Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  She saw Captain Gaynor again at dinner — they dined at three o’clock at Priory Close, too early by at least an hour to satisfy the mode. And from her window, discreetly hidden, she watched him ride out on his great black horse, watched his blue-coated figure along the white ribbon of road until it vanished, and so left her lonely again.

  And whilst she sat alone in her chamber there, below stairs Evelyn was spurring her mother to perform what Evelyn conceived to be her mother’s duty in the absence of Sir John.

  “You must write to his lordship, mother,” she was saying, “and inform him of what is taking place.”

  “Nay, now, but what is taking place?” quoth her mother querulously. She had a distaste for being drawn into situations that might afterwards require to be eased by explanation.

  Evelyn shrugged impatiently. Those hungry, questing eyes of hers were very angry. “Do you need to ask me, mother?”

  “Let us await your father’s return, child,” the mother pleaded. “He will know best. And meanwhile the Captain has gone.”

  “But he will return tomorrow.”

  “How do you know that? He may be given this appointment he is seeking, and so may return no more.”

  Evelyn smiled, contemptuous in her assurance that there existed at Priory Close a magnet to draw him back in spite of anything that might betide.

  “Then I will write myself.”

  “Evelyn, I forbid you.”

  “My father is absent, and my mother will not use her eyes. What help have I? I hope I have a conscience. It is for Damaris’ sake. What, after all, do we know of this adventurer?”

  “Nay, now, you must not speak so of him,” her ladyship remonstrated. “His father was your father’s dearest friend. Your father loves the Captain as a son.”

  Evelyn looked at her mother a moment. Then she turned away and went without another word to write the following letter:

  MY LORD, — My great regard for your lordship bids me delay no longer in writing to tell you that if you would not see that which you most value lost to you, you had best make haste to come to Priory Close. There is one here who is very like to steal away from you that which you cherish most in all the world. I send you this timely warning.

  EVELYN KYNASTON

  Having written, Evelyn paused. Within her a voice — a little mocking voice — was proclaiming that what she performed was an act of purest spite. She crimsoned and took up the sheet to tear it across. Then she paused.

  “I am too sensitive,” she assured herself. “Clearly it is my duty, since my mother will not. Damaris’ future happiness depends on’t.” Which, after all, was very true.

  But it was not until next morning that the letter sped to London by her messenger.

  Chapter 8. AT “THE WORLD’S END”

  Standing on the outskirts of the pleasant village of Chelsea, as one of London’s western outposts, “The Worlds End” was a house of great comings and goings, of much bustle and consequence. Hence had it been preferred by Captain Gaynor to any quieter hostelry for the business which he desired to transact. In the constant ebb and flow of travellers to and from the Metropolis there was but little chance that any particular man or group of men would attract more than passing notice. Moreover, Maclean, its Scottish landlord, was a circumspect but ardent Jacobite, and the house had yet the additional advantage of being — both on the score of its remoteness and of its traffic — a most unlikely place for such a meeting.

  It stood a little way back from the King’s Road — which runs from St James’s to Hampton Court — fronted by a patch of turf on which were planted a couple of trestle-tables flanked by plain wooden forms, and it looked out over a stretch of meadowland that sloped gently to the river.

  Before its doors on this June evening the wonted bustle was toward. A great black and yellow stagecoach on its way to London was drawn up on the very edge of the patch of turf, and the hoarse-voiced driver passed the time of the day with the ostler in terms which knew little of decorum and less of dainty ears. A nobleman’s travelling chaise, a sombre mass of wood and leather drawn by six horses and with bold escutcheons on its panels, stood cheek by jowl with the stage, but facing westward.

  About these was a huddle of lesser craft, a post-chaise, a couple of hackney coaches, a carrier’s cart, and lastly, stretching adown the road in line like the tail of a kite, some half-dozen waggons on their way to market for the following day. To increase the general bustle and to swell the throng there were men on horseback and men on foot, watermen from the moored barges and wherries, grooms, ostlers, drivers and waggoners, whilst a motley company derived from all of these sat about the trestle-tables over their ale, a noisy, babbling, quarrelling, laughing assembly.

