“Very well. We ask you to do a dangerous thing, Gilbert Winslow. We must get Elder Brewster out of his hiding place and to Southampton as quickly as possible. We think that you and Humility might be able to accomplish that.” He frowned and added, “Ordinarily we would not permit an unmarried couple to make such a journey unchaperoned—but we face a crisis.”
“I agree,” Gilbert said, “but let me urge you to let me undertake this mission alone. It’s too dangerous for a woman.” He argued valiantly for ten minutes, but to no avail.
“Both of you must go,” Bradford insisted stubbornly.
“Very well.” Gilbert shook his head. “Where is Elder Brewster hidden?”
“We think it best that no one know that—or as few as possible,” Bradford said smoothly.
Gilbert saw in a flash that he was on trial—and that it would require more doing than he had thought to do the job. But he said only, “A wise decision, Mr. Bradford. When do we leave?”
“As soon as possible. A ship is due in two days. Will that be satisfactory?”
“Perfectly.”
Gilbert spent much time during the next two days sequestered with Bradford and Pastor Robinson, going over details. Not once did they allude to the location of the elder. Humility spent the time tying up that part of her life that had been spent in Leyden—saying goodbye to those who would remain, making plans to be reunited with those she would see again on the Mayflower.
Finally, after a tearful parting at the dock, they stood on board a three-masted schooner, headed for England.
They said little for the first few hours, but after the moon came up, they stood in the bow, watching the white waves break, flashing with a rich golden light. The tang of salt was in the breeze that whipped through their hair, and there was a hissing sound as the schooner slid through the water.
“Are you afraid?” Gilbert asked suddenly.
Humility turned to him and thought about his question. Her blonde hair billowed in strands like golden threads, and she smiled as she said, “Not of being caught and sent to gaol.”
“Of what, then?”
“Of something happening to us.”
He bit his lip, and asked quietly, “To us?”
“You remember about the Persian myth?”
“Yes.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of most, dear. That we’ll be torn apart—and never find each other again.” Then she leaned against him, saying, “I’m like that myth, Gilbert. If I got lost from you, I’d never have anybody—not anybody! I never wanted to marry, and I never expected to love anybody as I love you.”
He stood there, staring into her eyes, and finally said, “Humility, I have to tell you something—”
She waited, then when he said nothing, she asked, “Yes, what is it, Gilbert?”
“Nothing. Things will be all right.”
He pulled her into his arms to prevent her seeing the twitching of his face as he said the words.
“It will be all right,” she murmured, pressing her face against his heart. “It will be fine—now that I’ve got you, Dear Heart!”
The ship faltered, changed course, and as the sails slipped and the masts creaked, a silence wrapped around the pair in the bow of the ship.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A TRAITOR UNMASKED
After getting ashore at Dartmouth, Humility and Gilbert caught the mail coach, then rolled along the Great North Road, huge plumes of dust rising like waves behind them. The fine grains of whitish dust coated them from head to foot, and even the water tasted dusty in the hot July weather.
They passed Cambridge on the left, and hours later the Boston Road flanked west, but they rolled steadily toward the north.
They changed teams three times, and shadows were growing long as the coach pulled into a quiet hamlet on the bank of the River Ryton, within sight of its junction with the Idle, both sluggish small streams in the watershed of the Humber which drains the moors and lands of the middle eastern counties.
“We leave the coach here,” Humility said, catching Gilbert off guard.
“What place is this?”
“Scrooby.”
Gilbert stared at the cluster of cottages and small houses. “He’s not here! It’s the first place they’d put a watch on!” He knew that because Tiddle had mentioned that the only wise thing Dudley Carleton had done was to set a man to keep close watch on Brewster’s former home where he still had distant relatives.
“No, but we can get word of him,” Humility said. She led the way past a small parish church, well built of cut stone, and a great manor house of timber.
