by John Buchan
The heath billowed and sank into ridges and troughs, waterless and furze-clad, and in one of the latter they came suddenly upon a house. It was a small place, built with its back to a steep ridge all overgrown with blackberries and heather — two stories high, and flanked by low thatched outbuildings, and a pretence at a walled garden. On the turf before the door, beside an ancient well, a sign on a pole proclaimed it the inn of The Merry Woman, but suns and frosts had long since obliterated all trace of the rejoicing lady, though below it and more freshly painted was something which might have resembled a human eye.
The three men lounged into the kitchen, which was an appanage to the main building, and called for ale. It was brought by a little old woman in a mutch, who to Alastair’s surprise curtseyed to the grimy figure of the charcoal-burner.
“He’s alone, sir,” she said, “and your own room’s waiting if you’re ready for it.”
“Will you go up to him?” the charcoal-burner asked, and Alastair followed the old woman. She led the way up a narrow staircase with a neat sheepskin rug on each tread, to a tiny corridor from which two rooms opened. The one on the left they entered and found an empty bedroom, cleanly and plainly furnished. A door in the wall at the other end, concealed by a hanging cupboard, gave access to a pitch-dark passage. The woman took Alastair’s hand and led him a yard or two till she found a door-handle. It opened and showed a large chamber with daylight coming through windows apparently half cloaked with creepers. Alastair realised that the room had been hollowed out of the steep behind the house, and that the windows opened in the briars and heath of the face.
A fire was burning and a man sat beside it reading in a book. He was the fiddler of Otmoor, and in the same garb, save that he had discarded his coat and wore instead a long robe de chambre. A keen eye scanned the visitor, and then followed a smile and an outstretched hand.
“Welcome, Alastair Maclean,” he said. “I heard of you in these parts and hoped for a meeting.”
“From whom?”
“One whom you call the Spainneach. He left me this morning to go into Derbyshire.”
The name stirred a question.
“Had he news?” Alastair asked. “When I last saw you you prophesied failure. Are you still of that mind?”
“I do not prophesy, but this I say — that since I saw you your chances and your perils have grown alike. Your Cause is on the razor-edge and you yourself may have the deciding.”
CHAPTER IX. Old England
“Yesterday morning your Prince was encamped outside Carlisle. By now the place may have fallen.”
“Who told you?” Alastair asked.
“I have my own messengers who journey in Old England,” said Midwinter. “Consider, Captain Maclean. As a bird flies, the place is not a hundred and fifty miles distant, and no mile is without its people. A word cried to a traveller is taken up by another and another till the man who rubs down a horse at night in a Chester inn-yard will have news of what befell at dawn on the Scotch Border. My way is quicker than post-horses. . . . But the name of inn reminds me. You have the look of a fasting man.”
Food was brought, and the November brume having fallen thick in the hollow, the windows were curtained, a lamp lit, and fresh fuel laid on the fire. Alastair kicked the boots from his weary legs, and as soon as his hunger was stayed fell to questioning his host; for he felt that till he could point a finger to the spy who had dogged him he had failed in his duty to the Cause. He poured out his tale without reserve.
Midwinter bent his brows and stared into the fire.
“You are satisfied that this servant Edom is honest?” he asked.
“I have observed him for half a day and the man is as much in the dark as myself. If he is a rogue he is a master in dissimulation. But I do not think so.”
“Imprimis, you are insulted in the Flambury inn by those who would fasten a quarrel on you. Item, you are arrested and carried before this man Thicknesse, and one dressed like a mummer presses the accusation. Item, in a warrant you and your purposes are described with ominous accuracy. You are likewise this very day tricked by your gypsy guide, but that concerns rather my lady Norreys. These misfortunes came upon you after you had supped with Kyd, and therefore you suspected his servant, for these two alone in this country-side knew who you were. A fairly argued case, I concede, and to buttress it Kyd appears to have been near Flambury last night, when he professed to be on the road for Wiltshire. But you have ceased to suspect the servant. What of the master?”
