The Yeoman Adventurer Page 10

  CHAPTER X

  SULTAN

  The lie of the land was as follows: To get to the "Ring of Bells," MasterFreake would have to ride over the hill to the main road at Weston, thencesome six miles north-west to Stone, thence another six or seven milessouth-west to the inn. Mistress Waynflete and I had a stiff walk of aboutnine miles in front of us. For the first three miles our way ran east bynorth, and then bent almost due east to the ale-house. Our difficultywould come at the bending point, for there we should have to cross themain road from Stafford along which the troops would be filtering north toget into touch with the Prince and his Highlanders. If the Duke had heardof the supposed intention of the Jacobites to turn off for Wales, hewould, I imagined, send a scouting party through Eccleshall to look outfor them, and we should, for the second time in our journey, be ondangerous ground in the neighbourhood of that village. The "Ring ofBells," however, lay north of that village, off his obvious line of marchin that direction, so that we stood a good chance of passing unchecked toour goal, provided that we got across the main road north in safety.Fortunately, at the place where I intended to cross, it climbed over afairly steep hill, and we could, if need were, lie and watch the road tillit was safe to venture out.

  It was ticklish work at the best and any break in our run of luck mightruin us. How ticklish was vividly brought home to me within a few minutesof our getting safe under cover in the cottage. I had, of course, broughtback the birding-piece and, after once more helping in the blissful taskof getting Mistress Waynflete into the domino, bungling as usual overarranging the hood because my fingers lost control of themselves at thetouch of her hair, I sat down to reload it, intending to carry it with me.I had settled matters with the absent gaffer, Doley, by putting one of myguineas conspicuously on the table, and was just finishing my task whenMistress Waynflete, who had stepped to the rear window and was lookingback on the scene of my recent exploit, suddenly called out, "Oliver! Comehere!"

  My heart leaped within me at that 'Oliver.' True, it was the familiarityof one born to command, one who had last night icily desired my servicesin the morning, and, womanlike, knew that she could queen it over me asshe listed, but still, and this was the main thing, it was familiar andfriendly, and seemed to lift me a shade nearer to her.

  "What is it, madam?" I asked respectfully, and ran toward her, but not soswiftly that I had not time to see the blue eyes fixed hard on mine. Foranswer, she turned and pointed down the hill, and there I saw the patch ofbrown road covered with wagons and soldiers. In five minutes they wouldcome across the dead body of the Major.

  "Good," said I indifferently, "they save me a guinea," and I put the coinback in my pocket. The soldiers didn't matter, but that look in her eyesdid.

  "Isn't that rather mean?" For some reason she spoke quite snappily. Thesoldiers clearly didn't matter to her, and something else did.

  "Which of the soldiers provided our breakfast, madam? We might as wellleave a note asking them to pick us up at the 'Ring of Bells.' And, madam,you can trust me to make Dick Doley content enough some day."

  She smiled, with her characteristic touch of chagrin. I liked her bestso, for she never looked daintier. "With a bit of luck, Master Wheatman,"she said whimsically, "there will surely come a time when you'll be wrongand I right. Then, sir, look out for crowing. I've never been so unluckywith a man in my life. But you'll slip some day!"

  "Surely, madam," I said, and smiled, "and then I'll abide your gloating.Now, pray you, let us be off. We've hardly a minute to spare."

  Without losing another second we started on our long walk. It was nowabout ten of the clock. The sun was shining cheerily, with power enough tomelt the white rime off every blackened twig it lit upon, and it was stillso cold that sharp walking was a keen delight.

  "Eight miles and more of it, Mistress Waynflete. I hope you can stand thepace and the distance."

  "I'm a soldier's daughter, not an alderman's," she replied curtly.

  The vicar was right. "Oliver," he said to me one day, "what is thedifference between the Hebrew Bible and a woman?"

  "Sir," said I, gaping with astonishment, "I know not, but of a truth itseems considerable."

  "It is, Oliver," replied the sweet old scholar. "Man can understand theone in a dozen years, if he try, but the other not in a lifetime, strivehe as earnestly as he may."

