2. Escape
SCHOOL was at six in the morning. Seven o'clock in winter – if it was possible to get through the snow at all.
The grammar school was down at Crosthwaite, close under the shadow of the church tower. It was a broad, flat valley thereabouts. When the floods were out, Derwentwater joined hands with the other lake, Bassenthwaite, so that the church and school, standing on a narrow tongue of higher ground, were almost islanded by the white silent waters. It was every yard of five miles from home, mostly downhill. I had a shaggy old pony, Nathaniel, and I always enjoyed the ride. It took me right through the middle of Keswick town, so I saw plenty of life every day – for which some of the older people envied me, stuck away as they were in the lonely valleys and seeing never a fresh face from one week's end to another.
It would have been fun to have told my friends about the excitements of the night, but I remembered the promise we'd all given not to breathe a word. That didn't stop me making up, just in my own mind, a story of how I had defied Sir Philip from the top of a perilous crag, and then hurled a hundredweight boulder at him, tumbling horse and man into the river. Of course, the boys wouldn't have believed me, but they'd have clapped when I acted the scene to them, imitating Sir Philip's haughtiness and my own heroic gestures.
Anyhow, I promised myself, I'll go back there tonight when the coast's clear and find my cap. A cap with a bullet-hole – that'll be something to show at school, something they'll have to believe in. They all know that green cap of mine, and it has my name in it, anyhow, so they can't pretend I've got hold of someone else's. I'll invent a good yarn to explain that cap, I thought gleefully….
It was a pity I never had time. It would have come in mighty useful.
That morning passed by as all other mornings had before. We sat round the school hall on our various benches, learning our grammar and writing, our Latin and Greek literature or our Hebrew, according to our age. There were only a few boys older than I. They were fifteen or sixteen, and nearly ready to go away to the Queen's College at Oxford. The master wanted me to do that too, but I could never quite decide. I wanted to see the outside world, but I did not want to leave the farm.
That day decided one question, anyhow.
We stopped work at eleven, and had two hours, midday, to eat the dinner we'd brought and play games. I remember Tim Moore and I went off to the lake for a swim, for it had turned out one of those sweaty summer days, when the mountains don't look real and the air hangs in the great bowl of the valley like stale water. We took Nathaniel and rode by turns, for Tim lived in the town and hadn't a pony himself.
We had our swim, and the sun dried us, and I was just pulling my shirt over my head again when young George Bell came running along the lake-shore, waving and shouting.
‘Peter Brownrigg!’
‘Hullo!’ I said.
‘The master wants you,’ he said, all panting.
I looked at the sun and guessed it was just after twelve, nearly an hour before lessons began again. ‘He can wait,’ I said.
‘That's right,’ said Tim, with a grin. ‘Say you looked everywhere, but you couldn't find us.’
‘No; you'd better come now. There's some men asking for you.’
‘Men?’ I echoed.
‘Two men,’ he said. ‘One of them's the constable, but I don't know the other. They'd got that green cap of yours –’
As soon as he mentioned the green cap I knew that it was serious. I must have gone very white. Tim stared at me.
‘What've you been up to, Peter, my lad?’
‘Nothing,’ I said, which wasn't at all true, but I spoke mechanically, for I was thinking hard. I was frightened – and I'm not ashamed to admit it. So would you have been. They'd got that cap of mine, and they knew whose it was. I didn't know what the exact penalty was for throwing a rock at a man, but as the man was one of the leading gentlemen in the district I could imagine it would be something heavy. If it wasn't hanging it might be prison, with possibly earcropping or nose-slitting or flogging into the bargain. And the chief witnesses would all be Sir Philip's men, who would be ready to swear to anything their master said.
My first thought was what any other boy's first thought would have been: home. It's a kind of instinct you don't lose till you get older. While you're a boy, you somehow imagine there's no trouble your father can't save you from if he tries.
I caught hold of Nathaniel and jumped on his back.