Alastair started. “No, no. That is madness. The man is in the very heart of the Prince’s counsels. He is honest, I swear — he is too deep committed.”
Midwinter nodded. “If he were false, it would indeed go ill with you; for on him, I take it, depends the rising of Wales and the Marches. He holds your Prince in the hollow of his hand. And if all tales be true the omens there are happy.”
Alastair told of the message from Brother Gilly, and, suddenly remembering Edom’s papers, drew them from his pocket, and read them again by the firelight. Here at last was news from Badminton and from Monmouth and Hereford: and at the foot, in the cypher which was that most commonly used among the Jacobites, was a further note dealing with Sir Watkin Wynn. The writer had concerted with him a plan, by which the Welsh levies should march straight through Gloucester and Oxfordshire to cut in between Cumberland and the capital. To Alastair, the thing was proved authentic beyond doubt, for it bore the pass-word which had been agreed between himself and Sir Watkin a week before at Wynnstay.
He fell into a muse from which he was roused by Midwinter’s voice.
“Kyd receives messages and forwards them northward, while he himself remains in the South. By what channel?”
“It would appear by Sir John Norreys, who is now, or soon will be, at Brightwell under the Peak.”
As he spoke the words his suspicions took a new course. Johnson had thought the man a time-server, though he had yesterday recanted that view. Sir Christopher Lacy at Cornbury had been positive that he was a rogue. The only evidence to the contrary was that his wife believed in him, and that he had declared his colours by forsaking his bride for the Prince’s camp. But he had not gone to the army, and it would seem that he had no immediate intention of going there, for according to Edom he would be at Brightwell during the month; and as for his wife’s testimony, she was only a romantic child. Yet this man was the repository of Kyd’s secret information, the use of which meant for the Prince a kingdom or a beggar’s exile. If Kyd were mistaken in him, then the Cause was sold in very truth. But how came Kyd to be linked with him? How came a young Oxfordshire baronet, of no great family, and no record of service, to be Achilles of the innermost circle?
He told his companion of his doubts, unravelling each coil carefully, while the other marked his points with jerks of his pipe-bowl. When he had finished Midwinter kept silent for a little. Then “You swear by Kyd’s fidelity?” he asked.
“God in Heaven, but I must,” cried Alastair. “If he is false, I may return overseas to-morrow.”
“It is well to test all links in a chain,” was the dry answer. “But for the sake of argument we will assume him honest. Sir John Norreys is the next link to be tried. If he is rotten, then the Prince had better bide north of Ribble, for the Western auxiliaries will never move. But even if the whole hive be false, there is still hope if you act at once. This is my counsel to you, Captain Maclean. Write straightway to the Army — choose the man about the Prince who loves you most — and tell him of the great things to be hoped for from the West. Name no names, but promise before a certain date to arrive with full proof, and bid them hasten south without delay. An invasion needs heartening, and if the worst should be true no word from Kyd is likely to reach the Prince. Hearten him, therefore, so that he marches to meet you. That is the first thing. The second is that you go yourself into Derbyshire to see this Sir John Norreys. If he be true man you will find a friend; if not you may be in time to undo his treason.”
> The advice was what had dimly been shaping itself in Alastair’s own mind. His ardour to be back with the Army, which for days had been a fever in his bones, had now changed to an equal ardour to solve the riddle which oppressed him. Midwinter was right; the Cause was on a razor edge and with him might lie the deciding. . . . There was black treachery somewhere, and far more vital for the Prince than any victory in Scotland was the keeping the road open for West England to join him. Shadows of many reasons flitted across his mind and gave strength to his resolve. He would see this man Norreys who had won so adorable a lady. He would see the lady again, and at the thought something rose in his heart which surprised him, for it was almost joy.
“Have you paper and ink?” he asked, and from a cupboard Midwinter produced them and set them before him.
