Through the streets of Worcester the Roundheads dragged Sir Crispin, and
for all that he was as hard and callous a man as any that ever buckled
on a cuirass, the horrors that in going he beheld caused him more than
once to shudder.
The place was become a shambles, and the very kennels ran with blood.
The Royalist defeat was by now complete, and Cromwell's fanatic butchers
overran the town, vying to outdo one another in savage cruelty
and murder. Houses were being broken into and plundered, and their
inmates--resisting or unresisting; armed or unarmed; men, women and
children alike were pitilessly being put to the sword. Charged was the
air of Worcester with the din of that fierce massacre. The crashing of
shivered timbers, as doors were beaten in, mingled with the clatter and
grind of sword on sword, the crack of musket and pistol, the clank of
armour, and the stamping of men and horses in that troubled hour.
And above all rang out the fierce, raucous blasphemy of the slayers,
and the shrieks of agony, the groans, the prayers, and curses of their
victims.
All this Sir Crispin saw and heard, and in the misery of it all, he
for the while forgot his own sorry condition, and left unheeded the
pike-butt wherewith the Puritan at his heels was urging him along.
They paused at length in a quarter unknown to him before a tolerably
large house. Its doors hung wide, and across the threshold, in and out,
moved two continuous streams of officers and men.
A while Crispin and his captors stood in the spacious hall; then they
ushered him roughly into one of the abutting rooms. Here he was brought
face to face with a man of middle height, red and coarse of countenance
and large of nose, who stood fully armed in the centre of the chamber.
His head was uncovered, and on the table at his side stood the morion he
had doffed. He looked up as they entered, and for a few seconds rested
his glance sourly upon the lank, bold-eyed prisoner, who coldly returned
his stare.
“Whom have we here?” he inquired at length, his scrutiny having told him
nothing.
“One whose offence is too heinous to have earned him a soldier's death,
my lord,” answered Pride.
“Therein you lie, you damned rebel!” cried Crispin. “If accuse you must,
announce the truth. Tell Master Cromwell”--for he had guessed the man's
identity--“that single-handed I held my own against you and a score of
you curs, and that not until I had cut down seven of them was I taken.
Tell him that, master psalm-singer, and let him judge whether you lied
or not. Tell him, too, that you, who--”
“Have done!” cried Cromwell at length, stamping his foot. “Peace, or
I'll have you gagged. Now, Colonel, let us hear your accusation.”
At great length, and with endless interlarding of proverbs did Pride
relate how this impious malignant had been the means of the young man,
Charles Stuart, making good his escape when otherwise he must have
fallen into their hands. He accused him also of the murder of his son
and of four other stout, God-fearing troopers, and urged Cromwell to let
him deal with the malignant as he deserved.
The Lord General's answer took expression in a form that was little
puritanical. Then, checking himself:
“He is the second they have brought me within ten minutes charged with
the same offence,” said he. “The other one is a young fool who gave
Charles Stuart his horse at Saint Martin's Gate. But for him again the
young man had been taken.”
“So he has escaped!” cried Crispin. “Now, God be praised!”
Cromwell stared at him blankly for a moment, then:
“You will do well, sir,” he muttered sourly, “to address the Lord on
your own behalf. As for that young man of Baal, your master, rejoice
not yet in his escape. By the same crowning mercy in which the Lord hath
vouchsafed us victory to-day shall He also deliver the malignant youth
into my hands. For your share in retarding his capture your life, sir,
shall pay forfeit. You shall hang at daybreak together with that other
malignant who assisted Charles at the Saint Martin's Gate.”
“I shall at least hang in good company,” said Crispin pleasantly, “and
for that, sir, I give you thanks.”
“You will pass the night with that other fool,” Cromwell continued,
without heeding the interruption, “and I pray that you may spend it in
such meditation as shall fit you for your end. Take him away.”
“But, my lord,” exclaimed Pride, advancing.
“What now?”
Crispin caught not his answer, but his half-whispered words were earnest
and pleading. Cromwell shook his head.
