Calais, Raoul's hairs grew again both on his face and on his head,
albeit I observed with sorrow a many flecks of grey among them. Besides
those and sundry scars and callosities, there was no other enduring mark
upon him of his long torture in the galleys when he came ashore with me.
We stayed in Calais only so long as that he might provide himself with
decent apparel, and then we rode on hired horses, Stubbs following, to
Dieppe. There we betook ourselves to Jean Prevost, to learn what had
happened during the two months of my absence. He welcomed Raoul with
boisterous demonstrations of delight, and having heard our story, cried
out in a fury that he would drive his sword through the carcass of the
Count de Sarney, and so rid the world of a villain. But I prevailed
upon him to leave us to our own courses with the Count, whereupon he
told us that the Count had but lately sold his own little domain, the
which we took to be an evident sign of his perfect security.
Next day we rode all four to Torcy, and never did I see pleasure so
admirably pictured on a man's countenance as it was when the old
faithful servitor opened to us and beheld his true master. He lifted up
his old cracked voice and called to his fellows, and they came pell-mell
from the kitchen and offices, and leapt and laughed in the right Gallic
manner, which we sober Englishmen are apt to find ridiculous. Their
clamour drew the Count from his cabinet, and he stood at the head of the
stairs as still as a stone, his countenance taking the colour of wax
when he beheld Raoul at my side, and Stubbs capering (sore against his
will) in the arms of a buxom buttery maid. The miserable wretch
wreathed his lips to a smile, and said, mumbling in dreadful sort--
"Welcome, my dear nephew; I had given you up for dead."
"You have kept my house warm for me, monsieur," said Raoul, with a fine
self-mastery; but Jean Prevost sprang up the stairs, and taking the
Count by the collar, bundled him down and out at the door without
ceremony. Raoul dispatched a man after him with his hat and cloak, and
he went away and sought shelter, as we afterward learnt, in the house of
one of his old retainers.
We made diligent search in the cabinet for evidence of his villainy,
finding nought save a book of accounts wherein were set down the sums he
had paid to Don Ygnacio de Acosta, the addition of which mounted to a
monstrous figure. Raoul bade his servants gather up all the Count's
chattels ready to be conveyed to him, and having put all things in order
for his own occupancy he returned with us to Dieppe, where we spent a
merry night at Jean Prevost's house.
We did not delay to seek the king's commissary, before whom we laid the
whole matter. He took down our depositions, and examined the
account-book, and delivered his opinion at great length, the which was,
in brief, that we had nothing to convict the Count of the felony of
kidnapping, though we might reasonably presume it; but that Raoul might
bring a suit against him in the king's court for restitution of the
moneys he had disbursed. This he did, and I had word, many months
after, that the slow-footed law upheld his claim, and that the Count,
being unable to acquit himself of so heavy a debt, was reduced to
beggary and thrown into prison, there to remain at the king's pleasure.
With great magnanimity Raoul relented towards him for the sake of his
son Armand, whom he sought out in Paris, and, being perfectly assured of
his innocency, endowed him with a pension sufficient to keep his father
in a decent penury.
As for me, long ere this was accomplished I had returned with Stubbs
(rejoicing in Raoul's liberal largess, and bound to my service for ever)
to my own land. I was not wholly at ease in my mind, for I had absented
myself from my duty in the Queen's Guard without her august leave, and
had no expectation but that she would visit my fault upon me somewhat
grievously. I betook me to the Palace on the day after my return, and
learnt from my comrades that the Queen had been highly incensed against
me, and had sworn to show me bitter marks of her anger.
I took up my post in the corridor at the proper hour, and had been there
but a brief while, when her Highness herself issued from her cabinet
unattended. She halted at sight of me, and, frowning heavily, cried in
shrill and shrewish accents (and it went to my heart that she was now
most apparently an old woman)--
"How now, sirrah? Dost dare show thy ugly face to me?"
"As for my ugliness, madam," said I, "that is as God pleases."
"It does not please me that thou hast hog's bristles on thy countenance"
(my beard and mustachio, in truth, were as yet somewhat like a field of
stubble). "Where hast thou been, monkey?"
I told her Grace that I had come from working some mischief among the
galleys of her brother of Spain, whereupon she let forth a round oath,
exceeding disparaging to the said brother, and bid me go with her into
her chamber and inform her more particularly on that matter. I related
the incidents in their due order, and when I came to that part where I
had made the Captain-General swallow my vile admixture, she burst forth
in a fit of laughter so immoderate that I feared lest, tight-laced as
she was, she should do herself a hurt.
