“Tread softly,” he said in a low voice, giving an order now with the authority of a captain. And carrying his taper into the hall he held it above his head, listening. Stafford crept through the doorway, and behind Stafford, after a little while, Sir Robert Bannet appeared, supporting himself against the side of it with an outstretched arm. Humphrey raised a hand to ensure silence and crept on tiptoe to the door of the small drawing room. Very carefully he turned the handle so that not a click of the latch was heard, and set the door slowly an inch or two ajar. Then he pushed it, and it swung, with a creak of its hinges, wide open. The room was in darkness, but the log fire still glowed red upon the hearth.
“They have gone to bed,” Stafford whispered, creeping up to Humphrey’s shoulder.
“The colonel and Mrs Norris, no doubt,” returned Humphrey.
“All of them,” said Stafford stubbornly.
“Then who rode away from the house? And on the grass verge till there was no need of secrecy?”
“One of the grooms. To keep a tryst. Our maidens are not so shy that a stranger would mistake the village for a nunnery.”
Humphrey looked at the secretary by the light of the taper above his head. Its flame wavered over their white faces, the secretary trying to counterfeit a smile, Humphrey gazing at him sombrely.
“We must make sure,” he said again.
A massive candelabrum of silver gleamed on a round table in the middle of the hall. Humphrey crossed to it, a shadow rather than a man — so lightly he moved, and lit the two wax candles which it held. He blew out the taper and dropped it on the polished wood of the table. He lifted the candelabrum and, passing through the hall to the big doors, eased the bolts out of their sockets and turned the key back in the lock. He drew the door open and slipped out on the gravel round in front of the house. The secretary followed close upon his heels, and Sir Robert, with a little whimpering cry, made a tottering run after them like a child afraid of being left alone in the dark. Humphrey turned to him with an unexpected gentleness.
“Nay, sir, there’s no need for you to come.”
“I’ll not be left behind,” the old man answered with a quavering voice.
“It shall be as you will.”
Humphrey took his father by the arm. All three were wearing light shoes upon their feet, and, though the old man’s shuffled as he walked, the sound was muffled and would not have waked the lightest sleeper in the house.
The stables were beyond the right wing of the main building and behind it in echelon. The gates of the courtyard stood open. Humphrey pointed to them.
“They were shut at nightfall.”
A dog bayed loudly, and a kennel chain rattled.
“Down, Morgan,” said Humphrey in a low voice. He crossed the yard and, rapping on a window, roused a groom.
“Come out quickly,” he said, and when the groom had joined them, “Show me the stall of Mistress Cynthia’s horse.”
The groom led them to the third door in the row of stables. The stall was empty.
“Where does her groom sleep?”
“Above, sir,” and he pointed to a small window over their heads. He cupped his hand about his mouth, but before he could shout Humphrey laid a hand quickly upon the groom’s arm.
“No!” he said. “Shut the door quietly. So!”
He led the small group away from beneath the window and, still speaking in the same low voice:
“Saddle my roan Victor, and White Arrow for yourself.” They were the two fastest horses in the stables. “I shall need you tonight. Be very quiet. I want no one disturbed.”
He turned again to his father and Stafford.
“She was in the blue room, I think.”
“Yes,” said Sir Robert.
“She may have left a letter.”
“To her father?”
“To whomsoever you will,” Humphrey returned. “We must have it.”
If any notions of ancient hospitality remained in Sir Robert’s mind they must yield to the necessities of the moment. Humphrey led the way back to the house. Once he stopped and listened whilst the flames of his candles burned straight up into the air like the heads of spears. It seemed that a sound would have reached to their ears across the hills and heaths of Dorset.
“If she left a letter we must have it,” said Humphrey.
The door of the house stood open. He placed the candelabrum on the hall table and lighting the taper went quickly and silently up the stairs. In a little while he came down again carrying his riding boots in his hand.
“There was nothing in her room,” he said; “not a scrap of a letter to her mother or to you, sir, her host. She fled in a panic at the harm she had done. That’s the truth.”
