THE FIRST DAY OF THE FLIGHT.
"That wench is stark mad, or wonderful froward."--_The Taming of the
Shrew._
The object of this double chase, Master Marryott, rode on with his two
men, through the night, beyond Stevenage, at what pace it seemed best to
maintain. The slowness, incredible to a bicyclist or horseman who to-day
follows the same route, was all the greater for the darkness; but
slowness had good cause without darkness. English horse-breeding had not
yet shown or sought great results in speed. An Elizabethan steed would
make a strange showing on a twentieth century race-track; for the
special product of those days was neither horses nor machines, but men.
And such as the horses were, what were the roads they had to traverse!
When a horse put his foot down, the chances were that it would land in a
deep rut, or slide crunching down the hardened ridge at the side
thereof, or find lodgment in a soggy puddle, or sink deep into soft
earth, or fall, like certain of the Scriptural seed, upon stony places.
It is no wonder, then, that on a certain occasion, when Queen Elizabeth
was particularly impatient for a swift answer to a letter she caused
sent to the keepers of Mary Stuart, the messenger's time from London to
Fotheringay and back was at the rate of less than sixty miles a day. As
for travel upon wheels, an example thereof will occur later in this
narrative. But there was in those days one compensatory circumstance to
fugitives flying with a rapidity then thought the greatest attainable:
if they could not fly any faster, neither could their pursuers.
The night journey of our three riders continued in silence. As no sound
of other horses now came from behind or from anywhere else, and as the
objects passed in the darkness were but as indistinct figures in thick
ink against a ground of watered ink. Hal's senses naturally turned
inward, and mainly upon what was then foremost in the landscape of his
mind. This was the face of Mistress Anne Hazlehurst; and the more he
gazed upon the image thereof, the more he sighed at having to increase
the distance between himself and the reality. His reluctance to going
from the neighborhood of her was none the less for the matter-of-fact
promptness with which he did go therefrom. The face was no less a magnet
to him for that he so readily and steadily resisted its drawing powers.
Those drawing powers would, of course, by the very nature of magnets,
decrease as he went farther from their source; but as yet they were
marvellously strong. Such is the charm exerted upon impressionable youth
by a pair of puzzling eyes, a mysterious expression, a piquant contour,
allied to beauty. All the effect of his first sight of that face was
revived, and eked to greater magnitude by his strange confrontation with
her, proud and wrathful in the poor lantern rays that fell
intermittently and shiftingly upon her in the dark road.
He wondered what would be her subsequent proceedings that night; tried
to form a mental panorama of her conduct regarding her wounded servants;
of her actions now that she saw her design upset, the tenor of her life
necessarily affected by this new catastrophe to her household. He pitied
her, as he thought of the confused and difficult situation into which
she had been so suddenly plunged. And then he came to consider what must
be her feelings toward himself. Looking upon him as her brother's
slayer, she must view him with both hate and horror. His violent
treatment of her servants would augment the former feeling to a very
madness of impotent wrath.
Yet it was not Hal Marryott that she hated,--it was the make-believe Sir
Valentine Fleetwood; not the player, but the part he played. Still, a
dislike of a character assumed by an actor often refuses to separate
the actor from the character; moreover, she must necessarily hate him,
should she ever come to know him, for having assumed that part,--for
being, indeed, the aider of her enemy against herself. Hal registered
one determination: should the uncertain future--now of a most exceeding
uncertainty in his case--bring him in his own person into the horizon of
this woman, he would take care she should not know he had played this
part. What had passed between them should be blotted out; should be as
if indeed Sir Valentine, not Hal Marryott, had escaped her in the road.
And Hal bethought himself of one gain that the encounter had yielded
him: it had acquainted him with the name and place of the previously
unknown beauty. Some day, when he should have gone through with all this
business, he might indeed seek her.
