by John Buchan
“I’m joyful to see ye again, for I feared ye had come by foul play. That Scotch serving-man was here seeking ye more than once, and” — lowering his voice—”word came from the Spoonbills, and you not here to answer, and me not knowing where in hell or Derbyshire ye had got to. Ye’ve happened on a rare to-do at the Sleeping Deer. Her right honourable Grace, the Duchess of Queensberry, has come here to lie the night, before journeying down into the West country. She has been at Chatsworth, but the gentles is all a-fleeing south now, for fear of the wild Highlandmen. Duke William himself escorted her here, and that pretty lad, his eldest son, the Lord Hartington, and dinner is ordered for three, and my wife’s like to fire the roof with perplexity. Ye’ll be for your old room, doubtless. It’s been kept tidy against your return, and I’ll see that a bite of dinner is sent up to ye, when Her Grace is served.”
The Spainneach had disappeared, so Alastair mounted to his attic and set about the long process of his toilet. His cramped fingers made a slow business of shaving, but at last his chin and cheeks were smooth, and the mirror showed a face he recognised, albeit a face hollow in the cheeks and dark about the eyes. As his dressing proceeded his self-respect stole back; the fresh-starched shirt, the well-ironed cravat, were an assurance that he had returned from savagery. By the time he had finished he felt his bodily health improved, and knew the rudiments of an appetite. The meal and the glass of brandy which the landlord brought him assisted his transformation, and he seemed to breathe again without a burden on his chest. He had bidden the landlord look out for the Spainneach, and meantime he had an errand to do on his own account; for it occurred to him that the arrival of the Duchess Kitty was the solution of one perplexity.
He walked through the store-closet to the landing above the staircase. At the half-opened door of the Brown Room stood a footman in the Queensberry colours, one who had been with his mistress at Cornbury and recognised Alastair. He bowed and let him pass; indeed he would have pushed the door wide for him had not the young man halted on the threshold. There were voices inside the room, and one of them had a familiar sound.
The sight which greeted his eyes made him shut the door firmly behind him. Duchess Kitty, still wearing the cloak of grey fur and the velvet mittens which had kept her warm in the coach, sat in the chair which Claudia had once sat in, one little foot on the hearth-stone, the other tapping impatiently on the hearth-rug. On a table lay the remains of a meal, and beside it, balancing himself with one large hand among the platters, stood Mr Samuel Johnson. It was not the Mr Johnson to whom he had bade farewell three weeks ago, but rather the distraught usher who had made the midnight raid on Cornbury. His dress was the extreme of shabbiness, his hair was in disorder, his rusty small clothes and coarse stockings were splashed with mud; and he seemed to be famished, too, for his cheeks were hollow, and for all his distress, he could not keep his eyes from straying towards the table.
“I beseech your Grace to remember your common womanhood,” he was saying when Alastair’s entrance diverted the Duchess’s attention.
She recognised him, and a look which was almost alarm crossed her face.
“Here enters the first of the conquerors,” she cried, and swept him a curtsey. “What is the latest news from the seat of war? My woman tells me that the Prince is already in Bedfordshire and that London is ablaze and King George fled to Holland. Your news, Captain Maclean?”
“I have none, madam. I have been no nearer the Prince’s camp than I am at this moment.”
Her eyes opened wide. “Faith, you have dallied long in the South. Have you been sick, or is Beaufort’s conscience a tender plant? Or did you return to Cornbury?” Her face had grown stern.
“I left Cornbury on the day you remember, and I have not since seen my lord, your brother.”
“That is well,” she said, with an air of relief. “I ask no further questions lest they embarrass you. But you are come opportunely, for you can give me counsel. This gentleman,” and she turned to Johnson, “has forced his company upon me, and, when you arrived, had embarked upon a monstrous tale. He bespeaks my pity, so I have composed myself to listen.”
“The gentleman and I are acquainted, and I can vouch for his honesty. Nay, madam, I have a fancy that his errand is also mine.”
