“Now,” said Penruddocke, who himself I think took a certain grim pleasure in the formality, “be ready to swear, gentlemen, in pairs, as I call the names. Kingston and Matthewson!”
Lolling against the wall under one of the sconces I looked at Master Bertie, expecting to be called up with him. He smiled as our eyes met; and I thought with a rush of tenderness how lightly I could have dared the worst had all my associates been like him. But repining came too late, and in a moment Penruddocke surprised me by calling out “Crewdson and Carey!”
So Master Bertie was not to be my companion! I learned afterward that men who were strangers to one another were purposely associated, the theory being that each should keep an eye upon his oath-fellow. I went forward to the end of the table, and took the book.
There was a slight pause.
“Crewdson!” called Penruddocke sharply; “did you not hear, man?”
There was a little stir at the farther end of the room, and he came forward, moving slowly and reluctantly. I saw that he was the man whom Penruddocke had called back when we entered, a man of great height, though slender, and closely cloaked. A drooping gray mustache covered his mouth, and that was almost all I made out before Sir Thomas, with some sharpness, bade him uncover. He did so with an abrupt gesture, and reaching out his hand grasped the other end of the book as though he would take it from me. His manner was so strange that I looked hard at him, and he, jerking up his head with a gesture of defiance, looked at me too, his face very pale.
I heard Penruddocke’s voice droning the words of the oath, but I paid no attention to them — I was busied with something else. Where had I seen the sinister gleam in those eyes before, and that forehead high and narrow, and those lean, swarthy cheeks? Where had I before confronted that very face which now glared into mine across the book? Its look was bold and defiant, but low down in the cheek I saw a little pulse beating furiously, a pulse which told of anxiety, and the jaws, half veiled by the ragged mustache, were set in an iron grip. Where? Ha! I knew. I dropped my end of the book and stepped back.
“Look to the door!” I cried, my voice sounding harsh and strange in my own ears. “Let no one leave! I denounce that man!” And raising my hand I pointed pitilessly at my oath-fellow. “I denounce him — he is a spy and traitor!”
“I a spy?” the man shouted fiercely — with the fierceness of despair.
“Ay, you! you! Clarence, or Crewdson, or whatever you call yourself, I denounce you! My time has come!”
“. . . HE IS A SPY AND A TRAITOR!”
CHAPTER XIX.
FERDINAND CLUDDE.
The bitterness of that hour long past, when he had left me for death, when he had played with the human longing for life, and striven without a thought of pity to corrupt me by hopes and fears the most awful that mortals know, was in my voice as I spoke. I rejoiced that vengeance had come upon him at last, and that I was its instrument. I saw the pallor of a great fear creep into his dark cheek, and read in his eyes the vicious passion of a wild beast trapped, and felt no pity. “Master Clarence!” I said, and laughed — laughed mockingly. “You do not look pleased to see your friends. Or perhaps you do not remember me. Stand forward, Master Bertie! Maybe he will recognize you.”
But though Master Bertie came forward and stood by my side gazing at him, the villain’s eyes did not for an instant shift from mine. “It is the man!” my companion said after a solemn pause — for the other, breathing fast, made no answer. “He was a spy in the pay of Bishop Gardiner, when I knew him. At the Bishop’s death I heard that he passed into the service of the Spanish Ambassador, the Count de Feria. He called himself at that time Clarence. I recognize him.”
The quiet words had their effect. From full one-half of the savage crew round us a fierce murmur rose more terrible than any loud outcry. Yet this seemed a relief to the doomed man; he forced himself to look away from me and to confront the dark ring of menacing faces which hemmed him in. The moment he did so he appeared to find courage and words. “They take me for another man!” he cried in hoarse accents. “I know nothing of them!” and he added a fearful oath. “He knows me. Ask him!”
He pointed to Walter Kingston, who was sitting moodily on a tram outside the ring, and who alone had not risen under the excitement of my challenge. On being thus appealed to he looked up suddenly. “If I am to choose between you,” he said bitterly, “and say which is the true man, I know which I shall pick.”
