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

“Weel, but, Laurie, ye maun befriend me this time, and get this wee bit sifflication slipped into his Majesty's ain most gracious hand. I promise you the contents will be most grateful to him.”

“Richie,” answered Linklater, “you have certainly sworn to say your prayers in the porter's lodge, with your back bare; and twa grooms, with dog-whips, to cry amen to you.”

“Na, na, Laurie, lad,” said Richie, “I ken better what belangs to sifflications than I did yon day; and ye will say that yoursell, if ye will but get that bit note to the king's hand.”

“I will have neither hand nor foot in the matter,” said the cautious Clerk of the Kitchen; “but there is his Majesty's mess of cock-a-leekie just going to be served to him in his closet—I cannot prevent you from putting the letter between the gilt bowl and the platter; his sacred Majesty will see it when he lifts the bowl, for he aye drinks out the broth.”

“Enough said,” replied Richie, and deposited the paper accordingly, just before a page entered to carry away the mess to his Majesty.

“Aweel, aweel, neighbour,” said Laurence, when the mess was taken away, “if ye have done ony thing to bring yoursell to the withy, or the scourging post, it is your ain wilful deed.”

“I will blame no other for it,” said Richie; and with that undismayed pertinacity of conceit, which made a fundamental part of his character, he abode the issue, which was not long of arriving.

In a few minutes Maxwell himself arrived in the apartment, and demanded hastily who had placed a writing on the king's trencher, Linklater denied all knowledge of it; but Richie Moniplies, stepping boldly forth, pronounced the emphatical confession, “I am the man.”

“Follow me, then,” said Maxwell, after regarding him with a look of great curiosity.

They went up a private staircase,—even that private staircase, the privilege of which at Court is accounted a nearer road to power than the grandes entrees themselves. Arriving in what Richie described as an “ill redd-up” ante-room, the usher made a sign to him to stop, while he went into the king's closet. Their conference was short, and as Maxwell opened the door to retire, Richie heard the conclusion of it.

“Ye are sure he is not dangerous?—I was caught once.—Bide within call, but not nearer the door than within three geometrical cubits. If I speak loud, start to me like a falcon—If I speak loun, keep your lang lugs out of ear-shot—and now let him come in.”

Richie passed forward at Maxwell's mute signal, and in a moment found himself in the presence of the king. Most men of Richie's birth and breeding, and many others, would have been abashed at finding themselves alone with their Sovereign. But Richie Moniplies had an opinion of himself too high to be controlled by any such ideas; and having made his stiff reverence, he arose once more into his perpendicular height, and stood before James as stiff as a hedge-stake.

“Have ye gotten them, man? have ye gotten them?” said the king, in a fluttered state, betwixt hope and eagerness, and some touch of suspicious fear. “Gie me them—gie me them—before ye speak a word, I charge you, on your allegiance.”

Richie took a box from his bosom, and, stooping on one knee, presented it to his Majesty, who hastily opened it, and having ascertained that it contained a certain carcanet of rubies, with which the reader was formerly made acquainted, he could not resist falling into a sort of rapture, kissing the gems, as if they had been capable of feeling, and repeating again and again with childish delight, “Onyx cum prole, silexque—-Onyx cum prole! Ah, my bright and bonny sparklers, my heart loups light to see you again.” He then turned to Richie, upon whose stoical countenance his Majesty's demeanour had excited something like a grim smile, which James interrupted his rejoicing to reprehend, saying, “Take heed, sir, you are not to laugh at us—we are your anointed Sovereign.”

“God forbid that I should laugh!” said Richie, composing his countenance into its natural rigidity. “I did but smile, to bring my visage into coincidence and conformity with your Majesty's physiognomy.”

“Ye speak as a dutiful subject, and an honest man,” said the king; “but what deil's your name, man?”

“Even Richie Moniplies, the son of auld Mungo Moniplies, at the West Port of Edinburgh, who had the honour to supply your Majesty's mother's royal table, as weel as your Majesty's, with flesh and other vivers, when time was.”

“Aha!” said the king, laughing,—for he possessed, as a useful attribute of his situation, a tenacious memory, which recollected every one with whom he was brought into casual contact,—“Ye are the self-same traitor who had weelnigh coupit us endlang on the causey of our ain courtyard? but we stuck by our mare. Equam memento rebus in arduis servare. Weel, be not dismayed, Richie; for, as many men have turned traitors, it is but fair that a traitor, now and then, suld prove to be, contra expectanda, a true man. How cam ye by our jewels, man?—cam ye on the part of George Heriot?”

“In no sort,” said Richie. “May it please your Majesty, I come as Harry Wynd fought, utterly for my own hand, and on no man's errand; as, indeed, I call no one master, save Him that made me, your most gracious Majesty who governs me, and the noble Nigel Olifaunt, Lord of Glenvarloch, who maintained me as lang as he could maintain himself, poor nobleman!”

“Glenvarlochides again!” exclaimed the king; “by my honour, he lies in ambush for us at every corner!—Maxwell knocks at the door. It is George Heriot come to tell us he cannot find these jewels.—Get thee behind the arras, Richie—stand close, man—sneeze not—cough not—breathe not!—Jingling Geordie is so damnably ready with his gold-ends of wisdom, and sae accursedly backward with his gold-ends of siller, that, by our royal saul, we are glad to get a hair in his neck.”

Richie got behind the arras, in obedience to the commands of the good-natured king, while the Monarch, who never allowed his dignity to stand in the way of a frolic, having adjusted, with his own hand, the tapestry, so as to complete the ambush, commanded Maxwell to tell him what was the matter without. Maxwell's reply was so low as to be lost by Richie Moniplies, the peculiarity of whose situation by no means abated his curiosity and desire to gratify it to the uttermost.

“Let Geordie Heriot come in,” said the king; and, as Richie could observe through a slit in the tapestry, the honest citizen, if not actually agitated, was at least discomposed. The king, whose talent for wit, or humour, was precisely of a kind to be gratified by such a scene as ensued, received his homage with coldness, and began to talk to him with an air of serious dignity, very different from the usual indecorous levity of his behaviour. “Master Heriot,” he said, “if we aright remember, we opignorated in your hands certain jewels of the Crown, for a certain sum of money—Did we, or did we not?”

“My most gracious Sovereign,” said Heriot, “indisputably your Majesty was pleased to do so.”

“The property of which jewels and cimelia remained with