The Fortunes of Nigel

“This will never answer,” he said, “Master Kilderkin – the king twice asked for sweetbreads, and fricasseed coxcombs, which are a favourite dish of his most Sacred Majesty, and they were not to be had, because Master Kilderkin had not supplied them to the clerk of the kitchen, as by bargain bound.” Here Kilderkin made some apology, brief, according to his own nature, and muttered in a lowly tone after the fashion of all who find themselves in a scrape. His superior replied, in a lofty strain of voice, “Do not tell me of the carrier and his wain, and of the hen-coops coming from Norfolk with the poultry; a loyal man would have sent an express – he would have gone upon his stumps, like Widdrington. What if the king had lost his appetite, Master Kilderkin? What if his most Sacred Majesty had lost his dinner? O, Master Kilderkin, if you had but the just sense of the dignity of our profession, which is told of by the witty African slave, for so the king’s most excellent Majesty designates him, Publius Terentius, Tanguam in specula – in patinas inspicerejubeo.”

“You are learned, Master Linklater,” replied the English publican, compelling, as it were with difficulty, his mouth to utter three or four words consecutively.

“A poor smatterer,” said Mr. Linklater; “but it would be a shame to us, who are his most excellent Majesty’s countrymen, not in some sort to have cherished those arts wherewith he is so deeply embued —Regis ad exemplar, Master Kilderkin, totus componitur orbis– which is as much as to say, as the king quotes the cook learns. In brief, Master Kilderkin, having had the luck to be bred where humanities may be had at the matter of an English five groats by the quarter, I, like others, have acquired – ahem-hem! – ” Here, the speaker’s eye having fallen upon Lord Glenvarloch, he suddenly stopped in his learned harangue, with such symptoms of embarrassment as induced Ned Kilderkin to stretch his taciturnity so far as not only to ask him what he ailed, but whether he would take any thing.

“Ail nothing,” replied the learned rival of the philosophical Syrus; “Nothing – and yet I do feel a little giddy. I could taste a glass of your dame’s aqua mirabilis.”

“I will fetch it,” said Ned, giving a nod; and his back was no sooner turned, than the cook walked near the table where Lord Glenvarloch was seated, and regarding him with a look of significance, where more was meant than met the ear, said, – “You are a stranger in Greenwich, sir. I advise you to take the opportunity to step into the Park – the western wicket was ajar when I came hither; I think it will be locked presently, so you had better make the best of your way – that is, if you have any curiosity. The venison are coming into season just now, sir, and there is a pleasure in looking at a hart of grease. I always think when they are bounding so blithely past, what a pleasure it would be, to broach their plump haunches on a spit, and to embattle their breasts in a noble fortification of puff-paste, with plenty of black pepper.”

He said no more, as Kilderkin re-entered with the cordial, but edged off from Nigel without waiting any reply, only repeating the same look of intelligence with which he had accosted him.

Nothing makes men’s wits so alert as personal danger. Nigel took the first opportunity which his host’s attention to the yeoman of the royal kitchen permitted, to discharge his reckoning, and readily obtained a direction to the wicket in question. He found it upon the latch, as he had been taught to expect; and perceived that it admitted him to a narrow footpath, which traversed a close and tangled thicket, designed for the cover of the does and the young fawns. Here he conjectured it would be proper to wait; nor had he been stationary above five minutes, when the cook, scalded as much with heat of motion as ever he had been by his huge fire-place, arrived almost breathless, and with his pass-key hastily locked the wicket behind him.

Ere Lord Glenvarloch had time to speculate upon this action, the man approached with anxiety, and said – “Good lord, my Lord Glenvarloch! – why will you endanger yourself thus?”

“You know me then, my friend?” said Nigel.

“Not much of that, my lord – but I know your honour’s noble house well. – My name is Laurie Linklater, my lord.”

“Linklater!” repeated Nigel. “I should recollect – ’

“Under your lordship’s favour,” he continued, “I was ‘prentice, my lord, to old Mungo Moniplies, the flesher at the wanton West-Port of Edinburgh, which I wish I saw again before I died. And, your honour’s noble father having taken Richie Moniplies into his house to wait on your lordship, there was a sort of connexion, your lordship sees.”

