CHAPTER IX.THE FIRST DAY OF THE FLIGHT.
"That wench is stark mad, or wonderful froward."—The Taming of the Shrew.
Theobject of this double chase, Master Marryott, rode on with his two men, through the night, beyond Stevenage, at what pace it seemed best to maintain. The slowness, incredible to a bicyclist or horseman who to-day follows the same route, was all the greater for the darkness; but slowness had good cause without darkness. English horse-breeding had not yet shown or sought great results in speed. An Elizabethan steed would make a strange showing on a twentieth century race-track; for the special product of those days was neither horses nor machines, but men. And such as the horses were, what were the roads they had to traverse! When a horse put his foot down, the chances were that it would land in a deep rut, or slide crunching down the hardened ridge at the side thereof, or find lodgment in a soggy puddle, or sink deep into soft earth, or fall, like certain of the Scriptural seed, upon stony places. It is no wonder, then, that on a certain occasion, whenQueen Elizabeth was particularly impatient for a swift answer to a letter she caused sent to the keepers of Mary Stuart, the messenger's time from London to Fotheringay and back was at the rate of less than sixty miles a day. As for travel upon wheels, an example thereof will occur later in this narrative. But there was in those days one compensatory circumstance to fugitives flying with a rapidity then thought the greatest attainable: if they could not fly any faster, neither could their pursuers.
The night journey of our three riders continued in silence. As no sound of other horses now came from behind or from anywhere else, and as the objects passed in the darkness were but as indistinct figures in thick ink against a ground of watered ink. Hal's senses naturally turned inward, and mainly upon what was then foremost in the landscape of his mind. This was the face of Mistress Anne Hazlehurst; and the more he gazed upon the image thereof, the more he sighed at having to increase the distance between himself and the reality. His reluctance to going from the neighborhood of her was none the less for the matter-of-fact promptness with which he did go therefrom. The face was no less a magnet to him for that he so readily and steadily resisted its drawing powers. Those drawing powers would, of course, by the very nature of magnets,decrease as he went farther from their source; but as yet they were marvellously strong. Such is the charm exerted upon impressionable youth by a pair of puzzling eyes, a mysterious expression, a piquant contour, allied to beauty. All the effect of his first sight of that face was revived, and eked to greater magnitude by his strange confrontation with her, proud and wrathful in the poor lantern rays that fell intermittently and shiftingly upon her in the dark road.
He wondered what would be her subsequent proceedings that night; tried to form a mental panorama of her conduct regarding her wounded servants; of her actions now that she saw her design upset, the tenor of her life necessarily affected by this new catastrophe to her household. He pitied her, as he thought of the confused and difficult situation into which she had been so suddenly plunged. And then he came to consider what must be her feelings toward himself. Looking upon him as her brother's slayer, she must view him with both hate and horror. His violent treatment of her servants would augment the former feeling to a very madness of impotent wrath.
Yet it was not Hal Marryott that she hated,—it was the make-believe Sir Valentine Fleetwood; not the player, but the part he played. Still, a dislike of a character assumed by an actor often refuses toseparate the actor from the character; moreover, she must necessarily hate him, should she ever come to know him, for having assumed that part,—for being, indeed, the aider of her enemy against herself. Hal registered one determination: should the uncertain future—now of a most exceeding uncertainty in his case—bring him in his own person into the horizon of this woman, he would take care she should not know he had played this part. What had passed between them should be blotted out; should be as if indeed Sir Valentine, not Hal Marryott, had escaped her in the road. And Hal bethought himself of one gain that the encounter had yielded him: it had acquainted him with the name and place of the previously unknown beauty. Some day, when he should have gone through with all this business, he might indeed seek her.
When he should have gone through with this business? The uncertain future came back to his thoughts. What would be the outcome of this strange flight? So strange, that if he should tell his friends in London of it, they would laugh at the tale as at a wild fiction. Fool a trained man-hunter, a royal messenger grown old in catching people for the council, and fool him by such a device as Hal had employed! Act a part in real life, even for a moment, to the complete deception of the spectator intended to be duped! To be sure, Dick Tarletonhad done so, when he pretended in an inn at Sandwich to be a seminary priest, in order to be arrested and have the officers pay his score and take him to London, where, being known, he was sure to be discharged. But Dick Tarleton was a great comedian, and had essayed to represent no certain identifiable seminary priest; whereas Master Marryott, who had dared impersonate a particular known man, was but a novice at acting.
But Hal soon perceived this fact: that playing a part on the stage and playing a part in real life are two vastly different matters. A great actor of the first may be a great failure in the second, and the worst stage player may, under sufficient stress, fill an assumed character deceptively in real life. The spectator in a theatre expects to see a character pretended, and knows that what he sees is make-believe, not real. A spectator in real life, chosen to be duped, expects no such thing, and is therefore ready to take a pretence for what it purports to be. Whatever may occur eventually to undeceive him, he is in proper mind for deception at first contact with the pretence. And the very unlikelihood of such an attempt as Hal's, the very seeming impossibility of its success, was reason for Roger Barnet's not having suspected it.
These thoughts now occurred to Hal for the first time. Should he succeed in his novel adventure, hemight congratulate himself upon the achievement, not of a great feat of stage-playing, indeed, though to his stage training he owed his quick perception and imitation of Sir Valentine's chief physical peculiarities, but of a singular and daring act, in which he both actually and figuratively played a part.
But was he destined to succeed? Was Roger Barnet still upon his track? Or was he fleeing from nothing, leaving a track for nobody to follow? Well, he must trust to those at Fleetwood house to keep Sir Valentine's actual whereabouts from discovery, and to Barnet's skill in picking up the trace that a fugitivemustleave, willy-nilly. But what if fate, so fond of playing tricks on mortals, should conceive the whim of covering up the track of this one fugitive who desired his track to be seen? Hal cast away this thought. He must proceed, confidently, though in blindness as to what was doing behind him. At present, silence was there; no sound of far-off horse-hoofs. But this might be attributed to Barnet's interruption by Anne's party; to measures for procuring fresh horses, and to the necessary delivery of the letters of which the queen had told him. And so, fleeing from cold darkness and the unknown into cold darkness and the unknown, deep in his thoughts, and trusting to his star. Master Marryott rode on through Baldock and toward Biggleswade. Kit Bottle presently called his attentionto their having passed out of Hertfordshire into Bedfordshire.