They went past the last lights of the small town, and for nearly half an hour groped their way along the stony road. Finally Humility said, “We go in here,” moving toward a dim light set well off the road.
“Who’s there? Stand and declare!”
Out of the small cottage, a huge man with a tremendous beard appeared, holding a flickering lantern high. He had a large cudgel in his fist, and he called again as the pair approached the house, “Who be ye?”
“It’s me, Gabriel—Humility.”
“Is it now!” the giant exclaimed, then leaned the club against the side of the house and took her shoulder with his free hand. He towered over her, but there was a warm smile on his craggy face as he said, “Well, now? Is it a ghost you are? Appearing like a spirit in the middle of the night?”
“This is Mr. Winslow, Gabriel.”
Gilbert put his hand out and it was crushed in a fleshly vise. “Gabriel was Mr. Brewster’s servant in the old days.”
“Still am, Lady! And always will be!” He stepped back and urged them inside, saying at once when he put the lantern on the handmade table, “Ye’ll want to see him, I take it?”
“As soon as possible,” Humility nodded. “Tonight if we can.”
“You stay close here tonight,” Gabriel said at once. “Tomorrow old Simon will get word to Mr. Brewster—then he’ll bring word back of what to do.”
After a meal of bread and cold meats, Gabriel put Humility in the single small bedroom, and Gilbert slept on fragrant hay in the loft above the half-timbered cottage.
The sun was warm on his face when Gilbert woke up, and he hastily descended the small ladder into the house below.
“Good morning, Gilbert,” Humility smiled. She came to him and lifted her face for a kiss, then went back to the small hearth where she was warming fresh bread and stirring a black pot hanging over the fire. “Try some of this porridge—straight from Scotland.”
After cleaning the dishes, they wandered through the fields and woods, taking pleasure in a staggering, newborn fawn crossing the path. As they went deeper into the woods, Humility took him to a small stream, and sitting on the green, mossy banks, they talked until the sun reached its zenith, then realized with a start that the whole morning had passed.
“I wish every day could be like this,” Gilbert said suddenly. “Life gets so complicated!”
Humility, thinking of the time she’d stood on the bridge at Leyden watching the circles in the water ripple and clash, smiled and put her arm around him. “One day it will—when we get to the New World.”
Gilbert started, then gave a rueful laugh. “I expect it will be a little more difficult than this.”
“Even so, we’ll be together!” she said. Since Gilbert had agreed to undertake the mission they were on, there had been no doubt in her mind that he was committed to the voyage, and the hardships did not frighten her. She was so complete in her happiness, she failed to notice the awkward silence that inevitably followed any reference she made to the exodus to America.
Gilbert had his mind made up to one thing, at least: he would turn Brewster over to the authorities, but he would keep Humility free of the business. Somehow he would pull her away before the actual arrest.
It was a little after one the next day when Gabriel returned, accompanied by a gnome of a man named Simon Lee.
“Simon will take you to
the place,” Gabriel said. “It’s a goodly walk.”
The “goodly walk” turned out to be a twelve-mile trek through brambles, bushes, and jagged paths that stabbed at the feet like dragon’s teeth! Simon led them upward from the table land to the foothills south of Scrooby, the beginnings of Sherwood, until finally they crested a rise, and there in a valley below was a small stone house, and beyond, a large meadow spotted with sheep and goats.
“It’s an abandoned sheep farm,” Humility explained as they made their way down the winding path. “It was too far away from market, so it was abandoned years ago.”
Fifteen minutes later they approached a man sitting on a large buff stone outcropping, and Gilbert got his first look at William Brewster, fugitive from the King’s justice.
He was of medium height, and had that healthy thinness that old men sometimes achieve. Over a broad forehead, mild eyes were set rather narrowly, and he had a full brown beard streaked with white. The hand he raised in greeting had the long fingers of an artist, and a stubborn set in his chin was the only evidence of the iron determination that lay like bedrock in his character.
