ROGER BARNET SITS DOWN TO SMOKE SOME TOBACCO.
"At least we'll die with harness on our back."--_Macbeth._
The avenue by which the pursuivant and his men were approaching the
house would lead them first near the wing in which was Mistress
Hazlehurst's chamber. Marryott remembered the ladder still outside her
window.
"Devil's name!" he cried. "They may enter as Rumney did! Follow me,
Kit!"
He led the way to her chamber. In the outer room, the wounded robber
begged for the water that Marryott had promised. But Hal first pointed
out to Kit the top of the ladder, and then proceeded with him to draw it
up into the chamber. This was an act of some difficulty, by reason of
the ladder's length and weight. When its top struck the roof of the
apartment, it had to be turned to a horizontal position, and then moved
diagonally across the floor, so that its foremost end should pass
through the doorway to the outer room. While Hal guided this end,
Bottle remained at the window, tugging at the ladder's rear.
It thus befell that Bottle alone was at the window when the pursuivant's
troop--men far different in appearance and equipment from Rumney's
band--rode into sight.
At one and the same instant, Bottle desisted from his exertions and
stared down at the horsemen, and Roger Barnet halted his party with a
curt gesture and gazed with hard coolness up at Kit.
"I see thou know'st me, Hodge," growled Bottle, at last. At this,
Marryott stood still, far within the chamber, and listened for the
answer.
It came, without emotion, in a voice that suggested iron, as some voices
are said to suggest silver or gold.
"I thought 'twas you, the night Sir Valentine Fleetwood ran away," said
Barnet. "And 'twas more certain, when louts by the way mentioned an ugly
big rascal, red-faced of drink, and of never keeping fish-days."
"I trust I may still be eating meat on fish-days, when thou'rt eaten of
worms!" replied Kit.
"Thou'lt fast a long fast, fish-days and other days, when I carry thee
to London!" said Barnet. "Hudsdon, take ten men; place five behind this
house, five north of it. Look you, Bottle, tell Sir Valentine Fleetwood
I would speak with him in the queen's name."
"What if Sir Valentine Fleetwood be not here?"
"Thy presence tells me he is."
"And I also tell you that he is!" cried another voice, that of Mistress
Hazlehurst, who had risen from her bed and rushed to the window. "He is
here, Master Pursuivant! He is in this very room! He has made a prisoner
of me!"
"'Tis well, mistress!" replied Barnet. "We'll soon make a prisoner of
him."
With that, and after designating men to guard this side of the house, he
rode with others toward the front, Hudsdon having already led away the
ten to watch the rear and the further side.
Kit turned and looked at Marryott, but the latter had eyes for Mistress
Hazlehurst only. The energy of her movement from the bed to the window,
the vigor of her voice, gave the lie to her illness.
"'Twas well feigned!" said Hal, quietly, after regarding her for a short
while in silence.
There was a little sorrow in his tone, but no reproach. His thought was
the same as hers, which she uttered while squarely meeting his gaze.
"I had an enemy's right to use what means I could, having once declared
myself, and the more so as I was your prisoner."
"'Tis most true," assented Hal. He would have much liked to explain that
what saddened him was, not that she had counterfeited illness, but that
she had counterfeited a willing response to his embraces. Why should she
have thought it necessary to carry the pretence so far? A choked,
blinded feeling came upon him. But he dared not succumb to it. Kit
Bottle was looking on, awaiting orders, and the injured robber was
crying for water. From the deceived, humiliated lover, Marryott became
perforce the alert commander of besieged fugitives.
"This lady must be watched," he said to Kit. "Till I send Anthony to
take your place see that she does not, by passing them this ladder, or
by hanging curtains or such stuff from the window, give Barnet's men the
means of climbing into the house. Nay, mistress, our watchman will not
disturb your privacy. From the outer room he can look through the door
to your window. Seest thou, Kit?--the ladder lying flat through the
doorway will forbid her closing the door. If there come sign of her at
the window, or meddling with ladder or door, then thou must invade her
chamber, and do as may seem best. You are warned, madam!"
With a courteous bow he left her. Bottle established himself outside her
door, squatting upon the ladder, his eye following its side-pieces
across her room to the window.
In the hall, Marryott found Anthony Underhill listening passively to
the door-knocks of Roger Barnet, which were accompanied by calls upon
Sir Valentine Fleetwood to open in the queen's name. The Puritan assured
Hal that the stable was now as strongly fortified as it had been ere his
departure in quest of provisions. Marryott, thereupon, sent him to take
Kit's place at Mistress Hazlehurst's door, and then despatched Oliver
Bunch (who had with some surprise discovered himself to be still alive)
with water for the wounded robber, and with instructions to care for the
latter's injuries and for those of Tom and Francis.
Hal then made again the round of the house. Moreton, Hatch, and the
least wounded of yesterday's deserters from Rumney, were at their
original posts, to which Anthony had taken it on himself to order their
return. Each man reported that his door had been tried from without, but
that no violent attempt had been made to force entrance.
Coming back to the hall, Marryott saw Kit Bottle mounted on a trestle,
and surveying the quadrangle through a clear place in a window.
