“To the river! To the Ouse with him!” yelled the mob. “In the Queen’s name!” shouted the officers. But these were to those as three to a score, and taken by surprise besides, and doubtful of the rights of the matter. Yet for an instant, as the crowd went reeling and fighting down the road, they prevailed; the constables managed to drag their leader free, and I caught a glimpse of him, wild-eyed and frantic with fear, his clothes torn from his back, standing at bay like some animal, and brandishing his staff in one hand, a packet of letters in the other.
“I have letters, letters of state!” he screamed shrilly. “Let me alone, I tell you! Let me go, you curs!”
But in vain. The next instant the mob were upon him again. The packet of letters went one way, the staff was dashed another. He was thrown down and plucked up again, and hurried, bruised and struggling, toward the river, his screams for mercy and furious threats rising shrilly above the oaths and laughter.
I felt myself growing pale as scream followed scream. “They will kill him!” I exclaimed trembling, and prepared to follow. “I cannot see this done.”
But the monk, who had returned to my side, grasped my arm. “Don’t be a fool,” he said sharply. “I will answer for it they will not kill him. Tom Miller is not a fool, though he is angry. He will duck him, and let him go. But I will trouble you for that bit of gold, young gentleman.”
I gave it to him.
“Now,” he continued with a leer, “I will give you a hint in return. If you are wise, you will be out of this county in twelve hours. Tethered to the gate over there is a good horse which belongs to a certain purveyor now in the river. Take it! There is no one to say you nay. And begone!”
I looked hard at him for a minute, my heart beating fast. This was horse-stealing. And horse-stealing was a hanging matter. But I had done so much already that I felt I might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. I was not sure that I had not incited to treason, and what was stealing a horse beside that? “I will do it!” I said desperately.
“Don’t lose time, then,” quoth my mentor.
I went out then and there, and found he had told the truth. Every soul in the place had gone to see the ducking, and the street was empty. Kicked aside in the roadway lay the bundle of letters, soiled but not torn, and in the gutter was the staff. I stooped and picked up one and the other — in for a lamb, in for a sheep! and they might be useful some day. Then I jumped into the saddle, and twitched the reins off the hook.
But before I could drive in the spurs, a hand fell on the bridle, and the monk’s face appeared at my knee. “Well?” I said, glaring down at him — I was burning to be away.
“That is a good cloak you have got there,” he muttered hurriedly. “There, strapped to the saddle, you fool. You do not want that, give it me. Do you hear? Quick, give it me,” he cried, raising his voice and clutching at it fiercely, his face dark with greed and fear.
“I see,” I replied, as I unstrapped it. “I am to steal the horse that you may get the cloak. And then you will lay the lot on my shoulders. Well, take it!” I cried, “and go your way as fast as you can.”
Throwing it at him as hard as I could, I shook up the reins and went off down the road at a gallop. The wind whistled pleasantly past my ears. The sounds of the town grew faint and distant. Each bound of the good hack carried me farther and farther from present danger, farther and farther from the old life. In the exhilaration and excitement of the moment I forgot my condition; forgot that I had not a penny-piece in my pocket, and that I had left an unpaid bill behind me; forgot even that I rode a — well, a borrowed horse.
CHAPTER IV.
TWO SISTERS OF MERCY.
A younger generation has often posed me finely by asking, “What, Sir Francis! Did you not see one bishop burned? Did you not know one of the martyrs? Did you never come face to face with Queen Mary?” To all which questions I have one answer, No, and I watch small eyes grow large with astonishment. But the truth is, a man can only be at one place at a time. And though, in this very month of February, 1555, Prebendary Rogers — a good, kindly man, as I have heard, who had a wife and nine children — was burned in Smithfield in London for religion, and the Bishop of Gloucester suffered in his own city, and other inoffensive men were burned to death, and there was much talk of these things, and in thousands of breasts a smoldering fire was kindled which blazed high enough by and by — why, I was at Coton End, or on the London Road, at the time, and learned such things only dimly and by hearsay.
