by John Buchan
At Avelard he found Darking. He had come from the east, and reported mighty floods in the Oxford rivers. Nevertheless, they could be passed by men who knew the ways of them. . . . The King had reached Woodstock. He had with him an escort of Shrewsbury’s men, but he had also called for levies from the local lords, avowedly for the Yorkshire campaign, where the rising of peasants and gentry might at any moment be increased by the advent of the King of Scots. . . . Meanwhile he was hunting in the great park, so far as the weather allowed, since the open winter had kept the deer in season. . . . Crummle had been with him, but had now returned to London. He had a posse of secretaries, but none of the great lords of the Council. . . . And then he added a piece of news which made Lord Avelard frown. Sir Gabriel Messynger was with him, specially summoned out of Kent.
It was plain that Lord Avelard was in deep perplexity. He was of a stouter heart than Sir Edward Neville, or maybe had more to gain and lose. He was not ready to give up an enterprise which had been so long the chief preoccupation of his brain. On the other hand, he had none of the simple passion of the Traceys, and had no mind to go crusading unless there was a reasonable chance of victory. He laughed to scorn the Neville advice that he should go forthwith to Woodstock and seek the King’s favour. “I shall bide here,” he said. “The next move is for the Welshman to make. He knows nothing of what we have done, and will know nothing, unless he clap all the west country in prison and put it to the rack. Our secret is confined to true men.”
“What of Sir Gabriel?” Peter asked.
Lord Avelard replied with a laugh in which to Peter’s ear there was a trace of disquiet.
“Sir Gabriel is the deepest involved of any. He was our go-between to the northern lords, and has twice followed Neville into Wales. There is nothing new in his going to Court. He was bred there as a youth, whence the touch of the popinjay in his manners.”
“We cannot sit idle,” said Peter. “Either we must do as Sir Edward advises, send word to Wales and the north, and call off all preparations. Or we must strike now, trusting to win such vantage that, when the floods abate and our army arrives, we shall be able to use it to deadly purpose.”
Darking nodded, as if in agreement, but Lord Avelard flung up his hand impatiently.
“How in God’s name can we strike? We have nothing at our command but our Cotswold neighbours, and you have seen their mood to-day. We might take Oxford by a bold stroke, but we should be scattered long before we were twenty miles on the London road.”
“Assuredly,” said Peter. “My mind was not on London, for it is certain that we must revise our plan.”
“Then where? Oxford is useless, except as a step. Windsor is seventy miles off. . . .”
“It has come nearer these last days. I think Windsor is now in Woodstock park.”
The old man stared and Darking smiled.
“See, my lord,” Peter went on. He had risen from his chair and stood in the glow of the hearth, tall and straight, tense as a strung bow. His face had lost all the softness of the boy’s, and was set in hard lines.
“See, my lord. I am Bohun, and it is right that I run the chief hazard. The King is at Woodstock by God’s grace, and has but a small force to guard him. What of the Oxford squires?” He turned to Darking.
“Sir Ferdinando Fettiplace with twenty men rode to Woodstock this morning, but he was sent back to Swinbrook to wait further commands. With the waters out the muster will be slow.”
“That is well. The King has but the Shrewsbury men around him and the park rangers. Give me a hundred spears, and, so be they are true folk, I will engage to bring the King’s grace captive to Avelard. . . . Then, when our own men muster, we shall confront a leaderless enemy. We have the chance to seize on the very keep and citadel of the foe, and there are enough stout fellows in Cotswold for the work. . . . If the venture succeed, then we are three parts of the road to the freeing of England. If it fail, some honest lads will go to Paradise, among them a nameless clerk of Oseney.”
The old man gazed at the speaker, and into his face came a sudden flush which told of something deeply stirred in his heart.
“‘Fore God,” he cried, “you are true Bohun! True Bohun and true Percy, for old Hotspur has come to life in you. God go with you, my son. There is a madness that is better than wisdom.”