“Ah!” said Lord Glenvarloch, “I had almost forgot your name, but not your kind purpose. You tried to put Richie in the way of presenting a supplication to his Majesty?”

“Most true, my lord,” replied the king’s cook. “I had like to have come by mischief in the job; for Richie, who was always wilful, ‘wadna be guided by me,’ as the sang says. But nobody amongst these brave English cooks can kittle up his Majesty’s most sacred palate with our own gusty Scottish dishes. So I e’en betook myself to my craft, and concocted a mess of friar’s chicken for the soup, and a savoury hachis, that made the whole cabal coup the crans; and, instead of disgrace, I came by preferment. I am one of the clerks of the kitchen now, make me thankful – with a finger in the purveyor’s office, and may get my whole hand in by and by.”

“I am truly glad,” said Nigel, “to hear that you have not suffered on my account, – still more so at your good fortune.”

“You bear a kind heart, my lord,” said Linklater, “and do not forget poor people; and, troth, I see not why they should be forgotten, since the king’s errand may sometimes fall in the cadger’s gate. I have followed your lordship in the street, just to look at such a stately shoot of the old oak-tree; and my heart jumped into my throat, when I saw you sitting openly in the eating-house yonder, and knew there was such danger to your person.”

“What! there are warrants against me, then?” said Nigel.

“It is even true, my lord; and there are those who are willing to blacken you as much as they can. – God forgive them, that would sacrifice an honourable house for their own base ends!”

“Amen,” said Nigel.

“For, say your lordship may have been a little wild, like other young gentlemen – ”

“We have little time to talk of it, my friend,” said Nigel. “The point in question is, how am I to get speech of the king?”

“The king, my lord!” said Linklater in astonishment; “why, will not that be rushing wilfully into danger? – scalding yourself, as I may say, with your own ladle?”

“My good friend,” answered Nigel, “my experience of the Court, and my knowledge of the circumstances in which I stand, tell me, that the manliest and most direct road is, in my case, the surest and the safest. The king has both a head to apprehend what is just, and a heart to do what is kind.”

“It is e’en true, my lord, and so we, his old servants, know,” added Linklater; “but, woe’s me, if you knew how many folks make it their daily and nightly purpose to set his head against his heart, and his heart against his head – to make him do hard things because they are called just, and unjust things because they are represented as kind. Woe’s me! it is with his Sacred Majesty, and the favourites who work upon him, even according to the homely proverb that men taunt my calling with, – ‘God sends good meat, but the devil sends cooks.’”

“It signifies not talking of it, my good friend,” said Nigel, “I must take my risk, my honour peremptorily demands it. They may maim me, or beggar me, but they shall not say I fled from my accusers. My peers shall hear my vindication.”

“Your peers?” exclaimed the cook – “Alack-a-day, my lord, we are not in Scotland, where the nobles can bang it out bravely, were it even with the king himself, now and then. This mess must be cooked in the Star-Chamber, and that is an oven seven times heated, my lord; – and yet, if you are determined to see the king, I will not say but you may find some favour, for he likes well any thing that is appealed directly to his own wisdom, and sometimes, in the like cases, I have known him stick by his own opinion, which is always a fair one. Only mind, if you will forgive me, my lord – mind to spice high with Latin; a curn or two of Greek would not be amiss; and, if you can bring in any thing about the judgment of Solomon, in the original Hebrew, and season with a merry jest or so, the dish will be the more palatable. – Truly, I think, that, besides my skill in art, I owe much to the stripes of the Rector of the High School, who imprinted on my mind that cooking scene in the Heautontimorumenos.”

“Leaving that aside, my friend,” said Lord Glenvarloch, “can you inform me which way I shall most readily get to the sight and speech of the king?”

“To the sight of him readily enough,” said Linklater; “he is galloping about these alleys, to see them strike the hart, to get him an appetite for a nooning – and that reminds me I should be in the kitchen. To the speech of the king you will not come so easily, unless you could either meet him alone, which rarely chances, or wait for him among the crowd that go to see him alight. And now, farewell, my lord, and God speed! – if I could do more for you, I would offer it.”

“You have done enough, perhaps, to endanger yourself,” said Lord Glenvarloch. “I pray you to be gone, and leave me to my fate.”