When he should have gone through with this business? The uncertain
future came back to his thoughts. What would be the outcome of this
strange flight? So strange, that if he should tell his friends in London
of it, they would laugh at the tale as at a wild fiction. Fool a trained
man-hunter, a royal messenger grown old in catching people for the
council, and fool him by such a device as Hal had employed! Act a part
in real life, even for a moment, to the complete deception of the
spectator intended to be duped! To be sure, Dick Tarleton had done so,
when he pretended in an inn at Sandwich to be a seminary priest, in
order to be arrested and have the officers pay his score and take him to
London, where, being known, he was sure to be discharged. But Dick
Tarleton was a great comedian, and had essayed to represent no certain
identifiable seminary priest; whereas Master Marryott, who had dared
impersonate a particular known man, was but a novice at acting.
But Hal soon perceived this fact: that playing a part on the stage and
playing a part in real life are two vastly different matters. A great
actor of the first may be a great failure in the second, and the worst
stage player may, under sufficient stress, fill an assumed character
deceptively in real life. The spectator in a theatre expects to see a
character pretended, and knows that what he sees is make-believe, not
real. A spectator in real life, chosen to be duped, expects no such
thing, and is therefore ready to take a pretence for what it purports to
be. Whatever may occur eventually to undeceive him, he is in proper mind
for deception at first contact with the pretence. And the very
unlikelihood of such an attempt as Hal's, the very seeming impossibility
of its success, was reason for Roger Barnet's not having suspected it.
These thoughts now occurred to Hal for the first time. Should he succeed
in his novel adventure, he might congratulate himself upon the
achievement, not of a great feat of stage-playing, indeed, though to his
stage training he owed his quick perception and imitation of Sir
Valentine's chief physical peculiarities, but of a singular and daring
act, in which he both actually and figuratively played a part.
But was he destined to succeed? Was Roger Barnet still upon his track?
Or was he fleeing from nothing, leaving a track for nobody to follow?
Well, he must trust to those at Fleetwood house to keep Sir Valentine's
actual whereabouts from discovery, and to Barnet's skill in picking up
the trace that a fugitive _must_ leave, willy-nilly. But what if fate,
so fond of playing tricks on mortals, should conceive the whim of
covering up the track of this one fugitive who desired his track to be
seen? Hal cast away this thought. He must proceed, confidently, though
in blindness as to what was doing behind him. At present, silence was
there; no sound of far-off horse-hoofs. But this might be attributed to
Barnet's interruption by Anne's party; to measures for procuring fresh
horses, and to the necessary delivery of the letters of which the queen
had told him. And so, fleeing from cold darkness and the unknown into
cold darkness and the unknown, deep in his thoughts, and trusting to his
star. Master Marryott rode on through Baldock and toward Biggleswade.
Kit Bottle presently called his attention to their having passed out of
Hertfordshire into Bedfordshire.
The captain had been hard put to it for a fellow talker. His remarks to
Hal had elicited only absent monosyllables or silence. At last, with a
gulp as of choking down an antipathy, he had ridden forward to Anthony
and tried conversation with that person. Master Underhill listened as
one swallows by compulsion a disagreeable dose, and gave brief, surly
answers. Kit touched with perfect freedom upon the other's most private
concerns, not deeming that a despised dissenter had a right to the
ordinary immunities.
"Marry, I know not which astoundeth me the more," said the soldier;
"that a papist should keep a Puritan in's household, or that the Puritan
should serve the papist!"
Anthony was for a moment silent, as if to ignore the impudent speech;
but then, in a manner of resignation, as if confession and apology were
part of his proper punishment, he said, with a lofty kind of humility:
"The case no more astoundeth you than it reproacheth me. It biteth my
conscience day and night, and hath done so this many a year. Daily I
resolve me to quit the service of them that cherish the gauds and
idolatries of papistry. But the flesh is weak; I was born in Sir
Valentine's household, and I could not find strength to wrench me from
it."
"Ay," said Kit, "no doubt it hath been in its way a fat stewardship,
though the estate be decreased. The master being so oft abroad, and all
left to your hands, I'll warrant there have been plump takings, for balm
to the bites o' conscience."
