Anthony Wilding

by Rafael Sabatini

  “Close the door,” she bade him, and Trenchard, who had stood aside that they might pass in, forestalled him in obeying her. “Now lead me to your room,” said she, and Wilding in amaze turned to Trenchard as if asking his consent, for the lodging, after all, was Trenchard’s.

  “I’ll wait here,” said Nick, and waved his hand towards an oak bench that stood in the passage. “You had best make haste,” he urged his friend; “you are late already. That is, unless you are of a mind to set the lady’s affairs before King Monmouth’s. And were I in your place, Anthony, faith I’d not scruple to do it. For after all,” he added under his breath, “there’s little choice in rotten apples.”

  Ruth waited for some answer from Wilding that might suggest he was indifferent whether he went to Newlington’s or not; but he spoke no word as he turned to lead the way above-stairs to the indifferent parlour which with the adjoining bedroom constituted Mr Trenchard’s lodging – and his own, for the time being.

  Having assured herself that the curtains were closely drawn, she put by her cloak and hood, and stood revealed to him in the light of the three candles burning in a branch upon the bare oak table, dazzlingly beautiful in her gown of ivory-white.

  He stood apart, cogitating her with glowing eyes, the faintest smile between question and pleasure hovering about his thin mouth. He had closed the door, and stood in silence waiting for her to make known her pleasure.

  “Mr Wilding…” she began, and straightway he interrupted her.

  “But a moment since you did remind me that I have the honour to be your husband,” he said with grave humour. “Why seek now to overcloud that fact? I mind me that the last time we met you called me by another name. But it may be,” he added as an afterthought, “you are of opinion that I have broken faith with you.”

  “Broken faith? As how?”

  “So!” he said, and sighed. “My words were of so little account that they have been, I see, forgotten. Yet, so that I remember them, that is what chiefly matters. I promised then – or seemed to promise – that I would make a widow of you, who had made a wife of you against your will. It has not happened yet. Do not despair. This Monmouth quarrel is not yet fought out. Hope on, my Ruth.”

  She looked at him with eyes wide open – lustrous eyes of sapphire in a face of ivory. A faint smile parted her lips, the reflection of the thought in her mind that had she indeed been eager for his death she would not be with him at this moment; had she desired it, how easy would her course have been.

  “You do me wrong to bid me hope for that,” she answered him, her tones level. “I do not wish the death of any man, unless…” She paused; her truthfulness urged her too far.

  “Unless?” said he, brows raised, polite interest on his face.

  “Unless it be His Grace of Monmouth.”

  He considered her with suddenly narrowed eyes. “You have not by chance sought me to talk politics?” said he. “Or…” and he suddenly caught his breath, his nostrils dilating with rage at the bare thought that leapt into his mind. Had Monmouth, the notorious libertine, been to Lupton House and persecuted her with his addresses? “Is it that you are acquainted with His Grace?” he asked.

  “I have never spoken to him!” she answered, with no suspicion of what was in his thoughts. In his relief he laughed, remembering now that Monmouth’s affairs were too absorbing just at present to leave him room for dalliance.

  “But you are standing,” said he, and he advanced a chair. “I deplore that I have no better hospitality to offer you. I doubt if I ever shall again. I am told that Albemarle did me the honour to stable his knackers in my hall at Zoyland.”

  She took the chair he offered her, sinking to it like one physically weary, a thing he was quick to notice. He watched her, his body eager, his soul trammelling it with a steely restraint. “Tell me, now,” said he, “in what you need me.”

  She was silent a moment, pondering, hesitation and confusion seeming to envelop her. A pink flush rose to colour the beautiful pillar of neck and overspread the delicate half-averted face. He watched it, wondering.

  “How long,” she asked him, her whole intent at present being to delay him and gain time. “How long have you been in Bridgwater?”

  “Two hours at most,” said he.

  “Two hours! And yet you never came to…to me. I heard of your presence, and I feared you might intend to abstain from seeking me.”

