Part 53 (1/2)
He made no retort, being indeed too excited to notice pin-p.r.i.c.ks, but ordered the sergeant to take me to the rear under a strong guard. ”Make sure of him!” he cried, and added in a lower tone, as I moved off under the combined pull and push of my captors, ”Make sure of it.” He then went off to his own place in the line.
The sergeant did not come with us, and I had been tugged nearly to the second hedge before he overtook us. To my astonishment he was carrying my saddle on his head, where, in the dim light, it looked like a gigantic bonnet. He swore at the men for loitering, and on we went to the second hedge. We struck it at a point where there was neither gate nor gap, but the dragoons bashed it down with their carbines and trampled it down with their boots, and so made a way.
Two of the men were through, and I was being hauled through, when there was a spattering of shots from behind. Over the noise a stentorian voice called out ”Claymores!” It was the Highland warcry, and, with reverberating yells, the clansmen poured out of the nearer enclosure to attack the dragoons lining the hedge.
The sergeant drew his sword, and, as we raced on again, struck viciously with the flat of it at his men to make them run faster. A queer figure he cut in the moonlight as he raced along, swearing and slas.h.i.+ng, with the skirts of the saddle flapping against his lean ribs. At last we got out on a poor road lined with trees and turned south along it. There was urgent need for him to haste now, for Brocton's dragoons had been cut out of their cover and were being pushed back to the hedge we had just left. The sergeant halted a moment to take stock of the situation, and then we hurried on again. Every time he struck a man for lazy running, the man in his turn paid me with punch or kick. After a mile or so, the avenue made an abrupt turn to the east and brought us out on the main road in the rear of the Duke's army.
The moon showed us a little cottage, standing off from the road in a poor plot of ground. The sergeant led the way up to it, turned the cottager and his family out of it into a shed, and set two men without as sentries. He then made the others strip me to the skin and examined every shred of clothing, ripping out the linings and even cutting my boots to pieces.
Finding nothing, he flung me the rags to put on again, and then cut the saddle to pieces and searched that. I knew now why William had so nearly lost his vail and Donald had been obliged to steal me another saddle. The sergeant wanted, the letter and papers I had taken from him at the ”Ring of Bells.” He was so keen that he omitted to pouch any of my belongings, and I retained my money, Donald's watch, and the priceless strip of bloodstained linen. My tuck and pistols were naturally taken from me on my capture.
”Any luck?” I asked quizzingly, when he at last gave over the search.
Too furious or too cautious to reply, he brutally kicked a dragoon whom he caught smiling.
After a miserable drag of some two hours, a fresh dragoon came with a message, whereon the sergeant conducted me to the presence of the Duke, who was quartered in a large house in the village. The Lord Brocton, the Lord Mark Kerr, and other officers were with him, and also several ladies who would have been more at home in Vauxhall. For a minute or two I was unheeded, and the sergeant could hardly keep himself sufficiently stiff and awkward. His Grace was in the sourest of humours for, as the talk showed, he had been beaten. The claymores had taken the conceit out of him finely. He finished the subject with a string of oaths and then made an unprintable inquiry of Brocton concerning me. The ladies t.i.ttered profusely, and the most powdery one vowed that His Grace was a great wag.
In further proof of this he s.n.a.t.c.hed a feather near a yard long out of her pompom, and fanned himself with it while he examined me.
This ducal waggishness gave me time to observe that the sergeant's uneasiness was icy coldness in comparison with his lords.h.i.+p's. He was uncertain of speech; his face was the colour of pea-soup; he looked anxiously, almost affrightedly, at me. He grew plainly more comfortable as the Duke failed to get any information out of me beyond the fact that the weather was cold. Finally, when the sergeant was ordered to keep me at his peril till such time as I could be lodged in Carlisle jail, Brocton greedily tossed off a b.u.mper of wine and laughed aloud at some vulgar sally from a lady in a green paduasoy. On leaving I bowed to the Duke. He was a vigorous, able man with the manners and morals of a bull.
Brocton followed the sergeant out. There was a consultation between them of which I heard nothing, but the result was that the sergeant picked up a man as guide who was waiting at the front door, obviously for the purpose, and took me through and beyond the village to a house on the roadside. The place was of fair size, built of rough slabs of stone, and evidently a farm-house. The owner was a lumpish, ungainly fellow, astonis.h.i.+ngly bow-legged. He had a little yapping dog, which jumped backwards and forwards between his knees like a trick-dog through a hoop.
Preparations had been made for my coming, ”by his lords.h.i.+p,” as the farmer blabbed out. I was taken upstairs to a back room, ironed, in the way I have described, by the parish constable, who had been prayed in aid for the job, and locked in in the dark. I heard a sentry posted without the door and another beneath the window. It was some consolation, and I needed all I could get, to know I was so prized. There was a rough bed in the room. I tumbled on it, wondered for a few minutes what Margaret would be thinking of it all, and then went to sleep.
Next morning I made her acquaintance to this extent that she brought me a jug of thin ale, a lump of horse-bread and a slab of cheese. Her looks froze my affability, but she does not become important till she smiled, and I need say no more about her at present.
I saw no other person till nightfall of the third day, when the door opened and the little dog hopped through his accustomed gap into the room, and was followed by his master carrying a lighted tallow candle in a rusty iron candlestick. This imported something unusual, as I was not allowed a light, and it turned out to be a visit from my Lord Brocton. He ordered the sentry to follow the farmer downstairs, and examined the door carefully to see if it was closed thoroughly. I sat on the edge of the bed and hummed a brisk air with a fine pretence of indifference.
He sat down on the one chair there was, placed his hat on the table, and said, ”I am sorry to see you in this place and condition, Mr. Wheatman.”
”Thank you,” said I.
”Of course you know there's only one end of it.”
”Yes,” I replied, and hummed a stave of ”Lillibullero.”
He leaned forward and said impressively, ”The gibbet, Mr. Wheatman!”
”Draughty places!” said I, smiling, as I thought of Nance Lousely. ”I can feel the wind whistling through my bones.”
”You are pleased to be facetious, sir. It does credit, I must say, to your nerves.”
”You are pleased to be sympathetic, my lord,” I riposted, ”whereby you do no credit to my common sense.”
He took short breaths and then reflected a minute or two, during which I clinked a soft tattoo with my iron wristlets, and eyed him joyously. He was there--a free lordling, I was here--a chained rebel, but I had him set.
”I have a proposal to make to you, Mr. Wheatman,” he said at length.
”I am indeed honoured, but be careful, my lord! It's not in the least likely, I fear, to be a proposal which you would like the sentry beneath the window to overhear.”
”You are plain and blunt,” he said, leaning forward and speaking in a low tone, ”and I will be the same. Return me all the papers you took from my sergeant at the 'Ring of Bells,' and I will see that you escape and get clear of the country.”