by John Buchan
Utter silence greeted his words. Purdey looked sharply behind him, embarrassment crept into the landlord’s malevolence, the rustics began to edge away. A high ringing boyish laugh came through the open window from the inn parlour.
“That be Squire Dick,” said someone.
“Then I shall present my letter,” said Nanty, and marched indoors.
There was no doubt where his errand lay, for talk and laughter drifted from behind a door on the left side of the little hall. He knocked, and a voice bade him enter.
Five gentlemen sat round a table discussing a magnum of claret. One had the look of a sporting attorney, an oldish man with horn spectacles on his nose, and before him a sheaf of papers. Of the others, two were elderly and fat, and one was a long lath of a man in a bright bird’s-eye necker-chief. The fifth, who seemed to be presiding, was scarcely more than a boy, with fair hair and blue eyes set wide apart in a freckled face. His cheeks were a little flushed, and his clothes, though cut in the extreme of fashion, were worn with an air of country undress. He lifted his head at Nanty’s entrance, but there was no incivility in his stare. Here was one who looked charitably upon the world.
“Can I speak with Squire Monckton?” Nanty asked, and four solemn heads nodded towards the boy.
“I ask pardon for my interruption, gentlemen, but I bear a letter to Squire Monckton from a friend. Sir Turnour Wyse.”
“Sir Turnour!” the boy cried. “How goes that imp of fame?” He tore open the envelope, read the page, and then held out a hand to Nanty.
“You’ve hit it off to a marvel, sir. I’m as ill to find these days at Flocksby as a mayfly in August, and here you get me at the first cast. These are my fellows of the committee of the Flocksby Hunt, met to review the season’s sport.” He named four names. “And this, gentlemen, is Mr Anthony Lammas, just out of Scotland, commended to me as a cock of the right breed by a most sovereign judge of cocks. No, by God, not Mister, but Professor. You abash me, sir. I’m too fresh from Brasenose College not to have still some awe of the academic gown. Consider me as at your service. I’ll see that Sir Turnour’s chaise is returned to his Half Moon Street stable, and the cattle can go north to Berwick with my next convoy, and meantime find stalls at the Hall. . . . Our sederunt is finished, and I move we adjourn to Flocksby. You’ll sup with me, and I’ll send you to Boroughbridge to join the Umpire. Tell you what, I’ll post a man ahead to book you a seat.”
“You are most kind, sir,” said Nanty. “But I have two companions with me. One is a young man, the son of an eminent judge in Scotland, and the other a fisherman who is essential to our business.”
“We’ll have ‘em all,” cried Mr Monckton. “Bless you, sir, at Flocksby we often sit down thirty to dinner and forty to supper. . . . Let us be going, for I am deucedly peckish! Your horse must be shod by now, and we five will attend you like a sheriff’s mounted posse. The place is not three miles off.”
“Thank God I found you here,” said Nanty. “The landlord was inclined to suspect our honesty, since he held that our appearance did not match our equipage.”
The boy drew down his brows in a way that showed that his temper lay handy. Then he laughed.
“Robbins is an oaf,” he said. “God made him and doubtless he must pass for a man, but he’s a cursed bad judge of a gentleman. I’d get rid of him to-morrow but for his wife, who was my father’s kennel-maid. Hey, Robbins,” he cried as he straightened his cravat and clapped a beaver on his unruly mop of hair. “Get the other horse in the gentleman’s pair, and quick about it.”
But there was no need of the command, for when Nanty emerged from the inn he found the galloways being put to the chaise by an obedient ostler. The landlord stood obsequiously by their heads, the rustics were back on their bench, and Purdey and his horses had disappeared.
The Squire of Flocksby accepted Jock and Bob with the same complacence with which he had received Nanty. “You’re the whip, ain’t you?” he asked the first. “Nice little tids, but too slow for my taste. I could fit you with a pair of spankers.” . . . Bob he looked over with a connoisseur’s eye, and consulted his friends. “Gad, what shoulders!” he cried. “He’d buff magnificently. If your fish stop taking you try the ring. Come to us and we’ll have you a champion in a twelvemonth.”