She looked curiously from one to the other, as Johnson, rolling his head like a marionette, seized Alastair’s hand. “It is the mercy of God, sir, that you have returned,” the tutor cried. “I have missed you sorely, for that house of Brightwell is no better than a prison. Its master is aged and bedridden and demented, and it is governed by two malevolent spinsters. Brightwell! Bridewell is its true name. I myself have eaten little and slept bare, but that matters nothing. It is my poor lady I grieve for. ‘Tis true, she has her husband, but he is little at home, and is much engrossed with affairs. Soon, too, he will ride south with his Prince, and Miss Claudia cannot travel with him nor can she be left behind in that ill-omened den. She must have a woman to befriend her in these rough days, and conduct her to Chastlecote or Weston, but she has few female friends of her rank and I knew not where to turn. But to-day, walking on the high road, I saw an equipage and learned that it was Her Grace travelling south, and that she would lie at this inn. So I ran hither like a Covent-garden porter, and have been admitted to her presence, though my appearance is not so polite as I could have desired.” He bowed to the Duchess, and in his clumsiness swept her travelling-mask from the table to the floor.
She looked at him for a little without speaking, and then fixed her eyes on Alastair, those large childlike eyes which were rarely without a spark of impish humour.
“Your friend,” she said, “has already opened his tale to me, but his manner of telling it is not of the clearest. Since you say that his errand may be yours, I pray you expound it. But be seated, gentlemen both. I have already a crick in my neck from looking up to such enormities.”
Mr Johnson, as if glad of the permission, dropped into a chair, but Alastair remained standing. His legs no longer felt crazy, but they were amazingly stiff, and once in a chair he distrusted his ability to rise. He stood at the opposite side of the hearth to the Duchess, looking down on the elfin figure, as pretty as porcelain in the glow of firelight.
“I do not ask your politics,” he said, “which I take to be your husband’s. But you are an honourable lady, by the consent of all, and, I can add of my own knowledge, a kind one. To you a traitor must be doubly repulsive.”
Her answer was what Claudia Norreys’s had been in that very room.
“You judge rightly, sir. If I thought I could betray a friend or a cause I should hang myself forthwith to avert the calamity.”
Alastair bowed. “Mr Johnson has told you of this girl, my lady Norreys. She is own sister to you, tender and brave and infinitely faithful. Her husband is otherwise. Her husband is a black traitor, but she does not know it.”
Mr Johnson cried out. “I had thought better of him, sir. Have you got new evidence?”
“I have full evidence. News of desperate import is sent to him here by another in the South, that other being one of the foremost agents of our Cause. That news should go forthwith to the Prince’s camp. It goes forthwith to the enemy’s.”
“For what reward?” the Duchess asked.
“For that reward which is usual to traitors in times of civil strife. They induce honest but weak-kneed souls to take a bold step, and then betray them to the Government, receiving a share of the fines and penalties that ensue. Great fortunes have been built that way.”
“But if the rebellion wins?”
“Then they are lost, unless indeed they are skilful enough to make provision with both sides and to bury whichever of the two villainies is unprofitable.”
“He is a young man,” she said. “He shows a shocking precocity in guile. And the poor child his wife dreams nothing of this?”
“Ah, madam,” cried Johnson. “She is the very soul and flower of loyalty. If she suspected but a tithe of it, her heart w
ould break.”
“His precocity is remarkable,” said Alastair, “but he is not the principal in the business. The principal is that other I have mentioned who is in the very centre of the Prince’s counsels.”
She put her hands to her ears. “Do not tell me,” she cried. “I will be burdened with no secrets that do not concern me. I take it that this other has not a wife whom you would have me befriend.”
“Nevertheless I fear that I must outrage your ears, madam. This other is known to you — closely allied with you.”
Her eyes were suddenly bright with anxiety.
“His name is Mr Nicholas Kyd.”
Her face showed relief; also incredulity.
“You are certain? You have proof?”
“I have long been certain. Before night I will have full proof.”
