by John Buchan
“Why do you ask for it when I am in your power, and it is yours for the taking?”
“Because a thing gifted is better than a thing taken. Plunder a man must sell, but a gift he can wear. If I had a dead man’s hat on my head took from his body, it would be crying out in my ears, but if he had kindly given it me, it would fit well and hold its peace. I want that ring that I may wear it and kiss it and call to mind my darling dear.”
The gypsy seized the hand and peered at the ring, a heavy jasper cut with the crest of Morvern, a tower embattled.
“Set free my hands, then, and I will give it you,” said Alastair.
The gypsy grinned cunningly. “And risk your strong fingers at my throat, my pretty one. Nay, nay. Just say the words, ‘I gift my ring freely and lovingly to Gypsy Ben,’ and hark to the service I will do you. With my own hand I will cut your pretty throat, and save you the cruel fall down, down into the darkness. Most gentlemen fear that more than death. ‘Tis unfair to the Journeyman, for he’s no raven that can put up with dead carrion, but a peregrine who kills what he eats. But for this once he will pardon his servant Ben. Say the words, gentleman dear. See, it is getting very close on supper time and John is crying out.”
He lifted his hand, an eldritch and evil figure, and sure enough the noise of the grinding had risen till it was like a storm in the night. The wooden partition and the windows at the far side of the room rattled violently and the whole place, roof, walls and rafters, shuddered. In a tumult a small sound pitched in a different key will sometimes make itself heard, and on Alastair’s ear there fell something like a human voice. It may have been fancy, but, though he had abandoned hope, it encouraged him to play for time.
“I do not fear the darkness,” he said, “or death in the darkness. But it is a notion of my family to die in the daylight. I will gladly speak the words which gift you the ring if you will let me live till dawn. It cannot be far distant.”
The gypsy took from his fob a vast old silver watch. “Nay, sir, not till daybreak, which is still four hours distant. But John shall wait for one half-hour on his supper, and he cannot complain, for he will have the killing of it himself. Take your pleasure, then, for thirty minutes by this clock which Ben had of the Miller of Bryston before he was hanged at Derby. What shall we do to make the moments go merrily? Shall Ben sing to you, who soon will be singing with angels?”
The gypsy was on his feet now, his face twitching with excitement and his eyes like two coals. He skipped on the table and cut a step.
“You shall see the Gallows Jig, darling mine, which goes to the tune of ‘Fairladies.’”
With grace and skill he threaded his way among the dishes on the stout oaken board, showing a lightness of foot amazing in one wearing heavy riding-boots.
“Bravo,” cried Alastair. “If I were unshackled I would give you the sword-dance as we dance it in the Highlands.” If the maniac could be absorbed in dance and song he might forget the passage of time. Somehow the young man believed that with daylight he would have a chance of salvation.
The gypsy leaped from the table, and took a long pull at the ale jug.
“Sing in turn or sing in chorus,” he cried. “Raise a ditty, precious gentleman.”
Alastair’s dry throat produced a stave of Desportes — a love song which he had last heard at a fête champêtre at Fontainebleau. The gypsy approved and bellowed a drinking catch. Then to Alastair’s surprise he lowered his voice and sang very sweetly and truly the song of “Diana.” The delicate air, with the fragrance of the wildwood in it, pierced Alastair like a sword. He remembered it as Midwinter had sung it — as Claudia Norreys had crooned it, one foot beating time by the hearth and the glow of firelight on her slim body. It roused in him a new daring and a passionate desire to live. He saw, by a glance at the watch which lay on the table, that the half-hour had already been exceeded.
“Nobly sung,” he cried. “Where got you that song?”
“Once I heard a pretty lady chant it as she walked in a garden. And I have heard children sing it far away from here — and long, long ago.”
The man’s craziness had ebbed a little, and he was staring into the fire. Alastair, determined that he should not look at the watch, coaxed him to sing again, and praised his music, and, when he did not respond, himself sang — for this new mood had brought back his voice — a gypsy lay of his own land, a catch of the wandering Macadams that trail up and down the sea-coast. Gentle and soothing it was, with fairy music in it, which the Good Folk pipe round the sheilings on the July eves. Ben beat time to it with his hand, and after it sang “Colin on a summer day” with a chorus that imitated very prettily a tabor accompaniment. . . . Alastair’s glance at the watch told him that more than an hour had passed, and he realised, too, that the noise of the Journeyman was dying down.
