MASTER CLARENCE.
We had stood thus for a few moments when a harsh voice, hailing us
from above, put an end to our several thoughts and forebodings. We
looked up and I saw half a dozen night-capped heads thrust over the
bulwarks. A rope ladder came hurtling down at our feet, and a man,
nimbly descending, held it tight at the bottom. "Now, madame!" he said
briskly. They all, I noticed, had the same foreign accent, yet all
spoke English; a singularity I did not understand, until I learned
later that the boat was the _Lions Whelp_, trading between London and
Calais, and manned from the latter place.
Mistress Bertram ascended quickly and steadily, holding the baby in
her arms. The other made some demur, lingering at the foot of the
ladder and looking up as if afraid, until her companion chid her
sharply. Then she too went up, but as she passed me--I was holding one
side of the ladder steady--she shot at me from under her hood a look
which disturbed me strangely.
It was the first time I had seen her face, and it was such a face as a
man rarely forgets. Not because of its beauty; rather because it was a
speaking face, a strange and expressive one, which the dark waving
hair, swelling in thick clusters upon either temple, seemed to
accentuate. The features were regular, but, the full red lips
excepted, rather thin than shapely. The nose, too, was prominent. But
the eyes! The eyes seemed to glorify the dark brilliant thinness of
the face, and to print it upon the memory. They were dark flashing
eyes, and their smile seemed to me perpetually to challenge, to allure
and repulse, and even to goad. Sometimes they were gay, more rarely
sad, sometimes soft, and again hard as steel. They changed in a moment
as one or another approached her. But always at their gayest, there
was a suspicion of weariness and fatigue in their depths. Or so I
thought later.
Something of this flashed through my mind as I followed her up the
side. But once on board I glanced round, forgetting her in the novelty
of my position. The _Whelp_ was decked fore and aft only, the
blackness of the hold gaping amidships, spanned by a narrow gangway,
which served to connect the two decks. We found ourselves in the
forepart, amid coils of rope and windlasses and water-casks;
surrounded by half a dozen wild-looking sailors wearing blue knitted
frocks and carrying sheath-knives at their girdles.
The foremost and biggest of these seemed to be the captain, although,
so far as outward appearances went, the only difference between him
and his crew lay in a marlin-spike which he wore slung to a thong
beside his knife. When I reached the deck he was telling a long story
to Mistress Bertram, and telling it very slowly. But the drift of it I
soon gathered. While the fog lasted he could not put to sea.
"Nonsense!" cried my masterful companion, chafing at his slowness of
speech. "Why not? Would it be dangerous?"
"Well, madam, it would be dangerous," he answered, more slowly than
ever. "Yes, it would be dangerous. And to put to sea in a fog? That is
not seamanship. And your baggage has not arrived."
"Never mind my baggage!" she answered imperiously. "I have made other
arrangements for it. Two or three things I know came on board last
night. I want to start--to start at once, do you hear?"
The captain shook his head, and said sluggishly that it was
impossible. Spitting on the deck he ground his heel leisurely round in
a knothole. "Impossible," he repeated; "it would not be seamanship to
start in a fog. When the fog lifts we will go. 'Twill be all the same
to-morrow. We shall lie at Leigh to-night, whether we go now or go
when the fog lifts."
"At Leigh?"
"That is it, madam."
"And when will you go from Leigh?" she cried indignantly.
"Daybreak to-morrow," he answered. "You leave it to me, mistress," he
continued, in a tone of rough patronage, "and you will see your good
man before you expect it."
"But, man!" she exclaimed, trembling with impotent rage. "Did not
Master Bertram engage you to bring me across whenever I might be
ready? Ay, and pay you handsomely for it? Did he not, sirrah?"
"To be sure, to be sure!" replied the giant unmoved. "Using
seamanship, and not going to sea in a fog, if it please you."
"It does not please me!" she retorted. "And why stay at Leigh?"
He looked up at the rigging, then down at the deck. He set his heel in
the knothole, and ground it round again. Then he looked at his
questioner with a broad smile. "Well, mistress, for a very good
reason. It is there your good man is waiting for you. Only," added
this careful keeper of a secret, "he bade me not tell any one."
She uttered a low cry, which might have been an echo of her baby's
cooing, and convulsively clasped the child more tightly to her. "He is
at Leigh!" she murmured, flushing and trembling, another woman
altogether. Even her voice was wonderfully changed. "He is really at
Leigh, you say?"
"To be sure!" replied the captain, with a portentous wink and a
mysterious roll of the head. "He is there safe enough! Safe enough,
you may bet your handsome face to a rushlight. And we will be there
to-night."