“Which?” Clarence murmured. “Which?” This time his tone was different. In his voice was the ring of hope.
“I should give my vote for you,” Kingston replied, looking contemptuously at him. “I know something about you, but of the other gentleman I know nothing!”
“And not much of the person you call Crewdson,” I retorted fiercely, “since you do not know his real name.”
“I know this much,” the young man answered, tapping his boot with his scabbard with studied carelessness, “that he lent me some money, and seemed a good fellow and one that hated a mass priest. That is enough for me. As for his name, it is his fancy perhaps. You call yourself Carey. Well, I know a good many Careys, but I do not know you, nor ever heard of you!”
I swung round on him with a hot cheek. But the challenge which was upon my tongue was anticipated by Master Bertie, who drew me forcibly back. “Leave this to me, Francis,” he said, “and do you watch that man. Master Kingston and gentlemen,” he continued, turning again to them, and drawing himself to his full height as he addressed them, “listen, if you please! You know me, if you do not know my friend. The honor of Richard Bertie has never been challenged until to-night, nor ever will be with impunity. Leave my friend out of the question and put me in it. I, Richard Bertie, say that that man is a paid spy and informer, come here in quest of blood-money! And he, Crewdson, a nameless man, says that I lie. Choose between us. Or look at him and judge! Look!”
He was right to bid them look. As the savage murmur rose again and took from the wretched man his last hope, as the ugliness of despair and wicked, impotent passion distorted his face, he was indeed the most deadly witness against himself.
The lights which shone on treacherous weapons half hidden, or on the glittering eyes of cruel men whose blood was roused, fell on nothing so dangerous as the livid, despairing face which, unmasked and eyed by all with aversion, still defied us. Traitor and spy as he was, he had the merit of courage at least; he would die game. And even as I, with a first feeling of pity for him, discerned this, his sword was out, and with a curse he lunged at me.
Penruddocke saved me by a buffet which sent me reeling against the wall, so that the villain’s thrust was spent on air. Before he could repeat it, four or five men flung themselves upon him from behind. For a moment there was a great uproar, while the group surrounding him swayed to and fro as he dragged his captors up and down with a strength I should not have expected. But the end was certain, and we stood looking on quietly. In a minute or two they had him down, and disarming him, bound his hands.
For me he seemed to have a special hatred. “Curse you!” he panted, glaring at me as he lay helpless. “You have been my evil angel! From the first day I saw you, you have thwarted me in every plan, and now you have brought me to this!”
“Not I, but yourself,” I answered.
“My curse upon you!” he cried again, the rage and hate in his face so terrible that I turned away shuddering and sick at heart. “If I could have killed you,” he cried, “I would have died contented.”
“Enough!” interposed Penruddocke briskly. “It is well for us that Master Bertie and his friend came here to-night. Heaven grant it be not too late! We do not need,” he added, looking round, “any more evidence, I think?”
The dissent was loud, and, save for Kingston, who still sat sulking apart, unanimous.
“Death?” said the Cornishman quietly.
No one spoke, but each man gave a brief stern nod.
“Very well,” the leader continued; “then I propose — —”
“One moment,” said Master Bertie, interrupting him. “A word with you apart, with our friends’ permission. You can repeat it to them afterward.”
He drew Sir Thomas aside, and they retired into the corner by the door, where they stood talking in whispers. I had small reason to feel sympathy for the man who lay there tied and doomed to die like a calf. Yet even I shuddered — yes, and some of the hardened men round me shuddered also at the awful expression in his eyes as, without moving his head, he followed the motions of the two by the door. Some faint hope springing into being wrung his soul, and brought the perspiration in great drops to his forehead. I turned away, thinking gravely of the early morning three years ago when he had tortured me by the very same hopes and fears which now racked his own spirit.
Penruddocke came back, Master Bertie following him.