He wrote to Lochiel, who was his kinsman, for though he knew Lord George Murray there was a certain jealousy between them. Very roughly he gave the figures which he had gleaned from Brother Gilly’s letter and that taken from Edom. He begged him to move the Prince to march without hesitation for the capital, and promised to reach his camp with full information before the month ended. “And the camp will, I trust, be by that time no further from St James’s than—” He asked Midwinter for a suitable place, and was told “Derby.” He subscribed himself with the affection of a kinsman and old playmate of Morvern and Lochaber.
“I will see that it reaches its destination,” said Midwinter. “And now for the second task. The man Edom is not suspect and can travel by the high road. I will send him with one who will direct him to my lady Norreys’ party, which this day, as you tell me, sets out for Derbyshire. For yourself I counsel a discreeter part. Mark you, sir, you are sought by sundry gentlemen in Flambury as a Jacobite, and by Squire Thicknesse and his Hunt as a horse-thief. In this land suspicion is slow to waken, but in the end it runs fast and dies hard. Rumour of your figure, face, clothes, manner and bloodthirsty spirit will have already flown fifty miles. If you would be safe you must sink into Old England.”
“I will sink into Acheron if it will better my purpose.”
Midwinter regarded him critically. “Your modish clothes are in Kit’s locker, and will duly be sent after you. Now you are the born charcoal-burner, save that your eyes are too clear and your finger nails unscorched. The disguise has served your purpose to-day, but it is too kenspeckle except in great woodlands. Mother Jonnet will find you a better. For the rest I will guide you, for I have the key.”
“Where is this magic country?”
“All around you — behind the brake, across the hedgerow, under the branches. Some can stretch a hand and touch it — to others it is a million miles away.”
“As a child I knew it,” said Alastair, laughing. “I called it Fairyland.”
Midwinter nodded. “Children are free of it, but their elders must earn admission. It is a safe land — at any rate it is secure from common perils.”
“But it has its own dangers?”
“It makes a man look into his heart, and he may find that in it which destroys him. Also it is ambition’s mortal foe. But if you walk in it you will come to Brightwell without obstruction, for the King’s writ does not run in the greenwood.”
“Whose is the law, then?” Alastair asked.
For answer Midwinter went to the window and flung it open. “My fiddle cannot speak except with free air about it,” he said. “If any drunken rustic is on the heath he will think the pixies are abroad.”
He picked up the violin which had been lying on the table behind him, and drew forth a slow broken music, which presently changed into a rhythmical air. At first it was like the twanging of fine wires in a wind, mingled with an echo of organ music heard over a valley full of tree-tops. It was tame and homely, yet with a childish inconsequence in it. Then it grew wilder, and though the organ notes remained it was an organ that had never sounded within church walls. The tune went with a steady rhythm, the rhythm of growing things in spring, of seasonal changes; but always ran the undercurrent of a leaping bacchanal madness, of long wild dances in bare places. The fiddle ceased on a soft note, and the fiddler fell to singing in a voice so low that the words and air only just rose above the pitch of silence. “Diana and her darling crew,” he sang.
“Diana and her darling crew
Will pluck your fingers fine,
And lead you forth right pleasantly
To drink the honey wine, —
To drink the honey wine, my dear,
And sup celestial air,
And dance as the young angels dance,
Ah, God, that I were there!”
“Hers is the law,” he said. “Diana, or as some say, Proserpina. Old folk call her the Queen of Elfhame. But over you and me, as baptized souls, she has no spell but persuasion. You can hear her weeping at midnight because her power is gone.”
Then his mood changed. He laid down the fiddle and shouted on Mother Jonnet to bring supper. Edom, too, was sent for, and during the meal was closely catechised. He bore it well, professing no undue honesty beyond a good servant’s, but stiff on his few modest scruples. When he heard Midwinter’s plans for him, he welcomed them, and begged that in the choice of a horse his precarious balance and round thighs might be charitably considered. Alastair returned him the letter and watched him fold it up with the others and shove it inside his waistcoat. A prolonged study of that mild, concerned, faintly humorous face convinced him that Edom Lowrie was neither fox nor goose. He retired to bed to dream of Mr Kyd’s jolly countenance, which had mysteriously acquired a very sharp nose.
