A PERILOUS MEETING
At the corner of the square, as they were turning under the shadow
of the cathedral, a smallish, slender youth came running trippingly
towards them.
"You want horses," he said to Wat; "there are three of them ready
waiting over there in the dark of the trees beyond the canal yonder."
"And who are you, my skip-jack manling," said Scarlett, "that makes so
free with your horses in this country of donkeys?"
"A friend!" said the boy, sliding away from the rasp in the voice of
the master-at-arms.
Something familiar in gait and manner struck Wat through the disguise
of the unfamiliar dress.
"It is the Little Marie!" he said, gladly enough. "What do you here in
this attire?"
The slim figure had slipped round to Wat's side and now laid a soft,
small hand on his.
"I have come to help you to escape. I have three horses waiting
for you, and I have discovered that the password for the night is
'Guelderland.'"
"And the horses," queried Wat, "whence came they?"
"Ne'er inquire too carefully so that they be good ones," quoth Scarlett
the campaigner.
"I took the loan of them from the stables of the Inn of the Coronation.
I know of one who will see them safe home," said Marie.
"Is their hire paid for?" asked Wat the Scot.
"Faith, aye," said Jack Scarlett; "I myself have paid the fat old
villain Sheffell for them over and over again. Let us go on. It skills
not to be too nice in distinctions when one argues under the shadow of
the gallows. The rascal shall have his horses back safe enough when we
are done with them."
They went by unfrequented ways, following their slim, alert guide down
by-ways that echoed under their feet, by quiet, evil-smelling streets
vocal with night-raking cats, past innumerable prowling dogs with their
backs chronically arched at the shoulders, half in general defiance of
their kind, and half with bending over baskets of domestic rubbish.
They came after a while to the shade of the little wood beyond the
great canal; and there, sure enough, tied to the green-sparred wooden
box, which in Dutch fashion had been put round some of the trees of
rarer sort, were three horses, all busily employed trying to crop the
herbage to the limit of their several tethers.
"And the third?" queried Scarlett, looking at them. "Whose leg goes
across the saddle of the third?"
"I come with you," said Marie, hastily and anxiously; "believe me, I
can guide you to a little haven where are ships wherein you may reach
your own land--or, at least, if it please you, escape safely out of
this country of enemies."
"And who may you be, my pretty little young man with the babe's face,
and where gat you the spirit that makes you speak so brisk and bold?"
Marie looked at Wat through the dim light as though to beseech him to
answer for her.
Said Wat, overcoming a natural touch of shyness and reluctance, "This
is the friend of mine who got me out of prison, and who was kind to me
beyond all thanks when I abode therein. She is only 'the Little Marie,'
whom you remember at the Hostel of the Coronation. After that night
she went back there no more."
"She!" cried Scarlett; "_she_, did he say? 'Only the Little Marie,'
quotha! Well, that is a good deal for a Scot of the Covenant, one that
for lack of other helpers will have to company with the Hill-wanderers,
so far as I can see, when he goes back to his own land."
"Aye," said Wat, dryly, "but we are not back yet."
"I kenned," returned Scarlett, every whit as dryly, "that we were on
one love-quest. But had I kenned that we were on two of them at once,
the devil a foot would I have stirred out of my good lodgings, or away
from the bield of that excellent and truly buxom householder, the Frau
Axel."
So far they had spoken in Scots, but the Little Marie, listening with
tremulous eagerness to the tone of their conversation, laid her hand
wistfully on Scarlett's arm.
"Fear not," she said in French, "I will never be a burden to you, nor
yet troublesome. I am to stay with you only till you are clear of your
difficulties. I can help you even as I helped him, for I know whither
the maiden you seek has been taken. And when you are on the track of
the robbers, then, so quickly as may be, the Little Marie will return
to her own place."
Scarlett did not give back a single word of good or bad. As his manner
was, he only grunted abruptly--yet, as it had been, not ill-pleased.
"Time we were in the saddle, at all events," he said; "that is, if we
are to pass the posts ere the coming of the day."
