for the second task. The man Edom is not suspect and can travel by the
high road. I will send him with one who will direct him to my lady
Norreys' party, which this day, as you tell me, sets out for
Derbyshire. For yourself I counsel a discreeter part. Mark you, sir,
you are sought by sundry gentlemen in Flambury as a Jacobite, and by
Squire Thicknesse and his Hunt as a horsethief. In this land suspicion
is slow to waken, but in the end it runs fast and dies hard. Rumour of
your figure, face, clothes, manner and bloodthirsty spirit will have
already flown fifty miles. If you would be safe you must sink into Old
England."
"I will sink into Acheron if it will better my purpose."
Midwinter regarded him critically. "Your modish clothes are in Kit's
locker, and will duly be sent after you. Now you are the born
charcoal-burner, save that your eyes are too clear and your finger
nails unscorched. The disguise has served your purpose to-day, but it
is too kenspeckle except in great woodlands. Mother Jonnet will find
you a better. For the rest I will guide you, for I have the key."
"Where is this magic country?"
"All around you--behind the brake, across the hedgerow, under the
branches. Some can stretch a hand and touch it--to others it is a
million miles away."
"As a child I knew it," said Alastair, laughing. "I called it
Fairyland."
Midwinter nodded. "Children are free of it, but their elders must earn
admission. It is a safe land--at any rate it is secure from common
perils."
"But it has its own dangers?"
"It makes a man look into his heart, and he may find that in it which
destroys him. Also it is ambition's mortal foe. But if you walk in it
you will come to Brightwell without obstruction, for the King's writ
does not run in the greenwood."
"Whose is the law, then?" Alastair asked.
For answer Midwinter went to the window and flung it open. "My fiddle
cannot speak except with free air about it," he said. "If any drunken
rustic is on the heath he will think the pixies are abroad."
He picked up the violin which had been lying on the table behind him,
and drew forth a slow broken music, which presently changed into a
rhythmical air. At first it was like the twanging of fine wires in a
wind, mingled with an echo of organ music heard over a valley full of
tree-tops. It was tame and homely, yet with a childish inconsequence in
it. Then it grew wilder, and though the organ notes remained it was an
organ that had never sounded within church walls. The tune went with a
steady rhythm, the rhythm of growing things in spring, of seasonal
changes; but always ran the undercurrent of a leaping bacchanal
madness, of long wild dances in bare places. The fiddle ceased on a
soft note, and the fiddler fell to singing in a voice so low that the
words and air only just rose above the pitch of silence. "Diana and her
darling crew," he sang.
"Diana and her darling crew
Will pluck your fingers fine,
And lead you forth right pleasantly
To drink the honey wine,--
To drink the honey wine, my dear,
And sup celestial air,
And dance as the young angels dance,
Ah, God, that I were there!"
"Hers is the law," he said. "Diana, or as some say, Proserpina. Old
folk call her the Queen of Elfhame. But over you and me, as baptized
souls, she has no spell but persuasion. You can hear her weeping at
midnight because her power is gone."
Then his mood changed. He laid down the fiddle and shouted on Mother
Jonnet to bring supper. Edom, too, was sent for, and during the meal
was closely catechised. He bore it well, professing no undue honesty
beyond a good servant's, but stiff on his few modest scruples. When he
heard Midwinter's plans for him, he welcomed them, and begged that in
the choice of a horse his precarious balance and round thighs might be
charitably considered. Alastair returned him the letter and watched him
fold it up with the others and shove it inside his waistcoat. A
prolonged study of that mild, concerned, faintly humorous face
convinced him that Edom Lowrie was neither fox nor goose. He retired to
bed to dream of Mr Kyd's jolly countenance, which had mysteriously
acquired a very sharp nose.
Edom went off in the early morning in company with the man called Kit
and mounted on an ambling forest cob whose paces he whole-heartedly
approved. Alastair washed himself like a Brahmin in a tub of hot water
in the back-kitchen, and dressed himself in the garments provided by
Mother Jonnet--frieze and leather and coarse woollen stockings and
square-toed country shoes. The haze of yesterday had gone, and the sky
was a frosty blue, with a sharp wind out of the north-east. He
breakfasted with Midwinter off cold beef and beer and a dish of grilled
ham, and then stood before the door breathing deep of the fresh chilly
morning. The change of garb or the prospect before him had rid him of
all the languor of the past week. He felt extraordinarily lithe and
supple of limb, as in the old days when he had driven deer on the hills
before the autumn dawn. Had he but had the free swing of a kilt at his
thighs and the screes of Ben Aripol before him he would have recaptured
his boyhood.
