by Talbot Mundy
I let Will Shakespeare talk first, and he made a drama of it, so far better than any argument that I could have invented that I was glad to sit still.
“Tunby!” he said. “Roger Tunby! Age hath no such privilege as maketh ill-faith honourable. Neither doth a friendship die with buried bones. Those ears that death hath sealed heard promises now written on a page the soul may read, and spiritual, changeless records hold you to accounting in the highest court that writes no writ of error! None may challenge that engrossment of a contract ‘tween the living and the dead. Nay, Tunby! Destiny commands fulfilment or the penalty, nor no alternative!”
“What do you mean?” Tunby stammered.
“Did Sir Harry Halifax not formally — yet too informally — entrust into your hands his money to be profitably used, the profit added to the principal, and both anon to be returned to him fully and fairly reckoned?”
“Nay!” said Tunby. “Nay, nay!”
“Did that in all things else unfrugal and too careless gentleman not charge you with the payment of the money to his son if death’s untimely scythe should sweep himself into the realm whence none returns?”
“Nay, nay!” said Tunby. “Never. There was no account between us.”
“None? Then no dilemma faces young Will Halifax? No compact, honourably kept — accounted — timely paid, obliges him to stand between you and the axe of justice? Does he owe you no consideration? Gratitude imposes no concession? — validates no claim on generosity? — appeals not to his manhood, that may otherwise command him in the service of the law, inexorable, ruthless, to uncover treason and see grey hairs, Roger Tunby, go in sorrow to a traitor’s grave?”
“Nay, nay!” said Tunby. “What do you mean, sirrah? Talking to me of treason in my own house! I am a loyal subject.”
“So said Stiles, a miscreant now lodging in the Marshalsea.”
“In the Marshalsea? Stiles in the Marshalsea?”
“Aye, taken thither by Will Halifax on royal warrant and accused of treason — blubbering in the Marshalsea — accusing others — naming his accomplices — in terror of the rack and Little Ease awaiting him, and of a cheerless dawn on Tower Hill where traitors to the realm pay forfeit! Better a debt repaid to kindly memory, than the closing of life’s long credit in a bankruptcy of shame!”
Roger Tunby gazed in terror at us, gaping, with the spittle drooling from his lip. It was dark where he sat in the corner shadow, but I could see his eyes wide with horror wavering unsteady as he tried to summon dignity, clutching the table to keep his hands from shaking.
“You — and a royal warrant?” he said, staring at me. “So soon?”
“Soon on the westward road, to Brownsover again, whence Tony Pepperday must come to answer for his practices,” said Will. “The warrant reads that he and others are conspiring to set Mary Queen of Scotland on the throne.”
“And you — you say nothing,” said Tunby, leaning forth out of his corner to stare wide-eyed at me. He was nigh choking.
“The less said the better,” I answered. “But I will say this: that I give you opportunity to play the honest man, which if you do I will not hold earlier lapse of memory against you. How much did you owe my father?”
Suddenly he yielded, like a bladder pricked; so suddenly that I doubted his performance, though his words were suitable.
“Willy,” he said, “Will Halifax, your father Sir Harry entrusted a thousand pounds to me to put out at a venture, princicipal and profit to be kept against your future need and nothing to be said of it to you lest the thought of the money should whet your recklessness ere years have taught you money’s value. I was to pay it to you at my own discretion.”
“How much is it now?” I interrupted.
“Fifteen hundred, and a few odd pounds.”
“Then pay me,” I demanded, laying my hand on the table, palm up. I had no doubt he was cheating me, but fifteen hundred pounds in minted money with which to start life was a stroke of fortune better than any I had dared to dream of, and I blessed my father while I waited, watching Tunby’s face, which was a picture of cunning, relief, anxiety and disaffection towards me.
“I have no such sum of money in the house,” he said.
“Then neither have I hope to offer you,” I answered. “From the Marshalsea to Tower Hill—”
He interrupted: “Treasury bills, Will Halifax, for fifteen hundred pounds, and gold and silver for the balance, is the best that I can manage. But a treasury bill is mandatory, payable on due date and therefore readily convertible into money in the City at a discount.”
