by John Buchan
There was a hush at the words, as if each auditor feared his neighbour. But the countryman went on undaunted.
“And now there is nought left of the proud race of Stafford and Bohun, and old England is the poorer place.”
After that he spoke no more but gave his mind to a meat pasty. Presently Wellaby rose to leave, and soon Peter was the only occupant of the taproom. It was the hour of the evening meal at Oseney, but Peter had no mind to it. He expended one of his few coins on a little bread and cheese, and sat on as the dusk deepened and the booths put up their shutters and women called their husbands to supper.
He was in a mood of profound dejection, for two things had befallen him that afternoon. He had realised that the life to which he had vowed himself was in danger of becoming no more than a blind alley, and that the huge fabric of the Church was falling about his ears. Also he had been made aware that great events were toward in the State, and he had seen the happy bustle of men with purpose and power, while he himself sat a disconsidered oddment in a corner. The blanket of the dark was very thick about him.
A hand touched him and woke him from his lassitude. It was one of the Abbey servitors from Oseney.
“Make haste, Master Pentecost—’ee be wanted. I’ve been rakin’ Oxford for ‘ee this past hour. Brother Tobias bade me bring ‘ee post-haste.”
Peter followed him into the street, listless and incurious. This was the consultation, no doubt, for which Tobias had trysted him that morning. But what could Tobias do? Peter had not lost the savour of life; the deadly sin of accidia was not his; he felt the savour with a desperate keenness, but he despaired of passing from the savour to the taste of it. . . . The crowd in the street was less, since it was the meal hour, but there were travellers on the road, spurring through the city to some Cotswold inn or manor. Also there were many of the new proud breed of collegians, coming from the Beaumont field to the colleges nearest the river, or forsaking their bare commons for a tavern supper. There were merchants of the town, too, taking the air and discussing the last news, comfortable men, with a proper reverence for a lord and a proper contempt for a poor scholar. . . . To everyone he met, even the humblest, he was nothing — a child of country peasants, a dabbler in unwanted learning, a creature of a falling Church. In the bitterness of his soul he clenched his hands till the nails hurt his palms. As he crossed Bookbinders bridge and entered the Abbey he felt like a dog whistled back to its kennel.
So low were his spirits that he did not notice that he was being conducted to the Abbot’s palace till his feet were on the threshold. The messenger handed him over to the seneschal, who appeared to be awaiting him. This was an odd spot for his appointment with Tobias, for he had never entered the place before, but he followed his guide dully through the outer hall, and through the dining chamber and up a stairway of Forest marble. He entered a room part panelled and part hung with tapestries, which looked westward over the Botley causeway and the Wytham meadows. It was lit by the summer sunset, and beside the table stood two men.
One was Tobias, whose crab-apple face seemed strangely perturbed. He looked at Peter with hungry eyes as if striving by them to say that which he could not put into words. The other was an old man dressed soberly in black, who wore a rich chain of gold and a jewel on his breast. His face was deeply lined, his mouth was grim, and he had the eye of one used to command. Recollection awoke in Peter at the sight. This was the very man whom he had seen wearing a purple cloak and an ermine collar in the cavalcade of the evening before. He had guessed that he was one of the King’s commissioners sent to deal with the religious houses. Eynsham had not been his goal. He must have been Oseney’s guest for the night.
Both men rose at his entrance and remained standing, a strange thing for a great one in the presence of a youthful clerk. The elder looked at him steadily, ardently, his eye taking in every detail of the threadbare clothes and lithe form and comely face. Then he sighed, but his sigh was not of disappointment.
“The same arch of the brows,” he murmured, “and the little cleft in the upper lip.”
“You are he whom they call Peter Pentecost?” he said. “I have searched long before I found you, my child. They told me that you were an inmate of a religious house in these parts, but which I could not learn. Having found you, I have much to tell you. But first answer my question. Who and what are you and what was your upbringing?” There was no rudeness in the interrogation, but nevertheless it was peremptory, and the speaker’s air had that in it which compelled an answer.