She fell into a muse. “Kyd — the bluff honest bon enfant! The man of the sad old songs and ready pathos, who almost makes a Jacobite of me — Kyd to play the rogue! Faith, His Grace had better look into his accounts. What do you want of me, Captain Maclean?”
“Two things, madam. My purpose is to do justice on rogues, but justice is a cruel thing, and I would spare the lady. I want you to carry her southward with you, and leave her at Chastlecote or Weston, which you please, or carry her to Amesbury. She shall never know her husband’s infamy — only that he has gone to the Prince, and when he does not return will think him honourably dead.”
The Duchess nodded. “And the other?”
“I beg your presence when Mr Kyd is confounded. He is on his way to Brightwell and this night will sleep there. His errand in the West is now done, and to-morrow, as I read it, he descends into Nottinghamshire to the Government headquarters to receive his reward. Therefore he will have papers with him, and in those papers I look for my proof. If they fail, I have other sources.”
“And if he is found guilty, what punishment?”
Alastair shrugged his shoulders. “That is not for me. Both he and Norreys go bound to the Prince.”
She brooded with her chin on her hand. Then she stood up, laughing.
“I consent. ‘Twill be better than a play. But how will you set the stage?”
“I go to Brightwell presently, and shall force admission. My lady Norreys will keep her chamber, while in another part of the house we deal with grimmer business. I nominate you of our court of justice. See, we will fix an hour. Order your coach for six, and you will be at Brightwell by seven. By that time the house will be ours, and we shall be waiting to receive you. You will bring Mr Johnson with you, and after that you can comfort the lady.”
She nodded. “I will come masked,” said she, “and I do swear that I will not fail you or betray you — by the graves of Durrisdeer I swear it, the ancient Douglas oath. Have you men enough? I can lend you two stout fellows.”
“Your Grace has forgotten that you are a Whig,” said Alastair, laughing.
“I have forgotten all save that I am trysted to a merry evening,” she cried.
*****
When Alastair returned to his attic he found the Spainneach.
“Your Kyd is nearing port,” he said. “I have word that he slept at Blakeley and dined early at Little Laning. In two hours or less he will be at Brightwell.”
“And the Spoonbills?”
“Await us there. Haste you, Sir Sandy, if you would arrive before your guest.”
CHAPTER XV. Bids Farewell to a Scots Laird
The night was mild and dark, and the high road which the two men followed was defined only by the faint glimmer of the rain-pools that lay in every rut. The smell of wet earth was in their nostrils, and the noise of brimming streams in their ears, and to Alastair, with a sword at his side again, the world was transformed. All might yet be saved for the Cause, and in twelve hours he should see the Prince; the thought comforted him, but it was not the main tenant of his mind. For a woman’s face had lodged there like an obsession in sleep; he saw Claudia’s eyes change from laughter to tragedy and back again to laughter, he heard her tongue stumble musically among greetings, he fancied he saw — nay, it was beyond doubt — her face some day light up for him, as a girl’s lights up for her lover. . . . Across the pleasant dream passed the shadow of a high coat-collar and a long sharp nose. He shivered, remembering the ugly business before him.
“Where are the Spoonbills?” he asked.
“By now they will be close around Brightwell, ready to run to my whistle.”
“Are they armed?”
“With staves only. We are men of peace.”
“Suppose Norreys has a troop of Kingston’s Horse for garrison. Or even that he and Kyd and a servant or two have pistols. We are too evenly matched to administer justice in comfort.”
“Then we must use our wits,” was the answer. “But a file or two of your Highland muskets would not be unwelcome.”
The wish was fulfilled even as it was uttered. As they swung round a corner of road, half a mile from Brightwell gates, they had to rein in their horses hard to avoid a collision with a body of mounted men. These were halted in a cluster, while by the light of a lantern their leader made shift to examine a scrap of paper. The sudden irruption set all the beasts plunging, and the lantern went out in the confusion, but not before Alastair had caught sight of him who had held it.
“God’s mercy!” he cried. “Charles Hay! Is it Tinnis himself?”
