weapon of Englishmen," his assailant cried, and caught the sword strap
and broke it, so that the weapon clattered into a corner and its wearer
spun round like a top. The big man seemed to have the strength of a
bull. "Put up your hands," he cried again, "or take a coward's
drubbing."
The company was now in high excitement, and its sympathies were mainly
against the challenged. Seeing this, he made a virtue of necessity,
doubled his fists, ducked and got in a blow on the tutor's brisket. The
latter had no skill, but immense reach and strength and the uttermost
resolution. He simply beat down the other's guard, reckless of the
blows he received, and presently dealt him such a clout that he
measured his length on the floor, whence he rose sick and limping and
departed on the arm of a friend. The victor, his cheeks mottled red and
grey and his breath whistling like the wind in a chimney, returned amid
acclamation to the fireside, where he accepted a glass of Alastair's
punch.
For a moment the haggardness was wiped from the man's face, and it
shone with complacence. His eyes shot jovial but martial glances at the
company.
"We have proved our innocence," he whispered to Alastair. "Had you used
sword or pistol you would have been deemed spy and foreigner, but a
bout of fisticuffs is the warrant of the true-born Englishman."
_VI_ _Introduces the Runaway Lady_
Alastair stole a glance at his neighbour's face and found it changed
from their first meeting. It had lost its dumb misery and--for the
moment--its grey pallor. Now it was flushed, ardent, curiously
formidable, and, joined with the heavy broad shoulders, gave an
impression of truculent strength.
"I love to bandy such civilities," said the combatant. "I was taught to
use my hands by my uncle Andrew, who used to keep the ring at
Smithfields. We praise the arts of peace, but the keenest pleasure of
mankind is in battles. You, sir, follow the profession of arms. Every
man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier."
He helped himself to the remainder of the bowl of punch, which he
gulped down noisily. Alastair was in two minds about his new
acquaintance. The man's simplicity and courage and honest friendliness
went to his heart, but he was at a loss in which rank of society to
place him. Mr Johnson spoke with a queer provincial accent--to him
friend was "freend" and a shire a "sheer"--and his manners were those
of a yokel, save that they seemed to spring from a natural singularity
rather than from a narrow experience, for at moments he had a fine
dignity, and his diction was metropolitan if his pronunciation was
rustic. The more the young man looked at the weak heavy-lidded eyes and
the massive face, the more he fell under their spell. The appearance
was like a Moorish palace--outside, a bleak wall which had yet a
promise of a treasure-house within.
"What of your errand?" he asked. "When we last parted you were in quest
of a runaway lady."
"My quest has prospered, though I have foundered a good horse over it,
and when I have paid for this night's lodging, shall have only a
quarter-guinea to take me back to Chastlecote. Why, sir, since you are
kind enough to interest yourself in this affair, you shall be told of
it. Miss Grevel is duly and lawfully wed and is now my lady Norreys.
Sir John has gone north on what he considers to be his duty. He is, as
you are aware, a partisan of the young Prince. My lady stays behind;
indeed she is lodged not a mile from this inn in the house of her
mother's brother, Mr Thicknesse."
"Then you are easier in mind about the business?"
"I am easier in mind. The marriage was performed as decently as was
possible for a thing so hastily contrived. He has behaved to the lady
in all respects with courtesy and consideration, and he has shown the
strength of his principles by departing at once to the camp of his
Prince. I am disposed to think better of his character than I had been
encouraged to by rumour. And, sir, there is one thing that admits of no
shadow of doubt. The lady is most deeply in love."
"You have seen her?"
"This very day. She carries her head as if she wore a crown on it, and
her eyes are as happy as a child's. I did not venture to present
myself, for if she guessed that I had followed her she would have laid
a whip over my back." He stopped to laugh, with affection in his eyes.
"She has done it before, sir, for 'tis a high-spirited lady. So I
bribed a keeper with sixpence to allow me to watch from a covert, as
she took her midday walk. She moved like Flora, and she sang as she
moved. That is happiness, said I to myself, and whatever the faults of
the man who is its cause, 'twould be sacrilege to mar it. So I slipped
off, thanking my Maker that out of seeming ill the dear child had won
this blessedness."