"Well, well, I pardon thee, my sweet Chris," she said, when I had made
an end; "but I must e'en have my moiety of the spoils."
And 'tis sober truth that her Grace made me tell over into her royal
palm a half of the French crowns that I had brought back with me. I
confess 'twas not an exact reckoning, for knowing her Grace's
propensity, I had been careful to make a subtraction from the full sum
before I named it, a fault which I trust will be held to be venial, and
not laid against me by honest men.
Her Grace's anger being thus mollified, I made bold to proffer a
petition whereon I set much store, to wit, that she would suffer me to
join myself to Sir Walter Raleigh for his voyage, the ships being at
that time, as I had already learnt, on the point of sailing from
Plymouth.
"Ods my bodikins!" cried the Queen; "hast thou lost thy silly heart to
some Spanish slut, that thou art burning to return among the
garlic-eaters?"
"I assure your Highness' Grace," said I, "that in all my wanderings I
have never beheld a damsel whose eyes could lure me from devotion to my
Queen."
At this her Grace showed as much pleasure as she were a girl of sixteen,
and I looked for her to consent to my petition; but in this I was
deceived.
"Well, well," she said, "thou'rt a proper bold rascal, but I can't have
all my lovers running about the wicked world, in danger of falling into
divers snares and temptations. No; ods my life, thou shan't go," she
cried in a passion, "and if I see any mumping and glooming, to the Tower
with thee!"
I smiled as amiably as I could, and vowed that I had no pleasure save
her Highness' will; but I own that I nourish to this day a remnant
grudge against my old mistress, for that she hindered me from serving
with Sir Walter in that world-renowned enterprise.
[Illustration: tailpiece to Fourth Part]
*Interim*
That feat of Sir Walter Raleigh was a wondrous achievement that any man
might envy without blame. The English fleet came to anchor off Cadiz on
June 20, 1596. Sir Walter's voice had great weight with the generals,
and it was by his counsel and ordering that the enterprise was ruled.
His device was to attack the galleons lying there in the haven and after
assail the town, and so was it performed. Himself led the van ward in
the _Warspright_, and ran through a fierce cannonade from the fort of
Puntal and the galleys, esteeming them but as wasps in respect of the
powerfulness of the others, and making no answer save by blare of
trumpet to each discharge. And he dropped anchor close over against the
_St. Philip_ and the _St. Andrew_, the greatest of all the galleons, and
the same which had overpowered in the Azores the little _Revenge_
wherein Sir Richard Grenville died gloriously, winning deathless fame.
Three hours the _Warspright_ fought those great ships, and was near
sinking; nevertheless Raleigh would not yield precedence to my Lord
Essex or the Lord Admiral, but thrust himself athwart the channel, so as
he was sure none should out-start him again for that day.
And so he set on to grapple the _St. Philip_, and the Spaniards fell
into a panic, and that galleon with three others tried to run aground,
tumbling into the sea soldiers in heaps, so thick as if coals had been
poured out of a sack. Straightway two were taken or ever their captains
were able to turn them; but the _St. Philip_ was blown up by her
captain, and a multitude of men were drowned or scorched with the
flames. And Raleigh received in the leg from a spent shot a grievous
wound, interlaced and deformed with splinters.
Thereupon my Lord Essex hasted to land, and put to rout eight hundred
horse that stood against him, and by eight of the clock the English were
masters of the market-place, the forts, and the whole town save only the
castle, which held out till break of day. And the citizens were
constrained to pay a hundred and twenty thousand crowns for their
ransom, and moreover all the rich merchandise of the town fell to the
English as spoils of war. And Sir Walter's valiant deeds purchased
again the favour of the Queen, and she willed he should come to the
Palace, and received him graciously, holding much private talk and
riding abroad with him.
My grandfather, who was of a goodly presence, had taken the eye of the
Queen, and she lifted him out of the Guard and made him one of her fifty
gentlemen pensioners, albeit he was full young for such a place. These
gentlemen were appointed to attend the Queen on all ceremonious
occasions, bearing a gilt axe upon a staff, and to serve about the
Palace, the which offices were little to his liking. And his father
dying about this time, he went down into Hampshire to take up his
inheritance, and was much busied about his estates, and exercising as
justice of the peace that little law he had learned in the Inner Temple.
