“You must begone at once,” she whispered, still in that voice of agony. He saw her begin to sway on her feet and her eyes turn glassy. He caught her as she swayed.
“Here! you women!” he cried.
V
He took particular pains to do as little damage as possible.
First he went through the out-houses, himself with a pike testing the haystacks, where he was sure that no man could be hidden.
As he passed, a little later, the inner door into the buttery passage, he could hear the beating of hands on the hall-door. He went on quickly to the kitchen, hating himself, yet determined to get all done quickly, and drove the kitchen-maid, who was crouching by the unlighted fire, out behind him, sending a man with her to bestow her in the hall. She wailed as she went by him, but it was unintelligible, and he was in no mood for listening.
“Take her in,” he said; “but let no one out, nor a message, till all is done.”
Then at last he went upstairs, still with his little bodyguard of four, of whom one was the man who had followed the fugitive down from the hills.
He began with the little rooms over the hall: a bedstead stood in one; in another was a table all piled with linen; a third had its floor covered with early autumn fruit, ready for preserving. He struck on a panel or two as he went, for form’s sake.
As he came out again he turned savagely on the informer.
“It is damned nonsense,” he said; “the fellow’s not here at all. I told you he’d have gone back to the hills.”
The man looked up at him with a furtive kind of sneer in his face; he, too, was angry enough; the loss of the priest meant the loss of the heavy reward.
“We have not searched a room rightly yet, sir,” he snarled. “There are a hundred places——”
“Not searched! You villain! Why, what would you have?”
“It’s not the manner I’ve done it before, sir. A pike-thrust here, and a blow there——”
“I tell you I will not have the house injured! Mistress Manners——”
“Very good, sir. Your honour is the magistrate.… I am not.”
The old man’s temper boiled over. They were passing at that instant a half-open door, and within he could see a bare little parlour, with linen presses against the walls. It would not hide a cat.
“Do you search, then!” he cried. “Here, then, and I will watch you! But you shall pay for any wanton damage, I tell you.”
The man shrugged his shoulders.
“What is the use, then——” he began.
“Bah! search, then, as you will. I will pay.”
They were opposite the old picture. Beneath it there showed a crack in the wainscoting.…
“If it please your honour we will break in this panel,” came the smooth, sneering voice that he loathed.
He could scarcely refuse leave. Besides, the woodwork was flawed in any case—he would pay for a new panel himself.
“There is nothing there!” he said doubtfully.
“Oh, no, sir,” said the man with a peculiar look. “It is but to make a show——”
The old man’s brows came down angrily. Then he nodded; and, leaning against the window, watched them.
One of his own men came forward with a hammer and chisel. He placed the chisel at the edge of the cracked panel, where the informer directed, and struck a blow or two. There was the unmistakable dull sound of wood against stone—not an echo of resonance. The old man smiled grimly to himself. The man must be a fool if he thought there could be any hole there! … Well; he would let them do what they would here; and then forbid any further damage.… He wondered if the priest really were in the house or no.
The two men had their heads together now, eyeing the crack they had made.… Then the informer said something in a low voice that the old man could not hear; and the other, handing him the chisel and hammer, went out of the room, beckoning to one of the two others that stood waiting at the door.
“Well?” sneered the old man. “Have you caught your bird?”
“Not yet, sir.”
He could hear the steps of the others in the next room; and then silence.
“What are they doing there?” he asked suddenly.
“Nothing, sir.… I just bade a man wait on that side.”
The man was once more inserting the chisel in the top of the wainscoting; then he presently began to drive it down with the hammer as if to detach it from the wall.
Suddenly he stopped; and at the same instant the old man heard some faint, muffled noise, as of footsteps moving either in the wall or beyond it.
“What is that?”
The man said nothing; he appeared to be listening.
“What is that?” demanded the other again, with a strange uneasiness at his heart. Was it possible, after all! Then the man dropped his chisel and hammer and darted out and vanished. A sudden noise of voices and tramplings broke out somewhere out of sight.
“God’s blood!” roared the old man in anger and dismay. “I believe they have the poor devil!”
He ran out, two steps down the passage and in again at the door of the next room. It was a bedroom, with two beds side by side: a great press with open doors stood between the hearth and the window; and, in the midst of the floor, five men struggled and swayed together. The fifth was a bearded young man, well dressed; but he could not see his face.
Then they had him tight; his hands were twisted behind his back; an arm was flung round his neck; and another man, crouching, had his legs embraced. He cried out once or twice.… The old man turned sick … a great rush of blood seemed to be hammering in his ears and dilating his eyes.… He ran forward, tearing at the arm that was choking the prisoner’s throat, and screaming he knew not what.
And it was then that he knew for certain that this was his son.
CHAPTER VI
I
ROBIN DREW a long breath as the door closed behind him. Then he went forward to the table, and sat on it, swinging his feet, and looking carefully and curiously round the room, so far as the darkness would allow him; his eyes had had scarcely time yet to become accustomed to the change from the brilliant sunshine outside to the gloom of the prison. It was his first experience of prison, and, for the present, he was more interested than subdued by it.
