So as long as our messenger, between the draughts of his ale fetched him by Prudence with hands as willing as the pouting mouth would fain have shown her reluctant, would descant of the black chargers, the black armor, the great broadswords, and the furred cloaks of this same Swedish cavalry, I listened as eagerly as my father had done to it all. And as the man dwelt on the gallant show they did make I was plotting to bring him to some mention of what I doubted not was among them the gallantest figure of all, but was prevented by my father asking if Mr. Kidd would ride the same road again, and carry a letter to His Highness of Orange. "With the best meal we can make you on short notice, Mr. Kidd, to comfort you within, and the best nag in Drayton stables between your knees?" said Sir Michael, in conclusion of his request.
Christopher Kidd was ready enough not only to oblige Sir Michael, but also, I believe, to return to the great sights and doings of which his mouth was so full; so, he being despatched in care of Prudence to be fed, I was left with my father. And when I had given him his writing things he opened his mind a little to me.
"I had gathered from Kidd, before you entered," he said, "that the common people are ready to do all and risk all for the Prince, but that since he landed no man of substance and gentry has joined his army." And here for a moment he did bite the feather of his pen, and looked in my face, so that I knew that the mind that was now long made up still felt pain to tell its resolve. Then he went on thus: "You that know me so well, little daughter Phil, have guessed, I do not doubt, this many a day how my mind was going in these matters. And seeing that it was decided, contrary to the use and belief of my life, in favor of His Highness before ever he came, I cannot now in honor hang back. It cannot be recruits for rank and file, raw soldiers at the best, that he needs, with such an army at his back; but I believe it is rather the countenance and support of the solid men of the country he asks, to take from his presence the odious seeming of invasion. And I am in great fear it may all miscarry, even as Monmouth's wicked business, on account of the behavior of those who, willing to bring, yet fear to welcome His Highness. You have, I do think, partly seen what it has cost your old Cavalier father to adopt a part against his old master's son. But it would cost me more if my hand were not as good as my thought. Yet, if I so make it, I risk all that is yours who but enter upon life,—little for myself whose sands are at the last falling grains. Sedgemoor, Kirke, Jeffreys, were summer-evening ripples on a mill-pond to the storm that is coming, if His Highness meet defeat in the field or abandon his undertaking, which last I take it he is like enough to do, if forced to the appearance of a foreign enemy. I did purpose now writing a letter to His Highness. The act will be mine, but the danger, my daughter, will be yours. How shall it be?"
I pushed the inkhorn to him over the table.
"Write, dear sir," I said. "Your hand shall not fail your thought for me. And I would mine," I added, putting a hand in his, "were as strong for the cause my heart holds the better as yours has ever been."
He looked in my face as he took it, and the old gleam flashed a moment in his age-saddened eyes.
"My lass," he said, "there 's Drayton in you for two men," and began to write forthwith; but soon paused, saying: "Wilt run, child, to the stable, and choose for Mr. Kidd? We have here no better head for horseflesh, and my old piece cannot keep these new nags well distinguished." And as I reached the door he called after me that I should not give him Skewbald Meg, whose appearance would do little honor to his errand or His Highness of Orange. And I cried back that poor Meg would break her heart with the weight of the man, and so to the stable. For, since her midnight ride to Lyme, I was never pleased that any but I should mount the mare.
And when I returned to my father the letter was written, which he would have me read. As I remember, it ran in this way:
"YOUR HIGHNESS,—I have within this hour in which I write received the certain news of Your Highness's coming into England. Without delay, then, I do myself the honor to inform Your Highness that I have attached myself and my household to his party and interest. The reasons that have led me to this are for the most part set out in that noble declaration published by Your Highness before his coming among us. Yet it is not without great pain that I, an old servant and soldier of Your Highness's grandfather of blessed memory, King Charles I., find myself inditing an epistle that sets me in a manner at war with his son. It is written with a hand that now finds the pen heavier than the sword was wont to be. I am too old and too infirm to pay to Your Highness in person the respect I feel. And I am too old a soldier to embarrass Your Highness's encampment with even my small body of men; it is possible they are not needed. Yet Your Highness is to know that they are to the number of a dozen, at his command, living meantime at free quarters, and getting such drill and practice in arms and evolutions, both men and beasts, as two old-fashioned soldiers can give. May God use Your Highness as you shall use this unhappy land. Your Highness's most respectful and obedient servant,
"M. DRAYTON."
And this letter, somewhat proud in its tones, as I thought (but not one word of it would Sir Michael change), reached the hand of the Prince by that of Christopher Kidd early upon the following morning, which was Sunday. It seems, from what I afterwards heard, that being deep in affairs His Highness did not break the seal until after the great and solemn service in the cathedral that was that morning held.
Now the bishop had fled to London before the gates of Exeter were opened to the Prince. The dean had followed him, and from this service the canons of the chapter carefully abstained themselves. Even the prebendaries and the singers of the choir fled from their stalls on the first words of Dr. Burnet's reading from the pulpit the Prince's famous Declaration. So, for all the pomp and the noble sermon of that great divine, it was in no mild or pleasant humor that His Highness returned to his lodging at the Deanery. Here chancing to open my father's letter, he took great pleasure in it, remarking to Mr. Bentinck that there was, after all, hope that he had not come in vain, when so stanch and famous a Cavalier as Sir Michael Drayton, of whom he had often heard, did so address him. He sent at once for Christopher Kidd, and very graciously bade him thank Sir Michael for his promptitude, which, he said, had done much to console him in a grievous hour; adding that he would send in good time for his little band, and hoped himself to pass, within some days, so near to Drayton that he might thank him in person. And with this message Christopher returned.
I have been thus particular because I would have it known that my father was the first of that great and distinguished number of gentlemen and noblemen that soon began to flock to the Prince's standard. I know it has been said that Mr. Burrington, of Crediton, was the first that came in, bringing with him a good company of followers. Now it is well known that Mr. Burrington did not arrive in Exeter till the Monday. But Sir Michael Drayton's adhesion to the cause being conveyed by letter, and his men kept a-drilling at his cost until they should be required, has put my dear father's name out of the histories, where it should stand as that of the man who first held out a hand to comfort a great Prince oppressed to despondency of mind by a backwardness that seemed ingratitude.
At an early hour on Monday there were gathered on the level turf that stretched beneath my chamber window some five and twenty men, with as many horses, from whom Sir Michael, with old Emmet to help him, was now to select that twelve he had promised to hold at the service of the Prince. And I thought it a clear mark of my father's nature that he did prefer furnishing a small number, but serviceable, when, had he measured his own importance by the rule that many gentlemen at that time did use, he might have sent a hungry and unruly band three times as great.
From my window the humors of the scene were strange and various, and at first not a little laughable. Simon bustled to and fro, urging and directing stable lads sweating under load after load of armor, and weapons from the hall, the armory, and the steward's room. At last, all being in some manner armed and mounted, they were gotten into a semblance of order, and their instruction and weeding out began. At first, I say, I laughed much at one man's hopeless perplexity in handling together sword and reins, or at another, being undersized and of even less strength than skill, to see him strive in vain to control a fat and lusty charger, fresh from the plough, and grown wanton to feel so little weight upon his back and none at his tail. But, as one after another these were discarded and went their ways, some in evident dudgeon and others in as plain relief of mind, and as the dwindling number grew even more martial in mount, bearing, and accoutrement, the sight did begin to make some corresponding emotion in my heart; and I almost found myself wishing that I had been born a man, the more that my dear father had that same morning lamented there was none of Drayton blood to lead the little band. He had let drop, too, some words, as bitter as few, of my brother Philip, and had told me then, for the first time, how my mother's two children did come to bear one name.