“It must not be done to-night,” he announced quietly, with a nod which meant that he would explain the reason afterward. “We will meet again to-morrow at four in the afternoon instead of at eight in the evening. Until then two must remain on guard with him. It is right he should have some time to repent, and he shall have it.”
This did not at once find favor.
“Why not run him through now?” said one bluntly. “And meet to-morrow at some place unknown to him? If we come here again we shall, likely enough, walk straight into the trap.”
“Well, have it that way, if you please,” answered Sir Thomas, shrugging his shoulders. “But do not blame me afterward if you find we have let slip a golden opportunity. Be fools if you like. I dare say it will not make much difference in the end!”
He spoke at random, but he knew how to deal with his crew, it seemed, for on this those who had objected assented reluctantly to the course he proposed. “Barnes and Walters are here in hiding, so they had better be the two to guard him,” he continued. “There is no fear that they will be inclined to let him go!” I looked at the men whom the glances of their fellows singled out, and found them to belong to the little knot of fanatics I had before remarked: dark, stern men, worth, if the matter ever came to fighting, all the rest of the band put together.
“At four, to-morrow, then, we meet,” Sir Thomas concluded lightly. “Then we will deal with him, never fear! Now it is near midnight, and we must be going. But not all together, or we shall attract attention.”
Half an hour later Master Bertie and I rode softly out of the courtyard and turned our faces toward the city. The night wind came sweeping across the valley of the Thames, and met us full in the face as we reached the brow of the hill. It seemed laden with melancholy whispers. The wretched enterprise, ill-conceived, ill-ordered, and in its very nature desperate, to which we were in honor committed, would have accounted of itself for any degree of foreboding. But the scene through which we had just passed, and on my part the knowledge that I had given up a fellow-being to death, had their depressing influences. For some distance we rode in silence, which I was the first to break.
“Why did you put off his punishment?” I asked.
“Because I think he will give us information in the interval,” Bertie answered briefly. “Information which may help us. A spy is generally ready to betray his own side upon occasion.”
“And you will spare him if he does?” I asked. It seemed to me neither justice nor mercy.
“No,” he said, “there is no fear of that. Those who go with ropes round their necks know no mercy. But drowning men will catch at straws; and ten to one he will babble!”
I shivered. “It is a bad business,” I said.
He thought I referred to the conspiracy, and he inveighed bitterly against it, reproaching himself for bringing me into it, and for his folly in believing the rosy accounts of men who had all to win, and nothing save their worthless lives to lose. “There is only one thing gained,” he said. “We are likely to pay dearly for that, so we may think the more of it. We have been the means of punishing a villain.”
“Yes,” I said, “that is true. It was a strange meeting and a strange recognition. Strangest of all that I should be called up to swear with him.”
“Not strange,” Master Bertie answered gravely. “I would rather call it providential. Let us think of that, and be of better courage, friend. We have been used; we shall not be cast away before our time.”
I looked back. For some minutes I had thought I heard behind us a light footstep, more like the pattering of a dog than anything else. I could see nothing, but that was not wonderful, for the moon was young and the sky overcast. “Do you hear some one following us?” I said.
Master Bertie drew rein suddenly, and turning in the saddle we listened. For a second I thought I still heard the sound. The next it ceased, and only the wind toying with the November leaves and sighing away in the distance, came to our ears. “No,” he said, “I think it must have been your fancy. I hear nothing.”
But when we rode on the sound began again, though at first more faintly, as if our follower had learned prudence and fallen farther behind. “Do not stop, but listen!” I said softly. “Cannot you hear the pattering of a naked foot now?”
“I hear something,” he answered. “I am afraid you are right, and that we are followed.”
“What is to be done?” I said, my thoughts busy.
“There is Caen wood in front,” he answered, “with a little open ground on this side of it. We will ride under the trees and then stop suddenly. Perhaps we shall be able to distinguish him as he crosses the open behind us.” We made the experiment; but as if our follower had divined the plan, his footstep ceased to sound before we had stopped our horses. He had fallen farther behind. “We might ride quickly back,” I suggested, “and surprise him.”
