Part 4 (2/2)
A little after, and when I had taken breakfast, we heard a noise of horses in the forecourt, and knew it for Sir Matthew Juke, of Roodwater, my companion, and his retinue. My father went at once to the door and invited him in, but he would not dismount, he said, thinking indeed 'twas already time to set forward. He spoke in a quick petulant fas.h.i.+on and was (as I since discovered) in a considerable trepidation upon certain rumours of thieves in the wild country betwixt Taunton and Glas...o...b..ry, the which greatly daunted him. He wore a cuira.s.s over his doublet, and carried his sword loose in the scabbard, while his men bore their pieces in their hands openly. A wain with his goods in, that followed, had an especial guard; though they seemed to be but mere patches spared from the farm, and I was a.s.sured, would have dropped their calivers and fled at the first onslaught.
I was soon horsed, with a dozen hands to help, and a ring of women beyond, admiring and weeping and bidding me G.o.d speed; to whom I addressed myself, as I have said, with as much grat.i.tude as little modesty; being strangely excited by the circ.u.mstance and noise which attended our departure. I had a pair of great pistols in the holsters of my saddle which I could scarce forbear to flourish in either hand, and the sword at my belt delighted me no less, it being the first I had yet worn.
”'Tis the one you would have given to the cheat,” my father had told me as he tightened my belt-strap. ”But give it to none now, Denis, nor draw it not, save in defence of yourself (as I pray G.o.d you need draw it seldom), and of such as, but for you, be defenceless.”
At our parting, I bent at a sign, when he kissed me, and I him, and so set forward with our train. A great shout followed us, and at the hedge-end stood Simon Powell, his bonnet in his hand, which he waved as we went by, crying out a deal of Welsh (having forgot the Queen's English altogether, he told me afterwards), and in so shrill a voice as set the knight's horse capering and himself in a rage of blasphemy.
We fell in with Mr. Jordan, whom I had almost feared had given over his enterprise, some mile or so distant, at a smith's in a little village we pa.s.sed through, where he was having his armour eased about the middle, and a basket hilt put upon his sword.
”Who is this fellow?” asked Sir Matthew testily, when I hailed and accosted him.
”It is my old preceptor, sir,” said I, ”who is coming with us, if he have your leave.”
”Hast heard of any robbers by the way, Doctor?” inquired the knight at that, and I saw he was marvellous glad of this increase in his auxiliaries.
”I hear of nought else,” replied the scholar st.u.r.dily, while the other turned very pale. But continuing, the scholar said: ”Seeing that in a treatise I wrote awhile since and caused to be printed, there is a notable paragraph hath been bodily seized upon by a beggarly student of Leyden, and impudently exhibited to the world as his own. Heard you ever such? Robbers quotha? How of my labour, and inquiry into the nature of the lost digamma----”
”Hold!” cried Sir Matthew. ”I see we talk athwart. This lost thing or person of yours (for I understand no whit of what it may be) is nothing to the purpose. I spoke of robbers on the highway, villains and cutpurses.”
”Of them I reck little,” said Mr. Jordan coolly, ”seeing I have no purse to be cut.”
”They are dangerous nevertheless,” said the other loftily.
”For which reason you go sufficiently attended,” muttered the scholar, with a cursory eye backward upon the knight's warlike following; and with that we all fell, although for different causes, into an uniform silence. At length, being come to the top of a hill up which we had ascended painfully for near the half of an hour, and especially the waggons found it hard to overcome, we stood out upon an open and circular piece of ground, bordered about by n.o.ble great beech trees, but itself clear save for the sweet gra.s.s that covered it; and the turf being dry and the air refres.h.i.+ng after our late labour, we were glad to dismount there and rest awhile.
Sir Matthew ordered one of his men to fetch cooked meat and two bottles of wine from the cart, and showed himself very generous in inviting us to join him at this repast.
”I have always gone provided in these matters,” he told us as we sat together thus, ”since I went upon my first voyage to the Baltic, being but a boy then, although accounted a strong one.” (I know not wherefore; for he must ever have been little, and his back not above two hands' breadth.) ”Howbeit,” he continued, ”we had the ill luck to be cast away upon the Hebrides, the weather being very tempestuous and our s.h.i.+p not seaworthy; so that about the fourth day it broke in pieces utterly. I held to a piece of the keel,” he said, looking anxiously from one to the other as his memory or invention helped him to these particulars, ”upon which, too, clung our purser, whom I did my best to comfort in this our common and marvellous peril. How we got to sh.o.r.e I never understood, but we did, although half dead, and the purser raving.”
