burning, guttering over the edge of the iron candlestick. A swift
shadow ran across the wall before him, and a sudden waft of air caused
the candle-end to flare like a torch. He glanced at the door, and it
seemed to move. Then the place was quiet again, but it was brighter,
for a new light had come into it. He scrambled from the bed to see the
glow of a shaded lantern, and a slim cloaked figure slipping the key
from the door.
The lantern was set beside the candle on the table. The figure wore a
furred bed-gown and a nightcap of lace and pink satin, and its brown
eyes in the shadow were bright as a squirrel's and very merry.
"La, la, such a commotion ere I could come to you, sir," she said.
"Giles must carry Nunkie to bed and hoist Squire Bretherton and Sir
Ambrose on their horses, and get a message from me to Black Ben, and
pass a word to Stable Bill about Moonbeam. You have slept, wise man
that you are? But it is time to be about your business of escaping, for
in three hours it will be daylight."
She was like a pixie in the half darkness, a tall pixie, that had a
delicious small stammer in its speech. Alastair was on his feet now,
bowing awkwardly.
"Tell me," she whispered. "The warrant is true? You are Alastair
Maclean, a captain in Lee's Regiment of France, and a messenger from
the Prince in Scotland. Oh, have no fear of me, for I am soul and body
for the Cause."
"The warrant spoke truly," he said.
"And you will join the Prince at the first possible moment? How go
things in the North? Have you any news, sir?"
"The Prince crossed the Border yesterday. He marches to Lancashire."
She twined her fingers in excitement. "You dare not delay an hour. And
you shall not. I have made everything ready. Sir, you will find I have
made everything ready. See, you shall follow me downstairs and Giles
will be waiting. The lock of your door fits badly, for the wood around
is worm-eaten. To-morrow it will be lying on the floor, to show my
uncle how you escaped. Giles will take you by a private way to the Yew
Avenue, and there Bill from the stables will await you with Moonbeam
saddled and ready--my uncle's favourite, no less. You will ride down
the avenue very carefully, keeping on the grass and making no sound,
till you reach the white gate which leads to Wakehurst Common. There
Ben will meet you and guide you out of this county so that by the
evening you may be in Cheshire."
"Ben the Gypsy?" he asked.
"The same. Do you know him? He is on our side and does many an errand
for me."
"But, madam, what of yourself? What will your uncle say when he finds
his horse gone?"
"Stolen by the gypsies--I have the story pat. There will be a pretty
hue and cry, but Ben will know of its coming and take precautions. I am
grieved to tell fibs, but needs must in the day of war."
"But I leave you alone to face the consequences."
"Oh, do not concern yourself for me. My dear uncle is indulgent and,
though a Whig, is no bigot. He will not grieve for your absence at
breakfast to-morrow. But I fear the loss of Moonbeam will put him
terribly out, and I should be obliged if you could find some way of
restoring his horse when his purpose is served. As for myself, I
propose leaving this hospitable house no later than to-morrow and
journeying north into Derbyshire. I will take Mr Johnson with me as
company and protector, and I have also my servants from Weston."
She spoke with the air of a commander-in-chief, an air so mature and
mistressly that it betrayed her utter youth.
"I am most deeply beholden to you, my lady," said Alastair. "You know
something of me, and I will beg in return some news of my benefactress.
You are my lady Norreys?"
The matronly airs fled and she was a shy child again.
"I am m-my lady," she stammered, "this week back. How did you know,
sir? The faithful Puffin? My dear Sir John has gone north to join his
Prince, by whose side you will doubtless meet him. Tell him I too have
done my humble mite of service to the Cause, and that I am well, and
happy in all things but his absence. . . . See, I have written him a
little letter which will serve equally to present you to him and to
assure him of my love. He is one of you--one of the trusted inner
circle, I mean." She lowered her voice. "He bears the name of
_Achilles_."
The hazel eyes had ceased to sparkle and become modest and dim.
"Tell me one thing, my lady, before I go. My mission to the South was
profoundly secret, and not four men in the Prince's army knew of it.
Yet I find myself and my doings set forth in a justice's warrant as if
I had cried them in the streets. There is a traitor abroad and if he
goes undetected he spells ruin to our Cause. Can you help me to unearth
him?"
She wrinkled her brows and narrowed her startled eyes.
"I cannot guess. Save you and Sir John I have seen no professor of our
faith. Stay, who was the mummer last night in the Justice Room?"