  He almost held his breath while she spoke, caught in amazement. He was standing close beside her chair, his right hand rested upon its tall back.

  “Did you so intend?” she asked him.

  “I told you even now,” he answered with hard-won calm, “that I had made you a sort of promise.”

  “I… I would not have you keep it,” she murmured. She heard his sharply indrawn breath, felt him leaning over her, and was filled with an unaccountable fear.

  “Was it to tell me this you came?” he asked her, his voice reduced to a whisper.

  “No…yes,” she answered, an agony in her mind, which groped for some means to keep him by her side until his danger should be overpast. That much she owed him in honour if in nothing else.

  “No – yes?” he echoed, and he had drawn himself erect again. “What is’t you mean, Ruth?”

  “I mean that it was that, yet not quite only that.”

  “Ah!” Disappointment vibrated faintly in his exclamation. “What else?”

  “I would have you abandon Monmouth’s following,” she told him. He stared a moment, moved away and round where he could confront her. The flush had now faded from her face. This he observed and the heave of her bosom in its low bodice. He knit his brows, perplexed. Here was surely more than at first might seem.

  “Why so?” he asked.

  “For your own safety’s sake,” she answered him.

  “You are oddly concerned for that, Ruth.”

  “Concerned – not oddly.” She paused an instant, swallowed hard, and then continued. “I am concerned too for your honour, and there is no honour in following his banner. He has crowned himself King, and so proved himself a self-seeker who came dissembled as the champion of a cause that he might delude poor ignorant folk into flocking to his standard and helping him to his ambitious ends.”

  “You are wondrously well schooled,” said he. “Whose teachings do you recite me? Sir Rowland Blake’s?” At another time the sneer might have cut her. At the moment she was too intent upon gaining time. The means to it mattered little. The more she talked to no purpose, the more at random was their discourse, the better would her ends be served.

  “Sir Rowland Blake?” she cried. “What is he to me?”

  “Ah, what? Let me set you the question rather.”

  “Less than nothing,” she assured him, and for some moments afterwards it was this Sir Rowland who served them as a topic for their odd interview. On the overmantel the pulse of time beat on from a little wooden clock. His eyes strayed to it; it marked the three-quarters. He bethought him suddenly of his engagement. Trenchard, below-stairs, supremely indifferent whether Wilding went to Newlington’s or not, smoked on, entirely unconcerned by the flight of time.

  “Mistress,” said Wilding suddenly, “you have not yet told me in what you seek my service. Indeed, we seem to have talked to little purpose. My time is very short.”

  “Where are you going?” she asked him, and fearfully she shot a sidelong glance at the timepiece. It was still too soon, by at least five minutes.

  He smiled, but his smile was singular. He began to suspect at last that her only purpose – to what end he could not guess – was to detain him.

  “’Tis a singularly sudden interest in my doings, this,” said he quietly. “What is’t you seek of me?” He reached for the hat he had cast upon the table when they had entered. “Tell me briefly. I may stay no longer.”

  She rose, her agitation suddenly increasing, afraid that after all he would escape her. “Where are you going?” she asked. “Answer me that, and I will tel
l you why I came.”

  “I am to sup at Mr Newlington’s in His Majesty’s company.”

  “His Majesty’s?”

  “King Monmouth’s,” he explained impatiently. “Come, Ruth. Already I am late.”

  “If I were to ask you not to go,” she said slowly, and she held out her hands to him, her glance most piteous – and that was not acting – as she raised it to meet his own, “would you not stay to pleasure me?”

  He considered her from under frowning eyes. “Ruth,” he said, and he took her hands. “There is here something that I do not understand. What is’t you mean?”

  “Promise me that you will not go to Newlington’s, and I will tell you.”

  “But what has Newlington to do with…? Nay, I am pledged already to go.”

  She drew closer to him, her hands upon his shoulders. “Yet if I ask you – I, your wife?” she pleaded, and almost won him to her will. But suddenly he remembered another occasion on which, for purposes of her own, she had so pled. He laughed softly, mockingly.

