Brightwell and entered the demesne by his usual gap. It was a morning
like early spring, when the whole world was full of melting snows,
running waters and light breezes. His plan was to go to the wood which
overhung the kitchen yard and gave a prospect of the house and all its
environs. There he would watch till noon, in the hope that either Kyd
would appear or one of Lady Norreys' party. If the former, he would
follow him and have the interview for which his soul longed; if the
latter, then he would find a way of getting speech and learning the
nature of the household. If nothing happened by noon, he would contrive
to make his way into the kitchen as before, and trust to his wits to
find an errand.
He saw no one as he forded the now turbulent stream and climbed the
farther slope to the wood of hazels and ashes which clung like an
eyebrow to the edge of a bare grey bluff, beneath which were the roofs
of the rearmost outbuildings. But as he entered the wood he received a
shock. Suddenly he had the consciousness that he was being observed,
which comes as from a special sense to those who have lived much in
peril of their lives in lonely places. He cowered like a rabbit, and
seemed to detect very faint and far-off movements in the undergrowth
which were too harsh and sudden for a wild animal. Then they ceased,
and the oppression passed. He threaded his way through the undergrowth
to his old lair beside a stone, where a tangle of fern hid his head,
and there he sat him down to wait.
It was a very wet anchorage. The frozen ground beneath him was melting
into slush, rivulets descended from the branches, vagrant winds blew
avalanches of melting snow like hail in his face. He grew cold and
stiff, and there was no such drama on the stage before him as might
have caused him to forget his icy stall. He saw in every detail the
morning awakening of a Derbyshire manor. A man with his head tied up in
a stocking wheeled barrow-loads of chopped logs from the wood-hovel;
another brought milk pails from the byres; while two stable-boys led
out to water various horses, among which Alastair recognised those once
ridden by Mr Johnson and Edom. The butler Bennet, wearing a kind of
dingy smock, shuffled out-of-doors and cried shrilly for someone who
failed to appear. Then came a long spell of quiet--breakfast, thought
Alastair. It was broken by a stout fellow in boots, whom he had not
seen before, coming from the direction of the kitchen, shouting the
name of "Peter." Peter proved to be one of the stable-boys, who, having
been goaded by a flight of oaths into activity, produced in a space of
five minutes a horse saddled and bridled and tolerably well groomed.
This the man in boots led round to the front of the house, and
presently, out from the shelter of the leafless avenue, appeared Sir
John Norreys, in a hurry as usual and heading for the bridle-path to
Dovedale.
This told Alastair two things. First, that in all likelihood Mr Kyd had
never been to Brightwell, or had left earlier, otherwise Sir John would
scarcely have fled his company. Second, that the said Sir John had been
restored to his lady and was living openly in the house, and not, as he
had half suspected, hidden in some priest-hole in the back parts.
The morning passed on leaden wings, for the thought that Kyd was not
there had dashed Alastair's spirits. Once he seemed to hear the sound
of breathing close at hand, and after some search traced it to a deep
bed of leaves under which a hedgehog was snoring in its winter sleep.
Once the pied snout of a badger, returning late to his earth, parted
the thicket. Just before noon he saw that which set his mind off on a
new tack. Down the valley, a matter of half a mile from the house, a
brook entered the stream from the west, and, since the hills there
overhung the water, flowed for the last part of its course in a
miniature ravine. Both sides of the dell were thickly covered with
scrub oak, but glades had been cut, and at the intersection of two on
the near bank stood a thatched hut. Alastair had noticed it before, and
from his present eyrie it was clearly visible.
Below him in the courtyard the butler suddenly appeared and, shading
his eyes, looked down the valley. Then he took from his pocket a
handkerchief and waved it three times, staring hard after each wave.
Alastair followed his gaze and saw that he was looking towards the oak
wood. Presently from the hut there a figure emerged, waved a white rag
three times, and disappeared in the scrub. The butler seemed satisfied,
and turned back to the house, from which he emerged again with a
covered basket. A boy rose from a bench, took the basket and set off at
a boy's trot. Alastair watched his progress and noted that he did not
take the direct road, but kept unobtrusively in the shade of thickets.
He avoided the glades and reached the hut by an overland route through
the scrub. He seemed to stay about a minute within, and then hurried
back by the way he had gone. The butler was waiting for him in the
yard, and the two talked for a little, after which the boy went off
whistling.
