It was indeed Master Peter Rainham whom Tiffany now brought into the
presence of her mistress, and left there standing and staring. Master
Peter, eyed and appraised by the searching scrutiny of Halfman,
resolved himself into a thick-set, boorish fellow, whose flying
forehead, little, angry eyes, and assertive, yellow teeth made him,
to Halfman's mind, resemble nothing in the world so much as a boar's
head on an ale-house sign. Yet the fellow stood his ground sturdily
enough, and stared at Brilliana with no sense of distress at his
dirty homespun or his dirty hands.
"You sent for me?" he challenged. "Have you changed your mood? I am
ever of the same mind, and will wed when you will."
The wolf look leaped into Halfman's eyes, and the loutish squire's
life was, all unawares, in the greatest peril it had ever fringed.
But Brilliana, intent only on her purposes, beamed on her blunt
suitor as if he had scattered flowers at her feet.
"You are a wonderful wooer," she protested. "But whatever admiration
of your person I may, without unbecoming effrontery, confess, I would
have you to know, plain and square, from this moment, that I will
hearken to none but a King's man."
The boor's little eyes glinted and the boor's rusty fingers rasped at
his stubble chin as he answered emphatically:
"Then I am a King's man, root and branch."
But his face showed less loyal confidence at Brilliana's next words.
"Then you must know his Majesty is in straits for ready money. Will
you, who are reputed rich, come to his aid with a round sum?"
Master Peter showed his teeth in a snarl and flung up his hands.
"Reputed rich! Oh, what a bitter thing is a bad reputation. I am
Job-poor; both ends will not meet, I tell you. If I had for
lending-money a guinea in one pocket, why, I should lend it to the
other pocket."
"Why do you woo me if you be so poor?" Brilliana asked, with a fine
show of heat, and Halfman nodded his head as much as to say, "Ay, ay,
answer me that, if you can."
Master Peter strove to answer, lamely enough.
"Poor in pennies, lady, poorer in shillings, poorest in guineas. I
may own half the country-side and have no coin to clink against the
other."
Brilliana scoffed at his protest.
"Why, 'tis not so long ago Master Paul Hungerford told me you were a
very Croesus."
Master Peter clinched and unclinched his horny hands as if he were
coming to grips with his traducer.
"Master Hungerford told you that? I would I had my hands knotted
about his lying throat. He that is as rich as a Jew, that has a
treasure of gold plate in his sideboard that would keep the King in
arms and men for a month of Sundays, he so to slander my poverty."
Brilliana heaved a sympathetic sigh.
"I fear he is but a bad man. Do you think he cherishes the King's
cause?"
Master Peter flamed with virtuous indignation.
"He, the black heart! Never think it. He is a rank Parliament
scoundrel and worships Mr. Pym."
"Is it so?" cried Brilliana. "A rebel, a renegade. Why, now, Master
Rainham, I see a pretty piece of loyal work for you."
Master Peter glowered at her suspiciously.
"Anything for you, anything for the King; except give what I have
none of--money."
"In the King's name," said Brilliana, heroically, "go forth and
ransack this rebellious gentleman's house for arms."
Master Peter snorted sceptically.
"Arms! I think he hath none but an old rusty fire-lock and a breast
and back that have seen better days."
Brilliana beamed on him, a yielding sphinx.
"But then, supposing you should pick up some plate on the way, some
gold plate by chance--"
Master Peter rubbed his grimy hands.
"Why, it were fine," he admitted, gleefully; then added, with
cunning, "Are you sure he is a Roundhead?"
"I am very sure he is your enemy," Brilliana answered, sharply, "for
he makes you his daily jape."
The ugly boar-head looked uglier as it growled:
"Does he, the dog! I'd jape him if I gad my two hands upon him."
"Why," Brilliana asserted, now in the full tide of make-believe, "if
you are a King's man, he will be of the other side, he hates you so.
I cannot think how you have earned his hatred, unless, indeed--" and
she broke off suddenly and looked aside. Halfman would have given a
shilling for a lonely place to laugh his fill in.
