LINLITHGOW Palace is a testament to the brutality of man. In the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the palace was a forum for torture,
both physical and spiritual. The Kirkgate Arch, the entrance to the
palace, has seen the arrival and departure of kings and queens,
Cromwellian soldiers, Covenanter prisoners and Jacobite troops, victims
or harbingers of terror. But on the Ghost Walk, organised by Historic
Scotland, the arch is a meeting point for the twentieth-century public
to gather and delight in being scared.
Sixty people huddled at the gate to the graveyard, anoraked and
mittened, prepared to shiver with cold and fear in a dark, dark night.
We were primed by a man in Count Dracula gear, our storyteller for the
evening, Mr Bruce Jamieson, who made it quite clear that were not going
to be spared the gory details of a savage period in history.
We learnt that in the sixteenth century people were not very nice to
each other. Especially if they had power and were related. We were fed
historical fact and invited to speculate on the souls which may inhabit
the palace, given their owners' sad and ugly end. The royals, then as
now, were at odds with each other. Sir James Hamilton of Finnart, a
companion of James V and the natural son of the first Earl of Arran, was
instrumental in having his second cousin burned at the stake. (The man
was a maniac; he also tried to shoot the king.) Finnart accused his
cousin of Protestant heresy, and sentenced him to death at the stake.
Executions, then, were superbly brutal but technically inefficient.
Practised, but not yet a science. The first blaze only burned his right
arm. Showers of rain put out the fire, again and again. They fetched
more wood, straw, and powder until he finally expired in pain.
We first stopped in the cool, calm graveyard. Mr Jamieson was in his
best Hammer House of Horror mood. He carried a small torch covered with
a skeletal hand, and stuck it in his top pocket to floodlight his
features from under the chin. He regaled us with tales of witchcraft,
grave-robbing, smallpox, and wolves. He spoke in low, conspiratorial
tones, suddenly raising his voice in order to startle the giggling
prepubescents in the front row. Some people were anxious about standing
on the graves. ''Don't worry about them,'' cheered Mr Jamieson.
''They've been a long time dead, they won't mind.'' We weren't at all
reassured and swayed on the path like a ship's crew on a surfboard.
He led us through the roofless palace. It was cold. We shuffled and
snuffled, two by two, through stony archways, into the many pockets of
hungry blackness. In the cobbled passages we tripped over sneaky bumps
and other's people's feet.
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw an apology of
civilisation. Any excuse for an outbreak of violence or pathological
sadism. People, therefore, were oppressed by fear; the fear of God, the
fear of the Devil, fear of death and disease. They were paranoid. No
wonder. There was a complete lack of fair trial for any alleged
misdemeanour. The ignorant, as always in any bloody period in history,
were in control.
We were deposited at the door of St Michael's Church. A man from the
audience donated his body for the purposes of illustrating another
particularly Scottish punishment, meted out for an act of treason, in
1652. He roared good-naturedly on cue, as Mr Jamieson performed a mock
flogging. The twentieth-century public roared with spirited laughter.
The cat o' nine tails had blades on each strip, our storyteller
explained. The prisoner was flogged 39 times, three times 13, the
devil's number. His crime? Toasting the king in a pub within earshot of
Cromwell's cronies. Linlithgow Palace is beautiful. There may be ghosts,
but the biggest of all is Mary Queen of Scots. As a consequence of all
the suffering within its walls, there is an atmosphere of general
sadness. Of intrigue, subterfuge, and deceit, of human beings trapped in
desperate lives. You can feel it. And as we traipsed across the Great
Hall, a stone basin with a hard floor, so sodden with rain it chilled
the soles of our feet, the death mask of Mary Stuart appeared on a wall
in the courtyard, superimposed by a projector above the fountain. Her
sweet, sleeping face, a testament to dignity, the only refuge of the
oppressed.
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