HAXO THE BULL INTERFERES
Walter bowed and returned him his sword, holding it by the blade.
"And now, Lieutenant Scarlett," he said, "I desire to ride back to
Amersfort, and you, I doubt not, wish as eagerly to return whence you
came--by sea to Flanders, as I guess. I shall be grateful, therefore,
if you will draw off your company, and give an order that my horse be
brought to that door which is in possession of your own men."
At this moment Haxo the Bull stepped into the room.
"Not so fast by a great deal, master-fighter with windlestraws," he
cried. "If it have pleased this friend of yours and traitorous officer
of the King of France to make a public bargain upon the issue of a
private duel, that has nothing to do with me. There are many other
fights to be fought ere you leave this house with the papers safe
in your pocket. Listen," he continued, addressing the officers and
soldiers standing in the opposite doorway behind Lieutenant Scarlett:
"are you to lose your reward and be left without reason or remedy here
in the very heart of an enemy's country--your work undone, your doom
sealed? For if ye let him escape, this fellow will instantly set the
prince's horsemen or his swift Dutch ships upon your track. Better to
kill him and take his papers without delay, when rewards and promotions
will assuredly be yours on your return to your master."
It was easy to see that this harangue had not been the inspiration of
Haxo himself, for he delivered it, now trippingly and now haltingly,
like a schoolboy who does not know the meaning of his lesson. But yet
it was perfectly comprehensible to all in the room, and Wat could see
that the purport of it moved the officers and men greatly. The wide
archway behind the table from which the arras had been drawn back was
now thronged with faces.
Wat Gordon stood aside whistling an air softly, like one who waits for
a discussion to be concluded in which he has no interest. He had not so
much as looked at Haxo the Bull while he was speaking.
But John Scarlett grew redder and redder as he listened, and so soon
as the butcher was finished he started towards him so abruptly and
fiercely that that worthy gat himself incontinently behind the weapons
of his allies, the Calf and the Killer, with an alacrity which seemed
quite disproportionate to his physical condition.
"I am the commander here," Scarlett cried, "and I am bound by my
promise. I am determined to let this man go according to my word. Stand
back there!"
But the elder of the two French officers came forward.
He saluted Scarlett and addressed himself directly to him.
"Lieutenant Scarlett," he said, "I am your equal in rank though not
in standing. We were sent here under your orders to obtain certain
despatches of great importance to our general and to the coming
campaign. We shall therefore be compelled to take this man with us,
with all the papers in his possession, and to report your conduct to
the commander at headquarters."
His words appeared first to amuse and then to infuriate John Scarlett.
Striking suddenly at the triple candlestick on his right, he leaped
over the table, crying, "Down with the lights! I am with you, Wat
Gordon. Through the door and have at them out into the open. It is your
only chance."
Wat, whose sword was ready in his hand, struck sideways at the other
group of lights and sent them crashing to the floor. Most of these
went out at once in their fall, but one or two continued to burn for
a moment with a faint light as they lay among the trampling feet. Wat
threw himself at the doorway in which he had heard the laugh, and
through which Scarlett had preceded him a moment before. Wat could hear
that valiant sworder somewhere in front of him, striking good blows
and swearing, "Out with you, devil's brats!" at the top of his voice.
So when he reached the end of the passage he found at the outer door
Scarlett making brisk play with four or five men, who were endeavoring
to hem him into a narrow space where he should not have the liberty of
his sword-arm.
Wat ranged himself beside his late enemy, the two long blades began
to flicker fatally in the starlight, and the hurt men to cry out and
stagger away. Then quite unexpectedly the crowd in front broke and fled.
"Get on your horse, Wat!" Scarlett cried. "I can keep the door against
these loons of mine--at least till you are well out of the way."