  “Do you woo me, Ruth, who, when I wooed you, would have none of me?”

  She drew back from him, crimsoning. “I think I had better go,” said she. “You have nothing but mockery for me. It was ever so. Who knows?” she sighed as she took up her mantle. “Had you but observed more gentle ways, you…you…” She paused, needing to say no more. “Good night!” she ended, and made shift to leave. He watched her, deeply mystified. She had gained the door when suddenly he moved.

  “Wait!” he cried. She paused, and turned to look over her shoulder, her hand apparently upon the latch. “You shall not go until you have told me why you besought me to keep away from Newlington’s. What is it?” he asked, and paused suddenly, a flood of light breaking in upon his mind. “Is there some treachery afoot?” he asked her, and his eye went wildly to the clock. A harsh, grating sound rang through the room. “What are you doing?” he cried. “Why have you locked the door?” She was tugging and fumbling desperately to extract the key, her hands all clumsy in her nervous haste. He leapt at her, but in that moment the key came away in her hand. She wheeled round to face him, erect, defiant almost.

  “Here is some devilry!” he cried. “Give me that key.” He had no need for further questions. Here was a proof more eloquent than words to his ready wit. Sir Rowland or Richard, or both, were in some plot for the Duke’s ruin – perhaps assassination. Had not her very words shown that she herself was out of all sympathy with Monmouth? He was out of sympathy himself. But not to the extent of standing by to see his throat cut. She would have the plot succeed – whatever it might be – and yet that he himself be spared. There his thoughts paused; but only for a moment. He saw suddenly in this, not a proof of concern born of love but of duty towards him who had imperilled himself once – and for all time, indeed – that he might save her brother and Sir Rowland.

  He told her what had been so suddenly revealed to him, taxing her with it. She acknowledged it, her wits battling to find some way by which she might yet gain a few moments more. She would cling to the key, and, though he should offer her violence, she would not let it go without a struggle, and that struggle must consume the little time yet wanting to make it too late for him to save the Duke, and – what imported more – thus save herself from betraying her brother’s trust. Another fear leapt at her suddenly. If through deed of hers Monmouth was spared that night, Blake, in his despair and rage, might slake his vengeance upon Richard.

  “Give me that key,” he demanded, his voice cold and quiet, his face set.

  “No, no,” she cried, setting her hand behind her. “You shall not go, Anthony. You shall not go.”

  “I must,” he insisted, still cold, but oh! so determined. “My honour’s in it now that I know.”

  “You’ll go to your death,” she reminded him.

  He sneered. “What signifies a day or so? Give me the key.”

  “I love you, Anthony!” she cried, livid to the lips.

  “Lies!” he answered her contemptuously. “The key!”

  “No,” she answered, and her firmness matched his own. “I will not have you slain.”

  “’Tis not my purpose – not just yet. But I must save the others. God forgive me if I offer violence to a woman,” he added, “and lay rude hands upon her. Do not compel me to it.” He advanced upon her, but she, lithe and quick, evaded him, and sprang for the middle of the room. He wheeled about, his self-control all slipping from him now. Suddenly she darted to the window, and with the hand that clenched the key she smote a pane with all her might. There was a smash of shivering glass, followed an instant later by a faint tinkle on the stones below, and the hand that she still held out covered itself all with blood.

  “O God!” he cried, the key and all else forgotten. “You are hurt.”

  “But you are saved,” she cried, overwrought, and staggered, laughing and sobbing, to a chair, sinking her bleeding hand to her lap, and smearing recklessly her spotless, shimmering gown.

  He caught up a chair by its legs, and at a single blow smashed down the door – a frail barrier after all. “Nick!” he roared. “Nick!” He tossed the chair from him and vanished into the adjoining room to reappear a moment later carrying basin and ewer, and a shirt of Trenchard’s – the first piece of linen he could find.