Mr Johnson ceased to drum on the table or waggle his foot, and fell
into an abstraction, his body at peace, his eyes fixed on the fire in a
pleasant dream. The company in the kitchen had thinned to half a dozen,
and out-of-doors the din of the fair seemed to be dying down. Alastair
was growing drowsy, and he too fell to staring at the flames and seeing
pictures in their depths. Suddenly a hand was laid on his elbow and,
turning with a start, he found a lean little man on the form behind him.
"Be 'ee the Dook's man?" a cracked voice whispered.
Alastair puzzled, till he remembered that an hour back he had claimed
to be Queensberry's agent. So he nodded.
The little man thrust a packet into his hands.
"This be for 'ee," he said, and was departing, when Alastair plucked
his arm.
"From whom?" he asked.
"I worn't to say, but 'ee knows." Then he thrust forward a toothless
mouth to the other's ear. "From Brother Gilly," he whispered.
"And to whom were you sent?"
"To 'ee. To the Dook's man at the Dog and Gun. I wor to ask at the
landlord, but 'e ain't forthcoming, and one I knows and trusts points
me to 'ee."
Alastair realised that he was mistaken for Mr Nicholas Kyd, now posting
south; and, since the two were on the same business, he felt justified
in acting as Mr Kyd's deputy. He pocketed the package and gave the
messenger a shilling. At that moment Mr Johnson came out of his
reverie. His brow was clouded.
"At my lord Cornbury's house there was a tall man with a florid face.
He treated me with little politeness and laughed out of season. He had
a servant, too, a rough Scot who attended to my horse. I have seen that
servant in these parts."
Alastair woke to a lively interest. Then he remembered that Mr Kyd had
told him of a glimpse he had had of the tutor of Chastlecote. Johnson
had seen the man Edom before he had started south.
His thoughts turned to the packet. There could be no chance of
overtaking Mr Kyd, whose correspondent was so culpably in arrears. The
thing might be the common business of the Queensberry estates, in which
case it would be forwarded when he found an occasion. But on the other
hand it might be business of _Menelaus_, business of urgent import to
which Alastair could attend. . . . He debated the matter with
himself for a little, and then broke the seal.
The packet had several inclosures. One was in a cypher to which he had
not the key. Another was a long list of names, much contracted, with
figures in three columns set against each. The third riveted his eyes,
so that he had no ear for the noises of the inn or the occasional
remarks of his companion.
It was a statement, signed by the word _Tekel_ and indorsed with the
name of _Mene_--a statement of forces guaranteed from Wales and the
Welsh Marches. There could be no doubt about its purport. There was Sir
Watkin's levy and the day and the hour it would be ready to march; that
was a test case which proved the document authentic, for Alastair
himself had discussed provisionally these very details a week ago at
Wynnstay. There were other levies in money and men against the names of
Cotton, Herbert, Savage, Wynne, Lloyd, Powell. Some of the figures were
queried, some explicit and certified. There was a note about Beaufort,
promising an exact account within two days, which would be sent to
Oxford. Apparently the correspondent called Gilly, whoever he might be,
knew of Kyd's journey southward, but assumed that he had not yet
started. At the end were three lines of gibberish--a cypher obviously.
As his mind grasped the gist of the thing, a flush crept over his face
and he felt the beat of his heart quicken. Here was news, tremendous
news. The West was rising, careless of a preliminary English victory,
and waiting only the arrival of the Prince at some convenient
rendezvous. There were ten thousand men and half a million of money in
these lists, and they were not all. Beaufort was still to come, and
Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire, and the Welsh south-west. The young
man's eyes kindled, and then grew a little dim. He saw the triumph of
his Prince, and the fulfilment of his dreams, for the war would no
longer be a foreign invasion but a rising of Englishmen. He remembered
Midwinter's words, "You can win only by enlisting Old England." It
looked as if it had been done. . . . He saw now why Kyd must linger
in the south. He was the conduit pipe of a vital intelligence which
must go to the Prince by the swiftest means, for on it all his strategy
depended. He himself would carry this budget, and for the others Kyd
had doubtless made his own plans. Even now Lancashire would be up, and
Cheshire stirring. . . .
The kitchen door was flung open with a violence which startled three
topers left by the table. A lantern wavered in the doorway, and in
front of it a square-set man in fustian stumped into the place. He
carried a constable's stave in one hand and in the other a paper.