There were two good horses, one on either side of the doorway--Wat's,
and that upon which Haxo had ridden. Wat sprang upon his own, and, with
a cut of his sword, Scarlett divided the halter. The horse wheeled and
set off at a gallop through the sand-hills. Yet he went reluctantly,
for, had it not been for the safety of his papers, Wat would gladly
have stayed and helped John Scarlett to engage the whole of the army of
France, with any number of Bulls and Killers in addition thereto.
For, as he vanished into the black night, he could hear John Scarlett
advising the first man who desired three feet of cold steel through
his vitals to step up and be accommodated. And as he turned eastward
towards Amersfort, riding beneath the silent bulk of the old castle of
Brederode, he heard again the clash of iron and the cry of pain which
he knew so well. He smiled a little grimly, and wished nothing better
than that his papers had been delivered, and he again at work at his
old master's elbow.
Presently, however, having, as it seemed to him, left all possibility
of pursuit behind, Wat put his horse into an easier pace, and rode
on by silent and unfrequented paths towards the east, judging his
direction by the stars--which had been an old study of his when it was
his hap to take to the heather in the black days of the Covenant in
Scotland.
As he went he became aware of the noise of a horse galloping swiftly
behind him. He drew his sword and stood on the defence, lest the sound
should betoken a new danger; but presently he heard a voice calling his
own name loudly:
"Wat Gordon! I say, Wat Gordon!"
It was the voice of Jack Scarlett, his late enemy and present deliverer.
He rode up beside Walter, very strange to look upon, clad in some suit
of white or pale blanket-color that glimmered in the dusk of the night.
"I gave half a dozen of the rascals that which it will be two days or
they get the better of, I'se warrant," he said, chuckling to himself;
"and then, thinking that mayhap I might not be welcome any longer in
the army of France, I e'en came my ways after you. As I rode I cast my
uniform and left my commission in the pocket of my coat. So I am but
poor masterless Jack Scarlett once more--a free comrade looking for a
regiment, and equipped with nothing but his thews and his long sword,
which, God be thanked, are both his own. Think ye the States-General
and the Yellow Prince have need of such as I?"
"And how now about the anointed king?" Wat could not help saying.
"The anointed king is safe in Whitehall, and can afford to wait till
Jack Scarlett is a little less hungry," answered the free-lance,
frankly.
Having been thus fortunate in obtaining the only two good horses about
the inn of Brederode (for the Frenchmen had come by sea to the little
port of Lis-op-Zee, and the horses of the Calf and the Killer were but
sorry jades), Scarlett had ridden all the way back without a challenge,
or so much as encountering any sound more threatening than the roopy
chuckle of disturbed poultry on the farm-house roosts as he clattered
by on his way.
As the two horsemen came nearer to the city, and the east began to
send up a fountain of rosy hues to mingle with the gray spaces of the
early morning, Wat could not help laughing at the figure his comrade
presented. The master-at-arms was attired simply and Spartanly in such
darned and patched underclothing as he had amassed during half a dozen
campaigns. These were not all of the same material nor color. They were
not, indeed, at all points strictly continuous, the native hide being
allowed to show itself through here and there, while only the long
sword belted about the waist and the cavalry boots remained to tell of
the well-seasoned man of wars and stratagems.
Jack Scarlett was noways offended at Wat's frank laughter. He even
glanced down at himself with a comically rueful air.
"I wish to the saints that I had met somebody else in this garb," he
said; "and then I own I could have laughed myself off my horse."
But, nevertheless, laugh he did, and that most heartily, like a
good-humored carle, at the figure of sin he cut in the morning light;
and specially he was delighted at the paralyzed astonishment of a lank,
hobbledehoy gooseherd who came trolloping along a path towards a canal
bridge, yawning so that his lower jaw and his head well-nigh dropped
apart. For at sight of the red-bearded man in the white sacking and
top-boots the wand-twirling yokel gave a yell sudden as the popping of
a cork, and forthwith fled, running fleet-foot along the edge of the
canal as though the devil himself had been tattering at his tail.