“Your turn,” said the gypsy, who had let his legs sprawl toward the fire, and seemed like one about to go to sleep.
An unlucky inspiration came to the young man. He broke into the song of “The Naked Men” and he let his voice ring out so that the thing might have been heard outside the dwelling. For a moment the gypsy did not seem to hear; then he frowned, as if an unpleasant memory were aroused; then suddenly he woke to full consciousness.
“Hell and damnation!” he cried. “What warlock taught you that? Stop the cursed thing,” and he struck the singer in the face.
Then his eye saw the watch, and his ear caught the cessation of the Journeyman’s grinding. His madness flared up again, he forgot all about the ring, and he leaped upon the prisoner like a wild-cat. He dragged him, helpless as he was, from the settle and flung him across the table, sending the remains of supper crashing to the floor. Then he left him, rushed to the wooden partition, and tore it apart. From the black pit thus revealed a thin grey vapour seemed to ascend, and the noise was like the snarling of hounds in kennel.
“John is hungry,” he cried. “I have kept you waiting, my darling, but your meat is ready,” and he was back clutching his prisoner’s middle.
The despair and apathy of the earlier hours had gone, and Alastair steeled himself to fight for his life. The gypsy’s strength was always respectable and now his mania made it prepotent. The young man managed to get his manacled ankles crooked in a leg of the table, but they were plucked away with a dislocating wrench. His head grated on the floor as he was dragged towards the pit. And then he saw a chance, for the rope that bound his wrists caught in a staple fixed in the floor, apparently to make an anchorage for a chain that had worked an ancient windlass. The gypsy pulled savagely, but the good hemp held, and he was forced to drop the body and examine the obstacle. Alastair noted that beyond the pit was a naked dripping wall of cliff, and that the space between the edge and the walls of the shed inclined downward, so that anything that once reached that slope would be easily rolled into the abyss. Death was very near him and yet he could not despair. He lifted up his voice in a great shout for help. A thousand echoes rang in the pit, and following on them came the gypsy’s crazy cackle.
“Do not fear, pretty darling. John’s arms are soft bedding,” and he dragged him over the lip of stone beyond which the slope ran to the darkness.
Once again by a miracle his foot caught. This time it was only a snag of rock, but it had a rough edge to it, and by the mercy of God, the bonds at his ankles had been already frayed. The gypsy, who had him by the shoulders and arms, tugged frantically, and the friction of the stone’s edge severed the last strands. Suddenly Alastair found his ankles free, and with a desperate scramble tried to rise. But his feet were cramped and numb and he could not find a stand. A tug from the gypsy brought him to the very edge of the abyss. But the incident had wakened hope, and once again he made the vault ring with a cry for help.
It was answered. The dim place suddenly blazed with light, and there was a sound of men’s voices. For an instant the gypsy loosed his hold to stare, and then with a scream resumed his efforts. But in that instant Alastair’s feet had found on the
very brink a crack of stone, which enabled him to brace his legs and resist. The thing was trivial and he could not hold out long, but the purchase was sufficient to prevent that last heave from hurling him into the void.
The gypsy seemed suddenly to change his mind. He let the young man’s shoulders drop, so that he fell huddled by the edge, plucked the long shagreen-handled knife from his belt and struck at his neck. But the blow never fell. For in the same fraction of time something bright quivered through the air, and struck deep in his throat. The man gurgled, then grew limp like a sack, and dropped back on the ground. Then with a feeble clawing at the air he rolled over the brink, struck the side twice, and dropped till the noise of his fall was lost in the moaning of the measureless deep.
Alastair lay sick and trembling, not daring to move, for his heels were overhanging the void. A hand seized him, a strong hand; and though he cried out in terror it dragged him up the slope and into the room. . . . The intense glare stabbed his eyes and he had the same choking nausea as when he had been felled in the hut. Then he came suddenly out of the fit of horror and saw himself on the settle, ready to weep from weariness, but sane again and master of himself.
