The Jacobite Trilogy. D. K. Broster

other side still desired admittance.

      “Open the door, mon ami,” said Charles Edward, and Ewen, unlocking it, did so; and in walked Colonel John William O’Sullivan, not too pleased, as was obvious, at his exclusion. He carried a cloak over his arm.

      “I thought your Royal Highness was admitting no one except——” He stopped and looked in dumb annoyance at the intruder. Ewen showed a stony front. There was no love lost between the Quartermaster-General and the Camerons whom he had posted so badly at Tranent before the recent battle.

      “Strickland has not come yet,” observed the Prince, and added, with a spice of malice, “I think it well to take an aide-de-camp with me, O’Sullivan. We shall therefore be a partie carrée.”

      “As your Highness pleases, of course,” said O’Sullivan stiffly.

      “And in that case,” went on his Royal Highness, “he had best know whither we are bound. We are going, my dear Ardroy, to pay a visit to a lady.”

      Ewen was astonished, for he had seen enough since their coming to Edinburgh to make him conclude that the Prince was—perhaps fortunately—very cold where women were concerned, no matter how much incense they burnt before him. Then disgust succeeded to astonishment: was this the time for intrigues of that nature? But the latter emotion, at least, was very transitory, for the Prince went on almost at once: “ ’Tis the Jacobite widow of a Whig Lord of Session—an old lady, but no doubt charming, and certainly loyal—who dwells at the corner of the West Bow and the Grassmarket.”

      “So near the Castle!” broke from Ewen in spite of himself.

      “Donc, the last place in which I shall be looked for! Moreover,” said the young Prince gaily, “I am borrowing Murray’s name, since Lady Easterhall is his kinswoman, and is expecting a visit from him—though not, I’m bound to say, to-night. You look blank, Captain Cameron” (and Ewen had no doubt he did). “See then, read the old lady’s letter to Murray.”

      Ewen took the paper which the Prince drew from his pocket, and read the following, written in a slightly tremulous hand:

      ‘My Dear John,—

      ‘It will no doubt be your Labours in His Royal Highness’s Service that have hitherto hindered you frae waiting upon an old Woman who has not set Eyes upon you since you were a Lad. I see I’ll e’en have to bid you to my House, and maybe set a Bait to bring you there. Well then—do you mind of William Craig of Craigmains, him that’s sib to your Uncle Dickson on the Mother’s Side, with a pretty Fortune, and Kin that went out, severals of them, in the Fifteen? He comes to Edinburgh to-day on Affairs, and will likely stay two-three Days with me; and I’m thinking that could he be gained for the Good Cause others of the Fife Lairds might follow his Example. Forbye there’s his Siller. Try then could you not dine with me the morn at three of the Clock, and have a bit Crack with Craigmains, and tell him how well Things go for our bonny Prince, and you’ll maybe do as good an Afternoon’s Work as writing Proclamations.

      ‘Your loving Great-aunt,

      ‘Anna Easterhall.’

      This letter was superscribed ‘To Mr. John Murray of Broughton at Holyroodhouse’, and was of the same day’s date. Ewen gave it back to the royal hand in silence.

      “Mr. Murray is indisposed and keeps his room, and I am going to pay his great-aunt a visit in his stead,” said the Prince, going to the bed and taking up his cloak. “And ‘our bonny Prince’ himself will have the necessary bit crack with this Fife laird of the moneybags. You can see from the letter that Lady Easterhall thinks a little persuasion might induce him to open them, and I flatter myself that he’ll yield to me sooner than to Murray.”

      “But your Royal Highness could cause this kinsman of Mr. Murray’s to come here, instead of venturing yourself in the Grassmarket,” objected Ewen, to whom this Haroun-al-Raschid scheme—unknown, he felt sure, to the secretary himself—did not at all appeal.

      “Not before he had made up his mind, man! He would not; your Lowland Scot is too canny.”

      “But would not a visit to this lady to-morrow——”

      “Would you have me approach the Castle in daylight, my friend?”

      “But consider the other dwellers in the house,” urged Ewen. “Your Royal Highness knows that nearly all Edinburgh lives pell-mell, one above the other. Lady Easterhall’s neighbour on the next land may well be a Whig gentleman or——”

      “My dear Ulysses,” said the Prince, laying a hand familiarly on his aide-de-camp’s arm, “you may have an old head on young shoulders, but so have I too! Lady Easterhall is very singular; she has a whole house to herself. I found this out from Murray. And if report says true, the house itself is singular also.”

      At that moment there was another discreet tap at the door, and O’Sullivan, who had been listening to this conversation in a sardonic silence, opened it to admit Mr. Francis Strickland in a cloak. In response to the displeased query on the last-comer’s face the Quartermaster-General observed that Captain Cameron was going with them, “though one gathers that he disapproves.”

      “He has my leave to disapprove,” said the Prince lightly, “provided he comes too.” He was evidently in great spirits at the prospect of this escapade, as pleased as a boy at stealing a march on his bedridden secretary—relieved too, perhaps, at having laid the storm which he had himself raised; and when Ewen asked him whether he should not procure him a chair, scouted the idea. He would go on his own feet as less likely to attract attention. “And when I have my cloak so,”—he threw it round his face up to the very eyes—“who will know me? I learnt the trick in Rome,” he added.

      But his gaze then fell upon his aide-de-camp’s attire. “Faith, Ardroy, you must have a cloak, too, to cover up that finery—nay, you cannot go to fetch one now. I know where Morrison keeps another of mine.”

      “And the sentinel at your Royal Highness’s antechamber door?” enquired Strickland in an injured voice.

      “The door must go wanting one after all—unless you yourself covet the post, Strickland? In that case you can lend your cloak to Captain Cameron.” And at the look on Strickland’s face he laughed. “I was but jesting. Like the man in the Gospel, I have two cloaks—here, Ardroy, if ’twill serve for that excessive height of yours. . . . Now for my great-great-great-grandsire’s private stair!”

      CHAPTER II

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      The three men followed him in silence down the narrow, twisting stair, Ewen bringing up the rear, and wondering why disapproval made one feel so old. And, after O’Sullivan had given the word of the day and passed them out of Holyrood House, they were soon walking briskly, not up the Canongate itself, but up the slope parallel to it, the ‘back of the Canongate’ the Prince in front with the Irishman, Ewen behind with Strickland, both the latter very silent. Flurries of the October wind plucked at their cloaks as they went in the semi-darkness, sometimes swooping at them from the open grassy spaces of the King’s Park on their left, at others appearing to originate mysteriously in the tall line of houses of the Canongate with their intervening gardens on the right. They met nobody until they came to the Cowgate Port, and, O’Sullivan again giving the word to the guard, were admitted within the town walls and the nightly stenches of Edinburgh proper.

      In the Cowgate there were still a few folk abroad, and a couple of drunkards, emerging unexpectedly from a close, all but knocked into the Prince. As he moved quickly aside to avoid collision, a man passing in the opposite direction was obliged to step into the gutter. It was quite natural that this man should turn his head to see the reason for being thus incommoded, but unfortunate that the Prince’s cloak should at that instant slip from its position. Ewen could only hope that the passer-by had not recognised him; there was at least nothing to indicate that he had. He went on his way without a pause, and