"This guiser's mode will never do to enter the city of Amersfort
withal!" quoth Scarlett, looking down at his own inconsequent
ragamuffin swathings.
And he paused to consider the problem, while Wat divided himself
between chuckling at his late enemy's dilemma, thinking what he would
say in his coming interview with Barra in the camp, and (what occupied
nine out of every ten minutes) wondering how Kate McGhie would receive
him in the street of Zaandpoort.
At last the man in the white bandagings had an idea. He clapped his
hand suddenly to his brow.
"What a dull dotard am I to forget Sandy Lyall!"
"I know," he continued in explanation, "a certain honest fool of a Scot
that hath wedded a wife of the country. He lives but a mile from here
and breeds young Flamands for the prince's armies, and ducks for the
Amersfort market. We will e'en go find him, and make him deliver of the
best in his wardrobe. For he and I count kin in some seventeenth or
eighteenth degree, though this is the first time I ever bethought me of
claiming it."
And with no more words John Scarlett turned his horse briskly down a
side lane, just as the sun was rising and beginning to shine ruddily
brown through the morning haze. The sails of a score of windmills
darted up suddenly black in the level rush of light, and every hissing
goose and waddling, matronly hen had a rosy side and a gray side,
together with an attenuated shadow which stretched up the dikes and
away across the polders.
Presently Scarlett and his companion, at the foot of a leafy by-lane,
came to the house of the Scot who had married the Flemish wife for the
very practical purposes described by Scarlett.
The madcap figure in white went forward to the door, while Wat remained
behind cackling helplessly with idiot laughter. Scarlett thundered on
the warped and sun-whitened deal of the panels with the hilt of his
sword. Then, receiving no response, he kicked lustily with his boots
and swore roundly at the unseen occupants in a dozen camp dialects.
During his harangues, sulky maledictions grumbled intermittently from
the house. Presently an upper window flew open, a splash of dirty
water fell souse on the warrior, and still more sadly bedraggled the
preposterous quixotry of his attire.
The temper of the master-at-arms was now strained to the
breaking-point. "Sandy Lyall," he cried--and to do him justice,
his voice was more full of sorrow than of anger--"Sandy Lyall, of
Pittenweem, listen to me, John Scarlett, gin ye dinna come doon this
minute and get me a suit o' claes, warm and dry, I'll thraw your dirty
Fifish neck--aye, like a twist of rotten straw at a rick-thatching."
But even this explicit malediction threatened to go by without effect.
But at long and last there looked out of the small diamond-paned window
from which the jar of water had fallen the head of a respectable enough
woman, who wore a red shawl wrapped round her coarse black hair in the
fashion of a nightcap.
[Illustration: "SCARLETT THUNDERED ON THE PANELS WITH THE HILT OF HIS
SWORD"]
"Decent woman," cried Jack Scarlett to her, "is your man at hame?"
But the woman, feather-bed sleep yet blinking heavily in her eyes,
threw up her hands and shrieked aloud at the unexpected apparition of
a man thus mountebanking before her window in white and incomplete
skin-tights.
Without articulate speech she withdrew her head and fled within.
Whereat Scarlett fell to louder knocking than before, exclaiming all
the while on the idleness, incapacity, and general uselessness of
such men of Fife as had married foreigneering sluts, and especially
threatening what he would do to the particular body and soul of Sandy
Lyall, sometime indweller in the ancient borough of Pittenweem.
"Never did I see such a man. The ill-faured wife o' him settin' her
head out o' a winnock-sole at five in the morning, and Sandy himsel'
lyin' snorkin' an' wamblin' in his naked bed like a gussy swine in a
stye! Lord, Lord, wait till I get my hands on him! I'll learn him to
keep honester men than himsel' waitin' on the loan of his Sabbath gear,
crawling partan o' the East Neuk that he is!"