  This fragment of my dear friend's talk came back to me now as we walkedin silence side by side. Out of the corner of my eye I could see her sweetface set in earnest thinking, her rich lips compressed, her speaking eyesfixed resolutely ahead. Not having to trouble about finding the road, andthere being no sign of anyone, either enemy or neutral, stirring on thecountryside, I let her go on thinking, and set myself the pleasant butimpossible task of accounting to myself for her mood. I went over all wehad said and done together that day, and at last, after perhaps half anhour of unbroken silence, fell back on what seemed the only possibleexplanation. She was thinking of her father. But why that suspicion ofasperity on her face? Was this explanation correct?

  The vicar was right. She suddenly slipped her hand round my arm, lookingat me with laughing lips and dancing eyes, and said, "Isn't it splendid tobe alive on a day like this?"

  "Yes, indeed it is," I replied, "but from your looks and your longsilence, I should hardly have judged that you were thinking so."

  "You have been taking stock of me, sir!"

  "Certainly I have been wondering why you were so silent, and lookedso ... grave."

  "Be honest and fear not, Master Wheatman. You were not going to say'grave.'"

  "At the expense of many whippings from old Bloggs, I learned to beprecise in the use of words."

  "I know, hence you were not going to say 'grave.'"

  "You will allow me to choose my own words, madam."

  "Certainly, so long as you choose the right ones."

  She unhooked her hand, and we walked a minute or two without anotherword, she frowning, and I fuming. Then she said wistfully, "Why did youthink I was cross?"

  "I feared I had offended you," said I hastily and innocently.

  She laughed long and merrily. "Old Bloggs taught you the silly rigmaroleyou men call logic, but he didn't teach you woman's logic, that's plain.Don't you see what I've made you do, Master Wheatman?"

  "Not yet, Mistress Waynflete."

  "Poof, slow-coach! I've made you admit that you were going to say 'cross'but altered it, too late, to 'grave.'"

  "You outrun me with your nimble and practised wit," said I, smiling.

  "And when did you offend me, think you?"

  "I answered you rather roughly when you took me up about the guinea."

  "Oh, then? Not at all. You snibbed me, but I richly deserved it."

  Another silence.

  "Well?" she said. "Go on! I say I richly deserved it. Go on!"

  "Go on where?" I asked testily. "You're not expecting me to say youdidn't, are you?"

  "No, I'm not," she said, "but it was good practice trying to make you."So saying, she slipped her hand under my arm again, and we stepped it outtogether.

  The current of her thoughts now ran and glittered in the oppositedirection. She made me for the moment her intimate, lifting up the veilover her past life, and giving me peeps and vistas of her wanderings andexperiences. She jested and gibed. She sang little snatches of song insome foreign tongue. "You're sure you don't understand Italian?" shedemanded, stopping short half-way through a bar, and quizzing me with hereyes, now blue as sapphires in the bright sunshine.

  "Not a word of it," said I.

  "A grave disadvantage," she said airily. "It's the only language one canlove in." And off she struck again.

  Now she sang something soothing and sad, with a wistful lilt in it thatdied into a low wail. It needed no Italian to be understood, for it waswritten in the language of human experience. A woman's heart throbbed inthe lilt and broke in the wail.

  This sweet interval of intimacy verging on friendship was ended by ourclose approa
ch to the main road. We had been travelling, heedless of roadsand tracks, across a champaign country, and the slope up to the top ofYarlet Bank now lay before us. I led the way, skulking behind such poorcover as the gaunt hedgerows provided, and, when only a hundred paces fromthe top, I asked her to crouch down, awaiting my signal to advance, whileI crept forward on my hands and knees to the edge of the road which hereclimbed the brow of the hill through a deep cutting, along either marginof which ran a straggling hedge.

  To my relief, the road down the hill, both to right and left, wascompletely deserted. I joyfully waved my arm to Mistress Waynflete, whowas soon by my side, looking down the road. To the right we could see fornearly a mile. On the left our view was cut short by a bend, and I walkeda score of yards in that direction and shinned up a stout sapling. Ourluck was absolute. Not a soldier, not a living soul, was in sight.

  "We might have had to skulk here for hours, waiting for an opportunity tocross unseen," said I, on rejoining her, "but our gods above arevictorious, and we share their victory. So now for the 'Ring of Bells.'There's a gate at the bottom of the hill. Come along, Mistress Waynflete!"