"Your mother bore her first child, little Phil," he said, "in the early days of the horse-breeding that has brought us so much wealth. And I loved the beasts, spending once my last guineas and the price of a farm besides to bring to my stud the Barbary sire you remember. So when I knew it was a man child I called him Philip, saying he should love horses as his father, and do great things for the breed, and his name be famous in England. And as he grew 't was harder to get him inside a stable than to keep most lads without it. To this day I know not if he would distinguish your ugly Meg from the noblest charger of His Highness of Orange. When ten years were gone, and there was again hope for us, I said, if it prove a girl, we 'll e'en try the name on her. And give it you I did, with a little tag or handle to mark you woman. Poor child," he added kindly, yet sorrowfully, "'t is not thy fault thou hast the wrong sex, and, Gad 's my life! you have been a better son to me than Philip."
"And I love horses, sir," I answered, "and, indeed, many other things that my Lady Mary will ever say are not women's matters." Whereupon we laughed at Lady Mary a little, and the matter dropped, as he went to the muster. But I knew he felt in great need of a son that day, or he had never come so near throwing reproach on me that he loved so well for a fault that at another time he would not have had me change for a man's best virtue. Yet, as I gazed from the window at this threshing and winnowing of men, to make of them soldiers, the memory of that reproach rankled a little in me, and a small plot began to take form.
At the time when I commenced housewife at home I had in a disused chamber above found a closet filled with clothes once worn by my half-brothers of the elder family that I had come into the world too late to know. These were the only relics, I believe, of three good and honest gentlemen that, in the strange and ghostly manner of a child as I then was, I reverenced much, and even contrived to love a little; I had therefore rescued many of these garments from the moth, and, deciding in my mind by the varying fashions and much guess-work to which brother the different pieces had belonged, bestowed them in three ordered piles in a wide shelf of my great oak press. "So these," I would say, as I brushed and folded them once a month, "were Henry's; these Maurice used to wear." And I always held that the morion and the back- and breast-pieces, which were all the armor found with the clothes, had belonged to Rupert. For they were wondrous small for a man, and I knew he had been the least of them all in stature, and had scarce attained his full growth when he fell at Salisbury.
Now, in my excitement with the martial sounds without, and a good part, I doubt not, in mischief that meant going no further than gently avenging his slight of my sex upon my father, I suddenly thought of this wardrobe so little proper to a young maid's chamber; and at once began with trembling hands to choose from my store such garments as I thought would best become the son my father wished me, giving, I doubt not, an undue value to color and to that size which nearest approached my own, and little to coherence of fashion.
The troop were now reduced to eleven, for Christopher Kidd, making the twelfth, and having leave of absence after his services to my father in riding to Exeter, was expected to return from his farm but for the afternoon's drill; lacking whom, the rest had been dismissed for dinner at noon, which was the hour when I began so unmaidenly to dress myself out in my dead brothers' clothes. It was a business that occupied me longer than I had thought for, and when it came to the boots and the armor I wished I had Prue's nimble fingers to help me. But she, I knew, though she would never have confessed so much, was somewhere watching for the return of Christopher. At last, however, I made shift to fasten together about me the back- and breast-pieces; for the boots, I stuffed the toes of each with an handkerchief, and so made them sit passably well, the practising which device called to my mind how in the dark I had done the same for Ned to the filthy brogues he wore in leaving us. So, being dressed at all points to my satisfaction, the next thing was to contrive reaching the stables unobserved. For this my reasons were two: I knew the men would soon reassemble, and wished, in my folly, to take part in their evolutions in such manner that none could forbid without openly chiding me before the yokels; which I knew neither my father nor Emmet would do, whatever their censures might be in private. But far stronger was the other reason for privacy. Being now ready, I began to feel shame of what I was doing, and, being too petulant and obstinate to give it up, I felt that a horse beneath me and the necessity of handling him in unwonted movements would do near as much to cover my shyness as the skirt I lacked.
Whether this be clear to a masculine reader or no, confident I was of a lessened sense of bareness, and so of greater boldness in the saddle. Hearing, then, the bugle blown without, and seeing the men canter up by ones and twos from the stable, the few old soldiers among them roundly cursing the laggards, I opened my chamber door, peeped up and down the gallery, and made a bold run for the head of the great stair. That it was before I reached it my sword, catching between my legs, did fling me prone, I must ever thank Providence. Had it happened in my descent with the same force, I had broken my neck at the foot of the stair. For, though I could handle the small-sword, and even the heavier weapon of a soldier, "passably well for a maid," as Mr. Royston did use to say in the days when he taught me something of fence, yet never before, even in our games, had I worn one hung from my side. I picked myself up more shamefaced than hurt, and made my way sneakingly and gingerly, holding my sword in my left hand, down the stair and into the great hall, making for its further door which leads to the kitchens. I was already half-way toward it, walking most cat-like in that shyness so little fitted to my garb and action, when I heard the heaving of a great sigh. Turning my head, I saw, at the further end of the hall, standing with his back to me, and gazing from a window, a man dressed in sad-colored clothes. More quickly, I suppose, than the stranger could turn to observe me, I was through the door and in the flagged gallery that leads to the kitchens and pantries. Cutting across this gallery is a shorter one leading to a side door of entrance to the house, and as I drew near this I heard voices at the outer door. At once I knew the speakers for Prue and Christopher Kidd, and now more than ever did I feel that the salvation of my plan was to get me astride of a good horse; I would not, even to save changing my mind, a thing always hateful to me, be seen walking thus dressed. So, coming silently to a stand in hope that they would move away, I was for some minutes an involuntary eavesdropper. The stables were opposite this same door, with a paved yard between, and I could tell by the sound of hoof on stone that Mr. Kidd was mounted and on his way to the muster on the other side of the house. But I believe that he had learned since his first return from Exeter that it was ill policy to hide fresh news, good or bad, from little Prudence. Yet did he make some show of resistance. The first words that I clearly heard were his:
"But where is Sir Michael? I have news."
"News good or ill, Mr. Kidd?" says Prue.
"That is for him to say," replied Kidd. "Are they at the exercises, mistress?"
"Nay, but Mr. Kidd—Christopher," said the little rogue, in tones most winning and persuasive, "will you not dismount and stay a while to pleasure me? Shall I fetch you a horn of ale?" Then there was silence for a little space, and I could fancy her little red and pouting mouth turned up to the man in such wise that it could scarce be three heart-beats ere his spurs would ring on the flags. Nor was it. And then she continued: "And the news, Mr. Kidd? Perhaps it would not taint it if my lips should sip it first." And so a pause, and a little soft sound of kissing, with a small scream of formal hypocrisy.
Then Christopher: "Faith, mistress, a kiss from you would win all things from a man, even to his soul's health, let alone a trifle of news."
"I gave you no kiss," says Prue, saucily enough; "you did but take it."
"Then take my news," quoth Kidd, with a stride, I thought, towards his horse. And then, I think, she did buy his news, and pay in advance. For although I cannot say that this time I heard the ring of the coin, yet Christopher's next words showed him proceeding to delivery of the goods. "You know, mistress, that Sir Michael would have me lead these men to the Prince when he shall call on them. So I have been to the farm to settle things for a long absence. I thought my nag here well recovered of his last week's ride to Exeter and beyond, but find there is little spirit left in him, and was ambling gently down the old road by the water-mill about an hour back, and cursing both luck and horse to be late for the work a-doing here, when there comes by a great coach, with much foul speech and cracking of whips. And whose face dost think I saw looking from the window, all drawn and wan?"