The honest cook lingered, but a nearer burst of the horns apprized him that there was no time to lose; and, acquainting Nigel that he would leave the postern-door on the latch to secure his retreat in that direction, he bade God bless him, and farewell.

In the kindness of this humble countryman, flowing partly from national partiality, partly from a sense of long-remembered benefits, which had been scarce thought on by those who had bestowed them, Lord Glenvarloch thought he saw the last touch of sympathy which he was to receive in this cold and courtly region, and felt that he must now be sufficient to himself, or be utterly lost.

He traversed more than one alley, guided by the sounds of the chase, and met several of the inferior attendants upon the king’s sport, who regarded him only as one of the spectators who were sometimes permitted to enter the Park by the concurrence of the officers about the Court. Still there was no appearance of James, or any of his principal courtiers, and Nigel began to think whether, at the risk of incurring disgrace similar to that which had attended the rash exploit of Richie Moniplies, he should not repair to the Palace-gate, in order to address the king on his return, when Fortune presented him the opportunity of doing so, in her own way.

He was in one of those long walks by which the Park was traversed, when he heard, first a distant rustling, then the rapid approach of hoofs shaking the firm earth on which he stood; then a distant halloo, warned by which he stood up by the side of the avenue, leaving free room for the passage of the chase. The stag, reeling, covered with foam, and blackened with sweat, his nostrils extended as he gasped for breath, made a shift to come up as far as where Nigel stood, and, without turning to bay, was there pulled down by two tall greyhounds of the breed still used by the hardy deer-stalkers of the Scottish Highlands, but which has been long unknown in England. One dog struck at the buck’s throat, another dashed his sharp nose and fangs, I might almost say, into the animal’s bowels. It would have been natural for Lord Glenvarloch, himself persecuted as if by hunters, to have thought upon the occasion like the melancholy Jacques; but habit is a strange matter, and I fear that his feelings on the occasion were rather those of the practised huntsman than of the moralist. He had no time, however, to indulge them, for mark what befell.

A single horseman followed the chase, upon a steed so thoroughly subjected to the rein, that it obeyed the touch of the bridle as if it had been a mechanical impulse operating on the nicest piece of machinery; so that, seated deep in his demipique saddle, and so trussed up there as to make falling almost impossible, the rider, without either fear or hesitation, might increase or diminish the speed at which he rode, which, even on the most animating occasions of the chase, seldom exceeded three-fourths of a gallop, the horse keeping his haunches under him, and never stretching forward beyond the managed pace of the academy. The security with which he chose to prosecute even this favourite, and, in the ordinary case, somewhat dangerous amusement, as well as the rest of his equipage, marked King James. No attendant was within sight; indeed, it was often a nice strain of flattery to permit the Sovereign to suppose he had outridden and distanced all the rest of the chase.

“Weel dune, Bash – weel dune, Battie!” he exclaimed as he came up. “By the honour of a king, ye are a credit to the Braes of Balwhither! – Haud my horse, man,” he called out to Nigel, without stopping to see to whom he had addressed himself – “Haud my naig, and help me doun out o’ the saddle – deil ding your saul, sirrah, canna ye mak haste before these lazy smaiks come up? – haud the rein easy – dinna let him swerve – now, haud the stirrup – that will do, man, and now we are on terra firma.” So saying, without casting an eye on his assistant, gentle King Jamie, unsheathing the short, sharp hanger, (couteau de chasse,) which was the only thing approaching to a sword that he could willingly endure the sight of, drew the blade with great satisfaction across the throat of the buck, and put an end at once to its struggles and its agonies.

Lord Glenvarloch, who knew well the silvan duty which the occasion demanded, hung the bridle of the king’s palfrey on the branch of a tree, and, kneeling duteously down, turned the slaughtered deer upon its back, and kept the quarree in that position, while the king, too intent upon his sport to observe any thing else, drew his couteau down the breast of the animal, secundum artem; and, having made a cross cut, so as to ascertain the depth of the fat upon the chest, exclaimed, in a sort of rapture, “Three inches of white fat on the brisket! – prime – prime – as I am a crowned sinner – and deil ane o’ the lazy loons in but mysell! Seven – aught – aught tines on the antlers. By G – d, a hart of aught tines, and the first of the season! Bash and Battie, blessings on the heart’s-root of ye! Buss me, my bairns, buss me.” The dogs accordingly fawned upon him, licked him with bloody jaws, and soon put him in such a state that it might have seemed treason had been doing its full work upon his anointed body. “Bide doun, with a mischief to ye – bide doun, with a wanion,” cried the king, almost overturned by the obstreperous caresses of the large stag-hounds. “But ye are just like ither folks, gie ye an inch and ye take an ell. – And wha may ye be, friend?” he said, now finding leisure to take a nearer view of Nigel, and observing what in his first emotion of silvan delight had escaped him, – “Ye are nane of our train, man. In the name of God, what the devil are ye?”