He looked at Mr Stafford and nodded his head, but without any menace or anger in his looks. They were all too close upon disaster for the futilities of anger.
“Carlo Manucci — she had betrayed him, her lover.” He sat down and, taking off his shoes, drew on his heavy riding boots. “Carlo Manucci — how should we know that was the name Robin Aubrey was using? How many knew it? She, Robin Aubrey, Walsingham, and now the three of us. But the three of us, knowing that name, know more than honest men could or should.”
He rose to his feet.
“Lock the door after me!” he said. “But you, Mr Stafford, will sit up till I return.”
“You’ll bring her back with you?” Sir Robert urged.
“I must if we are to keep our heads upon our shoulders,” returned Humphrey bluntly.
“But she will be near to her home by this time,” Mr Stafford argued, and Humphrey turned upon him with a grin distorting his white face.
“You think she has gone to her home?” he asked.
“Where else?” Mr Stafford asked in surprise.
“To Sydling Court, Mr Stafford, where tonight Sir Francis Walsingham lies on his way to Plymouth.”
Humphrey left his father and the secretary to make the best of his conjecture and, riding with his groom, followed the road to Cerne Abbas and over the shoulder of the down, as long ago George Aubrey had done and in a later year his son Robin. But though Humphrey rode at the risk of his neck that night, he never came up with Cynthia Norris. From the shoulder of the hill he looked down into the hollow where the village stood. There all was black and still. But above the village at the far end lights shone out barred across by the branches of trees. Sir Francis was keeping late hours that night at Sydling Court. Humphrey Bannet imagined Cynthia Norris, travel-stained and tortured by an agony of fear, pouring out her story to Francis Walsingham.
“They know that Carlo Manucci is Robin doing your work in Spain. You must stop them hurting him. Like father, like son — that mustn’t be true. On my knees, sir, on my knees.”
Humphrey Bannet turned his horse’s head. There was no more that he could do than to lie quiet in the house until the blow should fall — betwixt the head and the shoulders, as Stafford had said. Humphrey raised his hand and felt the back of his neck. Aye, between the head and the shoulders — he felt the axe cutting through skin and muscle and spine.
A little later he felt the breath of the morning and saw overhead the spangled canopy of sky fading into grey. It might be, after all, that Cynthia, exasperated by Stafford’s trick, had flung herself from the house and ridden home. It might be that Sir Francis Walsingham was not keeping late hours but was early astir. It might be, too, that something might be thought of which would save his house.
CHAPTER XXIV. In the Garden of Abbot’s Gap
CYNTHIA INDEED WAS not at Sydling Court, for she knew nothing whatever of Sir Francis Walsingham’s journey to Plymouth. She had fled in a panic, as Humphrey had guessed, a panic of self-reproach. She had never faltered from her faith in Robin — not even when the Expedition had sailed back into Poole last year and its sailors had made the very air a braggart with stories of galleons burning at Cadiz and Johnny Spaniard cowering behind his walls.
She had ridden into Poole on the very d
ay when the great ship, sailing full and bye between Brownsea Island and the sandbanks, swept up the narrow channel beribboned like a lady.
“That’s Robin hasting home,” her heart cried to her tumultuously. The Expedition was alone. Of course it was alone. Once in the Channel Robin had crammed on all sail and left the rest of the fleet, deep laden with its treasure, to follow with what speed it could. She heard the heavy anchor drop with a splash which sent all the sea birds screaming and flickering over that quiet haven. “It’s Robin,” she had cried aloud to them as she set her horse to a canter. And she reached the quay in time to see the sailors tumbling out of the long boat and no Robin anywhere at all.
With a breaking heart she had listened to them chattering and shouting to their wives and sweethearts. They had been to Cadiz, not the far Atlantic. Drake had been their admiral, not Robin.
