Captain Ravenshaw; Or, The Maid of Cheapside. A Romance of Elizabethan London

by Robert Neilson Stephens

  CHAPTER XVI.

  THE POET AS A MAN OF ACTION.

  "O father, where's my love? were you so careless To let an unthrift steal away your child?" --_The Case Is Altered._

  Millicent, after the riot had ceased and dinner had been eaten, passedthe day with a palpitating heart but a resolved mind. Under cover ofher usual needlework, she fashioned a sort of large linen wallet, inwhich to carry the few things she wished to take with her. Her emotionswere, in a less degree, similar to those which had affected her inthe hours preceding her former attempt to run away. At supper shelooked often with a hidden tenderness at the composed, unsuspectingface of her mother. When the light of evening faded she slipped to herchamber, and put a few chosen objects into the receptacle she had made,wrapped this in a hooded cloak, and dropped it from her window into theconcealed space behind the garden shrubbery. She then waited, watchingfrom the window that part of Friday Street in which Master Holyday mustappear.

  At last his slender figure lurched into view in the dusk, and came to astop outside the gate.

  Millicent sped across her chamber. At the door she turned, withfast-beating heart, and cast an affectionate, tearful look at theplace in which she had spent so much of her childhood and youth, andwhich seemed to share so many of her untold thoughts. It appeared foran instant to reproach her sorrowfully; but when in her swift thoughtshe justified her action, its aspect changed to that of wishing herGodspeed, and counselling her to hasten.

  She hurried through the house as if upon some indoor quest, foundherself alone in the garden, recovered her cloak and parcel, and wentto unfasten the gate.

  "'Tis I, Master Holyday," she said, in a low tone, as she loosened thebolt.

  "Good! good! excellent!" came the scholar's reply from outside thegate, in a voice rather parched and excited.

  Having slid back the bolt, she made to pull the gate open, but it wouldnot move.

  "What is the matter?" quoth she. "I cannot open it. Push it from yourside."

  She heard his hands laid against it, then his shoulder, then his back.But it would not budge. She examined it closely in the dusky light, andsuddenly gave a little cry of despair.

  "Oh, me! There is a new lock on the gate, and God knows where is thekey!"

  During the afternoon, in fact, Master Etheridge, alarmed by the easyentrance obtained by Ravenshaw and Gregory the previous night, and byRavenshaw's exit from the garden that day,--an exit after which thegate had been left open,--had caused an additional lock to be put on, alock to be opened by means of a key which the goldsmith thought best tokeep in his own care.

  "Oh, what shall I do?" she cried, after a futile tug at the lock.

  "Is there no other way to come out?" queried Holyday, in perturbation.

  "Alas, no! There's the street door from the gallery, but my fatherlocks it himself at supper-time and keeps the key. I durs'n't gothrough the shop; if it isn't closed, my father may be in the back shopand the apprentices will surely be in front."

  "God's name, I know not what--" began the poet, agitated withperplexity and fear of failure, but broke off to "Can't you makeanother pretext to go out?--drop another wedding-ring into the street,or something?"

  "Nay, they would sure stop my going or follow me out at this hour. Oh,would I could leap the wall! By St. Anne, 'tis too bad--Ha! wait aminute."

  Under the impulse of her thought she sped away without listening foranswer, unconscious that her last words had been spoken too low to gobeyond the gate.

  Hence she did not know that Master Holyday, attacked by an idea at thesame moment, and expressing himself with equal inaudibility, had assuddenly made off toward the White Horse Tavern.

  She was in the house ere it occurred to her that she ought to have ridherself of her burden by throwing it over the wall. She thought bestnot to retrace her steps. So she ran up-stairs and along the passage toa small window that looked down on Friday Street. She pushed open thecasement, saw that no one was passing below, and dropped the parcel,trusting it to the darkness. She had a moment's idea of calling toHolyday to come and take it, but a second thought was wiser; she cast asingle glance toward the gate, but was uncertain whether she made outhis form or not in the decreasing light. Then she went down-stairs, andboldly into the back shop. Her father sat at his small table countingby candle-light the day's money.

  "Eh! what is it?" he asked, looking sharply up. "What dost thou here,baggage?"

  "I have an order for George," she replied, quietly, forcing her voiceto steadiness, and praying that her throbbing heart and pale face mightnot betray her.

  George was an apprentice whom, for his cleverness, Mistress Etheridgewas wont to employ on errands. Millicent could see him now in the outershop, busy with other apprentices in covering the cases and closing upthe front.

  "'Zooks!" grumbled the goldsmith; "thy mother would best take the ladfor a page, and be done with it."

  Millicent passed on to the front shop.