Behind him a crowd followed, among which might be recognised the
mummers of the evening, notably the one whose bandaged face bore
witness to the strength of Mr Samuel Johnson's fist.
The constable marched up to the hearth.
"By these 'ere presents I lays 'old on the bodies of two suspected
pussons, to wit one Muck Lane, a Scotchman, and one Johnson, a
schoolmaster, they being pussons whose doings and goings and comings
are contrairy to the well-bein' of this 'ere realm and a danger to the
peace of our Lord the King."
The mention of himself by name showed Alastair that this was no affair
of village spy-hunters, but a major peril. In his hand he still held
the packet addressed to Kyd. Were he searched it might be damning
evidence; moreover he had already the best part of the intelligence
therein contained in his head. Mr Johnson, who was chilly, had just
flung on more logs and the fire blazed high. Into the red heart of it
went the paper and, since the tutor's bulky figure was between him and
the door, the act was not noticed by the constable and his followers.
"What whim of rascality is this?" asked Mr Johnson, reaching for a
stout oak stick which he had propped in a corner.
"A very troublesome whim for you," said a voice. "The constable holds a
warrant issued by Squire Thicknesse for the arrest of two Jacobite
emissaries traced into this village."
"Ay," said the constable, "'ee'd better come quiet, for Squire 'ave
sent a brave lot o' keepers and stable lads to manhandle 'ee if 'ee
don't. My orders is to carry 'ee to the Manor and lock 'ee up there
till such time as 'ee can be sent to Brumming'am."
"Arrant nonsense," cried Johnson. "I'm a better subject of His Majesty
than any rascal among you, and so, I doubt not, is my friend. Yet so
great is our veneration for the laws of England, that we will obey this
preposterous summons. Take me to your Squire, but be warned, every jack
of you, that if a man lays his hand on me I will fell him to the earth."
"And I say likewise," said Alastair, laying a significant hand on his
sword.
The constable, who had no great stomach for his duty, was relieved by
his prisoners' complaisance, and after some discussion with his friend
announced that no gyves should be used if they consented to walk with
the Squire's men on both sides of them. Alastair insisted on having his
baggage brought with him, which was duly delivered to one of the
Manor's grooms by a silent landlady; Mr Johnson carried his slender
outfit in his pockets. The landlord did not show himself. But at the
inn door, before the Manor men closed up, a figure pressed forward from
the knot of drunken onlookers, and Alastair found his sleeve plucked
and the face of Brother Gilly's messenger beside him.
"I've been mistook, maister. 'Ee bain't the Dook's man, not the one I
reckoned. Gimme back the letter."
"It's ashes now. Tell that to him that sent you. Say the letter's gone,
but the news travels forward in a man's head."
The messenger blinked uncomprehendingly and then made as if to repeat
his request, but a sudden rush of merrymakers, hungry for a fresh
spectacle, swept him down the street. Presently the escort was clear of
the village and tramping through a black aisle of trees. Someone lit a
lantern, which showed the mattress of chestnut leaves underfoot and the
bare branches above. The keepers and stable-boys whistled, and Mr
Johnson chanted aloud what sounded like Latin hexameters. For him there
was no discomfort in the adventure save that on a raw night it removed
him from a warm fireside.
But for Alastair the outlook was grave. Here was he arrested by a booby
constable on the warrant of some Justice Shallow, but arrested under
his own name. He had passed secretly from Scotland to Cornbury, and but
for the party at the latter place and one strange fellow on Otmoor, no
one had known that name. Could the news have leaked out from the
Cornbury servants? But, even then, he was not among the familiar
figures of Jacobitism, and he had but just come from France. Only Lord
Cornbury knew his true character, and Lord Cornbury did not talk. Yet
someone with full knowledge of his past and present had tracked him to
this village, a place far from any main highway to the North.
What he feared especially was delay. Unless Cornbury bore witness
against him, or the man from Otmoor, the law had no evidence worth a
farthing. Hearsay and suspicion could not hang him. He would play the
part of the honest traveller now returning from an Oxfordshire visit,
and if needs be he would refer to Queensberry's business. But hearsay
and suspicion could delay. He was suddenly maddened by the thought that
some bumbling Justice might detain him in these rotting midlands when
the Prince was crossing Ribble. And he had to get north with the news
of the Welsh recruiting! At the thought he bit his lips in a sharp
vexation.