"Oh, I know not," said Prue, in anger of impatience; "tell me, and quickly."
"Well, 't was Madam Royston," says Christopher.
"Lady Mary!" says Prue, with a little gasp. "What did she there?"
"'T is the very thing I would know, dear lass," replied Kidd. "The fellows round her were ill-looking, and she was about calling to me when she was dragged back within the coach."
"Well, you are a man," cried Prue, raising her voice in excitement. "What did you do?"
"Little to purpose, sweetheart," answered Kidd; and, though I was as eager now as little Prue to hear more, I could have laughed to note how the man took advantage of her emotion to edge in these lover's terms unchecked; "I spurred after them, but a fellow on a sorrel nag turned and drew a great pistol and let fly at me. Do but see the hole his ball made in my coat." And here I heard a very genuine cry of fear from Prudence. And Kidd went on, with a slight note of exultation in his voice, the result, I do not doubt, of her perturbation. "It did me no hurt, though it wanted but little, as you see, of sending me where I could never again see the prettiest maid in three counties. Well, that shot angered me, and I made at him. But he was the better mounted, and leapt his horse over the hedge, and so away over the fields, while I pounded heavily after on my tired beast. When I gave over, the coach was far and my nag well-nigh foundered. But one thing I learned of him."
"Ay," cried Prue eagerly, "and that was——"
"That he was no true man, but a devilish priest of Rome."
"O Mr. Kidd," says Prue, "how you will ever be frighting a poor girl! How knew you that?"
"As he leapt the hedge," said Kidd, "being a bad horseman, he was near losing his seat. Arrived the other side, he saved himself by clutching at the sorrel's mane, and in that had almost lost both hat and his red wig but for clutching at those in turn. But as the wig shifted I saw his own hair, dark and short, and a little round place atop, bald and shaven. A priest he is, and Sir Michael loves not such cattle on his land. So indeed, dear Mistress Prudence, I must find and tell him what is doing. Will you not grant me but one more? My news was worth it."
Whatever it were he asked, I do suppose he shortly obtained it, for very soon I heard upon the stones the hoofs of his departing horse. Hoping that Prudence would follow him round the back of the house to see him join the little troop at exercise, I thought this was the moment for pressing on to the stables. So, wisely tucking my sword again under my arm, I made a run for it, which took me round the corner and fairly into the arms of Prudence, whom I clutched firm and close in my own to save us both a fall. At first her fright to be so suddenly seized in the arms, as she thought, of some ruffling gallant was luckily too great to let a sound escape her; and when I loosed my hold and clapped my hand upon her mouth, it began slowly to dawn upon the terror-struck eyes raised to mine in mute appeal that 't was none but I; whereupon, being released, she fell to laughing most consumedly, pointing at me the while a most derisive finger, till I could not but think all was not well with my unaccustomed attire, and shrank together and cringed from her in fashion most unmanlike.
And, when she could for laughing, "Oh, dear Mistress Phil!" she cried, "whatever your plan in this pretty masquerade, none will take you for a man if you do stand so."
Which did but add anger to my desire of carrying through my plan; so that, drawing my body most martially erect, and seizing her by the shoulder with my left hand, I raised the other as if to cuff her, and threatened as much if she did not hold her peace and immediately lend me her aid. And this did mightily sober the girl, who, seeing me so terrible, ran out at my bidding to the stable, returning quickly with the news that there was not a man about the place, all being gone to see the drilling. Very bravely I then swaggered across the yard and in among the horses that were left. And there Prudence followed, panting with excitement and, as soon appeared, not without admiration of my assumption of manhood.
"Oh, but indeed I ask your pardon, dear Mistress Phil," she cried, "for so laughing at the figure you made. If you but carry it thus none who does not know you for Mistress Philippa Drayton will know you are not a man. Do but let me set your beautiful hair more in fashion of the great wigs Mr. Kidd tells me are worn by the gentlemen, even on horseback and in armor." And with a great coarse stable comb she pulled and twisted till she had my hair, which for the first time I was glad grew not so long as thick, to hang evenly round the shoulders behind, and over them in front in two heavy curling masses.
"And now for a horse," I said, when this was done. It took no long time to see that my choice lay between Meg, that I have already told of, and Roan Charley, a gelding of no great size but great beauty of proportion. He was grandson of that Barbary sire my father had purchased so dear to enrich his stock. Roan Charley had to the full the spirit and much of the fleetness of the Drayton barb, with more bone and greater power in the hinder part; whence it came, I suppose, that he was the best leaper I ever sat, while his grandsire would not, or could not, clear so much as a fallen tree-trunk. He was generally accounted difficult and contrary in handling, but he and I were seldom long in coming at an understanding.
Now for the work I had been watching all morning from my window I had certainly preferred Old Meg, as we had come to call the mare, more from her sure and trusty manners than her years. But, for the odd and elfish look of her, my vanity bade me pass her by and clap my father's best saddle on Charley. At first he gave me some trouble in this, thinking, said Prue, some strange gallant was about stealing him. When he fidgeted a little with his heels Prue screamed, and would not come near to help. The saddle was heavy and the sword mightily in my way, and each time I would have flung the first on Roan Charley's back, round would go his hindquarters, and, as I followed, the sword would again come between my legs and stop me, while he eyed me with teeth gleaming and ears laid back. At last I was fain to set down the saddle and caress him with voice and hand, making love to him till he knew me again, and, indeed, well-nigh said as much. After that, saddling and bridling were soon done, and Charley led into the yard, where, Prue being with much difficulty and in terror of her life persuaded to take him by the head, I was soon upon his back.
Now here, as once or twice before, I must tell of things that I did not know till after they were done. For even though it seem somewhat to break the thread of narrative to leave me running Roan Charley in the park to use him to my handling and my knees to my father's saddle, while I tell of events, some far, and others close at hand but beyond my knowledge, yet I hold it ever more easy for the reader to take his history, public or private, in order of occurrence, and so to hold in his hand all the threads that must knot together at that point for whose sake the story is told. For in life all is so large and complicate as to seem, in the little eye of man, confused and purposeless; and great part, I think, of our joy and interest in living it is found in the unexpected nature of its events. But in those pictures of life furnished us by drama, history, painting, or romance our pleasure is altogether of another kind. Here the artificer, choosing out of the multitudinous mesh threads such only as lead to his particular nodule of the mighty tangle, concerns himself and us with the convergence and final meeting of these; so that, if he but tell and we read aright, we see step by step the working of his little providence. And here our pleasure is not in astonishment, but in truth and sequence reasonably set forth. "This thing is coming," we say; or "That could have fallen no otherwise"; and we read on, and sometimes, perhaps, perceive some glimmer of the order lying in the greater skein. But all this Mr. Telgrove would call plagiarizing; and it comes, indeed, in the first instance, from his head. If he read it ever, he will confess me a better listener than he is wont to think.