  She followed me down the hedge-side. I turned once or twice to look ather, carefully pretending that it was only to see how she was getting on.The last time I thus stole another memory of her splendid presence we wereonly a few paces from the gate, and when my reluctant eyes turned again totheir rightful work, they looked straight into a pair of fishy eyes set ina face as blank and ugly as a bladder of lard.

  Face and eyes belonged to a big, sleek, sly man, perched on the top barof the gate. He had a notebook in his hand in which he had been enteringsome jottings. He suspended his writing to examine us, picking his nasty,yellow teeth meanwhile with the point of his pencil. His horse was hitchedto the post on the Stoneward side of the gate, where the stile was. He waswell enough dressed, and, as far as I could see, unarmed.

  It was a most exasperating thing to have pitched into him, whoever andwhatever he was, and indeed I much disliked the look of him, and wouldgladly have knocked him on the head. True, travellers were not rare onthis road, since it was part of the great highway from London to Chester,and the little thoroughfare town of Stone, some three miles ahead, had anoted posthouse. However, I kept, or tried to keep, my feelings out of myface and voice, and accosted him cheerily.

  "Good day, friend! What may be the price of fat beeves in Stafford marketto-day?"

  "Dearer than men's heads will be at the town gates after the nextassizes," he replied, stroking his notebook and grinning evilly.

  "You'll never light on a Scotsman, dead or alive, that's worth as much asa Staffordshire heifer," said I, leading the way past him to the stile,over which I handed Mistress Margaret into the road.

  "They won't all be Scotsmen, my friend," he replied, still stroking hisnotebook.

  "No?" said I, eager at heart to knock him off his perch.

  "Nor men," he added, leering at Margaret.

  "Come along, Sal," said I to her laughingly, "before the good gentlemanjots you down a Jacobite."

  So we left him, and when, fifty paces down the road, I looked back athim, he was jotting in his notebook again.

  "I think he knows something about us," said I.

  "Very likely," she replied calmly. "I've seen him once before in London,talking to Major Tixall. Who could forget a face like that?"

  "He's uglier than the big-mouthed dragoon."

  "The dragoon was at any rate a soldier."

  "And the worst of soldiers has, no doubt, some savour of grace in him."

  "Quite so," she retorted. "His calling makes it necessary."

  "And, so reasoning, you would say, I suppose, that the best of farmerswas to seek in the higher reaches of manliness."

  "Have I not told you, Master Oliver, that between man's logic and woman'slogic there's a great gulf fixed?"

  "Minds are minds," said I.

  "And hearts are hearts," replied she, and so shut me up to my thinkingagain.

  We turned into a cart-track on our left leading in the direction ofEccleshall. As we turned I saw that Bladder-face had mounted his horse andwas coming on toward Stone. There was no doubt that we should be pursuedfrom that quarter before long, and I grew heavy with anxiety as I saw howhardly we were being pressed. The encounter had not, however, disturbedMistress Waynflete. On the contrary, she became gayer than ever, so gaythat, fool-like, I got quite vexed at it, for it was clear that somethinghad relieved her anxiety, and I knew it was nothing that I had done. Iworried over it, and at last hit on the explanation. She was rejoicing inthe help of the new partner.

  "What do you make of Master Freake?" said I boorishly, cutting short alightsome trill, more Italian maybe.

  "Make of what?" said she lightly.

  "Master Freake."

  "Forgive me, Master Wheatman," she replied, "but I didn't take you asquickly as I ought to have done. I like the look of him. How pretty, pluckthem for me."

  I stopped to gather the spray of brilliant vermilion berries she fancied,saying meanwhile, "I wonder what he is? Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor,or what?"

  She seemed much more concerned with her berries, which she praisedrapturously, and placed carefully in the bosom of her riding-dress beforereplying.

  "He's no doubt a grave and prosperous citizen of London. I've seen manysuch, and he looks sworn brother to worthy Alderman Heathcoat. Moreover,he talks merchantlike."

  It seemed pretty certain that she had hit the right nail on the head. Herexplanation fitted his account of the large sums he was carrying and hisstay with and hold over Jack's father. True, Staffordshire seemed thewrong place for such a man. Both he and his money would have been farsafer in Change Alley. If her explanation was acute and probable, hermanner of making it had convinced me that my explanation of her gaiety waswrong. Of him she certainly had not been thinking. Then there was only onething left to account for it. What makes a maid as merry as a grig? Didn'tour Kate sing all morning when Jack was coming in the afternoon?

