Fair Maid of Perth


by Sir Walter Scott, Bart.







INTRODUCTORY.

The ashes here of murder'd kings Beneath my footsteps sleep; And
yonder lies the scene of death, Where Mary learn'd to weep.

CAPTAIN MARJORIBANKS.


Every quarter of Edinburgh has its own peculiar boast, so that the
city together combines within its precincts, if you take the word
of the inhabitants on the subject, as much of historical interest
as of natural beauty. Our claims in behalf of the Canongate are
not the slightest. The Castle may excel us in extent of prospect
and sublimity of site; the Calton had always the superiority of
its unrivalled panorama, and has of late added that of its towers,
and triumphal arches, and the pillars of its Parthenon. The High
Street, we acknowledge, had the distinguished honour of being
defended by fortifications, of which we can show no vestiges. We
will not descend to notice the claims of more upstart districts,
called Old New Town and New New Town, not to mention the favourite
Moray Place, which is the Newest New Town of all. We will not match
ourselves except with our equals, and with our equals in age only,
for in dignity we admit of one. We boast being the court end of the
town, possessing the Palace and the sepulchral remains of monarchs,
and that we have the power to excite, in a degree unknown to the
less honoured quarters of the city, the dark and solemn recollections
of ancient grandeur, which occupied the precincts of our venerable
Abbey from the time of St. David till her deserted halls were once
more made glad, and her long silent echoes awakened, by the visit
of our present gracious sovereign.

My long habitation in the neighbourhood, and the quiet respectability
of my habits, have given me a sort of intimacy with good Mrs. Policy,
the housekeeper in that most interesting part of the old building
called Queen Mary's Apartments. But a circumstance which lately
happened has conferred upon me greater privileges; so that, indeed,
I might, I believe, venture on the exploit of Chatelet, who was
executed for being found secreted at midnight in the very bedchamber
of Scotland's mistress.

It chanced that the good lady I have mentioned was, in the discharge
of her function, showing the apartments to a cockney from London
--not one of your quiet, dull, commonplace visitors, who gape,
yawn, and listen with an acquiescent "umph" to the information doled
out by the provincial cicerone. No such thing: this was the brisk,
alert agent of a great house in the city, who missed no opportunity
of doing business, as he termed it--that is, of putting off the
goods of his employers, and improving his own account of commission.
He had fidgeted through the suite of apartments, without finding
the least opportunity to touch upon that which he considered
as the principal end of his existence. Even the story of Rizzio's
assassination presented no ideas to this emissary of commerce,
until the housekeeper appealed, in support of her narrative, to
the dusky stains of blood upon the floor.

"These are the stains," she said; "nothing will remove them from
the place: there they have been for two hundred and fifty years,
and there they will remain while the floor is left standing--
neither water nor anything else will ever remove them from that
spot."

Now our cockney, amongst other articles, sold Scouring Drops,
as they are called, and a stain of two hundred and fifty years'
standing was interesting to him, not because it had been caused
by the blood of a queen's favourite, slain in her apartment, but
because it offered so admirable an opportunity to prove the efficacy
of his unequalled Detergent Elixir. Down on his knees went our
friend, but neither in horror nor devotion.

"Two hundred and fifty years, ma'am, and nothing take it away? Why,
if it had been five hundred, I have something in my pocket will
fetch it out in five minutes. D'ye see this elixir, ma'am? I will
show you the stain vanish in a moment."

Accordingly, wetting one end of his handkerchief with the all
deterging specific, he began to rub away on the planks, without
heeding the remonstrances of Mrs. Policy. She, good soul, stood
at first in astonishment, like the abbess of St. Bridget's, when a
profane visitant drank up the vial of brandy which had long passed
muster among the relics of the cloister for the tears of the blessed
saint. The venerable guardian of St. Bridget probably expected the
interference of her patroness--she of Holyrood might, perhaps, hope
that David Ruzzio's spectre would arise to prevent the profanation.
But Mrs. Policy stood not long in the silence of horror. She uplifted
her voice, and screamed as loudly as Queen Mary herself when the
dreadful deed was in the act of perpetration--

"Harrow, now out, and walawa!" she cried.

I happened to be taking my morning walk in the adjoining gallery,
pondering in my mind why the kings of Scotland, who hung around me,
should be each and every one painted with a nose like the knocker
of a door, when lo! the walls once more re-echoed with such shrieks
as formerly were as often heard in the Scottish palaces as were
sounds of revelry and music. Somewhat surprised at such an alarm
in a place so solitary, I hastened to the spot, and found the well
meaning traveller scrubbing the floor like a housemaid, while Mrs.
Policy, dragging him by the skirts of the coat, in vain endeavoured
to divert him from his sacrilegious purpose. It cost me some trouble
to explain to the zealous purifier of silk stockings, embroidered
waistcoats, broadcloth, and deal planks that there were such things
in the world as stains which ought to remain indelible, on account
of the associations with which they are connected. Our good friend
viewed everything of the kind only as the means of displaying the
virtue of his vaunted commodity. He comprehended, however, that he
would not be permitted to proceed to exemplify its powers on the
present occasion, as two or three inhabitants appeared, who, like
me, threatened to maintain the housekeeper's side of the question.
He therefore took his leave, muttering that he had always heard the
Scots were a nasty people, but had no idea they carried it so far
as to choose to have the floors of their palaces blood boltered, like
Banquo's ghost, when to remove them would have cost but a hundred
drops of the Infallible Detergent Elixir, prepared and sold by
Messrs. Scrub and Rub, in five shilling and ten shilling bottles,
each bottle being marked with the initials of the inventor, to
counterfeit which would be to incur the pains of forgery.