“I was reared by one Mistress Sweetbread at Leafield, the wife, and now the widow, of a Wychwood forester.”
The old man nodded.
“Your father?”
“Of him I know nothing. I have heard that he was a soldier who fell in the wars oversea.”
“Your mother?”
“I never saw her. She was, I think, of near kin to the Sweetbreads, a sister or a sister’s child.”
The other smiled.
“It was a necessary imposture. There was no safety for such as you except to bury you deep in some rustic place. You remember nothing of the years before you came to Leafield?”
Peter shook his head. A wild hope was beginning to surge in his heart.
“Then it is my privilege to enlighten you. There were some who knew the truth, but it did not become them to speak. This good man for one,” and he turned to Tobias.
“I judged it wiser to let the past sleep,” said Tobias, “for I considered only the happiness of him whom I loved as my own son. There was no need . . .”
“The need has arisen,” said the old man firmly. “We who were your father’s friends have never lost sight of that likelihood, though i’ faith we let you sink so deep into Oxfordshire mud that it has been hard to find you. That was the doing of our reverend brother Tobias. You have lived a score of years in a happy ignorance, but the hour has come when it must be broken. Your mother . . .”
He paused, and Peter’s heart stood still.
“Your mother was no Sweetbread kin. She was the Lady Elinor, the eldest daughter of Percy of Northumberland.”
Peter’s heart beat again. He felt his forehead flush and a wild gladness in him which sent the tears to his eyes. He was noble then on the distaff side, noble with the rarest blood of England. What runaway match, what crazy romance, had brought him to birth?
“My father?” he asked.
“Be comforted,” said the other, smiling back. “I read your face, but there is no bar sinister on your shield. You were born in lawful wedlock, a second son. Your mother is long dead, your elder brother is these three months in his grave. You are now the only child of your father’s house.”
“My father?” The tension made Peter’s voice as thin as a bat’s.
“Your father?” said the old man, and he rolled the words out like a herald at a tourney. “Your father was that high and puissant prince, Edward, Duke and Earl of Buckingham, Earl and Baron of Stafford, Prince of Brecknock, Count of Perche in Normandy, Knight of the Garter, hereditary Lord High Steward, and, in virtue of the blood of Bohun, Lord High Constable of England.”
“He died in the year ‘21,” said Peter, blindly repeating what he had heard in the Ram inn.
“He died in the year ‘21, a shameful and unmerited death. His lands and honours were thereby forfeited, and you have not one rood to your name this day. But in the eyes of God and of honest men throughout this land you are Buckingham and Bohun and the sixth man from Edward the Third. I and those who think with me have sought you long, and have planned subtly on your behalf, and on behalf of this unhappy realm which groans under a cruel tyranny. The times are ripe for a change of master, and there will be no comfort for our poor people till that change be accomplished.”
“You would make me a duke?” Peter stammered.
The westering sun was in the old man’s face, and it showed that in his eyes which belied his age. He was suddenly transfigured. He came forward, knelt before Peter, and too
k his hand between his two palms.
“Nay, sire,” he said, “by the grace of God we will make you King of England.”
CHAPTER III. IN WHICH PETER LURKS IN THE SHADOW
Four weeks later to a day Peter sat again in his old eyrie, above the highway which descended from Stowood to the Wood Eaton meads. Strange things had happened meanwhile. Twenty-four hours after the meeting in the Abbot’s lodging the heat had broken in thunderstorms, followed by such a deluge of rain as washed the belated riverside haycocks to the sea and sent Isis and Cherwell adventuring far into distant fields. In the floods a certain humble dependent of Oseney, Pentecost by name, had the ill-luck to perish. For two days he was missed from his accustomed haunts, and on the third news came up the river from Dorchester that he had been last seen attempting a crazy plank bridge over Thame which had been forthwith carried down by the floods. The body was not recovered, but there were many nameless bodies washed up those days. Perfunctory masses were sung for the soul of the drowned man in a side chapel of Oseney Great Church, and in the little chapel of St George in the Castle, and Brother Tobias wore a decent mask of grief and kept his chamber. A new master in grammar was found for the novices, and there was a vacancy in an Oseney corrody and an empty bed in the Castle garret. In a week a deeper tide than that of Isis had submerged the memory of Peter Pentecost.
