For Faith and Freedom

by Walter Besant

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  SIR CHRISTOPHER.

  I know not whom I expected to find in consequence of Barnaby'swords, as we went up the dark and dirty stairs which led to theupper room. Robin was not a prisoner. Why--then--but I knew not whatI thought, all being strange and dreadful.

  At the top of the stairs we found ourselves in a room of the samesize as the lower chamber, but not so high, and darker, being agloomy place indeed, insomuch that it was not for some minutes thatone could plainly discern things. It was lighted by a low, longwindow, set very close with thick bars, the shutters thrown openso that all the light and air possible to be admitted might comein. It had a great fireplace, but there was no fire burning, andthe air of the room struck raw, though outside it was a warm andsunny day. The roof was supported, as in the room below, by means ofthick square pillars, studded with great nails set close together,for what purpose I know not. Every part of the woodwork in the roomwas in the same way stuck full of nails. On the floor lay half ascore mattresses, the property of those who could afford to pay thewarders an exorbitant fee for the luxury. At Ilminster, as I amtold, at Newgate, the chief prison of the country, the same customobtains of exacting heavy fees from the poor wretches clapped intoward. It is, I suppose, no sin to rob the criminal, the debtor, thetraitor, or the rebel. For those who had nothing to pay there wereonly a few bundles of straw, and on these were lying half a dozenwretches, whose white faces and glazed eyes showed that they wouldindeed cheat Tom the Hangman, though not in the way that Barnabyhoped. These were wounded either in the Sedgemoor fight or in theirattempt to escape.

  My father lay on a pallet bed. His face showed not the least change;his eyes were closed, and you would have thought him dead; andbeside him, also on a pallet, sat, to my astonishment, none otherthan Sir Christopher himself.

  He rose and came to meet us, smiling sadly.

  'Madam,' he said, taking my mother's hand, 'we meet in a dolefulplace, and we are, indeed, in wretched plight. I cannot bid youwelcome; I cannot say that I am glad to see you. There is nothingthat I can say of comfort or of hope, except, which you knowalready, that we are always in the hands of the Lord.'

  'Sir Christopher,' said my mother, 'it was kind and neighbourly inyou to come. But you were always his best friend. Look at his poorwhite face!' she only thought upon her husband. 'You would thinkhim dead! More than a fortnight he hath lain thus--motionless. Ithink he feels no pain. Husband, if thou canst hear me, make somesign--if it be but to open one eye! No!' she cried. 'Day after dayhave I thus entreated him and he makes no answer! He neither seesnor hears! Yet he doth not die; wherefore I think that he may yetrecover speech and sit up again, and presently, perhaps, walk about,and address himself again unto his studies.'

  She waited not for any answer, but knelt down beside him and pouredsome drops of milk into the mouth of the sick man. Sir Christopherlooked at her mournfully and shook his head.

  Then he turned to me, and kissed me without saying a word.

  'Oh! Sir,' I cried, 'how could you know that my father would bebrought unto this place? With what goodness of heart have you cometo our help!'

  'Nay, child,' he replied gravely, 'I came because I had no choicebut to come. Like your father and your brother, Alice, I am aprisoner.'

  'You, Sir? You a prisoner? Why, you were not with the Duke.'

  'That is most true. And yet a prisoner. Why, after the news ofSedgemoor fight I looked for nothing else. They tried to arrestMr. Speke, but he has fled; they have locked up Mr. Prideaux, ofFord Abbey; Mr. Trenchard has retired across the seas. Why shouldthey pass me over? Nay, there were abundant proofs of my zeal forthe Duke. My grandson and my grandnephew had joined the rebels.Your father and brother rode over to Lyme on my horses; with mygrandson rode off a dozen lads of the village. What more couldthey want? Moreover, I am an old soldier of Lord Essex's army;and, to finish, they found in the window-seat a copy of Monmouth'sDeclaration--which, indeed, I had forgotten, or I might havedestroyed it.'

  'Alas! alas!' I cried, wringing my hands. 'Your Honour, too, aprisoner!'

  Since the Sergeant spoke to Barnaby about the interest of friends,I had been thinking that Sir Christopher, whose power and interest,I fondly thought, must be equal to those of any Lord in the land,would interpose to save us all. And he was now a prisoner himself,involved in the common ruin! One who stands upon a bridge and seeswith terror the last support carried away by the raging flood feelssuch despair as fell upon my soul.

  'Oh, Sir!' I cried again. 'It is Line upon Line--Woe upon Woe!'

  He took my hand in his, and held it tenderly.

  'My child,' he said, 'to an old man of seventy-five what doth itmatter whether he die in his bed or whether he die upon a scaffold?Through the pains of death, as through a gate, we enter upon ourrest.'