"I perceive you are a flippant railer; but you touch me not. What should
they of no religion understand of the bites of conscience?"
"No religion! Go to, man! Though I be a soldier, and of a free life,
look you, I've practised more religions than your ignorance wots of; and
every one of them better than your scurvy, hang-dog, vinegar-faced non
conformity! Nay, I have been Puritan, too, when it served my turn, in
the days when I was of Walsingham's men. He had precisian leanings, and
so had the clerk o' the council. Mr. Beal. But you are an ingrate, to
fatten on a good service, yet call it a reproach!"
"Fatten!" echoed the Puritan, glancing down at his spare frame. "Mayhap
it hath been a good service formerly, by comparison with its having this
night made me partaker in a five days' lie, abettor of a piece of
play-acting, and associate of a scurrilous soldier!"
With which Anthony Underhill quickened his horse so as to move from the
captain's side; whereupon Kit, too amazed for timely outward
resentment, lapsed into silent meditation.
They rode through Biggleswade. Fatigue was now telling on them. Hal's
latest sleep had been that of the previous morning, in the cold open air
of Whitehall garden,--an age ago it seemed! Kit's most recent slumbers,
taken even earlier, had been, doubtless, in equally comfortless
circumstances. Hal learned, by a question, that Anthony had passed
yesternight in bed, warm and sober. So Hal decided that when the three
should stop at dawn for rest, food, change of horses, and the removal of
the false beard, himself and Kit should attempt an hour's repose while
Anthony should watch. The Puritan should be one of the sleepers, Kit the
watcher, at the second halt. Hal planned and announced all details for
assuring an immediate flight on the distant advent of the pursuers. A
system of brief stops and of alternate watches could be employed
throughout the whole flight without loss of advantage, for Barnet also
would have to make similar delays for rest, food, and the changing or
baiting of horses.
On wore the night. They passed through Eaton Socon, and continued
northward instead of turning into St. Neots at the right. They took
notice here, as they had taken at previous forkings of the road, that
there were houses at or near the junction,--houses in which uneasy
slumberers would be awakened by their passing and heed which way their
horses went. Roger Barnet would have but to ride up noisily, and,
perchance, pound and call at a house or two, to bring these persons to
windows with word of what they had heard. Hal marvelled as he thought of
it the more, how the nature of things will let no man traverse this
world, or any part of it, without leaving trace of his passage. He saw
in this material fact an image of life itself, and in the night silence,
broken only by the clatter of his horses and by some far-off dog's bark
or cock's crow, he had many new thoughts. So he rode into
Huntingdonshire, and presently, as the pallor of dawn began to blanch
the ashen sky, he passed Kimbolton, whose castle now seemed a chill
death-place for poor Catherine of Aragon; and, four miles farther on, he
drew up, in the dim early light, before the inn at Catworth Magna, and
set Kit bawling lustily for the landlord.
A blinking hostler came from the stable yard, and the beefy-looking host
from the inn door, at the same time. But the travellers would not get
off their mounts until they were assured of obtaining fresh ones.
Captain Bottle did the talking. The new horses were brought out to the
green before the inn. Kit dismounted and examined them, then struck a
bargain with the innkeeper for their use, dragging the latter's slow
wits to a decision by main force. This done, Hal leaped to the ground,
called for a room fronting on the green, a speedy breakfast served
therein, a razor and shaving materials taken thither, and some oat-cakes
and ale brought out to Anthony, who should stay with the horses.
Hal then strode up and down the green, while Anthony ate and Kit and the
hostler transferred the saddles and bridles. He kept well muffled about
the face with his cloak, in such manner as at once to display his beard
and yet conceal the evidence of its falseness. The new horses ready,
Anthony mounted one, and, under pretence of exercising them, moved off
with them toward the direction whence Barnet would eventually come. Hal,
to forestall hindrance in case of a necessarily hasty departure, handed
the innkeeper gold enough to cover all charges he might incur, and was
shown, with Kit, to a small, bare-walled, wainscoted, plastered,
slope-roofed room up-stairs. He threw open the casement toward the
green, and promptly fell upon the eggs, fish, and beer that were by this
time served upon a board set on stools instead of on trestles. Finishing
simultaneously with Kit, Hal took off his false beard, strewed its
severed tufts over the floor, and then submitted his face, which had a
few days' natural growth of stubble, to a razor wielded by the captain.
