by Talbot Mundy
They had dragged Tony from his horse before I could ride up. They had Coningsby next. One of them struck down Futtok with a cudgel; another had a sword at Gaylord’s throat; another had Giles in chancery — the lad was helpless.
“‘S’death! John Coningsby!” cried someone. “What ho, there, Master Clintock!” — Clintock was their leader— “here’s John Coningsby that fled to France what time the Earl was after him! And by the rood, who’s this? Will Halifax, by Godfrey! And who’s with him?”
We were surrounded. But I had drawn my sword and I flourished the warrant under Clintock’s sharp nose.
“How now!” I retorted. “Are the bear’s whelps grown so insolent? Flout ye her Grace’s warrant?”
“Let me read that!” he demanded; and I let him, but when he sought to snatch it from my hand he slit his sleeve on my sword-point.
“‘Sblood!” he shouted. “Do you show teeth at the Earl of Leicester?”
They had not broken fast and they were weary, which is to say ill-tempered. I had heard how, twice since Michaelmas, the Earl had punished Clintock for remissness, tardiness and what not else; the man was eager to re-establish himself in the Earl’s good graces.
“Is John Coningsby’s name writ on that warrant?” he demanded. “How is it you ride with Coningsby? I smell treason!” He had a nose long enough to have smelt it in another county, and I said so. Furthermore, I promised him a clout on the ugly end of it an he thrust it any closer into my affairs; and I bade him unhand my prisoners. His men had already tied them with a rope around the elbows.
“I charge you with treason and with harbouring John Coningsby, whom all men know to be a traitor to the realm!” he shouted. “Ho, there, lads! Search Coningsby! I’ll lay a wager we’ll find on him all the proof a hangman needs!”
They stripped Coningsby nigh naked, but all they found was a little English money and a dagger hidden in his trunks. Disappointment angered Clintock more than ever. He spurred his horse again towards me.
“Who’s here?” he demanded. “Unmask!”
He would have stripped the mask off Mildred, but he was foul of my sword again; nor did he dare to draw on me since I held a Queen’s warrant and there were witnesses.
“My orders are to take Mildred Jackson to the Earl of Leicester’s house,” he shouted. “You’s a woman, or my name’s Queen Elizabeth! Who is she?”
“My prisoner,” I said; and again I shook the warrant at him. “This calls for Tony Pepperday and such members of his household as are discoverable, along with papers and all such evidence. I hear the Earl of Leicester has the papers. Let him answer for it, and we will see then who pleads to treason!”
He was in a quandary, and so enraged against me for having forestalled him that I feared he might have at me with twelve stout fellows at his back in spite of the Queen’s warrant. He might slay me and my men (though he would have to fight to do it) and then trust his followers to lie about it afterwards. But I think he was not too well liked by his own men, so that he hardly dared to trust them; and he had seen Jeremy leap the hedge and ride away, so that he feared an awkward witness might be in hiding to appear against him and he told too many lies. I added nothing to his equanimity; I bade him loose Gaylord and help Futtok to his feet, who was recovering from the cudgel-blow.
“You have molested the Queen’s messengers,” I told him. “You shall answer to her for it!”
“A fine tale!” he shouted. “Let me see the date on that warrant! Well — is Coningsby’s name writ there? Well and good, I take him! Ho lads! One of you take up Coningsby behind your saddle. We’ll put John Coningsby in the Marshalsea and see what tale he has to tell about you, Master Halifax — with your Queen’s warrant, and your green cross-country galloper and your woman prisoner in a man’s suit — no, and her sword not taken from her neither!”
Whereat John Coningsby laughed at me and Mildred, lifting his lip like a fox that throws the hounds off-scent. I knew there would be a fine tale told about me ere I could come to London Four against thirteen was a shade too long odds; there was no way I could rescue Coningsby. They lifted him behind a rider on their stoutest horse, and before Gaylord could help Futtok to his feet they were gone. I thought myself fortunate that they had not taken Mildred, too, and slain me, as they would have had to do to accomplish that.