  "George," said she, when out of her father's hearing, but in thatof one or two of the other apprentices, "you are to come with me toMistress Carroll's next door; there is something to fetch back. Nay,wait till you have done here; I'll run ahead, 'tis but a step."

  Upon the hazard that her father, in the rear shop, would not liftup his eyes from his money for some little time, she passed out toCheapside. In a breath she was around the corner, from the crowd andthe window-lights, into the dusk and desertion of Friday Street. Shestooped and picked up her cloak and bag; then ran on, to the gate.

  "Speed! speed! there's not a moment to lose!" she whispered, catchingthe elbow of the man who stood there, and who had not heard her comingswiftly up behind him.

  He turned and stared, putting his eyes close to hers on account of thedarkness; she saw that he had a great, scarred, bearded face, and thathis body was twice the breadth of Master Holyday's.

  "Oh, God!" she exclaimed, drawing back. "I thought you were MasterHolyday."

  "Master Holyday, eh?" growled the man. "What of him?"

  "I--I was to meet him here," she faltered, looking around with asinking heart.

  "Oh!--God's light!--you are the maid, belike? Well, troth, beshrew mebut that's the hell of it!" And the fellow grinned with silent laughter.

  "What mean you? What maid? Know you aught--?"

  "Of Master Holyday? Sooth, do I! He's on t'other side of this gate."

  She stared at the closed gate in bewilderment. "What? In the garden?"

  "Ay, in the garden." The man raised his voice a little. "Sure thou'rtthere, Master Holyday?"

  "Ay," came the reply in the scholar's unmistakable voice. "But the maidis not. Hang her, whither is she gone?"

  "Here I am," answered the maid, for herself. "In God's name, how gotyou in there?"

  "In God's name, how got you out there?" said Holyday, vexatiously. "Aminute ago you were here, and I was there. You could not come out, soI went for this gentleman, who lifted me to the top of the wall--"

  "Which was a service not included in the contract," remarked CuttingTom.

  "And here I dropped, thinking to find you," continued Holyday, inexasperation, "and to help you out as he helped me in. And now--"

  "Well, I am out, nevertheless," she replied, quickly. "So come you out,pray, without more ado; my father may discover at any moment--"

  "Why, devil take me!" cried Holyday, in despair. "I cannot climb thewall; there's none here to give me a shoulder."

  "Is there nothing there you can climb upon?" queried Cutting Tom.

  "Yes," cried Millicent, taking the answer upon herself; "there arebenches. Oh, pray, make haste, Master Holyday!"

  Soon Master Holyday could be heard dragging a bench across the sward;in its ordinary position it would not give him sufficient height, sohe seemed to busy himself in placing it properly for his purpose."_Nomine patris!_" he exclaimed as he bruised his fingers. Finally athud against the upper part of the gate indicated that he had fixed thebench slantwise. Mounting the incline chiefly by me
ans of hands andknees, he stood trembling at the top, high enough to get a purchase ofhis elbows on the gate, and so to wriggle his body over.

  Millicent breathed more freely as soon as his head and shouldersappeared; but, as he was righting himself on the gate-top in order todrop safely outside, there came a voice from within the garden:

  "Hey? How now? Good lack, more comings and goings!"

  "Oh, God! that meddling Sir Peregrine!" cried Millicent. "We are foundout. Hurry, Master Holyday!"

  The poet, startled, was still upon the gate, staring back into thegarden. With a revival of earlier agility, the old knight came up thesloping bench at a run, took hold of the gate's top with one hand, andof Master Holyday's neck with the other. His eyes fell upon the pairwaiting outside. It was not too dark for him to recognise a figurewhich he had oft observed with the interest of future ownership.

  "What! Mistress Millicent! And who's this? Master Holyday, o' my life!'Zooks and 'zounds! here's doings!"

  The poet, suddenly alive, jerked his neck from the old knight's grasp,and threw himself from the gate without thought of consequences.Luckily, Tom caught him by the body, and saved his neck, though bothmen were heavily jarred by the collision.

  "Come!" cried Millicent, seizing Holyday by the sleeve ere he hadgot his balance. She darted down Friday Street, the poet staggeringheadlong after her, Cutting Tom close in the rear.

  "What, ho!" cried Sir Peregrine, astonished out of his wits. "Stop!stay! The watch! constables! Master Etheridge! Runaways, runaways,runaways!"