  'It is dreadful!' I cried again. 'I cannot endure it!'

  'The shame and ignominy of this death,' he said, 'I shall, I trust,regard lightly. We have struck a blow for Freedom and for Faith.Well; we have been suffered to fail. The time hath not yet come.Yet, in the end, others shall carry on the Cause, and Religion shallprevail. Shall we murmur who have been God's instruments?'

  'Alas! alas!' I cried again.

  'To me, sweet child, it is not terrible to contemplate my end. Butit is sad to think of thee, and of thy grave and bitter loss. Hastthou heard news of Robin and of Humphrey?'

  'Oh, Sir!--are they also in prison--are they here?'

  'No; but I have news of them. I have a letter brought to me butyesterday. Read it, my child, read it.'

  He pulled the letter out of his pocket and gave it to me. Then Iread aloud, and thus it ran:--

  'Honoured Sir and Grandfather,

  'I am writing this letter from the prison of Exeter, where, withHumphrey and about two hundred or more of our poor fellows, I amlaid by the heels, and shall so continue until we shall all be tried.

  'It is rumoured that Lord Jeffreys will come down to try us, and weare assured by report that the King shows himself revengeful, andis determined that there shall be no mercy shown. After Sedgemoorfight they hanged, as you will have heard, many of the prisonersat Weston Zoyland, at Bridgwater, and at Taunton, without trial.If the King continue in this disposition it is very certain that,though the common sort may be forgiven, the gentlemen and those whowere officers in the rebel army will certainly not escape. ThereforeI have no hope but to conclude my life upon the gallows--a thingwhich, I confess, I had never looked to do. But I hope to meet myfate with courage and resignation.

  'Humphrey is with me, and it is some comfort (though I know notwhy) that we shall stand or fall together; for if I was a Captainin the army he was a Chyrurgeon. That he was also a secret agent ofthe exiles, and that he stirred up the Duke's friends on his wayfrom London to Sherborne, that they know not, or it would certainlygo hard with him. What do I say? Since they will hang him, thingscannot very well go harder.

  'When the fight was over, and the Duke and Lord Grey fled, there wasnothing left but to escape as best we might. I hope that some of theBradford lads will make their way home in safety: they stood theirground and fought valiantly. Nay, if we had been able to arm all whovolunteered and would have enlisted, and if our men had all shownsuch a spirit as your valiant lads of Bradford Orcas, then, I say,the enemy must have been cut to pieces.

  'When we had no choice left but to run, I took the road toBridgwater, intending to ride back to that place, where, perhaps,our forces might be rallied. But this proved hopeless. There Ifound, however, Humphrey, and we resolved that the safest plan wouldbe to ride by way of Taunton and Exeter, leaving behind us thegreat body of the King's army, and so escape to London if possible,where we should certainly find hiding-places in plenty, until thepursuit should be at an end. Our plan was to travel along bywaysand bridle-paths, and that by night only, hiding by day in barns,linneys, and the like. We had money for the charges of our journey.Humphrey would travel as a physician returning to London from theWest as soon as we had gotten out o
f the insurgents' country; I wasto be his servant. Thus we arranged the matter in our minds, andalready I thought that we were safe, and in hiding somewhere inLondon, or across the seas in the Low Countries again.

  'Well, to make short my story, we got no further than Exeter, wherewe were betrayed by a rascal countryman who recognised us, causedus to be arrested, and swore to us. Thereupon we were clapped intojail, where we now lie.

  'Hon'd Sir: Humphrey, I am sorry to write, is much cast down, notbecause he dreads death, which he doth not, any more than to lieupon his bed; but because he hath, he says, drawn so many to theirruin. He numbers me among those--though, indeed, it was none of hisdoing, but by my own free will, that I entered upon this business,which, contrary to reasonable expectation, hath turned out so ill.Wherefore, dear Sir, since there is no one in the world whoseopinion and counsel Humphrey so greatly considers as your own, Ipray you, of your goodness, send him some words of consolation andcheer.'

  'That will I, right readily,' said Sir Christopher. 'At least thepoor lad cannot accuse himself of dragging me into the Clink.'