Futtok’s head was not badly broken, and Mildred bound it for him with a wetted neckerchief that brought him a world of comfort (for it is the magic of a woman’s fingers and her kindness that heal hurts; the very pride of being tended by a lady in a velvet suit made Futtok feel like conquering Spain that morning). But I could make no speed with horses and men already weary and with less skin left on my men’s rumps than on as many poached eggs. Furthermore, it would not be right to leave Berden too far behind, for I was conscious that I owed him, in part at least, for such advancement as I already had.
So I set a slow pace with a heavy heart, now wondering what chance I had of hiding, Mildred from the Earl of Leicester, and now what Berden would have to say to my letting them take Coningsby. He might think me a coward. And what would Lord Burghley have to say to it? I wondered: should a man not die rather than let go a prisoner whom he had taken in the Queen’s name? Nor was I pleased that Mildred should have seen me worsted, having been a hero in her eyes so lately. Deeply I doubted that Sir Francis Drake, were he in my shoes, would have let the Earl of Leicester’s men — or any others, aye, and twice their number — take a prisoner from him.
I was out of conceit with myself when I saw Jeremy Crutch come riding toward us down the road; nor was I in any mood to treat him civilly, he having deserted me at the first pinch. I was minded rather to wreak my discontent on him, nor was I wholly foreign to the thought of making him my prisoner in place of Coningsby, he having been a highwayman, whose resolution to turn honest was not stiff enough to hold him in the road. I did not doubt he had hidden whatever it was that Coningsby had passed to him, but a taste of the rack might presently induce him to betray the hiding-place.
However, he was smiling and he greeted me as gaily as if no cowardice had come between us, pulling off his pea-green hat to Mildred and as saucy to me as an old friend.
“Master,” he said, wheeling his horse to ride beside me, “I’ve no proud stomach, and the Earl of Leicester’s men have hunted me so often that I jump at sight of ’em. I know ’em, and they know me. They’d ha’ swung me high as Haman in the Good Book. And they’d ha’ plucked me first. So they’d ha’ had this, that I took from Coningsby!”
He handed me a little package wrapped in silk and sealed; nor had the seal been broken. There was no address on it, but the seal was impressed with the arms of the Duke of Guise, that any man in England who knew aught of heraldry could recognize at the first glance.
“I told Coningsby,” he said, “that I was deep affected to the Scots Queen; for I guessed you had ordered Giles to broach that barrel o’ circumstances, and when the lad fell silent and rode forward I was sure of it. Coningsby put me through such a questioning as the Inquisition might, me lying like a lawyer at assizes, until I satisfied him I knew Fotheringay, from having delivered many a message to the Scots Queen’s servants.
“‘Swounds! That was a lucky chance: I remembered the names o’ two o’ them from having sat in Bellamy’s back-parlour listening to tales and wondering which traveller had the fattest purse. I told him I followed you for the sake of scraps o’ news, so that the Scots Queen might be informed of any steps now being taken to suppress rebellion that all men knew was coming. I don’t know whether I convinced him in the end. Maybe he was desperate, and so out of his wits, as had happened to me now and then. But he gave me that package at last and bade me promise to slip away with it to-night toward Fotheringay and deliver it to one of the Scots Queen’s servants. He said I should receive a token in return, and an address to which to take it, where someone in high authority would pay me heavily.”
“Said he aught else?” I demanded, and Jeremy fill
ed my ears with tales of how the Duke of Guise and many an expatriated Englishman were planning to land on the South Coast, and in Scotland, aye, and in Ireland, too, to raise a rebellion and, rescuing the Queen of Scots from Fotheringay Castle, to impose her on the throne of England.
“What should happen to our rightful Queen?” I asked him.
“Oh, the Pope has promised a hundred thousand crowns and everlasting life to anyone who slays her,” he said cheerfully. And at that he brought his flute forth, making merry music as he rode beside us.
That night, when we lodged at a roadside inn, came Berden overtaking us — a mess of sweat and mud, on a foundered farm-horse out of Walter Turner’s stable, nor in no good humour, taking umbrage at my having made free with the warrant and vexed at my good fortune in having found Tony and Mildred. He made a scandal, so that the inn was all agog with it. I had already given Mildred in charge to the innkeeper’s wife, to be bedded in her chamber, but Berden swore there should be a guard by the chamber door to boot because his honour was touched in the matter.