There was someone in the hut in the oak scrub--someone who was being
fed, and who did not wish to reveal himself to the house. It could only
be Kyd. At the notion Alastair's face flushed and he forgot his cold
vigil. The road was open for that meeting with Kyd, alone and secure,
which was his main desire. Having satisfied himself that the coast was
clear, he began to worm his way along the hillside.
At the edge of the covert he reconnoitred again. A figure had revealed
itself in the pleasance which skirted one side of the house--a large
figure which took the air on a green walk and appeared to be reading,
with a book held very near its eyes. It was Mr Samuel Johnson, and for
one moment he hesitated as to whether he should not first have speech
with him. There was ample cover to reach him by way of a sunk fence. It
was a critical decision, had he known it, but he took it lightly. His
duty and his pleasure was first to settle with Kyd.
He reached the oak shaw without difficulty, and, like the boy, shunned
the glades and squeezed through the thick undergrowth. He stopped once,
for he thought he heard a faint whistle, but decided that it was only a
bird. There were no windows in the hut, which, as he neared it, proved
to be a far solider thing than he had imagined, being built of stout
logs, jointed between stouter uprights, and roofed in with thatch as
carefully woven as that of a dwelling-house. He listened, but all was
quiet within.
The door yielded and he stepped inside with a quick motion, drawing it
behind him, for the place was in sight of the house. . . . Then
something smote him in the dark. He felt himself falling, and threw out
his hand, which gripped only on vacancy and blackness. . . .
The first pin-prick of consciousness found him climbing. There was a
sound of sea water in his ears, and the salt tingled in his eyes and
nostrils, for he had been diving from the Frenchman's Rock and was
still breathless with it. Now he was going up and up steeps of bracken
and granite to the flat top where the ripe blackberries were. He was on
Eilean a Fhraoich, had crossed over that morning in Angus Og's coble--a
common Saturday's ploy. . . . But he found it very hard to get up
the ledges, for they were always slipping from beneath him, and only
wild clutches at the bracken kept him from slithering down to the
beach. Also his head sang abominably, and there was a queer smell in
his nose, more than salt, a smell like burning--burning lime. He wished
he had not dived so deep. . . . Then his eyes suddenly stabbed him
with pain and the beach of Eilean a Fhraoich disappeared, and the sun
and the sky and the dancing sea. All was black now, with a pin-point of
light which was not the sun.
"Ye struck him over hard, Ben," a voice said.
"Never you fear," came the answer. "I know the stout pretty heads of
these Scotchmen." He waved the light over his face. "See, he is coming
round already."
Alastair would have liked to speak, for he was worried about Eilean a
Fhraoich and the smell in his nose was overpowering. But as his voice
struggled to emerge it woke a deadly nausea, and he seemed to sink
again down, down through cottony worlds of utter feebleness. . . .
His next conscious moment found him lying with his head propped up,
while someone tried to open his lips with a spoon and pour hot liquid
between them. The stuff burned his throat but did not sicken him. He
moved himself to take it better and discovered that the slightest
motion shot a flight of arrows through his head, arrows of an
intolerable pain. So he kept very still, only opening his eyes by slow
degrees. It was very dark, but there was a tiny light somewhere which
showed a hand and arm moving from a bowl to his mouth and back
again. . . . He began to piece his surroundings together. He was
indoors somewhere and someone was feeding him, but beyond that he could
tell nothing, so he slipped back into sleep.
After that he began to come again more frequently to the world, and the
pain in his head and eyes bothered him less. He knew when meal-time
came, for it was preceded by a dazzling brightness (which was daylight
through the open door) and attended by a lesser light, which was a
stable lantern. Slowly he began to reason and observe, and work his way
back till he saw suddenly in his mind's eye the outside of the hut, and
could remember the last waking moment. Then he heard a man's voice
which woke a chord in his memory, and further bits of the past emerged.
Soon he reached a stage when in a flood the whole story of his journeys
and perplexities rolled back into his mind, and he grew sick again with
a worse kind of nausea. Still he could not quite recapture the link; he
saw everything up to a certain noon, and realised the dim world which
now enveloped him, but he could not find the archway between the two.
Then one day the hand that brought his food left the door wide open,
and in the light of it he saw a dark gypsy-looking fellow who smiled
impishly but not malevolently.