“I cannot sanction it. Let it satisfy you that he dies. I condole with
you in your bereavement, but it is the fortune of war. Let the thought
that your son died in a godly cause be of comfort to you. Bear in mind,
Colonel Pride, that Abraham hesitated not to offer up his child to the
Lord. And so, fare you well.”
Colonel Pride's face worked oddly, and his eyes rested for a second
upon the stern, unmoved figure of the Tavern Knight in malice and
vindictiveness. Then, shrugging his shoulders in token of unwilling
resignation, he withdrew, whilst Crispin was led out.
In the hall again they kept him waiting for some moments, until at
length an officer came up, and bidding him follow, led the way to the
guardroom. Here they stripped him of his back-and-breast, and when that
was done the officer again led the way, and Crispin followed between two
troopers. They made him mount three flights of stairs, and hurried him
along a passage to a door by which a soldier stood mounting guard. At
a word from the officer the sentry turned, and unfastening the heavy
bolts, he opened the door. Roughly the officer bade Sir Crispin enter,
and stood aside that he might pass.
Crispin obeyed him silently, and crossed the threshold to find himself
within a mean, gloomy chamber, and to hear the heavy door closed and
made fast again behind him. His stout heart sank a little as he realized
that that closed door shut out to him the world for ever; but once again
would he cross that threshold, and that would be the preface to the
crossing of the greater threshold of eternity.
Then something stirred in one of that room's dark corners, and he
started, to see that he was not alone, remembering that Cromwell had
said he was to have a companion in his last hours.
“Who are you?” came a dull voice--a voice that was eloquent of misery.
“Master Stewart!” he exclaimed, recognizing his companion. “So it was
you gave the King your horse at the Saint Martin's Gate! May Heaven
reward you. Gadswounds,” he added, “I had little thought to meet you
again this side the grave.”
“Would to Heaven you had not!” was the doleful answer. “What make you
here?”
“By your good leave and with your help I'll make as merry as a man may
whose sands are all but run. The Lord General--whom the devil roast in
his time will make a pendulum of me at daybreak, and gives me the night
in which to prepare.”
The lad came forward into the light, and eyed Sir Crispin sorrowfully.
“We are companions in misfortune, then.”
“Were we ever companions in aught else? Come, sir, be of better cheer.
Since it is to be our last night in this poor world, let us spend it as
pleasantly as may be.”
“Pleasantly?”
“Twill clearly be difficult,” answered Crispin, with a laugh. “Were we
in Christian hands they'd not deny us a black jack over which to relish
our last jest, and to warm us against the night air, which must be
chill in this garret. But these crop-ears...” He paused to peer into the
pitcher on the table. “Water! Pah! A scurvy lot, these psalm-mongers!”
“Merciful Heaven! Have you no thought for your end?”
“Every thought, good youth, every thought, and I would fain prepare me
for the morning's dance in a more jovial and hearty fashion than Old
Noll will afford me--damn him!”
Kenneth drew back in horror. His old dislike for Crispin was all aroused
by this indecent flippancy at such a time. Just then the thought of
spending the night in his company almost effaced the horror of the
gallows whereof he had been a prey.
Noting the movement, Crispin laughed disdainfully, and walked towards
the window. It was a small opening, by which two iron bars, set
crosswise, defied escape. Moreover, as Crispin looked out, he realized
that a more effective barrier lay in the height of the window itself.
The house overlooked the river on that side; it was built upon an
embankment some thirty feet high; around this, at the base of the
edifice, and some forty feet below the window, ran a narrow pathway
protected by an iron railing. But so narrow was it, that had a man
sprung from the casement of Crispin's prison, it was odds he would have
fallen into the river some seventy feet below. Crispin turned away with
a sigh. He had approached the window almost in hope; he quitted it in
absolute despair.
“Ah, well,” said he, “we will hang, and there's the end of it.”