Captain Royston's troop was of that portion of the army which, after the pomp of entry into Exeter, had been quartered at Honiton. There, waiting at an equal distance from his own home and the city of Exeter, and unable to get so much as an hour's leave of absence, he fretted not a little at his situation, seeing that the further advance might be undertaken at any moment, and he be carried on the martial tide past both those havens his soul was longing after (but it was one in especial, if what he now saith must be believed). Upon the afternoon of that same Sunday whereon Dr. Burnet preached in the cathedral Captain Royston was surprised by a summons to report himself without delay before His Highness at headquarters. The order was brought by M. de Rondiniacque, a young Huguenot gentleman who had been transferred from a lieutenancy in Ginkel's Regiment to the personal staff of the Prince, on account not only of the charm of his manners and the quickness of his parts, but also, it seems, for the esteem in which his family was held by the veteran Count Schomberg, who, with hundreds of other French gentlemen of high birth and the proscribed religion, had left his country and attached himself to His Highness of Orange. M. de Rondiniacque and Captain Royston had long been fast friends, and both were glad of the ride together, and of such conversation as could be had in fifteen miles of wet and mud, travelled with the hard riding M. de Rondiniacque's orders enjoined. Arrived at the Deanery about seven o'clock of the evening, they were summoned at once to His Highness's presence, where they found beside the Prince none but Mr. William Bentinck.
In regard to the conversation that here took place, I am the better able to give some account of it that I have two narrations to draw upon—Captain Royston's, namely, and M. de Rondiniacque's.
As they entered the room, His Highness, seated at the table, was uttering the last words of a conversation, apparently of some earnestness, with Mr. Bentinck, of which, however, the only words that reached their ears were these: "No, William, no! Where I must trust so much I will trust all. The lad is true, and my interests are his."
These words, spoken in the French language, which the Prince used always with greater fluency and a nearer approach to exactness than the English, showed to Captain Royston with some clearness not only that the talk had been of him, but also that Mr. Bentinck's words, which he had not heard, had been in the nature of a warning. Knowing well that this faithful friend and servant of His Highness had never looked on him with the same favor shown him by the Prince, Captain Royston was as little surprised by the slight he guessed as troubled by the antipathy he knew. And he, being too proud of nature to seek its reason, I was moved one day many months after, and in happier times, to enquire it myself of Mr. Bentinck, who very freely and kindly told me that they had been in Holland no little troubled with an inroad of gallows-birds and broken men seeking asylum under the cloak of persecution suffered for opinions political or religious. Hearing some talk of a man slain in anger, he had rashly (as he said to me he now perceived) classed Mr. Royston with these, and had on two occasions declared himself opposed to his advancement; all which, I can well see, had in it the makings of a very pretty quarrel but for the haughty indifference of Captain Royston, leading him, as it would often do, to contemn and eschew explanation in his own behalf.
The Prince now turned sharply to Captain Royston, and at once informed him that he was chosen for a service of great secrecy. "And I believe, sir," said His Highness, "that I have chosen well. For I know you, Captain Royston, to be a brave man, a bold horseman, and acquainted with this countryside, and believe you a gentleman of honor."
His Highness here pausing as one that asks a question, Captain Royston said very simply that the last head of His Highness's opinion was as true as the two former, as he would know if he saw fit to use him in a matter of delicacy.
On which the Prince continued: "I do not doubt, Captain Royston, that something at least of the difficulty of my position in this disturbed country has been long clear to you. Victory in a pitched field over a proud and unconquered people, to whom I come as a friend invited, will hurt my cause no less than defeat. It is not every man that will act as this old Sir Michael Drayton, who, his mind once determined, is eager to take risk among the first." And here, perceiving the pleasure in Captain Royston's countenance to hear his old friend thus singled out for praise, His Highness enquired did he know that gentleman, and, being answered eagerly that he did, cast upon Mr. Bentinck a little glance of triumph, as a man looks who says, "I told you so." Then, "You have friends of the best, Captain," he continued. "And as it is not given to all to act with the courage of your friend, while there is scarce one but wishes me success in some measure, 't is a plain duty laid upon me to use all means to draw them to me, and so secure a peaceful issue. I have this night received a letter from one high in King James's favor, ennobled by his master, and holding in his army high rank, while he also exercises through his wife much influence upon our sister, the Princess Anne; and so, indirectly, upon her uncles, my Lords Clarendon and Rochester, her cousin-german, Viscount Cornbury—and—and—is it possible," he added, with an odd smile, "that I forget her husband, Prince George of Denmark? Now, in this letter," said His Highness, tapping upon the table with a paper he held folded in his hand, "in which there is much of his attachment to the Protestant religion, but more between the lines, as I read it, of the high price he would have for a firm continuance in that faith, this noble officer proposes coming to terms with us. We shall doubtless have him sooner or later, but sooner is my purpose, for the sake of his following. He has left the royal army, now stationed at Salisbury, and while his escort in two divisions, each of which supposes my Lord C—— to be with the other, is on the way to the capital, he himself with one companion has by this," said the Prince, glancing at the clock, "with forced riding, reached the town of Sherborne, where, under the style of 'Captain Jennings,' he will lie this night at 'The King's Head.' How far, Captain Royston, is this town of Sherborne from our present position?"
For a little time Captain Royston pondered, and then replied that the distance was something over fifty miles.
"And how long," asked His Highness, "would it take you to ride to Sherborne by night, Captain Royston?"
"The roads are very bad, and heavy with the rain, Your Highness," said Captain Royston; "but with a fresh horse from here, a remount from the stables of my troop at Honiton, and a third that I shall doubtless find at my own house of Royston, I will do it in ten hours. If the clouds should break, the moon might help me to better it by an hour."
"And how far is this house of yours, Captain?" asked the Prince.
"Royston Chase and the hamlet of Royston, Your Highness," he answered, "lie midway between Chard and Crewkerne: as the crow flies, some three and thirty miles from Exeter, and half as much, or thereabout, from Sherborne."
"Is it at present inhabited?" says His Highness.
"By my mother and a few old servants," said Royston.
"Is the lady of your mind in politics?" continued His Highness; and being answered that she was, he then asked Captain Royston to do him the honor to be his host on the following day. "I shall go to Chard with Count Schomberg and a troop of cavalry," he said, "to inspect the outposts that lie there, and ostensibly to take notice of the country for purpose of strategy. About two hours after noon we shall arrive and ask hospitality of madam your mother—it may be for the night. Meantime you, Captain Royston, will have conducted Colonel my Lord C——, with all secrecy and discretion, and by hidden paths and byways when possible, to your house, where we can privily accomplish that personal meeting he so much desires, and contrive, I doubt not, to fix the price of his treachery. Mr. Bentinck, sir, considers that I err to trust you so far with my secret purposes. But I intend employing an English gentleman in a service as much to the advantage of his country as of myself, and I would not have him think it is my habit to deal with traitors. While, like yourself, Captain, I vastly prefer the open field to the dark ways of intrigue, yet, in this case, though I am, as the world knows, no Jesuit, I hold the great end in view to justify the means we are to employ. And, when all is said, the private motives of his lordship are no more concern of ours than—than—" he said, pausing with a smile, "than his Protestantism. He is a good soldier, and, if I am any judge, bids fair to be a great one; so I would have him an instrument on the right side."
His Highness then gave to Captain Royston a pass under his own seal, very comprehensive in its terms, laying also before him a like paper sent by Lord C——, bearing the signature, "James R." M. de Rondiniacque has since told me of the lofty manner in which dear Ned would have declined this last. But His Highness insisted with some sharpness, saying: "You will take no escort, Captain, and these scruples are petty. And," he added more kindly, "let us hope that its use, if needed, will prove, after all, in the interest of His Majesty, my uncle. It shall not be our fault, sir, if it do not."
