by John Buchan
The place proved to be a wretched hovel of logs and mud, through the chinks of which came the gleam of a fire. In the dim light there could be seen around it broken walls and one large ruinous barn.
“This was once a snug farm,” said Simon. “Now some waif squats in the ruins, as a bird builds its nest in the nettles of a stoneheap.”
A shout from Simon brought someone to the door, a half-naked boy in his middle teens. Simon flung himself from his horse and pushed past him into the hovel, while Peter followed. It was a single room with an earthen floor, on which the snow, melting on the wattled roof and drifting through the holes, was making deep puddles. There was no light in the place but a new-kindled fire of wet wood, the smoke from which filled the air and set the eyes smarting. Furniture there was none except a three-legged stool and in a corner a heap of straw on which it seemed that a human figure lay. This was no forester’s hut, but a hovel of the very poorest.
On the stool sat a man who seemed to be engaged in cooking something in a broken pot. He was a bent creature with tangled tow-like hair. A ragged sack was his only garment, and through the rents of it showed ribs as sharp as the bars of a harrow. At the sight of the strangers he let the pot drop so that some of its contents spilled and fizzled in the ashes, while his face was drawn in an extreme terror. Yet it was a vacant terror, a physical rather than a mental passion, for, while his cheeks and mouth were contorted, his eyes remained dull and blind.
Simon sniffed, for the spilled food sent out a vile odour.
“We want lodgings and kindling for a fire,” he said. “What of the barn? Is the roof reasonable tight?”
The man only muttered, and it was the boy who answered.
“Tighter than this, master. There be store of faggots, too, against the next deer-drive. But we have nought to do with the place, for it belongs to Master Lee, the verderer.”
“We will take Master Lee’s permission for granted, for we travel on the King’s business. What have you in that pot?”
The man now spoke, his thin jaws working with a great effort, and his voice was like a bat’s squeak. But his speech, like the boy’s, was not that of an ordinary churl.
“Nothing, gentle sirs, but some nettle broth, with the thickening of a dead partridge, half-plucked by a hawk, which Dickon found in Waterman’s Acre.”
“The bird must have been dead a week,” said Simon, screwing up his nose.
“You speak truth, sir,” said the man eagerly. “‘Twas only carrion, and therefore honestly come by for a poor man.” And, all the while his lips and eyes seemed to be twisting towards the pot, as if he were in the last stage of famine.
“What is that on the straw?” Simon asked.
“My wife, noble sir. She has been dead twelve hours, and Dickon and I wait for the snow to pass to bury her.”
“Of what sickness?” Simon demanded in a sharpened voice, for the whole world feared the plague.
“Of none. Of a lamentable lack of food. Dickon did not find the partridge in time, and we have had nought for our bellies this past sennight but hips and haws and beechmast.”
Simon swung round. “Go on with your meal, brother. We will camp in the barn and make use of Master Lee’s faggots. We carry food with us, so need not borrow yours.”
Peter, whose stomach was turning at the stench of the pot and the spectacle of the dead thing on the straw, followed him hastily out of doors. The men were soon settled in the barn, which proved to be tolerably water-tight, a fire was made and a lantern lit, and the food wallets unpacked; while the horses were tethered among some straw at the far end. When the meal was eaten, Simon resaddled his beast.
“I must get me onward,” he said, “for the storm seems to abate. Farewell, Master Bonamy, and good speed to your journey! If you will honour my humble dwelling of Boarstall I will show you the work of the Italian chart-maker whom I spoke of.” Then to the men, “See you truss up that fellow when you lie down. If you sleep like hogs, and he is unshackled, he will be over Severn by the time you wake.”
Peter’s first intention had been to pass the night with the others. But the sight of a patch of clear sky and a few stars made him incline to follow Simon’s example. He was not concerned to deliver the gospeller to the Bishop’s charge: that was for the Bishop’s servants, and the two Avelard men, now lying drunk many miles in the rear. His business was to find Darking, and for that he must get him to Mother Sweetbread. The distance was not more than five miles, and he knew every cranny of the countryside.