‘I'm going home,’ I said, ‘but don't tell them so. Georgie, you say you couldn't find me. And Tim, say I left you by Friar's Crag.’
They both stared at me, goggle-eyed. ‘You're going to play truant?’ said George. ‘The old man'll have the hide off your back.’
‘It's not him I'm afraid of,’ I said, trying to sound very grand and dramatic. ‘It's the sheriff – and maybe the hangman!’ I wasted no more time, but dug my heels into Nathaniel's tubby sides and galloped away.
That was all very fine – till I was out of sight of the boys. But as Nat's gallop dropped to a canter, his canter to a trot, and, as the road grew steeper, his trot to a plodding walk, I began to feel less and less of a hero.
Here was a nice mess! Just my luck! Of all the twenty or thirty who'd helped to demolish Sir Philip's wall, I was the only one they had traced, and actually I had done less than all the others. But then I'd committed an assault… thrown a stone, which had missed. It didn't sound much. I'd thrown plenty of stones at people when I was smaller, and I'd often hit them, but I'd never had the constable after me before. This, though, was Sir Philip Morton, and it made a difference.
How I cursed poor old Nathaniel as he ambled up the long hill! He was doing his best, and the sun was scorching us both, but I was terrified lest I should be caught before I reached home. Once I heard hooves and looked back, but it was only a gentleman from Keswick, who passed me with his usual nod. He at any rate hadn't heard yet of my misdoings.
It's usually a pleasant moment when you turn off the high road along the rough trail which leads up your own valley to home and nowhere else. But never before had I felt so glad to see the steep fells give back on either hand to show the green nook of Lonsdale, with the becks racing down like spilt milk and the smoke going up from our own chimneys and those of our neighbours above and below.
I was afraid I should have to look for my father on the fell; but no, he was there, standing in the porch with his hand shading his eyes as Nathaniel came splashing up through the beck.
‘God be thanked!’ I heard him say, and that brought my mother out, wiping her eyes on her blue linen apron. I could see they knew all about it.
‘I'm sorry,’ was all I could say. ‘Don't worry.’
‘You must get away from here,’ my father said, as if he'd got it thought out. ‘It'll blow over, lad, but you'll be better away from home for a bit. Are they close after you?’
‘I don't know how close,’ I said. ‘I'm safe for an hour.’
‘Where can he go?’ mother wailed. ‘If my mother were still alive at Carlisle, we could have sent him there, but as it is…’ She looked at my father. ‘Wouldn't it be better for him to stay and face them? I'm sure he's done no wrong, no more than any of them, and there's not a man in the dale who won't swear what a good boy he is.’
‘You don't know the law,’ my father said grimly. ‘No, they mustn't get hold of him now, while Sir Philip's in his mad mood. Besides, we owe it to our neighbours to get him away. If the court lays hands on him, they'll question him about his companions at the time.’
That set my mother off again, weeping, and I wasn't far off myself, for I knew very well what sort of questioning he meant. I knew I couldn't stand torture. If the law let them do that, even a little of it, I knew I should blurt out the names of every man and boy who'd been there that night.
There was nothing for it but to clear out before they tracked me home.
‘I'll be all right,’ I comforted my mother. ‘I'll get out of the district; I'll slip across in
to Scotland perhaps; I'll get work, and I'll send word to you that I'm all right. Then in a few months, maybe, I shall be able to come back, and the whole thing be forgotten.’
‘It's the best thing,’ said my father.
He went to where the money was kept, and counted out five shillings.* ‘That'll keep you going for a few days,’ he said. ‘I wish it could be more, but…’ I knew. Times were hard, and we never handled much cash in Lonsdale. My mother brought me a couple of loaves, cheese, and oatmeal cakes, and a piece of cold mutton, big enough for three.
We wasted no time in talk, for we knew that at any moment we might see the horsemen riding up the dale to fetch me.