  'I hear,' continued Robin's letter, 'that my mother hath gone withMr. Boscorel to London, to learn if aught can be done for us. Ifshe do not return before we are finished, bid her think kindly ofHumphrey and not to lay these things to his charge. As for my deargirl, my Alice, I hear nothing of her. Miss Blake, who led the Maidswhen they gave the flags to the Duke, is, I hear, clapped intoprison. Alice is not spoken of. I am greatly perturbed in spiritconcerning her, and I would gladly, if that might be compassed,have speech with her before I die. I fear she will grieve and weep;but not more than I myself at leaving her, poor maid! I hear, also,nothing concerning her father, who was red-hot for the Cause, andtherefore, I fear, will not be passed over or forgotten. Nor do Ihear aught of Barnaby, who, I hope, hath escaped on shipboard, ashe said that he should do if things went ajar. Where are they all?The roads are covered with rough men, and it is not fit for suchas Alice and her mother to be travelling. I hope that they havereturned in safety to Bradford Orcas, and that my old master, Dr.Eykin, hath forgotten his zeal for the Protestant Duke, and isalready seated again among his books. If that is so, tell Alice,Honoured Sir, that there is no hour of the day or night but I thinkof her continually; that the chief pang of my approaching fate isthe thought that I shall leave her in sorrow, and that I cannot sayor do anything to stay her sorrow. Comfort her I cannot, save withwords which will come better from the saintly lips of her father. Iagain pray thee to assure her of my faithful love. Tell her that therecollection of her sweet face and steadfast eyes fills me with sogreat a longing that I would fain die at once so as to bring nearerthe moment when we shall be able to sit together in heaven. My lifehath been glorified, if I may say so in humility, by her presence inmy heart, which drove away all common and unclean things. Of suchstrength is earthly love. Nay, I could not, I now perceive, be happyeven with the joys of heaven if she were not by my side. Where isshe, my heart, my love? Pray God, she is in safety.

  'And now, Sir, I have no more to say: The prison is a hot andreeking place; at night it is hard to bear the foulness and thestench of it. Humphrey says that we may shortly expect some jailfever or small-pox to break out among us, in which case the work ofthe Judges may be lightened. The good people of this ancient cityare in no way afraid of the King's vindictiveness, but send in oftheir bounty quantity of provisions--fruit, eggs, fresh meat, saltedmeat, ale, and cider--every day for the poor prisoners, which showswhich way their opinions do lean, even although the clergy areagainst us. Honoured Sir, I am sure and certain that the miscarriageof our enterprise was caused by the conduct of those who had us inhand. In a year or two there shall be seen (but not by us) anotheruprising; under another leader with another end.

  'So no more. I send to thee, dear and Honoured Sir, my bounden dutyand my grateful thanks for all that I owe to your tender care andaffection. Pray my mother, for me, to mourn no more for me than isbecoming to one of her piety and virtue.

  'Alas! it is thinking upon her, and upon my poor lost Alice, thatmy heart is wellnigh torn in pieces. But (tell Humphrey) through nofault--no--through no fault of his.

  'From thy dutiful and obedient grandson,--

  'R. C.'

  I read this all through. Then I folded up the letter and returned itto Sir Christopher. As he took it the tears came into his dear andvenerable eyes and rolled down his cheeks.

  'My dear--my dear,' he said, 'it is hard to bear. Everyone who isdear to thee will go; there is an end of all; unless some way, ofwhich we know nothing, be opened unto us.'

  'Why,' I said, 'if we were all dead and buried, and our soulstogether in heaven'----

  'Patience, my dear,' said the old man.

  'Oh! must they all die--all? My heart will burst! Oh! Sir, will notone suffice for all? Will they not take me and hang me, and let therest go free?'

  'Child,' he took my hand between his own, 'God knows that ifone life would suffice for all, it should be mine. Nay, I wouldwillingly die ten times over to save thy Robin for thee. He is notdead yet, however. Nor is he sentenced. There are so many involvedthat we may hope for a large measure of mercy. Nay, more. His motherhath gone to London, as he says in his letter, with my son-in-law,Philip Boscorel, to see if aught can be done, even to the selling ofmy whole estate, to procure the enlargement of the boys. I know notif anything can be done, but be assured Philip Boscorel will leaveno stone unturned.'

  'Oh! can money buy a pardon? I have two hundred gold pieces. Theyare Barnaby's'----

  'Then, my dear, they must be used to buy pardon for Barnaby and thyfather--though I doubt whether any pardon need be bought for one whois brought so low.'

  Beside the bed my mother sat crouched, watching his white face asshe had done all day long in our hiding-place. I think she heedednothing that went on around her, being wrapped in her hopes andprayers for the wounded man.

  Then Sir Christopher kissed me gently on the forehead.

  'They say the King is unforgiving, my dear. Expect not, therefore,anything. Say to thyself, every morning, that all must die. To knowthe worst brings with it something of consolation. Robin must die;Humphrey must die; your brother Barnaby must die; your father--buthe is wellnigh dead already--and I myself, all must die upon thescaffold if we escape this noisome jail. In thinking of this,remember who will be left. My dear, if thou art as a widow and yeta maiden, I charge thee solemnly that thou forget thine own privategriefs and minister to those who will have none but thee to helpthem. Live not for thyself, but to console and solace those who,like thyself bereaved, will need thy tender cares.'