So he, too, resaddled his horse, and with a word to the men to go on to Oxford next day as they had been bidden, he opened the door and flung his cloak about his shoulders. It had an odd feeling, and, when he took it to the lantern, he realised that it was Simon’s cloak of grey frieze, and that his own, which was of soft murry-coloured woollen from the Stour, was now on Simon’s back on the road to Boarstall. There was small loss in the exchange, for the two men were much of a height.
Then another thought struck him. He picked up some of the remains of the food, a piece of loaf, a knuckle of salted beef, and a fragment of pie. There was enough left for the men to breakfast off, and they would be in Oxford for the noontide meal. He slung the viands in a corner of his cloak, and led his horse to the hovel door.
The couple had finished their meal, for the pot was empty. The man was picking his teeth with a bit of bone, and the boy was scraping the pot. The fire had sunk, and the light was so dim that he could not see the dead woman on the straw.
“Here are some broken meats,” he said. “And see here, friend. Here are also three silver pennies, that your wife may be decently put in the earth.”
The man scarcely lifted his head, but the boy seized eagerly on the gifts.
“If I were found with those monies on me I would hang,” said the man.
“Nay, father, I know where I can spend them secretly,” said the boy. “And here be enough food to keep us for a week. God bless ye, my lord.”
The man cast one look to the corner, and shook his matted head like a puzzled animal. “Would that God had sent him twelve hours sooner, or that Dickon had been quicker in finding the bird.” He hunched himself again on the stool, and stared into the ashes. There was neither sorrow nor regret in his voice, only bewilderment.
The snow had gone, and there was sufficient clear sky to permit of a faint starlight. Peter put his horse to a trot, for he wished to put miles between him and that place of death and famine. Fresh from the splendour of Avelard, he felt like a man in thin raiment coming from a warm and scented room into a bitter wind. To one brought up in the homely comfort of the Wychwood cottage, and the simple abundance of Oseney, this sudden glimpse of unimagined poverty was an awful revelation. He could not banish the picture from his mind, as he rode through the slush of the highway and the sprinkled meadows to Mother Sweetbread’s cottage high up on the skirts of Wychwood.
There he found the warm fire, and the lighted lamp, and the old welcome. He stabled his horse in an outhouse commonly occupied by forest ponies, and supped off a stew of game and a cup of Mother Sweetbread’s famous sloeberry wine.
“Solomon Darking left word that you were to follow him without delay to Oxford,” he was told. “You will find him, he said, at the Swan tavern over against the Ox Pens. You were to go secretly, and only under cover of night. . . . Now to bed with you, Peterkin — for I will call you by no other name. You look as weary as John Gowglass when he fled home from the night-riders on Bartholomew Eve.”
But Peter had not been three hours between Mother Sweetbread’s blankets, when he was roused by voices at the door, and found a lean urchin gabbling a message to his hostess. At the sight of him the boy slipped to his side, and in his eagerness took him by the hands. It was the boy from the hovel, and his errand was urgent. Someone had attacked the posse in the barn and released the prisoner, setting him on the best horse. The Bishop’s men had been overpowered in their sleep . . . bound with ropes, too, and had only freed themselve
s after the fugitives had been half an hour gone. They had been in a great taking, and had gone to Squire Fettiplace at Swinbrook, who was a zealous King’s man and would for certain mount his servants and scour the country. . . . “They think it was you that done the deed, master,” the boy added, “for they swear they recognised the cloak of him that mishandled them. . . . I heard them say that the villain was one Bonamy, who had ridden with them from Avelard and decoyed them to their undoing.”
Peter’s first impulse was to laugh. Simon Rede with the borrowed cloak had bested him nobly.
“Haste ye, master,” said the boy. “I followed ye here by your horse’s tracks. There is a powdering of snow and others can do the same.”
CHAPTER VIII. HOW PETER SAW DEATH IN THE SWAN INN
In the light of Mother Sweetbread’s rush candle Peter stared at the sparrow-like child, and the sparrow-like child stared at Peter.