"Aye, John Scarlett, man, but is that you, na?" drawled a quiet, sleepy
voice at the window. "Wha wad hae thocht on seeing you in mountebank's
cleading so early in the morning? Hae ye been at some play-actin' near
by? Ye dinna look as if you had gotten muckle for your pains. Come awa
ben, and I'll gar the wife rise an' get ye porridge--siclike porridge
as ane can get in this Guid-forsaken country, that is mair like
hen-meat than decent brose for Scots thrapples, to my thinkin'!"
"Sandy Lyall!" cried Scarlett, still much incensed, "hear to me! Come
down this instant and let me in! Gi'e me a pair o' trews, a coat, and
a decent cloak, and let me be gaun, for I am on an errand of great
importance which takes me before the Prince of Orange himsel' this very
morning, and it befits not a Scot and a soldier to appear before his
high mightiness in this costume."
"I'll come doon the noo, as fast as I can don my gear and truss my
points!" cried Sandy Lyall. "Ye were aye a rude man and unceevil a' the
days o' ye, John Scarlett. But I canna leave ony Scots lad to want for
a pair o' breeks and a cloak to cover his nakedness--or what amounts to
the same thing, as the monkey said when he sat down on the hot girdle
and gat up again before he was fairly rested."
And with these words, Sandy Lyall, of Pittenweem, in the shire of Fife,
slowly descended, his feet sounding portentously on the wooden ladder.
The door opened, and there was the master of the dwelling standing with
outstretched hand, bidding his compatriots welcome to his house. The
action would have disarmed a Cossack of Russia. It quenched the anger
of John Scarlett like magic.
"Aye, man, an' hoo's a' wi' ye?" he said, as it is the custom for all
Scots to say when they forgather with one another in any land under the
sun.
After turning out of one drawer and another various articles of his
wife's attire, which were clearly not intended (as Sandy remarked)
"for breeks to a grown man like John Scarlett," the master of the
house at last managed to array his friend somewhat less unsuitably in
a coat of dark-blue Rotterdam cloth, adorned with tails, which on his
thinner figure clapped readily together in a military manner; a pair of
breeches of tanned leather went very well with the boots and sword-belt
of buff, which were all that remained to Scarlett of his fine French
uniform. The master-at-arms surveyed himself with no small satisfaction.
"For a Fifer, ye are a man of some discernment," he said; "and your
duds fit me no that ill. They maun hae been made for ye when ye were
younger, and altogether a better-lookin' figure o' a man!"
"Aye; they were cutted oot for me when I was coortin'--no this ane,"
Sandy Lyall explained, indicating his present wife with a placid,
contemptuous thumb, "but a braw, weel-tochered lass oot o' the pairish
o' Sant Andros. But she wadna hae me because I cam' frae Pittenweem.
She said I smelled o' fish-creels."
"And what, Master Lyall, might have brought you to Flanders?" asked
Wat, who had been waiting as patiently as he might while his companion
arrayed himself.
He thought that this otiose burgher of Pittenweem must be a strange
subject for the religious enthusiasm which was mostly in these days the
cause of a man's being exiled from his native country.
"Weel," returned Sandy, with immense and impressive gravity, checking
off the details upon the palm of one hand with the index-finger of the
other, "ye see the way o't was this: There was a lass, and there was a
man, and there was me. And the man and me, we baith wanted the lass--ye
comprehend? And the lass didna want but ane o' us. And that ane wasna
me. So I gied the man a clour, and he fell to the grund and didna get
up. And the lass she gaed and telled. So that was the way that I left
my native land for conscience' sake."
Wat marvelled at the simple, quiet-looking man who had so strenuously
arranged matters to his satisfaction before leaving his love and the
land of his birth.
"Aye, but that wasna the warst o' it," Sandy Lyall went on, "for,
a' owin' to that lang-tongued limmer, I had to leave ahint me as
thrivin' a cooper's business as there was in a' the heartsome toon o'
Pittenweem--aye, and as mony as half a score o' folk owin' me siller!
But I owed ither folk a deal mair, and that was aye some consolation."