by Talbot Mundy
“For a soldier you are not so ready with obedience as suits my mood,” I said. “Have I to show you who is master?”
“Show me your commission,” he retorted.
Having none, though I meant to set my foot that minute on the first rung of the ladder of promotion, I strode toward him, with my hand clear from my sword-hilt, though he touched his. I scorned to show fear of him.
“I know a ‘prentice,” I said, “who can take your place and do the duty better. Which is it — mount and obey, or to the devil with you to ask the Lords in Council for a copy of my orders? Haply they will waste their time feeding your curiosity!”
So he summed me up and, being a braggart, he added too high: “You might have told me in the first place that you have a Queen’s commission,” he said, toothing and lipping the words outlandishly. “If I had known—”
“You know or you don’t know. What do I care? Mount!” I ordered; and he swung into the saddle, shrugging his shoulders and showing a grin to his men, as much as to say they should judge bye and bye of the upshot.
Then “Up tails all!” I shouted; and we rode out of the yard like a duke and his escort, even Berden keeping half a horse’s length behind me, though that may have been because he wished me not to see the smile that flickered at the corner of his mouth; but I saw it and knew Berden was yet to deal with. I rode the mare and one of Jacques’s men led my roan.
At the yard gate who should run towards me but the ‘prentice lad Jack Giles. I found out afterwards that he had clacked his tongue dry, questioning the halberdiers who I might be. Not knowing, they had naturally filled him full of lies for their own amusement. They had not said I was Emperor of Tartary come seeking the Queen’s hand in marriage, nor the Pope’s legate with a bill of deposition, but there was little else they had not thought of, so the lad had notions about me like a tall ship sailing through the ocean of his dreams. I bade him mount the roan, suspecting he might save me the necessity of asking Berden the way to Spitalfields and Alderman Stiles’s house.
I soon learned it was no far cry to Spitalfields, where we were likely to arrive too soon unless we dallied. Nevertheless, if I should dally in Westminister my bob-tailed following might learn I lacked the Queen’s commission.
Having to pass through London City I decided to get that done with and to beguile the time where distance should prevent my rascals from overworking curiosity. It was the first taste I had ever had of clattering with a troop behind me and I made the best of it, though we were only seven, all told, and the ‘prentice rode like an ape on a stick. I led so smart a pace that people fled to right and left of us, until Berden at last spurred up abreast of me:
Softly!” he said. “Softly! You are not Lieutenant-General of England yet!”
I neither answered nor slackened speed, suspecting that now was my chance to deal with Berden. Presently he asked me:
“Shall I tell these men you hold a Queen’s commission or shall I tell Lord Burghley that you make pretence of it?”
Then I was glad that the noise of our hoofs prevented the others from hearing.
“Tell him,” I answered, “whatever you please. But I will tell him this night whether you have helped or hindered.”
“You will go far, Will Halifax. When I was your age, if I had held a Queen’s commission I would have shown it to the first who asked.”
We rode between the counting-houses of the richest merchants in the world, and between the warehouses of the India merchants and the Easterlings, spicey with strange smells, and with here and there a dark-skinned heathen staring at us from under his comical cloth hat, until we came to London Bridge. And there the stench was so abominable that the horses shied at it and we all held our noses in hand or handkerchief. There was a man’s head on a spike above the arch at our end, and all the way along the bridge there were the rotting quarters of about two hundred Jesuits, all done to death since Candlemas.
“It comes of not minding their own business,” said Berden, “so serve ’em right!”
I agreed with him there, so I set my mind to thinking of the alderman whom I must hale into the Marshalsea.
We rode around the Tower moat, I marvelling at all that pile of masonry against the afternoon sky, shuddering a little, too, as I remember, at the thought of how many noblemen — aye, and a queen — had lost their heads behind that grim wall. What with one thought leading to another it began to dawn on me that I was in the midst of such treasons as had cost wiser men than me their heads, and that haply mere audacity were insufficient for the night’s work. And the more I thought of it, the more I saw that Berden was of like mind; he was making such grimaces to himself as a yokel makes through a horse-collar at a country fair for a prize of bacon and ale.
