Old Mortality, Volume 1. by Walter Scott (latest ebook reader txt) 📕

upon that errand up to the tower younder?"

"To be sure I do," answered Bothwell. "How should I be able to report favourably to my officers of the worthy lady's sound principles, unless I know the taste of her sack, for sack she will produce—that I take for granted; it is the favourite consoler of your old dowager of quality, as small claret is the potation of your country laird."

"Then, for heaven's sake," said Henry, "if you are determined to go there, do not mention my name, or expose me to a family that I am acquainted with. Let me be muffled up for the time in one of your soldier's cloaks, and only mention me generally as a prisoner under your charge."

"With all my heart," said Bothwell; "I promised to use you civilly, and I scorn to break my word.—Here, Andrews, wrap a cloak round the prisoner, and do not mention his name, nor where we caught him, unless you would have a trot on a horse of wood."

[Note: Wooden Mare. The punishment of riding the wooden mare was, in the days of Charles and long after, one of the various and cruel modes of enforcing military discipline. In front of the old guard-house in the High Street of Edinburgh, a large horse of this kind was placed, on which now and then, in the more ancient times, a veteran might be seen mounted, with a firelock tied to each foot, atoning for some small offence. There is a singular work, entitled Memoirs of Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, (son of Queen Anne,) from his birth to his ninth year, in which Jenkin Lewis, an honest Welshman in attendance on the royal infant's person, is pleased to record that his Royal Highness laughed, cried, crow'd, and said Gig and Dy, very like a babe of plebeian descent. He had also a premature taste for the discipline as well as the show of war, and had a corps of twenty-two boys, arrayed with paper caps and wooden swords. For the maintenance of discipline in this juvenile corps, a wooden horse was established in the Presence-chamber, and was sometimes employed in the punishment of offences not strictly military. Hughes, the Duke's tailor, having made him a suit of clothes which were too tight, was appointed, in an order of the day issued by the young prince, to be placed on this penal steed. The man of remnants, by dint of supplication and mediation, escaped from the penance, which was likely to equal the inconveniences of his brother artist's equestrian trip to Brentford. But an attendant named Weatherly, who had presumed to bring the young Prince a toy, (after he had discarded the use of them,) was actually mounted on the wooden horse without a saddle, with his face to the tail, while he was plied by four servants of the household with syringes and squirts, till he had a thorough wetting. "He was a waggish fellow," says Lewis, "and would not lose any thing for the joke's sake when he was putting his tricks upon others, so he was obliged to submit cheerfully to what was inflicted upon him, being at our mercy to play him off well, which we did accordingly." Amid much such nonsense, Lewis's book shows that this poor child, the heir of the British monarchy, who died when he was eleven years old, was, in truth, of promising parts, and of a good disposition. The volume, which rarely occurs, is an octavo, published in 1789, the editor being Dr Philip Hayes of Oxford.]

They were at this moment at an arched gateway, battlemented and flanked with turrets, one whereof was totally ruinous, excepting the lower story, which served as a cow-house to the peasant, whose family inhabited the turret that remained entire. The gate had been broken down by Monk's soldiers during the civil war, and had never been replaced, therefore presented no obstacle to Bothwell and his party. The avenue, very steep and narrow, and causewayed with large round stones, ascended the side of the precipitous bank in an oblique and zigzag course, now showing now hiding a view of the tower and its exterior bulwarks, which seemed to rise almost perpendicularly above their heads. The fragments of Gothic defences which it exhibited were upon such a scale of strength, as induced Bothwell to exclaim, "It's well this place is in honest and loyal hands. Egad, if the enemy had it, a dozen of old whigamore wives with their distaffs might keep it against a troop of dragoons, at least if they had half the spunk of the old girl we left at Milnwood. Upon my life," he continued, as they came in front of the large double tower and its surrounding defences and flankers, "it is a superb place, founded, says the worn inscription over the gate—unless the remnant of my Latin has given me the slip—by Sir Ralph de Bellenden in 1350—a respectable antiquity. I must greet the old lady with due honour, though it should put me to the labour of recalling some of the compliments that I used to dabble in when I was wont to keep that sort of company."

As he thus communed with himself, the butler, who had reconnoitred the soldiers from an arrowslit in the wall, announced to his lady, that a commanded party of dragoons, or, as he thought, Life-Guardsmen, waited at the gate with a prisoner under their charge.

"I am certain," said Gudyill, "and positive, that the sixth man is a prisoner; for his horse is led, and the two dragoons that are before have their carabines out of their budgets, and rested upon their thighs. It was aye the way we guarded prisoners in the days of the great Marquis."

"King's soldiers?" said the lady; "probably in want of refreshment. Go, Gudyill, make them welcome, and let them be accommodated with what provision and forage the Tower can afford.—And stay, tell my gentlewoman to bring my black scarf and manteau. I will go down myself to receive them; one cannot show the King's Life-Guards too much respect in times when they are doing so much for royal authority. And d'ye hear, Gudyill, let Jenny Dennison slip on her pearlings to walk before my niece and me, and the three women to walk behind; and bid my niece attend me instantly."

Fully accoutred, and attended according to her directions, Lady Margaret now sailed out into the court-yard of her tower with great courtesy and dignity. Sergeant Bothwell saluated the grave and reverend lady of the manor with an assurance which had something of the light and careless address of the dissipated men of fashion in Charles the Second's time, and did not at all savour of the awkward or rude manners of a non-commissioned officer of dragoons. His language, as well as his manners, seemed also to be refined for the time and occasion; though the truth was, that, in the fluctuations of an adventurous and profligate life, Bothwell had sometimes kept company much better suited to his ancestry than to his present situation of life. To the lady's request to know whether she could be of service to them, he answered, with a suitable bow, "That as they had to march some miles farther that night, they would be much accommodated by permission to rest their horses for an hour before continuing their journey."

"With the greatest pleasure," answered Lady Margaret; "and I trust that my people will see that neither horse nor men want suitable refreshment."

"We are well aware, madam," continued Bothwell, "that such has always been the reception, within the walls of Tillietudlem, of those who served the King."

"We have studied to discharge our duty faithfully and loyally on all occasions, sir," answered Lady Margaret, pleased with the compliment, "both to our monarchs and to their followers, particularly to their faithful soldiers. It is not long ago, and it probably has not escaped the recollection of his sacret majesty, now on the throne, since he himself honoured my poor house with his presence and breakfasted in a room in this castle, Mr Sergeant, which my waiting-gentlewoman shall show you; we still call it the King's room."

Bothwell had by this time dismounted his party, and committed the horses to the charge of one file, and the prisoner to that of another; so that he himself was at liberty to continue the conversation which the lady had so condescendingly opened.

"Since the King, my master, had the honour to experience your hospitality, I cannot wonder that it is extended to those that serve him, and whose principal merit is doing it with fidelity. And yet I have a nearer relation to his majesty than this coarse red coat would seem to indicate."

"Indeed, sir? Probably," said Lady Margaret, "you have belonged to his household?"

"Not exactly, madam, to his household, but rather to his house; a connexion through which I may claim kindred with most of the best families in Scotland, not, I believe, exclusive of that of Tillietudlem."

"Sir?" said the old lady, drawing herself up with dignity at hearing what she conceived an impertinent jest, "I do not understand you."

"It's but a foolish subject for one in my