  Into this scene of activity rode Captain Gaynor at a little after eight o’clock of that summer evening — the hour appointed for the meeting of those six confederates who were to receive from him and in their turn disseminate those messages of which he was the bearer and of which he carried upon him a note in cipher. The substance of those messages has not survived, and there are no means today of ascertaining the details of the precise plot that was the object of this particular mission of Captain Gaynor. Whilst regrettable from the point of view of historical research, from our own it is a matter of little moment, since we are here concerned with the personal history of Captain Gaynor and not with that of any of the perennially budding Jacobite conspiracies.

  We gather from stray records that have come down to us — and more particularly from the bulky memoirs which were penned by Mr Second Secretary Templeton to while the tedium of his subsequent retirement from office — that this was one of the earlier of those conspiracies which ultimately were to prove the undoing of that ambitious, plotting cleric, Atterbury; for we are able very plainly to trace that this mission of the notorious Jacobite agent, “Captain Jenkyn” — who was hanged at Tyburn under the extraordinary circumstances with which we are directly concerned — was undertaken at the Bishops urgent instances.

  To receive Captain Gaynor, as he drew rein on the outskirts of that throng, came a shock-headed, sweating, surpliced ostler, who was thrust aside almost immediately by a younger man. That the ostler submitted without demur showed that the youth who usurped his functions on this occasion was a person of some authority, as did indeed the latter’s garments which, though of plain homespun, indicated a station superior to a groom’s. He was, in fact, Maclean’s son, set by the vintner to watch for the Captain’s coming.

  Harry Gaynor tossed his reins to the youngster, and swung himself lightly from the saddle.

  “I stay but a little while,” he said, “so keep my nag saddled for me.”

  With that he pushed forward through the throng about the door, a throng which before his brisk, authoritative manner opened a way for him readily enough. He strode into a narrow, flagged passage upon which the taproom door stood open. From this issued sounds of voices and a reek of tobacco. Under the lintel leaned a tall, loose-limbed man in his shirt-sleeves with an apron girt about him. He turned at the sound of the Captain’s steps, and disclosed the mellow, jovial face of Maclean.

  His eyes welcomed the guest, and the Captain’s returned that welcome. It was as if they had clasped hands. With the other Jacobites who were assembled above stairs there had been question and answer on the score of wants to veil the giving of password and countersign. But Captain Gaynor was known to the vintner.

  “Ha, landlord!” quoth the soldier, after that real greeting of the eyes. “A pint of claret laced with Nantes!”

  “At once, your Honour,” replied Maclean, in formal landlord’s tones.

  The Captain stood halting upon the threshold of the taproom.

  “Ye’re somewhat crowded here,” he said, and coughed as if the smoke had jarred his windpipe.

  “There is another room above,” Maclean replied, approving the Captain’s easy acting. “Will you be pleased to go up, sir?”

  The soldier turned and made for the stairs. �
�The first door to the right, your Honour,” Maclean called after him. “I’ll bring the claret.” He coughed significantly, and Captain Gaynor, turning as he went up, caught from the host’s quick, expressive gestures that the door he was to take was on the left instead. He nodded his understanding, and went on. He knew the chamber from another visit some two years ago. It was peculiarly well fitted for a secret meeting in such a place, access being gained to it across another room, through a door that looked for all the world like that of a cupboard in the wall.

  But as he went he was puzzled by the almost excessive caution which the landlord had shown, by the loud announcement that the door was on the right followed by a correcting gesture. Maclean, the Captain reflected, must have some good reason for this, some notion that there was a spy at hand.

