II

The main body of the Parliament horse and two regiments at least

of their foot were quartered at Lestithiel, in the valley under

Boconnoc--a neat tidy town, but not commodious for so great a mob. It

stands by an ancient bridge of eight arches, where the tidal water

running up from Fowey spends the last of its strength; and there is

a Hall and Exchequer where the Dukes of Cornwall had been used to

receive their Stannary accounts, with a small prison beside for debtors

and offenders under the laws of Stannary.

This prison being crowded already with prisoners taken by the rebels,

the Provost Marshal clapped me, with nine others made captive in the

above skirmish, in the parish church of St. Bartholomew; and there set

a guard over us, using us more gently (I suppose) for that we had come

to him in more ceremonious fashion than by the ordinary hazard of war.

The rebel cavalry had turned the church into a stable, and defiled

it past description. Also I heard a tale of their having led a horse

to the font and christened him Charles--a double insult to God and

to their King; but will say in fairness that they practised no such

blasphemy during my sojourn there, nor seemed the men to do it, but

went about their grooming and feeding of their horses soberly enough,

making no more of the church than if it had indeed been a stable. Over

us they kept strict watch, but fed us as well as they themselves fared,

and showed us no incivility; nay, at my request one found pen, ink, and

paper for me that I might pass the time away by copying the scutcheons

in the windows, the glass of which they had spared.

Among us ten unfortunates were two young gentlemen of Cornwall,

Humphrey Grylls and John Trecarrel (but as "Jack" saluted by everyone).

They both had hurts: Grylls a shot through the flesh of an arm, with

two broken ribs to boot; Trecarrel a slight glancing wound across the

left lower ribs. For myself, I had taken no harm beyond the bruise

of my tumble, though my head swam for days after and I suffered from

frequent fits of nausea. The other seven were common troopers, decent

fellows; and one carried in his breeches' pocket a pack of cards, which

kept us well amused until a Roundhead sergeant, discovering our play,

reported it to the Provost-Marshal, who took the cards away.

In this church of Lestithiel, then, I dwelt from the day of my capture

(August 10) until the last of the month, and on the whole very

cheerfully; for we saw that the rebels intended us no injury, and from

some of them we had news of Sir Jacob Astley's seizing the forts at the

entry of Fowey Haven and so cutting off Essex from his supplies by sea;

wherefore we told ourselves that the Earl must either surrender or make

a desperate push to cut a way through his Majesty's posts, and that,

whichever he might choose, our liberty would not be long delayed.

Also, and besides my copying of the scutcheons, I pleased myself with

composing of a chronogramma which I here present to the reader. I

thought it mighty ingenious at the time: and so it is, and I spent four

days upon it--

_VIVat reX, CoMes esseXIVs DIssIpatVr._

or, in English, "Long live the King, the Earl of Essex is put to the

rout." You will see that, by taking out from the Latin all the letters

that stand for Roman numerals--and no other--you get the Annus Domini

1644: in this way--

_MDC together make sixteen hundred_ }

_and_ }

_XXVVVV, forty_ } _the total_ 1644.

_and_ }

_IIII, four_ }

I have shown it to many in private, and all agree that no better

chronogramma was made during the late troubles: but, to be sure, I had

leisure for it.

To leave these toys--on the last day but one of August, and a little

before nine in the evening, there came into the church (that was lit by

a few lanterns only) two foot-soldiers bearing a ladder between them

and a rope, which presently they set down in a corner by the belfry and

departed. They being scarce gone, by-and-by there entered two other

soldiers with a prisoner, whom they unbound--for his arms had been

trussed behind him--and bade make what cheer he might until the morrow.

Now, whether he had spied us or not as they brought him in I cannot

say; but, being loosed, he moved at first down the aisle uncertainly as

a man might who found even the dull light too strong for his eyes--then

with a quick tottering step towards us, that were gathered around a

lantern and taking our supper near the belfry: and as he drew toward us

I knew him for old Carminowe.