  His voice waned in the distance behind Millicent as she hastened on.She still held the poet's sleeve; he breathed fast and hard, but saidnothing. In front of the White Horse, four men, at a gruff word fromCutting Tom, fell in with the fugitives, and the whole party of sevenran on without further speech. For a short time, tramping and breathingwere the only sounds in Millicent's ears; but soon there came a renewedand multiplied cry of "Runaways! stop them!" whereby she knew that SirPeregrine had given the alarm, and that her father and his lads hadstarted in pursuit.

  "God send we get to the boat in time!" she said, as she halted for asingle step so that Master Holyday might take the lead. She cast aswift look over her shoulder, and saw two or three torches flaring inthe distance.

  Holyday led across Knightrider Street obliquely, then down the lowerpart of Bread Street, along a little of Thames Street, and througha short passage to Queenhithe. This wharf enclosed three sides of asomewhat rounded basin, wherein a number of craft now lay at rest inthe black water that lapped softly as stirred by the tide and a lightwind. Houses were built close together on all three sides.

  The poet made straight along the east side of the basin, and down anarrow flight of stairs to a large boat that lay there. A man startedup in the boat, and held out his hand to help the maid aboard, lightingher steps with a lantern in his other hand,--for a veil of clouds hadswept across the sky from the west, and the only considerable lightupon the wharf was from a lantern before one of the gabled houses,and from the lattice windows of a tavern. Other boatmen steadied thevessel, so that Millicent boarded without accident; Holyday, comingnext, and setting foot blindly upon the gunwale, rather fell thanstepped in. Cutting Tom and his men huddled aboard, and the whole partycrowded together astern, to leave room forward for the rowers.

  "Whither?" asked the waterman in command.

  "Why, down-stream, of course," replied Holyday. "Know you not--how now?Where is Bill Tooby?"

  "Bill Tooby? He is yonder in his boat, waiting for some that havebespoke him." The man pointed across the basin.

  Holyday was stricken faint of voice. "Oh, _miserere_!" he wailed. "Heis waiting for us. We have come to the wrong stairs."

  "Hark!" cried Millicent.

  Cries of "Runaways! Stop them! Stop the maid!" were approaching from,apparently, the vicinity of Knightrider Street.

  "We must e'en change to the other boat," said Holyday, despairingly.

  "Oh, heaven, there is not time!" cried Millicent.

  "If you be in haste," said the waterman, "stay where ye are. Whithershall we carry ye?"

  "Nay, nay, I durst not!" cried Holyday, and yet stood in helplessindecision.

  "Come, then!" said Millicent, and leaped from the boat to the stairs.Reaching back for Holyday's hand, she pulled him after her, dragged himup the steps, and led him around the three sides of the basin, theirfive protectors following close.

  A larger boat, manned with a more numerous crew, was in waiting atthe western stairs. The waterman with whom Ravenshaw had bargained inthe morning, making sure of Holyday's face in the light of a lantern,guided the fugitives aboard with orderly swiftness. But already thenoise of pursuit was in Thames Street; ere the last man--a slim fellowwith a thickly bearded face, which he carried well forward from hisbody--was embarked, the cries, swelling suddenly as the pursuersemerged from the narrow passage, were upon the wharf, and the red flareof torches came with them.

  The party in chase was headed by the goldsmith himself, no coveringon his head, his gray hair standing out in the breeze; then came hisapprentices, and sundry persons who had joined in the hue and cry;the rear was brought up by Sir Peregrine, lamed and winded. MasterEtheridge made out the party in the boat at once, and, with threateningcommands to the waterman to stop, led his people around to the stairs.

  "Cast off!" growled Bill Tooby, the waterman, pulling the slim fellowaboard. The order was obeyed, and Millicent, who had sat more dead thanalive since her father had come into sight, saw the wharf recede, anda strip of black water spread between the boat and the torch-lit partythat stood gazing from the stairs.

  "Oh, wench, I'll make thee rue this day!" cried the goldsmith, shakinghis arms after the boat. As for Sir Peregrine, he looked utterlynonplussed.

  Then her father spoke hurriedly to his followers, and called loudlyfor a boat. The waterman to whom Holyday had first led his own partywas quick to respond. Meanwhile Tooby's craft headed down-stream.Millicent, looking anxiously back over the water, saw the other boat,or its lantern and one of the torches, shoot out from the stairs.

  "Think you they will catch us?" she asked Master Holyday.

  "I think nothing," said the poet, dejectedly, really thinking verysmall of himself for the mistake which had enabled the goldsmith tocome upon their heels.

  Surprised at the apparent change in Master Holyday since the forenoon,she turned to Tooby. "What think you, waterman?"

  "Why, mistress, an they make better speed than we, belike they'll catchus; but, an we make better speed than they, belike they'll not catchus," growled Tooby.

  "And that's the hell of it!" quoth Cutting Tom.