Presently, therefore, the three found themselves riding towards the
city gate. Scarlett rode first to show his uniform--that of the new
corps of which he was master-at-arms. He wore also the ribbon of the
order he had received from the prince conspicuously displayed, if it
so happened that the watch should shed the light of a lantern upon them.
"Halt!" duly cried the sentinel at the port of the camp. "Who goes
there?"
"The nephew of the colonel, my Lord Buchan," said Scarlett, "going to
the camp under escort and accompanied by his tutor."
"Advance and give the password," said the sentry, mechanically.
"Guelderland!" said Scarlett, as carelessly as though he had been
passing posts all night and was tired of the formula.
The sentry, dreaming of a maid with plates of gold at her temples,
among the far-away canals of Friesland, fell back and permitted the
three horsemen to pass without so much as wasting a glance upon them.
The gates closed behind and the white tents glimmered vaguely in front
of them. They turned aside, however, from the camp, keeping cautiously
along to the right as they rode, in order to skirt the wall of the
city. In this way they hoped to reach the open country without being
again accosted; for it was entirely within the range of possibility
that the password which had served them so well inside the city might
be worse than useless without the walls of Amersfort.
Nevertheless, they passed the last of the white tents without challenge.
As soon as the camp was left behind Marie came to the front, and,
without apology or explanation, led the way, diving into darkling roads
and striking across fields by unseen bridle-paths without the least
hesitation.
Meanwhile Wat and Scarlett, riding close behind her, talked over
their plans. Kate (they decided) was in the power of Barra. She had
been carried off against her will. So much they were sure of. Barra,
however, was clearly not with her, having been wounded at the moment
of his setting out by the knife of the Little Marie. Therefore, for
the time being at least, Kate was saved the greater dangers of his
presence. Also, his men would certainly keep her safe enough. The only
question was in what direction Kate had been carried off.
"I can help you with that also," said the girl, to whom their quest
had been explained, letting her horse drop back beside Wat's, "for
yester-even there came a certain well-refreshed sailor-man of my
village to the Street of the Prison. He served, he said, in a ship
called the _Sea Unicorn_, and she waited only the signal of my Lord
Barra to weigh her anchor. 'Goes my lord to Scotland?' I asked him.
'Nay,' he laughed, 'at least not directly and not alone. But he brings
a fair wench for company to him, and that without asking her leave, as
the Lords of Barra do all. Captain Smith is well paid for the venture,
and to every man of us there is good white drink-money.' So after I
heard that I was determined to set my knife deeper in my lord for the
poor lass's sake, that she might never taste his tender mercies as I
myself had done."
"And heard you whither the ship was to sail, Marie?" asked Wat,
listening with great attention to her tale.
"Nay, my captain," she replied; "of that the man knew little, save
where she was to put down her anchors and wait, which was off the town
of Lis-op-Zee, to which presently we ride. But Captain Smith had sworn
to go first to his home at Poole, whatever might be his freight. And
the sailor believed that he would keep his word."
"That suits Jack Scarlett excellently," said his companion; "for to
go on a quest after runaway maids to the kingdom of the blessed Louis
the Great is of a certainty to have my neck stretched, on account of
the somewhat hasty manner in which I relinquished the service of his
Most Christian Majesty. And Scotland, though mine own land, has overly
many waspish sectaries and rough-riding malignants for old Jack to be
wholly comfortable therein."
"Then England and Poole it shall be," said Wat, confidently. "You shall
see!"
"But have you considered, my friend, that England is a somewhat large
mark to hit in the white and bring up in Poole Harbor at the first
offer?" said Scarlett. "How shall one know that he is within a hundred
miles or more of his aim?"
"Hearken," said Wat. "'Tis usually Jack Scarlett that is ready with
plans, eager and fretful with encouragements. Upon his own adventures
he fairly sweats alternatives, but on this occasion of mine he does
naught but grumble. There is yet time for him to turn about and betake
him to his greasy sheepfold. 'Guelderland' will even yet admit him in
time for the morning muster of the fleecy ones."