They passed through gates into a park where the trees fell back from
the road, and presently were in a flagged courtyard with a crack of
light showing from a door ajar. It opened and a portly butler filled it.
"You will await his honour in the Justice Room," he announced, and the
prisoners swung to the right under an archway into another quadrangle.
The Justice Room proved to be a bare apartment, smelling strongly of
apples, with a raised platform at one end and on the floor a number of
wooden forms arranged like the pens at a sheep fair. On the platform
stood a large handsome arm-chair covered in Spanish leather, and before
it a small table. The butler entered by a door giving on the platform,
and on the table placed a leather-bound book and on the chair a red
velvet cushion.
"Exit the clerk, enter the preacher," said Johnson.
The servant, bowing profoundly, ushered in a tall gentleman in a suit
of dark-blue velvet, with a fine lace cravat falling over a waistcoat
of satin and silver. The gentleman might have been fifty years of age
by the lines round his mouth, but his cherubic countenance was
infantine in contour, and coloured, by hunting or the bottle, to an
even pink. He had clearly been dining well, for he plumped down heavily
in the chair and his eye was as blue and vacant as a frosty sky. When
he spoke it was with the careful enunciation of one who is not in a
condition to take liberties with the English tongue.
"Makin' so bold, your honour," said the constable, "them 'ere's the
prisoners as is named in your honour's worshipful warrant."
His honour nodded. "What the devil do you want me to do, Perks?" he
asked.
The mummer with the broken head, who had become mysteriously one of the
party, answered.
"Lock 'em up for to-night, Squire Thicknesse, and to-morrow send 'em to
Birmingham with a mounted escort. It's political business, and no
matter of poaching or petty thieving."
"I require that the charge be read," said Johnson.
Squire Thicknesse took up a paper, looked at it with aversion, and
gazed round him helplessly. "Where the devil is my clerk?" he lamented.
"Gone feasting to Flambury, I'll warrant. I cannot read this damned
crabbed hand."
"Let me be your clerk, Nunkie dear."
A girl had slipped through the door, and now stood by the chair looking
over the Squire's shoulder. She was clearly very young, for her lips
had the pouting fullness and her figure the straight lines of a
child's, and her plain white gown and narrow petticoats had a nursery
simplicity. The light was bad, and Alastair could not note the details,
seeing only a glory of russet hair and below it a dimness of pearl and
rose. On that much he was clear, and on the bird-like charm of her
voice.
The effect of the vision on Johnson was to make him drive an elbow into
Alastair's ribs and to murmur in what was meant for a whisper: "That is
my lady. That is the dear child."
The sharp young eyes had penetrated the gloom below the platform.
"Why, Nunkie, there is a face I know. Heavens! It is our tutor from
Chastlecote. Old Puffin we called him, for he puffs like my spaniel. A
faithful soul, Nunkie, but at times oppressive. What can he want so far
from home?"
The mummer, who seemed to have assumed the duties of prosecution,
answered:
"The man Johnson is accused of being act and part with the other in
conspiracy against His Majesty's throne."
The girl's laughter trilled through the place. "Oh, what delectable
folly! Mr Samuel a conspirator! He is too large and noisy, Nunkie, and
far, far too much of a sobersides. But give me the paper and I will be
your clerk."
With disquiet and amazement Alastair listened to the record. His full
name was set down and his rank in King Louis' service. His journey into
Oxfordshire was retailed, and its purpose, but the name of Cornbury was
omitted. Then followed his expedition into Wales, with special mention
of Wynnstay, and last his urgent reasons for returning north. Whoever
had compiled the indictment was most intimately informed of all his
doings. His head swam, for the thing seemed starkly incredible, and the
sense of having lived unwittingly close to a deadly foe affected him
with something not far from fear.
"What do you say to that?" Squire Thicknesse asked.
"That it is some foolish blunder. You have laid hold on the wrong man,
sir, and I admit no part of it except the name, which is mine, and,
with deference, as ancient and unsmirched as your honour's. No single
fact can be adduced to substantiate these charges."
"They will be abundantly proven." The mummer's voice croaked ominous as
a raven's.
The charge against Johnson proved to be much flimsier, and was derided
by the girl. "I insist that you straightly discharge my Mr Samuel," she
cried. "I will go bail for his good behaviour, and to-morrow a servant
shall take him back to Chastlecote. He is too innocent to be left
alone. The other----"
"He says he is an agent of the Duke of Queensberry," said the
relentless mummer. "I can prove him to be a liar."