“Have you saddle-boils?” I asked him, and he tried to grin a little, misliking that I should think him fearful. But I had Berden’s measure.
When we came to a tavern such as we might enter without too much comment I drew rein to order bait for the beasts and for ourselves such supper as the mean place could provide. Our host came into the yard to look us over — a flinty-eyed, furtive rogue with a St. Anthony’s fire in his nose that I doubted not he kept well slaked; and before he would give us as much as a drink for man or beast he demanded to know who would settle the reckoning.
So I roundly cursed the fellow for a poxy cone-catcher and flung a coin into the mixen at his feet, declaring I would pay such reckoning as passed my scrutiny. Whereat my ruffians went into the inn to swill and gorge themselves at my cost. So I smelt another danger than the heavy draught on light purse. Extravagance, I thought, will certainly appear to them a weakness, as it will also make them pot-house brave and uncontrollable.
“Bread, cheese and beef,” I ordered, “and for each hour that we tarry here one mug of ale to the man — nor not a drop beside, not though they offer payment. If a man of mine is drunk when I require his services, I’ll have your licence confiscated and yourself whipped at a cart-tail. For you look to me, mine host, like a skullful of lousy purposes!”
“Who loosed this ban-dog?” he grumbled. But he understood his risk too well, and my predicament too little, to defy me and I heard him repeat my order to the ‘prentice potman.
In the tap-room the borough coroner was holding inquest on a corpse; the room was crowded with the jury and a throng of witnesses. I went into the inner room and bade the lad Giles follow me, he walking wryly, being unused to the saddle and as galled already as a tripe under a good-wife’s scraper.
“The smallest fishes make the biggest splashes now and then,” said I, “so I will try you first. Eat — drink — then slip away unseen and bring me word what passes near the house of Joshua Stiles the alderman. Keep silent and report to nobody but me.”
Presently came Berden, his imagination full of human entrails he had seen uncovered and his appetite no better for it.
“‘Swounds! But this is no night’s work for honest men!”
I told him we had lousy enough rougues with us for any undertaking. “Jaques and his blackguards will never see angels except in the shape of minted money, and that stolen.”
“Aye,” he answered, “lousy rascals who will leave us in the lurch! There are too few of us. Nor are the men we have much better than a pack of curs to catch a falcon with. What know you yet of Stiles and how he keeps himself?”
I knew nothing. I was careful, therefore, to appear wise, looking at Berden as if doubtful how far I could trust him. But he was not so taken by my air of secrecy as not to have his doubts.
“I see,” he said, “you are already chief adviser to Lord Burghley, so I pay you my humble respects. But are you aware that Joshua Stiles is plotting to deliver the Queen of Scotts from Tutbury?”
“So far you shoot middling straight,” I answered.
“And have they told you that the green thing in the red box, that you showed to Phelippes, is the Queen of Scots’ own talisman that the Lords in Council have been hunting for these many months?
The sight of that thing was to warn the disaffected men to hold themselves in readiness. It has been sent around the country, and the Council has heard of it scores of times, but none knew who the leaders are, nor how ready they are. It is easy enough to hang half-wit yokels or to make a carrier or two hop headless, but that uncovers no conspiracies.
“Who in the City of London is behind it all? — and how many? — and how prepared? to take Joshua Stiles by daylight might start a tumult. What then, my bully night-rider? Why does my Lord Burghley pick a hot-pate such as you to do his errand? You shall have your crack at Stiles, you shall; and if his fellows crack your pate, so” much the worse for you — but who else suffers? Nobody. If you catch him, and if the City of London takes his part, what then again? Why pittikins and God-amercy! You are nothing but an addle-witted knight’s son new to London, who did a decent alderman a gross indignity and may be thrown yourself into the Marshalsea in place of him!”
“‘Od’s teeth, you have the warrant,” I retorted.