"Why, what harm can they have found in _you_?" asked I, taking his

hand (as fellows will in misfortune) and giving him a seat beside us.

At this distance of time I will own that this speech of mine seems not

over-delicate; yet these were the words I used, and, be sure, I meant

them well.

He put my question aside. "You had ill-luck," he said. "I watched you

from the high ground, and my heart went with you; that is to say,

with _you_, Sir--and with _you_." Here he bowed to Grylls and Jack

Trecarrel, and went on as if explaining his performance lucidly. "My

son, Sirs, had he lived, would have been about your age. He died at

eighteen and a few months: but I think of him year by year as alive

and growing, and so I seem to share in his hopes and his high mettle."

My companions--as well they might--stared at him, and from him to me;

thinking, no doubt, that here was some madman.

"Excuse me," said I, and presented him formally. "This gentleman and I

are, in a fashion, acquaintances. He is a countryman of yours, by name

Carminowe."

"Carminowe?" Young Grylls looked at him musingly. "I have read the name

on a hundred old parchments at home."

"The estates, Sir," said Carminowe, "have passed into many hands, but

into none worthier than that of Grylls."

"Faith, that's handsomely said!" answered Grylls, perceiving now that,

in spite of the old man's dress, he had to do with a gentleman. "And,

as for the estates, our greed (which, a generation or two back, was a

scandal) has not swallowed them all, I hope?--though, for that matter,

if these crop-ears prevail, 'tis little enough that any of us will

inherit."

"They will not prevail at this bout," said the old man. "At Fowey,

they tell me, the Earl has but six days' provisions and is planning to

slip away by sea. Between this and the coast the soldiers have eaten

all bare; in a day or two they must break through or surrender, and I

think, gentlemen, I can promise that you will be soon enlarged."

"You speak with assurance, Sir," said I, handing him a crust and

filling a pannikin for him from our common pail of water.

"And yet," said he, with a faint smile, "I am no combatant: no, nor

even a spy--though to-morrow morning they are to hang me for one."

He spoke the words quietly and fell to munching his crust. The three of

us--and the troopers too--stared at him amazed: and for explanation,

his jaws being occupied, he pointed a thin finger at the ladder and

rope.

"But surely," I began, "since you are no spy, someone can speak for

you----"

"Lord, Sirs!" he took me up; "what does it matter? I had yet left to

me a small estate in St. Teath parish, which they have twice pillaged.

My son they slew on outpost duty, before the first Braddock fight."

He turned to me again. "What says the Mohun motto, Sir? _Generis

revocamus honores_, is it not? Well, there is no chance of that for the

Carminowes. Let the Mohuns paint up their ancestral hand clutching

the Pope's golden flower: I have held a fairer in mine, and seen it

wither. I have lived through the bitterness of death; I have seen the

end of things. The last Carminowe goes down the blind way of fate--goes

out in obloquy to-morrow, hanged for a spy by mistake. I have finished

my quarrel with the gods: they are strong, and I make no complaint

that they choose to wind up with a jest. I do assure you, Sirs, that I

neither fear death nor disdain any way of it."

But here Jack Trecarrel, that had been staring gloomily at the wall

opposite, suddenly rubbed his eyes and sat up with a laugh.

"By the Lord, Master Carminowe! and if that be how you take it, you may

yet turn the jest against the gods."

We stared at him all, trying to read his meaning.

"Nay," he went on, "I have a slow wit, and you must give me time. The

notion in my head may be worth much or little. Only you must tell me,

Master Carminowe, on what ground you promised us that our liberty was

nigh at hand: for something will depend on that."

"'Tis that fortunate knowledge unfortunately brings me here," answered

the old man with a grave smile. "You know the narrow road that passes

for a space along the left bank above the bridge, and so strikes

away to the north-east over the downs? It has deep hedges, you will

remember, and at the bend stands a mean cottage. For days we have heard

talk that the enemy would try to break away by this road; and a week

ago Goring moved down a body of horse to the fields hard by and posted

a strong picket in and about the cottage, to counter this design. Well,

then, I, to-night, taking my ramble after sunset (as my custom is, and

known to our sentries), came down to this cottage, supposing myself

to be well within our lines. To my concern no one challenged me, and,

creeping a little closer, I found the place empty. But while I stood,

puzzling this out, a man called softly from a little way down the lane,

where between the hedges all was dark to my eyesight, whom I approached

without fear, supposing him to be one of our sergeants in command of a

picquet, and that maybe he had a message for me to take back to Goring.