He had not said one word to his father. The shock was complete and unexpected. He had seen the old man stagger back and sink on the bed. Then he had been hurried from the room and downstairs. As the party came into the buttery entrance, there had been a great clamour; the man on guard at the hall doors had run forward; the doors had opened suddenly and Marjorie had come out, with a surge of faces behind her. But to her, too, he had said nothing; he had tried to smile; he was still faint and sick from the fight upstairs. But he had been pushed out into the air, where he saw the horses waiting, and round the corner of the house into an out-building, and there he had had time to recover.
He was led out again presently, and set on a horse. And while a man attached one foot to the other by a cord beneath the horse’s belly, he looked like a child at the arched doorway of the house; at a patch of lichen that was beginning to spread above the lintel; at the open window of the room above.
He vaguely desired to speak with Marjorie again; he even asked the man who was tying his feet whether he might do so; but he got no answer. A group of men watched him from the door, and he noticed that they were silent. He wondered if it were the tying of his feet in which they were so much absorbed.
Little by little, as they rode, this oppression began to lift. Half a dozen times he determined to speak with the man who rode beside him and held his horse by a leading rein; and each time he did not speak. Neither did any man speak to him. Another man rode behind; and a dozen or so went on foot. He could hear them talking together in low voices.
He was finally roused by his companion’s speaking. He had noticed the man look at him now and again strangely and not unkindly.
“Is it true that you are a s
on of Mr. Audrey, sir?”
He was on the point of saying “Yes,” when his mind seemed to come back to him as clear as an awakening from sleep. He understood that he must not identify himself if he could help it. He had been told at Rheims that silence was best in such matters.
“Mr. Audrey?” he said. “The magistrate?”
The man nodded. He did not seem an unkindly personage at all. Then he smiled.
“Well, well,” he said. “Less said——”
He broke off and began to whistle. Then he interrupted himself once more.
“He was still in his fit,” he said, “when we came away. Mistress Manners was with him.”
Intelligence was flowing back in Robin’s brain like a tide. It seemed to him that he perceived things with an extraordinary clearness and rapidity. He understood he must show no dismay or horror of any kind; he must carry himself easily and detachedly.
“In a fit, was he?”
The other nodded.
“I am arrested on his warrant, then? And on what charge?”
The man laughed outright.
“That’s too good,” he said. “Why, we have a bundle of popery on the horse behind! It was all in the hiding-hole!”
“I am supposed to be a priest, then?” said Robin, with admirable disdain.
Again the man laughed.
“They will have some trouble in proving that,” said Robin viciously.
They ate as they rode, and reached Derby in the afternoon.
At the very outskirts the peculiar nature of this cavalcade was observed; and by the time that they came within sight of the market-square a considerable mob was hustling along on all sides. There were a few cries raised. Robin could not distinguish the words, but it seemed to him as if some were raised for him as well as against him. He kept his head somewhat down; he thought it better to risk no complications that might arise should he be recognised.
As they drew nearer the market-place the progress became yet slower, for the crowd seemed suddenly and abnormally swelled. There was a great shouting of voices, too, in front, and the smell of burning came distinctly on the breeze. The man riding beside Robin turned his head and called out; and in answer one of the others riding behind pushed his horse up level with the other two, so that the prisoner had a guard on either side. A few steps further, and another order was issued, followed by the pressing up of the men that went on foot so as to form a complete square about the three riders.
Robin put a question, but the men gave him no answer. He could see that they were preoccupied and anxious. Then, as step by step they made their way forward and gained the corner of the market-place, he saw the reason of these precautions; for the whole square was one pack of heads, except where, somewhere in the midst, a great bonfire blazed in the sunlight. The noise, too, was deafening; drums were beating, horns blowing, men shouting aloud. From window after window leaned heads, and, as the party advanced yet further, they came suddenly in view of a scaffold hung with gay carpets and ribbons, on which a civil dignitary, in some official dress, was gesticulating.
It was useless to ask a question; not a word could have been heard unless it were shouted aloud; and presently the din redoubled, for out of sight, round some corner, guns were suddenly shot off one after another; and the cheering grew shrill and piercing in contrast.
As they came out at last, without attracting any great attention, into the more open space at the entrance of Friar’s Gate, Robin turned again and asked what the matter was. It was plainly not himself, as he had at first almost believed.
The man turned an exultant face to him.
“It’s the Spanish fleet!” he said. “There’s not a ship of it left, they say.”
When they halted at the gate of the prison there was another pause, while the cord that tied his feet was cut, and he was helped from his horse, as he was stiff and constrained from the long ride under such circumstances. He heard a roar of interest and abuse, and, perhaps, a little sympathy, from the part of the crowd that had followed, as the gate closed behind him.