Midwinter looked at him with approval.
"You are clad as a man should be for Old England, and you have the legs
for the road we travel. We do not ride, for we go where no horse can
go. Put not your trust in horses, saith the Scriptures, which I take to
mean that a man in the last resort should depend on his own shanks.
Boot and spur must stick to the paths, and the paths are but a tiny bit
of England. How sits the wind? North by east? There is snow coming, but
not in the next thirty hours, and if it comes, it will not stay us. _En
avant, mon capitaine._"
At a pace which was marvellous for one of his figure, Midwinter led the
way over the heath, and then plunged into a tangled wood of oaks. He
walked like a mountaineer, swinging from the hips, the body a little
bent forward, and his long even strides devoured the ground. Even so,
Alastair reminded himself, had the hunters at Glentarnit breasted the
hill, while his boyish steps had toiled in their rear. Sometimes on
level ground he would break into a run, as if his body's vigour needed
an occasional burst of speed to chasten it. The young man exulted in
the crisp air and the swift motion. The stiffness of body and mind
which had beset him ever since he left Scotland vanished under this
cordial, he lost his doubts and misgivings, and felt again that lifting
ardour of the heart which is the glory of youth. His feet were
tireless, his limbs were as elastic as a sword-blade, his breath as
deep as a greyhound's. Two days before, jogging in miry lanes, he had
seemed caught and stifled in a net; now he was on a hill-top, and free
as the wind that plucked at his hair.
It is probable that Midwinter had for one of his purposes the creation
of this happy mood, for he kept up the pace till after midday, when
they came to a high deer-fence, beyond which stretched a ferny park.
Here they slackened speed, their faces glowing like coals, and,
skirting the park, reached a thatched hut which smoked in a dell. A
woman stood at the door, who at the sight of the two would have retired
inside, had not Midwinter whistled sharply on his fingers. She blinked
and shaded her eyes with her hand against the frosty sunshine; then to
Alastair's amazement she curtseyed deep.
Midwinter did not halt, but asked if Jeremy were at the stone pit.
"He be, Master," was her answer. "Will ye stop to break bread?"
"Nay, Jeremy shall feed us," he cried, and led the way up the dingle
where a brook flowed in reedy pools. Presently there was a sound of
axe-blows, and, rounding a corner, they came on a man cutting poles
from a thicket of saplings. Again Midwinter whistled, and the
woodcutter dropped his tool and turned with a grinning face, pulling at
his forelock.
Midwinter sat down on a tree-trunk.
"Jeremy, lad, you behold two hungry men waiting to sample the art of
the best cook in the Borton Hundreds. Have you the wherewithal, or must
we go back to your wife?"
"I has, I surely has," was the answer. "Be pleased to be seated, kind
sirs, and Jerry Tusser will have your meat ready before ye have rightly
eased your legs. This way, Master, this way."
He led them to a pit where a fire burned between three stones and a
kettle bubbled. Plates of coarse earthenware were brought from some
hiding-place, and in five minutes Alastair was supping with an iron
spoon as savoury a stew as he had ever eaten. The fruits of Jeremy's
snares were in it, and the fruits of Jeremy's old fowling piece, and it
was flavoured with herbs whose merits the world has forgotten. The hot
meal quickened his vigour, and he was on his feet before Midwinter had
done, like a dog eager to be on the road again.
He heard the man speak low to Midwinter. "Dook o' Kingston's horse," he
heard and a hand was jerked northward.
In the afternoon the way lay across more open country, which Midwinter
seemed to know like the palm of his hand, for he made points for some
ridge or tree-top, and yet was never held up by brook or fence or
dwelling. The air had grown sharper, clouds were banking in the east,
and a wind was moaning in the tops of the high trees. Alastair seemed
to have been restored to the clean world of his youth, after long
absence among courts and cities. He noted the woodcock flitting between
the bracken and the leafless boughs, and the mallards silently
flighting from mere to stubble. A wedge of geese moving south made him
turn his face skyward, and a little later he heard a wild whistle, and
saw far up in the heavens a line of swans. His bodily strength was
great as ever, but he had ceased to exult in it, and was ready to
observe and meditate.