I wouldn't take Nathaniel, for they would have caught me at once if I'd stuck to the road, and I couldn't have borne to sell the old boy in Penrith. Instead, I decided to make for Penrith on foot, across the fells, where there would be ample cover from pursuit. There was a market at Penrith next day, and amid the crowds of strangers I should be able to avoid notice and perhaps – who knew? – find some work to help me get out of Cumberland.
I never saw my brother to say good-bye, for he was up the fell. My sisters were cheese-making. They wept buckets over me; I'd never realized how fond of me my sisters were until that day. Then I tore myself away, shouldered my bundle with a few clothes, and started up the beck to the high crest of the moor.
Five minutes later, when I was right up in the tough grass and the heather, I looked back and saw my dale below, with the houses like little grey boxes, right and left of the brown lane. And along that lane, just turned off the high road, came two riders, crawling along like two silly, bright-backed beetles.
I laughed, though I didn't feel at all like laughing, and went tramping on up the mountain.
I'd always wanted to see the outside world, I'd always wanted adventure, and now I was going to get it with a vengeance.
3. Peril at Penrith
No one followed me up the mountain. I walked for an hour or two along the northern slopes of Blencathra, and saw no living thing but a cluster of red deer on the far skyline of Skiddaw Forest, and an eagle circling lazily in the thick sky. Late in the afternoon I came to the Stronghold.
We used to play there, when we were smaller and still enjoyed war-games like English-and-Scots or English-and-Spanish. It was a long way from home, but there was no place like it, and I've spent many a day there. There was a small lake or tarn, black and bottomless, and the precipices rose all round it in the shape of a horseshoe, except on the eastern side, where the ground fell away, and a little stream came bubbling out of the tarn to join the Glendermakin River in the valley below.
The Stronghold was a natural hiding-place among the giant rocks that littered the lakeside. There was one overhanging boulder under which half a dozen of us could have lain and slept, bone-dry, through the wettest night. Other big stones lay round in a rough circle, which we called the ‘courtyard’. By heaping up a few smaller stones, which we could lift ourselves, we turned the rocks into continuous ramparts.
We got the idea of a stronghold from the old peel-tower which stood some way down the valley. In grandfather's time, all the wealthier people lived in peel-towers of that kind, because you never knew when the Scots might come pouring over the Border on one of their raiding expeditions. But there had been no such raid since I was born, and some of the local squires were giving up their ‘peels' and building ordinary houses.
That's what Sir Philip Morton had done. He'd built himself a fine new mansion down by the Greta, with tall chimneys and windows with hundreds of little diamond panes. The old house – the peel-tower now stood empty and tumbling into ruin. It was an oblong, three-storey affair, with tiny windows and none at all (let alone a door) on the ground-level. To enter, you had to climb a flight of stone steps outside and, if the massive oak door was then barred in your face, you weren't any forrader.
Like a little fort the Mortons' peel-tower was, with its battlemented roof and its little corner turret for the watchman and its iron basket to hold the warning beacon. But it must have been a bleak, gloomy box to live in, standing so high and so far from roads and houses, so I don't wonder that Sir Philip had given it up and built something more comfortable.
Well, as I say, late that afternoon I came to the Stronghold we boys had made in imitation of the peel. I felt it was a safe spot to hide overnight, because it was so seldom people went up there.
Sure enough I found the Stronghold just as we'd left it three summers before, when we grew too old for the game. A hundred drenching storms had washed away the black circle of our fires, but nothing else was changed. The sheep's skull still grinned from ‘the topmast battlement' – we used to pretend it was a traitor's who had committed high treason against the Queen – and there were all our initials, a little fainter perhaps, scratched on the rock below.
I had to get to Penrith, and out of the country where I was known. From the Stronghold to Penrith was twelve miles as the crow flies, and rather more by the winding road, which would be safe enough after dark. I reckoned I could walk it in five hours. If I stayed in the Stronghold and rested till nearly midnight, I could do the journey under the moon, and land in the town as soon as it was properly astir.