The girl was apparently not listening. Her eyes had caught Alastair's
and some intelligence seemed to pass from them to his. She spoke a word
in the Squire's ear and then looked beyond the prisoners to the mummer.
"My uncle, who is known for his loyalty to the present Majesty, will
take charge of the younger prisoner and send him safe to-morrow to
Birmingham. The other he will discharge. . . . That is your will,
Nunkie?"
The Squire nodded. He was feeling very sleepy and at the same time very
thirsty, and his mind hovered between bed and a fresh bottle.
"You may go home now, friends," she said, "and sweet dreams to you.
You, constable, bring the two men to the Great Hall." Then she slipped
an arm inside her uncle's. "My Mr Sam shall sup in the buttery and have
a bed from Giles. To-morrow we will find him a horse. You are a wise
judge, Nunkie, and do not waste your wisdom on innocents. The other man
looks dangerous and must be well guarded. Put him in the Tower garret,
and give Giles the key. But first let the poor creature have bite and
sup, if he wants it. He has the air of a gentleman."
As Alastair walked before the staff of the constable, who wielded it
like an ox-goad, his mind was furiously busy at guessing the source of
the revelations in the warrant. Not till they stood in the glow of the
hall lights did the notion of Kyd's servant come to him by the process
of exhausting other possibilities. But the man had set off with Kyd
early that morning for the South from a place forty miles distant. It
was a naked absurdity, but nevertheless he asked Johnson the question,
"Where did you see the serving man who took your horse at Cornbury?"
The answer staggered him. "This very day at the gate of this place
about an hour after noon."
As his perturbed gaze roamed round the hall he caught again the eye of
the girl, looking back with her foot on the staircase. This time there
could be no mistake. Her face was bright with confidential friendliness.
_VII_ _How a Man May Hunt with the Hounds and yet Run with the
Hare_
The butler Giles conducted him through long corridors to the door which
separated the manor proper from its ancient Edwardian tower, and then
up stone stairways to a room under the roof which had once been the
sleeping apartment of the lord of the castle. The walls were two yards
thick, the windows mere slits for arrows, the oaken floor as wavy as a
ploughland. He had refused supper and asked only peace to collect his
wits. Giles set a candle down on an oak table, and nodded to a
cavernous canopied bed. "There's blankets enow to keep you warm, since
the night be mild for the time o' year. Good sleep to ye and easy
dreams." The key turned in the lock, and the shuffle of heelless shoes
died on the stair.
Alastair flung himself on the bed, and lay staring at the roof of the
canopy, fitfully illumined by the dancing candle. A light wind must
have crept into the room from some cranny of the windows, for the flame
flickered and queer shadows chased each other over the dark walls. He
was in a torment of disquietude since hearing the warrant--not for his
own safety, for he did not despair of giving these chaw-bacons the
slip, but for the prospects of the Cause. There was black treason
somewhere in its innermost councils. The man who had betrayed every
danger-point in his own career could do the same thing for others. The
rogue--Kyd's servant or whoever he might be--was in the way of knowing
the heart of every secret. Kyd, charged with a most vital service on
which the future of England hung, had this Judas always at his elbow to
frustrate or falsify any message to the North, to play the devil with
the Prince's recruiting, and at the end to sell his master's head for
gold. The thought made the young man dig his nails into his palms.
God's pity that in an affair so gossamer-fine there should be this rude
treachery to rend the web. . . . But if the miscreant was Kyd's
servant, how came he in this neighbourhood? Had he been dismissed Kyd's
service? Or was Kyd himself at hand and the journey into Wiltshire
relinquished? His mind was in utter confusion.
Nevertheless the discovery had quickened his spirit, which of late he
thought had been growing languid. He was a campaigner, and made his
plans quick. His immediate duty was to escape, his next to reach the
Prince and concert measures to meet the case of West England. Fortunate
for him that the letter of Brother Gilly had fallen into his hand, for
now he knew the magnitude of the business. But first he must sleep, for
all evening he had been nodding. He had the soldier's trick of
snatching odd hours of slumber, so, drawing a blanket round him and
resolutely shutting off all thoughts, he was soon unconscious.