At Flocksby they supped at a board at which dukes and drovers, peers and pugilists, were regaled indifferently. The fat member of the Flocksby Hunt became drunk and slumbered. The attorney had to leave half-way through the meal, and the lean man, who had ambitions to represent the county, talked politics when the decanters had been thrice round, till he was silenced by his host, after which he sang a song. They all sang, Jock in his bass, Bob in his fine tenor, and Nanty gave the company “Dunbarton’s Drums.” At midnight Squire Monckton, still warbling choruses, packed the three of them into his curricle and drove his “spankers” tandem to Boroughbridge, where the Green Willow received them with open arms. “If there’s no room in the Umpire,” was his parting injunction to the landlord, “fling out a brace of bagmen. I’ll pay the shot.”
Presently, in a night as balmy as a Fife June, Nanty on the box seat was watching in the glow of the headlights the ribbon of the great road unwind before him. The young Squire had given him an inspiration. Difficulties must be faced with a light heart and with a high hand. He was almost happy. But he wished he did not look like an unfrocked parson. The phrase rankled; he had heard it whispered by a member of the Flocksby Hunt.
Then he laughed and reminded himself of his true rôle. He was no swashbuckling youth roaming the land for sport and adventure, but a grave man to whom had fallen a heavy duty. His strength lay in his head, not in his hands or heels. He had won the first point in the game, for he knew from Purdey’s remark that somewhere by Huntingdon lay a place called Fenny Horton, and that somewhere near Fenny Horton was Cranmer.
CHAPTER XIV. Tells of a Veiled Champion
At nine o’clock on a very wet morning a chaise from Huntington deposited the three travellers in the market-place of Fenny Horton, where, at the sign of the Roman Urn, John Blanchflower invited company. Two nights and days they had been on the road, for the coach from Boroughbridge had missed the regular day mail on the Great North Road.
To Nanty’s surprise the little square was full of people, and the landlord, two ostlers and three serving-maids awaited them at the inn door. Soon it became clear that this was no accident, but that they were really the object of popular interest. Every eye was turned on them, an ostler ran to the horses’ heads, the landlord himself, smiling like a harvest-moon, assisted them to descend.
It was Bob apparently who caused the excitement. He wore his big seaman’s coat, and had a blue woollen comforter knotted round his neck. “That’s him,” Nanty heard from the crowd. “That’s the Scotty. Lord, he do look a tough ‘un.”
Mr Blanchflower bobbed his head.
“Welcome, gentlemen. The Urn is honoured to entertain you. We got word to expect you, but heard nothing more, so I had given up hopes of you.”
“Who sent you word?” Nanty finessed, for he was deep in bewilderment.
“It came down the road — I couldn’t just say how — it’s been in everybody’s mouth that Fisher Jemmy was on his way. A week ago some said he had passed Newcastle. Then, as the time went on and the big day came nearer, there was word that he had gone to a mill Darlington way. You’ve cut it fine, gentlemen, for the championship is only two days off — the first round to be fought at ten o’clock on Thursday morning. Five of the boys has arrived, two at the Dog and Unicorn, one at the Duke’s Head, and two with Sir Miles Furmilow at Hay Hall. Now the Urn has got its man, too, for which I kindly thank you. Your rooms are ready, and I promise you they’ll be as private as your own parlour, and the food of the Urn is reckoned the best in three shires. There’s a nice barn for sparring practice, and a quiet little meadow for a run in the morning. Follow me, gentlemen. . . . May I be honoured by your name, sir?”
Jock took charge,
since Nanty still blinked puzzled eyes. “Hold your tongue,” he whispered fiercely to Bob, who was the embarrassed recipient of many appraising glances. “As dumb as a door-post till I give you the word.” Then to the landlord, speaking broadly like a jockey from Cupar Fair: “This is Mr Anthony Lammas, the gentleman that backs the Fisher and pays his shot. I’m his trainer, and a damned pernickety one ye’ll find me. We want three rooms — one for Mr Lammas, one for me and the Fisher that’ll bed thegither, and one for our meals, and for each door we want a key. Ye’ll send our food to our room — the best ye’ve got for me and Mr Lammas, and underdone steak and wheaten bread for the Fisher. We could manage fine with a second breakfast when we’ve washed our faces and dried our breeks.”
Jock’s tone had the mixture of authority and vulgar familiarity which the part required. The three in the landlord’s wake withdrew from the gaze of the crowd, who raised a faint cheer in Bob’s honour. Ten minutes later they sat before a sea-coal fire in a room full of flowered chintz and ancient mahogany, drinking tumblers of rum and milk. Another twenty minutes and they were busy with a platter of bacon and eggs as large as a milk-pan. There was also a dish at which Bob took one shuddering look and replaced the cover. “Eels,” he cried. “Waur than frogs. They’re a queer folk, the English.”