  It was no concern of mine, and as a man sometimes makes his right handplay his left hand at chess, so I now made stern Oliver lecture palteringWheatman, but without doing him much good. Naturally all this made me apoor companion on the road, and for a long time Mistress Waynflete borewith me patiently. Then she turned from her tra-la-la-ing to waken me up,roundly declaring that I was bored with her company; and I had no defence,ridiculous as the charge was.

  "I've sung every song I know, and sung them my best, too, and you'venever once praised me. You'll have to learn, you know, Master Oliver, tosmile at a lady even when you really want to smack her. What do you do?You just write on your face as plainly as this"--and here her daintyfinger toured her face, ending up where the tear of milk hadtrembled--"S-M-A-C-K." I roared aloud, she did it so frankly and mirthfully. Whata treasury of moods she was! She had stepped across our house-place like aqueen, she had fronted that devil, Brocton, like a goddess, and now shewas larking like a schoolmaid.

  Long as the way was, we seemed to me to be getting over the ground toorapidly. Mistress Waynflete did not tire, and did full credit to herfather's soldiership. We circled round the red-tiled roofs of Eccleshall,and at length took shelter in the pines that ringed the great pool. Acrossthe mere lay the road, and on the far side of the road from us was the"Ring of Bells," standing well back, with a little green in front, in thecentre of which a huge post carried a board bearing the rudely paintedsign of the ale-house.

  I scouted ahead, dodging from tree to tree along the edge of the mere, inorder to keep out of view of anyone moving on the road. Over against theale-house I crept still more warily through the wood to the edge of theroad. There was no one moving in or about the ramshackle little place, butthere was one unexpected thing in sight which gave me pause. Hitched bythe reins to a staple in the signpost was the finest horse I had ever seteyes on, a slender, sinewy stallion, champing on his bit and pawingnervously on the stone-hard ground.

  Here was the shadow of
a new trouble, though, indeed, there was nothingto be surprised at, seeing that the countryside far and near was buzzingwith enemy activities. A rat in a barn might as justly complain of beingtickled by straws as I of jostling into difficulties. The horse withoutbetokened a rider within, and probably some one in the Duke's horse. Ibeckoned Mistress Waynflete, and by signs indicated that extreme cautionwas necessary. During the moments I was awaiting her I examined thebirding-piece to make sure it was in order. Caution, however, she flung tothe winds, for the moment she set eyes on the horse she joyously shouted'Sultan' and made a wild, happy dash to cross the road.

  I stopped her sternly, and in a brief whisper asked, "Who's Sultan?"

  "Father's horse."

  "We do not know for sure that your father is in the inn because his horseis outside, and by your leave, madam, we'll make sure first. Keep rightbehind yon thick tree, and await my return."

  She looked calmly at me, but even before she could glide off, there camefrom the ale-house an appalling volley of oaths and curses. It was a man'svoice, yelling in agonized blasphemy, and a woman's shrill treble floatedon the surface of the stream of virulence.

  I caught Mistress Waynflete's wrist and steadied her. "Not your father,apparently?" I said in a cool voice, though my head was whirling a bitunder the strain. "Here," I went on, fetching a fistful out of my pocket,"are some guineas. Follow me, unhitch the horse, and if I shout to you tobe off, mount him from yon horse-trough, and away like lightning. That'sthe road to Eccleshall, along which Master Freake is bound to come."

  I thrust the guineas into her hand, gripped my weapon, slipped out of thepines and across the road, circled the horse, and made to peep round thejamb of the open door into the guest-room of the ale-house. As I did so,the man yelled, "God damn, I'm on fire!" and the woman shrieked back,"Burn, you foul devil, burn, and be damned!"