A dark friendly face was looking down at him.
“You may travel the world’s roads for a hundred years,” said the Spainneach, “and never be nearer death. I warned you, Sir Sandy. You have been overlong in the South.”
CHAPTER XIV. Duchess Kitty on the Road
Five hours’ sleep were not enough to rest his body, but they were all that his unquiet mind would permit. He woke to a sense of great weariness combined with a feverish impulse to drive himself to the last limits of his strength. His limbs were desperately stiff, and at his first attempt to rise he rolled over. A bed had been made for him in the attic of the farm, and the view from the window showed only the benty shoulder of a hill. Slowly the doings of the night came back to him; from the bowels of the earth he seemed to hear the mutterings of Journeyman John, and he crawled down the trap-ladder in a fret to escape from the place of horror.
In the kitchen the Spainneach was cooking eggs in a pan, smiling and crooning to himself as if the morning and the world were good. He put Alastair in a chair and fed him tenderly, beating up an egg in a cup with French brandy.
“Have that for your morning’s draught, Sir Sandy,” he said. “You are with your friends now, so let your anxieties sleep.”
“They cannot,” said the young man. “I have lost weeks of precious time. My grief! but I have been the broken reed to lean on! And the Prince is in this very shire.”
“To-night he will lie in Derby. Lord George Murray has led a column in advance to Congleton and the Duke of Kingston has fled back to Lichfield. His Grace of Newcastle has sent offers to the Prince. All goes well, heart’s darling. Your friends have given Cumberland the slip and are on the straight road to London.”
The news stirred his languid blood.
“But the West,” he cried. “What news of the West — of Barrymore and Sir Watkin and Beaufort? There is the rub.” And with the speaking of the words the whole story of the past weeks unrolled itself clear and he dropped his head into his hands and groaned. Then he staggered to his feet.
“There is a man reaches Brightwell this day. He must be seized — him and his papers.” Swiftly he told the story of Kyd. “Let me lay hands on him and I will extort the truth though I have to roast him naked, and that truth the Prince must have before a man of us sleep. It is the magic key that will unlock St James’s. Have you men to lend me?”
The Spainneach smiled. “Last night they tracked you, as few men in England could, and they were here to overpower the rascaldom that held the door. Now they are scattered, but I have a call to pipe them back like curlews. The Spoonbills are at your back, Sir Sandy.”
“Then for God’s sake let us be going,” Alastair cried. “Have you a horse for me, for my legs are like broomshanks?”
“Two are saddled and waiting outbye. But first I have a little errand to fulfil, which the Master charged on me.”
From a shed he brought armfuls of hay and straw and piled them in a corner where the joists of the roof came low and the thatch could be reached by a man’s hand. Into the dry mass he flung a smouldering sod from the fire. As Alastair, stiffly feeling his stirrups, passed between the dry-stone gateposts, he heard a roaring behind him, and, turning, saw flames licking the roof.
“Presently Journeyman John will lie bare to the heavens,” said the Spainneach, “and the wayfaring man, though a fool, will understand. Brightwell is your goal, Sir Sandy? ‘Tis fifteen moorland miles.”
“First let us go to the Sleeping Deer,” was the answer. “I have a beard weeks old, and my costume is not my own. Please God, this day I am going into good society and have a high duty to perform, so I would be decently attired.”
The Spainneach laughed. “Still your old self. You were always for the thing done in order. But for this Kyd of yours — he comes to Brightwell to-day, and may depart again, before you take order with him. It is desirable that he be detained?”
“By God, he shall never go,” cried Alastair.
“The Spoonbills do not fight, but they can make a hedge about a man, and they can bring us news of him.”
So at a grey cottage in the winding of a glen the Spainneach turned aside, telling Alastair that he would overtake him, and when he caught him up his face was content. “Mr Kyd will not enter Brightwell unknown to us,” he said, “and he will assuredly not leave it.”