The captain had been hard put to it for a fellow talker. His remarks to Hal had elicited only absent monosyllables or silence. At last, with a gulp as of choking down an antipathy, he had ridden forward to Anthony and tried conversation with that person. Master Underhill listened as one swallows by compulsion a disagreeable dose, and gave brief, surly answers. Kit touched with perfect freedom upon the other's most private concerns, not deeming that a despised dissenter had a right to the ordinary immunities.
"Marry, I know not which astoundeth me the more," said the soldier; "that a papist should keep a Puritan in's household, or that the Puritan should serve the papist!"
Anthony was for a moment silent, as if to ignore the impudent speech; but then, in a manner of resignation, as if confession and apology were part of his proper punishment, he said, with a lofty kind of humility:
"The case no more astoundeth you than it reproacheth me. It biteth my conscience day and night, and hath done so this many a year. Daily I resolve me to quit the service of them that cherish the gauds and idolatries of papistry. But the flesh is weak; I was born in Sir Valentine's household,and I could not find strength to wrench me from it."
"Ay," said Kit, "no doubt it hath been in its way a fat stewardship, though the estate be decreased. The master being so oft abroad, and all left to your hands, I'll warrant there have been plump takings, for balm to the bites o' conscience."
"I perceive you are a flippant railer; but you touch me not. What should they of no religion understand of the bites of conscience?"
"No religion! Go to, man! Though I be a soldier, and of a free life, look you, I've practised more religions than your ignorance wots of; and every one of them better than your scurvy, hang-dog, vinegar-faced non conformity! Nay, I have been Puritan, too, when it served my turn, in the days when I was of Walsingham's men. He had precisian leanings, and so had the clerk o' the council. Mr. Beal. But you are an ingrate, to fatten on a good service, yet call it a reproach!"
"Fatten!" echoed the Puritan, glancing down at his spare frame. "Mayhap it hath been a good service formerly, by comparison with its having this night made me partaker in a five days' lie, abettor of a piece of play-acting, and associate of a scurrilous soldier!"
With which Anthony Underhill quickened his horse so as to move from the captain's side; whereuponKit, too amazed for timely outward resentment, lapsed into silent meditation.
They rode through Biggleswade. Fatigue was now telling on them. Hal's latest sleep had been that of the previous morning, in the cold open air of Whitehall garden,—an age ago it seemed! Kit's most recent slumbers, taken even earlier, had been, doubtless, in equally comfortless circumstances. Hal learned, by a question, that Anthony had passed yesternight in bed, warm and sober. So Hal decided that when the three should stop at dawn for rest, food, change of horses, and the removal of the false beard, himself and Kit should attempt an hour's repose while Anthony should watch. The Puritan should be one of the sleepers, Kit the watcher, at the second halt. Hal planned and announced all details for assuring an immediate flight on the distant advent of the pursuers. A system of brief stops and of alternate watches could be employed throughout the whole flight without loss of advantage, for Barnet also would have to make similar delays for rest, food, and the changing or baiting of horses.
On wore the night. They passed through Eaton Socon, and continued northward instead of turning into St. Neots at the right. They took notice here, as they had taken at previous forkings of the road, that there were houses at or near the junction,—housesin which uneasy slumberers would be awakened by their passing and heed which way their horses went. Roger Barnet would have but to ride up noisily, and, perchance, pound and call at a house or two, to bring these persons to windows with word of what they had heard. Hal marvelled as he thought of it the more, how the nature of things will let no man traverse this world, or any part of it, without leaving trace of his passage. He saw in this material fact an image of life itself, and in the night silence, broken only by the clatter of his horses and by some far-off dog's bark or cock's crow, he had many new thoughts. So he rode into Huntingdonshire, and presently, as the pallor of dawn began to blanch the ashen sky, he passed Kimbolton, whose castle now seemed a chill death-place for poor Catherine of Aragon; and, four miles farther on, he drew up, in the dim early light, before the inn at Catworth Magna, and set Kit bawling lustily for the landlord.
A blinking hostler came from the stable yard, and the beefy-looking host from the inn door, at the same time. But the travellers would not get off their mounts until they were assured of obtaining fresh ones. Captain Bottle did the talking. The new horses were brought out to the green before the inn. Kit dismounted and examined them, then struck a bargain with the innkeeper for their use,dragging the latter's slow wits to a decision by main force. This done, Hal leaped to the ground, called for a room fronting on the green, a speedy breakfast served therein, a razor and shaving materials taken thither, and some oat-cakes and ale brought out to Anthony, who should stay with the horses.
Hal then strode up and down the green, while Anthony ate and Kit and the hostler transferred the saddles and bridles. He kept well muffled about the face with his cloak, in such manner as at once to display his beard and yet conceal the evidence of its falseness. The new horses ready, Anthony mounted one, and, under pretence of exercising them, moved off with them toward the direction whence Barnet would eventually come. Hal, to forestall hindrance in case of a necessarily hasty departure, handed the innkeeper gold enough to cover all charges he might incur, and was shown, with Kit, to a small, bare-walled, wainscoted, plastered, slope-roofed room up-stairs. He threw open the casement toward the green, and promptly fell upon the eggs, fish, and beer that were by this time served upon a board set on stools instead of on trestles. Finishing simultaneously with Kit, Hal took off his false beard, strewed its severed tufts over the floor, and then submitted his face, which had a few days' natural growth of stubble, to a razor wielded by the captain. After this operation, the two stretched themselves uponthe bed, in their clothes, their heads toward the open window.
A dream of endless riding, varied by regularly renewed charges against a wall of plunging horses that invariably fled away to intervene again, and by the alternate menacings and mockings of a beautiful face, culminated in a clamorous tumult like the shouting of a multitude. Hal sprang up. Bottle was bounding from the bed at the same instant.