  Such a notion Maclean had, indeed, and his suspicions on that score were almost immediately changed to certainty. For as he turned he found himself confronted in the doorway of the taproom by the very object of his suspicions — a burly fellow in snuff-coloured clothes, in whom he had sniffed a Bow Street messenger. This man had sat apart, unobtrusive, in a corner of the taproom whence he could command the passage, and for all his unobtrusiveness — or, perhaps, because of it — Maclean had furtively watched him with increasing mistrust. He had taken care when Captain Gaynor entered so to place himself before the soldier as to screen him from the prying eyes of that suspected spy. And it was with the intention of misleading that same watcher that he had uttered aloud his misdirection.

  Confronted now by the man, and his every suspicion thus confirmed, Maclean, affecting to await the fellow’s commands, effectively barred his way until it should be too late for him to perceive the real direction taken by the Captain.

  “What d’ye lack, sir?” was his formal question, smiling his anxiety to supply the needs of this guest — and in that smile dissembling the greater anxiety which this guest occasioned him.

  The fellow coughed affectedly. “This reek of tobacco smoke,” said he, “is more than I can suffer. I’ll go upstairs to this other room of yours.”

  Maclean made way with a bow and a readiness that were entirely disarming.

  “Pray do so,” said he, and waved a hand towards the stairs. “The room is on the right. You’ll find some company there. I’ll send a drawer to wait on you.”

  The burly spy — for a spy he was, and moreover had a warrant in his pocket and six men at his orders outside at the trestle-tables — felt himself checked by the landlord’s ease and the readiness with which the way was opened for him. Maclean was a born conspirator, a man who knew how a plot should be laid if it were to baffle discovery. To mask that meeting above stairs against precisely such a contingency as the present one, he had placed a room above at the disposal of such of his guests as appeared to be persons of quality, and it was into this room that the spy now thrust himself, notwithstanding the loss of confidence occasioned him by the landlord’s imperturbability.

  He found himself in the company of some dozen gentlemen who eyed him somewhat askance, a circumstance which reawakened fading suspicions. The assembly was, it is true, rather more numerous than he had been led to look for, and he observed that it was broken into detached groups of twos and threes. These, surely, could not be his quarry. Yet, being a man so suspicious of ruses that he saw ruses where none existed, considered innocence itself the most damning mark of guilt, the messenger sat down in a corner, and, when presently approached by a drawer, ordered himself a nipperkin of ale. But the scrutiny to which he furtively submitted each separate group and each member of it gradually convinced him that either he had been deliberately led or else was fallen into error. This conviction was complete when anon the door opened to admit a couple of fresh arrivals, the first of whom was a portly, pompous man in a full-bottomed wig, in whom the messenger recognised Sir Henry Thresh, one of the Middlesex justices.

  Meanwhile Captain Gaynor had crossed the empty room on the left of the passage, and through that deceptive narrow double-door had entered the farther apartment, where his friends awaited him.

  This was a small chamber facing westward and flooded now with the roseate glow of sunset. It was very plainly furnished, and about a polished, oblong walnut table in mid-apartment sat four gentlemen over their wine. A crystal bowl of water — inevitable appendage to every Jacobite gathering — occupied the middle of the board and shed upon it a wedge of prismatic light. Near this pipes had been placed, a tinder-box and a leaden jar of cut tobacco; but only one member of the company — an extremely tall and slender young man, very fine in a green riding-suit with white satin linings — was smoking. This gentleman had dark, vivacious eyes and a pleasant face under an extremely modish and ample periwig; his name was Partridge, and he was said to be a person of considerable importance in Wiltshire.

  Of the other three, two were men of forty or thereabouts. One was Viscount Harewood, a gentleman with whom allegiance to the Stuarts was a family matter, since he claimed the patriarchal second Charles for his grandsire. Indeed, some resemblance to that too-merry monarch was to be discerned in his lordship’s swarthy tint and saturnine cast of countenance; the other was Mr Stephen Dyke, a pale, hawk-faced man in a brown bag-wig. The last member of that quartette was the staunch and almost brazen Jacobite, Sir Thomas Leigh. He was much older than his companions, very tall and straight nevertheless, with something military in his air and carriage, and something military, too, in the vigorous oaths with which his speech was peppered, for he had seen service in the late queen’s days. In countenance he was fresh-complexioned, frank and jovial.