“Peau d’Espagne, that’s the scent for me, duckie,” roared one of the men, delighted with his wit, and the man’s words and his burnt, excited face and the look of the girl clinging to his arm remained in her memory. It was the bitterest day which Cynthia could remember, but in spite of it she had kept her lips closed and her heart high and her faith in her lover untarnished. And now, somehow, she had betrayed him by a foolish cry extorted from her by Stafford’s cunning trick.
“He wanted to know who Carlo Manucci was,” she argued, “and I told him.”
What she must now do to repair her folly she could not guess, but she would know. That conviction had come to her before Mr Stafford slipped out of the room. It strengthened in her as her hands wandered over the keys of her virginal after he had gone. She would surely know at Abbot’s Gap. If she could sit for an hour in that room looking over Warbarrow Bay where she and Robin had spoken their last words and exchanged their last embrace. If she could walk for an hour in the rose garden with the doves fluttering about the big octagonal dovecot and preening themselves on the brick walks! If she could sit for an hour on the bench on the bowling green with the famous yew hedge upon the one side and the high red wall on the other. In one of these places the answer would be vouchsafed to her. She did not argue or reason about it. To Abbot’s Gap she must go and all would be made plain to her.
She slipped from the room where her father dozed in his chair and her mother bent placidly over her needlework. She ran silently and quickly up to her room. For a minute, as she changed into her riding dress, she hesitated whether she should write a message to them or no. But she dared not. There was a voice calling to her, faint as from far away, but very clear and imperative as the voice of God. The morning must dawn for her in the garden of Abbot’s Gap. She must not be prevented.
She crept down by a back staircase to a side door, unlocked it and escaped. In the stable yard she gathered a handful of gravel and, flinging it up at the window, woke her groom. He saddled her horse for her quickly.
“I’ll come with you, Mistress Cynthia,” he said.
“No,” she answered. “I know the road I must travel. There’s no danger for me on this night, and I must go alone.”
Some note of quiet certainty in her voice stopped his protestations. He led the horse quietly across the gravel onto the grass and held the stirrup whilst Cynthia mounted.
“Have no fear for me, William,” she said gently. “I thank you,” and she gathered up the reins in her gloved hand.
“You are going home, mistress?” he asked.
He heard her draw in her breath, and for a moment she sat very still. Then she said gently, but with the same odd note of quiet certainty which she had used before:
“Yes. Hasting home.”
She cantered for a little way upon the grass and turned onto the hard gravel of the drive. It was then that Sir Robert Bannet first was sure that she had gone.
Cynthia rode warily that night. An accident now, a stumble, a careless loosening of the rein and her great fears might never be resolved. At times she stopped and listened for a sound of pursuit, but none reached her ears. Once past the division of the ways, where the road to her home branched off to the left, she lost the fear of being followed; but the night being the darker for the great forest of beeches which she skirted, she went still more carefully. She must win to Abbot’s Gap. She reached the long slope at the back of the Purbeck Hills and mounted into a bitter air. Below her all was hidden — the winding river through the water meadows, the little grass-walled town of Wareham, and distant Poole — not a light gleamed in any window, not a star drew a trembling golden finger across a stream. There was, she remembered, a heavy white gate at the top of the hill whence the steep crumbling track twisted down on the farther side to Abbot’s Gap. It took her some little time to find that gate, but to her good fortune, when she found it, it was open. For a yard or two her horse’s hooves brushed through grass. Somewhere close the great signal beacon which was to warn all Dorsetshire of the coming of the Armada towered at the head of the track. Cynthia made it out as it stood high and black between herself and the starlit sky. Here she paused, recollecting how Robin had paused when to this spot they had come together. Here she looked out towards Portland in the west, remembering with what strange and ardent eyes Robin had looked into distances not visible and watched imagined scenes as in the magic of a crystal. Some great necessity had changed his purpose, some seal had been laid upon his lips, so that even she must walk in ignorance of what he did, of where he laid his head, of even whether he still lived. The tears rose to her eyes; a sob, a quavering moan broke from her mouth. For a moment she felt that there could be no one more lonely than she on this cold black night in all the width of the world. And then round the Bill of Portland there came into view the dancing lanterns of a ship floating eastward with the tide; and she drew enough comfort from that trifle to chide herself for a faintheart and a craven. Why, who knew but what Robin himself was aboard that ship straining his eyes towards the land as she towards the sea?
