Witch Wood. Buchan John
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sudden vision that he tripped over a stone and almost pulled the horse down.
‘I did not look,’ said the rider, in a voice low-pitched and musical, ‘I did not look to find a scholar in these hills.’
‘Nor did I know,’ said David, ‘that Virgil was the common reading of Leven’s men.’
They had reached a field of wild pasture studded with little thorns, in the middle of which stood a great stone dovecot. A burn falling in a deep ravine made a moat on one side of the tower of Calidon, which now rose white like marble in the moon. They crossed the ravine not without trouble, and joined the main road from the glen, which ended in a high-arched gate round which clustered half a dozen huts.
At the sound of their arrival men ran out of the huts and one seized the bridle of the leader. David and the groom had now fallen back, and it was the dark man who did the talking. These were strange troopers, for they sat their horses like princes, so that the hand laid on the bridle was promptly dropped.
‘We would speak with the laird of Calidon,’ the dark man said. ‘Stay, carry this ring to him. He will know what it means.’ It seemed curious to David that the signet given to the man was furnished by the groom.
In five minutes the servant returned. ‘The laird waits on ye, sirs. I’ll tak’ the beasts, and your mails, if ye’ve ony. Through the muckle yett an it please ye.’
David turned to go. ‘I’ve brought you to Calidon,’ he said, ‘and now I’ll take my leave.’
‘No, no,’ cried the dark man. ‘You’ll come in and drink a cup after the noble convoy you’ve given us. Nicholas Hawkshaw will be blithe to welcome you.’
David would have refused, for the hour was already late and he was many miles from Woodilee, had not the groom laid his hand on his arm. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘I would see my friend, the student of Virgil, in another light than the moon,’ and to his amazement the young man found that it was a request which he could not deny. There was a compelling power in that quiet face, and he was strangely loth to part from it.
The four dismounted, the three troopers staggering with stiff bones. The dark man’s limp did not change after the first steps, and David saw that he was crippled in the left leg. They passed through the gate into a courtyard, beyond which rose the square massif of the tower. In the low doorway a candle wavered, under a stone which bore the hawk in lure which was the badge of the house.
The three men bowed low to the candle, and David saw that it was held by a young girl.
‘Will you enter, sirs?’ said the girl. She was clad in some dark homespun stuff with a bright-coloured screen thrown over her head and shoulders. She held the light well in front of her, so that David could not see her face. He would fain have taken his leave, for it seemed strange to be entering Calidon thus late at e’en in the company of strangers, but the hand of the groom on his arm restrained him. ‘You will drink a stirrup-cup, friend. The night is yet young and the moon is high.’
A steep stairway ran upward a yard or two from the doorway. Calidon was still a Border keep, where the ground-floor had once been used for byres and stables, and the inhabitants had dwelt in the upper stories. The girl moved ahead of them. ‘Will you be pleased to follow me, sirs? My uncle awaits you above.’
They found themselves in a huge chamber which filled the width of the tower, and, but for a passage and a further staircase, its length. A dozen candles, which seemed to have been lit in haste, showed that it was raftered with dark oak beams, and that the walls were naked stone where they were not covered with a coarse arras. The floor, of a great age, was bare wood blackened with time and use, and covered with a motley of sheepskins and deerskins. Two long oak tables and a great oak bench made the chief furniture, but there were a multitude of stools of the same heavy ancient make, and by a big open fireplace two ancient chairs of stamped Spanish leather. A handful of peats smouldered on the hearth, and the thin blue smoke curled upward to add grime to an immense coat of arms carved in stone and surmounted by a forest of deer horns and a trophy of targes and spears.
David, accustomed only to the low-ceiled rooms of the Edinburgh closes, stared in amazement at the size of the place and felt abashed. The Hawkshaws had made too great a sound in his boyhood’s world for him to enter their dwelling without a certain tremor of the blood. So absorbed was he in his surroundings that it was with a start that he saw the master of the house.
A man limped forward, gathered the leader of the party in his arms and kissed him on both cheeks.
‘Will,’ he said, ‘Will, my old comrade! It’s a kind wind that has blown you to Calidon this night. I havena clapped eyes on you these six year.’
The host was a man about middle life, with the shoulders of a bull and a massive shaggy head now in considerable disorder from the fact that a nightcap had just been removed from it. His clothes were of a comfortable undress, for the tags of his doublet and the points of his breeches were undone, and over all he wore an old plaid dressing-gown. He had been reading, for a pipe of tobacco marked his place in a folio, and David noted that it was Philemon Holland’s version of the Cyropaedia. His eyes were blue and frosty, his cheeks ruddy, his beard an iron grey, and his voice as gusty as a hill wind. He limped heavily as he moved.
‘Man Will,’ he cried, ‘it’s a whipping up of cripples when you and me foregather. The Germany wars have made lameters of the both of us. And who are the lads you’ve brought with you?’
‘Just like myself, Nick, poor soldiers of Leven’s, on our way home to Angus.’
‘Angus is it this time?’ The host winked and then laughed boisterously.
‘Angus it is, but their names and designations can wait till we have broken our fast. ’Faith, we’ve as wolfish a hunger as ever you and me tholed in Thuringia. And I’ve brought in an honest man that guided us through your bogs and well deserves bite and sup.’
Nicholas Hawkshaw peered for a moment at David. ‘I cannot say I’m acquaint with the gentleman, but I’ve been that long away I’ve grown out of knowledge of my own countryside. But ye shallna lack for meat and drink, for when I got your token I bade Edom stir himself and make ready. There’s a good browst of yill, and plenty of French cordial and my father’s Canary sack. And there’s a mutton ham, and the best part of a pie—I wouldna say just what’s intil the pie, but at any rate there’s blackcocks and snipes and leverets, for I had the shooting of them. Oh, and there’s whatever more Edom can find in the house of Calidon. Here’s back your ring, Will. When I read the cognisance I had a notion that I was about to entertain greater folk—’
‘Than your auld friend Will Rollo and two poor troopers of Leven’s. And yet we’re maybe angels unawares.’ He took the ring and handed it to the groom, who with David stood a little back from the others, while Nicholas Hawkshaw’s eyes widened in a momentary surprise.
An ancient serving-man and a barefoot maid brought in the materials for supper, and the two troopers fell on the viands like famished crows. The groom ate little and drank less; though he was the slightest in build of the three travellers he seemed the most hardened to the business. The lame man, who was called Will Rollo, was presently satisfied, and deep in reminiscences with his host, but the other required greater sustenance for his long wiry body, and soon reduced the pie to a fragment. He pressed morsels upon the groom—a wing of grouse, a giblet of hare—but the latter smiled and waved the food away. A friendly service, Leven’s, David thought, where a servant was thus tenderly considered.
‘Yon were the brave days, when you and me served as ensigns of Meldrum’s in the Corpus Evangelicorum. And yon was the lad to follow, for there never was the marrow of the