  This was enough, and I burst in on a spectacle, strange, serious, on thepoint of becoming terrible, and yet almost laughable. In the middle of theroom, a stout, shock-headed, red-elbowed woman stood, a pikel in herstrong outstretched hands. The sergeant of dragoons, with his back to aroaring fire, was pinned against the hearthstead by the pitchfork, thetines of which were stuck in the oak lintel of the chimney-piece, so thata ring of steel encircled his throat like the neckhole of a pillory, andheld him there helpless and roasting. When I first caught sight of him hewas making a frenzied attempt to wrench the prongs out, but, finding ithopeless, drew his tuck, and lashed out at the woman. She calmly shiftedout of reach along the handle of the fork. He then hacked fiercely butwithout much effect on the wooden handle, and finally, in his despair andagony, poised the tuck and cast it at her javelin-fashion. The woman,cooler than he in both senses of the term, dodged it easily. How she hadcontrived to pin him in such a helpless manner, I could not imagine. Themotive was obvious. A little girl lay writhing and sobbing on the flooramid the fragments of a broken mug and a scattering of copper and silvercoins.

  "You've got him safe enough, mother," said I, "and it's no good cookinghim since you can't eat him."

  "Be yow another stinking robber, like this'n?" she demanded. The epithetwas as apt as it was vigorous, for the stink of singeing cloth made mesniff. "If y'be," she went on, "I'll shove' im in the fire and set aboutyow."

  "Not a bit of it, mother. I've come to help you, but shift him along abit out of the heat, and then we'll settle what to do with him." To him Iadded, "Understand, sergeant, any attempt to fight or fly, and your neckwill be wrung like a cockerel's." Then laying down my gun I pulled out thetines and shifted him along the lintel till he was out of danger. Thewoman, whose fierce determination never faltered, jammed the pikel inagain and kept him trapped.

  I went to the door and saw Mistress Waynflete standing by Sultan's head,and the proud beauty arching his neck in his joy at finding his mistressnear him. I beckoned her.

  "An old acquaintance, in a fix. Come in!" said I, and introduced her tothe strange scene. "The sergeant, madam," I went on, "and he has beenplucked like a brand from the burning." She took in the scene, judged whathad happened, and then gathered up the child, who had ceased crying out ofcuriosity, and mothered the little one so sweetly that the red-elbowedwoman cried out hearty thanks.

  In brief the story, as collected later from the mother and child, wasthat the sergeant had ridden up and asked for a meal. After he had hadsome bread and cheese and ale, he had taken advantage of the alewife'sabsence to ask the child where mother kept her money, and, receiving noanswer, had twisted the poor little one's arm until in her terror andagony she had told him of the secret hole in the chimney where the moneywas kept in a coarse brown mug. The child's cry had brought the motherrunning back with the pikel, snatched up on the way, and she, taking himat unawares with the mug in his hand, had darted at him and luckily caughthim round the neck, and pinned him against the fireplace as I had foundhim. Let him go she dared not, for she was alone except for the child, andbut for my arrival he would have roasted right enough till he washelpless. As it was the skirts of his coat were smouldering, and he hadonly just escaped serious injury. In fact, although smarting sore, he wasso little damaged that after tearing away the burnt tails, he collectedhimself and tried to bam me.

  "Master Wheatman," he began, "I call upon you in the King's name to aidand assist me. This woman's tale is all a lie. The mug was on thechimney-top for anyone to see, and I only took it down to examine it,being struck with its appearance."

  "Also in the King's name, Master Sergeant," was my reply, "I propose tohave you handed over to the nearest justice as a rogue and vagabond."

  "And you shall explain why you are here with your--" I should havestrangled him if his foul tongue had wagged one word of insult, and he sawit in my eyes. He stopped, and his face showed that he had discovered thesecret.

  "The sergeant recognizes you again, Molly," said I lightly.

  "Bammed and beaten by a damned yokel?" he burst out. "Ten thousanddevils! Where were my eyes yesterday?" In his anger he began to strain athis steel cravat.

  "Virgil for ever! The first town we come to I'll buy me a Latin grammar,"said Margaret to me, with a low ripple of laughter.

  "How'd on, fool," said the alewife to the sergeant. "Yow wunna be wuthhangin' if y' carry on a this'n."

  "If you don't loose me, you old bitch," he shouted, "I'll see you hanged!Loose me, for your neck's sake! These people are Jacobites!"

  "Gom, I dunna know what that be, but I wish Stafford-sheer was full on'em. 'Tinna any good chokin' y'rsen, I shanna let go."