'Give the password, friend, and tell us, What time did he say?' this

man demanded of me. I, taken aback by these words, stood still: and,

with that, I saw beyond the hedge the faint light of the stars shining

on many scores of morions and breastplates. 'Twas a whole troop of

horse drawn up and standing silent in the field below. At once I knew

that these must be rebels; that the pass had been sold by some traitor;

and that I had tumbled by mistake into the part of his messenger.

Heaven knows if, using my wit and naming an hour boldly, I might yet

have escaped and carried back warning to camp. I think not: for they

would have pressed me for the password. As it was, being dumbfoundered,

I broke away and tried to run: but the fellow was after me in a trice,

and my old legs carried me but a dozen yards before he had me down

and flung on my back. You can guess, Sirs, what remains to tell. They

marched me down here; and to-morrow--supposing me to know what would

implicate, no doubt, several men of standing in both armies--they will

close my mouth for ever. For 'tis certain the King's interests have

been betrayed, and the rogues will break through to-night, no one

hindering. They have a river-fog, too, to help them. Now, whether or

not the infantry will make a dash for it after the horse I cannot tell

you: but to-morrow his Majesty will march down into Lestithiel and you

will be free."

"Then a few hours would suffice to save you, Master Carminowe?" said

Trecarrel, still pondering.

The old gentleman shrugged his shoulders. "They will get my business

done early," said he. "I pray you, feel no more concern about it."

He turned to me and asked if I had amused myself with sketching the

monuments of this church as well as of Boconnoc. The windows being dark

against the lantern-light, we could see no more than the outlines of

their blazonries: but he seemed to know them by heart. I told him how

that among them I had found his own coat twice depicted--_azure_, a

bend _or_, but this time without the three-pointed label of difference.

He nodded. "And that is right," said he; "we have no business with the

label." He went on to tell that in Edward the Third's time, in the

English camp before Paris, Carminowe of Cornwall had challenged Sir

Richard Scrope with wrongfully bearing his arms; and that six knights

appointed to decide the controversy had found Carminowe to be descended

of a lineage armed _azure_, a bend _or_, since the time of King Arthur.

This led us into converse on the Scrope and Grosvenor dispute. "'Tis

curious," said he after a while, "that we may be the last men in

England to sit awake talking over these old tales. For when the rebels

have dispossessed his Majesty--as they surely will--and have destroyed

the fountain of honour, who would light his pipe with such-like

straws?"

But I would not allow the King's cause to be hopeless, and showed him

my chronogramma, not without complacency.

He took the paper in hand, and was holding it close to the lantern, to

con it, when at that instant Jack Trecarrel started up on his straw

pallet into a sitting posture, and nudged Grylls--who, with the rest of

our comrades, lay in a sound sleep; but, feeling his elbow jogged, he

opened his eyes.

Having wakened Grylls, Trecarrel motioned to us both to do as he did

without questioning, and began very cautiously to pull off his boots.

While he did this a new thought seemed to strike him, for he puckered

his brows awhile, and leaning towards me whispered across the back of

Carminowe (who still bent forward, studying my scrap of paper), "Rouse

the men on your side--softly as you can! They may all be useful." He

turned to Grylls and whispered (as I suppose) the same order: for

Grylls at once touched the shoulder of the trooper lying next him, and

put finger to lip as the fellow stirred in his sleep and blinked up at

him.

I on my part, having pulled off my boots obediently, began to rouse

the men nigh me with similar caution; so that presently we had the

whole ring awake and staring, their eyes asking what we intended.