"No ill will, dear pretty gentleman," he whined. "You knew too much and
were proving too inquisitive, so them as I obeys bade me put you to
sleep for a tidy bit. No harm is meant you, so eat your pretty dinner
and say your pretty prayers and go beddie-bye like a good little
master. You're picking up strength like a cub fox."
Alastair saw again the dim door of the hut, felt the musty darkness,
and the fiery pain that seemed to rend his skull. Now he had the tale
complete.
The gypsy left him to feed himself, which was achieved at the expense
of spilling a third of the soup. He sat on a pile of ash poles,
swinging his legs, and preening himself like a jay.
"Ben was too clever for you, my dainty gentleman. He was a-watching for
you days back, and when you was a-creeping belly-flat Ben was never a
dozen yards behind you. He was in the wood above the stable that
morning when you arrived, and 'twas him as arranged the play about the
Shaw Hut with old Bennet. Not but what you had a pretty notion of
travelling, my dear, and nimble legs to you. I owed you one for the day
with Oglethorpe's soldiers and I paid it that morning at the Flambury
meet. Now you owes me one for this device, and I'm waiting to pay it.
All for a bit of sport is Ben."
Alastair let him brag and asked him but the one question. "How long
have I been here?"
"Nineteen days," said the gypsy. "This is now the second day of
December."
The news would have put the young man into a fever had his wits been
strong enough to grasp its full meaning. As it was, he only felt hazily
that things had gone very ill with him, without any impulse to take the
wheel from Destiny's hand and turn it back.
All morning he drowsed. He was not uncomfortable, for he had a bed of
bracken and rushes and sufficient blankets for the mild winter weather.
An old woman, the wife of the butler, brought water and bathed his head
daily, and the food, which was soup or stew of game, was good and
sufficient. That day for the first time he felt his strength returning,
and as the hours passed restlessness grew on him. It was increased by
an incident which happened in the afternoon. He was awakened from a
doze by the sound of steps and voices without. Two people were walking
there, and since there were interstices between the logs of the wall it
was possible to overhear their conversation.
Said one, a female voice, "He left Manchester two days ago?"
"Two days ago, St Andrew's Day," was the reply, "and therefore a day of
happy omen for a Scot."
"So in two days he will be in D-derby."
That stammer he would have known in the babble of a thousand tongues.
The other--who could he be but her husband, and the man they spoke of
but the Prince?
A hand was laid on the latch and the door shook. Then a key was
inserted and the lock turned. Alastair lay very quiet, but below his
eyelids he saw the oblong of light blocked by a figure. That figure
turned in profile the better to look at him, and he saw a sharp nose.
"He is asleep," said the man to his companion without. "He has been
sick, for there was a sharp scuffle before he was taken, but now he is
mending. Better for him, poor devil, had he died!"
"Oh, Jack, what will they do with him?"
"That is for His Highness to decide. A traitor's death, at any rate. He
may get the benefit of his French commission and be shot, or he may
swing like better men in hemp."
The other voice was quivering and anxious. "I cannot credit it. Oh,
Jack, I am convinced that there is error somewhere. He may yet clear
himself."
"Tut, the man was caught in open treason, intercepting messages from
the West and handing them to the Government. His lies to you prove his
guilt. He professed to be hastening to the Prince, and he is taken here
crouching in a wood fifty miles from his road, but conveniently near
General Ligonier and the Duke of Kingston."
The door was shut and the key turned, but not before Alastair heard
what he took for a sigh.
There was no sleep for him that night. His head had cleared, his blood
ran easily again, the strength had come back to his limbs, and every
nerve in him was strung to a passion of anger. His fury was so great
that it kept him calm. Most desperately had things miscarried. The
Prince was on the threshold of the English midlands, and all these
weeks Kyd and Norreys had been at their rogueries unchecked. Where were
the western levies now? What devil's noose awaited the northern army,
marching into snares laid by its own professed allies? Worse, if worse
were possible, the blame would be laid on him; Norreys and Kyd had so
arranged it that he would pass as traitor; doubtless they had their
cooked evidence in waiting. And in the dear eyes of the lady he was
guilty, her gentle heart wept for his shame. At the memory of her
voice, as it had made its last protest, he could have beaten his head
on the ground.
