Redgauntlet: A Tale of the Eighteenth Century by Walter Scott (classic novels .TXT) 📕

‘You may run some risk, though, by turning up to Fairladies; for I tell you they are all up through the country.’

‘Never mind—I may chance to put some of them down again,’ said Nanty, cheerfully. ‘Come, lads, bustle to your tackle. Are you all loaded?’

‘Aye, aye, captain; we will be ready in a jiffy,’ answered the gang.

‘D—n your captains! Have you a mind to have me hanged if I am taken? All’s hail-fellow, here.’

‘A sup at parting,’ said Father Crackenthorp, extending a flask to Nanty Ewart.

‘Not the twentieth part of a drop,’ said Nanty. ‘No Dutch courage for me—my heart is always high enough when there’s a chance of fighting; besides, if I live drunk, I should like to die sober. Here, old Jephson—you are the best-natured brute amongst them—get the lad between us on a quiet horse, and we will keep him upright, I warrant.’

As they raised Fairford from the ground, he groaned heavily, and asked faintly where they were taking him to.

‘To a place where you will be as snug and quiet as a mouse in his hole,’ said Nanty, ‘if so be that we can get you there safely. Good-bye, Father Crackenthorp—poison the quartermaster, if you can.’

The loaded horses then sprang forward at a hard trot, following each other in a line, and every second horse being mounted by a stout fellow in a smock frock, which served to conceal the arms with which most of these desperate men were provided. Ewart followed in the rear of the line, and, with the occasional assistance of old Jephson, kept his young charge erect in the saddle. He groaned heavily from time to time; and Ewart, more moved with compassion for his situation than might have been expected from his own habits, endeavoured to amuse him and comfort him, by some account of the place to which they were conveying him—his words of consolation being, however, frequently interrupted by the necessity of calling to his people, and many of them being lost amongst the rattling of the barrels, and clinking of the tackle and small chains by which they are secured on such occasions.

‘And you see, brother, you will be in safe quarters at Fairladies—good old scrambling house—good old maids enough, if they were not Papists,—Hollo, you Jack Lowther; keep the line, can’t ye, and shut your rattle-trap, you broth of a—? And so, being of a good family, and having enough, the old lasses have turned a kind of saints, and nuns, and so forth. The place they live in was some sort of nun-shop long ago, as they have them still in Flanders; so folk call them the Vestals of Fairladies—that may be, or may not be; and I care not whether it be or no.—Blinkinsop, hold your tongue, and be d—d!—And so, betwixt great alms and good dinners, they are well thought of by rich and poor, and their trucking with Papists is looked over. There are plenty of priests, and stout young scholars, and such-like, about the house it’s a hive of them. More shame that government send dragoons out after-a few honest fellows that bring the old women of England a drop of brandy, and let these ragamuffins smuggle in as much papistry and—Hark!—was that a whistle? No, it’s only a plover. You, Jem Collier, keep a look-out ahead—we’ll meet them at the High Whins, or Brotthole bottom, or nowhere. Go a furlong ahead, I say, and look sharp.—These Misses Arthurets feed the hungry, and clothe the naked, and such-like acts—which my poor father used to say were filthy rags, but he dressed himself out with as many of them as most folk.—D—n that stumbling horse! Father Crackenthorp should be d—d himself for putting an honest fellow’s neck in such jeopardy.’

Thus, and with much more to the same purpose, Nanty ran on, increasing, by his well-intended annoyance, the agony of Alan Fairford, who, tormented by a racking pain along the back and loins, which made the rough trot of the horse torture to him, had his aching head still further rended and split by the hoarse voice of the sailor, close to his ear. Perfectly passive, however, he did not even essay to give any answer; and indeed his own bodily distress was now so great and engrossing, that to think of his situation was impossible, even if he could have mended it by doing so.

Their course was inland; but in what direction, Alan had no means of ascertaining. They passed at first over heaths and sandy downs; they crossed more than one brook, or beck, as they are called in that country—some of them of considerable depth—and at length reached a cultivated country, divided, according to the English fashion of agriculture, into very small fields or closes, by high banks, overgrown with underwood, and surmounted by hedge-row trees, amongst which winded a number of impracticable and complicated lanes, where the boughs projecting from the embankments on each side, intercepted the light of the moon, and endangered the safety of the horsemen. But through this labyrinth the experience of the guides conducted them without a blunder, and without even the slackening of their pace. In many places, however, it was impossible for three men to ride abreast; and therefore the burden of supporting Alan Fairford fell alternately to old Jephson and to Nanty; and it was with much difficulty that they could keep him upright in his saddle.

At length, when his powers of sufferance were quite worn out, and he was about to implore them to leave him to his fate in the first cottage or shed—or under a haystack or a hedge—or anywhere, so he was left at ease, Collier, who rode ahead, passed back the word that they were at the avenue to Fairladies—‘Was he to turn up?’

Committing the charge of Fairford to Jephson, Nanty dashed up to the head of the troop, and gave his orders.—‘Who knows the house best?’

‘Sam Skelton’s a Catholic,’ said Lowther.

‘A d—d bad religion,’ said Nanty, of whose Presbyterian education a hatred of Popery seemed to be the only remnant. ‘But I am glad there is one amongst us, anyhow. You, Sam, being a Papist, know Fairladies and the old maidens I dare say; so do you fall out of the line, and wait here with me; and do you, Collier, carry on to Walinford bottom, then turn down the beck till you come to the old mill, and Goodman Grist the Miller, or old Peel-the-Causeway, will tell you where to stow; but I will be up with you before that.’

The string of loaded horses then struck forward at their former pace, while Nanty, with Sam Skelton, waited by the roadside till the rear came up, when Jephson and Fairford joined them, and, to the great relief of the latter, they began to proceed at an easier pace than formerly, suffering the gang to precede them, till the clatter and clang attending their progress began to die away in the distance. They had not proceeded a pistol-shot from the place where they parted, when a short turning brought them in front of an old mouldering gateway, whose heavy pinnacles were decorated in the style of the seventeenth century, with clumsy architectural ornaments; several of which had fallen down from decay, and lay scattered about, no further care having been taken than just to remove them out of the direct approach to the avenue. The great stone pillars, glimmering white in the moonlight, had some fanciful resemblance to supernatural apparitions, and the air of neglect all around, gave an uncomfortable idea of