“It is necessary to do such things cleanly,” the old Lord Avelard had said. “There must be no Lambert Simnel tale that might crop up to our undoing.” He was a careful gentleman, for Brother Tobias was sent to Wychwood to spread the news, so that those who had sat by Peter on the benches of Witney school might spare a sigh for a lost companion.
Then Peter by night was taken to Sir Ralph Bonamy’s house at Wood Eaton. No servant saw him enter, but in the dark a clerk’s gown was burned, and in the morning a young man broke his fast in Sir Ralph’s hall, who bore the name of Bonamy, and was a cousin out of Salop. The manor-house of Wood Eaton was no new-fangled place such as fine gentlemen were building elsewhere. It was still in substance the hall of Edward the First’s day, with its high raftered roof, its solar with plastered walls, its summer parlour, its reedy moat, which could nevertheless be speedily filled bank-high by a leat from Cherwell, its inner and outer courtyards bastioned and loopholed for defence. Sir Ralph was as antique as his dwelling. A widower and childless, he lived alone with an ancient sister, who spent her days amid the gentle white magic of herbs and simples. He was well beyond three-score and ten years, but still immensely strong and vigorous, and able to spend long days in the field with his hounds or on the meres with his fishing pole. He was short and broad, with a noble head of greying reddish hair, and he was clad always in coarse green cloth like a yeoman, while his boots were as massive as an Otmoor fowler’s. He was a lover of good fare and mighty in hospitality, so that his hall was like a public house of entertainment, where neighbour or stranger could at any time get his fill of beef-pudding and small beer. It was an untidy place, murky in winter with wood-smoke and dim even in summer, for the windows were few and dirty. It smelled always of cooked meats and of a motley of animals, being full of dogs — deer-hounds and gazehounds, and Malta spaniels, and terriers; likewise there were hawks’ perches, and Sir Ralph’s favourite tassel-gentle sat at his elbow. The stone floor was apt to be littered with marrow-bones and the remains of the hounds’ meals, and the odour was not improved by the drying skins of wild game which hung on the walls. Sir Ralph had a gusty voice and a habit of rough speech, which suited his strange abode, but he was also notably pious, and a confrater of Oseney; a small chapel opened from the hall where the family priest conducted regular devotions, and he kept his Fridays and fast days as rigidly as any Oseney canon. He was an upholder of the old ways in all things — religion, speech, food and furnishing.
Peter, clad in a sober, well-fitting suit of brown such as became a country squire out of Salop, breakfasted his first morning at Wood Eaton with his head in a whirl. His host, in a great armed chair, made valorous inroads on a cold chine of beef, and drank from a tun glass of ale which he stirred with a twig of rosemary. The long hawking-pole, which never left him, leaned against his chair, and by his hand lay a little white stick with which he defended his platter against the efforts of a great deer-hound and two spaniels to share its contents. Sir Ralph had welcomed his guest with a gusto which he had in vain attempted to make courtly, and since then had said nothing, being too busy with food and dogs. “Eat, sir,” he had said, “youth should be a good trencherman. Now, alas! I can only pick like a puling lanner.” Then he cut himself a wedge of pie which might have provisioned a ploughman for a week.
Peter turned his head at a sound behind him. Lord Avelard had entered the hall, preceded by his body-servant, who arranged his chair, procured him some wheaten cakes and butter, filled a glass of sack which he mixed with syrup of gillyflowers, and then bowed and took his leave. Seen for the first time in the morning light, the face of the old man was such as to hold the eyes. His toilet was but half made; he had slippers on his feet and still wore his dressing-gown; his age was more apparent, and could not be less than four-score; nevertheless, so strong was his air of purpose that he seemed ready forthwith to lead an army or dominate a council. A steady fire burned in his pale eyes, a fire of enthusiasm, or, it might be, of hate. Peter, as he looked on him, felt his curiosity changing to awe.