CHAPTER XIV. HOW PETER STROVE WITH POWERS AND PRINCIPALITIES
St Thomas’s eve was quiet and very mild. There had been no winds to abate the flood-water and dry the sodden meadows, so the valleys were still lagoons and every rivulet an encroaching mere. The rendezvous was in the distant hollows of Wychwood, and thither the little bands from the western Cotswold moved under cover of night.
Peter, with Dickon and a dozen picked Avelard men, took the road by Stow, where the wolds made easy travelling. Word had come that the bridge at Charlbury could be passed, the only crossing of Evenlode, and such a route would take them over Windrush near its source. All were to move slowly and secretly, keeping to cover by day, and making the next stage in the darkness. There were to be no liveries or badges among them, but each man as drab as a deer-stealer.
At cockcrow, when they stopped for meat on Naunton downs, the Carmelite came out of the shadows, his white gown showing in the half-light like a monstrous owl. He knelt and mumbled Peter’s hand, and then his wild eyes scanned his following, and he cried out like a man in pain:
“Where is the trampling of the horsemen?” he screamed, “the mighty array that should sweep the hosts of Midian into the deep ocean? I see but a handful of country folk! Where is your army, my lord? Remember, you go up against the great city of Babel, and her towers are iron and her battlements of hewn stone.”
The man was not easy to soothe.
“The others will come in good time, father,” Peter told him. “We are only like the scouts sent out by Joshua to spy the land. Get you back to your cell, for you can help best by your prayers. We travel secretly and your exhortations may do us a mischief.”
In the end he flitted off, his arms waving and his voice falling and rising in what seemed now a chant and now a moan; but Peter noted with disquiet that the road he took was not west but east.
At Slaughter, where the little river was ill to ford, there was a mad woman in the hamlet who found their camping place in the woods. She seemed to divine their purpose, for she cried around them like a lost soul. It seemed that she was come to warn, and the Avelard men’s faces blanched at the sight of her.
“Back to your homes, my darlings,” she cried. “I see blood in Evenlode, and blood in Glyme, and blood in Cherwell, which all the floods will not wash away. That road there are pretty lads hanging on every tree. Back to your sweethearts, for there are no honest maids where you be going.”
Over Peter’s shoulder she flung a ragged wreath of holly and ivy, such as are made for the Christmas pleasantries.
“May your lordship’s grace be decked with no harsher crown!” she cried, and then fled babbling into the covert.
It was clear that strange rumours had gone abroad in the countryside, for, stealthy as was their journey, they seemed to be expected. If in the twilight they skirted a village street, the doors were shut, but there were curious eyes at the windows. The children had been forewarned; they stared with open mouths, but spoke no word, and did not run away. The Avelard men, who had been advised of the deep secrecy of the journey, were perturbed by this atmosphere of expectation, and spoke aside among themselves. Peter scarcely noticed it. His thoughts had flung ahead, out of this sheepwalk country to the glades of Woodstock, where somewhere a ruddy man was breathing his horse and looking doubtfully towards the west.
At Chadlington in the early hours of the night Darking met them.
“Evenlode runs like a mill-leat,” he said, “but the causeway holds. I can guide you across, my lord. Others are before you, and I have left those who will lead them to their appointed places. Pity you have drawn your folk from High Cotswold, where there is nought but thorns a ma
n’s height. Our work will be in a forest, and these Tracey lads have never seen the tall trees and are easily mazed among them.”
Darking brought news of the King. “I have passed the word among the Upright Men,” he said, “and there are many quick eyes in the Woodstock coverts. See, my lord, yon spark of light in the valley. That is Little Greece, where old John Naps now sits at the receipt of custom. He will be eyes and brain to us. . . . King Harry is snug at Woodstock with my lord Shrewsbury’s men to guard him. He hunts daily, but only in the park, for the floods have narrowed his venue. Glyme is a young ocean, and Evenlode below Wilcote fills the vale to the brim. I doubt if we have seen the end of this overflow. The snow-cap on High Cotswold is still melting with the mild air, as your lordship has seen this day, and that will prevent the streams abating. Nay, they may rise higher yet, for in certain valleys lakes have formed through the damming of trees and sliding earth, and any hour the dams may break and send down a new deluge. It is fickle weather for our enterprise, and we be terribly at the mercy of God.