”Since which time,” said Mr. Jordan, pausing in the conveyance to his mouth of a great piece of a fowl's wing, ”you have, as you say, gone provided against the repet.i.tion of such accidents, even upon the dry land.”
”And wisely, sir, as I think,” added Sir Matthew.
”Was there then no food to be had in Scotland?” asked Mr. Jordan simply.
”Not where we landed, in the Hebrides,” replied the knight tartly. ”As to the rest of that country I know nothing, save that 'tis a poor starved foggy place, and the people savage, half naked and inclining to Presbytery, which is a form of religion I abhor, and to any that professeth the same I am ready to prove it wholly erroneous and false.”
The knight's tale seeming likely to digress into theology, we ended our dinner hastily without more words; albeit from time to time later, it was evident that Sir Matthew's thoughts were still upon s.h.i.+pping and the sea; so that scarce an accident we met with but he found in it occasion for casting us naked on the Hebrides, or drowning us in the Baltic.
We had halted, I say, upon a considerable eminence, and the ground falling away in our front very steeply, the view thence was of an unparalleled breadth and variety. For stretched at our very feet, as it seemed, lay a fair and fertile champaign diversified here and there with woodland and open heath. Beyond the vale rose the wild and untracked downs all dark and clouded; and to the left hand (as we stood) the bar of the Quantock Hills. Surely a man must travel far who would behold a land more pleasant than this sweet vale of Taunton; nay, were he to do so, as indeed the exiled Israelites found pleasanter waters in Babylon than they had left in Jewry, yet must he needs (as they did) weep at the remembrance of it; for there is no beauty ascendeth to the height of that a man's own country hath--I mean at least if it be the West Country, as mine is.
We continued our progress, going through two or three hamlets where the old folk and children stood about the doors to watch us pa.s.s, for we were a notable spectacle, and Sir Matthew Juke a stern figure in the van; travelling thus without any great fatigue, for we kept at a foot's pace on account of the waggon, and of Mr. Jordan also, who had no horse. I frequently besought him to ride my own mare, but he would not until we were within sight of the great belfry tower of St. Mary's Church in Taunton, when he consented, being indeed pretty faint by that, and thanked me handsomely out of aesop.
In Taunton we dined, and there too I hired a beast for the scholar because (to speak the truth) I could not bear to be parted any longer from my holsters with the new pistols in. No adventure befell us worthy recording, or rather nothing of such magnitude as Sir Matthew's s.h.i.+pwreck which I have above set down, until we reached Glas...o...b..ry, where we were to lie that night.
On the morrow we departed early, observing still the same order, save that we rode more closely before the baggage upon a persistent report in the inn of a horrid robbery with murder on the Frome road: which town lay in our way to Devizes. Even the Baltic dried up at this, and we kept a pretty close look-out as we crossed the flat marsh lands thereabout; and once Juke shot off his piece suddenly upon some alarm, but with so trembling and ill an aim that Mr. Jordan's high crowned hat (that he still wore) was riddled through the brim, and a verse of Ovid's which was in his mouth, cut off smartly at the caesura. Matter of ridicule though this were, I had been alert to note some other circ.u.mstance of more gravity (as I conceived) though I spoke not of it then; the cause of my anxiety being indeed too near for open conference thereupon. For I had, by accident, observed certain becks and glances to pa.s.s between two of the fellows of our guard; the one of whom, a pikeman (by name Warren), trudged beside the cart wherein were laid up the knight's goods, and his fellow in the plot (to call it as I feared it) was the elder of the two hors.e.m.e.n that wore the knight's livery and were particularly engaged in his defence. After two or three such furtive signals run up, as it were, and answered betwixt these twain, I could be in no further doubt of their purpose, but studied what to do, should they fall upon us suddenly. That their main design was to seize upon the contents of the waggon that was by all supposed valuable, I made sure; but what I could not yet guess was the degree of complicity or indifference in which the rest of our company stood towards the projected a.s.sault. I conceived them to be chiefly cowards, however, and resolved therefore, if I might, to enlist their aid upon the first advantage: for cowards ever succeed to the party that rises dominant, and protest their loyalty loudest when 'tis most to be questioned.
Because I was a boy, I suppose, but at all events very impudently, my conspirators took small pains to hide their deliberations from my eyes, having first a.s.sured themselves that neither Juke nor the scholar had any cognizance of their doings. And this disdain of me it was that brought matters to a head; for I could no longer brook it, but, wheeling my horse about, I faced them both, and drawing a pistol from my holster shouted: ”Halt, sirs! here be traitors amongst us.”
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