"He has had his men dismount and the horses led away," said Kit,
alluding, of course, to Roger Barnet. "He has set two guards, I think,
at the front end of each wing, and two in the court. He is sitting on
the edge of the fountain. He seems a little lame o' the leg."
"What think you is his intent?" asked Marryott, not risking to Barnet a
possible glimpse of his face, for fear of an untimely undeceiving.
"'Tis for time to show. He will either attack or wait. But 'tis less
like he will attack."
"Why?"
"Because he is a prudent dog and a patient. Those gaping bodies on the
snow tell how Rumney's gang fared 'gainst men firing from inside these
stout walls. Barnet thinks he has the hare mewed up, and 'tis as cheap
to wait for't to venture out as 'tis to risk flesh and blood in trying
to come at it. And, moreover, a fight might give the man he seeks a
chance to die by sword or pistol, whereas 'tis a point of honor with
Barnet to take his prisoner well and whole to London. He is a feeder of
headsman's blocks and hangman's nooses! Ay, he has chosen to wait; 'tis
certain now."
"How know'st thou?"
"He is filling his tobacco-pipe, and motioning one of his men for use of
a slow-match. When Roger sits down to smoke, he hath made up his mind
for a season of waiting. And there is no man can out-wait Roger Barnet
when he is sucking his Nicotian. He is then truly patience on a
monument, as Master Shakespeare's comedy says."
"If he wait till to-morrow night, my work for others will be done!
'Twill be six days since we left Welwyn, and 'twill take four and over,
in this weather, for any man to ride back thither."
"And then 'tis a matter of our own necks, I ween! Let me tell thee this,
lad: While Roger Barnet thinks the man he wants is in this house, he
will wait to starve him out, though he wait till doomsday. And if he
learns 'tis not his man that he hath been chasing, he will infer that
the other man is by that time 'scaped, and he will wait still for the
man that has tricked him. He will carry some victim back to London for
this, be sure on't!"
Kit had come down from the trestle, and was standing with Hal at the
fireplace.
"Well, after to-morrow," said Marryott, "we may use our wits, or our
valor and skill, to break through the circle he has drawn around us."
"'Twill take sharp wits to slip through Roger Barnet's vigilance, now he
has closed around us. As for valor and skill, what shall boot our small
force 'gainst his, who are stout men all, well armed, and most of them
clad above the waist in steel? Tut, lad, don't think old Kit is
disturbed upon it! I'll die as well as another, and better than most! I
tell thee these things merely in fireside talk, as I should speak of the
weather."
"How if we shoot Barnet, from one of the windows?"
"Twould not help. Firstly, as the preacher at Paul's Cross says, we
might miss him, or his cuirass and morion might save him. He might take
offence, and act as if we forced a fight upon his patience; might set
fire to the timber part of this house and burn us out betimes. Secondly,
if we killed Barnet, his man Hudsdon might do the burning. Hudsdon, look
you, is, in his particular humor, a man of as good mettle as Barnet.
These be no Rumneys!"
"But if we so diminished Barnet's troop, by shooting them one by one
from the windows, then we might sally forth, fire or no fire, with fair
chance of cutting our way through."
"Ay, were it not that, for every man we slew, Barnet would send to
Harmby or elsewhere for two men to fill the vacant post. As 'tis, the
foul weather, and the pride of doing his own work unhelped, will stay
him from demanding aid of the country; but an we force him to it, ere he
give us the upper hand he will use to the full his power of pressing
men, and requiring local officers, in the queen's name."
"Why, then, is there no course, no chance?"
"None but what time may bring, and time we shall gain by letting Roger
wait. He will stay where he is, in hope of starvation driving out his
man weak and easy to be taken, or of our knaves rebelling from hungry
stomachs and delivering up their leader. But we'll see to it the men be
staunch; and some time must pass before our bellies take to grinding one
side 'gainst the other!"
"'Tis well Anthony brought--" began Marryott, but was interrupted by the
entrance of Oliver Bunch at the top of the stairs.
"An't please your honor," said Oliver, "the lady desired I should ask
when she might have breakfast, for that she is faint with hunger."
"Why, so am I; and the rest of us, I doubt not," said Marryott. "We
shall eat forthwith. Where are the provisions Anthony brought, Kit?"
"I thought to have told you sooner," replied the captain, in a strangely
resigned manner; "in the fray outside the stable door, Rumney's knaves
got Anthony's bag of victuals from him, and when they ran off they
forgot to leave it behind!"
There was a considerable silence, during which Kit Bottle looked darkly
into the fire, and Marryott muttered several times under his breath, "A
murrain on't!" Then, adopting the captain's mien of uncomplaint. Hal
said to Oliver:
"Tell the lady we have no food and can get none. Later, I may contrive
to obtain some for her, from the enemy that surrounds us."
"Why," said Kit Bottle, as Oliver disappeared, "an thou dost that,
thou'lt betray our empty state to Roger Barnet."
"What matter?" said Hal. "We can hold out two days, that's certain. And
after that,--Barnet will but know he need smoke the less tobacco till
our starving out, that's all!"