I would have preferred the minted money, but I took the parchment and the few gold coins and wrote him a receipt in full, which Will Shakespeare witnessed. Tunby locked the receipt in his iron chest, then turned to me and said slyly:
“Know you what it means to compound felonies? You are involved now in the same conspiracy, to stand in the same dock, plead to the same offence and suffer for it with the rest of us if we stand convicted!”
Ludd knows I was not a lawyer, but I saw a hole in that indictment! So I set my fist under his nose and spoke him sharply, for his own good:
“Get you out of England ere I overlook your one night’s hospitality! You sought to steal my father’s money, doubtless for your son, along with Mistress Mildred Jackson, whom you also coveted for him at my cost! Get you out of England! Get you to that ship whereon you boasted you would send me out of mischief’s way! Get you swiftly out o’ reach of the Queen’s messengers and warrants! Get you gone before nightfall — before Joshua Stiles can tell his story on the rack and you and others follow him to groan forth all you know! The rack hurts old men worse than young ones, Roger Tunby!”
And with that I left him, caring not much whether he should run away abroad or stay to suffer questioning (for they put them all to torture on a charge of treason, and no favours shown to old age).
Presently, Will Shakespeare and Benjamin Berden witnessed a receipt that Burbage gave me for the treasury bills. I staked a hundred pounds on Willy Shakespeare’s honesty — aye, and on Burbage’s also, for we drew no written contract, lacking time: Will was to have the horse-monopoly and Burbage was to hold the hundred pounds as warranty. The rest he was to keep for me until I needed it, but fifty pounds I drew to carry in purse and saddlebags, in great part for my own conceit, but partly, too, for the sake of the effect on Berden.
Burbage agreed to keep my best suit at the mews and to have it cleaned and mended against my return, he having in employment tailors who were used to furbishing the actors’ finery. Then we wasted no more time but took the road in order to defeat the Earl of Leicester, who, said Berden, was a swift one in his own devices though a laggard enough in affairs of state.
And Ludd! how the Londoners laughed to see my following! Futtok and Gaylord rode like honest seamen, and the ‘prentice hardly better, only lacking their determination because there was no skin where he chiefly needed it and he swore that the saddle was red-hot. So I bought him goose-grease. But he whimpered all the first day’s journey. And the seamen used such oaths as if their patient mounts were Spaniards whom they sought to restrain from laying waste all Merry England. So that Berden and I had much amusement, albeit Berden was not flattered to be the butt of strangers’ ridicule.
But I know of no better way to teach the rudiments of horsemanship than to mount your man on a baggage animal and trot him until he learns in self-defence, though that is not so good for horses and I was thankful that the beasts were Burbage’s, not mine. That night, when we lodged at a wayside inn, I understood a little of why England’s name is such a terror on the seas; for though those sailors, aye, and the ‘prentice, too, were wearier than the horses and as sore as questioned felons, there was no complaint beyond such cannonading blasphemy as sailors use, nor not a word of flinching in the cold dawn when they had to mount and face another long day’s jolting with their rumps afire. Discomfort only angered them; it strengthened rather than reduced their spirit. They
were good men and it pleased me that I now had the means to pay them wages, never doubting that I would find an opportunity to profit by their steadfastness.
But by the time we came to Brownsover, near midnight of the second day, and set the dogs abarking in the yard of Walter Turner’s house to rouse him out of bed, we were a rag-tag-looking crew and Kate, Walter’s sister, had to stir the wenches to bring simples from her closet and perform all manner of such intimate accomplishments as women understand. And by the rood, the horses needed caring for no less, so that Walter’s whole establishment was taxed of its resources and it was an hour before Walter and I had private word together.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
How Jeremy Crutch escaped the gallows-tree.
SO soon from London?” Walter asked me, when Berden and I had finished eating mightily of cold fowl and fried eggs and bacon and cheese, with copious draughts of good Warwickshire ale to wash good victuals on their way. My men were still guzzling in the kitchen shamelessly, as if I never fed them, and Walter and I were at last alone together.
“And a following already?” he said. “And money to jingle? Never lived a Halifax who hadn’t a sword-hand and a head to guide it, but this is swift work, Will!”