But the rill joins the river at last; and ofttimes suddenly and at a bound, as it were. On this very day, while I cantered easily southward with my face set toward St. Albans, Providence was at work shaping a niche for me in the lives of certain people who were at the time as unconscious of my existence as I was of theirs. In a great house in the Barbican in London there was much stealthy going and coming on this February afternoon and evening. Behind locked doors, and in fear and trembling, mails were being packed and bags strapped, and fingers almost too delicate for the task were busy with nails and hammers, securing this and closing that. The packers knew nothing of me, nor I of them. Yet but for me all that packing would have been of no avail; and but for them my fate might have been very different. Still, the sound of the hammer did not reach my ears, or, doing so, was covered by the steady tramp of the roadster; and no vision, so far as I ever heard, of a dusty youth riding Londonward came between the secret workers and their task.
I had made up my mind to sleep at St. Albans that night, and for this reason, and for others relating to the Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, in which county Stony Stratford lies, I pushed on briskly. I presently found time, however, to examine the packet of letters of which I had made spoil. On the outer wrapper I found there was no address, only an exhortation to be speedy. Off this came, therefore, without ceremony, and was left in the dirt. Inside I found two sealed epistles, each countersigned on the wrapper, “Stephen Winton.”
“Ho! ho!” said I. “I did well to take them.”
Over the signature on the first letter — it seemed to be written on parchment — were the words, “Haste! haste! haste!” This was the thicker and heavier of the two, and was addressed to Sir Maurice Berkeley, at St. Mary Overy’s, Southwark, London. I turned it over and over in my hands, and peeped into it, hesitating. Twice I muttered, “All is fair in love and war!” And at last, with curiosity fully awake, and a glance behind me to make sure that the act was unobserved, I broke the seal. The document proved to be as short and pithy as it was startling. It was an order commanding Sir Maurice Berkeley forthwith in the Queen’s name, and by the authority of the Council, and so on, and so on, to arrest Katherine Willoughby de Eresby, Duchess of Suffolk, and to deliver her into the custody of the Lieutenant of the Tower, “These presents to be his waranty for the detention of the said Duchess of Suffolk until her Grace’s pleasure in the matter be known.”
When it was too late I trembled to think what I had done. To meddle with matters of state might be more dangerous a hundred times than stealing horses, or even than ducking the Chancellor’s messenger! Seeing at this moment a party of travelers approach, I crammed the letter into my pocket, and rode by them with a red face, and a tongue that stuttered so feebly that I could scarcely return their greetings. When they had gone by I pulled out the warrant again, having it in my mind to tear it up without a moment’s delay — to tear it into the smallest morsels, and so get rid of a thing most dangerous. But the great red seal dangling at the foot of the parchment caught my eye, and I paused to think. It was so red, so large, so imposing, it seemed a pity to destroy it. It must surely be good for something. I folded up the warrant again, and put it away in my safest pocket. Yes, it might be good for something.
I took out the other letter. It was bound with green ribbon and sealed with extreme care, being directed simply to Mistress Clarence — there was no address. But over Gardiner’s signature on the wrapper were the words, “These, on your peril, very privately.”
&
nbsp; I turned it over and over, and said the same thing about love and war, and even repeated to myself my old proverb about a sheep and a lamb. But somehow I could not do it. The letter was a woman’s letter; the secret, her secret; and though my fingers itched as they hovered about the seals, my cheek tingled too. So at last, with a muttered, “What would Petronilla say?” I put it away unopened in the pocket where the warrant lay. The odds were immense that Mistress Clarence would never get it; but at least her secret should remain hers, my honor mine!
It was dark when I rode, thoroughly jaded, into St. Albans. I was splashed with mud up to the waist and wetted by a shower, and looked, I have no doubt, from the effect of my journeying on foot and horseback, as disreputable a fellow as might be. The consciousness too that I was without a penny, and the fear lest, careful as I had been to let no one outsrip me, the news of the riot at Stratford might have arrived, did not tend to give me assurance. I poked my head timidly into the great room, hoping that I might have it to myself. To my disgust it was full of people. Half-a-dozen travelers and as many townsfolk were sitting round the fire, talking briskly over their evening draught. Yet I had no choice. I was hungry, and the thing had to be done, and I swaggered in, something of the sneak, no doubt, peeping through my bravado. I remarked, as I took my seat by the fire and set to drying myself, that I was greeted by a momentary silence, and that two or three of the company began to eye me suspiciously.
