Shrewsbury: A Romance

by Stanley John Weyman

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  It wanted two hours of midnight on a fine night when we two rode overLondon Bridge, and through a gap in the houses saw the river flowingbelow, a ripple of silver framed in blackness, and so cold to the eyethat involuntarily I shivered; feeling a return of all the vague fearsand apprehensions which, originally awakened by the prospect of thejourney, had been set at rest for the time by the awe in which I heldmy companion. I began to recall a dozen stories of footpads andhighwaymen, outrage and robbery, which I had read, and found but coldcomfort in the reflection that the Kent Road, from the amount oftraffic that used it, was accounted one of the safest in England. Itwas not wonderful, that with nerves so disordered, I went in front ofdanger; or that when--opposite the Marshalsea, where the chain crossesthe road, near the entrance to White Horse Yard--a man came suddenlyout of a passage and caught hold of my companion's rein, I cried out,and all but turned my horse to fly.

  Smith himself appeared to be taken off his guard; for, after biddingme beware what I did, he called with the same harshness to the man torelease the rein, or take the consequences.

  "Oh, I am all right," the fellow answered roughly, peering at himthrough the darkness. "You are Mr. Smith?"

  "Well?"

  "Fairholt sent me--to stop you."

  "Fairholt!"

  "Ay, he is here."

  "Here?" my companion cried, in a tone of rage and surprise. "Whatthe----! Why, he should be--you know where, by this time!"

  "Ay, but his horse threw him this morning, and he is lying at theWhite Horse here, with a broken leg!"

  Smith cursed the absent man for a fool. "I wish he had broken hisneck!" he said savagely. And then, after an interval, "Has he sentanybody?"

  "He has had something else to think about," the man answered drily."And so would you, master, with his leg!"

  Smith swore again, and sat gloomily silent.

  "He says if you can stead it off for twenty-four hours," the mancontinued, "he will arrange that----"

  "No names," Smith cried sharply, interrupting him.

  "Well, that--someone shall take his place and do the job."

  Smith did not answer for a time, but at length in a curt, incisivetone, "Tell him, yes," he said. "I will see to it. And you--keep astill tongue, will you? You were going with him, I suppose?"

  "Ay."

  "And you will come with the other?"

  "May be. And if not I shall not blab."

  Smith by a nod showed that the man had taken his meaning; after which,bidding him good-night, he pricked up his horse. "Come on," he said,addressing me with impatience. "I thought to have had companions, andso ridden more securely. But we must make the best of it."

  Heaven knows that I too would have liked companions, and took the roadagain dolefully enough. Nor was that the worst of it; Smith, inspeaking to the stranger, had mentioned Fairholt. Now, I knew thename, and knew the man to be one of the messengers attached to theSecretary's office, one whose business it was to execute warrants andarrest political prisoners. But what had Smith, riding to a secretinterview with a man outlawed and in hiding, to do with messengers?With Fairholt?

  And then, as if this were not enough to disturb me with a view oftreachery, black as gulf seen by traveller through a rift in themist--if this glimpse, I say, were not enough, how was I going toreconcile Smith's statement that he had expected companions with hisfirst cry, uttered in wrath and surprise--that Fairholt ought to be bythis time--well, at some distant point?

  In fine, I was so far from being persuaded that Smith had expectedcompany, that I gravely suspected that he had made quite otherarrangements; arrangements of the most perfidious character. And asthe horses' hoofs rang monotonously on the hard road, and we rose andfell in the saddle, and I peered forward into the gloom, fearing allthings and doubting all things, for certain I feared and doubtednothing so much as I did the dark and secret man beside me; whosescheming brain, spinning plot within plot, each darker and moreinvolved than the other, kept all my ingenuity at a stretch toovertake the final end and purpose he had at heart.

  Indeed, I despair of conveying to others how gravely this sombrecompanionship and more sombre uncertainty aggravated the terrors of ajourney, that at the best of times must have been little to my taste.To the common risks of the road, deserted at that hour by all savecutpurses and rogues, was added a suspicion, as much more harassingthan these, as unseen dangers ever surpass the known. It was in vainthat I strove to divert my mind from the figure by my side; neitherthe bleak heath above Greenwich--whence we looked back at the reddishhaze that canopied London, and forward to where the Thames marshesstretched eastward under night--nor the gibbet on Dartford Brent,where a body hung in chains, poisoning the air, nor the light thatshone dim and solitary, far to the left, across the river, and puzzledme until he told me that it was Tilbury--neither of these things, Isay, though they occupied my thoughts by turns and for a moment, hadpower to drive him from my mind, or divert my fears to dangers moreapparent. And in this mood, now glancing askance at him, and nowmoving uneasily under his gaze, I might have ridden to Rochester if myear had not caught--I think when we were two or three miles short ofthe city--the sound of a horse trotting fast on the road behind us.

  At first it followed so faintly on the breeze that I doubted, thinkingit might be either the echo of our hoofs, or a pulse beating in myears. Then, on a hard piece of ground, it declared itselfunmistakably; and again as suddenly it died away.

  At that I spoke involuntarily. "He has stopped," I said.

  Smith laughed in his teeth. "He is crossing the wet bottom, fool--bythe creek," he said.

  And before I could answer him the dull sound of a horse gallopingfast, but moving on the turf that ran alongside the road, proved himto be right. "Draw up!" he whispered in something of a hurry, andthen, as I hesitated, "Do you hear?" he continued, sharply seizing myrein. "What do you fear? Do you think that night birds prey on nightbirds?"

  Whatever I feared, I feared him more: and turning my horse, I satshivering. For notwithstanding his confident words I saw that he washandling his holster; and I knew that he was drawing a pistol; and itwas well the suspense was short. Before I had time for many qualms,the horseman, a dark figure, lurched on us through the gloom, pulledhis horse on to its haunches, and, with raised hand, cried to us todeliver.

  "And no nonsense!" he added sharply. "Or a brace of balls willsoon----"

  Smith laughed. "Box it about!" he cried.

  "Hallo!" the stranger answered, taking a lower tone; and hepeered at us, bending down over his horse's neck. "Who are you, infly-by-night?"

  "A box-it-about!" my companion answered with tartness. "That is enoughfor you. So good-night. And I wish you better luck next time."

  "But----"

  "St!" Smith answered, cutting him short. "I am going to my father, andthe less said about it the better."

  "So? Well, give him my love, then." And backing his horse, thestranger bade us good-night, and with a curse on his bad fortuneturned and rode off. Smith saw him go, and then wheeling we took theroad again.

  Safely, however, as we had emerged from this encounter, and far as itwent towards proving that we bore a talisman against the ordinaryperils of travellers, it was not of a kind to reassure a law-abidingman. To be hung as the accomplice of footpads and high-tobys was ascarcely better fate than to be robbed and wounded by them, and I washeartily glad when we found ourselves in the outskirts of Rochester,and stopping at a house of call outside the sleeping city, roused adrowsy hostler, and late as the hour was, gained entrance and awelcome.

  I confess, that safe in these comfortable quarters, on a sandedhearth, before a rekindled fire, with lights, and food, and ale at myelbow, and a bed in prospect, I found my apprehensions and misgivingsless hard to bear than on the dark road above Tilbury flats. I beganto think less of the body creaking in its irons on the gibbet aboveDartford, and more of the chances of ultimate safety. And Smithgrowing civil, if not genial,
I went on to count the hours that mustelapse, before, our miserable mission accomplished, I should seeLondon again. After all, why should I not see London again? What wasto prevent me? Where lay the hindrance? In three days, in three dayswe should be back. So I told myself; and looking up quickly metSmith's eyes brooding gloomily on me.