“Aye,” he said, “I have it, which is, so to say, you have it not. If all goes well, good Benjamin Berden, a proper person, frequently employed in such particulars, has served a warrant issued by the Lords in Counail. If not, aforesaid Benjamin Berden, a scapegrace oftentimes entrusted with ticklish treasons that were best not talked about, returns the warrant whence it came, he knowing which side uppermost his bread is buttered. Where is the warrant then? Who shall produce it? Who shall save Will Halifax from the vengeance of Stiles and others?”
“I am doubtless not so deep in the Council’s confidence as you are,” I retorted, “yet it seems I am trusted more than you are, and apparently with cause.”
“Well crowed, my bully rooster,” he said, laughing. He was no churl, though a life of playing spy had changed his natural courage into a cunning not so admirable. “But hear me first,” he went on, “for your own good. If we all went tails up and heads down into any trap the Lords in Council tallyho us into, how long should we last? Yet dare we not refuse, since bread and cheese depends on it, and pickings. Therefore, sometimes we avoid the danger and the man escapes us, yet we bring back to our masters such reports as mollify their hard conceits.
“All England is full o’ treason. If six of us and a ‘prentice lad go after Joshua Stiles we are like to leave our carcases for the crowner here to hold his quest on; but if we fill our noses full o’ new hot scent and cry it to the Lords in Council, we provide ourselves a suitabler employment and live longer.”
It was a weighty argument, because I saw he lacked the spunk for the night’s work and I knew that Jaques and his men were even less dependable.
“By God’s beard,” I answered, “I will carry such report of you as you deserve this night, and you shall do the same by me, so let us look to it that each may praise the other!”
By his eye I knew he liked me better for that speech than if I had yielded to his persuasion. Rather ruefully but with a grin he struck hands on the bargain and then went to the tap-room to draw Dutch courage from the hogshead.
There had come a fog down-river, thickened by the smoke from chimneys, and it was no evening to tempt men outdoors.
I began to fear my ‘prentice-lad had lost himself and when he lingered until after six o’clock, as I knew by the cry of the watchman in the street, the doubt crept into me that I had acted like a country fool to trust him.
But he came at last beckoning in the doorway, his snub nose twitching and his freckles all awork with news. I followed him out to the stable, noticing as I went that Jaques and his men were none too sober; they had found fools ready to buy drinks for them in exchange for tales of foreign parts — all lies, I doubt not. Women had arrived to tempt them after they should grow too drunk to know a wanton from an honest wench. Jaques was putting pepper and Holland spirits into his ale and was in a fair way toward picking quarrels.
‘Prentice Giles waited for me where the fog and the steam from the yard dung made a nimbus around the stable lantern, and by the way he grinned I knew he had chanced on something that should set me by the ears. So I wore my best air of indifference, although he well-nigh robbed me of it with his first words:
“Master, there are twenty sailors lying in wait for you behind a garden wall near Alderman Stiles’s house. Stiles has a boat on the river and is on the way to it now, with two men. There the twenty sailors are to find him after they have killed you and whoever comes with you. I heard Stiles give his orders, for it was easy in the fog to creep close without their knowing it. They are to take the trinket in a red box from your person and then to make all haste to the boat, which is already loaded with Stiles’s luggage. They are to row the boat down-river to a ship that is bound for Flushing.”
He knew where the boat was and swore he could find it, fog or no fog. So I bade him put the bridles on my mare, on the roan, and on Berden’s horse, and to have all three ready in the stable-yard against my coming.
In the tap-room Jaques sat with a slattern on his knee, his busy fingers fidgeting her shift, what little remained to guard her easy virtue. He kicked his rapier-point to bring the hilt well forward as a hint to me to govern myself shrewdly; so while I paid the tavern reckoning with my back toward him I was thinking more of him than of the money and I doubt not I was cheated. But so was Jaques — of his drunken hope of making me the target of his ill-will. I needed just such a spur to my waning courage as Jaques provided.