There was one man, who sat on the settle in the warmest corner of the chimney, who seemed in particular to resent my damp neighborhood. His companions treated him with so much reverence, and he snubbed them so regularly, that I wondered who he was; and presently, listening to the conversation which went on round me, I had my curiosity satisfied. He was no less a personage than the Bailiff of St. Albans, and his manner befitted such a man; for it seemed to indicate that he thought himself heir to all the powers of the old Abbots under whose broad thumb his father and grandfather had groaned.
My conscience pricking me, I felt some misgiving when I saw him, after staring at me and whispering to two or three of his neighbors, beckon the landlord aside. His big round face and burly figure gave him a general likeness to bluff King Hal and he appeared to be aware of this himself, and to be inclined to ape the stout king’s ways, which, I have heard my uncle say, were ever ways heavy for others’ toes. For a while, however, seeing my supper come in, I forgot him. The bare-armed girl who brought it to me, and in whom my draggled condition seemed to provoke feelings of a different nature, lugged up a round table to the fire. On this she laid my meal, not scrupling to set aside some of the snug dry townsfolk. Then she set a chair for me well in the blaze, and folding her arms in her apron stood to watch me fall to. I did so with a will, and with each mouthful of beef and draught of ale, spirit and strength came back to me. The cits round me might sneer and shake their heads, and the travelers smile at my appetite. In five minutes I cared not a whit! I could give them back joke for joke, and laugh with the best of them.
Indeed, I had clean forgotten the Bailiff, when he stalked back to his place. But the moment our eyes met, I guessed there was trouble afoot. The landlord came with him and stood looking at me, sending off the wench with a flea in her ear; and I felt under his eye an uncomfortable consciousness that my purse was empty. Two or three late arrivals, to whom I suppose Master Bailiff had confided his suspicions, took their stand also in a half-circle and scanned me queerly. Altogether it struck me suddenly that I was in a tight place, and had need of my wits.
“Ahem!” said the Bailiff abruptly, taking skillful advantage of a lull in the talk. “Where from last, young man?” He spoke in a deep choky voice, and, if I was not mistaken, he winked one of his small eyes in the direction of his friends, as though to say, “Now see me pose him!”
But I only put another morsel in my mouth. For a moment indeed the temptation to reply “Towcester,” seeing that such a journey over a middling road was something to brag of before the Highway Law came in, almost overcame me. But in time I bethought me of Stephen Gardiner’s maxim, “Be slow to speak!” and I put another morsel in my mouth.
The Bailiff’s face grew red, or rather, redder. “Come, young man, did you hear me speak?” he said pompously. “Where from last?”
“From the road, sir,” I replied, turning to him as if I had not heard him before. “And a very wet road it was.”
A man who sat next me chuckled, being apparently a stranger like myself. But the Bailiff puffed himself into a still more striking likeness to King Henry, and including him in his scowl shouted at me, “Sirrah! don’t bandy words with me! Which way did you come along the road, I asked.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to answer saucily, “The right way!” But I reflected that I might be stopped; and to be stopped might mean to be hanged at worst, and something very unpleasant at best. So I controlled myself, and answered — though the man’s arrogance was provoking enough— “I have come from Stratford, and I am going to London. Now you know as much as I do.”
“Do I?” he said, with a sneer and a wink at the landlord.
“Yes, I think so,” I answered patiently.
“Well, I don’t!” he retorted, in vulgar triumph. “I don’t. It is my opinion that you have come from London.”
I went on with my supper.
“Do you hear?” he asked pompously, sticking his arms akimbo and looking round for sympathy. “You will have to give an account of yourself, young man. We will have no penniless rogues and sturdy vagabonds wandering about St. Albans.”