I can't say I enjoyed that long evening in the Stronghold. The sun was soon hidden by the crags which rise round the tarn, but long after I was sunk in a gloomy pool of shadow, I could see the beams warm and friendly on the upper slopes of White Horse Bent and Souther Fell. It was as if I had dropped out of the day hours too soon. Yet it didn't get dark; I began to feel it never would get dark. The sunset went on for ever. And there was nothing to do, once I had eaten a dismal supper of cold meat and bread, with icy water from the beck. I was in a hurry to be off, but I daren't start till dark.
Never before had I been up at the Stronghold either alone or so late. It was very eerie. As the twilight gathered, the dead place seemed to come alive. The crags seemed to move. Once something went flapping thunderously overhead, and there was a long, harsh screech which went echoing all round the rock-faces. Even the beck, so friendly a thing in daylight, seemed to be chuckling in a new and unpleasant fashion. I would have risked a fire, but I had nothing to burn and nothing to light it with. I tried to snatch some sleep, but the ground was too hard, and if the best goosefeather bed had been offered me I should have been too excited to close my eyes.
When I judged it to be about eleven – it was hard to tell, for the moon wasn't up yet – I could stand the place no longer. I shouldered my bundle and groped my way along the mountainside till I reached the high saddle which joins Scales Fell to Souther Fell. Luckily I knew every inch of this ground, and, though I tumbled twice in the darkness, I knew there was no danger of broken necks along this way. Soon a beck sprang from the ground below me, and, using it as a guide, I came quickly down to the Penrith road, just where it crosses the Glendermakin.
It was good to feel the hard road under my feet again – but mighty hard it felt by the time I sighted the red ramparts of Penrith Castle standing up on its hill.
Penrith is a fine town – hundreds of people live there, and, that day being market-day, there must have been thousands pouring up the narrow streets, under the overhanging houses. I wondered where on earth so many people would put themselves, not to mention their cattle and sheep, their riding-horses and pack-horses, their wagons and all. But when I got on into the centre of the town, the narrow streets broadened out suddenly into big squares, as a river broadens into a lake, and there was space for everyone. Penrith was planned like that, because of the Scots. When war came, the people drove all their flocks and herds into the middle, and by barricading the narrow streets turned the whole town into a fortress.
No one was thinking of danger that day; even I forgot my trouble for a while when I saw all the cheerful bustle around me.
There weren't only the farmers parading their stock and the women laying out their eggs and butter and homespun cloth. All sorts of exciting strangers had
come to the market – a swarthy man without any ears, leading a bear on a chain, a sword-swallower, a man who drew out your aching teeth (while your friends held you down), a couple of acrobats, and dozens of others doing strange tricks or selling miraculous remedies. One man was bellowing that there would be a great bull-baiting in the ring at noon, and inviting every man to bring his dog for the sport. I was listening to him when someone touched my shoulder and spoke, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
‘Hullo, Peter!’
It was only Tam Burney of Mungrisdale, but he gave me a start, for I'd never expected to see anyone I knew. Our folks all used Keswick Market.
I could see the old man knew everything that mattered. His frosty eyes twinkled. He laid a swollen forefinger to his bearded mouth.
‘Whist, Peter boy, I'll say nothing! But' – he chuckled – ‘that was a bad shot o' yours with the stone! Why didn't ye hit him, eh? There's plenty would have danced on his funeral day.’
‘He was going pretty fast,’ I said apologetically.
Tam looked more serious. ‘You'll do well to get right out of the district, Peter boy. Sir Philip was like a madman yesterday, they say. Not for your stone, but for his beautiful wall. He's vowing Hell's vengeance on all who had a hand in it; but you're the only one, seemingly, he can prove anything against. I wouldn't be in your shoes, Peter boy.’
‘I'm going away for a bit,’ I admitted.
‘That's right. Sir Philip's got too many friends among the magistrates. You'll not stand a dog's chance if they catch you. Where did you think of going?’
‘Scotland, perhaps…’
Tam shook his head dubiously. ‘They're expecting that. They've sent word to Carlisle to look out for you – that I know for a fact.’
Cue for Treason Page 2