After this operation, the two stretched themselves upon the bed, in
their clothes, their heads toward the open window.
A dream of endless riding, varied by regularly renewed charges against a
wall of plunging horses that invariably fled away to intervene again,
and by the alternate menacings and mockings of a beautiful face,
culminated in a clamorous tumult like the shouting of a multitude. Hal
sprang up. Bottle was bounding from the bed at the same instant.
The sound was only the steadily repeated, "Halloo, halloo!" of Anthony
Underhill beneath the open window. Hal looked out. The Puritan sat his
horse on the green, holding the other two animals at his either side,
all heads pointed northward. On seeing Hal, he beckoned and was silent.
Hal and Kit rushed to the passage, thence down the stairs, and through
the entrance-way, to horse. The landlord, called forth by Anthony's
hullabaloo, stared at them in wonder. Hal returned his gaze, that an
impression of the newly shaven face might remain well fixed in the
host's mind; and then jerked rein for a start. Neither Hal nor Kit had
yet taken time to look for the cause of Anthony's alarm. As they
galloped away from the inn, Hal heard the patter of horses coming up
from the south. He turned in his saddle, expecting to see Roger Barnet
and his crew in full chase.
But the horses were only two in number, and on them were Mistress
Hazlehurst, in a crimson cloak and hood, and the page in green who had
attended her at the theatre. Hal's heart bounded with sudden pleasure.
As he gazed back at her, he caught himself smiling.
She saw him, noted his two companions, and seemed to be in doubt. The
landlord was still before the inn. She reined up, and spoke to him. Hal
could see the innkeeper presently, while answering her, put his hand to
his chin. "Good!" thought Hal; "he is telling her that, though I depart
smooth-faced, I arrived bearded."
The next moment, she and the page were riding after the three fugitives.
Without decreasing his pace, Hal asked Anthony:
"Was it she only that you saw coming? Are Barnet's men behind?"
"'Twas she only. But she is enough to raise the country on us!"
"Think you that is her purpose?"
"Ay," replied Anthony. "She hath heard of the treason matter from the
pursuivant, and hath shot off, like bolt from bow, to denounce you. 'Tis
her method of vengeance."
"'Tis like a woman--of a certain kind," commented Kit Bottle, who had
taken in the situation as promptly as the others had.
"'Tis like a Hazlehurst," said Anthony.
"Well," said Master Marryott, for a pretext, "'tis doubtless as you say;
but I desire assurance. It may serve us to know her intentions. She
cannot harm us here." (They were now out of the village.) "Though she
would raise hell's own hue and cry about us, she might halloo her
loudest, none would hear at this part of the road. We shall wait for
her."
Anthony cast a keen glance at Hal, and Kit Bottle thrust his tongue in
his cheek and looked away,--manifestations at which Hal could only turn
red and wish that either of the two had given some open cause for
rebuke. He was determined, however; the temptation to play with fire in
the shape of a beautiful woman was too alluring, the danger apparently
too little. So the three horses dropped to a walk, and presently the two
that followed were at their heels. Hal looked back as she came on, to
see if she still carried the sword she had used on the previous night;
but he saw no sign of it about her. In fact, she had given it to
Francis, who bore at his girdle a poniard also.
"Mistress, you travel ill-protected," was Hal's speech of greeting.
"So my brother must have done when he met you last," was her prompt and
defiant answer.
She let her horse drop into the gait of Hal's, and made no move to go
from his side. The Puritan resumed his place at the head, and Francis,
in order to be immediately behind his mistress, fell in with Kit
Bottle. In this order the party of five proceeded northward, their
horses walking.