"Some common jackal of Hanover. No, the danger is not there. But,
madam, you have a quick brain and a bold heart. If you can lay your
finger on this fount of treason, you will do a noble work for our
Prince. Have you the means to send a message to the North?"
She nodded. "Assuredly--by way of Sir John. . . . But you must start
forthwith, sir. I will take your mails into Derbyshire in my charge,
for you must ride fast and light. Now, follow me, and tread softly when
I lift my hand."
Down the long stone stairs the lantern fluttered, and at a corner the
man who followed caught a glimpse of bare rosy ankles above the furred
slippers. In the manor galleries, where oaken flooring creaked, a hand
was now and then raised to advise caution. Once there came the slamming
of a door, and the lantern-bearer froze into stillness behind an
armoire, while Alastair, crouched beside her, felt the beating of her
heart. But without mishap they reached the Great Hall, where the last
red embers crackled fitfully and a cricket ticked on the hearthstone.
Through a massive door they entered another corridor and the girl
whistled long and soft. The answer was a crack of light from a side
door, and Giles appeared, cloaked like a conspirator and carrying a
pewter candlestick. Gone was the decorum of the butler who had set the
stage in the Justice Room, and it was a nervous furtive old serving-man
who received the girl's instructions.
"Oh, my lady, I'm doing this for your mother's sake, her as I used to
make posies for when I was no more'n buttery lad. But my knees do knock
together cruel, for what Squire would say if he knew makes my blood
freeze to think on."
"Now, don't be a fool, Giles. I can manage your master, and you have
nothing to do but lead this gentleman to the Yew Avenue, and then back
to your bed with a clear conscience."
She laid a hand on the young man's arm--the gesture with which a boy
encourages a friend.
"Adieu, sir, and I pray God that He lead you swift and straight to your
journey's end. I will be in Derbyshire--at Brightwell under the Peak,
waiting to bid you welcome when you come south to the liberation of
England." He took her hand, kissed it, and, with a memory of wistful
eyes and little curls that strayed from her cap's lace and satin, he
followed the butler through the kitchen postern into the gloom of the
night.
A short and stealthy journey among shrubberies brought them to a deeper
blackness which proved to be a grove of yews. Something scraped and
rustled close ahead, and the hoarse whisper of Giles received a hoarse
answer. The night was not so dark as to hide objects outside the shade
of the trees, and on a patch of grass Alastair made out a horse with a
man beside it. Bill the stableman put the bridle into his hand, after
making certain by a word with Giles that he was the person awaited.
Alastair found a guinea for each, and before their muttered thanks were
done was in the saddle, moving, as he had been instructed, into the
blackness of the great avenue.
The light mouth, the easy paces, the smooth ripple of muscle under his
knees told him that he was mounted on no common horse, but his head was
still too full of his late experience to be very observant about the
present. The nut-brown girl, the melodious voice with a stammer like a
break in a nightingale's song, seemed too delicious and strange for
reality. And yet she was flesh and blood; he had felt her body warm
against his when they sheltered behind the armoire: it was her doing
that he was now at liberty and posting northward. Now he understood Mr
Johnson's devotion. To serve such a lady he would himself scale the
blue air and plough the high hills, as the bards sang.
The bemusement took him down the avenue till the trees thinned out and
on the right came the ghostly glimmer of a white gate. He turned and
found it open, and by it another horseman.
"The gentleman from Miss Claudy--beg y'r pardon--from m'lady?" a voice
asked.
"The same," Alastair replied. The speech was that of the gypsy he had
met the day before.
The man shut the gate with his whip. "Then follow me close and not a
cheep o' talk. We've some cunning and fast journeying to do before the
day breaks."
They swept at a canter down a long lane, deeply rutted, and patched
here and there with clumps of blackberries. Then they were on a heath,
where the sky was lighter and the road had to be carefully picked round
sandpits and quarry-holes. Alastair had no guess at direction, for the
sky showed never a star, and though the dark was not impenetrable it
was hopeless to look for landmarks. A strange madcap progress they made
over every kind of country, now on road, now in woodland, now breasting
slopes of heath with the bracken rubbing on the stirrups. Oftenest they
were in forest land, where sometimes there was no path and Alastair
found it best to give his horse its head and suffer it to do the
steering. He had forgotten that England could be so wild, for these
immense old boles and the miles of thicket and mere belonged surely to
a primeval world. Again the course would be over fallow and new plough,
and again in lanes and parish roads and now and then on the turnpike.