The sound was only the steadily repeated, "Halloo, halloo!" of Anthony Underhill beneath the open window. Hal looked out. The Puritan sat his horse on the green, holding the other two animals at his either side, all heads pointed northward. On seeing Hal, he beckoned and was silent.
Hal and Kit rushed to the passage, thence down the stairs, and through the entrance-way, to horse. The landlord, called forth by Anthony's hullabaloo, stared at them in wonder. Hal returned his gaze, that an impression of the newly shaven face might remain well fixed in the host's mind; and then jerked rein for a start. Neither Hal nor Kit had yet taken time to look for the cause of Anthony's alarm. As they galloped away from the inn, Hal heard the patter of horses coming up from the south. He turned in his saddle, expecting to see Roger Barnet and his crew in full chase.
But the horses were only two in number, and onthem were Mistress Hazlehurst, in a crimson cloak and hood, and the Page_in green who had attended her at the theatre. Hal's heart bounded with sudden pleasure. As he gazed back at her, he caught himself smiling.
She saw him, noted his two companions, and seemed to be in doubt. The landlord was still before the inn. She reined up, and spoke to him. Hal could see the innkeeper presently, while answering her, put his hand to his chin. "Good!" thought Hal; "he is telling her that, though I depart smooth-faced, I arrived bearded."
The next moment, she and the Page_were riding after the three fugitives.
Without decreasing his pace, Hal asked Anthony:
"Was it she only that you saw coming? Are Barnet's men behind?"
"'Twas she only. But she is enough to raise the country on us!"
"Think you that is her purpose?"
"Ay," replied Anthony. "She hath heard of the treason matter from the pursuivant, and hath shot off, like bolt from bow, to denounce you. 'Tis her method of vengeance."
"'Tis like a woman—of a certain kind," commented Kit Bottle, who had taken in the situation as promptly as the others had.
"'Tis like a Hazlehurst," said Anthony.
"Well," said Master Marryott, for a pretext, "'tis doubtless as you say; but I desire assurance. It may serve us to know her intentions. She cannot harm us here." (They were now out of the village.) "Though she would raise hell's own hue and cry about us, she might halloo her loudest, none would hear at this part of the road. We shall wait for her."
Anthony cast a keen glance at Hal, and Kit Bottle thrust his tongue in his cheek and looked away,—manifestations at which Hal could only turn red and wish that either of the two had given some open cause for rebuke. He was determined, however; the temptation to play with fire in the shape of a beautiful woman was too alluring, the danger apparently too little. So the three horses dropped to a walk, and presently the two that followed were at their heels. Hal looked back as she came on, to see if she still carried the sword she had used on the previous night; but he saw no sign of it about her. In fact, she had given it to Francis, who bore at his girdle a poniard also.
"Mistress, you travel ill-protected," was Hal's speech of greeting.
"So my brother must have done when he met you last," was her prompt and defiant answer.
She let her horse drop into the gait of Hal's, and made no move to go from his side. The Puritan resumed his place at the head, and Francis, in orderto be immediately behind his mistress, fell in with Kit Bottle. In this order the party of five proceeded northward, their horses walking.
"I did not harm your brother," reiterated Marryott, with a sigh.
"I perceive," she replied, ironically, "you are not the man that hurt my brother. You have made of yourself another man, by giving yourself another face! God 'a' mercy, the world is dull, indeed, an it is to be fooled with a scrape of a razor! You should have bought the silence of mine host yonder, methinks! And changed your company, altered your attitude, rid yourself of the stiffness from the wound my brother gave you, and washed your face of the welt my sword left! You have a good barber, Sir Valentine; he hath shaved a score of years from your face; he hath renewed your youth as if with water from that fountain men tell of, in America!"
"The loss of a long-worn beard indeed giveth some men a strange look of youth," assented Hal, as if humoring her spirit of bitter derision against himself. He was glad of her conviction that he could look youthful and yet be the middle-aged Sir Valentine.
"'Twas so in the case of an uncle of mine," she said, curtly, "which the more hindereth your imposing on me with a face of five and twenty."
"Five and twenty?" echoed Hal, involuntarily,surprised that he should appear even so old. But a moment's reflection told him that his age must be increased in appearance by the assumed stiffness of his attitude; by the frown and the labial rigidity he partly simulated, partly had acquired since yesterday; by the gauntness and pallor, both due to nervous tension and to lack of sleep and food. He was indeed an older man than the "Laertes" of two days ago, and not to be recognized as the same, for in the play he had worn a mustache and an air little like his present thoughtful mien.
"And I'll warrant this new face will serve you little to throw them off that are coming yonder," she went on, indicating the rearward road by a slight backward toss of the head.
"Certain riders from London, mean you?" said Hal. "By your leave, madam, sith you be in their secrets, I would fain know how far behind us they ride?"
"Not so far but they will be at your heels ere this day's sun grow tired of shining."
"Ay, truly? They will do swift riding, then!"
"Mayhap 'twill come of their swift riding," she replied, taunted by his courteous, almost sugary, tone. "And mayhap, of your meeting hindrance!"
"Prithee, what should put hindrance in my way?" he inquired, with a most annoying pretence of polite surprise and curiosity.
"I will!" she cried. "I have run after you for that purpose!"
"God's light, say you so? And what will you do to hinder me?"
"I know not yet," she answered, with high serenity. "But I shall find a way."
"No doubt you will choose the simplest way," said Hal.
"What is that, I pray you?" she asked, quickly.
But Hal merely smiled. She followed his glance, however, which rested upon a gabled country-house far across the open field at their right, and she read his thought.
"Nay," she said, her chin elevated haughtily, "I disdain help. 'Tis my humor to be alone the means of throwing you into the hands that bring the warrant for you. Nor shall I lose sight of you time enough to seek rustic officers and set them on you."
"You are wise in that," said Hal; "for, indeed, if you took but time to cry out against me to some passing wayfarer, I and my men would be up-tails-and-away in a twinkling. For my own interest, I tell you this; sith I'd fain not have you do aught to deprive me of your company as fellow traveller."
