Great Britain -- History -- Civil War, 1642-1649 -- Fiction
But although he took the thing thus quietly and indeed merrily, it
revealed to him that their usual apartments were no longer fit for the
ladies, and he gave orders therefore that the great rooms in the tower
should be prepared for them and the children.
Dorothy's capacity for work was not easily satisfied, but now for a time
she had plenty to do. In the midst of the roar from the batteries, and
the answering roar from towers and walls, the ladies betook themselves
to their stronger quarters: a thousand necessaries had to be carried
with them, and she, as a matter of course, it seemed, had to superintend
the removal. With many hands to make light work she soon finished,
however, and the family was lodged where no hostile shot could reach
them, although the frequent fall of portions of its battlemented summit
rendered even a peep beyond its impenetrable shell hazardous. Dorothy
would lie awake at night, where she slept in her mistress's room, and
listen--now to the baffled bullet as it fell from the scarce indented
wall, now to the roar of the artillery, sounding dull and far away
through the ten-foot thickness; and ever and again the words of the
ancient psalm would return upon her memory: 'Thou hast been a shelter
for me, and a strong tower from the enemy.'
She tended the fire-engine if possible yet more carefully than ever,
kept the cistern full, and the water lipping the edge of the moat, but
let no fountain flow except that from the mouth of the white horse. Her
great fear was lest a shot should fall into the reservoir and injure its
bottom, but its contriver had taken care that, even without the
protection of its watery armour, it should be indestructible.
The marquis would not leave his own rooms and the supervision they gave
him. The domestics were mostly lodged within the kitchen tower, which,
although in full exposure to the enemy's fire, had as yet proved able to
resist it. But all between that and the library tower was rapidly
becoming a chaos of stones and timber. Lord Glamorgan's secret chamber
was shot through and through; but Caspar, as soon as the direction and
force of the battery were known, had carried off his books and
instruments.
CHAPTER L.
A SALLY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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