The Fortunes of Nigel by Walter Scott (good summer reads txt) 📕

“Doubtless, my lord,” answered the Prince, still calm and unmoved,—“your late mode of life, and the associates with whom you have lived, have made you familiar with scenes and weapons of violence. But it is not to me you are to plead your cause.”

“Hear me—hear me, noble Prince!” said Nigel, eagerly. “Hear me! You—even you yourself—may one day ask to be heard, and in vain.”

“How, sir,” said the Prince, haughtily—“how am I to construe that, my lord?”

“If not on earth, sir,” replied the prisoner, “yet to Heaven we must all pray for patient and favourable audience.”

“True, my lord,” said the Prince, bending his head with haughty acquiescence; “nor would I now refuse such audience to you, could it avail you. But you shall suffer no wrong. We will ourselves look into your case.”

“Ay, ay,” answered the king, “he hath made appellatio ad Casarem—we will interrogate Glenvarlochides ourselves, time and place fitting; and, in the meanwhile, have him and his weapons away, for I am weary of the sight of them.”

In consequence of directions hastily given, Nigel was accordingly removed from the presence, where, however, his words had not altogether fallen to the ground. “This is a most strange matter, George,” said the Prince to the favourite; “this gentleman hath a good countenance, a happy presence, and much calm firmness in his look and speech. I cannot think he would attempt a crime so desperate and useless.”

“I profess neither love nor favour to the young man,” answered Buckingham, whose high-spirited ambition bore always an open character: “but I cannot but agree with your Highness, that our dear gossip hath been something hasty in apprehending personal danger from him.”

“By my saul, Steenie, ye are not blate, to say so!” said the king. “Do I not ken the smell of pouther, think ye? Who else nosed out the Fifth of November, save our royal selves? Cecil, and Suffolk, and all of them, were at fault, like sae mony mongrel tikes, when I puzzled it out: and trow ye that I cannot smell pouther? Why, 'sblood, man, Joannes Barclaius thought my ingine was in some measure inspiration, and terms his history of the plot, Series patefacti divinitus parricidii; and Spondanus, in like manner, saith of us, Divinitus evasit.”

“The land was happy in your Majesty's escape,” said the Duke of Buckingham, “and not less in the quick wit which tracked that labyrinth of treason by so fine and almost invisible a clew.”

“Saul, man, Steenie, ye are right! There are few youths have sic true judgment as you, respecting the wisdom of their elders; and, as for this fause, traitorous smaik, I doubt he is a hawk of the same nest. Saw ye not something papistical about him? Let them look that he bears not a crucifix, or some sic Roman trinket, about him.”

“It would ill become me to attempt the exculpation of this unhappy man,” said Lord Dalgarno, “considering the height of his present attempt, which has made all true men's blood curdle in their veins. Yet I cannot avoid intimating, with all due submission to his Majesty's infallible judgment, in justice to one who showed himself formerly only my enemy, though he now displays himself in much blacker colours, that this Olifaunt always appeared to me more as a Puritan than as a Papist.”

“Ah, Dalgarno, art thou there, man?” said the king. “And ye behoved to keep back, too, and leave us to our own natural strength and the care of Providence, when we were in grips with the villain!”

“Providence, may it please your most Gracious Majesty, would not fail to aid, in such a strait, the care of three weeping kingdoms,” said Lord Dalgarno.

“Surely, man—surely,” replied the king—“but a sight of your father, with his long whinyard, would have been a blithe matter a short while syne; and in future we will aid the ends of Providence in our favour, by keeping near us two stout beef-eaters of the guard.—And so this Olifaunt is a Puritan?—not the less like to be a Papist, for all that—for extremities meet, as the scholiast proveth. There are, as I have proved in my book, Puritans of papistical principles—it is just a new tout on an old horn.”

Here the king was reminded by the Prince, who dreaded perhaps that he was going to recite the whole Basilicon Doron, that it would be best to move towards the Palace, and consider what was to be done for satisfying the public mind, in whom the morning's adventure was likely to excite much speculation. As they entered the gate of the Palace, a female bowed and presented a paper, which the king received, and, with a sort of groan, thrust it into his side pocket. The Prince expressed some curiosity to know its contents. “The valet in waiting will tell you them,” said the king, “when I strip off my cassock. D'ye think, Baby, that I can read all that is thrust into my hands? See to me, man”—(he pointed to the pockets of his great trunk breeches, which were stuffed with papers)—“We are like an ass—that we should so speak—stooping betwixt two burdens. Ay, ay, Asinus fortis accumbens inter terminos, as the Vulgate hath it—Ay, ay, Vidi terrain quod esset optima, et supposui humerum ad portandum, et factus sum tributis serviens—I saw this land of England, and became an overburdened king thereof.”

“You are indeed well loaded, my dear dad and gossip,” said the Duke of Buckingham, receiving the papers which King James emptied out of his pockets.

“Ay, ay,” continued the monarch; “take them to you per aversionem, bairns—the one pouch stuffed with petitions, t'other with pasquinadoes; a fine time we have on't. On my conscience, I believe the tale of Cadmus was hieroglyphical, and that the dragon's teeth whilk he sowed were the letters he invented. Ye are laughing, Baby Charles?—Mind what I say.—When I came here first frae our ain country, where the men are as rude as the weather, by my conscience, England was a bieldy bit; one would have thought the king had little to do but to walk by quiet waters, per aquam refectionis. But, I kenna how or why, the place is sair changed—read that libel upon us and on our regimen. The dragon's teeth are sown, Baby Charles; I pray God they bearna their armed harvest in your day, if I suld not live to see it. God forbid I should, for there will be an awful day's kemping at the shearing of them.”

“I shall know how to stifle the crop in the blade,—ha, George?” said the Prince, turning to the favourite with a look expressive of some contempt for his father's apprehensions, and full of confidence in the superior firmness and decision of his own counsels.

While this discourse was passing, Nigel, in charge of a pursuivant-at-arms, was pushed and dragged through the small town, all the inhabitants of which, having been alarmed by the report of an attack on the king's life, now pressed forward to see the supposed traitor. Amid the confusion of the moment, he could descry the face of the victualler, arrested into a stare of stolid wonder, and that of the barber grinning betwixt horror and eager curiosity. He thought that he also had a glimpse of his waterman in the green jacket.

He had no time for remarks, being placed in a boat with the pursuivant and two yeomen of the guard, and rowed up the river as