II
As his eyes became better accustomed to the dark, he began to see what kind of a place it was in which he found himself. It was a square little room on the ground-floor, with a single, heavily-barred window, against which the dirt had collected in such quantities as to exclude almost all light. The floor was beaten earth, damp and uneven; the walls were built of stones and timber, and were dripping with moisture; there was a table and a stool in the centre of the room, and a dark heap in the corner. He examined this presently, and found it to be rotting hay covered with some kind of rug. The whole place smelled hideously foul.
From far away outside came still the noise of cheering, heard as through wool, and the sharp reports of the cannon they were still firing. The Armada seemed very remote from him, here in ward. Its destruction affected him now hardly at all, except for the worse, since an anti-Catholic reaction might very well follow.… He set himself, with scarcely an effort, to contemplate more personal matters.
He was astonished that his purse had not been taken from him. He had been searched rapidly just now, in an outer passage, by a couple of men, one of whom he understood to be his gaoler; and a knife and a chain and his rosary had been taken from him. But the purse had been put back again.… He remembered presently that the possession of money made a considerable difference to a prisoner’s comfort; but he determined to do as little as he was obliged in this way. He might need the money more urgently later.
By the time that he had gone carefully round his prison-walls, even reaching up to the window and testing the bars, pushing as noiselessly as he could against the door, pacing the distances in every direction—he had, at the same time, once more arranged and rehearsed every piece of evidence that he possessed, and formed a number of resolutions.
It was perfectly clear by now that his father had been wholly ignorant of the identity of the man he was after. The horror in the gasping face that he had seen so close to his own, above the strangling arm, set that beyond a doubt; the news of the fit into which his father had fallen confirmed it.
Next, he had been right in believing himself watched in the shepherd’s hut, and followed down from it. This hiding of his in the hills, the discovery of him in the hiding-hole, together with the vestments—these two things were the heaviest pieces of testimony against him. More remote testimony might be brought forward from his earlier adventures—his presence at Fotheringay, his recognition by my lord’s man. But these were, in themselves, indifferent.
His resolutions were few and simple.
He would make no demand to see anyone; since he knew that whatever was possible would be done for him by Marjorie. He would deny nothing and assert very little if he were brought before the magistrates. Finally, he would observe the hours of prayer so far as he could. He had no books with him of any kind. But he could pray God for fortitude.
CHAPTER VII
I
THERE WAS a vast crowd in the market-place at Michaelmas to see the judges come—partly because there was always excitement at the visible majesty of the law; partly because the tale of one at least of the prisoners had roused interest. It was a dramatic tale: he was first a seminary priest and a Derbyshire man (many remembered him riding as a little lad beside his father); he was, next, a runaway to Rheims for religion’s sake, when his father conformed; third, he had been taken in the house of Mistress Manners, to whom, report said, he had once been betrothed; last, he had been taken by his father himself. All this furnished matter for a quantity of conversation in the taverns; and it was freely discussed by the sentimental whether or no, if the priest yielded and conformed, he would yet find Mistress Manners willing to wed him.
There was a deal of loyal cheering as the procession went by; for these splendid personages on horseback stood to the mob for the power that had repelled the enemies of England; and her Grace’s name was received with enthusiasm. Behind the judges and their escort came a cavalcade of ri
ders—gentlemen, grooms, servants, and agents of all sorts. But not a Derby man noticed or recognised a thin gentleman who rode modestly in the midst, with a couple of personal servants on either side of him. It was not until the visitors had separated to the various houses and inns where they were to be lodged, and the mob was dispersing home again, that it began to be rumoured everywhere that Mr. Topcliffe was come again to Derby on a special mission.
The tidings came to Marjorie as she leaned back in her chair in Mr. Biddell’s parlour and listened to the last shoutings.
She had been in town now three days.
Ever since the capture she had been under guard in her own house till three days ago. Four men had been billeted upon her, not, indeed, by the orders of Mr. Audrey, since Mr. Audrey was in no condition to control affairs any longer, but by the direction of Mr. Columbell, who had himself ridden out to take charge at Booth’s Edge, when the news of the arrest had come, with the prisoner himself, to the city. It was he, too, who had seen to the removal of Mr. Audrey a week later, when he had recovered from the weakness caused by the fit sufficiently to travel as far as Derby; for it was thought better that the magistrate who had effected the capture should be accessible to the examining magistrates. It was, of course, lamentable, said Mr. Columbell, that father and son should have been brought into such relations, and he would do all that he could to relieve Mr. Audrey from any painful task in which they could do without him. But her Grace’s business must be done, and he had had special messages from my lord Shrewsbury himself that the prisoner must be dealt with sternly. It was believed, wrote my lord, that Mr. Alban, as he called himself, had a good deal more against him than the mere fact of being a seminary priest: it was thought that he had been involved in the Babington plot, and had at least once had access to the Queen of the Scots since the fortunate failure of the conspiracy.
All this, then, Marjorie knew from Mr. Biddell, who seemed always to know everything; but it was not until the evening on which the judges arrived that she learned the last and extreme measures that would be taken to establish these suspicions. She had ridden openly to Derby so soon as the news came from there that for the present she might be set at liberty.
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