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 great Gustavus for putting smeddum into troops that had as many tongues and creeds as the Tower of Babel. But you and me were ower late on the scene. We never saw Breitenfeld—just the calamitous day of Lutzen, and the blacker day of Nordlingen where Bernhard led us like sheep to the slaughter. That was the end of campaigning for you, Will. I mind leaving you on the ground for dead and kissing your cheek, the while I was near my own end with a musketoon ball in my ribs. Then I heard you were still in life and back in Scotland, but I was off with auld Wrangel to Pomerania and had to keep my mind on my own affairs.’
So the talk went on, memories of leaguers and forced marches and pitched battles, punctuated with the names of Leslies and Hamiltons and Kerrs and Lumsdens and a hundred Scots mercenaries.—‘I got my quietus a year syne serving with Torstensson and his Swedes—a pitiable small affair in Saxonia, where I had the misfortune to meet a round shot on the ricochet which cracked my shin-bone and has set me hirpling for the rest of my days. My Colonel was Sandy Leslie, a brother of Leslie of Balquhain, him that stuck Wallenstein at Eger, but a man of honester disposition and a good Protestant. He bade me go home, for I would never again be worth a soldier’s hire, and faith! when the chirurgeon had finished with my leg I was of the same opinion.—So home you find me, Will, roosting in the cauld rickle of stones that was my forbears’, while rumours of war blow like an east wind up the glens. I’m waiting for your news. I hear word that Davie Leslie ….’
‘Our news can wait, Nick. We’ve a gentleman here to whose ears this babble of war must sound outlandish.’ It seemed to David that some secret intelligence passed between the two and that a foot of one was pressed heavily on the other’s toes.
‘I am a man of peace,’ David said, for the talk had stirred his fancy, ‘but I too have word of a glorious victory in England won by the Covenant armies. If you have come straight from the south you can tell me more.’
‘There was a victory beyond doubt,’ said the tall man with the squint, ‘and that is why we of Leven’s are permitted to go home. We have gotten our pay, whilk is an uncommon happening for the poor soldier in this land.’
‘I have heard,’ said David, ‘that the ranks of the Army of the Covenant fought for higher matters than filthy lucre.’
‘For what, belike?’
‘For the purity of their faith and the Crown honours of Christ.’
The other whistled gently through his teeth.
‘No doubt. No doubt. There’s a braw sough of the Gospel in Leven’s ranks. But we must consider the loaves and fishes, good sir, as well as the preaching of the Word. Man canna live by bread alone, but he assuredly canna live without it, and to fill his belly he wants more than preaching. Lucre’s none so filthy if it be honestly earned, and goes to keep a roof over the wife and bairns. I have served in many lands with a kennin’ o’ queer folk and, believe me, sir, the first thing a soldier thinks of is just his pay.’
‘But he cannot fight unless he has a cause to fight for.’
‘He’ll make a very good shape at it if he has been learned his business by a heavy-handed sergeant. I have seen the riddlings of Europe stick fast as rocks before Wallenstein’s horse, because they had been taught their trade and feared death less than their Colonel’s tongue. And I have seen the flower of gentrice, proud as Lucifer and gallant as lions, and every one with a noble word on his lips, break like rotten twigs at the first musket volley. It’s discipline that’s the last word in war.’
‘But if the discipline be there, will not a conviction of the right of his
