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“We hae gaen alang,” said Lord Gy gravely, “like a hoose afire.”
The Lieutenant of the Tower and the Yeoman Warder alike seemed just a bit uncomfortable with this simile; and so there was now an awkward silence. Lord Gy filled it by humming some sort of weird aimless Gaelic chaunt.
The Lieutenant’s Lodging, which was situated in the southwestern corner of the I
“Splendid,” said Throwley weakly, “that is what Mr. Downs has reported, and most fortunate it is that I have been able to share this table with you before your, er, departure.”
“Ye spake a minute or of lang-standin traditions,” said Lord Gy, and looked significantly at the Yeoman Warder. Downs relayed the signal to the young woman in the entry hall, who now ventured into the dining-room. Ewell Throwley raised his eyebrows and blinked, for she was a tall and muscular lass with enough red hair to cover three average heads. As she burst across the threshold of the room she executed a sort of ru
“On the Muir of Ra
“Ah, you have imported a…clanswoman from the…country to look after you.”
“A look oot for her, sir…an orphant she is…a trigidy, if ye must know.” MacIan cleared his throat. The red-headed lass withdrew a bottle from the market-basket perched on her arm. She gave it to Downs, then curtseyed and backed out of the room. Gy purred some phlegmy endearment to her. Downs handed him the bottle. Gy clasped it tenderly in both hands. “I have prepared an Oration!” he a
Throwley bowed, but did not reach out to accept the bottle, since Rufus MacIan had not yet formally presented it. He contented himself, for now, with a glance at the label. “Glen Coe, twenty-two years old,” he read. “Why, ’tis as old as the lassie who brought it in!”
Downs laughed in the ma
“My lord, I know some London gentlemen who make a study of this usquebaugh, in all its varieties, even as Frenchmen do of Burgundy wine. I confess I know little of Glen this or Glen that-but I have at least the wit to recognize that any bottle aged two and a score years must be of rare excellence.”
“Oh, ’tis rare-very few hae survived. Very few. Ye maun learn usquebaugh, sir. For many Jacobites wul be dwellin in this Tower in years to come, an a moiety of ’em wul be Highlanders. Nae man is better poised than ye to make o hissell a collector and a co
“Then do let my collection, and my education, begin to-day! David, bring some dram-glasses,” Throwley called to the steward who had been waiting outside the servants’ entrance to the dining-room. “What can you tell me, my lord, concerning this bottle? What distinguishes it from the common dram?”
“Och, sir, ye maun no consider only its age, but its provenance, or what the French call its terroir. For Scotland’s a big varyand countra, as crazed, riven, and pitted as ma own visage, gowstie here, cosie thare. Nae brae, nae glen, nae ben like the next. Each wi its own clime, its own sile, its own water. Adam’s wine, we call water. A hae known Highlandmen who, when they were lost in smochy weather, could ken just where they were by scoopin up a handful o water frae a burn or a loch, an havin a wee gust.”
“Or, I daresay, a wee dram from the nearest still!” put in Lieutenant-General Throwley, to the great entertainment of Yeoman Warder Downs. But Rufus MacIan accepted the jest with equanimity, and settled the chuckling of the two Englishmen with the calm stare of his clear blue eye.
“Di
“My lord, modest chap that you are, you do not do justice to the men who dwell in those glens. For surely there is skill, there is technique-it is not a mere matter of stirring together a few natural constituents.”
Rufus MacIan raised his eyebrows and held up an index finger. “Point well taken, sir, an a thank ye for gien me a fair opportunity to blaw mynes ain horn!”
Downs and Throwley laughed. A silver tray, a-rattle with small cups, had been brought in and set down. “Please, my lord, sit with us.”
“A wul stand, thank ye, as befits a professor afore his scholars.”
The two Englishmen were left slightly ill at ease, but Lord Gy made it plain by gestures that they were to sit, and even pulled out Downs’s chair for him. He explained: “In that wee tissle at Malplaquet, which ye may hae heard of, ma company were ruggin an rivin wi some Frenchmen. A took a muckle cloot frae a musket butt, fell frae ma horse, an bemang’d my rig.” He put his hands on his kidneys and shoved his pelvis forward. His sporran flew at the Englishmen and a barrage of pops and creaks came out of his lower spine.
“ ’Tis true, he never sits, but drives me mad with his pacing,” Downs put in.
MacIan was at such obvious pains to make them at ease that Downs and Throwley acquiesced, and leaned back comfortably in their chairs to hear the continuation of the lecture.
“As the landscape o ma countra is fractured into diverse muirs, glens, gullions, snibs, howes, scaurs, li