“An unfortunate man, sire,” replied Nigel.

“I dare say that,” answered the king, snappishly, “or I wad have seen naething of you. My lieges keep a’ their happiness to themselves; but let bowls row wrang wi’ them, and I am sure to hear of it.”

“And to whom else can we carry our complaints but to your Majesty, who is Heaven’s vicegerent over us!” answered Nigel.

“Right, man, right – very weel spoken,” said the king; “but you should leave Heaven’s vicegerent some quiet on earth, too.”

“If your Majesty will look on me,” (for hitherto the king had been so busy, first with the dogs, and then with the mystic operation of breaking, in vulgar phrase, cutting up the deer, that he had scarce given his assistant above a transient glance,) “you will see whom necessity makes bold to avail himself of an opportunity which may never again occur.”

King James looked; his blood left his cheek, though it continued stained with that of the animal which lay at his feet, he dropped the knife from his hand, cast behind him a faltering eye, as if he either meditated flight or looked out for assistance, and then exclaimed, – “Glenvarlochides! as sure as I was christened James Stewart. Here is a bonny spot of work, and me alone, and on foot too!” he added, bustling to get upon his horse.

“Forgive me that I interrupt you, my liege,” said Nigel, placing himself between the king and his steed; “hear me but a moment!”

“I’ll hear ye best on horseback,” said the king. “I canna hear a word on foot, man, not a word; and it is not seemly to stand cheek-for-chowl confronting us that gate. Bide out of our gate, sir, we charge you on your allegiance. – The deil’s in them a’, what can they be doing?”

“By the crown that you wear, my liege,” said Nigel, “and for which my ancestors have worthily fought, I conjure you to be composed, and to hear me but a moment!”

That which he asked was entirely out of the monarch’s power to grant. The timidity which he showed was not the plain downright cowardice, which, like a natural impulse, compels a man to flight, and which can excite little but pity or contempt, but a much more ludicrous, as well as more mingled sensation. The poor king was frightened at once and angry, desirous of securing his safety, and at the same time ashamed to compromise his dignity; so that without attending to what Lord Glenvarloch endeavoured to explain, he kept making at his horse, and repeating, “We are a free king, man, – we are a free king – we will not be controlled by a subject. – In the name of God, what keeps Steenie? And, praised be his name, they are coming – Hillo, ho – here, here – Steenie, Steenie!”

The Duke of Buckingham galloped up, followed by several courtiers and attendants of the royal chase, and commenced with his usual familiarity, – “I see Fortune has graced our dear dad, as usual. – But what’s this?”

“What is it? It is treason for what I ken,” said the king; “and a’ your wyte, Steenie. Your dear dad and gossip might have been murdered, for what you care.”

“Murdered? Secure the villain!” exclaimed the Duke. “By Heaven, it is Olifaunt himself!” A dozen of the hunters dismounted at once, letting their horses run wild through the park. Some seized roughly on Lord Glenvarloch, who thought it folly to offer resistance, while others busied themselves with the king. “Are you wounded, my liege – are you wounded?”

“Not that I ken of,” said the king, in the paroxysm of his apprehension, (which, by the way, might be pardoned in one of so timorous a temper, and who, in his time, had been exposed to so many strange attempts) – “Not that I ken of – but search him – search him. I am sure I saw fire-arms under his cloak. I am sure I smelled powder – I am dooms sure of that.”

Lord Glenvarloch’s cloak being stripped off, and his pistols discovered, a shout of wonder and of execration on the supposed criminal purpose, arose from the crowd now thickening every moment. Not that celebrated pistol, which, though resting on a bosom as gallant and as loyal as Nigel’s, spread such cause less alarm among knights and dames at a late high solemnity – not that very pistol caused more temporary consternation than was so groundlessly excited by the arms which were taken from Lord Glenvarloch’s person; and not Mhic-Allastar-More himself could repel with greater scorn and indignation, the insinuations that they were worn for any sinister purposes.