Now since the attempt of one Gerrard and others upon the life of the Prince, Mr. Bentinck had endeavored with a subtlety of precaution truly wonderful to protect his friend and master from such vile and hidden enemies. For, however strongly the instigator might be suspected, the instigation was never proved, and the instruments had control of agencies to the full as cunning and secret as any that Mr. Bentinck, with all his servants and correspondents, could bring to bear. Before Captain Royston, therefore, had gotten himself to horse, this gentleman took occasion to draw him apart, and, laying aside for the moment his wonted ungraciousness of demeanor, warned him privately and kindly that, many bad men being about, and the neighborhood of so large a force offering much opportunity of disguise and concealment to the evilly disposed, it was before all to be desired that no word of His Highness's purposed visit to Royston Chase should go abroad. Captain Royston very civilly thanked him, saying that he was of a like opinion; that not even to that distinguished gentleman to whom his mission was would he impart the name of his destination; but only to madam his mother, should he have the fortune to speak with her that night while changing his horse, would he tell so much as should ensure His Highness a fitting reception.
I am not to give a particular narrative of that tedious, rapid, and cautious ride, for the most part in the dark, from Exeter to Sherborne, but only to touch upon such incidents therein as may serve to throw a little light upon the events that ensued,—events of which the result came so near the tragical that even now a shuddering will accompany their memory.
At the door of the Deanery a fresh and powerful horse awaited him. He was as far as Honiton accompanied upon his road by M. de Rondiniacque, who was entrusted with an order to the colonel of the Swedish Cavalry. As they rode from the Close, his companion pointed out to Captain Royston a fellow that stood at the corner with his back to the wall.
"'T is the same we saw at the ale-house, half-way from Honiton," said M. de Rondiniacque. He then turned his horse and enquired of the sentry that paced the Close a little higher up, did he know that short, stout, and red-haired fellow, or anything of his business; to which the soldier answered that he was something in the way of a sutler, or perhaps a dealer on commission in supplies, to the various messes. And, while M. de Rondiniacque was thus out of ear-shot conferring with the musketeer, the man at the corner betrayed to the eyes of Captain Royston some perturbation of countenance. As the friends continued their road to the left from the mouth of the Close, Captain Royston, turning in the saddle, perceived this loiterer, whom he suspected for a spy, to be already making off swiftly in a contrary direction.
The tedium of the first ten miles was well beguiled by the gaiety of M. de Rondiniacque, and marked by no incident but the sudden passing at full speed of a fine horse mounted by a bold but, as appeared in the brief glance, an ill-seated and inexperienced horseman. A sudden gleam of the moon shining upon this figure as it disappeared round a corner of the road a little in advance of the two officers, M. de Rondiniacque observed that he believed 't was the same fellow with the red head they had already twice that evening encountered. A little later Captain Royston took note that, whoever the reckless rider was, he had either checked his pace or much increased the distance between them, since the sound of his flight was no longer heard. And so for the time the matter passed out of their heads.
The last five miles of the road to Honiton, being in fair condition, were accomplished at a good pace, checked only by an accident of a very trifling sort. Captain Royston, ever a man of great knowledge and consideration in horseflesh, his beast having stumbled and partly fallen among some loose stones in a dark part of the way, dismounted to examine what injury the animal had taken. Waiting beside him, M. de Rondiniacque continued, in tones audible enough, their conversation, which had reference to the Prince's intended visit to Royston, the words he used chancing to indicate both time and place. Before remounting, Captain Royston observed that the disposition of the stones of considerable size which had caused the mishap appeared rather of design than accident, and as he bade his friend hold his peace the ears of both could clearly distinguish a rustling among the bushes that here divided the sunken road from the adjoining fields.
I have been thus particular over the early portion of Captain Royston's midnight ride because it afterwards appeared they had been spied upon to some purpose.
Arrived at Honiton, and learning that the badness of the road that leads through the hamlet of Royston was through the long wetness of the weather grown extreme, he resolved upon taking another, with the chance of a remount at the house of a gentleman well known to him, who lived at a point fitly dividing the remnant of his journey. So he sat him down while his best charger was a-saddling to write a brief letter to my Lady Mary, in which he did but cautiously inform her that his "honored master" would visit her on the morrow with a good company in attendance, and signed himself her "obedient E.R." This letter entrusted for conveyance to Royston Chase by the first light to a trooper of great fidelity, Captain Royston set out on his way to Sherborne by a road somewhat longer, indeed, than he had purposed using, but promising greater expedition and security at this hour and season. Reaching "The King's Head" at Sherborne about six of the morning (it being that same Monday upon which the exercising of Sir Michael's little squadron of horse did begin), he was at once introduced to "Captain Jennings" in his chamber, who, having dressed and eaten, was soon mounted, so that, riding with the light, and freshly horsed, but with some expense of time for caution and the using of byways, they were safely housed at Royston Manor an hour before noon. Nor is it wonderful that poor Ned, having ridden at least eighty miles upon five horses, with no sleep in thirty hours, and scarce a mouthful of food for fourteen, after noting with regret that there was not one among the servants whose face he knew, did fall asleep upon his bed in all his travel-fouled clothes. Awaking, like a true soldier, an hour before His Highness and the escort should arrive, and asking of the servants why he had not seen his mother, he received from a very civil fellow, who seemed above the rest, a letter written by my Lady Mary in characters much shaken with some emotion, wherein it was set forth that, rather than compromise her loyalty in receiving His Highness, she had left the house free to her son, but herself, with the two old servants that were left of those he knew, had fled to the King's camp at Salisbury. Although vastly put about by this ill news, and, as he thought, great discourtesy of his mother, he put the best face upon the matter, that he might in no manner seem to belittle her in her dependents' eyes, and set about preparation of hospitality. Lady Mary was ever a notable housekeeper, and it was no long matter to load tables and dress beds, the less that it seemed much had been already begun before her unkind departure.
With all this we have yet come no further than the noontime of the Monday; but I have yet one more thread to gather up before I come again to my proper part in this tale.
That stranger, the sight of whose back so frighted me, foolishly clad in boy's garments, that I dared not risk encounter with the gaze of his eyes, was, though, alas! I knew it not, my brother Philip. When I did pass through the great hall on my way to the stables, he had just come to an end of some talk with Simon Emmet, who was then gone to fetch Sir Michael.
From his errand Simon hoped little good, fearing of the ills that might arise from Philip's return at this conjuncture, most of all the perturbation of spirit into which it was like to cast his master. So much, indeed, he said, with such plainness as his old and unbroken affection for my brother would allow. There is no little reason to suppose that, even more than the lad's father, Simon Emmet had been grieved by Philip's adoption of his mother's religion. For Philip, upon his arrival and encounter with the old man, was no sooner recognized than he was asked if it were indeed true that he was become a priest: and when Simon was assured that so it was, he counselled a speedy departure, since no good would come, Sir Michael being minded as he was, of their meeting. Being told, with that gentle severity which did use to sit very nobly upon my brother, that he must inform his master with no more ado, he yet in going must turn at the door to deliver a parting bolt through the man he loved at the creed he abhorred.
"Now, I bethink me, Master Philip," says Simon, "there is, when all is said, some good come of your heresy." And when Philip said gently that he hoped indeed it was so, but saw not how he meant it, Simon gave answer that, old man and sick though he was, Sir Michael upon that dire news had gotten a mind to live, and had lived ever since, in the firm intent that, as long as he might prevent, a Papist should never rule at Drayton.
"But, Simon," says Philip, with a sadness political rather than religious, "there was surely a time when my dear father had preferred a Papist in his house to a Dutch Calvinist on the throne."
"Ay, Master Phil," says Simon, with an old man's chuckle of much cunning, "but that was before the throne had tried a Papist," and so left him.