  They rose to welcome Captain Gaynor, who came a full quarter of an hour behind the time appointed for the meeting; yet, as he perceived, he was not the last to arrive. Lord Pauncefort and an Irish man named O’Neill were still awaited. He made his excuses and sat down to await with them their missing confederates, giving them meanwhile such news as they sought, until they were interrupted by the entrance of Maclean with the Captain’s claret.

  Having set down the jug and glass, the vintner leaned a hand upon the table, and addressing himself more particularly to Captain Gaynor, he gravely announced the presence in the house of one whom he suspected of being a spy.

  They listened in consternation and in silence, with the exception of old Sir Thomas, who let fly a volley of sulphuric oaths which no one heeded.

  “What do you counsel us to do, Maclean?” was Captain Gaynor’s quiet question.

  “Why, do the business upon which you are come, gentlemen. The rogue is safe bestowed for the present, watching the guests in another room across the passage. I had disposed against any such surprise as this. And, after all,” he ended, “it is not impossible that he is after other quarry than yourselves. Still, I thought it well to set you on your guard.”

  He withdrew upon that, leaving relief behind him; for all but one accepted as certain the supposition that the Bow Street messenger might be on the spoor of other game.

  “It must be so, egad!” cried Harewood. “Else were we betrayed, and that is not possible.”

  “Not possible, indeed,” agreed Sir Thomas. “The fellow will be some thief-taker on the trail of a tobyman belike. Maclean starts at shadows.”

  But Captain Gaynor did not share their confidence. Pauncefort’s absence fretted him. The mistrust implanted in his breast by Sir John Kynaston and what he had learnt from him was stirring uneasily now.

  “I wonder where the plague these others tarry,” he muttered, and then almost immediately to answer him the door opened and O’Neill reeled into the room.

  There is no other way in which to describe his entrance. He was a red-headed youngster, whose face was usually florid and mischievously good-humoured. It was of a deathly pallor now, and clammy; his blue eyes were a thought wild. His boots were white with dust, and all about him there was an air of haste, disorder and alarm.

  His advent brought the others to their feet. Questions rained upon him on the score of his condition.
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  He sank to a chair, snatched up a glass of Nantes that belonged to Sir Thomas, and unceremoniously drained it. Then he explained himself quite tersely.

  “The game is up, gentlemen.” He rolled his eyes about the company that stood above him. “’Tis betrayed we are; undone entirely.”

  There fell a pause, all eyes upon this bearer of ill tidings. Then Lord Harewood fired a question.

  “By whom?” quoth he, so fiercely that had the betrayer heard him he must have looked to his skin.

  “I don’t know,” was the answer, “and faith ’tis the only thing I don’t know. We’ve been sold — devil a doubt of that, and ’tis a miracle I am here to tell you of it. Clinton, Brownrigg, Holmdale, Spencer Gamlin and Sir Vernon Bewick have been arrested today upon warrants. Other arrests are to follow — yours, Harewood, and yours, Sir Thomas.”

  “Let them arrest me and be damned to them,” said the stalwart veteran. “What else?”

  “There’s a warrant for myself too, bedad, and you may be thankful for’t, as otherwise I should never have had any warning at all.”

  Came a fresh volley of questions, quelled at last by Captain Gaynor. He spoke for the first time since O’Neill’s arrival.

  “Shall we discuss this matter calmly, gentlemen,” said he. “Thus shall we make the better speed, and time may be of more consequence than we deem. Will you be seated?”

  He spoke in a crisp voice of authority. Outwardly he was the calmest — indeed, the only calm — man in that room. He was instantly obeyed. They realised that in this extremity a leader was needed, and the natural leader, as much by the position which his mission gave him as by his natural endowments, was Captain Gaynor. They sat down at once, and the Captain sat down with them.