"I did not harm your brother," reiterated Marryott, with a sigh.
"I perceive," she replied, ironically, "you are not the man that hurt my
brother. You have made of yourself another man, by giving yourself
another face! God 'a' mercy, the world is dull, indeed, an it is to be
fooled with a scrape of a razor! You should have bought the silence of
mine host yonder, methinks! And changed your company, altered your
attitude, rid yourself of the stiffness from the wound my brother gave
you, and washed your face of the welt my sword left! You have a good
barber, Sir Valentine; he hath shaved a score of years from your face;
he hath renewed your youth as if with water from that fountain men tell
of, in America!"
"The loss of a long-worn beard indeed giveth some men a strange look of
youth," assented Hal, as if humoring her spirit of bitter derision
against himself. He was glad of her conviction that he could look
youthful and yet be the middle-aged Sir Valentine.
"'Twas so in the case of an uncle of mine," she said, curtly, "which the
more hindereth your imposing on me with a face of five and twenty."
"Five and twenty?" echoed Hal, involuntarily, surprised that he should
appear even so old. But a moment's reflection told him that his age must
be increased in appearance by the assumed stiffness of his attitude; by
the frown and the labial rigidity he partly simulated, partly had
acquired since yesterday; by the gauntness and pallor, both due to
nervous tension and to lack of sleep and food. He was indeed an older
man than the "Laertes" of two days ago, and not to be recognized as the
same, for in the play he had worn a mustache and an air little like his
present thoughtful mien.
"And I'll warrant this new face will serve you little to throw them off
that are coming yonder," she went on, indicating the rearward road by a
slight backward toss of the head.
"Certain riders from London, mean you?" said Hal. "By your leave, madam,
sith you be in their secrets, I would fain know how far behind us they
ride?"
"Not so far but they will be at your heels ere this day's sun grow tired
of shining."
"Ay, truly? They will do swift riding, then!"
"Mayhap 'twill come of their swift riding," she replied, taunted by his
courteous, almost sugary, tone. "And mayhap, of your meeting hindrance!"
"Prithee, what should put hindrance in my way?" he inquired, with a most
annoying pretence of polite surprise and curiosity.
"I will!" she cried. "I have run after you for that purpose!"
"God's light, say you so? And what will you do to hinder me?"
"I know not yet," she answered, with high serenity. "But I shall find a
way."
"No doubt you will choose the simplest way," said Hal.
"What is that, I pray you?" she asked, quickly.
But Hal merely smiled. She followed his glance, however, which rested
upon a gabled country-house far across the open field at their right,
and she read his thought.
"Nay," she said, her chin elevated haughtily, "I disdain help. 'Tis my
humor to be alone the means of throwing you into the hands that bring
the warrant for you. Nor shall I lose sight of you time enough to seek
rustic officers and set them on you."
"You are wise in that," said Hal; "for, indeed, if you took but time to
cry out against me to some passing wayfarer, I and my men would be
up-tails-and-away in a twinkling. For my own interest, I tell you this;
sith I'd fain not have you do aught to deprive me of your company as
fellow traveller."
She colored with indignation at this compliment, and Hal, thereby
reminded that she saw in him her brother's slayer, and sensible how much
affront lay in the speech in the circumstances, reddened as deeply. If
he could but find a way, without making her doubt that he was Sir
Valentine, of convincing her that he had not been her brother's
opponent! He had thought vaguely that, by his reiterated denials of a
hand in the killing, he might finally implant in her mind the impression
that, though he was Sir Valentine, he had not given the mortal thrust;
that there was some mystery about the fight, to be explained in time.
But he now perceived that if such an idea could be rooted into her mind,
its effect must be to make her drop the chase and go back to Sir
Valentine's neighborhood. There she might find conclusive evidence of
Sir Valentine's responsibility for her brother's death, and make upon
Fleetwood house some kind of invasion that would endanger the real Sir
Valentine. Moreover, Hal took a keen, though disturbed, joy in her
presence, despite the bar of bloodshed that in her mind existed between
them; and though to retain that joy he must let her continue in that
supposition, he elected to retain it at the price.