There was no manner of doubt as to his peril. If the Fettiplace men laid hands on him, he would have the evidence of the Bishop’s servants against him — honest evidence, for it would rest upon the sight of his own cloak on the back of the man who had freed the gospeller. To rebut it he must proclaim his connection with Avelard and reveal the details of his journey, and that meant that he, who for the moment must court obscurity, would stand out glaringly to the whole shire — nay, even to Oxford and the Bishop of Lincoln. The thing was not to be thought of.
“I am trysted with Solomon in Oxford,” he told the woman, “but not till the dark hours, so I must get me to cover. I am for Stowood. . . . Feed the child, mother, for he has earned it well.” Then to the boy, “What is your name?”
“They call me Dickon,” was the answer. “Dickon of the Holt!”
“Then, Dickon, get you back the road you came. Put yourself in the way of the Swinbrook men and let them drag from you news of me. You saw me on the Witney road with the prisoner, riding like one possessed. . . . This horse of mine, mother, you will send into the forest till I can recover him. Hide him where no Fettiplace can penetrate, for he is a damning link with Avelard. Then give me some provender for the road, for I will be hungry before to-morrow’s e’en.”
“This is the vigil of Hallowmas,” said the old woman anxiously. “‘Tis an ill night to take to the greenwood.”
“Better Hallowe’en witches than the rough hands of Squire Fettiplace. Haste you, mother. I must be beyond Cherwell ere daybreak.”
Ten minutes later Peter — cloakless, for he must travel light — had slipped from the hut, where a hungry lad was supping bear-meal porridge, and an old woman was saying spells by the fire for his protection. The snow had ceased to fall, but it lay an inch and more deep on the ground. The wind had dropped, a few stars showed, and on the horizon there was the prelude of moonrise. It was bitter cold, so he ran — first across the slushy pastures, then through the scrub of the forest bounds, and then by a path he knew, which in the shadow of the trees was almost bare of snow, and which took him down the southern ridge of the Evenlode vale.
Now that he had leisure to think, his anger surged up against Simon Rede. The man was a foe to God, for he had freed a heretic — Peter made the reflection mechanically and without conviction, for it seemed to set his grievance on higher grounds than his own pride. Simon was certainly an enemy to himself, for he had deforced the Bishop’s men in such a way as to lay the blame on his innocent head. Doubtless, too, he had earlier in the day made the two Avelard men drunk. For what purpose? To free the gospeller? But why incriminate Peter?
He was of the opposite party, and must suspect something — Lord Avelard had feared this — Sir Ralph Bonamy had feared it — that was why he himself had had to take the road again. The man was as cunning as he was bold. Peter thought bitterly of how he had thawed to this enemy, and a few hours ago had looked on him almost as a comrade. He remembered ruefully his admiration of the man’s carriage and conversation. And he had been nobly duped. The stolen cloak, the tale of a journey post-haste to Boarstall, the friendly parting — every incident rankled in his memory. . . . Well, it was for him to defeat Master Simon’s conspiracies. He had something against him — the knowledge, the certain knowledge, that he was in league with those who defied the King’s grace in matters of religion. . . . And then he laughed sardonically, for he himself was about to defy the King’s grace in things of greater moment.
He strove to keep his mind on the notion that Simon’s hostility to him was because of state policy. But it would not stay there. The unpleasing reflection would edge its way in that the cause was Sabine Beauforest. The man had not come to Avelard to please Crummle’s commissary, but to be near the girl. Of that he was as certain as that he was now stumbling through the scrub oaks above Evenlode with owls hooting like lost souls around him. Presently the thought became a conviction, and the conviction an oppression. Simon was a rival, a deadly rival, and he had won the first bout by turning the heir of Avelard into a mockery. He saw that lean face puckered with mirth, and those cool, arrogant, contemptuous eyes, and he had a miserable consciousness of weakness in the face of such an antagonist. Decked with the pomp of Avelard he could condescend on one who was no more than a squire of modest estate, but now Simon was mounted and fronting the world, while he was afoot and a fugitive.
