THE LONDON ROAD.
"How many miles to London town?"--_Old Song._
And now Master Marryott was himself again, with the will to break away
if he could, and the eye for the opportunity if it should occur. It was
plain that she had ceased to view him with antagonism or indifference.
And her interest in him--an interest so strong as to overcome or exclude
resentment toward him as the agent of Sir Valentine Fleetwood's escape
from her as well as from the government--surely sprang from some more
powerful feeling than mere regret for a man placed by her in a peril she
had designed for another. To have caused her to order or sanction the
holding of the horse in readiness, her interest must have fully taken up
her mind. Perhaps to this fact was due her evident relinquishment of
revenge upon Sir Valentine, as much as to that knight's present
inaccessibility, and to the stupefying blow her vengeful impulse had
received in the disclosure that her far and toilsome quest in its
service had but led her from the right object to the wrong one.
Whence had this interest arisen? Doubtless from her musing on the love
he had shown in staying to protect her that night at Foxby Hall; on the
annoyances and delays to which she had subjected him during his long
flight, and on his uniform gentleness to her in his necessary severity
toward her.
Could he indeed break from his guards and escape, that he might satisfy
himself on these questions, and profit in his love by that interest!
But Roger Barnet's vigilance, like his iron grip on Marryott's bridle
when they rode, and on Marryott's arm when they alighted, seemed to
increase with his increasing distress of body.
This night they ate and slept at Nottingham. Barnet occupied a second
bed in Marryott's chamber. More than once Hal was awakened from sleep--a
sleep in which his dreams carried out the wildest plans of escape--by
the pursuivant's groans of pain. At dawn Roger's face was that of a man
who had neither slept nor known a moment's ease. It was with a desperate
stiffening of muscles and clenching of teeth that he forced himself to
rise for the continuance of his journey.
Marryott had taken pains to view out the whereabouts of the led horse
the previous evening, when, as usual, it had appeared in sight of his
window. He marvelled not that his friends never failed to find a spot
on which his gaze might alight. Kit Bottle, as he knew, had ways of
learning, from inn menials of either sex, what room was taken for the
prisoner. This morning the horse was at a place some distance from where
it had been yesternight. Bottle was leading it; and the picture had a
new figure, in the shape of a horse a little farther off. This second
horse had a rider,--Anne Hazlehurst!
What would he not give now for means of escape? But there, hemming him
in, were his four silent, stalwart guards; and beyond them, with cold
eyes now red-rimmed from a restless night but fixed implacably on him,
was the equally silent Barnet.
The wind had blown itself to other regions; the day was as fair as it
was serene; it was milder, too, than days had been of late. But Hal's
captors made poor travelling. Barnet had to halt often, as he could now
scarce endure the pain caused by the movement of his horse. He stopped
for dinner when he had ridden no farther than to Melton Mowbray and when
it was no later than eleven o'clock.
Marryott took what scant comfort of mind he could, in this slowness of
the journey toward London. Yet slow as it was, it was all too fast.
London was but little more than a hundred miles away, now. Only a
hundred miles of opportunity for that miracle of accident, or ingenuity
and skill, by which he might save himself for the joys awaiting him in
Anne Hazlehurst's love! Life had begun to taste ineffably sweet. The
world was marvellously beautiful on such a day. But when he faced the
terrible likelihood of a speedy hurling hence to "that undiscovered
country," where there could not be a fairer sky to look upon, or purer
air to breathe, and where there was no Anne Hazlehurst, the beauty of
the day mocked him.
And the sight of the horse, too, mocked him, as it passively waited to
bear him far from the reclaiming pursuit of death the moment he might
slip from death's arms closing tighter around him. His heart cried
"Avaunt, death! I am not for thee! Love and beauty await me; they, and
this glad earth even now waking to joy at the first breath of spring! I
am for this world, with its music and its wine, its laughter and its
poetry, its green fields and its many-colored cities, its pleasures of
good-fellowship, its smiles of the woman beloved! Unhand me, death; go
your ways, black monster; I am life's own!" He had moments wherein he
was half mad, not with the fear of death, but with the love of life; yet
his madness had so much method in it that he gave no outward sign of it,
lest his alertness for some means of escape might be suspected.
Back in the saddle, after dinner, to decrease by another afternoon's
riding: those hundred miles to London town, Marryott observed in
Barnet's face the fierce resolution which a man gathers for a last fight
against physical anguish. So these two rode side by side, the captor
concealing tortures of the body, the prisoner veiling tortures of the
mind. At two o'clock they clattered into Oakham. When they arrived
before the gate of a large inn, Roger Barnet suddenly called a halt, and
said, in tones whose gruffness was somewhat broken by a note of bodily
suffering:
"We'll tarry the day out here, and start fresh on the morrow. The foul
fiend is in my leg!"
He thereupon sent Hudsdon to order rooms made ready, so that the
prisoner might, as usual, be conducted from the horse to his chamber
without stoppage. Barnet did not yet ride into the inn yard, for he
noticed a crowd and a bustle therein, and preferred not to enter until
it should be certain he would not have to go elsewhere for lodging.
Here, as in other towns, the pursuivant kept his men close around the
prisoner, as much to conceal the latter's bound wrists and legs from
lookers-on as for any other purpose. Thus few people, if any, observed
that here was a prisoner, and so no crowd collected.
As Hal sat his horse, awaiting Hudsdon's return, he bethought him that
this day was Friday, March 13th,--the tenth day since his departure from
Fleetwood house. The time he had undertaken to obtain for Sir Valentine
would be past that evening,--and Welwyn was still seventy miles away!
This geographical fact, connected as it was with the certainty that he
had more than accomplished his adventure, called up another and less
pleasing fact, of which indeed he needed little reminder,--the fact that
not a hundred miles now remained of the road to London.
His reflections were cut short by the reappearance of Hudsdon, who spoke
to Barnet in whispers. The party then rode around to a side door of the
inn, doubtless to avoid taking the prisoner through the crowd in the
great yard. The hostess had already opened this door. Barnet and four
men alighted from their horses, enabled Hal to dismount, and led him, at
the heels of a chamberlain, through passages and up-stairs to a room. He
had noticed, as he entered, that hostlers had already come from the inn
gate to take the horses to stable by the usual route.
Hal's first glance, on entering his chamber, was for the window. To his
dismay, it opened, not so as to give a view of street or of places
exterior to the inn, but so as to command a part of the square inn yard,
which was enclosed on three sides by the inn itself, on the fourth by a
wall and gate. What hid a portion of this yard, which was far below, was
the downward-sloping roof of the long upper gallery or balcony that
traversed the three inner sides of the house. Situated as he now was, he
could have no sight of the waiting horse.
"What do you see to make you stare so?" asked the watchful Barnet.
"Naught but the crowd in the inn yard," replied Hal, with barely the
heart to dissemble. "'Tis more than common, methinks."
"Yes. Heard you not what Hudsdon said? There is to be a play in the
yard; the town will not give the guildhall for plays on a Friday in
Lent."[30]
"A play? Who are the players?"
"The lord chamberlain's men that are now travelling. They are wont to
play at the Globe,--why, that is where you played, is't not so?"
But Hal heeded not the question. The lord chamberlain's men!
Shakespeare, Sly, his friends, who a moment since had seemed worlds and
ages away!
And, that very instant, a familiar voice rang out above the noise of the
crowd below.