But he was again lodging in London when my Lord Essex, having botched up
his work in Ireland, and taking reproof like a spoilt child, gave rein
to his ill-temper, and hatched treason against his long-suffering
Mistress. My grandfather often spoke to me sorrowfully of that
headstrong young lord, and related sundry of his foolhardy doings--how
he locked into an inner chamber the Chancellor, the Chief Justice, and
other grave men who had resorted to his house to inquire the cause of
the assemblage of armed men there; how he rode boisterously through the
streets, brandishing his sword, and calling upon the populace to follow
him; and how finally he lost his head on the block.
A short while thereafter, my grandfather sailed to Ireland, where befell
him the last great adventure, and, as he was wont to say, the most
fortunate, of his life. The O'Neill, called Earl of Tyrone, had been
long time a thorn in the side of Queen Elizabeth, taking gold from the
King of Spain to sustain his treasons, and in the year 1597 making open
war upon the English governor. He did great despite upon the people of
the Plantation, and lurking in the forests, long defied the English
soldiery. My Lord Mountjoy, whom the Queen had sent to Ireland as her
deputy in the room of Essex, being resolved to make an end of the
rebellion, ravaged and wasted the country, driving off the cattle,
starving the people, and fortifying all the passes through the woods.
And you shall read now how my grandfather once more, and for the last
time, drew his sword, and the strange fashion whereby he was led to put
it up again, for ever.
*THE FIFTH PART*
*CHRISTOPHER RUDD'S ADVENTURE IN IRELAND,
AND THE MANNER OF HIS WINNING A WIFE*
[Illustration: headpiece to Fifth Part]
*I*
I hold it ill that a man should be under no constraint to labour for his
bread. To have a competency is indeed a comfortable thing; but being so
possessed, a man lacks a spur to high emprise, and his faculties are
like to wither and decay.
It was my fortune to receive from my father a property sufficient to
supply the needs of the body; and the gear I added thereto in divers
enterprises and adventures gave me the wherewithal to maintain a decent
port before the world, and even at the Court of the Queen's Majesty,
where a man had need be of some substance. But my ambition did not soar
a high pitch: I was content to play a modest part on the world's stage;
and when I fell out of humour, as sometimes I did, with the fevered life
at Court, I withdrew myself to my little estate in the country, and
there lived rustically among the boors and the pigs.
Nevertheless, from having seen many men and cities in my time, I was not
long of finding this rustical employment stale upon me. After some few
months I would begin to yearn again for the stir and bustle of London,
where I might at the least whet my wits that had grown dull and rusty
among my simple country fellows. One such time, in the late autumn of
the year 1601, my years then numbering thirty, I rode out of Hampshire
to London, and took up my lodging in King Street, in Westminster,
rejoicing to meet my old friends again, to hear the clash of wits, and
feed my mind on the marvellous inventions of Will Shakespeare and Ben
Jonson and other ornaments and luminaries of that glorious age.
I found that two great matters were in men's mouths, whereof the one was
the exceeding melancholy whereinto the Queen had sunk since the
beheading of my Lord Essex; the other, the rising of the O'Neill
(otherwise the Earl of Tyrone) in Ireland, and the descent of some
thousands of Spaniards upon the harbour of Kinsale to enfurther that
base ungrateful traitor. King Philip having failed in his endeavour to
get a grip upon the throat of England, was seeking to annoy her
extremities, like as a blister upon the heel or a corn upon the toe. I
acknowledge that this news of his impudency made me itch and sweat to
flesh my sword again on those enemies of my country; but I dallied
somewhat, supposing that my Lord Mountjoy, who was now Lord Deputy in my
Lord Essex his room, would speedily make his account with the Irish
rebels and their Spanish consorts. Furthermore, Ireland had always
shown me a forbidding aspect: I had heard much of its wildness, its
thick woods and filthy bogs, its savage and uncouth people, from men
that had served the Queen there and got thereby small thanks and less
renown; and I had read of these matters also in the book of Master
Spenser, whereof a written copy (for it was not put in print until many
years after) had come into my hands. For these reasons, therefore, I
was no ways in the mind to adventure myself across the Irish Sea.
