Covenanters -- Fiction; Historical fiction; Scotland -- History -- Stuarts, to the Union, 1371-1707 -- Fiction
My grandfather having, as I have told, a compassion for the silly
affection wherewith the honest man of Crail still regarded his wanton
wife, told him the circumstantials of his adventure with the stripling;
without, however, letting wot he had discovered that the invitation was
from her; the which was the case, for the damsel who looked out at the
window was no other than the giglet he had seen in her lodging when he
went thither with Sir David Hamilton, and he proposed to the
disconsolate husband that he should be his friend in the adventure;
meaning thereby to convince the unhappy man, by the evidence of his own
eyes and ears, that her concubinage with the Antichrist was a blessed
riddance to him and his family.
At first Master Kilspinnie had no zest for any such frolic, for so it
seemed to him, and he began to think my grandfather's horror at the
martyrdom of the aged saint but a long-fac't hypocrisy; nevertheless he
was wrought upon to consent; and they sat plotting and contriving in
what manner they should act their several parts, my grandfather
pretending great fear and apprehension at the thoughts of himself, a
stranger, going alone into the traps of a house where there were sic
forerunners of shame and signs of danger. At last he proposed that they
should go together and spy about the precincts of the place, and try to
discover if there was no other entrance or outgate to the house than the
way by which the stripling conducted him, though well he remembered the
sallyport, where the fat friar kept watch, eating the pasty.
Accordingly they went forth from the vintner's, and my grandfather, as
if he knew not the way, led his companion round between the priory and
the sea, till they came near the aforesaid sallyport, when, mounting
upon a stone, he affected to discover that the house of the madam stood
in the garden within, and that the sallyport could be no less than a
back yett thereto.
While they were speaking concerning the same, my grandfather observed
the wicket open in the gate, and guessing therefrom that it was one
spying to forewarn somebody within who wanted to come out unremarked, he
made a sign to his companion, and they both threw themselves flat on the
ground, and hirsled down the rocks to conceal themselves. Presently the
gate was opened, and then out came the fat friar, and looked east and
west, holding the door in his hand; and anon out came his Grace the
Antichrist, hirpling with a staff in his hand, for he was lame with that
monkish malady called the gout. The friar then drew the yett to, and
walked on towards the castle, with his Grace leaning on his arm. In the
meantime the poor man of Crail was grinding the teeth of his rage at the
sight of the cause of his sorrow, and my grandfather had a sore struggle
to keep him down, and prevent him from running wud and furious at the
two sacerdotal reprobates, for no lightlier could they be called.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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