The pace was easy--a light canter, but there were no halts, and always
ahead over hedge and through gap went the slim figure of the gypsy.
The air was chilly but not cold, and soon the grey cloth of darkness
began to thin till it was a fine veil dimming but not hiding objects,
and the light wind blew which even on the stillest night heralds the
dawn. The earth began to awake, lights kindled in farms and cottages,
lanterns flickered around steadings. Movement through this world just
struggling out of sleep was a joy and an exhilaration. It reminded
Alastair of a winter journey from Paris to Beauvais--part of a Prince's
wager--when with relays of horses he had ridden down the night, through
woods and hamlets dumb with snow, intoxicated with his youth, and
seeing mystery in every light that glimmered out of the dark. Now he
was in the same mood. His spirits rose at the signs of awaking
humanity. That lantern by a brook was a shepherd pulling hay for the
tups now huddled in the sheep-cote. The light at that window was the
goodwife grilling bacon for the farmer's breakfast, or Blowselinda of
the Inn sweeping the parlour after the night's drinking. And through
that homely ritual of morn he was riding north to the Wars which should
upturn thrones and make nobles of plain captains. Youth! Romance! And
somewhere in the background of his brain a voice sounded like a trill
of music. "Adieu, sir. I pray God . . . I go to B-Brightwell under
the P-Peak . . ."
The light had grown and he had his first view of Black Ben, and Ben of
him. They jostled at a gate and stared at each other.
"We meet again," he said.
"Happy meeting, my dear good gentleman. But you were on a different
errand yesterday when my duty drove me the way of hot ashes. No offence
took along of a poor man's honesty, kind sir?"
"None," said Alastair. He saw now the reason for the gypsy's presence
with the recruits. He was in Jacobite pay, hired to scatter
Oglethorpe's levies and so reduce Wade's command. But none the less he
disliked the man--his soft sneering voice, and the shifty eyes which he
remembered from yesterday.
It was now almost broad day, about eight in the morning, and Alastair
reckoned that they must have travelled twenty miles and be close on the
Cheshire border. The country was featureless--much woodland
interspersed with broad pastures, and far to the east a lift of ground
towards a range of hills. The weather was soft and clear, a fine
scenting morning for the hunt, and far borne on the morning air came
the sound of a horn.
The gypsy seemed to be at fault. He stopped and considered for a matter
of five minutes with his ear cocked. Then he plunged into a copse and
emerged in a rushy bottom between high woods. Here the sound of the
horn was heard again, apparently from the slopes at the end of the
bottom.
"The turnpike runs yonder at the back of the oak clump," he said. "Best
get to it by the brook there and the turf bridge. I must leave you,
pretty gentleman. You take the left turn and hold on, and this night
you will sleep in Warrington."
They were jogging towards the brook when Alastair took a fancy to look
back, and saw between the two woods a tiny landscape neatly framed in
the trees. There was a church tower in it, and an oddly shaped clump of
ashes. Surely it was familiar.
Across the brook the hunting horn sounded again, this time from beyond
a spinney at the top of the slope.
"There lies your road, pretty sir," and the gypsy pointed to the left
of the spinney and wheeled his horse to depart.
But Alastair was looking back again. The higher ground of the slope
gave him a wider prospect, and he saw across one of the enclosing woods
the tall chimneys of a great house. That did not detain his eye, which
was caught by something beyond. There on a low ridge was sprawled a big
village with square-towered church and a blur of smoke above the line
of houses. England must be a monotonous land, for this village of
Cheshire was the very image of Flambury, and the adjacent mansion might
have been Squire Thicknesse's manor.
At the same moment the music of hounds crashed from the spinney ahead,
and a horn was violently blown. Round the edge of the spinney came the
hunt, and the pack was spilled out of its shade like curds from a
broken dish. The sight, novel in his experience, held him motionless.
He saw the huntsman struggling with outrunners, and the field, urged on
by the slope, crowding on the line. In the rear he saw a figure which
was uncommonly like the magistrate who had presided last night in the
Justice-room. As he observed these things he realised that his twenty
miles of the morning had been a circuit, and that he was back now at
the starting-point, mounted on a stolen horse, and within a hundred
yards of the horse's owner. The gypsy had set spurs to his beast and
was disappearing round the other end of the spinney, and even in the
hubbub of the hunt he thought he detected the man's mocking laugh.
