The young man once more put an arm around her; and, with a glance that conveyed a world of grief and passion, supported her to the summit of the steep street, where, between two broad, round towers, another massive barrier, that separated the city from the suburban burgh of the Canongate, frowned over the long vista to the east. The grimness of its aspect, its heavy battlements, and deep, round portal, were no way enlivened by the bare white skulls of two of Rizzio's murderers—Henry Yair, and Thomas Scott, sheriff-depute of Perth—on long spikes.
Lest Anna might perceive them, Konrad turned hastily away; and, looking round, hailed with satisfaction a house, having the appearance of a comfortable hostelry, furnished with a broad sign-board that creaked on a rusty iron rod; and half leading, half supporting Anna, he approached it.
CHAPTER V.
THE RED LION.
A seemly man our Hosté was withall
For to have been a marshall in a hall;
A largé man he was with eyen steep,
A fairer burgess is there none in Cheap;
Bold of his speech he was, and well y taught,
And of his manhood him lackéd righté nought:
Eke thereto was he right a merry man.
Chaucer.
The Red Lion in St. Mary's Wynd was one of the most spacious and famous of the old Scottish hostellaries, and Adam Ainslie, the gudeman thereof, was as kindly a host as ever welcomed a guest beneath his roof-tree. The enormous obesity of his paunch made him resemble a turtle on its hind-legs, while his visage, by hard drinking and frequent exposure to the weather, had become as flushed and red as the lion figuring on his sign-board, that overhung the principal wynd of Edinburgh.
If the ancient Scottish inns lacked aught that was necessary for the comfort of the traveller, it was not want of legislative encouragement; for so early as the days of James I., laws were enacted, and confirmed by James V., that all hostellaries "should have honest chambers and bedding for passengers and strangers travelling through the realme, weel and honestlie accoutred; good and sufficient stables, with hack and manger, corn and haye—fleshe, fishe, breade, and oile, with other furnishing for travelloures."
This edifice, for which the antiquary may now look in vain, was two stories in height, having a row of pediments over the upper windows, which, like the lower, were thickly grated. The doorway, to which an outside stair gave access, was surmounted by an old coat-of-arms and the pious legend—
Miserere Mei Deus.
marked it as once the habitation of a churchman of rank. A low archway gave admittance to the stables behind. These bordered the garden of the ancient Cistertian convent of St. Mary-in-the-Wynd, an edifice of which not a vestige now survives. In the middle of the court there lay a great stone tank for watering horses, and high above the inn, on the north side, towered the smoke-encrusted mansions of the Netherbow.