His bonds had always been light--a long chain with a padlock clasping
his left ankle and fastened to a joist of the hut--for his captors
trusted to the strength of the walls and his frail condition. During
the night he worked at this and managed so to weaken one of the links
that he thought he could break it at will. But the morning brought him
a bitter disappointment. Some fresh orders must have been issued, for
Gypsy Ben produced new fetters of a more formidable type, which bound
Alastair to a narrow radius of movement. As a make-weight he did not
lock the door, but left it ajar. "You're like me, gentleman dear," he
said; "you like the sky over you and to hear birds talking round about.
I can humour you in that, if you don't mind a shorter tether."
It was a fine morning, the third of December, with a loud frolicking
wind and clouds that sailed in convoys. In black depression of heart
Alastair watched the tiny half-moon of landscape vouchsafed to him,
three yards of glade, a clump of hazels, the scarred grey bole of an
ancient oak. He had toiled at his bonds till every muscle was wrung,
and he had not moved a link or coupling one fraction of an inch.
Breathless, furious, despairing, he watched a pert robin approaching
the door in jerks, when the bird rose startled at someone's approach.
Alastair, lifting dreary eyes, saw the homely countenance of Edom.
The man cried out, and stood staring.
"Guid sake, sir, is this the way of it? I heard that something ill had
happened to ye, but I never jaloused this."
Hungry eyes read the speaker's face, and saw nothing there but honest
perplexity.
"They have invented a lie," Alastair said, "and call me a traitor. Do
you believe it?"
"Havers," said Edom cheerfully. "They never telled me that, or they'd
have got the lee in their chafts. Whae said it? Yon lang wersh lad they
ca' Sir John?"
"Is your master here?"
"He's comin' the morn and I'm michty glad o't. For three weeks I've
been like a coo in an unco loan. But, Captain Maclean, sir, I'm wae for
you, sittin' sae gash and waefu' in this auld bourock."
Alastair's eyes had never left Edom's face, and suddenly his mind was
made up. He resolved to trust everything to this man's honesty.
"You can help me if you will. Can I count on you?"
"If it's onything reasonably possible," said the cautious Edom.
"I need friends. I want you to summon them."
"I'll be blithe to do that."
"You know the country round and the inns?"
"I've traivelled the feck o't on my twae feet and sampled the maist o'
the publics."
"Then find a cross-roads which has broom on the signpost or an inn with
an open eye painted under the sign. Whistle this air," and he hummed
Midwinter's ditty.
Edom made a tolerable attempt at it. "I mind ye whustled that when we
were huntit i' the big wud. And after that?"
"Someone will come to you and ask your errand. Tell him of my plight
and direct him or guide him here."
Edom nodded, and without more ado turned and swung out for the
river-bridge and the high road.
_XIII_ _Journeyman John_
The hours passed slowly, for Alastair was in a ferment of hope and
fear, into which like lightning-flashes in a dark sky shot now and then
a passion of fury, as he remembered Claudia Norreys. He had not seen
her as she stood outside the hut, but he could picture the sad
disillusionment of her eyes, and the quiver of her mouth as she
protested against a damning truth which she yet needs must believe. Her
gentle voice sounded maddeningly in his ears. He could not forecast
what his fate might be, he could not think settled thoughts, he could
not plan; his mind was in that helplessness in which man falls back
upon prayer.
The afternoon drew to a quiet sunset. The door of the hut remained
open, and through it he saw the leafless knotted limbs of the oaks,
which had before been a grey tracery against the smoky brown of the
scrub, fire with gold and russet. There was no sign of Edom or his
friends, but that at the best he could hardly hope for till late, there
was no sign of his gaoler or of any living thing--he was left alone
with the open door before him, and the strict fetters on his limbs. The
sun sank, the oaks grew grey again, a shiver went through the earth as
the night cold descended. The open space in the door had turned to
ebony dark before there was a sound of steps.
It was Ben the Gypsy, and he had two others with him, whom Alastair
could not see clearly in the light of the single lantern. The man
seemed in high excitement.
"'Tis time to be stirring, pretty gentleman," he chirruped. "Hey for
the high road and the hills in the dark o' the moon, says I. No time
for supper, neither, but there'll be a long feast and a fine feast
where you're going. Up with him, Dick lad and Tony lad. I'm running no
risks with the bonds of such a fiery fearless gentleman."
Two stalwart followers swung him in their arms, and marched down one of
the glades, the gypsy with the lanthorn dancing before, like a
will-o'-the-wisp. At the foot of the slope were horses, and on one of
them--a ragged shelty--they set him, undoing his leg bonds, and
fastening them again under the animal's belly. The seat was not
uncomfortable, for he had his feet in stirrups of a sort, but it was
impossible for him to escape. His hands they tied, and one of the party
took the shelty's bridle.