She colored with indignation at this compliment, and Hal, thereby reminded that she saw in him her brother's slayer, and sensible how much affront lay in the speech in the circumstances, reddened asdeeply. If he could but find a way, without making her doubt that he was Sir Valentine, of convincing her that he had not been her brother's opponent! He had thought vaguely that, by his reiterated denials of a hand in the killing, he might finally implant in her mind the impression that, though he was Sir Valentine, he had not given the mortal thrust; that there was some mystery about the fight, to be explained in time. But he now perceived that if such an idea could be rooted into her mind, its effect must be to make her drop the chase and go back to Sir Valentine's neighborhood. There she might find conclusive evidence of Sir Valentine's responsibility for her brother's death, and make upon Fleetwood house some kind of invasion that would endanger the real Sir Valentine. Moreover, Hal took a keen, though disturbed, joy in her presence, despite the bar of bloodshed that in her mind existed between them; and though to retain that joy he must let her continue in that supposition, he elected to retain it at the price.
After a pause, during which she acquired the coolness of voice to answer Hal's thoughtlessly offensive words, she said:
"I pray God to hasten the hour when I shall be your fellow traveller toward London!"
"An Roger Barnet, with his warrant of the council, were left out, I should pray God to be yourfellow traveller anywhere!" was Hal's reply,—and again he had to curse his heedlessness, as again he saw how odious to her was the truth that had slipped so readily out of him. "You rode fast, else you had not overtaken me," he said, in hope of changing her thoughts.
"And having overtaken you, I shall not lose you," she answered.
"And you have not slept nor eaten! Marry, you must be weary and faint, mistress!"
"Neither too weary nor too faint to dog you to your undoing," she said, resolutely throwing off all air of fatigue.
"And you risked the dangers of the road. Ods-death, if you had fallen in with robbers!"
"That danger is past," she said. "Henceforth, till the officers be with us, I shall go in your company, and the appearance of you and your men will be my guard against robbers."
"Nay, an you were threatened, I and my men would offer more than mere appearance in your protection, I do assure you!"
"Be that as it may," she answered, coldly. "Appearance would serve. I take protection of you while I have need of it, and not as a favor or a courtesy, but as a right—"
"From a gentleman to a lady, yes," put in Hal.
"From an enemy," she went on, ignoring hisinterruption, "sith it be a practice in war to avail oneself of the enemy without scruple, in all ways possible!"
Hal sighed. He would rather let his protection be accepted otherwise. But he inwardly valued her unconscious tribute to the gentlemanhood she divined in him,—the tribute apparent in her taking for granted that he would act her protector even on a journey in which her declared object was to hold him back for the death he was flying from. There were such gentlemen in those days; and there have been such women as Anne—women who will avail themselves of the generosity of men they are seeking to destroy—in all days.
He was glad of the assurance received from her that Roger Barnet was still on his track. Thus far, all was going well. If this woman, from pride or caprice or a strange jealousy of keeping her vengeance all to herself, did indeed think to impede him by other and more exclusive means than public denunciation or hue and cry, he felt that he had little to fear from her. To put her declaration to the test, he held the horses down to an easy gait in passing through the next villages, though he was ready to spur forward at a sign; but she indicated no thought of starting an outcry. She kept her eyes averted in deep thought. Hal would have given much to read what was passing within that shapely head.Without doubt, she was intent upon some plan for making a gift of him to his pursuers, some device for achieving that revenge which she craved as a solitary feast, and which she was not willing to owe to any one but herself. What design was she forming? Hal imagined she could not be very expert in designs. A crafty nature would not have declared war openly, as her proud and impulsive heart had bade her do. He admired her for that frankness, for that unconscious superiority to underhand fighting. It showed a noble, masterful soul, and matched well her imperious beauty.
They rode through Clapton and Deane. Her fatigue became more and more evident, though pride and resolution battled hard against it. Her only food during the forenoon was some cold ham she got at a country inn in Northamptonshire, at which Hal paused to bait the horses. They proceeded into Rutlandshire. Before entering Glaiston she swayed upon her side-saddle, but instantly recovered herself. At Manton she was shivering,—the day was indeed a cold one, though the sun had come out at eight o'clock, but she had not shivered so before.
"We shall have dinner and a rest at Oakham," said Master Marryott, softly. "'Tis but three miles ahead."
"All's one, three miles or thirty!" she answered.
As they stopped before an inn at the farther end of Oakham,—an inn chosen by Hal for its situation favorable to hasty flight northward,—the clocks in the town were sounding noon; noon of Wednesday. March 4, 1601; noon of the long first day of the hoped-for five days' flight.
CHAPTER X.THE LOCKED DOOR.
"When I was at home, I was in a better place: but travellers must be content." —As You Like It.
Beforealighting from her horse, Mistress Hazlehurst waited to see what her enemy should do. The enemy's first proceedings were similar to those taken upon his arrival at Catworth Magna. That is to say, through the expeditious offices of Captain Bottle, new horses were placed ready before the inn, ere the party dismounted from the tired ones; dinner and a room were bespoken; and all possible charges were forestalled by advance payment. Anne imitated this whole arrangement precisely, causing no little wonder on the part of the inn people, that she should give her orders independently, though they were exactly like those of the three men with whom she and her Page_were manifestly travelling. It was mentally set down by the shrewd ones that here were man and wife, or brother and sister, not on speaking terms, yet obliged to perform a journey together.
Hal remained outside the inn with Anthony, tillBottle should ride back to keep watch. Anne stood near him, not irresolute, but to observe his actions. Refreshed with a stirrup-cup and some cakes, Bottle soon rode off, with two led horses. Perceiving the object of this movement, Anne dismissed the captain from her observation, that she might concentrate it upon the supposed Sir Valentine. As her boy Francis was in no less need of food and sleep than herself, she gave a coin to one of the hostlers, with orders to walk her horses up and down before the inn till she should come for them.
Hal counted on her fatigue to reinforce her proud determination that she would not resort to the local authorities against him. Yet he would not go to his chamber ere she went to hers. Deducing this from his actions—for no speech passed between them while they tarried before the inn—and being indeed well-nigh too exhausted to stand, she finally called for a servant to show her to her room. Francis followed her, to wait upon her at dinner and then to lie on a bench outside her door.