The day had been bright in the morning, but ere they descended from the high moors to the wider valleys the wind had veered to the north, and a cold mist had blown up, which seemed a precursor of storm. Rain fell heavily and then cleared, leaving a windy sky patched with blue and ruffled with sleet blasts. The tonic weather did much to refresh Alastair’s body, and to add fuel, if that were possible, to the fire in his brain. He knew that he was living and moving solely on the passion in his spirit, for his limbs were fit only for blankets and sleep. When his horse stumbled or leaned on the bit he realised that the strength had gone out of his arms. But his mind amazed him by its ardour of resolution, as if all the anxieties of the past week had been fused into one white-hot fury. . . . So far the Prince had not failed, and these forced marches which would place him between Cumberland and the capital were surely proof of undivided counsels. Perhaps he had news of the West after all. There was his own letter to Lochiel — but in that he had promised proofs at Derby, and this day the Prince would be in Derby and would not find him.
“You have seen His Highness?” he asked the Spainneach.
“At Manchester, for a brief minute, surrounded by white cockades.”
“How did he look?”
“Sad and reflective — like a man who has staked much against odds and does not greatly hope.”
It was the picture he had made in his own mind. But by Heaven he would change it, and bring a sparkle again to those eyes and the flush of hope to that noble brow. . . . For weeks no news could have reached the camp from the West, for Kyd would have passed it to Norreys and Norreys to one of the Whig Dukes in Nottinghamshire, and if the levies had marched from Wales the Government had had ample warning to intercept them. . . . Probably they had not started, for Kyd could no doubt counterfeit orders from the Prince. But the point was that they were there — men, armed men, and money — ready and eager for the field. His thoughts were drawing to a point now, and he realised what had been the vague fear that so long had tormented him. It was that the Prince would lose heart — nay, not he, but his Council, and instead of striking for St James’s, fall back to a defensive war inside the Scottish Border. That way lay destruction, slow or speedy — with England unconverted and France uncommitted. But the bold road, the true road, would bring France and England to their side, and strike terror to the heart of their already perplexed enemy. Tower Hill or St James’s! Would to God he was now by the Prince’s side, instead of Lord George with his slow Atholl drawl, or
the Secretary Murray, fussy and spluttering and chicken-hearted, or the Teagues, whose boldness was that of kerns and only made the others more cautious. At the thought of his Prince’s haggard face he groaned aloud.
But, please God, it was still in his power to find the remedy, and by evening the peril might be past. He spurred his horse at the thought, and, since the beasts were fresh and they were now on the good turf of the vales, the miles flew fast, and they rode out of sleet showers into sun. To his surprise he found that his attitude to Kyd had changed. He loathed the man and longed to crush him, but it was as a vile creeping thing and not as a personal enemy. But against Sir John Norreys he felt a furious hatred. The thing was illogical — to hate a tool rather than the principal, the more as Norreys had done him no personal ill, while Kyd had connived at his death. But had the two been on the sward before him with drawn swords he could have left the laird of Greyhouses to the Spainneach and taken the baronet for himself. Why? His heart inexorably gave the answer. The man was the husband of the russet lady; to her ears he had lied, and with his lies drawn a moan of pity from her gentle lips. For Sir John Norreys, Alastair reserved a peculiar vengeance. Kyd might fall to a file of the Prince’s muskets, but Norreys must die before the cold point of his own steel. And then . . . ? Claudia would be a free woman — sorrowful, disillusioned, shamefaced, but still a child with the world before her, a white page on which love could yet write a happy tale.
They skirted the little hill on which Alastair had stood with Midwinter, and came to the high road and the door of the Sleeping Deer. There was now no need of back stairs, and Alastair, giving up his horse to an ostler, boldly entered the hall and made for the landlord’s sanctum. But an elegant travelling trunk caught his eye, its leather bearing the blazon of a crowned heart, and by the fire a lackey in a red-and-blue livery was warming himself. A glance through the open door of the stable-yard revealed more red and blue, and a fine coach which three stable-boys were washing. The landlord was not in his room, but in the kitchen, superintending the slicing of hams, the plucking of pullets and the spicing of great tankards of ale. At the sight of Alastair he started, called another to take his place at the table and beckoned him out-of-doors.
