Part 5 (1/2)
I never saw men so immediately fall into confusion as did all of them, but chiefly the rearward, that, every man of them, fled hither and thither with little squealing pitiful cries; some running beneath the waggon or behind it; others leaping off the causeway amidst the fenny ooze and peat-bogs that it wends through in these parts, where they were fain to shelter themselves in the gra.s.ses and filthy holes that everywhere there abound. I caught a sight of Sir Matthew, on the instant, exceedingly white, and his sword half drawn; but he then losing a stirrup (as he told me afterwards he did) was borne from the conflict unwillingly a great way down the road ere he could recover himself. Only the younger serving man, whose name was Jenning, and Mr.
Jordan, retained their courages, and both came at once to my a.s.sistance, which in truth was not too soon. For the footman (that is the villain with the pike) ran in under my guard and dealt me a keen thrust into the thigh which sore troubled although it did not unhorse me. I returned upon him with my pistol, discharging it close to his body, and hurt him in the shoulder, as I knew, because he dropped his pike and clapped his hand there, grinning at me the while like a dog.
Just then I heard the click of a snaphance, and perceived that the caliver that Jenning carried had hung fire; and following upon this, a great laughter from the elder man, whose name was Day, a hard-favoured fellow, having a wicked pursed mouth and little dull green eyes.
”Shouldst 'a looked to thy priming, Master Jenning,” he called out mockingly; by which I saw that he had tampered with the poor man's piece while we lay at the inn in Glas...o...b..ry; and this much said, he raised his own piece and fired directly at him, who fell at once all huddled upon his horse's neck, stark dead. Before I could draw forth my second pistol, Mr. Jordan had rid forward very boldly, though armed but with his antique broadsword, and laid about him with good swinging blows, the one of which happening upon his opponent's mare, it cut into her cheek with a great gash, at the same time bursting the rein and headstall, to the end she was quite unmanageable, and despite of Day's furious restraint (who, to do him credit, would have continued the contest, two to one), charged away at a great pace, carrying him with her along the road until they were fairly out of sight.
When I had satisfied myself that the villain would certainly not return, I drew my sword and looked about for his companion, the pikeman, whom I had wounded; but whether he had crept into the concealment of the high bog gra.s.s, as the most part of the guard had done, or else had gone backward down the road, I could not get any certainty; and Sir Matthew who now rode up said he had not gone that way, else he would a.s.suredly have met and slain him, which, seeing that the man was disabled, is likely; and so I gave over the search.
It cost us some pains to rally our forces, but in the end we did, Mr.
Jordan persuading them very cogently with his great sword wherever he found them: he having groped for the digamma in stranger places, he said, and worn away the better part of his life in the prosecution of things more hard to come by than this, our bog-shotten escort.
We reverently bestowed the body of poor Jenning upon the stuff in the waggon, and with heavy hearts (though not without some thrill of victory in mine) set onward again towards Frome and Devizes, which last place the knight was now in a fever to attain to before sundown.
”I think I have not been in such jeopardy,” he said, ”since I suffered s.h.i.+pwreck off the barren coast of the Hebrides, as I related to you yesterday.”
”The dangers would be about upon an equality,” quoth Mr. Jordan.
Nothing occurred to renew our fears nor to cause us to a.s.sume a posture of defence for the remainder of our pa.s.sage; the only accident any way memorable being that through some mischance we got into the town of Devizes at the wrong end of it, and were diligently proceeding quite contrary to our purposed direction before we discovered our error. I set this down because I have so done since also (in spite of clear information received), and have therefore cause to regard Devizes as something extraordinary in the approaches thereto, although Sir Matthew, to whom I spoke of it, said that such divergences were common enough at sea, where a man might set his course for the Baltic and fetch up off the Hebrides, or indeed the devil knew where.
CHAPTER VI
HOW THE OLD SCHOLAR AND I CAME TO LONDON
I leave you to imagine whether Sir Matthew made much or little of our adventure in the marshes, and of the part he took therein, when, having parted from us, he found himself free to relate the same privately to his family; they having preceded him (without any escort at all) to his new great mansion in Devizes. Upon our part, we, that is Mr. Jordan and I, having inquired out the Inn to which my chattels had been already carried, took up our lodging there for the night, being pretty well fatigued (and I wounded too) so that of all things we desired rest. Nevertheless my old schoolmaster would by no means suffer me to go to bed until he had procured me a surgeon, who bound up my thigh and took his fee without any word good or bad; afterwards going himself into the kitchen (I mean Mr. Jordan did) in order to my more careful attendance, so that the host his daughter brought me up of her best, and called me poor child, though I was older than she by half a year.
Now, I learned next morning that Mr. Jordan at his supper had put so heroical a construction upon our exploit as transformed us into men above nature almost, and I loathed to descend into the common room where all the ostlers and maids would be gaping after us for a pair of paladins. Mr. Jordan took the prospect of such adulation very coolly, saying that the wise man was he that nothing moved; but for all that I saw he liked it, and indeed he had been at considerable pains to prepare the ovation he now affected to despise. However, it so fell out that when at length we descended amongst the people of the Inn, our arrival quite failed of applause, and that for the simplest, although a tragical, reason.