The road ran up-hill, first through woods and then in a waste of
bracken and heather and scree. Black despair was Alastair's portion.
His enemies had triumphed, for even if Edom discovered some of
Midwinter's folk, they would find the hut empty, and how could they
trace him by night over such trackless country? His body as well as his
heart was broken, for the sudden change from the inertia of the hut
made every limb ache and set his head swimming. Soon he was so weary
that he lost all count of the way. Dimly he was conscious that they
descended into glens and climbed again to ridges, but the growing chill
and greater force of the wind told him that they were steadily rising.
Presently the wrack was blown off the face of the sky, the winter
regiment of stars shone out, and in their faint radiance he saw all
about him the dark fields of the hills. Often he thought himself
fainting. Repeatedly he would have fallen, but for the belly girth, and
more than once he bowed over his horse's neck in deep weariness. Ben
the Gypsy spoke to him, but as he did not answer rode ahead, with his
lantern bobbing like a ship's riding light in a gusty harbour.
Then Alastair fell asleep, and was tortured by nightmares. Indeed all
the latter part of the journey was a nightmare, sleeping and waking,
for it was a steady anguish, half muffled by a sense of crazy
unreality. When the party stopped at last, he came back from caverns of
confused misery, and when the belly-girth was cut fell leadenly to the
ground. The ride in an unnatural position had given him a violent cramp
in his right leg, and the sharp pain woke him to clear consciousness.
He was picked up and carried inside some building, and as he crossed
the threshold had a vision of steep walls of cliff all about him.
After that he must have slept, for when he next remembered he was lying
on a settle before a fire of peat and heather-roots, and, watching him
through the smoke, sat Gypsy Ben, whittling a stick with a long, fine
shagreen-handled knife.
"Feeling happier now?" the gypsy asked. "Soon it will be supper time
and after that the soft bed and the long sleep, my darling dear. Ben's
are the kind hands."
Something in the voice made Alastair shake off his torpor. The gypsy,
as he first remembered him, had been a mischievous sneering fellow, and
he had longed to wring his neck when he rode off grinning that day at
the Flambury Hunt. In the hut he had been almost friendly, protesting
that he bore no malice but only obeyed orders. But now--there was
something bright and mad about those dark dancing eyes, something
ghoulish in the soft gloating voice. Had his orders been changed? What
plan of his foes was served by bringing him thus into this
no-man's-land of the hills?
"Why am I here?" he asked, and his tongue so stumbled between his dry
lips that the gypsy passed him a jug of ale that was being kept warm by
the fire.
"Orders, kind precious sir. Them that I obeys has changed their mind
about you, and thinks you are too dear and good for this wicked, wicked
world. Therefore they hands you over to Gypsy Ben, who brings you the
straight way to Journeyman John."
The other looked puzzled, and the gypsy rose and, dancing to a far end
of the room, opened a large rough door like a partition in a cowshed.
Instantly a great gust swept the place, driving clouds of fine dust
from the hearth. A noise came from that darkness beyond the door, a
steady rumbling and grinding which had been a mere undercurrent of
sound when the door was shut, but now dominated the place--a sound like
mill-stones working under a full press of water, joined with a curious
shuddering like wind in an old garret. The gypsy stood entranced, one
hand to his ear, his eyes glittering.
"That's him we call Journeyman John. Hark to him grinding his old
teeth! Ah, John, hungry again! But cheer up, there's a fine supper
a-coming."
He shut the door as a showman shuts a cage. The light died out of his
eyes, leaving only smouldering fires.
"That's the deepest pot-hole in all the land," he said, "and John like
a scaly serpent lies coiled at the foot of it. Nothing that goes in
there comes out--leastways only in threads and buttons by way of
Eldingill, and that long after. There's your bed made for you, master,
and it's Ben's duty to tuck you in. Oh, Ben's a kind mammy."
The young man's brain had been slow to grasp the fate prepared for him,
but the crazy leer which accompanied the last words brought a hideous
illumination, and at the same time the faintest ray of hope. The man
was clearly a madman, and therefore incalculable. With a great effort
Alastair steeled his heart and composed his voice.
"What of supper?" he asked. "That comes before bed in a hospitable
house."