“Away with the wretch – the parricide – the bloody-minded villain!” was echoed on all hands; and the king, who naturally enough set the same value on his own life, at which it was, or seemed to be, rated by others, cried out, louder than all the rest, “Ay, ay – away with him. I have had enough of him and so has the country. But do him no bodily harm – and, for God’s sake, sirs, if ye are sure ye have thoroughly disarmed him, put up your swords, dirks, and skenes, for you will certainly do each other a mischief.”

There was a speedy sheathing of weapons at the king’s command; for those who had hitherto been brandishing them in loyal bravado, began thereby to call to mind the extreme dislike which his Majesty nourished against naked steel, a foible which seemed to be as constitutional as his timidity, and was usually ascribed to the brutal murder of Rizzio having been perpetrated in his unfortunate mother’s presence before he yet saw the light.

At this moment, the Prince, who had been hunting in a different part of the then extensive Park, and had received some hasty and confused information of what was going forward, came rapidly up, with one or two noblemen in his train, and amongst others Lord Dalgarno. He sprung from his horse and asked eagerly if his father were wounded.

“Not that I am sensible of, Baby Charles – but a wee matter exhausted, with struggling single-handed with the assassin. – Steenie, fill up a cup of wine – the leathern bottle is hanging at our pommel. – Buss me, then, Baby Charles,” continued the monarch, after he had taken this cup of comfort; “O man, the Commonwealth and you have had a fair escape from the heavy and bloody loss of a dear father; for we are pater patriae, as weel as pater familias. -Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus tarn cari capitis!-Woe is me, black cloth would have been dear in England, and dry een scarce!”

And, at the very idea of the general grief which must have attended his death, the good-natured monarch cried heartily himself.

“Is this possible?” said Charles, sternly; for his pride was hurt at his father’s demeanour on the one hand, while on the other, he felt the resentment of a son and a subject, at the supposed attempt on the king’s life. “Let some one speak who has seen what happened – My Lord of Buckingham!”

“I cannot say my lord,” replied the Duke, “that I saw any actual violence offered to his Majesty, else I should have avenged him on the spot.”

“You would have done wrong, then, in your zeal, George,” answered the Prince; “such offenders were better left to be dealt with by the laws. But was the villain not struggling with his Majesty?”

“I cannot term it so, my lord,” said the Duke, who, with many faults, would have disdained an untruth; “he seemed to desire to detain his Majesty, who, on the contrary, appeared to wish to mount his horse; but they have found pistols on his person, contrary to the proclamation, and, as it proves to be by Nigel Olifaunt, of whose ungoverned disposition your Royal Highness has seen some samples, we seem to be justified in apprehending the worst.”

“Nigel Olifaunt!” said the Prince; “can that unhappy man so soon have engaged in a new trespass? Let me see those pistols.”

“Ye are not so unwise as to meddle with such snap-haunces, Baby Charles?” said James – “Do not give him them, Steenie – I command you on your allegiance! They may go off of their own accord, whilk often befalls. – You will do it, then? – Saw ever a man sic wilful bairns as we are cumbered with! – Havena we guardsmen and soldiers enow, but you must unload the weapons yoursell – you, the heir of our body and dignities, and sae mony men around that are paid for venturing life in our cause?”

But without regarding his father’s exclamations, Prince Charles, with the obstinacy which characterised him in trifles, as well as matters of consequence, persisted in unloading the pistols with his own hand, of the double bullets with which each was charged. The hands of all around were held up in astonishment at the horror of the crime supposed to have been intended, and the escape which was presumed so narrow.

Nigel had not yet spoken a word – he now calmly desired to be heard.

“To what purpose?” answered the Prince coldly. “You knew yourself accused of a heavy offence, and, instead of rendering yourself up to justice, in terms of the proclamation, you are here found intruding yourself on his Majesty’s presence, and armed with unlawful weapons.”

“May it please you, sir,” answered Nigel, “I wore these unhappy weapons for my own defence; and not very many hours since they were necessary to protect the lives of others.”

“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.”