Kenneth had resumed his seat in the corner, and, wrapped in his cloak,
he sat steeped in meditation, his comely young face seared with lines of
pain. As Crispin looked upon him then, his heart softened and went
out to the lad--went out as it had done on the night when first he had
beheld him in the courtyard of Perth Castle.
He recalled the details of that meeting; he remembered the sympathy
that had drawn him to the boy, and how Kenneth had at first appeared to
reciprocate that feeling, until he came to know him for the rakehelly,
godless ruffler that he was. He thought of the gulf that gradually had
opened up between them. The lad was righteous and God-fearing, truthful
and sober, filled with stern ideals by which he sought to shape
his life. He had taxed Crispin with his dissoluteness, and Crispin,
despising him for a milksop, had returned to his disgust with mockery,
and had found a fiendish pleasure in arousing that disgust at every
turn.
To-night, as Crispin eyed the youth, and remembered that at dawn he was
to die in his company, he realized that he had used him ill, that his
behaviour towards him had been that of the dissolute ruffler he was
become, rather than of the gentleman he had once accounted himself.
“Kenneth,” he said at length, and his voice bore so unusually mild a
ring that the lad looked up in surprise. “I have heard tell that it
is no uncommon thing for men upon the threshold of eternity to seek to
repair some of the evil they may have done in life.”
Kenneth shuddered. Crispin's words reminded him again of his approaching
end. The ruffler paused a moment, as if awaiting a reply or a word of
encouragement. Then, as none came, he continued:
“I am not one of your repentant sinners, Kenneth. I have lived my
life--God, what a life!--and as I have lived I shall die, unflinching
and unchanged. Dare one to presume that a few hours spent in whining
prayers shall atone for years of reckless dissoluteness? 'Tis a
doctrine of cravens, who, having lacked in life the strength to live as
conscience bade them, lack in death the courage to stand by that life's
deeds. I am no such traitor to myself. If my life has been vile my
temptations have been sore, and the rest is in God's hands. But in my
course I have sinned against many men; many a tall fellow's life have
I wantonly wrecked; some, indeed, I have even taken in wantonness or
anger. They are not by, nor, were they, could I now make amends. But you
at least are here, and what little reparation may lie in asking pardon
I can make. When I first saw you at Perth it was my wish to make you my
friend--a feeling I have not had these twenty years towards any man.
I failed. How else could it have been? The dove may not nest with the
carrion bird.”
“Say no more, sir,” cried Kenneth, genuinely moved, and still more
amazed by this curious humility in one whom he had never known other
than arrogant and mocking. “I beseech you, say no more. For what
trifling wrongs you may have done me I forgive you as freely as I would
be forgiven. Is it not written that it shall be so?” And he held out his
hand.
“A little more I must say, Kenneth,” answered the other, leaving the
outstretched hand unheeded. “The feeling that was born in me towards you
at Perth Castle is on me again. I seek not to account for it. Perchance
it springs from my recognition of the difference betwixt us; perchance I
see in you a reflection of what once I was myself--honourable and true.
But let that be. The sun is setting over yonder, and you and I will
behold it no more. That to me is a small thing. I am weary. Hope is
dead; and when that is dead what does it signify that the body die also?
Yet in these last hours that we shall spend together I would at least
have your esteem. I would have you forget my past harshness and the
wrongs that I may have done you down to that miserable affair of your
sweetheart's letter, yesterday. I would have you realize that if I am
vile, I am but such as a vile world hath made me. And tomorrow when we
go forth together, I would have you see in me at least a man in whose
company you are not ashamed to die.”
Again the lad shuddered.
“Shall I tell you my story, Kenneth? I have a strong desire to go
over this poor life of mine again in memory, and by giving my thoughts
utterance it may be that they will take more vivid shape. For the rest
my tale may wile away a little of the time that's left, and when you
have heard me you shall judge me, Kenneth. What say you?”
Despite the parlous condition whereunto the fear of the morrow had
reduced him, this new tone of Galliard's so wrought upon him then that
he was almost eager in his request that Sir Crispin should unfold his
story. And this the Tavern Knight then set himself to do.