“What keeps the King in keeps us out,” he went on. “There is nothing to be done inside the pales of Woodstock, where every furlong has its verderer. We are like a troop sitting round a fortalice which it cannot enter. . . . Heaven send the weather let Harry go forth. That is what he longs for, since the hunting in the park is a child’s game to the hunting in the forest. ‘Tis the great yeld hinds of Wychwood that he seeks. Pray for a cold wind and a drying wind, so long as it do not freeze.”
Darking guided them skilfully across the Charlbury bridge. A causeway of hewn stone led up to it at either end, but this was hidden in the acres of eddying water. A man who did not know the road would have slipped into the swirl, but Darking kept them on the causeway, where the stream was not beyond the horses’ withers. Presently they were on the arch of the bridge, and then on the farther causeway, where the eddies were gentle, and then on the hard ground of the forest slopes. By midnight they were encamped in a dingle of dead bracken, hidden as securely as if they had lain in the Welsh hills.
There were five such encampments within the forest bounds, and by the next morning all the men had arrived — a hundred picked spearmen, some of them old soldiers of the French wars, all of them hard and trusty and silent. For the present their task was to lie hidden, and they were safe enough from prying eyes, for the King had appointed no new keeper of Wychwood in the place of the dead Norris, and every ranger and verderer was Darking’s man. Also there was an outer guard of the vagabonds under the orders of John Naps at Little Greece.
Peter inspected the five companies and approved, but Darking shook his head. “They are lithe fellows, but they belong to the bare hills. Stout arms, no doubt, in a mellay, and good horsemen in the open, but I cannot tell how they will shape in our forest work. They are a thought too heavy-footed for that secret business. God send our chance comes in the open.”
It was a blue day, mild and sunny, with but a breath of wind, and that soft from the south.
“We are for Woodstock park, my lord,” said Darking. “You and I alone, and on foot, for we go as spies. Follow my lightest word, for your life may hang on it. And shed most of your garments. The air is mild and there is swimming before us.”
In shirt and hose and deerskin shoes they made for the old bridge below Finstock, which a week before had been swept down to Thames. Here Evenlode ran for ordinary in a narrow stream which spread into a broad mill-pond. Now it was all one waste of brown torrent. Darking led the way to the end of the broken pier of the bridge. “The current will bear us down to the slack water beyond the hazels. Trust your body to it, and swim but a stroke or two, enough to keep your head up. Then, when I give the word, strike hard for the other shore. The rub is to get out of the stream once it has laid hold of you.”
So Peter found it. The torrent swept him down easily and pleasantly, till he was near the submerged hazel clump. Then Darking struck off left handed, and it was no easy task to get rid of the entangling current, which would have carried him into a maelstrom of broken water. It plucked at his shoulders, and gripped his feet with unseen hands. But, breathless and battered, in five minutes they were shaking themselves among the rushes of the farther bank.
“Let us stretch a leg,” said Darking, “or we will chill, and maybe be late for the fair. The King’s grace on a day like this is early abroad.”
They were now within the pale of Woodstock, but they had four miles to go before they reached the wilderness of green glades and coppices which was the favourite hunting-ground. An hour later Darking had his ear to the ground, and then stood like a dog at gaze. “I can hear horses,” he said, “maybe a mile distant. I could hear them better if the earth were less full of rain. Also the hounds are out. I judge they are in Combe Bottom. If they unharbour a deer there, with what there is of wind it will come our way. Let us harbour ourselves, my lord. No, not on the ground, for that might give our scent and turn the deer or lure the hounds. This oak will be screen enough.”
He caught a spreading limb of the tree and swung himself into a crutch. Peter followed, and found that he had a long vista down an aisle of rough grass. Now he could hear the hounds giving tongue in some thicket, but that was the only sound. . . . He might have been listening to mongrels hunting alone in a covert, for there were no horns, or human cries, or the jingle of bridles.