She started up with a wild gesture. For a moment she had sat down on a
cask standing beside her, and forgotten our peril, and the probability
that we might never see Leigh at all. Now, I have said, she started
up. "No, no!" she cried, struggling for breath and utterance. "Oh, no!
no! Let us go at once. We must start at once!" Her voice was
hysterical in its sudden anxiety and terror, as the consciousness of
our position rolled back upon her. "Captain! listen, listen!" she
pleaded. "Let us start now, and my husband will give you double. I
will promise you double whatever he said if you will chance the fog."
I think all who heard her were moved, save the captain only. He rubbed
his head and grinned. Slow and heavy, he saw nothing in her prayer
save the freak of a woman wild to get to her man. He did not weigh her
promise at a groat; she was but a woman. And being a foreigner, he did
not perceive a certain air of breeding which might have influenced a
native. He was one of those men against whose stupidity Father Carey
used to say the gods fight in vain. When he answered good-naturedly,
"No, no, mistress, it is impossible. It would not be seamanship," I
felt that we might as well try to stop the ebbing tide as move him
from his position.
The feeling was a maddening one. The special peril which menaced my
companions I did not know; but I knew they feared pursuit, and I had
every reason to fear it for myself. Yet at any moment, out of the
fog which encircled us so closely that we could barely see the raft
below--and the shore not at all--might come the tramp of hurrying feet
and the stern hail of the law. It was maddening to think of this, and
to know that we had only to cast off a rope or two in order to escape;
and to know also that we were absolutely helpless.
I expected that Mistress Bertram, brave as she had shown herself,
would burst into a passion of rage or tears. But apparently she had
one hope left. She looked at me.
I tried to think--to think hard. Alas, I seemed only able to listen.
An hour had gone by since we parted from that rascal in the court, and
we might expect him to appear at any moment, vengeful and exultant,
with a posse at his back. Yet I tried hard to think; and the fog
presently suggested a possible course. "Look here," I said suddenly,
speaking for the first time, "if you do not start until the fog lifts,
captain, we may as well breakfast ashore, and return presently."
"That is as you please," he answered indifferently.
"What do you think?" I said, turning to my companions with as much
carelessness as I could command. "Had we not better do that?"
Mistress Bertram did not understand, but in her despair she obeyed the
motion of my hand mechanically, and walked to the side. The younger
woman followed more slowly, so that I had to speak to her with some
curtness, bidding her make haste; for I was in a fever until we were
clear of the _Whelp_ and the Lion Wharf. It had struck me that, if the
ship were not to leave at once, we were nowhere in so much danger as
on board. At large in the fog we might escape detection for a time.
Our pursuers might as well look for a needle in a haystack as seek us
through it when once we were clear of the wharf. And this was not the
end of my idea. But for the present it was enough. Therefore I took up
Mistress Anne very short. "Come!" I said, "be quick! Let me help you."
She obeyed, and I was ashamed of my impatience when at the foot of the
ladder she thanked me prettily. It was almost with good cheer in my
voice and a rebound of spirits that I explained, as I hurried my
companions across the raft, what my plan was.
The moment we were ashore I felt safer. The fog swallowed us up quick,
as the Bible says. The very hull of the ship vanished from sight
before we had gone half a dozen paces. I had never seen a London fog
before, and to me it seemed portentous and providential; a marvel as
great as the crimson hail which fell in the London gardens to mark her
Majesty's accession.
Yet after all, without my happy thought, the fog would have availed us
little. We had scarcely gone a score of yards before the cautious
tread of several people hastening down the strand toward the wharf
struck my ear. They were proceeding in silence, and we might not have
noticed their approach if the foremost had not by chance tripped and
fallen; whereupon one laughed and another swore. With a warning hand I
grasped my companions' arms, and hurried them forward some paces until
I felt sure that our figures could not be seen through the mist. Then
I halted, and we stood listening, gazing into one another's strained
eyes, while the steps came nearer and nearer, crossed our track and
then with a noisy rush thundered on the wooden raft. My ear caught the
jingle of harness and the clank of weapons.
"It is the watch," I muttered. "Come, and make no noise. What I want
is a little this way. I fancy I saw it as we passed down to the
wharf."
They turned with me, but we had not taken many steps before Mistress
Anne, who was walking on my left side, stumbled over something. She
tried to save herself, but failed and fell heavily, uttering as she
did so a loud cry. I sprang to her assistance, and even before I
raised her I laid my hand lightly on her mouth. "Hush!" I said softly,
"for safety's sake, make no noise. What is the matter?"
