The Honorable Imposter (House of Winslow Book #1)

by Gilbert, Morris

  The inside of his mouth was dry as toast, and the words stumbled to his lips, but he had to try!

  “I—I did agree to help the law find Elder Brewster—that’s true—but—”

  “Oh, that’s true enough, Lady,” Roth said with an oily smile. “I see he’s used you for his evil purposes—as he has used another lady!”

  “Another lady?” Humility stared at Roth, then at Gilbert. “What lady?”

  “Lady Cecily North, the daughter of Winslow’s employer. He has led her to believe that his affections were due only to her.” Roth shrugged and added with a show of sadness, “But that has been Mr. Winslow’s downfall—by his own testimony. I hear he has been a womanizer of terrible proportion.”

  “Gilbert, is it true? Have you made love to this woman—all the time that we—”

  “Humility!” Gilbert said hoarsely, “I know how you must feel—and I’ve been wrong! But just tonight, I decided that I couldn’t go through with it! That’s why I looked ill, and when I got alone, I took a close look and decided that I could not betray you!”

  “Dear me!” Lord Roth sniffed. He gave Gilbert a sad shake of his head, saying, “I regret that you must resort to the final excuse of all evildoers! I never knew one who did not cry, ‘I was just going to repent’!”

  One look at Humility’s face, and Gilbert knew that she hated him. His mind raced, and suddenly he saw his sword hanging from a peg on the wall. With a sudden leap, he pulled it from the scabbard and set himself on guard against the form of Lord Roth.

  “You devil!” he whispered. “No matter what I’ve done, one thing is certain—you’ll not take this man!”

  Simon Roth did not seem alarmed at the threat of Gilbert’s sword. He said easily, “Well, now we see, don’t we? First you betray this woman, then you betray Brewster. Now you intend to betray your employer, the bishop, the law and the King of England. There’s nothing in you of truth, is there, Winslow?”

  The raw truth of Roth’s speech raked across Gilbert’s nerves, and he could have wept at the foolish decisions that had brought him to this time!

  But he shook his head and said drily, “You mistake me in one thing at least, my Lord—and I will now prove to you by my sword that my honor may be tattered by my foolish choices—but there is enough remaining to stop you!”

  Gilbert advanced to engage swords with the lean man in front of him, but to his surprise, Roth did not lift his blade. Instead, he called out, “Johnson!”

  Aware suddenly that his back was to the bedroom door, Gilbert whirled to find the man he had encountered on the dock at Leyden framed in the doorway, in his hands a heavy blunderbuss, trained right on Gilbert’s chest!

  “We meet again, eh?” he said with a wide grin. “Thought we might.”

  “Well, well, we must get on with it,” Roth said. “As you must have guessed, Johnson followed you and the woman here all the way from Leyden. Followed you here, also, then came to get me. So we’ll have your head on a pike on London Bridge, I shouldn’t wonder, Mr. Winslow. It’ll look well enough—until the crows pick out those bright blue eyes!”

  “We better chain this one ’till morning, Lord Roth,” Johnson suggested.

  “Quite so, Johnson. I believe you brought the irons?”

  “Right enough! Here, you put yer arms behind yer back!” Johnson commanded, bringing a set of heavy manacles out of a roomy coat pocket.

  He kept the blunderbuss trained carefully on Gilbert’s middle, and there was no chance of avoiding being torn in two at that range. “Just drop the sword!”

  Gilbert gave up hope then, and his sword clattered to the stones of the floor. Turning to face Lord Roth’s triumphant gaze, he heard Johnson approach and felt the touch of the iron on his wrists.

  “Don’t grieve over Cecily too much, Winslow,” Roth said. “I’ll see that she gets the proper consolation. As a matter-of-fact, it—”

  Roth’s words were drowned out by a tremendous bonging sound almost in Gilbert’s ear, and the weight of Johnson’s body came crashing into his back. The blunderbuss hit the floor, exploding with a tremendous boom! The shot tore huge chunks of plaster from the wall next to Lord Roth, and the nobleman’s face turned pale.