Presently the hounds seemed to come nearer. A cloud of pigeons rose from the opposite trees, and a young buck, a two-year-old at the most, stuck out his head, sniffed the air, and proceeded to amble up the glade. He may have caught a whiff of their wind, for he turned back to covert.
Then the world woke to life. A big old hind, barren by her grey muzzle and narrow flanks, broke from the wood, and behind her the covert was suddenly filled with a babel of noise. The first hounds streamed out, fifty yards behind; and two sweating beaters in blue smocks, who had been stationed there to turn the hind to the open glades, stumbled after them and promptly flung themselves on the ground. In a second they were up again, for a horn was blown behind them.
From an alley in the opposite woods the huntsmen appeared, debouching into the broader aisle. There were five of them — three in livery, with badges in their hats and horns at their saddle bows; one young man with a doublet of crimson velvet, a plumed cap and a monstrous jewel; the fifth a big man who rode first and waved his hand and shouted hoarsely. Peter, from his crutch in the oak, craned his head through the leafless boughs and watched intently. For he knew that he was looking upon the King.
He was plainly dressed, with trunk hose of brown leather and a green doublet with a jewel at his throat. A heavy silver-handled hunting-knife hung at his belt. His horse was a big-boned Fleming with a ewe-neck, and he handled it masterfully; for all his weight his seat was exquisitely balanced and the big hands were light on his beast’s mouth. The face was vast and red as a new ham, a sheer mountain of a face, for it was as broad as it was long, and the small features seemed to give it a profile like an egg. The mouth was comically small, and the voice that came from it was modest out of all proportion to the great body. He swept like a whirlwind up the glade, one hand pawing the air, screaming like a jay. In every line of him was excitement, an excitement naïve and childish, but in his very abandonment there was a careless power.
Peter’s eyes narrowed as he watched the broad back above the flat rump of the Fleming lessen in the distance, till the men behind blocked the view. He had seen his King — his rival — his quarry. Many a picture had he formed of Henry, but none like this. He had looked for gross appetites, cruel jaws, lowering brows, eyes hot with the lust of power. In all his portraits the man had been elderly. But what he had now seen was more like an overgrown boy. There was a preposterous youthfulness in this ageing creature, whinnying like a puppy with the ardour of the game; there was something mirthful in his great, glowing, fleshy face. . . . There was more. One who, with his kingdom afire in the east and north and smouldering in the west, could fling his whole heart lik
e a child into his play, had greatness in him. There was about him an insolent security. What he desired, whether it were deer or gold or kingdoms, he desired so fiercely that he was likely to get it. Peter felt as if some effluence of power had struck him, like a wind in his face.
“What think you of his grace?” Darking asked, as they stole back towards Evenlode.
“I think that he will not easily go down, and that if he falls much will fall with him.”
Darking looked up into the sky.
“The wind freshens, and it has moved back to the south-east — a good wind for the forest. To-morrow belike the King will hunt in Wychwood, and kill a yeld hind. There is a great she-devil harbouring in Finstock brake.”
Darking’s forecast was true. Next morning saw a dawn of lemon and gold, and a sharper tang in the air, while, instead of the spring zephyr which had blown for two days, there was a small, bitter easterly breeze. Peter was abroad at the first light, placing his men. If the King crossed Evenlode and entered the forest it would be by the bridge of Charlbury, for the best harbourage for deer lay to the west of Leafield in the thick coverts above Shipton. He would have an escort, since he was outside the Woodstock pales, but it was certain that, if a strong quarry were unharboured, he would soon leave that escort behind him. With the wind in its present quarter, the deer would run towards Ramsden and Whiteoak Green, where the ground was broken and the vistas short. There, at strategic points, his men would lie hidden, while in the undergrowth would lurk some of Naps’s scouts to pass the word to the posts. Peter and Darking had planned every detail like the ordering of a battle, and had their alternatives in case any item miscarried. “Send the wind holds,” said Darking. “The King will not stay abed to-day, and if the slow-hounds are once out in Shipton Barren, his grace in an hour’s time will be among the Ramsden oaks.”