"Oh!" she moaned, making no effort to rise, "my ankle! my ankle! I am
sure I have broken it."
I muttered my dismay, while Mistress Bertram, stooping anxiously,
examined the injured limb. "Can you stand?" she asked.
But it was no time for questioning, and I put her aside. The troop
which had passed were within easy hearing, and if there should be one
among them familiar with the girl's voice, we might be pounced upon,
fog or no fog. I felt that it was no time for ceremony, and picked
Mistress Anne up in my arms, whispering to the elder woman: "Go on
ahead! I think I see the boat. It is straight before you."
Luckily I was right, it was the boat; and so far well. But at the
moment I spoke I heard a sudden outcry behind us, and knew the hunt
was up. I plunged forward with my burden, recklessly and blindly,
through mud and over obstacles. The wherry for which I was making was
moored in the water a few feet from the edge. I had remarked it idly
and without purpose as we came down to the wharf, and had even noticed
that the oars were lying in it. Now, if we could reach it and start
down the river for Leigh, we might by possibility gain that place, and
meet Mistress Bertram's husband.
At any late, nothing in the world seemed so desirable to me at the
moment as the shelter of that boat. I plunged through the mud, and
waded desperately through the water to it, Mistress Bertram scarce a
whit behind me. I reached it, but reached it only as the foremost
pursuer caught sight of us. I heard his shout of triumph, and somehow
I bundled my burden into the boat--I remember that she clung about my
neck in fear, and I had to loosen her hands roughly. But I did loosen
them--in time. With one stroke of my hunting-knife, I severed the
rope, and pushing off the boat with all my strength, sprang into it as
it floated away--and was in time. But one second's delay would have
undone us. Two men were already in the water up to their knees, and
their very breath was hot on my face as we swung out into the stream.
Fortunately, I had had experience of boats on the Avon, at Bidford and
Stratford, and could pull a good oar. For a moment indeed the wherry
rolled and dipped as I snatched up the sculls; but I quickly got her
in hand, and, bending to my work, sent her spinning through the mist,
every stroke I pulled increasing the distance between us and our now
unseen foes. Happily we were below London Bridge, and had not that
dangerous passage to make. The river, too, was nearly clear of craft,
and though once and again in the Pool a huge hulk loomed suddenly
across our bows, and then faded behind us into the mist like some
monstrous phantom, and so told of a danger narrowly escaped, I thought
it best to run all risks, and go ahead as long as the tide should ebb.
It was strange how suddenly we had passed from storm into calm.
Mistress Anne had bound her ankle with a handkerchief, and bravely
made light of the hurt; and now the two women sat crouching in the
stern watching me, their heads together, their faces pale. The mist
had closed round us, and we were alone again, gliding over the bosom
of the great river that runs down to the sea. I was oddly struck by
the strange current of life which for a week had tossed me from one
adventure to another, only to bring me into contact at length with
these two, and sweep me into the unknown whirlpool of their fortunes.
Who were they? A merchant's wife and her sister flying from Bishop
Bonner's inquisition? I thought it likely. Their cloaks and hoods
indeed, and all that I could see of their clothes, fell below such a
condition; but probably they were worn as a disguise. Their speech
rose as much above it, but I knew that of late many merchant's wives
had become scholars, and might pass in noblemen's houses; even as in
those days when London waxed fat, and set up and threw down
governments, every alderman had come to ride in mail.
No doubt the women, watching me in anxious silence, were as curious
about me. I still bore the stains of country travel. I was unwashen,
unkempt, my doublet was torn, the cloak I had cast at my feet was the
very wreck of a cloak. Yet I read no distrust in their looks. The
elder's brave eyes seemed ever thanking me. I never saw her lips move
silently that they did not shape "Well done!" And though I caught
Mistress Anne scanning me once or twice with an expression I could ill
interpret, a smile took its place the moment her gaze met mine.
We had passed, but were still in sight of, Greenwich Palace--as they
told me--when the mist rose suddenly like a curtain rolled away, and
the cold, bright February sun, shining out, disclosed the sparkling
river with the green hills rising on our right hand. Here and there on
its surface a small boat such as our own moved to and fro, and in the
distant Pool from which we had come rose a little forest of masts. I
hung on the oars a moment, and my eyes were drawn to a two-masted
vessel which, nearly half a mile below us, was drifting down, gently
heeling over with the current as the crew got up the sails. "I wonder
whither she is bound," I said thoughtfully, "and whether they would
take us on board by any chance."