To hesitate was to be lost, and there was but the one course open. A
tawny streak had slid before the hounds towards the brook. That must be
the fox, and if he were not to become the quarry in its stead he must
join in the chase. The huntsman was soon twenty yards from him,
immediately behind the hounds, and fifty yards at his back came the van
of the field. In that van he could see Squire Thicknesse mounted on a
powerful grey, and he seemed to have eyes only for the hounds. Alastair
cut in well behind him, in the hope that he would be taken for a
straggler at covert-side, and in three seconds was sweeping forward in
the second flight.
The morning's ride had been for Moonbeam no more than a journey to the
meet, and the beautiful animal now laid back his ears and settled down
to his share in that game which he understood as well as any two-legged
mortal. But in the very perfection of the horse lay the rider's peril.
Moonbeam was accustomed to top the hunt, for Squire Thicknesse was
famed over three shires as a good goer. He would not be content to
travel a field or two behind hounds; he must keep them company.
Alastair found that no checking could restrain his mount. The animal
was lightly bitted and he had not the skill or the strength to hold him
back. True, he could have swerved and fetched a wide circuit, but in
that first rush these tactics did not suggest themselves, and he set
himself to a frantic effort at reining in, in which he was worsted.
Moonbeam crossed the brook like a swallow; in a boggy place he took off
badly, topped an ox-bar in the hedge, and all but fell on his nose in
the next meadow. But after that he made no mistake, and in five minutes
Alastair found himself looking from ten yards' distance at the broad
back of the huntsman, with no rider near him except Squire Thicknesse
on the grey.
The going was good over old pasture, and the young man had leisure to
recover his breath and consider his position. He had hunted buck in
France--stately promenades in the forests of Fontainebleau and
Chantilly, varied by mad gallops along grassy rides where the only risk
was the cannoning with other cavaliers. But this chase of the fox was a
very different matter, the glory of it went to his head like strong
wine, and he would not have cried off if he could. So far he was
undiscovered. Were the fumes of last night's revel still in the
Squire's head, or had he never meant to ride Moonbeam that day and his
groom kept the loss from him? Crossing a thickset hedge neck by neck,
Alastair stole a glance at him, and decided that the former explanation
was the true one. His late host was still in the process of growing
sober. . . . It could not last for ever. Sooner or later must come a
check or a kill, when he would have a chance to look at his neighbour
and his neighbour's horse. . . Then he must ride for it, become
himself the fox, and trust to Moonbeam. Pray God that the run took them
to the north and ended many miles from Flambury.
For the better part of an hour hounds ran without a check--away from
the enclosed fields and the woodlands to a country of furzy downs and
bracken-filled hollows, and then once more into a land of tangled
thickets. It took about twenty minutes to clear Squire Thicknesse's
brain. Alastair heard a sudden roar behind him and looked over his
shoulder to see a furious blue eye fixed on him, and to hear a bellow
of--"Damme, it's my horse. It's my little Moonbeam!" He saw a whip
raised, and felt it swish a foot from his leg. There was nothing for it
but to keep his distance from the wrathful gentleman, and so gallantly
did Moonbeam respond that he was presently at the huntsman's elbow.
Had he known it, the grey was the faster of the two, though lacking
Moonbeam's sweet paces and lionlike heart. His enemy was up on him at
once, and it looked as if there was nothing before him but to override
hounds. But the discipline of the sport was stronger than a just wrath.
The Squire took a pull on the grey and drew back. He was biding his
time.
Alastair seized the first chance, which came when hounds were engulfed
in a wide wood of oaks on the edge of a heath. Taking advantage of a
piece of thick cover, he caught Moonbeam by the head and swung him down
a side glade. Unfortunately he was observed. An oath from Squire
Thicknesse warned him that that sportsman had forgone the pleasure of
being in at the death for the satisfaction of doing justice on a
horse-thief.
Now there was no hunt etiquette to be respected. The grey's hooves
spurned the rotten woodland turf, and pursuer and pursued crashed into
a jungle of dry bulrushes and sallows. Alastair was saved by the
superior agility of his horse, which could swerve and pivot where the
heavier grey stumbled. He gained a yard or two, then a little more by a
scramble through a gap, and a crazy scurry down a rabbit
track. . . . He saw that his only chance was to slip off, for
Moonbeam had the madness of the chase on him, and if left riderless
would rejoin the hounds. So when he had gained some forty yards and was
for the moment out of the Squire's sight, he took his toes from the
stirrups and flung himself into a bed of bracken. He rolled over and
over into a dell, and when he came to a halt and could look up he saw
the grey's stern disappearing round the corner, and heard far off the
swish and crash of Moonbeam's flight.