“This is a merciful Providence,” said Jock, when called upon to face the situation.
“It’s a calamity,” said Nanty. “Here are we full in the public eye, with every movement we make a matter of interest to some hundreds of idlers. We might as well have printed a handbill and sent it round with the bellman.”
“Not so, Nanty my dear. Your logic is deserting you. We’re a fighting party and therefore privileged folk in Old England. Bob can do what he likes within reason, and no one will question him — not till after Thursday’s fight. He can lie all the time in his bed. He can sit in his chair before the fire. He can trot round the meadow and break the nose of any man that looks at him. His privacy will be respected as if it were a royal accouchement, and you as his backer and I as his trainer will have the same indulgence. We’re sportsmen, hang it, and till we’re beaten we’re cocks of the walk. That’s the grandeur of the English character. In Fife they’d jail us as suspicious characters.”
“But we’ll have people coming here — to talk about the fight — to look at Bob—”
“Not them. We’re sacred characters, guarded like racehorses. Nobody will come near us. It would be a breach of the unwritten laws of the game. I had a word with the stable-lad who brought up our baggage, and it seems that the meeting on Thursday has been got up by one Sir Miles Furmilow, a local sporting baronet, and that fighting men are coming from all over the land, since the championship stake is a belt of five hundred guineas. They are to draw lots for their opponents, and to fight in bouts of ten rounds each till the best man wins. There’ll be a lot of blood lost in Mill meadow come Thursday.”
“But supposing the real Fisher Jemmy arrives?”
“Bob’s the real man, for he is first comer. Anyone else has to prove his title against Bob’s fists. Are you prepared, Bob?”
“‘Deed I am that,” was the answer. “But, mind ye, I ken naething about fightin’ inside a ring o’ ropes wi’ a clout round my middle. I’ve grand wind, and I’m light on my feet, and when I’m thrawn I could fell a stirk, but naebody ever learned me what they ca’ the science o’t. I’ll no stand up like a jumpin’-jaick and mak mysel a show for thae English.”
“You’ll not be asked,” said Jock. “What we’ve got is a hidy-hole for the present. Long before Thursday we must be up and off on our proper job. Man, Nanty, don’t look so glum. We must take what cards fortune gives us and play boldly. Up to now we’ve had the luck on our side.”
But Nanty was not glum; he was thinking hard. Thursday, the day after the morrow, was the big day, and the countryside for thirty miles round would flock to the spectacle. Cranmer would know of this, for a dispeopled land was what he wanted. Somewhere near must lie the Merry Mouth, a quiet place that day with Fenny Horton as the magnet. Thursday must be the day he had fixed on for his purpose — Thursday, or, more likely, Thursday night. He was now in Norfolk, for Gabriel (he thought of the girl only as Gabriel) had told him that their first goal was her house of Overy. Some time on Thursday he would return, and the crisis would begin.
He told the others in conclusion. His spirits had risen again, for the hand of Providence seemed to have thus far guided them. The time of waiting was nearly over, and in two days the worst — or the best — would happen.
“I must bestir myself,” he said. “You two stay here till I come back, for I’m the least conspicuous of the three. I can pass unnoticed in the streets, when every eye would be on the pair of you. I must find where the Merry Mouth is.”
“Ask the landlord,” said Jock.
“Not I. He looks a decent soul, but inns are the breeding-ground of tattle, and if we mentioned the Merry Mouth to him or to anybody about the place it would be over the town in an hour. I’ll take the air like a curious traveller, and maybe I’ll find some native to crack about the countryside so that I can edge in my question. Don’t stir a foot till you see me again.”
The rain had ceased, but the brimming gutters showed that there had been a heavy fall. With the collar of his greatcoat turned up and his hat low on his brows, Nanty passed unremarked out of the inn door and mingled with the throng on the kerb. The little town stood on a knuckle of high ground, and he followed the main street which straggled eastward. He gazed with interest at the brick houses, some of them with stuccoed porticoes and fanlights, and with admiration at the great sprawling grey church which looked as ancient as Largo Law. “But for John Knox,” he reflected, “we should have had the like in Scotland and not be forced to put up with barns.”