“Daughter, it’s good to see you,” he said in a high-pitched, pleasant voice, then turned a pair of inquiring eyes on her companion and put out a thin hand, saying, “And this is Mr. Winslow. God bless you for your aid, sir.”
Gilbert nodded, unable to reply, but Humility threw her arms around Brewster’s neck, and cried out, “Oh, just think, soon we’ll be in the New World.”
Brewster gave Winslow a quick smile over her shoulder, saying, “Well, this old world isn’t all that bad, actually.”
Brewster took Gilbert by one arm and Humility by the other, turned them toward the cottage, saying, “I’m thankful you’ve come—both of you. I’ve been alone so much I talk to the hares—and even they go to sleep! Come, let’s go to the cottage.”
The next three days were a strange time for Gilbert. The mornings and afternoons were spent doing little but wandering the beautiful hills with Humility, while the nights provided good talk with Brewster. The old man had lived a great deal and had known many famous people. Gilbert had nearly fallen out of his chair when Brewster casually mentioned being rather close to the poets Spenser and Sir Philip Sidney. But that was nothing to what he felt when Brewster said, talking about the old days, “. . . They were not so good as they remember,” he had mused. “Why, I remember once when Bess had a half dozen of her ministers cooling their heels in the tower at the same time. I recall it was at that time that Essex came to see my master, Mr. Davenport, and we were talking in the parlor—”
“You spoke with Essex?” Gilbert stared at him as if he had said he talked with Moses.
Brewster’s eyes twinkled and he nodded, “Oh, yes, but he wasn’t much—Robert wasn’t. A tailor’s dummy—beautiful to look at, but not enough sense for a nit!”
“But Elizabeth—Queen Elizabeth—you actually saw her?”
“Many times, lad—but she wasn’t much to see,” Brewster smiled. “She was getting pretty long in the tooth, but she’d bed down with anything that caught her fancy! And curse? Why, she would put the roughest sailor in the fleet to shame!”
Gilbert stared at the old man, then shaking his head in sad wonder, said, “You don’t think about people like that having flaws—temper, or bad teeth.”
“Ah, that’s because you’re a romantic at heart, lad!” Brewster chuckled. “You’ll choose to think of something long ago rather than today, because time dulls the rough edges of things. And a true romantic will always think the land across the sea will be much more wonderful than Scrooby or London. It’s only when he gets there and discovers that garbage and leaky roofs occur about as often in a far-off paradise as they do in England!”
Humility said, “Why, you seem to be saying that all of us who are going to the New World are romantics, Mr. Brewster!”
“Why, bless you, child,” Brewster hooted with laughter. “Of course we are! Every pilgrim is!”
“I never thought of it that way,” Gilbert mused.
“Rich, successful men don’t become pioneers, Gilbert. They are settled down in this world with both feet. It’s only those who have a dream who tear up and risk everything in a new world.”
“I suppose that’s why the Scripture says, ‘Abraham looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.’ ”
Brewster nodded approval. “ Ye know your Bible, son. And you’ll mind the verse in that same chapter that says all the pilgrims ‘died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them far off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.’ ”
“Not a happy prospect, is it?” Gilbert mused.
“Because they didn’t get what they wanted?” Brewster demanded, and there was a fire in his fine old eyes. “Son, the most miserable man in creation is the man who has everything he wants! Ye’ve heard of Alexander who wept because he had no more world to conquer? Well, he deceived himself, because there was one world—more wonderful and rich than Greece or Persia—that he never conquered!”
“Which world, Elder Brewster?”
“Himself.” The answer came quietly, but there was such fervor in Brewster’s manner that he seemed young, and Gilbert had a sudden hope that he would have the spirit of William Brewster when he came to the end of his life.
Humility had not taken her eyes off Gilbert’s face. Now she put her hand on his, and said gently, “Strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” She smiled at him with a faith so steady it shook him, and added, “It’s better, though, to be on the pilgrim way with someone, isn’t it?”
