Woodstock; or, the Cavalier by Walter Scott (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📖

The boy is—hark ye, sirrah—what’s your name?—
Oh, Jacob—ay, I recollect—the same.

CRABBE.

The affectionate relatives were united as those who, meeting under great adversity, feel still the happiness of sharing it in common. They embraced again and again, and gave way to those expansions of the heart, which at once express and relieve the pressure of mental agitation. At length the tide of emotion began to subside; and Sir Henry, still holding his recovered son by the hand, resumed the command of his feelings which he usually practised.

“So you have seen the last of our battles, Albert,” he said, “and the King’s colours have fallen for ever before the rebels.”

“It is but even so,” said the young man—“the last cast of the die was thrown, and, alas! lost at Worcester; and Cromwell’s fortune carried it there, as it has wherever he has shown himself.”

“Well—it can but be for a time—it can but be for a time,” answered his father; “the devil is potent, they say, in raising and gratifying favourites, but he can grant but short leases.—And the King—the King, Albert—the King—in my ear—close, close!”

“Our last news were confident that he had escaped from Bristol.”

“Thank God for that—thank God for that!” said the knight. “Where didst thou leave him?”

“Our men were almost all cut to pieces at the bridge,” Albert replied; “but I followed his Majesty with about five hundred other officers and gentlemen, who were resolved to die around him, until as our numbers and appearance drew the whole pursuit after us, it pleased his Majesty to dismiss us, with many thanks and words of comfort to us in general, and some kind expressions to most of us in especial. He sent his royal greeting to you, sir, in particular, and said more than becomes me to repeat.”

“Nay, I will hear it every word, boy,” said Sir Henry; “is not the certainty that thou hast discharged thy duty, and that King Charles owns it, enough to console me for all we have lost and suffered, and wouldst thou stint me of it from a false shamefacedness?—I will have it out of thee, were it drawn from thee with cords!”

“It shall need no such compulsion,” said the young man—“It was his Majesty’s pleasure to bid me tell Sir Henry Lee, in his name, that if his son could not go before his father in the race of loyalty, he was at least following him closely, and would soon move side by side.”

“Said he so?” answered the knight—“Old Victor Lee will look down with pride on thee, Albert!—But I forget—you must be weary and hungry.”

“Even so,” said Albert; “but these are things which of late I have been in the habit of enduring for safety’s sake.”

“Joceline!—what ho, Joceline!”

The under-keeper entered, and received orders to get supper prepared directly.

“My son and Dr. Rochecliffe are half starving,” said the knight. “And there is a lad, too, below,” said Joceline; “a page, he says, of Colonel Albert’s, whose belly rings cupboard too, and that to no common tune; for I think he could eat a horse, as the Yorkshireman says, behind the saddle. He had better eat at the sideboard; for he has devoured a whole loaf of bread and butter, as fast as Phœbe could cut it, and it has not staid his stomach for a minute—and truly I think you had better keep him under your own eyes, for the steward beneath might ask him troublesome questions if he went below—And then he is impatient, as all your gentlemen pages are, and is saucy among the women.”

“Whom is it he talks of?—what page hast thou got, Albert, that bears himself so ill?” said Sir Henry.

“The son of a dear friend, a noble lord of Scotland, who followed the great Montrose’s banner—afterwards joined the King in Scotland, and came with him as far as Worcester. He was wounded the day before the battle, and conjured me to take this youth under my charge, which I did, something unwillingly; but I could not refuse a father, perhaps on his death-bed, pleading for the safety of an only son.”

“Thou hadst deserved an halter, hadst thou hesitated” said Sir Henry; “the smallest tree can always give some shelter,—and it pleases me to think the old stock of Lee is not so totally prostrate, but it may yet be a refuge for the distressed. Fetch the youth in;—he is of noble blood, and these are no times of ceremony—he shall sit with us at the same table, page though he be; and if you have not schooled him handsomely in his manners, he may not be the worse of some lessons from me.”

“You will excuse his national drawling accent, sir?” said Albert, “though I know you like it not.”

“I have small cause, Albert,” answered the knight—“small cause.—Who stirred up these disunions?—the Scots. Who strengthened the hands of Parliament, when their cause was well nigh ruined?—the Scots again. Who delivered up the King, their countryman, who had flung himself upon. their protection?—the Scots again. But this lad’s father, you say, has fought on the part of the noble Montrose; and such a man as the great Marquis may make amends for the degeneracy of a whole nation.”

“Nay, father,” said Albert, “and I must add, that though this lad is uncouth and wayward, and, as you will see, something wilful, yet the King has not a more zealous friend in England; and, when occasion offered, he fought stoutly, too, in his defence—I marvel he comes not.”

“He hath taken the bath” said Joceline, “and nothing less would serve than that he should have it immediately—the supper, he said, might be got ready in the meantime; and he commands all about him as if he were in his father’s old castle, where he might have called long enough, I warrant, without any one to hear him.”

“Indeed?” said Sir Henry, “this must be a forward chick of the game, to crow so early.—What is his name?”

“His name?—it escapes me every hour, it is so hard a one,” said Albert—“Kerneguy is his name—Louis Kerneguy; his father was Lord Killstewers, of Kincardineshire.”

“Kerneguy, and Killstewers, and Kin—what d’ye call it?—Truly,” said the knight, “these northern men’s names and titles smack of their origin—they sound like a north-west wind, rumbling and roaring among heather and rocks.”

“It is but the asperities of the Celtic and Saxon dialects,” said Dr. Rochecliffe, “which, according to Verstegan, still linger in those northern parts of the island.—But peace—here comes supper, and Master Louis Kerneguy.”

Supper entered accordingly, borne in by Joceline and Phœbe, and after it, leaning on a huge knotty stick, and having his nose in the air like a questing hound—for his attention was apparently more fixed on the good provisions that went before him, than any thing else—came Master Kerneguy, and seated himself, without much ceremony, at the lower end of the table.

He was a tall, rawboned lad, with a shock head of hair, fiery red, like many of his country, while the harshness of his national features was increased by the contrast of his complexion, turned almost black by the exposure to all sorts of weather, which, in that skulking and rambling mode of life, the fugitive royalists had been obliged to encounter. His address was by no means prepossessing, being a mixture of awkwardness and forwardness, and showing in a remarkable degree, how a want of easy address may be consistent with an admirable stock of assurance. His face intimated having received some recent scratches, and the care of Dr. Rochecliffe had decorated it with a number of patches, which even enhanced its natural plainness. Yet the eyes were brilliant and expressive, and, amid his ugliness—for it amounted to that degree of irregularity—the face was not deficient in some lines which expressed both sagacity and resolution.

The dress of Albert himself was far beneath his quality, as the son of Sir Henry Lee, and commander of a regiment in the royal service; but that of his page was still more dilapidated. A disastrous green jerkin, which had been changed to a hundred hues by sun and rain, so that the original could scarce be discovered, huge clouterly shoes, leathern breeches—such as were worn by hedgers—coarse