“Penniless rogues do not go a-horseback,” I answered. But it was wonderful how my spirits sank again under that word “penniless.” It hit me hard.
“Wait a bit,” he said, raising his finger to command attention for his next question. “What is your religion, young man?”
“Oh!” I replied, putting down my knife and looking open scorn at him, “you are an inquisitor, are you?” At which words of mine there was a kind of stir. “You would burn me as I hear they burned Master Sandars at Coventry last week, would you? They were talking about it down the road.”
“You will come to a bad end, young man!” he retorted viciously, his outstretched finger shaking as if the palsy had seized him. For this time my taunt had gone home, and more than one of the listeners standing on the outer edge of the group, and so beyond his ken, had muttered “shame.” More than one face had grown dark. “You will come to a bad end!” he repeated. “If it be not here, then somewhere else! It is my opinion that you have come from London, and that you have been in trouble. There is a hue-and-cry out for a young fellow just your age, and a cock of your hackle, I judge, who is wanted for heresy. A Londoner too. You do not leave here until you have given an account of yourself, Master Jack-a-Dandy!” The party had all risen round me, and some of the hindmost had got on benches to see me the better. Among these, between two bacon flitches, I caught a glimpse of the serving-maid’s face as she peered at me, pale and scared, and a queer impulse led me to nod to her — a reassuring little nod. I found myself growing cool and confident, seeing myself so cornered.
“Easy! easy!” I said, “let a man finish his supper and get warmed in peace.”
“Bishop Bonner will warm you!” cried the Bailiff.
“I dare say — as they warm people in Spain!” I sneered.
“He will be Bishop Burner to you!” shrieked the Bailiff, almost beside himself with rage at being so bearded by a lad.
“Take care!” I retorted. “Do not you speak evil of dignitaries, or you will be getting into trouble!”
He fairly writhed under this rejoinder.
“Landlord!” he spluttered. “I shall hold you responsible! If this person leaves your house, and is not forthcoming when wanted, you will suffer for it!”
The landlord scratched his head, being a good-natured fellow; but a bailiff is a bailiff, especially at St. Albans. And I was muddy and travel-stained, and quick of my tongue for one so young; which the middle-ag
ed never like, though the old bear it better. He hesitated.
“Do not be a fool, Master Host!” I said. “I have something here — —” and I touched my pocket, which happened to be near my sword-hilt— “that will make you rue it if you interfere with me!”
“Ho! ho!” cried the Bailiff, in haste and triumph. “So that is his tone! We have a tavern-brawler here, have we! A young swashbuckler! His tongue will not run so fast when he finds his feet in the stocks. Master landlord, call the watch! Call the watch at once, I command you!”
“You will do so at your peril!” I said sternly. Then, seeing that my manner had some effect upon all save the angry official, I gave way to the temptation to drive the matter home and secure my safety by the only means that seemed possible. It is an old story that one deception leads inevitably to another. I solemnly drew out the white staff I had taken from the apparitor. “Look here!” I continued, waving it. “Do you see this, you booby? I am traveling in the Queen’s name, and on her service. By special commission, too, from the Chancellor! Is that plain speaking enough for you? And let me tell you, Master Bailiff,” I added, fixing my eye upon him, “that my business is private, and that my Lord of Winchester will not be best pleased when he hears how I have had to declare myself. Do you think the Queen’s servants go always in cloth of gold, you fool? The stocks indeed!”
I laughed out loudly and without effort, for there never was anything so absurd as the change in the Bailiff’s visage. His color fled, his cheeks grew pendulous, his lip hung loose. He stared at me, gasping like a fish out of water, and seemed unable to move toe or finger. The rest enjoyed the scene, as people will enjoy a marvelous sudden stroke of fortune. It was as good as a stage pageant to them. They could not take their eyes from the pocket in which I had replaced my wand, and continued, long after I had returned to my meal, to gaze at me in respectful silence. The crestfallen Bailiff presently slipped out, and I was left cock of the walk, and for the rest of the evening enjoyed the fruits of victory.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 46