Freed from the odious presence of this lover of cleanliness, my
good friend Mrs. Policy was profuse in her expressions of thanks;
and yet her gratitude, instead of exhausting itself in these
declarations, according to the way of the world, continues as lively
at this moment as if she had never thanked me at all. It is owing
to her recollection of this piece of good service that I have the
permission of wandering, like the ghost of some departed gentleman
usher, through these deserted halls, sometimes, as the old Irish
ditty expresses it--

Thinking upon things that are long enough ago;

--and sometimes wishing I could, with the good luck of most editors
of romantic narrative, light upon some hidden crypt or massive
antique cabinet, which should yield to my researches an almost
illegible manuscript, containing the authentic particulars of some
of the strange deeds of those wild days of the unhappy Mary.

My dear Mrs. Baliol used to sympathise with me when I regretted
that all godsends of this nature had ceased to occur, and that an
author might chatter his teeth to pieces by the seaside without a
wave ever wafting to him a casket containing such a history as that
of Automates; that he might break his shins in stumbling through
a hundred vaults without finding anything but rats and mice;
and become the tenant of a dozen sets of shabby tenements without
finding that they contained any manuscript but the weekly bill for
board and lodging. A dairymaid of these degenerate days might as
well wash and deck her dairy in hopes of finding the fairy tester
in her shoe.

"It is a sad and too true a tale, cousin," said Mrs. Baliol,
"I am sure we all have occasion to regret the want of these ready
supplements to a failing invention. But you, most of all, have right
to complain that the fairest have not favoured your researches--
you, who have shown the world that the age of chivalry still exists
--you, the knight of Croftangry, who braved the fury of the 'London
'prentice bold,' in behalf of the fair Dame Policy, and the memorial
of Rizzio's slaughter! Is it not a pity, cousin, considering the
feat of chivalry was otherwise so much according to rule--is it
not, I say, a great pity that the lady had not been a little younger,
and the legend a little older?"

"Why, as to the age at which a fair dame loses the benefit of
chivalry, and is no longer entitled to crave boon of brave knight,
that I leave to the statutes of the Order of Errantry; but for the
blood of Rizzio I take up the gauntlet, and maintain against all
and sundry that I hold the stains to be of no modern date, but to
have been actually the consequence and the record of that terrible
assassination."

"As I cannot accept the challenge to the field, fair cousin, I am
contented to require proof."

"The unaltered tradition of the Palace, and the correspondence of
the existing state of things with that tradition."

"Explain, if you please."

"I will. The universal tradition bears that, when Rizzio was
dragged out of the chamber of the Queen, the heat and fury of the
assassins, who struggled which should deal him most wounds, despatched
him at the door of the anteroom. At the door of the apartment,
therefore, the greater quantity of the ill fated minion's blood was
spilled, and there the marks of it are still shown. It is reported
further by historians, that Mary continued her entreaties for his
life, mingling her prayers with screams and exclamations, until
she knew that he was assuredly slain; on which she wiped her eyes
and said, 'I will now study revenge.'"

"All this is granted. But the blood--would it not wash out, or
waste out, think you, in so many years?"

"I am coming to that presently. The constant tradition of the
Palace says, that Mary discharged any measures to be taken to remove
the marks of slaughter, which she had resolved should remain as a
memorial to quicken and confirm her purposed vengeance. But it is
added that, satisfied with the knowledge that it existed, and not
desirous to have the ghastly evidence always under her eye, she
caused a traverse, as it is called (that is, a temporary screen of
boards), to be drawn along the under part of the anteroom, a few
feet from the door, so as to separate the place stained with the
blood from the rest of the apartment, and involve it in considerable
obscurity. Now this temporary partition still exists, and, by
running across and interrupting the plan of the roof and cornices,
plainly intimates that it has been intended to serve some temporary
purpose, since it disfigures the proportions of the room, interferes
with the ornaments of the ceiling, and could only have been put
there for some such purpose as hiding an object too disagreeable
to be looked upon. As to the objection that the bloodstains would
have disappeared in course of time, I apprehend that, if measures
to efface them were not taken immediately after the affair happened
--if the blood, in other words, were allowed to sink into the wood,
the stain would become almost indelible. Now, not to mention that
our Scottish palaces were not particularly well washed in those
days, and that there were no Patent Drops to assist the labours
of the