And I do suppose it was while I listened unseen to little Prue's willing news from her lover on the flags of the stable-yard that my two nearest kin were threshing out, in the great hall behind me, a question that can never be settled. There was no quarrel between them, but little that was common to their two minds. And that day the little seemed altogether naught. Yet in temper the two men were as like as unlike in thought.
Now Philip's change of faith had but strengthened, and in a manner embittered, the old Cavalier devotion to the house of Stuart. Being commissioned by that great religious society of which he was a member, and whose power is as far-reaching as its means are often hidden and subtile, to travel from London through the southern and western parts of England, exhorting, persuading, and commanding the Catholic gentry to remain constant in the royal cause, he had, at the end of two months so spent, at last arrived among us. He now told his father that he held it within the spirit of his commission, if not of its letter, to use upon him, did he waver in that political faith of which his life hitherto was so noble an exhibition, the same arguments and modes of appeal he was daily employing upon those of the true faith.
"You lack, however, in dealing with me, my son, one weapon—and that your strongest," said his father.
"And that, sir?" said Philip.
"The appeal to religious authority, my boy. And yet I scarce see by what means you do bring it in use; for I hear that His Holiness is ever at war of one kind or another with King Lewis, and favors rather the cause of that alliance of the Empire with the Protestant Princes, of which His young Highness of Orange is the soul and spirit. I warrant, lad," said the old man, with some grimness of humor, "you find the Pope but an unhandy weapon in your schemes and plots."
"I obey orders, sir, but do not deal in plots," the son replied, with a pride that matched the father's.
"Art not a Jesuit?" asked Sir Michael.
And Philip answering, proudly and yet with much humility, that he was, Sir Michael would have known of him what he did when the bidding of the Society of Jesus ran counter to His Holiness's policy, or enjoined action inconvenient with the honor of a gentleman. But Philip, avoiding the former question, was yet stung into reply on the second, saying boldly that the spiritual descendants of Loyola were much belied, and had no traffic in the plotting of underhand schemes.
To this his father, with much warmth, but with a greater kindness than had yet appeared in his address, replied: "Truly, I think they do not—through such as thou, my son. Believe your old father, lad; your superiors are men of a boundless statecraft and a subtile, and well know their tools. Who that has knowledge uses an axe to do the office of a file? But files they have, and augers even down to the finest gimlet; and these also work among us."
"Be that as it may, sir," answered Philip, "my mission is honest and open. I come to conjure you to hold faith with the cause in which you have so nobly spent your blood, your sons, your land, and your gold."
"There is nothing left me but my daughter and the ragged edge of life, Philip," said the old man, with a great sadness. "And these, too, would I spend, as I thought, God knows, to spend all that is gone,—for the good, I mean, of England. But not as you would lay them out, Philip; not on James, his harlots, priests, and bastards. The King is the slave of priests as his brother was of women; and, Gad 's my life! the late King was more English in 's tastes. Women may harm the king, but your priest in power is death to the kingdom. I have learned one thing, son Philip, in my nine and seventy years: that a man's king is much, but his country more. But it is enough. Let us leave the matter, or, God forgive me, I shall end by lauding the man I have most hated—the one Englishman since I drew breath that was feared and honored by Pope, Emperor, and Kings. And since? We have been laughed to scorn of the Spaniard, spat upon by the Hollander, and paid—God's blood! ay, paid by a filthy Frenchman!"
"You have called a man traitor for less words than these, sir," said his son, mightily amazed.
"Traitor!" quoth Sir Michael, with a great bitterness. "We are all traitors now. It is the curse of God upon a wicked and adulterous generation. There is no man among us but some will say of him, 'There goeth a traitor,' whether to his king, his country, or his God."
Then Philip: "If I must choose, it shall be to all before my God."
"Ay," said Sir Michael; "but in my plain English way of thought, Sir Priest, no man betrays his country but is traitor to his God."
And so they made an end, and Philip mounted his horse and rode away. And all that day I knew not that my brother had stood in reach of my arms. These things and the little more I have here to tell of Philip I learned after from his own lips. Riding sad and thoughtful from the house he did meet, at the turn of the avenue where it opens upon the road, a short, fat man, with red hair that matched ill with his dark and oily skin. His horse, though good, seemed but now painfully to recover from hard running. The fellow's countenance being not unknown to him, Philip was the less surprised to be addressed by name as brother, and asked had he forgotten the speaker. And when he was at length remembered for one Francis, that was in the time of Philip's novitiate a lay brother in no good odor of repute, he told with some boastfulness how he had received priest's orders and the conduct of a great mission, concerning which he was loftily mysterious, saying only it was a great work for the subduing the heathen; to compel a blind and unquestioning assistance in which he had powers granted him, he said, over any member of the Society he should encounter. At present, he added, he was to be known and addressed only as Mr. James Marston of the city of Oxford. He then commanded Philip's attendance upon him, and, on his demurring, showed him such writings as convinced my dear brother, rightly or wrongly, that he had no choice but to obey. Which he did, riding with him sadly enough, and wondering, as he has told me, whether he were not soon about to give the lie to that proud speech wherein he told his father that he, no more than the Society of Jesus, did deal in plots. I will here say that grave doubt has since been cast upon the authenticity of the alleged commission of Brother Francis. Philip has ever held that he was deceived by the man; that the papers were either forged, or used to ends far other than their purpose.
Mr. William Bentinck, whose great knowledge of hidden affairs as well as his lack of bias in favor of that Society entitles his opinion to a greater value, thought it to be a case in which one had been employed that might, in event of failure, throw the fault upon a body of men as accustomed to be blamed as to do good. However it may be, we shall never certainly know the truth of the matter, since the destruction of the papers and other accidents have put it quite beyond the power of any man to enquire further with hope of success. One thing at least is certain: that Philip was as ignorant as innocent of the purpose to which he was led.
And so I find myself in the saddle, taming Roan Charley in the park, where I have, in a manner of speaking, patiently awaited my reader through the tedious course of two chapters.
With my horse reduced to some show of order, but yet champing fretfully at his bit and throwing back his head in such manner as but for my quick avoidance had endangered the soundness of my own, I cantered gaily to that part where the exercising was, with head erect and a firm hold upon the great war-saddle that seemed no longer too vast to grip between the knees. There I perceived that Simon Emmet was at great pains to get the words of command and their significance not only into the heads of his troopers but also into that of Christopher Kidd, who there was sweating visibly in attempt at once to control a fresh horse he had gotten, and to repeat after Simon words of whose meaning he had less knowledge than the men that, for lack of a better, he was to command. At once and without a word I fell into line, and, after a few mistakes, very successfully put myself and Roan Charley through the simple evolution in progress. At first Simon did not mark me, being the more busied that the dulness of Kidd was much increased by his amazement at the sight of me. But when at length Simon saw the direction of his awkward pupil's regard, he as quickly perceived his new recruit.
Giving the command to halt in his great voice of an old sergeant of horse, he walked up to me, saying, with a rough petulance: "How now, young gentleman? What have you to do among these?" Then, at the laugh with which I answered him, he drew near and understood. And mightily put about he was, and would have me at once return to the house.
But, "Tush, Simon!" I said, smiling on him in the fashion I had used from a child when I would have my way rather than his, "do I not do it all fit and properly? You are not to know who I am, but a young gentleman that would exercise with you."
"You must leave the ranks," said Simon, gruff but wavering.
"So I will indeed," I answered, "if Mr. Kidd will but take my place."