Mistress Bertram shook her head. "I have no money," she answered
sadly. "I fear we must go on to Leigh, if it be any way possible. You
are tired, and no wonder. But what is it?" with a sudden change of
voice. "What is the matter?"
I had flashed out the oars with a single touch, and begun to pull as
fast as I could down the stream. No doubt my face, too, proclaimed my
discovery and awoke her fears. "Look behind!" I muttered between my
set teeth.
She turned, and on the instant uttered a low cry. A wherry like our
own, but even lighter--in my first glance up the river I had not
noticed it--had stolen nearer to us, and yet nearer, and now throwing
aside disguise was in hot pursuit of us. There were three men on
board, two rowing and one steering. When they saw that we had
discovered them they hailed us in a loud voice, and I heard the
steersman's feet rattle on the boards, as he cried to his men to give
way, and stamped in very eagerness. My only reply was to take a longer
stroke, and, pulling hard, to sweep away from them.
But presently my first strength died away, and the work began to tell
upon me, and little by little they overhauled us. Not that I gave up
at once for that. They were still some sixty yards behind, and for a
few minutes at any rate I might put off capture. In that time
something might happen. At the worst they were only three to one, and
their boat looked light and cranky and easy to upset.
So I pulled on, savagely straining at the oars. But my chest heaved
and my arms ached more and more with each stroke. The banks slid by
us; we turned one bend, then another, though I saw nothing of them. I
saw only the pursuing boat, on which my eyes were fixed, heard only
the measured rattle of the oars in the rowlocks. A minute, two
minutes, three minutes passed. They had not gained on us, but the
water was beginning to waver before my eyes, their boat seemed
floating in the air, there was a pulsation in my ears louder than that
of the oars, I struggled and yet I flagged. My knees trembled. Their
boat shot nearer now, nearer and nearer, so that I could read the
smile of triumph on the steersman's dark face and hear his cry of
exultation. Nearer! and then with a cry I dropped the oars.
"Quick!" I panted to my companions. "Change places with me! So!"
Trembling and out of breath as I was, I crawled between the women and
gained the stern sheets of the boat. As I passed Mistress Bertram she
clutched my arm. Her eyes, as they met mine, flashed fire, her lips
were white. "The man steering!" she hissed between her teeth. "Leave
the others. He is Clarence, and I fear him!"
I nodded; but still, as the hostile boat bore swiftly down upon us, I
cast a glance round to see if there were any help at hand. I saw no
sign of any. I saw only the pale blue sky overhead, and the stream
flowing swiftly under the boat. I drew my sword. The case was one
rather for despair than courage. The women were in my charge, and if I
did not acquit myself like a man now, when should I do so? Bah! it
would soon be over.
There was an instant's confusion in the other boat, as the crew ceased
rowing, and, seeing my attitude and not liking it, changed their
seats. To my joy the man, who had hitherto been steering, flung a
curse at the others and came forward to bear the brunt of the
encounter. He was a tall, sinewy man, past middle age, with a
clean-shaven face, a dark complexion, and cruel eyes. So he was Master
Clarence! Well, he had the air of a swordsman and a soldier. I
trembled for the women.
"Surrender, you fool!" he cried to me harshly. "In the Queen's
name--do you hear? What do you in this company?"
I answered nothing, for I was out of breath. But softly, my eyes on
his, I drew out with my left hand my hunting-knife. If I could beat
aside his sword, I would spring upon him and drive the knife home with
that hand. So, standing erect in bow and stern we faced one another,
the man and the boy, the flush of rage and exertion on my cheek, a
dark shade on his. And silently the boats drew together.
Thought is quick, quicker than anything else in the world I suppose,
for in some drawn-out second before the boats came together I had time
to wonder where I had seen his face before, and to rack my memory. I
knew no Master Clarence, yet I had seen this man somewhere. Another
second, and away with thought! He was crouching for a spring. I drew
back a little, then lunged--lunged with heart and hand. Our swords
crossed and whistled--just crossed--and even as I saw his eyes gleam
behind his point, the shock of the two boats coming together flung us
both backward and apart. A moment we reeled, staggering and throwing
out wild hands. I strove hard to recover myself, nay, I almost did so;
then I caught my foot in Mistress Anne's cloak, which she had left in
her place, and fell heavily back into the boat.
I was up in a moment--on my knees at least--and unhurt. But another
was before me. As I stooped half-risen, I saw one moment a dark shadow
above me, and the next a sheet of flame shone before my eyes, and a
tremendous shock swept all away. I fell senseless into the bottom of
the boat, knowing nothing of what had happened to me.