  Gilbert whirled to find Elder William Brewster holding a large chamber pot made of solid brass in both hands and staring down at the still form of Johnson whose head was beginning to bleed from a large gash over his left ear.

  Brewster looked a little stunned at his own action, but a gleam came into his mild eyes, and he said distinctly, “The Lord is a man of war!”

  In a heartbeat Gilbert snatched up his sword, but barely in time, for Lord Roth recovered his senses in time to make a lunge that would have pierced the heart of Winslow had he been one fraction of a second slower!

  They met in a fierce instant, hilts locked, their faces not six inches apart. They strained fiercely, then Gilbert thrust his opponent backward, sending him against the wall with a tremendous crash that rattled the dishes.

  There was a silence, the two men frozen for one brief moment. Then Lord Roth said, “I had thought to see you hang, Winslow, but this way is better!”

  “Lord Roth, look to yourself. One of us will be in the presence of God in a few seconds!”

  Gilbert lifted his sword, the creation of master swordsmith Clemens Hornn, a gift from Paul Dupree. He stood sideways, right foot straight forward with knee bent, left foot sideways and a little behind him, creeping to the right leg. The rapier, so balanced to his hand that it seemed to carry its own weight, was as steady as if it were carved in stone.

  The adversaries moved forward, the blades rang; then they disengaged and fell back. This was no tournament with buttoned foils; both men knew that one error would be fatal.

  Time and time again, Roth’s blade circled slowly, then like the strike of a snake it drove straight toward Gilbert’s heart; each time Gilbert used just enough pressure on Roth’s blade to deflect it.

  Once Gilbert saw his opportunity, and made a lunge, but the long arm of Roth made it ineffective.

  Roth was fencing according to all the rules, and Gilbert was caught off guard when suddenly, instead of lunging in a classic thrust, Roth bent to one side and slashed viciously at Gilbert’s leg. A sudden pain ripped through Gilbert’s thigh, and blood spattered the floor, making it slippery.

  “A foretaste, Winslow!” Roth smiled. He wiped his sweating brow, and glanced at Brewster and Humility who were backed up against the outside wall, saying, “Just a moment more, and we can have our tea!”

  Pain was running through Gilbert’s leg, sending its message through live nerves. He knew at once that he was cut to the bone, and was aware that if he put his full weight on that wounded right leg, he would go down. Backing up slowly, parrying Roth’s now frantic thrusts, he saw that his opponent knew as much and was bearing down with all his might to end the fight with one thrust. He need not fear Gilbert’s blade, for the wounded leg meant that he could not thrust at all.

  Then Gilbert felt the wall against his back, and saw instantly that Roth was uncoiling that long body of his ready for the final thrust that would pin his helpless opponent to the wall!

  Throw the rule book away, Mon Ami! The words rang in Gilbert’s mind—words he had heard a hundred times from his master Dupree: When you are losing, what good are rules?

  As Roth gathered himself into a coil of muscle, Gilbert knew that the last thrust was coming. Then Gilbert did what he had never done—what he had never seen done, and what he had never heard of; and he did it smoothly as though he had practiced it every day of his life.

  As Roth’s blade drove toward him, Gilbert’s left hand flashed out, grasped the tip of the flat sword. It was pure chance that his finger’s closed on it, for no man is fast enough to achieve that sort of reaction on purpose.

  As Roth came in for the kill, Gilbert twisted his blade to one side. It sliced through his palm, cutting to the bone with each edge, but that was a small thing. At the same time, Gilbe
rt simply lifted his sword and Roth, sensing at the last moment what had happened, opened his mouth to cry out, “No!”

  But he was too late. The force of his lunge brought him in range, and Gilbert felt his blade penetrate the tough membrane of the chest, grate on bone, then slide easily up to the hilt.

  Roth stood there staring at Gilbert with a terrible brightness in his eyes. Then he looked down at the hilt of the sword nestled against his chest. For a long moment he seemed to be meditating what to do about it. He put his hand up, touched the hilt of Gilbert’s sword tenderly—then his legs buckled and he sprawled limply on the floor, a bright crimson flood spreading out from beneath his body.

  Gilbert stared at Roth’s body, took one step forward on his wounded leg, and fell headlong, his legs tangled with the body of his adversary.