But I demanded news of Mildred ere I would tell him anything, and what he answered set me in such an agitation that I forgot my manners and kept him for a while on equal tenterhooks.
“You didn’t know? You haven’t heard?” he stammered. “Didn’t you meet them on your way down? Pepperday has gone to London, and she with him. They left yesterday. And they were hardly gone afore John Gable, one of the Earl of Leicester’s captains, and a following of five, came hunting for Tony Pepperday. He was all a-mud and in a hurry. Not finding Tony and Mildred he was in a fine fury, I can tell you. He came here questioning, but I knew nothing. So he went back and searched the house. He took all the papers — aye, and the bills and receipts, in a sack, and Madge Ambleby the maid-of-all-work, and rode to Kenilworth, cursing the day I was born because I knew nothing and would tell him less. He would have taken me, too, had he dared; but an Englishman’s house is his castle, and he knows my aunt is Mistress of the royal pantry.”
“Said Tony why he went to London?” I demanded.
“Not he. Tony was never a talker, unless to accuse someone. They rode attended by two of Tony’s farm louts, Mildred astride on the black mare between them, and Tony alone in front with the blunderbuss across his knees, peering to left and right as if he expected highwaymen at every corner. Mildred wore a mask, a man’s clothes under a long cloak, and by the rood she looked more manful than the other three together. I was looking for a stray pig down by the spinney; and having seen her so often in boy’s clothes I thought nothing of it until I saw the pack-horse following. She called to me but the wind was blustery. Not having my horse I could not come near enough to hear more than that they were on their way to London; but she said something about you, so I supposed you knew of it.”
Slow-witted friends are better than sagacious enemies, but I could have struck good Walter Turner as he sat there yawning. We had come so fast and halted by the way so seldom that we might easily have ridden past some inn where Mildred and Tony rested without me knowing or they either. I believe what saved me from venting my spleen ill-mannerly on Walter Turner was the thought how dull of wit myself had been.
There were horses enough in Walter’s stable. I could borrow his plough-team for my men. But the men were as good as halfdead and I doubted they could ride another furlong without a night’s sleep. I went into the kitchen to look them over, and by my face they knew there was ill-luck uppermost. They were still stuffing themselves with ham and what not else, but they stood when I entered and I learned that minute something I have never since forgotten — nay, but have seen proven fifty times.
“Stand by for a squall!” said Futtok, gobbling food out of his mouth.
“Aye, aye!” Gaylord answered, and he used his thumb to jerk out of his mouth what he could not swallow fast enough.
They two were reckless of themselves in an emergency, but the ‘prentice, being a landsman who had never seen the sea, thought first of his own unwillingness to suffer the road again until his skin ceased burning; he drew a long face and began feeling his hams to remind me. And so ever: they who have faced the sea have learned that Nature waits not on a man’s convenience, and though a seaman is a child in many ways, and a poor gull oft-times when the landsmen cousen him, he is a very culverin to go off sudden when the match is laid.
“We must turn back toward London. We go now,” I said. “Master Walter Turner will lend us fresh horses.”
“Aye, aye, master,” said Futtok, and he and Gaylord began pulling on their coats. They shamed the ‘prentice by taking pity on him, so that he put a brave face on it and cursed them for a pair of Gravesend Billyboys, all tide-wise and no oaring.
Berden was already three-parts drunk. He had been mixing ale with some of the geneva that Walter Turner had from a friend in the fetching trade from Holland. He was snoring on the settle. When I shook him awake he swore he would ride no further that night, not though the Earl of Leicester and a duke or two to boot came clamouring. And since he fell asleep again I let him lie. But I bethought me of how we were on the Queen’s business, and it were a pity not to link that importunity to my own need. So I took the warrant from the pocket inside his shirt and asked Walter Turner to horse him and send him forward as soon after dawn as he should wake.
I told Walter as much as I could think to tell him, in the yard while we saddled the horses, he holding the lantern and Kate crying out from the attic window to me to come in and change my sweaty underwear before I took the road; and when I would not, she threw me a change of Walter’s, that I stuffed into the saddlebag. I had Walter’s new horse that he had bought while I was gone and had not yet ridden: a fiery, illtempered beast he proved to be, but road-wise and as nigh impossible to tire as a wild goose on the wing.