Hal watched her into the entrance-hall of the inn. At the foot of the stairs leading to the upper floor, she stopped, handed a piece of money to the attendant, and spoke a few words in a low tone. The fellow glanced toward the inn porch in which Hal was standing, and nodded obedience. Hal inferred that she was engaging to be notified instantly incase of his departure. A moment later Hal beckoned Anthony to follow, and went, under the guidance of the landlady herself, up to his own room.
As he turned from the stair-head into the upper passage, he saw a door close, which he divined to be that of his fair enemy. A moment later an inn servant appeared with a bench, and placed it outside this door. On reaching his own room, in the same passage, Hal noticed that this bench, on which Francis was to rest, stood in view of his own door, and also—by way of the stairs—of the entrance-hall below. He smiled at the precautions taken by the foe.
Examining his room, he saw that it had the required window overlooking the front inn yard and the road beyond. Immediately beneath this window was the sloping roof of the inn porch. Having opened the casement, and moved the bed's head near it, Hal turned to the dinner that a servant was placing on a small trestle-table, for which there was ample free space in the chamber. The English inns of those days were indeed commodious, and those in the country towns were better than those in London. Hosts took pride in their tapestry, furniture, bedding, plate, and glasses. Some of the inns in the greater towns and roads had room for three hundred guests with their horses and servants. Noblemen travelled with great retinues, andcarried furniture with them. It was a golden age of inns,—though, to be sure, the servants were in many cases in league with highway robbers, to whom they gave information of the wealth, destinations, routes, and times of setting forth of well-furnished guests. The inn at which Hal now refreshed himself, in Oakham, was not of the large or celebrated ones. He had his own reasons for resorting to small and obscure hostelries. Yet he found the dinner good, the ale of the best, and, after that, the bed extremely comfortable, even though he lay in his clothes, with his hand on his sword-hilt.
He had flung himself down, immediately after dinner, not waiting for the platters and cups to be taken away. Anthony, who had been as a table-fellow sour and monosyllabic, but by no means abstemious, for all his Puritanism, was as prompt as Hal to avail himself of the comfort of the bed. His appreciation was soon evinced by a loud snoring, whose sturdy nasality seemed of a piece with his canting, rebuking manner of speech when he allowed himself to be lured into conversation. There was in his snore a rhythmic wrestling and protesting, as of Jacob with the angel, or a preacher against Satan, that befitted well his righteous non-conformity. From this thought—for which he wondered that he could find place when his situation provided so muchother matter for meditation—Hal's mind lapsed into the incoherent visions of slumber, and soon deep sleep was upon him.
Hal had arranged that Kit Bottle should return to the inn and call him, after four hours, in the event of no appearance of the pursuit. When Hal awoke with a start, therefore, and yet heard no such hallooing as Anthony had given at Catworth, he supposed that Kit must have summoned him by a less alarming cry. His head shot out of the window, but he beheld no Kit. Turning to Anthony, he saw that the Puritan had just opened his eyes.
"Didst hear anything?" queried Hal.
"Not sith I awoke," was the answer. "Yet meseems in my sleep there was a loud grating sound and a terrific crash."
"In our dreams we multiply the sounds that touch our ears," said Hal. "It must have been a sound of omen, to have waked us both. So let us think of a small grating sound—"
At that instant his eyes alighted on the door. He would have sworn a key had been in that door, though he had not locked it before sleeping. He had noticed the key for its great size and rustiness. But no key was there now, at least on the inside. Hal strode from the bed, and tried the door. It was locked.
"How now?" quoth he. "Some one has robbedus of our key, and used it on the wrong side of the door!"
"I warrant it should be no far seeking to find that some one," growled Anthony, rising to his feet.
"Ay," said Hal, "'tis just the shallow, childish stop-nobody thing a woman would do, and think she hath played a fine trick! Come, Anthony,"—Hal spoke the Puritan's name not superciliously now, for he was beginning to like a fellow who could toil forward so uncomplainingly through fatigue and danger, yet make such full use of comforts when they fell to him,—"I see Captain Bottle riding hither, at a walk. That means 'tis four o'clock, though Master Barnet hath not yet shown his face. We must be taking horse again."
And he dropped out of the window to the porch roof, let himself down a corner-post, and stood in the inn yard. Anne's horses were still there. As soon as Anthony was beside him, Hal stepped into the entrance-passage. At the stair-foot stood Mistress Hazlehurst, her back to the door, giving some swift and excited commands to her page, Francis, who was ready to ride.
She turned to see who had entered the inn. On perceiving it was Hal, and that his face wore an involuntary quizzical smile, she caught her breath, and became the very picture of defeat and self-discovered foolishness.
"Have you seen aught of a key I lost?" said Hal, ere he thought. "I need it to unlock my door and get out of my room, as I am in some haste!"
She turned deep crimson at the jest; her eyes shot a glance of fire, her lips closed tight; and, without a word, she glided past him, and out to her horses. He saw in her look a new sense of the insufficiency of easy and obvious means, and a resolution to rise to the needs of her purpose.
"Her eyes are opened," mused Hal, following her and Francis to the yard. "Her next step is like to be more considerable!"
Meeting Kit and the horses just within the inn yard gate, Hal and Anthony mounted. Anne and her Page_were prompt to follow their example. With courtesy, Hal held back his horses for her to precede him out to the road. A minute afterward the five riders, so strangely brought into a single group, were pushing northward in the cold, waning afternoon.
She had slept some, and was the better for the food she had taken. Yet this riding was manifestly a wearier business than it could have been at the time of her setting out. It was a chilly business, too, for March had begun to turn out very January-like, and was steadily becoming more so. The look of dogged endurance that mingled on her face withthe new resolution there, continually touched Hal's tender and pitying side. His countenance as continually showed his feelings, and she perceived them with deep and ill-concealed resentment.