But that winter, a day or two before Christmas, Sir Oliver St. John
arrived in London out of that distressful country, bearing letters from
the Lord Deputy and his council wherein they set down the exceeding hard
straits in which they rested for want of provisions and men. They
related how they had annoyed all parts of the town of Kinsale with the
battery of their ordnance, so as the breach was almost assaultable,
insomuch that they were not without hope of the enemy yielding, or of
their being able to enter the town by force. But a thousand more
Spaniards had lately sailed into Castlehaven with great store of
munition and artillery; and moreover the Spanish commander had besought
the O'Neill to haste to relieve him, who had accordingly come and
encamped not far from the town with eight thousand men or more. The
Lord Deputy therefore earnestly entreated the Lords of the Council in
England to despatch to him without delay four thousand good footmen at
the least, with victuals, munition, and money.
These urgent messages occasioned a notable stir among the Lords of the
Council, and being laid before the Queen by master secretary Cecil,
kindled her to an extremity of rage. Her Majesty had already been at
great charges to sustain the Lord Deputy in his dealings with the rebels
and their Spanish aids, and being ever loth to untie her purse-strings,
she bemoaned exceedingly the ruinous expense which this demand of the
Lord Mountjoy would cast upon her. Yet had she a proud spirit that ill
brooked the thought of Spain planting a foot in any part whatsoever of
her dominions, and she was torn betwixt her parsimony and her care for
the common weal.
It chanced that, having gone to Greenwich, where the Queen then was, to
bear my part in the revels that were performed at Christmas-time, I came
in the eye of Her Majesty one day as she passed through the hall. She
stayed her walk (alas! how tottering!), and as I rose up from bending my
knee, my heart smote me to see how thin and frail her body was, albeit
her eye still flashed and glittered with the fire of her unquenchable
spirit.
"So, sirrah," quoth she, "you are come again out of your pigsty to
refresh your snout with more delectable odours."
Her Majesty was ever hard of tongue, and she bore me a grudge for that I
had demitted the humble office I had one time held at her Court.
"Madam," I said, "I have come like Eurydice, out of Tartarus into the
bounteous light of the sun."
"Ods fish! dost think to win me by thy flattery?" she said; nevertheless
methought she was not ill-pleased. But she went on, in a pitiful shrill
voice: "What does a proper man here in idlesse, conning soft speeches
and inditing silly verses to silly wenches, when my kingdom of Ireland
lieth in peril for lack of swords! Go to, rascal; an thou wouldst
pleasure me, show thyself a man, and vex me not with lip service and the
antics of an ape."
Then, wellnigh breaking in two with her churchyard cough, she passed on,
leaving me a sorry spectacle of confusion.
Methought that now I could do no other thing than take up the challenge
which my wrathful Mistress had flung at me. In two breaths she had
called me swine and ape, and I grudged that in this her feeble old age
she should hold me in low esteem. 'Twas too plain that she was not long
for this world, and the desire to please her, together with my old
longing for a bout with the Spaniards, prevailed upon me to join myself
to those voluntaries that were proffering their service in Ireland.
Accordingly I wrote a brief epistle to her Majesty, acquainting her of
my design, and received for answer two lines in a quivering hand.
"Chris, thou'rt a good lad. God bless thee with perseverance. Thy
loving sovereign, E.R."
*II*
In such manner it came to pass that, one day about the middle of
January, I found myself sailing into Kinsale harbour, my ship having
aboard her many gentlemen that were voluntaries like myself, and some
portion of the new levies for which the Lord Deputy had made petition. I
stretched my ears for the sound of guns and the blast of war trumpets,
but there was a great stillness and peace that smote me with dread of
ill news. However, on coming to land, I discovered as much with
disappointment as with joy that the Spaniards had yielded themselves by
articles of capitulation a few days before, that the O'Neill had been
beaten back from the English camp with sore discomfiture, and his men
scattered to the four winds. Though I rejoiced in the good success of
the Lord Deputy's arms, I was vexed that I had come too late to deal a
blow against the Spaniard, more especially as I foresaw a weary campaign
against the native rebels.
It fell out according to my expectation. The Lord Deputy, furnished
with new supplies of men and munition, marched through the land,
burning, wasting, harrowing without ruth, and hanging such chief rebels
as fell into his hands. As it ever is in war, they that suffered most
were the poor peasantry of the country: and seeing daily their
lamentable estate, finding everywhere men dead of famine, insomuch that
in one day's journey we saw upwards of a thousand men lying unburied, my
heart sickened of this work, and I thought to return home. Could I but
have looked into the future, I should have seen divers sorry experiences
through which it was my destiny to pass; but that which is to come is
mercifully hid from us. I foresaw neither what I was to suffer, nor
that great blessing which Providence bestowed on me, whereby I have ever
regarded my going to Ireland as the most fortunate and happy event of
all that ever befell me.