A little lower down she dismounted and led her horse, so many loose stones there were, so many holes and ruts and so abruptly the steep path turned upon itself; and a long while after she had dismounted she rang the great bell at the gatehouse of Abbot’s Gap.
It was answered with a quickness which surprised her. The clapper was hardly still, the bell was still vibrating and ringing in the air above the house, when someone came running. The bolts were loosed, the door pulled open by a man in a fever of impatience — Dakcombe. He held a big lantern high.
“Master Robin! Master Robin!” he cried. “Aye, you would be coming at an unseemly hour when men of sense are in their beds” — this between a chuckle and a sob. “But come you in, I’ll mind the horse — —”
He suddenly stopped. Cynthia was dressed like a man in her doublet and breeches and her boots to her thighs, and she was tall for a girl. But she was not tall enough to be Robin Aubrey. Dakcombe lowered his lantern with a gesture of utter disappointment. He raised it again and stepped forward.
“It’s you, Mistress Cynthia.”
His distress left no room in his mind for any surprise that she had come at this unseemly hour. It was not Master Robin. It was someone else, and his voice was dead. Yet in the light of that lantern her slight figure in the bespattered clothes and her tired face might have moved anyone to pity.
“Yes, myself, Dakcombe,” she said in a small voice.
There was a question which he hardly dared to ask.
“You bring news, mistress?”
“No, I come seeking it.”
Some look of forlornness in her drooping shoulders, some note of it in her voice did at last reach Dakcombe’s consciousness.
“Take you the lantern, mistress, and go right forward into the house. ’Tis all open and a great fire blazing in the hall,” he said, broadening out his vowels in a warmer voice. And he took her horse by the bridle and led it round the corner of the gatehouse to the stables.
Cynthia carried the lantern through the gatehouse into the court behind. The sky was lightening in the east, and the
high oriel, with its mullioned windows and its carved pinnacles, swung up out of the darkness against the paling stars. Dakcombe’s discouragement had not passed over to her. She indeed was conscious of a thrill of excitement as the morning broadened. Through the windows of the oriel and the hall a big flare of light flashed out and sank and flashed again from the logs in the hall chimney, like a harbour light. A harbour light lit to cheer Robin, since it was Robin whose coming was expected. She left the lantern on the parapet by the steps and, going into the hall, stood, her face lit and her chilled hands thawed in the glow of the fire. But she had tramped these last difficult miles, and only her hands were cold. Though she had passed through the house but once, the housekeeper — and she remembered it with a smile — had been insistent that she should admire, nay love, every nook of it.
“The rose garden at the back on this March morning will be black,” she said to herself. “I shall wake the doves in the big dovecot some minutes before their time. But in the dining room — that door upon my left as I stand facing the fire leads to it — a glass door leads on to the bowling green between the high red wall and the still higher yew hedge.”
She went through the dining room and out. The day was breaking clear and still with a pale-blue sky overhead and a promise of gold in the east. The grass was shaven and tended, and grey with the morning dew like the leaves of an olive tree; and under the wall and by the side of the hedge crocuses and daffodils were lifting their heads. There Dakcombe found her, and hurrying up behind him came Kate the housekeeper in a fluster of welcome and concern. Cynthia must come into the house.
“You’re all peaked with your travelling. The cook — the lazy good-for-nothing slut she is too — is cooking your breakfast. There’s one in the house we can wake whilst you are eating and he may tell you more than he tells us, the hard-hearted curmudgeon. But you’ll be better for a few hours in bed first.”
“There’s someone in the house?” Cynthia asked, giving heed to nothing else in the spate of words.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 680