But she at last attained a degree of stolid iciness at which she remained. It imposed upon Hal, riding at her side, a silence that became the harder to break as it became the less bearable. And the further she tried to put herself out of his pity, the greater his pity grew, for the effort she was required to make. The more his admiration increased, too; and if pity is ever akin to love, it is certainly so when united to admiration. Her determination had not the mannish mien, nor her dislike the acrid, ill-bred aspect that would have repelled; they were of the womanly and high-born character that made them rather pique and allure. Partly to provoke her feelings to some change of phase, partly to elicit relief from the impassiveness in which she had sought refuge, partly for the cruel pleasure sometimes inexplicably found in torturing the tender and beautiful,—a pleasure followed by penitence as keen,—he made two or three delicate jests about the locked door; these were received with momentary glints of rage from her dark eyes, succeeded by coldness more freezing than before.
The silence created—and diffused—by her enveloped the whole party, making the ride even morebleak than it was already from the wintry day and the loneliness of the road. It was bad weather for travelling, less by reason of the present cold than of the signs of impending storm. "There is snow in the air," growled Anthony Underhill to himself, as if he smelled it. Of the country through which they passed, the most was open, only the pasture-land and the grounds pertaining immediately to gentlemen's houses being fenced. Enclosures were a new thing in those days, defended by the raisers of sheep and cattle, bewailed by the farmers who tilled the soil. Where the road did not run between woods or over wild moors, it gave views of far-off sheep-cotes, of mills, and here and there of distant castle-towers, or the gables of some squire's rambling manor-house; or it passed through straggling villages, each with a central green having a may-pole and an open pool.
But most human life was indoors upon this evening of belated winter; still and brown was the landscape. Once, soon after they had passed from Rutlandshire into Leicestershire, a burst of yokelish laughter struck their ears from among some trees, like a sudden ray of light and warmth in a cold, dead world. It came from some yeomen's sons who were destroying the eggs of birds of prey. The population of Melton Mowbray was housed and at supper, as they rode through that town in the early dusk without stop.
On into Nottinghamshire they went; and at last, checked alike by darkness and by weariness, they came to a halt before a little, low, wobbly-looking wood-and-plaster inn at the junction of the Nottingham road with the cross-road to Newark.
CHAPTER XI.WINE AND SONG.
"He's in the third degree of drink; he's drowned."—Twelfth Night.
Theinn people coming forth with a light, Hal made similar arrangements to those effected at his two previous stopping-places, with this difference, that he himself was to watch for two hours, and then be succeeded by Anthony. Anne could not exactly repeat her precautions taken at Oakham, for Hal procured the only available fresh horses before she applied for any; nor could she arrange that her own horses should be held in readiness before the inn. She caused them, however, to be fed and kept in an unlocked shed, from which her Page_might speedily take them out; and she was successful in bespeaking information in case of the enemy's departure.
Though Hal left her sight in riding back to keep watch, she now knew that he would not flee without calling his attendants, nor could he continue his flight in either practicable direction—toward Nottingham or toward Newark—without passing theinn. So she went to her room—one of the few with which the low upper story of the house was provided—in confident mind, stationing Francis on a bench where he might, in a state of half slumber, watch the door of Kit and Anthony. As for the window of the room taken by these two, it was not far from her own, and by keeping the latter open she counted upon hearing any exit made through the former. She lay down, and dozed wakefully.
Hal's watch was without event. As he moved up and down the silent road with his horses, he continued to ask himself whether she might yet have formed a plan of action against him; and from this question he fell to considering what plan might be possible. He tried to devise one for her, but could invent none that he saw himself unable to defeat.
He returned to the inn at the end of his two hours, and summoned Anthony by a whistle previously agreed upon. Anthony came down by the stairs, and went silently on guard. Hal, who had not yet eaten, now entered the inn with a ready appetite for the supper he had previously ordered. As he stepped from the outer wind into the passage, he noticed that the door was open which led thence to the inn parlor. Just within that door stood a figure. He glanced at it. By the light of the candles farther in the room, he saw that it was Mistress Hazlehurst.
"Sir," she said to him, in a dry tone, which, as also her face, she tried to rob of all expression save that of ordinary, indifferent civility, "I learn you bespoke supper to be sent to your room. I am having mine own served here. We have full understanding of each other's intent. There is open warfare between us. Yet while we be fellow travellers, each set upon the other's defeat, meseems we should as well comport ourselves as fellow travellers till one win the other's undoing. Though writ down in blood as bitter foes, in birth we are equal, and our lands are neighbor. So I do offer that we sup together, as becometh people of civility upon the same journey, though enemies they be to the death."
To this proposal, so congenial with his inclinations, what could Master Marryott do but forthwith assent, too dazzled by the prospect to torture his brain for a likely motive on her part? With a "Right readily, mistress!" he hastened to give the necessary orders, and then entered the parlor, which had no occupant but Mistress Anne. The last tippler of the night had sought his bed.
At one side of the low room was a fire in a wide hearth. At another side, beneath a deep, long, horizontal window was a table, on which some dishes were already set. The floor was covered with stale rushes. There were no hangings on the besmoked, plastered, timbered walls. The poor candles sheda wavering light. This was no Mermaid tavern, indeed. Yet Hal felt mightily, dangerously comfortable here.
He opened a casement a little, that he might hear any alarm from Anthony, and then he sat down at the table, opposite Anne. He saw that Francis, who seemed of wire, and proof against fatigue and lack of sleep, stood ready to wait upon his mistress. He saw, too, that her wine was placed on a rude kind of sideboard, to be served from thence each time a sip might be wanted, as in the private houses of gentlefolk. When a tapster came, sleepy and muttering to himself, with Hal's wine, Master Marryott ordered it put as the lady's was; and then Mistress Hazlehurst proposed, in the manner she had used before, that the inn servant be dismissed and Francis wait upon them both.
"It is but fair repayment," she added, "for the protection I receive upon the road by the presence of your men."
Hal was nothing loath. He would not show suspicion, if he felt any, at being invited to be left alone with his enemy and her servant. Francis was but a slip of a boy,—and yet, in his tirelessness, his reposeful manner, his discreet look, the closeness of his mouth, there was sufficient of the undisclosed, of the possibly latent, to put a wise man on his guard. Hal kept a corner of his eye upon the page,therefore, while with the rest of it he studied the fine face and graceful motions—motions the more effective for being few—of the page's mistress.