A highway cut the forest, and the two behind a bush of box watched a
company of riders jingle down it. They were rustic fellows, poor
horsemen most of them, mounted on every variety of beast, and at the
head rode a smarter youth, with brand-new holsters out of which peeped
the butts of ancient pistols.
"Recruits for the Duke of Kingston," Midwinter whispered. "They
rendezvous at Nottingham, I hear. Think you they will make a good match
of it with your Highland claymores?"
Night fell when they were still in the open, and Midwinter, after
halting for a second to take his bearings, led the way to a wood which
seemed to flow in and out of a shallow vale.
"The night will be cold, Captain Maclean, and a wise man takes comfort
when he can find it. I could find you twenty lodgings, but we will take
the warmest."
The woodland path ended in a road which seemed to be the avenue to a
great house. It was soon very dark, and Alastair heard the rustling of
animals which revived some ancestral knowledge, for he could
distinguish the different noises which were rabbit, badger, stoat and
deer. Down the avenue Midwinter led unconcernedly, and then turned off
to a group of buildings which might have been stables. He bade Alastair
wait while he went forward, and after some delay returned with a man
who carried a lantern. The fellow, seen in the dim light, was from his
dress an upper servant, and his bearing was in the extreme respectful.
He bowed to Alastair, and led them through a gate into a garden, where
their feet rang on flagged stones and rustled against box borders. A
mass loomed up on the left which proved to be a great mansion.
The servant admitted them by a side door, and led them to a room, where
he lit a dozen candles from his lantern, and revealed a panelled
octagonal chamber hung with full-length portraits of forbidding
gentlemen. There he left them, and when he returned it was with an
elderly butler in undress, who bowed with the same deferent decorum.
"His lordship has gone since yesterday into Yorkshire, sir," he
informed Midwinter. "I will have the usual rooms made ready for you at
once, and you can sup in my lord's cabinet which is adjacent."
The two travellers soon found themselves warming their feet before a
bright fire, while some thousands of volumes in calf and vellum looked
down on them from the walls. They supped royally, but Alastair was too
drowsy for talk, and his body had scarcely touched the sheets of his
bed before he was asleep. He was woke before dawn, shaved and dressed
by the butler, and given breakfast--with China tea in place of beer--in
the same cabinet. It was still dark when the first servant of the night
before conducted them out of the house by the same side door, led them
across the shadowy park, and through a gate in the wall ushered them
out to a dusky common, where trees in the creeping light stood up like
gibbets. Midwinter led off at a trot, and at a trot they crossed the
common and put more than one little valley behind them, so that when
day dawned fully there was no sign in all the landscape of their
night's lodging.
"Whose was the house?" Alastair asked, and was told--"We name no names
in Old England."
The second day was to Alastair like the first for joy in the movement
of travel, but the weather had grown bitterly cold and unfallen snow
was heavy in the leaden sky. The distances were still clear, and though
all the morning the road seemed to lie in hollows and dales, yet he had
glimpses in the north of high blue ridges. Other signs told him that he
was nearing the hills. The streams ceased to be links of sluggish
pools, and chattered in rapids. He saw a water ouzel with its white
cravat flash from the cover of a stone bridge. A flock of plovers which
circled over one heath proved to be not green but golden. He told this
to Midwinter, who nodded and pointed to a speck in the sky.
"There is better proof," he said.
The bird dropped closer to earth, and showed itself as neither
sparrow-hawk nor kestrel, but merlin.
"We are nearing the hills," he said, "but Brightwell is far up the long
valleys. We will not reach it before to-morrow night."
Just at the darkening the first snow fell. They were descending a steep
boulder-strewn ridge to a stream of some size, which swirled in icy
grey pools. Above them hung a tree-crowned hill now dim with night, and
ere they reached the cover on its crest the flakes were thick about
them. Midwinter grunted, and broke into a trot along the ridge. "Ill
weather," he croaked, "and a harder bed than yestereen. We'll have to
make shift with tinkler's fare. They told me at Harrowden that Job
Lee's pack were in the Quarters Wood, and Job has some notion of
hospitality. Job it must be, for the snow is fairly come."