  This method of keeping him, however, rendered the alewife useless, so Itook her place, and bade her fetch the longest and toughest rope she'dgot. She brought me a beauty and with it I trussed the sergeant, tying himsecurely into a heavy, clumsy chair, and leaving him as helpless as a fowlready for roasting. Then a thought struck me and I went through hispockets. His very stillness made me careful in my search, but I found onlysome old bills for fodder and other military papers, and a heavily sealedletter addressed "To HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS." I was not quite Jacobite enoughto make me willing to steal a dispatch addressed to the Royal Duke, and Ishould have thrust it and the oddments of paper back again but for therattle of hoofs outside. It was probably Master Freake, and I wasparticularly anxious that the sergeant should not see him, so I rushed outwith all the papers in my hand to forestall him.

  Hurrying outside I saw Master Freake hitching his horse to the signpost,and Mistress Waynflete already talking to him eagerly. When I got up hedelivered his news briefly and to the point, and bad news it was.

  He had learned in Stone that the Colonel had again been taken on aheadtowards Newcastle in charge of a troop of Brocton's dragoons under thecommand of Captain Rigby, "last night's table companion of the deadMajor," he explained.

  "Whatever for?" asked Mistress Waynflete.

  Master Freake said nothing, but his eyes were troubled, and I knew therewas something he would fain conceal.

  "Whatever for?" she repeated. "Could you lear
n of no reason?"

  "I was told," he answered slowly, "that Colonel Waynflete's knowledge andassistance would be invaluable to the royal troops."

  "Told that my father had turned traitor! Is that what you mean, sir?"Scorn too great for anger covered her face, veiling its sweetness as witha fiery cloud.

  "That is the plain English of what I was told, I must admit." Here wasthe grave, businesslike nature of the man, plainly posing awkwardquestions that had to be answered.

  "It's a wicked lie!" she burst out. She turned her face proudly to lookinto mine, and I saw that her eyes were filled with tears.

  "Naturally, madam," said I.

  "My father's honour is mine, Master Wheatman, and I am your debtor foranother splendid courtesy."

  "I argue from the flower to the tree. Man's logic, and thereforenecessarily imperfect, you would say, but for once I stick to it." I spokelightly and reminiscently, so as to chase the gloom from her mind, and shewas immediately herself again.

  Master Freake continued his story, which went from bad to worse. As I hadexpected, Bladderface had ridden into Stone, and the result of hiscommunication to Captain Rigby had been that orders were issued for ourpursuit, and Master Freake had left the town not very far in advance ofthe squad of horse sent on our track. He had thus been unable to procurehorses for us, but at Eccleshall he had managed to obtain a pillion forMargaret's use behind him.

  This was awkward indeed, for though Master Freake had ridden hard, thepursuit could not be very far behind, and if, as was almost certain, thedragoons turned up at the "Ring of Bells," the sergeant would be set free,and be after us like a mad bull. There was, however, a margin of timeavailable, and therefore I put this problem out of my mind, and attendedonly to the urgent one of the Colonel's position.

  To me there was only one explanation possible. This continual shifting ofthe Colonel, ever under the charge of those rascally dragoons, commandednow by a man whose familiarity with Tixall was an evil augury, meant onething only. Soon, perhaps within an hour or two, there would be fighting,and under cover of that a stab in the back or a bullet in the head wouldclear the Colonel out of Brocton's path for ever.

  "Take these papers, Master Freake," said I. "Mistress Waynflete will tellyou what has happened here, and you can give them back to their owner ifyou choose. But do not, I beg you, on any account let the rascal insidesee or hear you."

  I raced indoors, seized the sergeant's tuck and took his baldrick fromhim, heedless of his vile threats. I left him there, choking withfoulness, unhitched Sultan, sprang into the saddle, and cantered up to myfriends.

  "Now, Mistress Margaret," I said, "describe your father so that I shallknow him when I see him."

  She sketched his portrait in broad, clear outlines, and I fixed thedescription point by point in my memory.

  "That's the road to Newcastle," said I, pointing along the edge of themere, "and it's fairly straight and good. Follow me there as quickly asyou can, and inquire for me at the 'Rising Sun.' I'll have news of theColonel, if not the Colonel himself, when we meet again."

  I bowed to Margaret, dug my heels into Sultan, and was off like a flash.