For it appeared that when, on the yesternight, Sir Matthew, having discharged his baggage-wain and bestowed his goods and valuable stuff within the house, had gone to bed, it being then about midnight and all quiet, comes there, lurking through the dark night, that villain serving-man Day, whose late defeat had nothing distracted him from his hopes of plunder. With his poniard he cuts out a panel of the postern door, and privily entering thereby, goes rummaging through the house from loft to cellar, cutting and wasting what he could not carry off, but for the money, of which he found good store, and sundry gold ornaments thereto that were my lady Juke's, he fills his doublet full of them, as is proved upon him, said the teller, beyond dispute.
”But then,” proceeded the man, who now held our whole company expectant, ”even as he was about to steal away by the way he had come, he heard a little grating noise, as of a weapon which one struck against some impediment, close beside him in the dark where he was; and supposing this to be the knight who had unluckily heard him, he drew boldly upon him with his sword. The other thrust out upon the instant, and a horrid conflict ensued, the men coming to grips shortly and stabbing out of all rule. At length the serving-man, whose name is Day, dealt his adversary his death-blow and prepared to flee away with his booty, when it appeared (and as Day himself told me it surprised him out of measure) his legs would not bear him; so that he fell along the floor from sheer loss and effusion of blood, a subtle blow having pierced him unawares and mortally hurt him. Thus they lay both until the morning, when the servants, and I that am the butler, found them there, the one of them already stark and the other close upon his end and all aghast.”
”Then thy master be murdered, Roger Butler,” cried an old fellow from the tail of the press.
”Not so, Father Time,” shouted the butler with a great laugh, ”although Day, by that same error, was led into striking down one he should have gone in leash withal, namely his fellow-thief, one Warren, that was gone about the same game as himself.”
”Why, 'tis the very knave that dealt Mr. Cleeve here that great wound I told you of,” cried Mr. Jordan, when the clamour of voices had somewhat lessened; the which speech of his I could have wished not spoken, for now all turned about, demanding this and that of me, and swearing I was a brave lad; with such a deal of no-matter as put me into an extremity of rage and shame, so that I was glad to escape away to the hall, where I fell to at the ordinary, and drank to their confusion.
But for all my spleen it was indeed a merry tale, beside that it was a marvellous judgment upon two rogues. Day, it seemed, had breath enough left in him properly to incriminate Warren, who was, as I say, already dead, and then rolled over and died too. There was an inquest held of necessity, as well upon the thieves as upon poor Jenning that Day killed before; which process somewhat detained us; but in the afternoon of the day following, having satisfied the Coroner, we were permitted to depart on our way.
Nevertheless there was a deal of time lost upon our reckoning, it being now Sat.u.r.day morning, and although we were now no further to be hindered with the slowness of Juke's waggon, yet there was still a good four score miles to go, and the Sunday falling on the morrow when we were bound to rest, we could by no means reach London before Monday at night, or even the Tuesday forenoon. My baggage I had sent on by the common carrier, who engaged to transmit it at Reading, whither he plied, to another carrier going to London.
We rode out of the base court of the Inn gaily enough, and soon came upon the high Wilts.h.i.+re downs, which, there having been a deal of snow fallen in the night, lay about us in that infinite solemnity of whiteness that stills a man's heart suddenly, as few things else have the power to do.
Nought could we discern before and around us but ridge after ridge of snow, above which hung a sky of unchanging grey; all features of the country were quite obliterated, and but that some cart had gone that way a while since, of which we picked out and followed the wheel marks scrupulously, it had wanted little but we should have ridden bewildered into some deep drift and perhaps perished. Indeed, we were fortunate in that; and keeping close upon the track, although but slow going, in time descended into the market town of Marlborough, which we reached early in the afternoon. Here we refreshed ourselves and our beasts, and then away into the Savernake forest, traversing it without mishap, and so out upon the high road again by Hungerford, and into Newbury a little after nightfall; having covered above thirty miles in all, the ways bad too, and the day, because of the late season, very short.
On the Sunday we remained all day in the Inn, except that I went in the morning to the Church there, when I heard a sermon by the curate upon Wars and the Rumours thereof, wherein he advised us very earnestly to examine our pieces and have them ready to hand and not to keep our powder in the loft under the leaky thatch. He brought in somewhat, too, about the Sword of the Spirit and the s.h.i.+eld of Faith, but listlessly, and I saw that no one attended much to that, all men being full of fear of the Papists, to which they were particularly moved by Mr. Will. Parry's malicious behaviour in the House of Commons. The scholar did not accompany me to the Church, I suppose because he was himself a Papist, though perhaps no very rigorous one, but feigned a stiffness from riding; and when I returned I found him in the larder, where he was discoursing amply of the Scythians and their method of extracting a fermented liquor from the milk of mares, which was of a grateful potency, but (he lamented) not now to be obtained.
I wrote home a letter to my father after dinner, and in the evening entertained the curate, who had got to hear of our going to London, and came to speak with us thereon. He was an honest man, and of an ingenuous complacency, which he manifested in telling us very quietly that his Grace of Canterbury was of the same university as he, and he doubted not, would be pleased to hear of him, and that he had taken another rood of ground into the churchyard; all which I promised, if I should meet his lords.h.i.+p, to relate.