Edom went off in the early morning in company with the man called Kit and mounted on an ambling forest cob whose paces he whole-heartedly approved. Alastair washed himself like a Brahmin in a tub of hot water in the back-kitchen, and dressed himself in the garments provided by Mother Jonnet — frieze and leather and coarse woollen stockings and square-toed country shoes. The haze of yesterday had gone, and the sky was a frosty blue, with a sharp wind out of the north-east. He breakfasted with Midwinter off cold beef and beer and a dish of grilled ham, and then stood before the door breathing deep of the fresh chilly morning. The change of garb or the prospect before him had rid him of all the languor of the past week. He felt extraordinarily lithe and supple of limb, as in the old days when he had driven deer on the hills before the autumn dawn. Had he but had the free swing of a kilt at his thighs and the screes of Ben Aripol before him he would have recaptured his boyhood.
Midwinter looked at him with approval.
“You are clad as a man should be for Old England, and you have the legs for the road we travel. We do not ride, for we go where no horse can go. Put not your trust in horses, saith the Scriptures, which I take to mean that a man in the last resort should depend on his own shanks. Boot and spur must stick to the paths, and the paths are but a tiny bit of England. How sits the wind? North by east? There is snow coming, but not in the next thirty hours, and if it comes, it will not stay us. En avant, mon capitaine.”
At a pace which was marvellous for one of his figure, Midwinter led the way over the heath, and then plunged into a tangled wood of oaks. He walked like a mountaineer, swinging from the hips, the body a little bent forward, and his long even strides devoured the ground. Even so, Alastair reminded himself, had the hunters at Glentarnit breasted the hill, while his boyish steps had toiled in their rear. Sometimes on level ground he would break into a run, as if his body’s vigour needed an occasional burst of speed to chasten it. The young man exulted in the crisp air and the swift motion. The stiffness of body and mind which had beset him ever since he left Scotland vanished under this cordial, he lost his doubts and misgivings, and felt again that lifting ardour of the heart which is the glory of youth. His feet were tireless, his limbs were as elastic as a sword-blade, his breath as deep as a greyhound’s. Two days before, jogging in miry lanes, he had seemed caught and stifled in a net; now he was on a hill-top, and free as the wind that plucked at his hair.
It is
probable that Midwinter had for one of his purposes the creation of this happy mood, for he kept up the pace till after midday, when they came to a high deer-fence, beyond which stretched a ferny park. Here they slackened speed, their faces glowing like coals, and, skirting the park, reached a thatched hut which smoked in a dell. A woman stood at the door, who at the sight of the two would have retired inside, had not Midwinter whistled sharply on his fingers. She blinked and shaded her eyes with her hand against the frosty sunshine; then to Alastair’s amazement she curtseyed deep.
Midwinter did not halt, but asked if Jeremy were at the stone pit.
“He be, Master,” was her answer. “Will ye stop to break bread?”
“Nay, Jeremy shall feed us,” he cried, and led the way up the dingle where a brook flowed in reedy pools. Presently there was a sound of axe-blows, and, rounding a corner, they came on a man cutting poles from a thicket of saplings. Again Midwinter whistled, and the woodcutter dropped his tool and turned with a grinning face, pulling at his forelock.
Midwinter sat down on a tree-trunk.
“Jeremy, lad, you behold two hungry men waiting to sample the art of the best cook in the Borton Hundreds. Have you the wherewithal, or must we go back to your wife?”
“I has, I surely has,” was the answer. “Be pleased to be seated, kind sirs, and Jerry Tusser will have your meat ready before ye have rightly eased your legs. This way, Master, this way.”
He led them to a pit where a fire burned between three stones and a kettle bubbled. Plates of coarse earthenware were brought from some hiding-place, and in five minutes Alastair was supping with an iron spoon as savoury a stew as he had ever eaten. The fruits of Jeremy’s snares were in it, and the fruits of Jeremy’s old fowling piece, and it was flavoured with herbs whose merits the world has forgotten. The hot meal quickened his vigour, and he was on his feet before Midwinter had done, like a dog eager to be on the road again.