That island is covered in every part with thick forest and vast swamps
and bogs, from which arise exhalations exceeding noisome as well to the
native people as to our English. From camping oft on the borders of
such oozy fens I took an Irish ague, suffering sharp pains in all my
limbs, with shivering and vomiting, my teeth chattering, my head
oppressed with ringing noises intolerable. So sore was I beset by this
most malignant distemper as that all my strength departed from me; I
could neither sit my horse nor march afoot, and was afflicted with so
desperate a languor and exhaustion that I believed myself nigh unto
death. Being in so dreadful a case, I must needs be left behind in a
small fort, that had lately been constructed to command a ford on the
border of O'Neill's country; and I am sure that when my companions shook
my hand and bade me farewell, none expected ever to see me in life
again. But by the mercy of God and the devotion of my servant (there
was no physician in that place) I recovered of my fever; and within ten
days or so I felt myself ready to make a push towards the army that had
gone before.
We had learnt by scourers that our people were then distant some thirty
miles across the hills, intending to advance further towards the north.
By this it was plain that I must needs hasten if I would come up with
them, and there was the more reason for this in that the hills were
known to be the haunt and covert of rebels. But I had good hope that,
being furnished with a noble horse, and accompanied with my stout and
mettlesome servant, and three tall natives of the country, of proven
loyalty, I might compass the journey of thirty miles in security. I
acknowledge that, having been occupied of late in hunting a broken
rabble, I held the enemy in lighter esteem than I ought; and when I look
back upon the matter, I feel some scorn of my recklessness, and deem
that in what befell me I had no more than my desert.
We set forth at daybreak one morning, one of the Irishmen leading us,
and took our way into the hills. I knew somewhat of the trials and
hardships of travel in Ireland, but they were as nought by comparison
with that which I encountered that day. The country was covered with
close and almost impassable woods, intersected with watercourses of
depth sufficient to render hazardous their crossing; and we pierced the
woods but to find ourselves in swamp or morass. I was by this time aware
of the treacherous nature of these quaggy places; but in spite of all
our heedfulness, and notwithstanding that three of us were natives well
skilled in their country's discommodities, we had ofttimes much ado to
hold our course. Ever and anon we saw ourselves forced to go round
about; and although our guide ordered our going with as diligent
carefulness as he might, many times we had need to quit our saddles and
lend aid to our horses, to draw them from the deceitful mire of the
swamps, in such sort that we made but poor going, and by the middle part
of the day had accomplished a mere trifle of our journey.
As we were picking our steps thus gingerly over an expanse of spongy
ground, overhung by a low beetling cliff, there befell an accident upon
which I cannot look back without a mortifying pang, seeing that I was,
for all my thirty years, a veteran in war. In all our journey up to
that moment we had seen neither man nor any living thing save only the
small animals of the woods, and some few wild cattle that smelt us afar
off, and vanished from our sight more quickly than eye could follow. On
a sudden, before we were aware, there descended upon us from the midst
of the bushes on the rock aforesaid a thick shower of spears and stones.
A fragment of rock smote upon my headpiece with such violence as
wellnigh to stun me; and my horse, made frantic by the sudden onset and
the fierce cries of the men in ambush, swerved from the narrow track
whereon we were riding, and carried me into the swamp. Dizzy with the
shock, I lost my manage of the beast, which, plunging to regain his
footing, cast me headlong from my saddle.
When I came to myself, I saw my horse in the hands of two kernes, as
they are named in that country--rude and ragged fellows, barefoot,
half-naked, and armed with light darts and a long and deadly knife which
they call a skene. These two were hauling upon my horse's bridle, to
bring the scrambling beast upon the dry ground. One of my Irishmen lay
like a senseless log, with a dart in his body; another and my servant
were overthrown, and the kernes were standing over them; the third
Irishman, as I saw, had wheeled his horse, and was spurring along the
track, I supposed to bring help. I made no doubt but that the rascals,
when they had finished their work upon my followers, would deal likewise
with me, whom they had left hitherto, seeing me dazed and bewildered by
my fall.