The cobbler rose unsteadily to his feet, drawing from his bosom with trembling fingers the parchment bearing the king’s signature. He moistened his dry lips with his tongue, then spoke in a low voice.
“Sir,” he said, “we are here under safe conduct from the king.”
“Safe conduct to where?” cried James angrily, “that is the point. I stand by the document; read it; read it!”
“Sir, it says safe conduct for eleven men here present, under protection of your royal word.”
“You do not keep to the point, cobbler,” shouted the king bringing his fist down on the table. “Safe conduct to where? I asked. The parchment does not say safe conduct back into Stirling again. Safe conduct to Heaven, or elsewhere, was what I guaranteed.”
“That is but an advocate’s quibble, your majesty. Safe conduct is a phrase well understood by high and low alike. But we have placed our heads in the lion’s mouth, as our leader said last Wednesday night, and we cannot complain if now his jaws are shut. Nevertheless I would respectfully submit to your majesty that I alone of those present doubted a Stuart’s word, and am like to have my doubts practically confirmed. I would also point out to your majesty that my comrades would not have been here had I not trusted the Master of Ballengeich, and through him the king, therefore, I ask you to let me alone pay the penalty of my error, and allow my friends to go scatheless from the grim walls of Stirling.”
“There is reason in what you say,” replied the king. “Are you all agreed to that?” he asked of the others.
“No, by God,” cried the leader springing to his feet and smiting the table with his fist as lustily as the king had done. “We stand together, or fall together. The mistake was ours as much as his, and we entered these gates with our eyes open.”
“Headsman,” said the king, “do your duty.”
The headsman whipped off the black cloth and displayed underneath it a box containing a large jug surrounded by eleven drinking-horns. Those present, all now on their feet, glanced with amazement from the masked man to the king. The sternness had vanished from his majesty’s face, as if a dark cloud had passed from the sun and allowed it to shine again. There sparkled in the king’s eye all the jubilant mischief of the incorrigible boy, and his laughter rang to the ceiling. Somewhat recovering his gravity he stretched out his hand and pointed a finger at the cobbler.
“I frightened you, Flemming,” he cried. “I frightened you; don’t deny it. I’ll wager my gold crown against a weaver’s woollen bonnet, I frightened the whole eleven of you.”
“Indeed,” said the cobbler with an uneasy laugh, “I shall be the first to admit it.”
“Your face was as white as a harvest moon in mid-sky, and I heard somebody’s teeth chatter. Now the drink we have had at our meetings heretofore was vile, and no more fitted for a Christian throat than is the headsman’s axe; but if you ever tasted anything better than this, tell me where to get a hogshead of it.”
The headsman having filled their horns, the leader raised the flagon above his head and said, —
“I give you the toast of The King!”
“No, no,” proclaimed the boyish monarch, “I want to drink this myself. I’ll give you a toast. May there never come a time when a Scotchman is afraid to risk his head for what he thinks is right.”
And this toast they drank together.
The King Dines
“When kings frown, courtiers tremble,” said Sir Donald Sinclair to the Archbishop of St. Andrews, “but in Stirling the case seems reversed. The courtiers frown, and the king looks anxiously towards them.”
“Indeed,” replied the prelate, “that may well be. When a man invites a company to dine with him, and then makes the discovery that his larder is empty, there is cause for anxiety, be he king or churl. In truth my wame’s beginning to think my throat’s cut.” And the learned churchman sympathetically smoothed down that portion of his person first named, whose rounded contour gave evidence that its owner was accustomed to ample rations regularly served.
“Ah well,” continued Sir Donald, “his youthful majesty’s foot is hardly in the stirrup yet, and I’m much mistaken in the glint of his eye and the tint of his beard, if once he is firmly in the saddle the horse will not feel the prick of the spur, should it try any tricks with him.”
“Scotland would be none the worse of a firm king,” admitted the archbishop, glancing furtively at the person they were discussing, “but James has been so long under the control of others that it will need some force of character to establish a will of his own. I doubt he is but a nought posing as a nine,” concluded his reverence in a lower tone of voice.
“I know little of mathematics,” said Sir Donald, “but yet enough to tell me that a nought needs merely a flourish to become a nine, and those nines among us who think him a nought, may become noughts should he prove a nine. There’s a problem in figures for you, archbishop, with a warning at the end of it, like the flourish at the tail of the nine.”
The young man to whom they referred, James, the fifth of that name, had been pacing the floor a little distance from the large group of hungry men who were awaiting their dinner with some impatience. Now and then the king paused in his perambulation, and gazed out of a window overlooking the courtyard, again resuming his disturbed march when his brief scrutiny was completed. The members of the group talked in whispers, one with another, none too well pleased at being kept waiting for so important a function as a meal.
Suddenly there was a clatter of horse’s hoofs in the courtyard. The king turned once more to the window, glanced a moment at the commotion below, then gave utterance to an exclamation of annoyance, his right hand clenching angrily. Wheeling quickly to the guards at the door he cried, —
“Bring the chief huntsman here at once, and a prod in the back with a pike may make up for his loitering in the courtyard.”
The men, who stood like statues with long axes at the doorway, made no move; but two soldiers, sitting on a bench outside, sprang to their feet and ran clattering down the stair. They returned presently with the chief huntsman, whom they projected suddenly into the room with a violence little to the woodman’s taste, for he neglected to remove his bonnet in the royal presence, and so far forgot himself as to turn his head when he recovered his equilibrium, roundly cursing those who had made a projectile of him.
“Well, woodlander!” cried the king, his stern voice ringing down again from the lofty rafters of the great hall. “Are there no deer in my forests of the north?”
“Deer in plenty, your majesty,” answered the fellow with a mixture of deference and disrespect, which in truth seemed to tinge the manners of all present. “There are deer in the king’s forest, and yet a lack of venison in the king’s larder!”
“What mean you by that, you scoundrel?” exclaimed the king, a flush overspreading his face, ruddy as his beard. “Have your marksmen lost their skill with bow and arrow, that you return destitute to the castle?”
“The marksmen are expert as ever, your majesty, and their arrows fly as unerringly to their billet, but in these rude times, your majesty, the sting of an arrow may not be followed by the whetting of a butcher’s knife.”
The king took an impatient step forward, then checked himself. One or two among the group of noblemen near the door laughed, and there was a ripple of suppressed merriment over the whole company. At first the frown on the king’s brow deepened, and then as suddenly it cleared away, as a puff of wind scatters the mist from the heights of Stirling. When the king spoke again it was in a calm, even voice. “As I understand you, there was no difficulty in capturing the deer, but you encountered some obstacle between the forest and Stirling which caused you to return empty-handed. I hope you have not added the occupation of itinerant flesher to the noble calling of forest huntsman?”
“Indeed,