"Heaven help me if _I_ know!" I muttered to myself, but endeavoured to

answer the looks bent upon me by looking extremely wise.

"Most ingenious!" said Carminowe aloud, who all this while had been

working out my riddle, observant of none of these preparations. He

turned to me. "May I ask, Sir----"

"Hist!" commanded Trecarrel, laying a hand on his arm and peering

into the space of darkness between us and the chancel, where three

stable-lanterns shone foggily--one tilted on the cushion of the

pulpit-desk, the other two set side by side on the altar itself. In the

choir-stalls and on the floor between (where the altar-step, with a

coat laid upon it, served for their pillow) maybe a score of rebels lay

snoring. These did not belong to our regular guard, and indeed by night

I never discovered that we had a guard: but some four hundred soldiers

bivouacked, as a rule, in the churchyard outside, with sentries posted;

which from the first had been a dead-wall to all our projects of

breaking prison.

After peering for half a minute or so, Trecarrel raised himself to a

kind of crouching posture, Grylls, at the same time, imitating him.

They beckoned to a couple of our troopers to follow them; and, backing

out of the lantern's rays, in a trice all four made a sudden dart

across for the shadow of the belfry arch.

Then in a trice I understood what was forward; and, pointing to

Carminowe's feet, signalled to him to slip off his shoes. The tower of

Lestithiel church rises to a spire, and its belfry chamber stood then

on a raised floor, approached, not as in most belfries by a winding

stair, but through a trapway by a ladder reaching up from the ground.

During our captivity this ladder had been removed and perhaps cast down

outside in the grass of the churchyard. But now I followed Trecarrel's

guess that the same had been found and carelessly brought back for

Carminowe's hanging on the morrow. I knelt and unlaced the old man's

shoes. He suffered this, eying me as if to ask what it meant, but

making no protest.

One by one our comrades slipped away into the shadow under the belfry.

I heard the ladder raised softly and then a light scraping as its upper

end touched the stonework aloft. It seemed to me, too, that I heard

a footstep mounting the rungs; but of this I could not be sure. Our

enemies in the chancel snored on.

Five minutes passed; again I heard a light footfall, and Trecarrel came

stealing back to us.

"Blow out the light," he commanded--and, as he crouched to whisper

this, I saw his face running bright with sweat. "And give me the

candle--the bolt of the trap is stiff."

He took the candle from me, and after waiting a moment, to be sure that

none of those in the chancel had taken alarm at this blowing out of

the light, we stole across all three to the ladder's foot. Trecarrel

mounted again. I heard him rub the tallow on the bolt--or seemed, at

least, to hear it; and by-and-by the trap opened with a creak. Still

the sleepers took no alarm.

I pushed Carminowe forward, and believe that he was among the first to

mount. One by one the others followed, Grylls carrying with him the

coil of rope. I, as senior in command, took last turn. This adventure

was not mine, nor could I see the end of it; but I supposed that in the

uncommon military operation of retreating up a steeple the commanding

officer's place must be the extreme rear.

My foot was on the lowest rung when some fool above, who had taken the

coil of rope off Grylls' shoulders, let it slip through the hatchway.

It struck the ladder, and came glancing down with a rush fit to wake

the dead; and almost on the instant two or three of the men in the

chancel had sprung to their feet and were snatching down the lanterns

there. Now I had leapt aside nimbly--and luckily too, or the blow of it

had either brained or, at the least, stunned me: and as it thudded on

to the pavement I made a clutch at the rope and sprang for the ladder

with a shout that woke the whole church and echoed back on me with a

roar.

"Hoist!" I yelled, clambering as high as I might, and anchoring myself

with an arm crookt through a rung.

"'Hoist' it is!" sung down Trecarrel's voice cheerfully. "Hold tight

below--and you, lads, up with him! One, two, three--heave, my hearties!"