  He looked at his left palm, noting impersonally the white gristle and bone in the red slashes, then at his thigh which was pumping a throbbing stream of his blood on the floor with each steady beat of his heart.

  He heard Humility say, “We must leave! There’ll be others!”

  Looking up, he saw her face, but it was as if she were behind a thin red curtain. Her voice was thin and reedy, as though she were in a distant far-off room.

  He knew he was dying, bleeding to death, and he desperately wanted to tell them both how he had changed out under the stars—but when he opened his lips, no sound came out.

  He heard Humility say, “Leave him!” Then came a roaring in his ears, and then—nothing.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “THEY KNEW THEY WERE PILGRIMS . . . ”

  Consciousness came to Gilbert suddenly. One moment he was unaware of anything; then he was looking up at a crude picture of a horse with very stiff legs. Fascinated, he stared at it, thinking, I could draw a better horse than that! Then he felt a thrill of fear, for he realized that he didn’t know where he was—nor even, for a fraction of a second, who he was.

  “You’re awake,” a voice said, and he rolled his head to one side to see a face that looked familiar—an elderly man with a full beard and eyes that were kind. “About time, my boy!”

  Then it all came back—the cottage in the valley and the duel with Lord Roth. “Elder Brewster . . .” he croaked, and could not say more, so parched were the tissues of his throat and lips, until Brewster held his head up and gave him a few swallows of tepid water from a pewter tankard. “Let me sit up.”

  “Careful with your leg!” Brewster warned as he helped pull Gilbert into a sitting position. “We’ve got too much invested in you to lose you now.”

  Gilbert’s head swam as he sat up, but that passed and he stared around the room, a small, low-ceilinged affair with one small window allowing a thin shaft of sunlight through a dingy glass. “This isn’t your house! Where are we—and how . . . ?”

  “Now, there’s time for that,” Brewster said. He got up and brought a bowl from the small chest by the door. Taking a large wooden spoon he said, “You try to eat some of this broth, and I’ll tell you what’s happened.”

  The broth was cold, filmed with grease—and the most delicious thing Gilbert had ever tasted! He gobbled down the contents, and Brewster refilled it twice from a black pot as he talked.

  “Well, when you went down bleeding like a slaughtered steer, we got the bleeding stopped; then we did the needlework. We had no way of knowing how soon somebody would appear looking for Lord Roth and Johnson, so we managed to get you into my little two-wheeled cart, hitch up my donkey, and somehow—by God’s grace!—we got you back to Gabriel’s house.”

  “Is this it?”

  “Oh, no, Gilbert! That would have been fatal! We stayed until dark the next night; then we put you in a wagon, covered you with fresh cut hay, and Humility and I lay beside you to keep you still. Gabriel has a brother with a tiny farm about ten miles from Scrooby, and that’s where we are now.”

  “How long have I been here, Mr. Brewster?”

  “This is August 6—that makes it five days.”

  “Five days! Why, you can’t stay here—you’ve got to get to Southampton at once! The Mayflower is due to sail—”

  Brewster pushed Gilbert back into bed, and said in a gentle voice, “The ship sailed yesterday, Gilbert.”

  “Oh, no!” He struggled to break the grip of Brewster, but he was too weak, and finally fell back, despair etched on his face. “What will . . . ?”

  He stopped abruptly when the door opened and Humility came in.

  He almost failed to recognize her, so changed was she from what he remembered. She was very pale—he could not see how anyone could lose so much color in such a short time! The rosy cheeks and the pert cherry lips were washed to a pale gray, faded and lifeless, and there was none of the sparkle in her green eyes that had been so beautiful. She gazed at him as she approached, and there was no anger that he could read, but more of a stolid indifference. Her eyes seemed cloudy, obscured by a thin film that blocked out all the warmth and charm of her spirit. “I found some food,” she said quietly, and there was the same deadness in her voice that was in her eyes—none of the vivacious element that had been there before.

  Gilbert swallowed and said with an effort, “Humility—and Mr. Brewster—it may not mean anything to you now—I suppose it doesn’t—but what I said to Roth, about deciding not to deliver you up? It was the truth!”