In his depression the picture of Sabine seemed to limn itself on the dark night — Sabine, not as he had last seen her, distracted and sullen, but Sabine on that night when she had opened her arms to him, her pale loveliness suddenly become a fire. Once he had thought of a fair woman as something dim and infinitely distant, like a sickle moon in an April twilight. Now he had seen the fairest of all, her eyes dewy with kindness, her lips tremulous with surrender. . . . The picture entranced and maddened him, but it also drove Simon Rede from his head. He was Bohun, and his business was to win in the lists which had been set for him. To victory there all other things would be added, chief of which was a laughing girl.
Before dawn the snow returned, big powdery flakes with no wind behind them. In a crook of Bladon heath, just outside the deer-park of Woodstock, he stumbled upon a small encampment of horse-priggers, round a hissing fire. Half a dozen weedy garrons, with their heads muffled in sacking, were tethered near by. John Naps’s watchword saved him a slit throat, and secured him a bed of moderately dry bracken and enough of the fire to warm his toes. There he slept till an hour after daybreak, when he was roused by the encampment shifting ground. He breakfasted on some of the food he had brought from Mother Sweetbread, distrusting the stew of the priggers. The ruffians were civil enough and a little abashed in his presence, for Flatsole ruled the clan with an iron hand. They showed some relief when he prepared to leave them, and they gave him a useful bit of news. Catti the Welshman was in the alehouse at Gosford, lying hid because of a broken rib. Peter must find a place to spend the daylight hours, and in such weather he preferred the shelter of a roof to a cold hollow of Stowood. Where Catti lay he might reckon on a safe sanctuary.
The snow grew heavier as he crossed the open moorlands towards the sharp spire of Kidlington church. He skirted the village and came to the tiny hamlet of Gosford, hard upon a ford of Cherwell. He remembered the alehouse, a pleasant place where, in a garden beside a colony of bees, he had had many a summer draught. Now the bush at its door was turned upside down — the innkeeper’s sign that there was sickness in the hostelry and that no guests could be entertained. There was an utter silence in the hamlet, not a soul showed or a dog stirred, nothing but the even descent of the snow. But behind doors and windows he seemed to catch a glimpse of furtive faces.
Peter made for the back-quarters of the tavern. There he found a sluttish girl plucking a cockerel, and tossing the white feathers to mix with the falling snow. “Will you carry a message, Mother Goose,” said Peter, “to him who lodges here?”
“There be no one lodging here, master,” she said. “Feyther has the autumn sickness, and mother is new brought to bed.”
“Nevertheless, you will take my messa
ge and give it to whom you will,” and he spoke the first part of John Naps’s watchword.
She looked up at Peter, and, seeing him young and well-favoured, relaxed her stubbornness. She flung the half-plucked fowl to him with a laugh. “I dare not idle, master, with all the work of the house on my hands. Do ‘ee finish my job and I will carry your word indoors.”
In an instant she was back, giggling.
“Feyther he says, ‘Far as to Peter’s gate.’ What play be it, master? Wychwood’s no more’n six miles.”
“Say, ‘Alack, I shall not be there in time.’”
She nodded. “Ay, that was what I was bidden wait for. Come ‘ee indoors, but first shake the clots from your feet, lest you muck up my floor.”
Catti was not in the house, but in a chamber, the remnant of an old priory, which was connected with the building by a vaulted passage. There he lay on a couch of straw and rags in a darkness illumined only by a brazier which burned beside him and such light as came from above through the slats of the roof. But even in the dimness Peter saw the beetle brows and the fierce black eyes and the hilt of a long knife.
The man was genial and open, for Naps’s pass was clearly a master word. When he heard that Peter — whose name he did not ask — was on his way to meet Darking and in some peril from the law, he became reassuring. Peter was safe for the daylight hours, and what easier than to slip into Oxford by the east gate in weather which would keep the inquisitive at home? Thereafter Solomon would see to him, Solomon who could, if he wanted, pass a red-handed felon through the guards of a palace.
He had got his own hurt on the Worcester road. It was near healed, and he proposed to move towards London, where trade would be brisk, since the King’s law was gone Lincoln way. Peter, with Lord Avelard’s talk in his head, was amazed to find how well informed this bandit was on every matter they had spoken of with hushed voices. He knew what was stirring on the western marches, and named the very numbers which Neville and Latimer had under arms.