Clearly there were many incomers in the town, farmers in top-boots as thick as on a market day, raffish young gentlemen in waxcloth coats, staring countrymen, dusky gipsy folk, and a motley of the lantern-jawed sporting breed which he had seen at Cupar races and which is the same over all the world. The street descended and widened, and he found himself looking over straggling cottages to a great expanse of flat country very clear under the rain-washed sky. It was of a curious grey-green tint, without any of the brighter colours of spring, except where patches of mere caught the sun. The road in front of him presently became a causeway, embanked above a sluggish watercourse. The whole land seemed strangely foreign. The folk in the street, rosy or sallow, were of a different race from his own, and to an eye accustomed to sharp contours there was something infinitely dreary in the unfeatured vista and the smudged horizon.
But when the sense of foreignness was most strong upon him, he suddenly encountered a familiar face. It was long and white and melancholic, and it rose above the folds of a voluminous white muffler. He recognised Mr Ebenezer Pitten, the Balbarnit butler.
He was recognised in turn. The doleful features became almost cheerful, and a not very clean hand was thrust forward.
“It’s the Professor,” cried Pitten. “I’m blithe to see a kenned face in this foreign land. What in the name o’ a’ that’s wise has guidit ye here? I was just thinkin’ I was the first Scotsman that ever set foot in this wersh countryside, which is a’ glaur and flowe-moss.”
“That is the question I would ask you,” was Nanty’s answer. “I thought that you and your ladies were bound for London.”
“So we are — so we are — in the hinder end, but there was aye a notion of stoppin’ on the road to visit a young lassie that was at the school langsyne wi’ Miss Kirsty. Landbeach Manor they ca’ the bit, but it’s mair water than land. The lassie’s name is Leddy Jean Hilgay, and she bides wi’ her auld grannie the Countess o’ Horningsea. Grand names and grand folk, but a dowie habitation. We came here twa days syne in a post-shay, and yestereen it rained as if the Almighty had forgotten His promise and ettled a new Flood.”
“Do you stay long?” Nanty decided that he would not mentio
n to Jock that Miss Evandale was in the neighbourhood, fearing to revive black memories.
“They were speakin’ about a week, and it’ll be the sairest week I ever put in. Miss Georgie is content eneugh sittin’ sewin’ her piece and crackin’ wi’ the auld leddyship. But Miss Kirsty yawns her heid off, for she has been accustomed to exercise like a young cowt, and the Leddy Jean is no that weel, and spends the feck o’ the day lyin’ on a sofy. But it’s me that’s gotten the warst job, for there’s no a hand’s turn o’ work for me to dae, and I’m feared o’ yon muckle English serving men wi’ their pouthered heids. It’s a drouthy bit, too, for I dinna like their yill, and there’s naething else allowed in the housekeeper’s room. I cam in here this mornin’ to get a dram, for there’s nought to be got at the Merry Mouth.”
“The what?” Nanty cried.
“The Merry Mouth. A queer name and a queer house. It’s the nearest public, about a mile frae the Manor yetts, but it’s no the kind o’ canty public we’re used wi’ in Scotland. Merry Mouth, forsooth! I never saw onything less merry, and there’s naething in’t for a man’s mouth. It stands down by the edge o’ the flood water, a’ by its lane among saugh trees, and there’s a thrawn bitch o’ a wife wha shoos ye awa like a tinkler dog. . . . But ye haena telled me what brings you here, Professor. I last saw ye in the hottle at Berwick-on-Tweed wi’ the Kinloch lad.”
“A mere accident,” said Nanty. “Like your mistress I had to visit a friend before going on to London, and followed him here. My stay will be short, but it may last a day or two. I have a distant acquaintance with Miss Evandale, and we come from the same shire, so while I am in the neighbourhood I may be privileged to pay my respects to her. How far off is this Landbeach Manor, and where does it lie?”
“About three Scots mile — five maybe, as the English reckon. Ye canna miss the road. Gang on as ye are gaun, tak the first turn to the north, and syne east again whaur ye see a muckle windmill that pumps the water frae the sheughs. Then head straight on by the Merry Mouth till ye come to the lodge yetts. I cam here in an hour and a half, but a young lad like yoursel’ wad hae come in less. Will I gie Miss Kirsty ony message?”