The early part of the meal went in silence, Francis attending to the dishes and serving the wine noiselessly, with neither haste nor tardiness. Hal saw in the looks of both lady and Page_the reviving effects of a short sleep and of cold water. Anne ate, not as if hungry, but as if providing against possible exposure and fasting. That Francis might not have to depart unfed, she bade him partake of certain dishes as he bore them from before her. He contrived to do this, and yet to see that Master Marryott never wanted for wine.
And, indeed, Master Marryott, warmed, comforted, made to see things rosily, put into mood of rare good-feeling and admiration, kept Francis busy and busier between the sideboard and the wine-cup at Hal's hand. Finally, the page, when he should have taken the flagon back to the sideboard, set it down on the table, that he might thereafter fill the cup without even the loss of time involved in traversing the rush-covered floor. Was this the boy's own happy thought, or was it in obedience to a meaning glance from his mistress? Hal did not query himself on this point; he had observed no meaning glance. He was entering the seventh heaven of wine; it seemed the most natural thing in the world that heshould find the flagon constantly at his elbow. And suddenly this silence, so long maintained, appeared absurd, unaccountable. God-'a'-mercy! why should people sit tongue-tied in this manner? Wherefore he spoke:
"Truly 'twas well thought on that we might use civil courtesy between us, enemies though you will have us! 'Tis like the exchange of gentleness 'twixt our noblest soldiers and those of Spain, in times of truce, or even in the breathing moments 'tween sword-thrusts. Truly, courtesy sweeteneth all transactions, even those of enmity and warfare! 'Tis like this wine that giveth a soft and pleasing hue, as of its own color, to all one sees and hears when one has drunk of it. Taste it, madam, I pray. Your glass hath not been once refilled. Nay, an you spare the wine so, I shall say you but half act upon your own offer!"
She drank what remained in her cup, and let Francis fill it again.
"No doubt the ladies of France drink more wine than we of England," she said, as if at the same time to account for his importunity and her moderation. He perceived the allusion to Sir Valentine's long residence in France, and was put on his guard against betraying himself. He ought to have taken more into mind that she regarded him as her brother's slayer, and that her tone was strangely urbanefor such regarding, even though courtesy had been agreed upon. But by this time he had too much wine in. He had long since exhausted the contents of his own flagon, and was now being served from hers.
"The ladies of France," he replied, "are none the better of the ladies of England for that."
"I have heard there is a certain facility and grace in them, that we lack," she answered, having noticed that he drank at the end of each speech he made.
"It may be," he said, "but 'tis the facility and grace of the cat, with claws and teeth at the back of it." He had to speak of French ladies entirely from hearsay. "For softness, united with strength and candor, for amplitude and warmth of heart, commend me to the English ladies." Euphuism was still the fashion, and people of breeding had the knack of conversing offhand in sentences that would now seem studied.
The cup-lifting that followed this remark was accompanied by so direct a look at her that she could not but know for which particular English lady the compliment was intended. She gave no outward sign of anger.
"The French excel us in their wine, at least," she replied, sipping from her cup as if to demonstrate the sincerity of her words,—an action that instantly moved Master Hal to further and deeper potations.
i001
"SHE GAVE NO OUTWARD SIGN OF ANGER."
"Why, I should be an ingrate to gainsay that," said he. "Tis indeed matter for thanks that we, sitting by night in this lone country ale-house,—'tis little better,—with the March wind howling wolf-like without, may imbibe, and cheer our souls with, the sunlight that hath fallen in past years upon French hillsides. But we should be churls to despise the vineyards of Spain or Italy, either! Or the Rhenish, that hath gladdened so many a heart and begot so many a song! Lovest thou music, madam?"
She kept a startled silence for a moment, at a loss how to receive the change from "you" to "thou" in his style of addressing her. In truth the familiarity was on his part unpremeditated and innocent. But, for another reason than that, she speedily decided to overlook it, and she answered, in words that gave Hal a sudden thrill, for they were those of one of Master Shakespeare's own comedies, often played by the company:
"The man that hath no music in himself.Nor is not moved with concord of sweet soundsIs fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils."
She paused here, as if struck with the thought that the speech might not be known to the Catholic knight.
"'Tis Lorenzo's speech in 'The Merchant,'" saidHal, quite ecstatic. "I—" he caught himself in time to avoid saying, "know the part by heart, having studied it in hope of some-day playing it," and added, instead, "saw the comedy in London when 'twas first played, and a friend sent me a book of it last year, that he bought in Paul's Churchyard. Thou'st seen the play, I ween."
"And read it," she answered, this time filling his glass herself, for Francis had stolen from the room with a flagon in quest of more wine at the bar.
"Know'st thou the full speech," said he, "beginning, 'How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank'?" Without waiting for an answer, and being now in the vinous rage for reciting, he went on through the scene to its interruption by the entrance of Portia and Nerissa. It was nothing wonderful, in those days, that a gentleman should speak verse well; yet she viewed him with some astonishment, in which was a first faint touch of regret that circumstance made this man, in whom otherwise she might find certain admirable qualities, irrevocably her foe, to become inevitably her victim. This regret she instantly put from her, and set herself the more to plying him with wine.
"I'll warrant thou hast music at the end of thy tongue, and of thy fingers also," said Hal. "Would there were an instrument here! Heavenly must be the offspring, when such hands wed string of lute, orkey of virginal! But thy lips are here. Wilt sing? All are abed. I prithee, a song!"
"Nay, 'twere better you should sing," she answered, by way of evading a course of importunities, and seeing that he was in ripe mood for compliance.
"Willingly, an thou'lt engage to sing in thy turn," he replied.
She gave her promise, thinking she would not have to keep it; for when a gentleman in wine becomes vocally inclined, he is apt to go on like a wound-up clock till he be stopped, or till he run down into slumber.