  “I believe you,” Humility said, but it seemed to have no meaning to her; there was nothing in her voice or in her face to remind him of the woman he had known.

  “And so do I, Gilbert!” Brewster patted his shoulder. He gave Humility a quick glance and then said hurriedly, “You must put it all behind you, and start all over again, my boy!”

  Gilbert put his hand out to Humility and said huskily, “I’m sorry for all of it!”

  She took his hand, but it might have been the hand of a marble statue he held—so cold and motionless it was. And her eyes were somehow brittle and empty as she said tonelessly, “I forgive you, Gilbert.” Then she turned and left, saying, “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”

  Brewster waited until she was gone, then said, “Don’t despair, Gilbert. She’ll change.”

  “Why should she?” Gilbert asked angrily. “I’ve pulled her world apart—yours as well. If I hadn’t been involved, you’d both be on the Mayflower right now!”

  “You can’t know that, can you? A thousand things might have happened to keep us from being there. Do you remember the word from the Bible: ‘All things work together for good to them that love the Lord’? So this tragedy is part of God’s plan.”

  “Doesn’t seem possible!”

  “And did it seem good to Joseph when his brothers threw him in a pit to die? But years later when he saved his whole family, he told them not to worry about what they’d done. Remember that? He said, ‘You thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good, to save much people alive.’ ”

  “I can’t see how murdering a man and wrecking your life can be good!”

  “Well, to be honest with you, my boy, neither can I—right now. But I’m an old man, and one thing I’ve learned is that God has a sovereign will in every situation. So we must wait and see what He plans to do with this one!”

  He was out of the bed in a week, dizzy and clinging to the wall for support. But it took three more weeks for him to move with anything like a normal walk. He used the days to exercise in the small room, and after dark he limped painfully around the confines of the small farm. There were other farms so close that there was always a chance of someone seeing them, so Gabriel came to bring them food and give them news.

  Gilbert had given up on any response from Humility. She was locked in, barricaded behind a wall that baffled his many attempts to get through. Brewster had said, “Give her time, Gilbert. She’ll come out one day and be herself again.”

  He marked a little calendar that he had made, checking off each day, and on the 4th of September Gabriel came bursting into the house, calling, “Mr. Brewster! Mr.
Brewster!” in stentorian tones loud enough to rattle the dishes.

  Gilbert fell downstairs and saw the huge Gabriel practically shaking the slender form of Brewster, his face wild with excitement.

  “I tell ye, she’s not gone yet!”

  “Who’s not gone, Gabriel?” Gilbert asked.

  “The ship—the Mayflower—she’s at Plymouth!”

  Brewster was trying to read a note, apparently a letter that Gabriel had passed to him. “It’s true, Gilbert! This is from Bradford . . .” He paused to scan the contents, and then looked up with excitement in his face. “The two ships left Southampton together, but the Speedwell proved to be un-seaworthy, so they turned back to have her repaired.”

  “And they’re at Plymouth?” Gilbert demanded.

  “Yes—but Bradford says that the new plan is to leave the Speedwell here—to put as many as possible on the Mayflower and make the trip in one ship.”

  “When do they sail?”

  Brewster looked at the letter and shook his head. “By the 6th—that’s day after tomorrow!”

  “You’ll be on that ship!” Gilbert exclaimed.

  “Impossible!” the older man exclaimed.

  “With God, all things are possible,” Gilbert grinned. It delighted him to have a hope; the waiting had been terribly hard on his nerves, but the worst was the total lack of any possible action. Now he took Gabriel by the arm, and said rapidly, his face glowing with excitement, “Gabriel, get your wagon piled high with hay.”

  “Why, it’s here—I was bringing a wagon load to my brother for his stock!”

  “Good! Where’s Humility?”

  “Gone to the stream for fresh water,” Brewster said.

  “I’ll go get her—you throw everything we’ve got in the way of food and clothing together!”

  He lurched out the door, breaking into a half-run. Pain ran along his leg, but ignoring it, he drove himself through the gate and halfway to the creek when he met Humility coming back in the darkness.