Scarlett laughed good-naturedly, like one who will not take offence
even when offence is meant.
"I am not in love, you see," he said. "It is love that is fertile of
stratagems. I am but an old, wizened apple-jack. But so was it not
ever. The days have been--ah, lad, the days have been!--when Jack
Scarlett did not ride hot-foot after another man's lass."
"Hear my idea," said Wat, paying little heed to him. "We may hit or
miss, it is true, but in any case the ship would be a small one, and
most likely she would run for the nearest point of safety. Yet not
directly across, for all the narrow seas are patrolled by the English
vessels, because deadly jealousy of the Dutch still rankles deep in
the heart of the king for the defeats he had of them in the days when
he was Lord High Admiral of the Fleet, and attended to his mistresses'
lapdogs instead of his duty."
Scarlett moved uneasily. There was, he knew, in most countries such a
thing as a navy, but ships and rolling Jack Tars little concerned a
soldier, save to transport him to his campaigning ground.
It was brightening to the morning as they came in sight of the high
dunes of land that shut off the Northern Sea. Behind them, with the
gables of its houses already threatened by the encroaching waves of
sand, nestled the little village of Lis-op-Zee. A few fishing-boats
were drawn up into a swallow's nest of a harbor, and beyond league on
league stretched the desolate dunes, through which the river Lis felt
its tortuous way among the sand-hollows to the wider levels of the sea.
Wat and Scarlett, with their attendant, were about to ride directly and
without challenge through the street of the village towards the harbor,
when a man came staggering out of a narrow entry betwixt two of the
taller houses, so suddenly that the horse of the Little Marie almost
knocked him down.
It was already the gray light of dawn, and the man, who was clad in
swash-buckler array of side-breeches and broad hat, with many swords
and pistols a-dangle at his belt, set his hand on his breast tragically
and cried, "I thank the saints of the blessed Protestant religion that
I have escaped this danger. For if I had been run over by that thing
upon the horse there, before the Lord I should never have known what
had struck me!"
"Get out of the way!" thundered Scarlett, savagely, for he was in no
mood for miscellaneous fooling; "lie down under a bush, man, and learn
to take thy liquor quietly."
The man turned instantly with a new swagger in his attitude and a
straightening of his shoulders to a sort of tipsy attention. "And who,
Sir Broad-Stripe, made you burgomeister of the town of Lis-op-Zee? Or
may you by chance be his highness the prince in person, or his high
councillor my Lord Barra, that you would drive good, honest gentlemen
before you like cattle on the streets of this town?"
"Out, fellow!" shouted Scarlett, furiously, drawing his sword; "leave
me to settle with him," he added, over his shoulder. Wat and Marie rode
by at the side, but the man still stood and barred Scarlett's path.
Now Jack Scarlett was not exactly, as we have reason to know, a man
patient to a fault. So on this occasion he spurred his horse straight
at his opponent and spread him instantly abroad in the dust, sprawling
flat upon his back on the highway.
"Help! Hallo, Barra's men! Here is a comrade ill-beset!" cried the
rascal, without, however, attempting to rise.
And out of the houses on either side there came running a little cloud
of men, all armed with swords and pistols hastily snatched, and with
their garments in various stages of disarray.
Wat gave one look behind and then turned to his companion, holding his
head down the while that the pursuers might not recognize him.
"Come on, thou fool, Scarlett," he cried, "we have started Barra's
whole nest of wasps--there come Haxo and the rest. God help us if they
have seen us!"
Scarlett turned also. But it was too late--the mischief was done.
"Stop them!" came the thunderous bellow of Haxo the Bull. "These
are the fellows who outflouted and overbore us at the Inn of the
Coronation."
So without waiting to parley, Wat and Scarlett, with the Little Marie
well abreast of them, set spurs to their horses and rode as hard as
they could gallop through the fringing woods of Lis and the sweet and
flowery May glades out upon the desolate sand-hills of Noorwyk, hoping
to hit upon some dell or cleft among these vast waves of sand, where
they might keep themselves safe till their enemies should tire of the
search and return to the city.