“It would be useless,” Bertie answered. “There is too much cover close to the road. Let us rather trot on and outstrip him.”
We did trot on; and what with the tramp of our horses as they swung along the road, and the sharp passage of the wind by our ears, we heard no more of the footstep behind. But when we presently pulled up to breathe our horses — or rather within a few minutes of our doing so — there it was behind us, nearer and louder than before. I shivered as I listened; and presently, acting on a sudden impulse, I wheeled my horse round and spurred him back a dozen paces along the road.
I pulled up.
There was a movement in the shadow of the trees on my right, and I leaned forward, peering in that direction. Gradually, I made out the lines of a figure standing still as though gazing at me; a strange, distorted figure, crooked, short, and in some way, though no lineament of the face was visible, expressive of a strange and weird malevolence. It was the witch! The witch whom I had seen in the kitchen at the Gatehouse. How, then, had she come hither? How had she, old, lame, decrepit, kept up with us?
I trembled as she raised her hand, and, standing otherwise motionless, pointed at me out of the gloom. The horse under me was trembling too, trembling violently, with its ears laid back, and, as she moved, its terror increased, it plunged wildly. I had to give for a moment all my attention to it, and though I tried, in mere revolt against the fear which I felt was overcoming me, to urge it nearer, my efforts were vain. After nearly unseating me, the beast whirled round and, getting the better of me, galloped down the road toward London.
“What is it?” cried Master Bertie, as I came speedily up with him; he had ridden slowly on. “What is the matter?”
“Something in the hedge startled it,” I explained, trying to soothe the horse. “I could not clearly see what it was.”
“A rabbit, I dare say,” he remarked, deceived by my manner.
“Perhaps it was,” I answered. Some impulse, not unnatural, led me to say nothing about what I had seen. I was not quite sure that my eyes had not deceived me. I feared his ridicule, too, though he was not very prone to ridicule. And above all I shrank from explaining the medley of superstitious fear, distrust, and abhorrence in which I held the creature who had shown so strange a knowledge of my life.
> We were already near Holborn, and reaching without further adventure a modest inn near the Bars, we retired to a room we had engaged, and lay down with none of the gallant hopes which had last night formed the subject of our talk. Yet we slept well, for depression goes better with sleep than does the tumult of anticipation; and I was up early, and down in the yard looking to the horses before London was well awake. As I entered the stable a man lying curled up in the straw rolled lazily over and, shading his eyes, glanced up. Apparently he recognized me, for he got slowly to his feet. “Morning!” he said gruffly.
I stood staring at him, wondering if I had made a mistake.
“What are you doing here, my man?” I said sharply, when I had made certain I knew him, and that he was really the surly ostler from the Gatehouse tavern at Highgate. “Why did you come here? Why have you followed us?”
“Come about your business,” he answered. “To give you that.”
I took the note he held out to me. “From whom?” I said. “Who sent it by you?”
“Cannot tell,” he replied, shaking his head.
“Cannot, or will not?” I retorted.
“Both,” he said doggedly. “But there, if you want to know what sort of a kernel is in a nut, you don’t shake the tree, master — you crack the nut.”
I looked at the note he had given me. It was but a slip of paper folded thrice. The sender had not addressed, or sealed, or fastened it in anyway; had taken no care either to insure its reaching its destination or to prevent prying eyes seeing the contents. If one of our associates had sent it, he had been guilty of the grossest carelessness. “You are sure it is for me?” I said.
“As sure as mortal can be,” he answered. “Only that it was given me for a man, and not a mouse! You are not afraid, master?”
I was not; but he edged away as he spoke, and looked with so much alarm at the scrap of paper that it was abundantly clear he was very much afraid himself, even while he derided me. I saw that if I had offered to return the note he would have backed out of the stable and gone off there and then as fast as his lame foot would let him. This puzzled me. However, I read the note. There was nothing in it to frighten me. Yet, as I read, the color came into my face, for it contained one name to which I had long been a stranger.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 66