In a broad coombe on the sheltered side of the ridge they came
presently on a roaring fire of roots with three tents beside it, so
placed that they were free alike from wind and smoke. The snow was
falling hard, and beginning to drift, when Midwinter strode into the
glow, and the man he called Job Lee--a long man with untied hair
brushing his shoulders and a waistcoat of dyed deerskin--took his right
hand between both of his and carried it to his lips. The newcomers
shook themselves like dogs and were allotted one of the tents, thereby
ousting two sleeping children who staggered to the hospitality of their
father's bed. They supped off roast hare and strong ale, and slept till
the wintry sun had climbed the Derbyshire hills and lit a world all
virgin-white.
"The Almighty has sent a skid for our legs," Midwinter muttered as he
watched the wet logs hiss in Job Lee's morning fire. "We can travel
slow, for the roads will be heavy for my lady." So they did not start
till the forenoon was well advanced, and as soon as possible exchanged
the clogged and slippery hillside for a valley road. A wayside inn gave
them a scrag of boiled mutton for dinner, and thereafter they took a
short cut over a ridge of hill to reach the dale at whose head lay the
house of Brightwell. On the summit they halted to reconnoitre, for the
highway was visible there for many miles.
Just below them at the road side, where a tributary way branched off,
stood an inn of some pretensions, whose sign was deciphered by
Alastair's hawk eyes as a couchant stag. Fresh snow was massing on the
horizon, but for the moment the air was diamond clear. There had been
little traffic on the road since morning and that only foot passengers,
with one horse's tracks coming down the valley. These tracks did not
pass the door, therefore the horseman must be within. There were no
signs of a coach's wheels, so Lady Norreys had not yet arrived. He
lifted his eyes and looked down the stream. There, a mile or so
distant, moved a dark cluster, a coach apparently and attendant riders.
The snow was on them again and Alastair bowed his head to the blast.
"They will lie at that inn," said Midwinter. "Brightwell is half a
dozen miles on, and the road is dangerous. You will, of course, join
them. I will accompany you to the door and leave you, for I have
business in Sherwood that cannot wait."
Again Alastair peered through the snow. He saw a man come out of the
inn door as in a great hurry, mount a waiting horse, and clatter off up
the vale--a tall man in a horseman's cloak with a high collar. Then a
little later came the vanguard of the approaching party to bespeak
quarters. The two men watched till the coach came abreast the door, and
a slender hooded figure stepped from it. Then they began to make their
way down the hillside.
_X_ _Snowbound at the Sleeping Deer_
The whole staff of the Sleeping Deer were around the door when my lady
Norreys, making dainty grimaces at the weather, tripped over the yards
of snow-powdered cobbles between the step of her coach and the
comfortable warmth of the inn. The landlord, ill-favoured and old, was
there with his bow, and the landlady, handsome and not yet forty, with
her curtsey, and in the gallery which ran round the stone-flagged hall
the chambermaid tribe of Dollys and Peggys clustered to regard the
newcomer, for pretty young ladies of quality did not lie every night at
a moorland hostelry. But the lady would not tarry to warm her toes by
the great fire or to taste the landlady's cordials. A fire had been
bespoke in her bedchamber and there she retired to drink tea, which her
woman, Mrs Peckover, made with the secret airs of a plotter in the
sanctum beside the bar. The two servants from Weston attended the coach
in the inn-yard. Mr Edom Lowrie comforted himself with a pot of warm
ale, while Mr Samuel Johnson, finding a good fire in the parlour,
removed his shoes, and toasted at the ribs his great worsted stocking
soles.
Twenty minutes later, when the bustle had subsided, two unassuming
travellers appeared below the signboard on which might be seen the
fresh-painted gaudy lineaments of a couching fallow deer. The snow was
now falling thick, and the wind had risen so that the air was one wild
scurry and smother. Midwinter marched straight for the sanctum, and
finding it empty but for Mrs Peckover, continued down a narrow passage,
smelling of onions, to a little room which he entered unbidden. There
sat the landlord with horn spectacles on his nose, making a splice of a
trout rod. At the sight of Midwinter he stood to attention, letting all
his paraphernalia of twine and wax and tweezers slip to the floor.
"I have brought a friend," said Midwinter. "See that you entreat him
well and do his biddings as if they were my own. For myself I want a
horse, friend Tappet, for snow or no I must sleep in the next shire."
So as Alastair was changing into his own clothes, which the landlord
fetched for him from Edom, he saw from his window in the last faint
daylight a square cloakless figure swing from the yard at a canter and
turn south with the gale behind it.