He was cold-discourteous to Jeremy, whom he dubbed a gallows-bird and promised him trial by jury, so that I had no fear of Jeremy prattling to him about the packet we had from Coningsby. When he demanded the warrant back and I refused he threatened to draw sword on me, which was a silly gesture, he having no right by virtue of his birth to fight with me on equal terms; Futtok and Gaylord would have disarmed him in a minute. It was time to have it out with Berden, and to settle which of us two was master, so I led him aside to where a dim lamp shone on whitewash in a passage corner and none could hear us — unless, indeed, he shouted as I was minded he should not do.
“Berden,” I said, “I’ll play you fair and you shall trust me to it. I’ll play you fair an you treat me foul. I’ll not forget past friendship, not though future enmity should dye you blacker than a Moor. So if you think you have aught against me, come out to the stable where I’ll thrash you and we’ll get that over with. I like not to shame you before strangers, nor in the presence of my men.”
He grew less choleric, but he was obstinate about the warrant, vowing he must have it or lose standing with the Lords of the Council.
“Berden,” I said, “none loses without another gaining. And if I gain, who am your friend, and who can go high, being the son of as true and gentle a knight as ever lived, you will gain more than if you had the warrant back and I took place as your subordinate. And in truth you have forfeited the warrant through your own sloth. And had I not taken it, we had both lost standing through not catching Tony Pepperday; but I the more, since being higher I may fall the farther; and because so, too, I should have lost my lady-love.”
“Whom certes you will lose in any event,” he answered. “One or t’other — Leicester or Burghley will have her to ward, and you’re out. She’ll marry him who pays most for her dower.”
I could have struck him, that thought so maddened me, but I held anger in rein.
“Leave Lords in Council to their own conceits,” I answered, “and stick to the question. Do you yield the warrant? There is nothing written concerning who shall serve it. And who did serve it? Which of us slept? If you’d rather, then tell your own tale to Lord Burghley and I’ll tell mine. But if you’re my subordinate I’ll see you come by no discredit for a draught too many of ale and hollands.”
“You gentry are all alike,” he grumbled.
“Aye,” I said, “we aim upward. But we draw stout-hearted fellows up behind us.”
“If I could trust you,” he began, but I interrupted.
“If you couldn’t ‘twere a pity. There are more than you shall trust me ere my sun sets. But why should I trust you unless you act fair? And you envious?”
So he yielded, being not a man of mettle though a worthy enough fellow in his way. We took a glass of ale together, and Berden has been my fairly loyal subordinate and moderately amiable ally ever since.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Wherein Will Shakespeare offers inspiration.
IN the morning Berden rode with me and Mildred, she so changing his disposition with her kindness that, although he started with an envious resentment, he was ere long proffering his aid to solve our difficulty, whose intricacies she and I understood hardly better than the birds do a net that catches them.
We rode slowly, having no taste for the issue — nay, not one of us; Giles was afraid of the drunken master-merchant-tailor to whom he had been bound apprentice, and who might hale him before the magistrates; Futtok and Gaylord feared the press, that was said to be looking for seamen for the Queen’s ship (though that turned out to be a mere innkeeper’s gossip); Tony trembled for his life, each yard of the London road to him a step nearer in imagination to a dreadful death; Jeremy, his face half-hidden in a neck-cloth and his hat drawn down above his eyes, looked askance at every gallows that we passed, and when we came at last to Tyburn Tree, he was as lily-white as the goosewing feather in his green hat. Berden, softening toward us two, lamented our hard case, knitting his brows as he sought a remedy until at last, turning to me with an oath, he urged on me a counsel of despair.
“Master Halifax, ‘Od rot me if I’d stand it! see what will happen: my Lord Burghley, acting on information from his spies, charges Tony Pepperday with treason. The Earl of Leicester has Tony’s papers, and what isn’t writ thereon will be so in time for the trial; for the Earl has secretaries who could forge an Act of Parliament, let alone Tony’s hand o’ writing. Tony is as good as dead this minute, since his property can’t be forfeited unless they convict him o’ treason. And then what?