  She was half fainting, and she let him have his swift, masterful way. He bathed her hand, and was relieved to find that the injury was none so great as the flow of blood had made him fear. He tore Trenchard’s fine cambric shirt to shreds – a matter on which Trenchard afterwards commented in quotations from at least three famous Elizabethan dramatists. He bound up her hand, just as Nick made his appearance at the splintered door, his mouth open, his pipe, gone out, between his fingers. He was followed by a startled serving-wench, the only other person in the house, for everyone was out of doors that night.

  Into the woman’s care Wilding delivered his wife, and without a word to her he left the room, dragging Trenchard with him. It was striking nine as they went down the stairs, and the sound brought as much satisfaction to Ruth above as dismay to Wilding below.

  Chapter 19

  THE BANQUET

  It was striking nine. Therefore, Ruth thought that she had achieved her object, Wilding imagined that all was lost. It needed the more tranquil mind of Nicholas Trenchard to show him the fly in madam’s ointment, after Wilding, in half a dozen words, had made him acquainted with the situation.

  “What are you going to do?” asked Trenchard.

  “Run to Newlington’s and warn the Duke – if still in time.”

  “And thereby precipitate the catastrophe? Oh, give it thought. It is all it needs. You are taking it for granted that nine o’clock is the hour appointed for King Monmouth’s butchery.”

  “What else?” asked Wilding, impatient to be off. They were standing in the street under the sign of The Ship, by which Jonathan Edney – Mr Trenchard’s landlord – distinguished his premises and the chandler’s trade he drove there. Trenchard set a detaining hand on Mr Wilding’s arm.

  “Nine o’clock is the hour appointed for supper. It is odds the Duke will be a little late, and it is more than odds that when he does arrive the assassins will wait until the company is safely at table and lulled by good eating and drinking. You had overlooked that, I see. It asks an old head for wisdom, after all. Look you, Anthony. Speed to Colonel Wade as fast as your legs can carry you, and get a score of men. Then find some fellow to lead you to Newlington’s orchard, and if only you do not arrive too late you may take Sir Rowland and his cut-throats in the rear and destroy them to a man before they realise themselves attacked. I’ll reconnoitre while you go, and keep an eye on the front of the house. Away with you!”

  Ordinarily Wilding was a man of a certain dignity, but you had not thought it had you seen him running in silk stockings and silver-buckled shoes at a headlong pace through the narrow streets of Bridgwater, in the direction of the Castle. He overset more than one, and oaths foll
owed him from these and from others whom he rudely jostled out of his path. Wade was gone with Monmouth, but he came upon Captain Slape, who had a company of scythes and musketeers incorporated in the Duke’s own regiment, and to him Wilding gasped out the news and his request for a score of men with what breath was left him.

  Time was lost – and never was time more precious – in convincing Slape that this was no old wife’s tale. At last, however, he won his way and twenty musketeers; but the quarter past the hour had chimed ere they left the Castle. He led them forth at a sharp run, with never a thought for the circumstance that they would need their breath anon, perhaps for fighting, and he bade the man who guided them take them by back streets that they might attract as little attention as possible.

  Within a stone’s throw of the house he halted them, and sent one forward to reconnoitre, following himself with the others as quietly and noiselessly as possible. Mr Newlington’s house was all alight, but from the absence of uproar – sounds there were in plenty from the main street, where a dense throng had collected to see His Majesty go in – Mr Wilding inferred with supreme relief that they were still in time. But the danger was not yet past. Already, perhaps, the assassins were penetrating – or had penetrated – to the house; and at any moment such sounds might greet them as would announce the execution of their murderous design.

  Meanwhile Mr Trenchard, having relighted his pipe, and set his hat rakishly atop his golden wig, strolled up the High Street, swinging his long cane very much like a gentleman taking the air in quest of an appetite for supper. He strolled past the Cross and on until he came to the handsome mansion – one of the few handsome houses in Bridgwater – where opulent Mr Newlington had his residence. A small crowd had congregated about the doors, for word had gone forth that His Majesty was to sup there. Trenchard moved slowly through the people, seemingly uninterested, but, in fact, scanning closely every face he encountered. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he espied in the indifferent light Mr Richard Westmacott.