And this Christopher, ever ready for Prue's sake to pleasure me, very readily did, without more said; whereupon I took his place, and, before Simon had well lowered his brows of amazement, I was giving out in the greatest voice I could compass all the words of command I had spent my morning in learning from my window. The troop, falling in with the jest, acquitted themselves so well that Simon did not interfere; and I had halted them at length with intent to coax old Emmet to fetch my father, that he might see how good a man I was, when from round the corner where lay the front of the house there came a great and growing confusion of sound: the wheels of a coach, the hoofs of many horses, and a mixed murmur of voices. And then the great voice of my father rang out, at the sound of which all was hushed; wheels stopped, horses stood, and men held their breath. Bidding Simon keep his men as they were, I cantered round the southeast corner of the house, and, checking my horse, stood for some minutes unmarked in the confusion, to observe a scene not a little curious.
The coach was my Lady Mary's, easily recognized in our parts for the newness of its fashion. By its side stood our friend and neighbor, Sir Giles Blundell, that instant dismounted, and opening the door that my lady might descend. Behind him were two young gentlemen, one of whom held Sir Giles's horse by the bridle. My lady, of a pallor very death-like, and stumbling as she stepped down from the coach so that she was like to have fallen but for the ready support of his hands, said a few words to Sir Giles, but all in a voice so low from weakness of fatigue and the faintness of terror as no word of it to reach my ears. His answer, however, was given clearly enough. And as he spoke my father, till now delayed in his descent of the steps by the lameness of his leg, drew near and stood beside my lady, leaning upon his stick.
"Indeed, dear madam," said Sir Giles, "I will do no such thing. I and my friends here are vastly pleased we were in the way to rescue you from such evil hands; 't was a small service we are proud to have rendered to so good a friend and neighbor. But to ride further to Royston Chase on the mere chance of some danger to His Highness of Orange, that has an army to protect him, is but to mix ourselves with a game we are well resolved to watch at a safe distance."
"Ah, Giles," says Sir Michael, who had known him from a boy, "your father had been of one part or the other. What, in God's name, is coming to England, when Englishmen are found that cannot even take a side?" Whereupon more words to little purpose ensued, Sir Giles and the two other gentlemen at length departing as they had come, after replying with much forbearance to some heated and scornful animadversions of my father upon the lukewarmness of their conduct.
Gratitude for what these gentlemen had done in her behalf and the need of recovering her spirits from the great perturbation into which they had been thrown by the events of the morning kept my lady silent until their departure was accomplished, when she turned to Sir Michael with a great beseeching in her countenance, saying: "Surely you will help me, my old friend." On which he gave her assurance he would do all he might, but told her he was yet ignorant what was her trouble and need. And it is great wonder to me that all the time she was telling and he hearing her story neither did observe me sitting there on my horse, and but partly hidden from their eyes by the branches of a tree. But her eagerness was well equalled by his interest; and there was a great bustling of our hostlers and her two servants about the coach. For one of the horses had fallen when brought to a stand, and lay, it seemed, at the point of death, two more being in a very bad case.
In brief, the tale she told him, of which I heard near every word, was this: that one had come at six o'clock of that morning with a letter from her son, announcing a visit, as she interpreted its terms, from His Highness of Orange; that by nine she was well advanced with her preparation for his fit reception, when all was thrown into confusion by the sudden arrival and enforced entry of a strange and ill-assorted body of men, acting, with a silent obedience truly wonderful to see in so unlikely a comradeship, under the orders of a little fat man with a dark face and red hair. This fellow, after he had compelled her with the threat of death and a pistol at her head to write that letter to her son which I have already mentioned, did force her, with her maid and one man-servant, into the coach which the other was to drive, a ruffian of decent mien being seated beside him with a loaded pistol to quicken his obedience and despatch. One other, in like manner persuasive, was in the coach, while Red-head and a fourth with a led horse rode beside. This party, in the endeavor to reach Salisbury, but much delayed by the devices of my lady's coachman, after escaping the pursuit of Farmer Kidd, had fallen the more easily before the gallant assault of Sir Giles Blundell and his friends that they were weakened by the absence of their leader; he having, as I believe (though this came not in Lady Mary's narrative), lost his way in drawing off Christopher's attack, and, being minded from the first to return before the end to Royston Chase, and falling in with my brother Philip, was glad enough to enforce his attendance as a guide, if not also to vent an old spleen by making of him an unwilling accomplice in his wicked purpose.
Of the three villains left with the coach, one was slain in the rescue and the other two escaped on their horses.
My lady ended her tale by telling her fear that the life of His Highness was aimed at, and imploring Sir Michael with tears that he should at once send his men (for Simon had by this brought his troops in very fair order round into the drive) for the warning and defence of His Highness; adding most piteously that her fear was no less for the honor of her son and his father's house than for the life of the Prince.
"Ay, madam," says my father; "but since there is none to lead them, and they are like a flock of sheep lacking a shepherd, they must wait the time of writing a letter."
"Write! write!" cried her ladyship, wringing her hands, "write! while even now it is perhaps too late!"
"I would I had one left of them all," said Sir Michael, with a groan; "or anybody with a head-piece on a sound body. You see what I am, and Simon is well-nigh a cripple these three years."
And with that I cantered up to them; and, bringing suddenly my horse to a stand, and saluting very finely,more militari—"I will go, sir," I cried.
"Who 's here?" cries my father, and "Mercy on us!" says my lady, like any milkmaid, in one breath with him.
"Who but your son Philip?" I answered, laughing gaily, and, I think, blushing a little, as well indeed I might. "And your son Philip is the best horseman in the country; your son Philip bestrides the best nag in three; and your son Philip knows the crow's-road to Royston, while it is of common knowledge that he has a very pretty head-piece on his shoulders."
My father being past speaking for amazement, my lady breaks in with: "Thou 'rt a brave girl, but why this masquerade, dear child?"
"To convince Sir Michael Drayton," I pertly replied, "that there is some use even in daughters, when they can hold a sword and sit in a war-saddle of Prince Rupert's time."
Sir Michael here made to seize my bridle, but Roan Charley had caught excitement from my voice, and a little slacking of his rein with a pressure of the knee at once put him at the distance of three great bounds from any detaining hand.
"Come back, Philippa!" cries my father.
"Not so, dear sir," said I, turning in the saddle, "for I shall go, an you will allow it."
"The roads and fields are not safe for thee, child," said he, "with so many bad men about, and an army close to hand, else were I willing enough."
"Then let these men follow me," I cried. "Simon will tell you, dear sir, that I can give and take the word of command. Christopher has no wit to handle them. Send the six best mounted, and let them come up with me if they can, and I will give Roan Charley to him that reaches Royston neck and neck with me."
And if they answered me again I heard it not, for Charley was away, taking in his stride the fence of the paddock that lies behind the stable; and although that way did mean a leap-out at a point where the fence was high, with the ground falling sharply on the other side, we did the second jump as well as we had done the first, and so gained three hundred yards on the pursuing troop, whom I already heard pounding after me with many a hearty cry and much rattling of harness.
Two years after it happened my husband and I did ride over the same course of my crow's flight from Drayton Manor to Royston Chase. And it was matter of some surprise to me, and of more to Ned, ambling in cold blood over the fields and viewing the leaps that I and Roan Charley did that day take in company, that I had not only the courage for such feats but also the fortune to come through it all without misadventure.
