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.