Gilbert put on an evasive cheerfulness, and the moment passed.
As the days passed, Gilbert was drawn to the spirit of Brewster, and the idea of betraying the good old man grew increasingly repulsive.
On the third night the thing got the best of him. He was sitting beside Humility listening to Brewster read from the Scriptures, as he did each night. He was reading the account of the last hours in the life of Jesus, and when he came to the story of Judas, an icy fist seemed to seize Gilbert’s heart: “The Son of man goeth as it is written of him; but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It had been better for that man if he had not been born.”
It would have been better for that man if he had not been born!
The words echoed in Gilbert’s brain with an eerie cadence—an anthem straight out of the Pit!
He stared across the room, and the holiness etched on the face of William Brewster was an indictment of his own wretched soul—and one glance at Humility as she smiled at him with love and confidence was enough to fill him with a self-loathing such as he had never known!
“Gilbert, don’t you feel well?” he heard Humility ask.
“You look pale as death, boy—are you ill?” Brewster asked.
Gilbert got up, averting his face and lurching toward the door. “I—I am a little sick—don’t come—I’ll get some air!”
He wandered blindly along the path, paying no heed to anything save the agony of guilt that had suddenly exploded within his soul. Finally he threw himself face down on a grassy knoll and bit his lip to hold back the cries that rose from within him, and there was such a power in the storm of emotion tearing at him that he was drenched in sweat and his hands were scratched from beating on the earth unconsciously.
How long he fought that battle he never knew, but finally he rolled over on his back, drained and empty, staring up at the sky. Then a decision came—like the return of an old friend who had been long on a journey; he felt his honor come back. He lay there, wondering why he had ever thought he could sell another human being for his own gain and hope to be a man.
Getting up, he looked to the sky and said, “I may never be lord of any land—but by my honor, there’s one thing I’ll rule over, and that’s myself!”
The stars seemed friendly, and he made his way back to Brew
ster’s cottage. He felt clean, refreshed, as if plunged into a pool of water that washed away all the stains the past had marked him with.
But he also felt a twinge of fear, thinking that he would lose his place, lose the main chance that had come to him in life if he did not deliver up Brewster. He laughed aloud, saying to the night, “Why, let it be, then! If Lord North turns me out for being an honorable man, why, he’s none himself! If Cecily boots me out for refusing to be a man-seller, I’m best off without her! Let Tiddle prate on about how a man can do without honor—but I notice that he’s none too happy for having sold his for a place!”
He found light still burning in the window as he burst through the door and said to Humility, who was sitting at the table with Brewster, “Well, I feel much better! Must have been that third chop you forced on me for supper, Elder Brewster.”
He stopped abruptly and the smile left his lips as he saw that Humility’s face was pale as a sheet of paper, and Brewster looked very disturbed.
“What’s the matter? You have some evil tidings?”
“Why, I think not!” Gilbert whirled in time to see Lord Roth step from behind the door that had swung back to conceal him. There was a savage joy in his piercing eyes as he stepped forward, sword in hand, and said, “The tidings are good for the loyal subjects of King James—evil for traitors such as William Brewster—and those that are involved in his escape.”
Gilbert stood like a man turned to stone. It was like a nightmare! Coming as it did on the heels of his decision to aid Brewster, he could not find any avenue of escape.
“Ah, you are speechless?” Roth stated with mock sadness. He whipped the foil in his hand through the air idly, then nodded to the pair at the table. “I salute you, Mr. Brewster. You have outwitted the law for quite a long time. As a matter-of-fact, if it had not been for the help of Mr. Gilbert Winslow, it is likely that you would have made your way to the New World after all.”
“No!” Humility cried. She rose, hands at her breast, and the pain in her eyes was unbearable to Gilbert. She stepped to his side, and said in a voice strained to the breaking point, “He’s lying! Tell me he’s lying, Gilbert!”
The Honorable Imposter (House of Winslow Book #1) Page 11