I turned on him right suddenly and tripped the chair he sat on; he and the slut went sprawling in the sawdust. She was on her feet first, screaming to him to avenge her, making more fuss than an honest wench about the offence I had done to her modesty. She dubbed me a young springald, so as Jaques made shift to draw his rapier I fetched her a back-hand clout across the ear that sent her staggering into him. He gave her a shove that sent her sprawling on the floor again out of his way, but that was too late: I had him by the sword-wrist, and if he had not let go the rapier I would have rendered his arm an object lesson for that drunken surgeon’s ‘prentices.
“’Twould serve you right,” said I, “if I should snap this toy off to its proper length and thrash you with the half of it for making yourself a whoreson spectacle. You serve a gentleman, and God’s teeth, you shall serve him mannerly!”
With that I threw his weapon in a corner and bade him go fetch it. I knew I had hurt his wrist more smartly than should make him eager for a fight just then, so I turned my back to him and, after spilling his men’s ale (they had drunk more than I ordered) and parting them from the toss-pot trulls they fondled, I went in to speak my mind to Berden, who had stood at the crack of the inner door to watch what happened.
“That fellow Jaques will stick you in the back like a Michaelmas hog,” he warned me, and I waxed sarcastic:
“Not with a brave, bold lad like you to stand beside me!” I said; and that was the last I ever had to say to Berden in such vein as that; since that night Berden and I have been in many a tight place together and I have never known him either to flinch or spare himself.
I told him I had work enough to keep Jaques otherwise engaged than stalking me. “Get six yards of good stout cord,” I urged him. “Cut it in three and bring it. You and I and the ‘prentice-lad will catch our man while Jaques and his ruffians draw the ambush.”
“Dare you trust Jaques?” he demanded, for he realized that I had news, though he knew not yet how I had it.
“Look you well to your report concerning me and never mind Jaques,” I answered, whereat he laughed, for he was braver when he had no choice than when he thought his luck presented him with opportunity to run out and around an issue. So I let him know I bore no malice, taking him by the arm that Jaques and his men might see the two of us in open amity. I ordered Jaques to take his men and up-tails in the yard.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Of the taking of Alderman Joshua Stiles.
HORSES and men were like ghosts in the fog by the light of the stable lantern and there was opportunity for Jaques
and his men to have revenge on me. But fortune seems to me to flow into the channel of men’s moods and Jaques’s mood was offensive to the lady, if she is a female, as the ancients seem always to have maintained, with what warranty I know not. I found him standing on the mixen, very angry with his horse that would not let him mount. I came up like a phantom and the horse took fright at me. It threw him on his back and would have kicked him and dragged him by the stirrup if I had not caught the rein and set his foot free. When I had helped him to his feet, and before he had time to make up his mind to dirk me, I gave him another set of thoughts to think about.
“Jaques,” I said, “I will thank you to turn your malice against him who merits it. We hunt an alderman, who has set an ambush for us, and your fortune as much as mine must depend on the outcome, for I will as surely give you credit for your true share in this night’s work as I will forget your ill-will if you let me.”
I could feel his ill-will meditating treason, but I affected such confidence in his reasonableness as might seem natural in one of my youth and inexperience, and I gave him an opportunity to play the man if he should see fit.
“Ride, you and your men,” I said, “to Joshua Stiles’s garden gate and cry admittance, saying you are Master Will Halifax. But beware. When they open, be ready to retreat into the fog and draw the ambush after you, thus giving me the chance to ride in and find Stiles and seize him.”
I could see he liked the plan. It smacked of not much danger to himself and offered him the chance to play a scurvy trick on me. I had small doubt that he had made up his mind there and then to help me to enter the grounds and then to warn the enemy to turn and kill me.
“How shall I find the house?” he asked.
I bade the ‘prentice tell him, which was easy, since a road ran from where we were in one long curve until it passed the house and there was nothing to do but keep the ditch on one hand and a row of elm-trees on the other until Stiles’s front gate should loom out of the fog. Jaques rode off with his men behind him. Presently Berden and I and the ‘prentice followed, but not far; I wanted Stiles’s twenty men engaged and occupied while Berden and I should dowhat they were ambushed to prevent.