After a pause, during which she acquired the coolness of voice to answer
Hal's thoughtlessly offensive words, she said:
"I pray God to hasten the hour when I shall be your fellow traveller
toward London!"
"An Roger Barnet, with his warrant of the council, were left out, I
should pray God to be your fellow traveller anywhere!" was Hal's
reply,--and again he had to curse his heedlessness, as again he saw how
odious to her was the truth that had slipped so readily out of him. "You
rode fast, else you had not overtaken me," he said, in hope of changing
her thoughts.
"And having overtaken you, I shall not lose you," she answered.
"And you have not slept nor eaten! Marry, you must be weary and faint,
mistress!"
"Neither too weary nor too faint to dog you to your undoing," she said,
resolutely throwing off all air of fatigue.
"And you risked the dangers of the road. Ods-death, if you had fallen in
with robbers!"
"That danger is past," she said. "Henceforth, till the officers be with
us, I shall go in your company, and the appearance of you and your men
will be my guard against robbers."
"Nay, an you were threatened, I and my men would offer more than mere
appearance in your protection, I do assure you!"
"Be that as it may," she answered, coldly. "Appearance would serve. I
take protection of you while I have need of it, and not as a favor or a
courtesy, but as a right--"
"From a gentleman to a lady, yes," put in Hal.
"From an enemy," she went on, ignoring his interruption, "sith it be a
practice in war to avail oneself of the enemy without scruple, in all
ways possible!"
Hal sighed. He would rather let his protection be accepted otherwise.
But he inwardly valued her unconscious tribute to the gentlemanhood she
divined in him,--the tribute apparent in her taking for granted that he
would act her protector even on a journey in which her declared object
was to hold him back for the death he was flying from. There were such
gentlemen in those days; and there have been such women as Anne--women
who will avail themselves of the generosity of men they are seeking to
destroy--in all days.
He was glad of the assurance received from her that Roger Barnet was
still on his track. Thus far, all was going well. If this woman, from
pride or caprice or a strange jealousy of keeping her vengeance all to
herself, did indeed think to impede him by other and more exclusive
means than public denunciation or hue and cry, he felt that he had
little to fear from her. To put her declaration to the test, he held the
horses down to an easy gait in passing through the next villages, though
he was ready to spur forward at a sign; but she indicated no thought of
starting an outcry. She kept her eyes averted in deep thought. Hal would
have given much to read what was passing within that shapely head.
Without doubt, she was intent upon some plan for making a gift of him to
his pursuers, some device for achieving that revenge which she craved as
a solitary feast, and which she was not willing to owe to any one but
herself. What design was she forming? Hal imagined she could not be very
expert in designs. A crafty nature would not have declared war openly,
as her proud and impulsive heart had bade her do. He admired her for
that frankness, for that unconscious superiority to underhand fighting.
It showed a noble, masterful soul, and matched well her imperious
beauty.
They rode through Clapton and Deane. Her fatigue became more and more
evident, though pride and resolution battled hard against it. Her only
food during the forenoon was some cold ham she got at a country inn in
Northamptonshire, at which Hal paused to bait the horses. They proceeded
into Rutlandshire. Before entering Glaiston she swayed upon her
side-saddle, but instantly recovered herself. At Manton she was
shivering,--the day was indeed a cold one, though the sun had come out
at eight o'clock, but she had not shivered so before.
"We shall have dinner and a rest at Oakham," said Master Marryott,
softly. "'Tis but three miles ahead."
"All's one, three miles or thirty!" she answered.
As they stopped before an inn at the farther end of Oakham,--an inn
chosen by Hal for its situation favorable to hasty flight
northward,--the clocks in the town were sounding noon; noon of
Wednesday. March 4, 1601; noon of the long first day of the hoped-for
five days' flight.