The young man had now secured all his belongings, some having come with
Edom by grace of the charcoal-burner and the rest from Squire
Thicknesse's manor in the lady's charge. As he dressed, his mind was
busy on his old problem, and he had sadly to confess that though he had
covered much country in recent days he had got little new light. More
than once he had tried to set Midwinter's mind to work on it, but,
beyond his advice to come to Brightwell, he had shown no interest. Why
should he, Alastair reflected, since his creed forswore all common
loyalties? But as he had plodded up and down the foothills that day his
thoughts had been running chiefly on the lady's husband whom she
believed to be now with the Prince, but who most certainly was, or was
about to be, in the vicinity of Brightwell. For what purpose? To
receive a letter from Edom--a continuing correspondence, sent by Kyd,
and charged with the most desperate import to the Prince--a
correspondence which should be without delay in the Prince's hands.
What did Sir John Norreys in the business? Why did Kyd send the letters
by Brightwell, which was not the nearest road to Lancashire?
As he came downstairs he noticed a map hanging on a panel between
prints of the new gardens at Chatsworth and the old Marquis of Granby.
It was a Dutch thing, drawn by Timothy Hooge a hundred years before,
and it showed all the southern part of the Peak country, with fragments
of Yorkshire, Notts and Staffordshire adjoining. It was hard to read,
for it had been pasted on a wooden board and then highly varnished, but
the main roads were strongly marked in a purplish red. He saw the road
from the north-west descend the valleys to Derby and so to London, the
road from Manchester and Lancashire which the Prince's army would
travel. With some trouble he found Brightwell and to his surprise saw
the road which passed it marked with equal vigour, as if it vied with
the other in importance. A moment's reflection told him the reason. It
was the main way from the West. By this road must come the levies from
Wales if they were to join the Prince before he reached Derby and the
flat country. By this road, too, must all messages come from West
England so soon as the army left Manchester. More, the Hanoverian
forces were gathering in Nottinghamshire. If they sought to cut in in
the Prince's rear they would march this way. . . . Brightwell was
suddenly revealed as a point of strategy, a ganglion; if treachery were
abroad, here it would roost.
He walked into the kitchen, for he had an odd fancy about the horseman
whom he had seen ride away a little before Lady Norreys' arrival--an
incredible suspicion which he wished to lay. A kitchen wench was busy
at the fire, and on a settle a stableman sat drinking beer while a
second stamped the snow from his boots at the back door. The appearance
of a dapper gentleman in buckled shoes and a well-powdered wig so
startled the beer-drinker that he spilled half his mug on the floor.
Alastair ordered fresh supplies for all three and drank his on the seat
beside the others. Had they been in the yard all afternoon? They had,
and had prophesied snow since before breakfast, though Master wouldn't
have it so and had sent the waggons to Marlock, where they would be
storm-stayed. . . . Yes. A rider had come down the valley and had
put up his horse for the better part of an hour. He had been indoors
most of the time--couldn't say why. A tall fellow, Bill said. No, not
very powerful--lean shoulders--pale face--big nose. Young, too--Tom
reckoned not more than twenty-five. . . . Alastair left them with an
easier mind, for the worst of his suspicions had been disproved. The
back he had seen from the ridge-top posting up the dale had had a
disquieting resemblance to Kyd's.
In the parlour he found Mr Johnson stretching his great bulk before a
leaping fire and expanding in the warmth of it. The windows had not
been shuttered, so the wild night was in visible contrast to the snug
hearth. A small girl of five or six years, the landlady's child, had
strayed into the room, and, fascinated by a strange gentleman, had
remained to talk. She now sat on one of Johnson's bony knees, while he
told her a fairy tale in a portentous hollow voice. He told of a
dragon, a virtuous dragon in reality a prince, who lived in a
Derbyshire cave, and of how the little girl stumbled on the cave, found
the dragon, realised his true character, and lived with him for a year
and a day, which was the prescribed magical time if he were to be a
prince again. He was just describing the tiny bed she had in the rock
opposite the dragon's lair, which lair was like a dry mill-pond, and
the child was punctuating the narrative with squeals of excitement,
when Alastair entered. Thereupon the narrator became self-conscious,
the story hastened to a lame conclusion, and the small girl climbed
from his knee and with many backward glances sidled out of the room.