“You have my name,” a voice answered, “and a tongue I have heard before.”
Alastair laughed happily. “Indeed you have heard it before, Mr Charlie. In quarters and on parade, and at many a merry supper in the Rue Margot. Your superior officer has a claim upon you.”
The lantern, being now relit, revealed a tall young man with twenty troopers at his back, most of them large raw lads who were not long from the plough tail. The leader’s face was flushed with pleasure. “Where in God’s name have you been lurking, my dear sir?” he cried. “I have looked for you at every bivouac, for I longed to clap eyes again on a soldier of Lee’s, after so much undisciplined rabble.”
“The story will keep, Charles, and meantime I claim a service. You are on patrol?”
“A patrol of Elcho’s ordered to feel our way down this valley and report at Derby town by breakfast. ‘Tis a cursed difficult affair riding these hills when there is no moon.”
“You have time and to spare before morn. Turn aside with me here for a matter of two hours. You shall have a good supper to cheer you, and will do your Prince a distinguished service. I pledge my word for it.”
“Lead on,” said Mr Hay. “I am back in Lee’s again, and take my orders from Captain Maclean.”
He cried to his men, and the troop wheeled behind him, where he rode with Alastair and the Spainneach. “Now tell me the ploy,” he said. “It should be a high matter to keep you away from Derby this night, where they say the fountains are to run claret.”
“We go to do justice on a traitor,” said Alastair, and told him the main lines of the story. Mr Hay whistled long and loud.
“You want us to escort the gentleman to Beelzebub’s bosom,” he asked.
“I want you to escort him to the Prince.”
“Not the slightest use, I do assure you. His Highness has a singular passion for gentry of that persuasion. Yesterday Lord George’s force brought in a black-hearted miscreant, by the name of Weir, caught red-handed no less, and a fellow we had been longing for months to get our irons on. Instead of a tow or a bullet he gets a hand-shake from His Highness, and is bowed out of the camp with ‘Erring brother, go and sin no more.’ Too much damned magnanimity, say I, and it’s not like we’ll get much of it back from Cumberland. Take my advice, and hang him from the nearest oak, and then apologise to His Highness for being in too much of a loyal hurry.”
The gates of Brightwell to Alastair’s surprise stood open, and in the faint light from a shuttered window of the lodge it seemed as if there had been much traffic.
“Where are your Spoonbills?” he asked t
he Spainneach.
“I do not know. In furze bush and broom bush and hazel thicket. But when I whistle, in ten seconds they will be at the door of Brightwell.”
The troopers were left in the dark of the paved court, with certain instructions. Accompanied by the Spainneach, Mr Hay and Mr Hay’s troop sergeant, Alastair rode forward to the great door, and pulled the massive bell-rope. A tinkle sounded inside at an immense distance, and almost at the same moment the door was opened. There was a light within which revealed the ancient butler.
“We have business with Sir John Norreys.”
“Sir John awaits you,” said the man. “But are there not others with you, sir?”
So the conspirators had summoned their friends, doubtless a troop of Kingston’s Horse from down the water. A thought struck him.
“We are also appointed to meet a Scotch gentleman, Mr Kyd,” he said.
“Mr Kyd arrived some minutes ago,” was the answer, “and is now repairing his toilet after his journey. Will you be pleased to enter?”
Alastair spoke in French to Mr Hay, who gave an order to his troop sergeant, who took the horses and fell back; and the three men passed through the outer portals into the gaunt gloomy hall, in which Alastair had shivered on his first visit. Tonight there was a change. A huge fire of logs roared up the chimney, and from a door ajar came a glimpse of firelight in another room, and the corner of a laden table. Miserly Brightwell was holding revel that night.
Hay flung himself on a settle and toasted his boots.
“Comfort,” he cried, “after bleak and miry moors, and I have a glimpse of the supper you promised me. Sim Linton will hold the fort against any yokels on cart-horses that try to interrupt us. But what has become of your swarthy friend?”