"Well, madam, well?" Master Rainham questioned, eagerly.
Brilliana faltered her answer.
"--unless he believes you stand higher in the graces of a certain
lady than he can ever hope to stand."
Master Rainham's smile gave Halfman the feel of goose-flesh.
Brilliana's face was, happily, averted.
"Madam, assure me 'tis so," grunted boar's-head.
"I must not say much," Brilliana protested, "no more than this, that
in this enterprise, if you but achieve it, you will win great credit
with the King at no cost to yourself, you spoil a rival, and--but
this is very private--you will give great pleasure to that same
nameless lady."
Master Peter shouted, "Why, then, all's well. I will pick him as
clean as a whistle." Again caution overcrowded cheer. "But I must
pick my time, look you."
On this, Brilliana became emphatic.
"No time like the present. It is to my certain knowledge that Master
Paul is away from home to-day." Again she looked to Halfman for
support, and again Halfman yielded it blithely.
"Ay, he has gone hawking," he declared; "he will not be home this
great while."
Halfman's confirmation decided Master Peter.
"Why, I go at once. When the cat's away--! I will be back within the
hour."
"Then," said Brilliana, "pray you go to the house and gather in my
name from the servants' hall such men as you may need for your
enterprise. Use despatch, for indeed I long for your return."
Master Peter paid her what he believed to be a courtly bow.
"That same nameless lady shall praise me," he chuckled, and, turning,
made for the house with all speed. When they were alone, Brilliana
and Halfman looked at each other with the mirth of children who have
successfully raided an orchard.
"I have netted them," Brilliana said. "If it do but happen pat, we
shall have served the King and punished two cozening faint-hearts.
For the best of it is that neither can complain. Each is neck-high in
the mire of lies, each has plundered the other, and must be dumb for
shame of his knavery."
"It will be brave to spy their faces," Halfman commented, "when they
smell out the snare."
"Look to it," Brilliana suggested, "that they be kept apart when they
come here. The jest must not spoil. How these old hawks will fly at
each other when we unhood them."
"Trust me, lady," said Halfman. "I have been a play-actor and know
how to stage a pair of gabies to the show."
He saluted her and made to depart. She had learned to like his
company through the long days of siege, and this dull day of quiet
she felt lonely. Moreover, she was grateful to him for having helped
her so well in her plot against the niggards.
"Come again when you have taken order for this," she said. "There is
still much to do, much to think for."
The man saluted anew, intoxicated with pleasure. He knew that she
liked his company, and whatever was well in him burgeoned at the
knowledge. His play-actor passion had bettered him, if it had not
accomplished the impossible and transmuted the pirate of body into
the pure of soul. It would not be true to say that he never thought
lewdly of her; he would have thought lewdly of an angel or a vestal
maid; that was ingrain in the composition of the man; but he thought
well of her as he had never thought well of women before since he
first scorched his stripling's fingers, and he would have killed
twenty men to keep her from hearing a foul word. Sometimes when he
talked with her, ever in his chastened part of the rough old soldier,
he laughed in his sleeve at the difference between part and true man.
The nut-hook humor of it was that both were realities, or, perhaps,
that neither were realities.
As he quitted the pleasaunce he countered Mistress Tiffany, and saw
at a distance, standing by the laurels, a foppish, many-colored,
portly personage negligently twirling a long staff. Halfman guessed
the name, grinned, and went on his business. Tiffany burst wellnigh
breathless into her lady's presence.
"My lady," she gasped, "here is Sir Blaise Mickleton, who entreats
the honor to speak with you."
Brilliana's face darkened for a moment, for she bore no kindness just
then to the laggard in war. Then her face cleared again.
"Admit him," she said. "He will divert me for want of a better."
Back ran Tiffany to where the visitor lingered, bade him enter the
pleasaunce, where he would find her mistress, and having delivered
her errand, ran again to the house, leaving him to his adventure.