But the old man was very cordial to the young one. He greeted him as a father might greet a son who was presently to be pope or king.
“We will call him for a little by your name, Ralph,” he said. “Master Bonamy — Master Peter Bonamy — I have forgot what is his worship’s manor t’other side of Severn. . . . Wood Eaton will be a safe retreat for a week or two, till I am ready to receive him at Avelard.”
“By your leave, my lord,” said his host, “it is none too safe a sanctuary. Wood Eaton has a plaguey name as a house of call for all and sundry. It is as open as the Oxford corn-market. Likewise, I have lodging here my niece Sabine — old Jack Beauforest’s daughter — you mind Jack of Dorchester, my lord? Come to think of it, Sabine is as near kin to your deceased lady as to me. She is gone for a week to the nuns at Godstow, where she went to school — Abbess Katherine was her mother’s cousin — but will be home to-morrow. The secret with which you have entrusted me is too big for a maid’s ear, and I do not want Mistress Sabine and this new cousin of ours to clap eyes on each other. You see the reason of it, my lord, though, as one with a hospitable name, I think shame to urge it.”
“But I have a plan to offer,” he continued, when he saw the old man’s countenance fall. “Let him go into Stowood to a verderer’s lodge. I, as principal ranger, can compass that. There is one John of Milton, a silent man, who lives deep in the forest, and to him I would send our cousin, my lord. There no eye will see him save that of gipsy or charcoal-burner or purley-man, and he will have leisure to perfect himself in arts in which I gather he is lacking. A month will pass quick in the cool of the forest.”
Lord Avelard pondered. “Your plan is good, Ralph,” he said. “Wood Eaton is a thought too notable because of its master.” He looked at Peter and smiled. “How will you relish taking to the greenwood like Robin Hood or Little John? You are dedicated, my son, to a great purpose, and it has always been the custom of the dedicated to sojourn first for a while in the wilderness.”
His face, as he looked on the young man, was lit for a moment with a strange tenderness, but the next second it had fallen back into the wary mask of the conspirator.
“How goes the country, Ralph?” he asked. “What does Oxfordshire say of the latest doings at Court?”
“Oxfordshire is very weary of the Welshman,” was the answer, “and grieves for the fate of poor Hal Norris. It was well to cut off the Concubine’s head, but why should Hal have been made to suffer for her misdoings — Hal whom I knew from boyhood and who was innocent as a christom babe? Wychwood and Langley forests had never a better keeper than Hal. . . . Who is to have the
post, think you? I heard talk of Jack Brydges. . . .”
“The King, as you know, has married the Seymour, so he has a new breed of wife’s kin to provide for.”
“The Welshman makes a poor business of marrying, for he has nothing to show for his pains. The Lady Mary is outlawed, and the Concubine’s child is outlawed, and . . .”
“Nay, but there is a new conceit,” said Lord Avelard. “Parliament has granted the King’s grace the power to bequeath the Crown of England by will, as you or I might legate an old doublet.”
“God’s wounds!” cried Sir Ralph, “but this is sacrilege! If a pack of citizens can decide the disposition of the crown what becomes of the Lord’s anointing? It is the tie of blood which God has determined. . . .”
“Do not vex yourself, for the thing works in our favour. If the King forget the obligations of lawful descent, England remembers them. . . . What further do you report of the discontents?”
“There is the devil’s own uproar over the King’s extortions among the gentle, and the simple complain that they are sore oppressed by the inclosers and the engrossers and the wool-staplers. Likewise the pious everywhere are perturbed, since heretics sit in high places and the blasphemer is rampant in the land. Crummle’s commissioners go riding the roads, with the spoils of God’s houses on their varlets’ backs, copes for doublets and tunics for saddlecloths. There are preachers who tell the folk that the Host is only a piece of baker’s bread, and that baptism is as lawful in a tub or a ditch as in a holy font; and will allow a poor man none of the kindly little saints to guide his steps when God and His Mother have bigger jobs on hand. Certes, the new England they will bring upon us is good neither for Jack nor his master.”