So Hal began, with Shakespeare's "O mistress mine, where are you roaming?" as a song whose line, "That can sing both high and low," was appropriate to their recent subject. And this led naturally to the song "It was a lover and his lass," which in turn called up Ben Jonson's song on a kiss, from the masque of "Cynthia's Revels." Then something gave a convivial shift to Hal's thoughts, and he offered King Henry VIII.'s "Pastime with good company," from which he went to the old drinking song from "Gammer Gurton's Needle."
Mistress Hazlehurst, having perceived that singing hindered his drinking, though each lapse between songs was filled with a hasty draught, was now willing enough to keep her promise; and she made bold to remind him of it. He was quite eager to hearher, though it should require silence on his own part. She sang Shakespeare's "When icicles hang by the wall," in a low and melodious voice, of much beauty in a limited range,—a voice of the same quality as her ordinary speaking tones. Seeing that Hal, who gazed in admiration, broke his own inaction by constant applications to the flagon, which the clever Francis had succeeded in filling at the bar, she followed this song immediately with "Blow, blow, thou winter wind."
Hal was now ready to volunteer with "Under the greenwood tree," but she cut him short, and drove him to repeated uses of the cup, by starting John Heywood's song of "The green willow," which she selected as suiting her purpose by reason of its great length.
When this was at last finished, Hal, who had been regarding her steadily with eyes that sometimes blinked for drowsiness, opened his mouth to put in practice a compliment he had for some minutes been meditating,—that of singing "Who is Sylvia?" in such manner as should imply that Mistress Hazlehurst embodied all the excellences of her who "excelled each mortal thing upon the dull earth dwelling." She silenced him at the outset by taking up Heywood's "Be merry, friends," at which, despite how much he admired her face and was thrilled by her voice, he sat back in resignation; for the old songshe had this time hit upon was as nearly endless as it was monotonous. Hal's nurse had many times droned him to sleep with it, in his infancy.
And now its somnolent effect was as great as ever. Save for her voice, in the unvarying rhythm of the countless four-line stanzas marked by the refrain. "Be merry, friends!" at the end of each, and for a frequent moan or whine of the wind without, the utmost stillness reigned. Francis had effaced himself on a high-backed seat in a dark corner of the fireplace. The candles burned dimly for want of snuffing, and they were just so far from Hal's arm that, in his drowsy state, it was too great an effort to reach them. Indeed, it had now become too great an effort to draw the wine flagon toward him. His brain swam a little. He sat back limp in his oaken settle, his head fell more and more heavily toward his breast. Things became vaguer and vaguer before him; the face from whose lips the soporific melody proceeded was blended more and more with the ambient shadows. His eyelids closed.
She continued the song more softly, a triumphant light slowly increasing in her eyes. At last her voice was still. The supposed Sir Valentine moved not, lifted not his head, opened not his eyes. Only his regular breathing, the heavy breathing of vinous stupor, was heard in the room.
Mistress Hazlehurst rose without noise.
"He will not be in riding mood for ten hours to come," she said, quietly, to Francis. "An his men waken him, he'll be for calling them hard names, and off to sleep again! God-'a'-mercy, what an ocean of wine hath he swallowed in three short hours! Come. Francis, we may sleep with ease of mind to-night. He is stayed beyond even the will to go on. And I thank heaven, for I am well-nigh as drowsy, and as loath to ride in this weather, as he must be!"
It was sleepily indeed that she stepped, with as little sound as could be, over the crackling rushes to the door. To keep her enemy in the drinking mood, and to dissemble her purpose, she had taken an unusual quantity of wine herself. Ladies did not drink as much in Elizabeth's outwardly decent reign as they came to drink a few years later, under ScottishJeames, when, if Sir John Harrington lied not in 1606, those of the court did "abandon their sobriety" and were "seen to roll about in intoxication." And Mistress Hazlehurst was the last woman in the world to violate the prevalent seemliness under the virgin queen. But she had sipped enough to augment the languor induced by her recent exertions. She put a hand upon the door-post to support herself as she approached it.
There was a wild, swift beating of horses' hoofs on the road outside; an abrupt stop just before theinn; a shrill whistle, and this shout from Anthony Underhill:
"What, ho! Halloo, halloo!"
Hal raised his head, and looked drowsily around with blinking eyes. There was a noise overhead of a heavy tread,—that of Captain Bottle, responding to the alarm. In a trice old Kit was heard clearing the stairs at a bound, and then seen dashing through the passage and out into the darkness. He had unbarred the outer door with a single movement.
Hal stared inquiringly at Mistress Hazlehurst. Her eyes had a glow of confident expectation. That was her blunder.
Her look told him all,—that she had supped with him, sung for him, incited him to drink, in order that he might be unfit for flight or action. He sprang to his feet, clapped on his hat, threw off his tipsiness with one backward jerk of the shoulders; was himself again, with clear eyes and strong, steady limbs.
"To horse, madam, if you would still ride with us!" he cried. "I have some thirty miles or so to go to-night!"
And he strode past her, and out after Kit Bottle.
"'Tis Barnet's men, methinks, by the sound of the horses yonder," said Anthony, composedly, pointing southward, as Hal rose into the saddle.
Hal looked back toward the open door of the inn.In a moment Anne came out with Francis, who ran at once to the shed wherein her horses were.
In the doorway between parlor and passage she had undergone a moment of sickening chagrin. Not only had she failed ridiculously a second time, but she must now abandon her clutch upon her enemy, or face with him that thirty miles of night ride in biting weather! Francis looked at her for commands. She tightened her lips again, imitated Hal's own motion of casting away lassitude, drew her cloak close around her, put up her hood, and hastened out to the windy night.
Hal made great stir with his horses before moving off, that the inn people might be awakened and some of them note which road he took. This precaution, used for the benefit of Roger Barnet, gave Anne time to join Hal's party.
When the pursuivant and his fellows rode up, soon afterward, on half dead horses, that stumbled before the inn, the fugitives were well forward on the Nottingham road. It was a bitter, black night.
"Fellow travellers still!" quoth Master Marryott, to the dark figure that rode galloping, with flying cloak, beside him.
"And shall be till I see you caught, though I must ride sleepless till I drop!" was the reply.