“Such forfeited estates, and such guardianships of marriageable girls as go along with them, are fat prizes that the Queen gives to her favourites. My Lord Burghley will claim both. So will the Earl of Leicester. They’ll neither of them stop at straws and thistle-down. The Earl of Leicester will claim prior right as having produced most evidence — such as Tony’s papers; and he has Coningsby, too, who will swear to any tale that the Earl’s men put into his mouth if such will save him from the rack. ‘Sdeath! What a calamity that you let ’em poach that partridge! He was a Queen’s commission in your pocket, had you brought him safe to London. Now he’s death’s own evidence against you! Such runaways as Coningsby don’t face the rack; they blab — and a blabber o’ lies, I warn you, such as brings to grief whoever has a name they can remember!
“One quarrel with you were enough for the Earl of Leicester, but now he has two. And my Lord Burghley will not lightly overlook your letting Coningsby fall into the Earl of Leicester’s hands. ’Tis a pity of a business! And you without a friend at court!
“Stood I in your shoes, Master Halifax, and with fifteen hundred pounds to boot, I’d hie me across salt water, and my mistress with me! I’d woo fortune in Flanders or in France. For what else is there?
“Say you face it out. Say you face the charges of the Earl of Leicester. Say for the sake of Christ’s mercy that you win free, with no more than Leicester’s malice stored against you for the next opportunity. Then what? You’ve lost maid Mildred, since they’ll make her a court ward, and you’re worse off than you were before! I’d run to Holland, I would.”
He was thinking of the warrant that he would have liked to coax me to return to him. But I think, too, he was giving me the best advice that his head could invent. Disinterested friends are rare and if a man has two, three in a lifetime he is lucky. However, he set me cudgelling my brain, and by the time we drew near Tyburn I had thought of a key to the riddle that only a greenhorn new to London would have wasted a minute’s thought on. And by the grace of God, it fitted!
I turned aside near Tyburn Tree, bidding Jack Giles lead us by mean streets, at risk of foot-pads; for if the Earl of Leicester’s men were waiting for us it were well to steal that march and circumvent them, which was all the simpler since it was dusk and there was fog again. I have blessed the London fog a hundred times, but never more than that night, though the men returned from Flanders lurked like starv
ing wolves and we rode all of a cluster surrounding Mildred, to protect her.
So we came into the City by a narrow lane unnoticed, at an hour when honest citizens were all within-doors. Unchallenged we reached Burbage’s, where we stalled the tired horses and fed them, the yardman saying he knew where Will Shakespeare lay. So I bribed him to go in search of Will, who came walking wondrous stately, as if he were an alderman already, but so feared of foot-pads, nevertheless, that he breathed like a fat man. Marvelous polite he made himself to Mildred, bowing to her beneath the stable lantern, saying that her beauty and her gentle manner, in a gallant’s clothes, so fervered thought that he could think o’ nothing else.
“Mildred? ‘Od’s pity! That’s a cow-byre name! It should be Rosalinda! Mistress,” he said, “you stir me. The delights we’re heirs to fade away in shadow, as a dream at daylight, when appears — oh, happy eyes! — some new, revealing vision of a virtue we had thought we knew! A woman? All the world knows how a woman looks, does, curtseys; in a moment coy, and in the next a vixen, constant only in the constancy of change’s limits! Custom that commands her infinite variety to veil — poor Adam’s rib in pond’rous farthingale! — so uses us as seasons dull a ploughman’s senses, until Nature is all sameness and the sweets of spring lie viewless in monotony! Oh, dull, dread repetition! And oh happy eyes, when Nature changes, burgeoning her secrets! Lo, look you now — Diana, chaste yet chastely daring — modesty apparel’d in a gallant’s hose, redeeming gallantry! A maiden adding to herself such attributes as goddesses in armour claimed of old on tented field! You stir me, mistress! You awaken me to spiritual knowledge and I see all Nature infinitely lovable, nor nothing dull!”
He would have mouthed for her a play that minute, had I let him. He was fertile of phrase, and he could sweeten discourse with his honied humour; he could comment on all he saw with wiser and more critical discernment than I have heard from the lips of anyone; but he was like a sheep that kept within the hurdles when I asked his counsel. He could think of nothing new, except new ways of doing old deeds.