'Twas the only way: for already half a score of the rebel rogues were

bearing down the nave towards me at a run. But, I thank Heaven, they

had started in too great a hurry to remember their muskets. They

reached the belfry arch to find the foot of my stairway lifted a good

six feet above their heads. One or two leaped high and made a clutch

for it, but missed; and as they fell back, staring and raising their

lanterns, I was borne aloft and removed from them through the trapway

like any stage god.

My comrades lifting me off the ladder, I found myself on a floor of

stout oak, and in the midst of an octagonal chamber filled with a pale,

foggy light--as I supposed, of the declining moon. Directly overhead,

in a cavernous darkness, hung the great bells like monstrous black

spiders, with their ropes like filaments let down and swaying: for a

stiff and chilly breeze blew every way through the chamber, which had a

high open window in each of its eight sides.

For these windows the most of us scrambled at once, foreseeing what

must happen. Indeed, the baffled rogues below lost no time over their

next move; but running for their muskets, began firing up at the hatch

and at the floor under our feet--the boards of which, by the favour of

Heaven, were of oak and marvellous solid; also the heavy beams took

many of their shot; but none the less they made us skip.

This volley, fired suddenly within, at once, as you may guess, alarmed

all the bivouacs in the churchyard. Crowds poured into the church,

and word passing that all the eleven prisoners were escaped into the

belfry under the spire, other crowds ran back into the street and

began firing briskly at the windows. But this helped them nothing, the

angle being too steep, and the bullets--or so many of them as found

entrance--striking upwards over our heads. By-and-by a few cleverer

marksmen climbed to the upper rooms of certain houses around the

church, and thence peppered us hotly: yet with no more effect than

the others, for by this time I had discovered, by sounding with my

heel, where the stout beams ran beneath us. Slipping down from our

window-sconces and choosing these beams to stand upon, we were entirely

safe from the musketeers outside, and reasonably protected from those

below.

"Now the one thing to pray for," whispered Trecarrel to me in a pause

of the firing, "is that Lestithiel town contains no second ladder so

tall as ours: and I believe it cannot."

"There is another thing to pray for," said I; "which is, that the dawn

may come quickly."

He stared at me. "My good Sir, are you crazed?" he demanded. "Day has

broke already! What light on earth do you suppose this to be all about

us?"

"I took it for the moon," I confessed somewhat shamefacedly.

He burst into a laugh. "You and your friend then must have sped the

time rarely with your Scropes and your Grosvenors, your fesses and

bends, your counter-paleys and what-not. I can tell you the night

dragged by tediously enough for me, that had to lie and listen to your

discoursing!"

"But hullo!" said I; "they seem to have ceased firing below. And whose

voice is that calling?"

'Twas the voice of the Provost-Marshal summoning us to parley. He had

been roused up in haste, and by the tone of his voice was in a towering

passion of temper.

"At your service, Sir!" I called out in answer, approaching the trap.

"But if you want a parley it must be an honourable one, and no shooting

up or catching me at disadvantage."

"My men will not fire again until I give the word."

"Very well, then: what do you require of us?"

"I require you to give up to me, and instantly, the prisoner whom we

took last night. This done, I may consent to overlook your escapade."

"For what purpose do you want him?"

"That, Sir, is my affair, I should hope. 'Tis enough that I require his

surrender."

"Indeed no, Sir: 'tis nothing like enough. The gentleman you speak of

happens to be a friend of mine; and you have formed an opinion of him

as incorrect as it is injurious. If I consent to release him to you

it will only be on your engaging yourself most solemnly to do him no

harm."

'Tis wonderful what an advantage height gives a man in an argument. The

Provost-Marshal, dancing with rage on the floor far below and cricking

back his neck to get sight of me, cut one of the absurdest figures in

the world.

"I'll hang you all!" he threatened, lifting and shaking his fist. "I'll

hang every mother's son of you!"

But here I felt a hand laid on my shoulder, and looked up to see

Trecarrel standing over me and smiling, and the belfry full of a sudden

with rosy morning light.

"Wyvern," said he, "don't be keeping all the fun to yourself! Let me

have a turn with the man, and go you to the window--the north-east

window yonder, and tell me an I speak not the truth to him."