Not a second was to be lost, for the Squire would soon see that the
rider had gone and turn back in the search for him. Alastair forced his
stiff legs to a run, and turned in the direction which he thought the
opposite of that taken by hounds. Up a small path he ran, among a scrub
of hazels and down into a desert of red bracken and sparse oak trees.
The noises in the wood grew fainter, and soon his steps were the
loudest sound, his steps and the heavy flight of an occasional scared
pigeon. He ran till he had put at least a mile of rough land behind
him, and had crossed several tracks, which would serve to mislead the
pursuit. Lacking a bloodhound, it would not be easy to follow his
trail. Then in a broader glade he came upon a thatched hovel, such as
foresters and charcoal-burners use when they have business abroad in
the night hours.
Alastair crept up to it cautiously, and through a crack surveyed the
interior. His face hardened and an odd light came into his eye. He
strode to the door and pushed the crazy thing open.
Within, breakfasting on a hunch of bread and cheese, sat the man Edom,
Mr Kyd's servant.
_VIII Broom at the Cross-Roads_
The face before him had the tightened look of a sudden surprise: then
it relaxed into recognition; but it showed no fear, though the young
man's visage was grim enough.
"You are Mr Kyd's servant?"
"Your honour has it. I'm Edom Lowrie at your honour's service."
"Your master started yesterday for Wiltshire. Why are you not with him?"
The man looked puzzled.
"Ye're mista'en, sir. My master came here yestereen. I left him at
skreigh o'day this morning."
It was Alastair's turn to stare. Kyd had lied to him, thinking it
necessary to deceive him about his road--scurvy conduct, surely,
between servants of the same cause. Or perhaps this fellow Edom was
lying. He looked at him and saw no hint of double-dealing in the plain
ugly face. His sandy eyebrows were indistinguishable from his freckled
forehead and gave him an air of bald innocence, his pale eyes were
candid and good-humoured, the eaves of his great teeth were comedy
itself. The more Alastair gazed the harder he found it to believe that
this rustic zany had betrayed him. But what on earth was Kyd about?
"Where is your master now?" he asked.
The other took off his hat and scratched his head. "I wadna like to
say, sir. You see he telled me little, forbye sayin' that he wadna see
me again for the best pairt o' a month. I jalouse mysel' that he's gone
south, but he micht be for Wales."
"Were you in Flambury last night?"
The man looked puzzled till Alastair explained. "Na, na, I was in nae
village. I had a cauld damp bed in a bit public. My maister wasna
there, but he appeared afore I was out o' the blankets, a' ticht and
trim for the road, and gied me my marching-orders. I was to traivel the
woods on foot, and no get mysel' a horse till I won to a place they ca'
Camley."
"Are you for Scotland?"
"Nae sic fortune. I'm for the Derbyshire muirs wi' letters." He
hesitated. "Your honour's no gaun that road yoursel'? I wad be blithe
o' company."
The light in the hut was too dim to see clearly, for there was no
window, the door was narrow and the day was sullen.
"Step outside, Mr Lowrie, till I cast an eye over you," said Alastair.
The man pocketed the remains of his bread and cheese and shambled into
the open. He wore a long horseman's coat and boots, a plain hat without
cocks, and carried a stout hazel riding-switch. He looked less like a
lackey than some small yeoman of the Borders, habited for a journey to
Carlisle or St Boswell's Fair.
"You know who I am," said Alastair. "You are aware that like your
master I am in a certain service, and that between him and me there are
no secrets."
"Aye, sir. I ken that ye're Captain Maclean, and a gude Scot, though
ower far north o' Forth for my ain taste, if your honour will forgie
me."
"You carry papers? I must know more of your journey. What is your goal?"
"A bit the name o' Brightwell near a hill they ca' the Peak."
Alastair had not been prepared for this, had had no glimmering of a
suspicion of it, and the news decided him.
"It is of the utmost importance that I see your papers. Your master, if
he were here now, would consent."
The man's face flushed. "I kenna how that can be. Your honour wadna
have me false to my trust."
"You will not be false. You travel on a matter of the Prince's
interest, as I do, and I must know your errand fully in order to shape
my own course. Your master and I have equal rank in His Highness's
councils."