And so away again, good Walter calling to us to watch the puddles at the cross-roads rather than waste time questioning innkeepers who might have been paid to keep their knowledge to themselves; for it was as clear to Walter as it was to me that Tony Pepperday had got word somehow that the Earl of Leicester’s men were after him, and he was likelier than not to take a side-road. Why should he go to London? Why not Plymouth — Portsmouth — anywhere rather than London? HE might have told Mildred — aye, and Madge Ambleby, too, that he was bound for London, being likely not to trust a woman’s tongue; but he might head northward after a while, toward Chester, where I knew he had a relative.
And why was Mildred so apparelled? She and I, when we were young, had ridden all our part of Warwickshire together, she clad like a boy and I glad of it, because that saved me from having to fight the lads who would have mocked me had they seen me riding with a girl; and though I never refused to break a pate on challenge, there was no sense in always fighting. As my father used to say: “Enough to keep the hand in and the fear out — enough to keep the churls respectful and his equals courteous — is all the fighting that a gentleman should do until a public enemy needs sending to the Lord God’s Judgement Seat.”
But why should Mildred take the road to London now in man’s apparel? Whose was she wearing? Not Tony’s. She could never have worn Tony’s; he was too small. Mildred is nigh as tall as I am, and as strong and healthy as Tony was pinched and poisoned looking. Had she known she would ride to London and so made preparation for it, buying man’s clothes? If so, how had she not told me? She could not have bought such apparel in haste in Brownsover, and it was several years since she had worn the boy’s suit, which now would be much too small for her.
I hate a mystery. It may be that is why the Lord God has inflicted such a number on me to unravel, trying, I suppose, to reach me patience, which has been a hard task even for Omnipotence to do, and not yet nearly finished. Ludd! but I lacked it that night, turning ever and anon to listen through the wind-shriek and the swish
ing rain for sounds of my three followers, who lacked as much of horsemanship as I did of consideration for the honest fellows plodding along on smarting bottoms in the murk behind me. And nothing I gained, except to fret my horse, having to wait for them at every cross-road.
But as money spurs an old man’s zeal, so love exaggerates a young one’s vanity; and I was very young, no less in years than in experience. I visioned, as I rode into the rain, myself sole rescuing my Mildred from a cut-throat crew, attacking her for no known reason on the London road. Tony, I remember, I left in that dream in a ditch, discomfited in several separate ways all due to my own virtue and his own incorrigible vileness.
I knew that dawn was due because I could hear the kine at a farmhouse nearby lowing to be milked — and presently I saw the milkmaid’s lantern, that made me shiver the more for the thought of the warmth within the byre. But it was so dark that I could scarcely see the hedgerows and the wait seemed endless; I was minded to ride back along the road, supposing my three might have met with accident, when I heard their plodding splash at last — and then voices beyond them, and the noise of at least a dozen horses overtaking us.
I spurred. Those weary men of mine were not in fettle for incivilities. It flashed across my mind that the Earl of Leicester’s men were on Tony’s trail, too. They would claim the privilege of Lord-Lieutenant’s men, warrant or no warrant, and it was likely to fare ill with anyone they chose to suspect, or to bully for the love of the display of their authority. There was no law against our being on the road at night, but not much reason for not doubting us if we should give an unready account of ourselves.
My men thought me a highwayman, so suddenly I came on them, not daring to raise my voice. I turned their horses, that were eager enough to follow mine through a gap in the hedge, since hedges mean barns nearby, and a bam means shelter, hay and oats. That I managed it without hurt from my seamen’s hangers was enough evidence of the condition they were in. And when they recognized me, they were as silent as I could wish, from very weariness. Dismounting, I muzzled my horse in my cloak to prevent his neighing, and I was just in time to make them muzzle theirs before the overtaking horsemen drew abreast and halted on the far side of the hedge. There was barely enough dawn light yet to show them like ghosts on horseback, me peering through the briars: thirteen men, and in another moment I knew certain that they were the Earl of Leicester’s.