I must indeed suppose that I did myself choose my path and guide in it the gallant little horse; but, were I to trust merely to the memory of feeling, I should believe that I sat in the saddle like one in a dream, while Charley, with the inward knowledge of some homing pigeon, galloped straight for the place where lay all my hopes and fears. 'T was but twice that I had any sight of my escort—first, turning in my seat as Charley reached the level of the meadow-land below the hill that falls away from the home paddock, I beheld them, close massed in a body, rounding the bend of the fence away to the right above me, and just about commencing the descent; and once again, after the roan had leaped into, and well-nigh miraculously scrambled out of, an ugly and broken gully that lies near half-way between Royston and my father's house. For as Charley heaved his body with a tearing, scratching, and clinging most wondrous cat-like upon the safe ground of the further bank, I looked back once more and spied them bearing off to the left for lower ground and easier passage; but by this they were a straggling rout covering much ground, so hardly already had the pace and distance with the differing weight of riders told upon the various mettle of the horses. Indeed, the next two miles did tell not a little even upon Charley, being a rising stretch of ploughed land in condition very grievous for his smallness of hoof; but coming thereafter to grass, he was mightily refreshed, and cleared two fences and a little bank of earth with bushes atop in his old gay and light-hearted manner.
And after this we were not long in coming to the road, which being in good condition for the season and weather that it was we made the remaining miles at a very pretty pace.
Now the front of the house at Royston Chase stands but a little back from the road, behind great gates of wrought iron, hung upon mighty pillars of carved stone. These stood wide as I galloped up, but the way was barred by two soldiers, of mien immovable as the brazen gates of Gaza. By their black cloaks of fur I knew them to be of that Swedish Regiment of Horse in which Captain Royston held His Highness's commission. They were, however, dismounted for sentry duty—an office for which I could but think them ill chosen when I perceived that not one word of the English language did they understand, and would neither let me pass through the archway into the inner court of the house, nor, when I had come to the purpose of moving further down the road and leaping both hedge and ditch into the orchard, would they let me depart. For one of them did lay a great hand on Charley's bridle, saying something to his fellow in a manner easy of comprehension, though the words were to me without meaning. And I truly believe that I was in that moment very near to discovery of my sex. For answer to his jest I struck the fellow across the face with my loose gauntlet, at the same time with great quickness using both spur and rein, so that Roan Charley in a single movement reared himself almost upright and swerved aside. This, coming right upon the blow he had received, caused the trooper to loose my rein; which before the other could seize we were away at the best pace we could make.
Now, some three hundred yards down the road seemed the lowest part of the bank and hedge enclosing the little field that here divides the beautiful orchard of Royston Chase from the highroad. But even at this point, I thought, the leap was hard for a horse that had already done so much; wherefore I had determined to pass on to that little cross lane that leads from the road to the gate at the lower end of the orchard. But even as I was so resolving I heard behind me the cries and hoofs of mounted pursuers, and in front, coming from the very lane I had purposed using, a patrol of three men of this same Swedish regiment. And so jump we must, or altogether fail, it seemed, in that for which we had ridden so far and so fast. Charley, too, seemed to understand, and for a few strides we both steadied ourselves, taking deep breaths of air and watching the hedge for a thin spot. And I have always thought 't was Charley that found it—a spot where the growth of bramble on the bank's top was so scarce as to let the narrow edge of the earth mound be clearly seen. But whether the will were mine or his, the doing of the matter was Charley's alone, and very well, for a tired horse, was it done. Knowing he could not with sureness clear both ditch and bank in a single spring, and feeling that his mistress did leave the manner of this last and most difficult passage of his hard run wholly to his clever legs and wiser head, my little horse, as if he had been twice the age he was, most soberly took his leap from the roadside, and landed with his four hoofs bunched cat-like in a cluster on the summit of the bank in that place where I have said the growth of brush and bramble was thin. Here, for the space of two heart-beats, he poised himself, in which time he judged so well both his own flagging powers and the wider and unexpected ditch on the further side, that he was able with a second leap to land us safely and gently beyond it on the rain-softened earth of the ploughed field.
Now, even in the brief moment when Charley swayed on the top of the bank and gathered himself for that second spring, I had time (so swiftly works the mind in the tension of danger to be forestalled) to note two things: that my pursuers on their heavy chargers had balked the leap; and that in the orchard, across the little ploughed field and beyond the low fence, were many people, walking to and fro among the fruit trees; and I knew from their carriage, from the sheen of armor, and the gay colors of the various habits, that they were no common soldiers; and as Charley foundered wearily but with great courage through the heavy plough my heart was high with the thought that fortune had brought me the straight road to my end. And then we reached the fence, which proved higher than I had thought; yet did my brave nag pass that too, very cleverly bursting with his knees the highest rail, which he was too tired to overtop, and though he took the grass among the trees beyond with a little stumble, it was his first and last mistake, from which quickly recovering, and, as it seemed, well aware that his work was done, he stood like an image of stone, with forelegs stretched in front and nose near down to his knees.
And then I thought the whole world did heave and turn and swim before my eyes, and all that I saw through the mist of its convulsion was two long, shadowy arms reaching from opposite quarters for Roan Charley's bridle; all I thought, that little was the need to hold a horse that had turned to stone; all I heard, the sound of a voice far off, that said: "The Prince of Orange; there is a plot; look to his safety; search the house, the grounds, or they will slay him." And then slowly the earth settled again to its place, the mist began to clear, and I knew the voice for my own. And I saw, as one that wakes from a dream, that he who held my bridle on the near side was Captain Edward Royston, and straightway I was within a little of so addressing him, but bethought me in time, and, looking round, asked where was the master of the house.
Upon which he replied: "I am Captain Royston; what is to do?"
"Sir," I said, very solemnly (yet, for all the gravity of the case, I was at pains to keep back a smile when I so addressed him, and saw that he knew me not), "Sir, His Highness is in danger. Madam your mother has been by force taken from home, but is now in safety; the servants that you find in your house are evil men, and of the plot."
Then he that held my horse on the off side, whom I afterwards knew for that great person that for discretion I shall still call "Captain Jennings," took his hand from the bridle.
"The lad speaks truth," he said; "a word with you, Captain." With that he drew Ned aside, and while they spoke together ("Captain Jennings" telling, I think, how he feared unjust suspicion of his own connivance if aught befell His Highness) I marked that six Swedish troopers did approach, threading their way through the trees from the gate in the lane that I have above mentioned. Also, between them and me, but nearer by no little distance to where I still sat upon Charley's back, I saw a man stand leaning against the wall of the granary that stands in the orchard, and thus hidden from the advancing soldiers that were still, as I supposed, in pursuit of poor me. And this man, whether from description or from something high and noble in the aquiline countenance of him, I knew at once for William, Prince of Orange. Now, even as I gazed in idleness of wonder on the man I held greatest in the world (for did not Edward Royston serve him with reverence and ardor?), I saw that a little door in the granary, on His Highness's left, was slowly, slowly moving back upon its hinges, and a moment later I had one glimpse of a fat face and a red head peering from the narrow slit of that opening. I thought of Farmer Kidd's tale, and again of Madam Royston's, and straightway drew my sword and clapped heels to my horse. Roan Charley, for all his fatigue, responded very gallantly, and in three of his long bounds we had been beside the Prince, but for a fellow, long, lean, and black-coated, that drew a pistol from under his breast, which he fired in my face in the same moment as he leapt at Charley's head, whereby he undid himself, for, as the horse reared in terror, I, in as much, struck spurs in his sides, and Charley leaping forward, we rode clean over our assailant, whom I struck at wildly with my sword as he fell. Charley must have found foothold upon some part of his body, for I remember still with a thrill of sickness the softness under foot.