Part 5 (1/2)
”Thou hast honestly confessed, like a brave man, that thou art a coward, John Alward; and so it shall be a bargain between us. I will take your message. I fear not Paul Kelpy--he has been down with that stake through his body, ever too fast to walk abroad.”
”There's my hand to it,” said the groom, ”and thanks to boot. I am no coward, Derrick,--but have an infirmity which will not endure to look by night in the lonesome woods, upon a spirit which walks with a great shaft through it. w.i.l.l.y of the Flats saw it, in that fas.h.i.+on, as he went home from the Viewer's feast on the eve of St. Agnes.”
”w.i.l.l.y had seen too much of the Viewer's hollands that night,” said Derrick; ”and they are spirits worth a dozen Paul Kelpys, even if the whole dozen were trussed upon the same stake, like herrings hung up to smoke. In spite of the fisherman and his bolt, I warrant you I pa.s.s unchallenged betwixt this and Mattapany.”
The secretary, soon after this, entered the hall and confirmed the arrangements which had just been made. He accordingly delivered the letters intended for Colonel Talbot and Nicholas Sewall to the falconer, and that for Mr. Notley, the late lieutenant general of the province, to John Alward. To the Indian was committed the duty of bearing the missions to such members of the council as resided either in the town or within a few miles of it. Holding it matter of indifference whether he despatched this duty by night or by day, the Knife took it in hand at once, and set forth, on foot, with a letter for Colonel Digges, who lived about five miles off, at the same time that the other two couriers mounted their horses for their lonesome journeys through the forest.
CHAPTER VI.
If we should wait till you, in solemn council With due deliberation had selected The smallest out of four and twenty evils, 'I faith we should wait long.
Dash and through with it--that's the better watchword, Then after, come what may come.
PICCOLOMINI.
On the following day, the council, consisting of some four or five gentlemen, were a.s.sembled at the Proprietary Mansion. About noon their number was rendered complete, by the arrival of Colonel George Talbot, who, mounted on a spirited, milk-white steed that smoked with the hot vigour of his motion, dashed through the gate and alighted at the door.
A pair of pistols across his saddle-bow, and a poniard, partially disclosed under his vest, demonstrated the precautions of the possessor to defend himself against sudden a.s.sault, and no less denoted the quarrelsome aspect of the times. His frame was tall, athletic, and graceful; his eye hawk-like, and his features prominent and handsome, at the same time indicative of quick temper and rash resolve. There was in his dress a manifestation of the consciousness of a good figure--it was the costume of a gallant of the times; and his bearing was characteristic of a person accustomed to bold action and gay companions.h.i.+p.
Talbot was a near kinsman of the Baltimore family, and besides being a member of the Proprietary's council, he held the post of Surveyor General, and commanded, also, the provincial militia on the northern frontier, including the settlements on the Elk River, where he owned a large manor, upon which he usually resided. At the present time he was in the temporary occupation of a favourite seat of the Proprietary, at Mattapany on the Patuxent, whither the late summons had been despatched to call him to the council.
This gentleman was a zealous Catholic, and an ardent personal friend of his kinsman, the Proprietary, whose cause he advocated with that peremptory and, most usually, impolitic determination which his imperious nature prompted, and which served to draw upon him the peculiar hatred of Fendall and Coode, and their partisans. He was thus, although a sincere, it may be imagined, an indiscreet adviser in state affairs, little qualified to subdue or allay that jealous spirit of proscription which, from the epoch of the Protectorate down to this date, had been growing more intractable in the province.
Such was the individual who now with the firm stride and dauntless carriage of a belted and booted knight of chivalry, to which his picturesque costume heightened the resemblance, entered the apartment where his seniors were already convened.
”Well met!” he exclaimed, as he flung his hat and gloves upon a table and extended his hand to those who were nearest him. ”How fares it, gentlemen? What devil of mutiny is abroad now? Has that pimpled fellow of fustian, that swiller of the leavings of a tap room, the wors.h.i.+pful king of the Burgesses, master Jack Coode, got drunk again and begun to bully in his cups? The falconer who hammered at my door last night, as if he would have beaten your Lords.h.i.+p's house about my ears, could tell me nothing of the cause of this sudden convocation, save that Driving d.i.c.k had come in hot haste from James Town with letters that had set the mansion here all agog, from his Lords.h.i.+p's closet down to the scullery.”
”With proper abatement for the falconer's love of gossip,” said the Proprietary, ”he told you true. The letters are there on the table.
When you have read them, you will see that with good reason I might make some commotion in my house.”
Talbot ran his eye over the papers. ”Well, and well--an old story!” he said, as he threw one letter aside and took up another.
”Antichrist--the Red Lady of Babylon--the Jesuits--and the devil: we have had it so often that the lecture is somewhat stale. The truculent Papists are the authors of all evil! We had the Geneva band in fas.h.i.+on for a time; but that wore out with old Noll. And then comes another flight of kestrels, and we must have the thirty-nine articles served up for a daily dish. That spider, Master Yeo, has grown to be a crony of his grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, and is busy to knit his web around every poor catholic fly of the province.”
”This must be managed without temper,” said Darnall, the oldest member present, except the Chancellor. ”Our adversaries will find their advantage in our resolves, if made in the heat of pa.s.sion.”
”You say true,” replied Talbot. ”I am a fool in my humour; but it doth move me to the last extremity of endurance to be ever goaded with this shallow and hypocritical pretence of sanct.i.ty. They prate of the wickedness of the province, forsooth! our evil deportment, and loose living, and notorious scandal! all will be cured, in the opinion of these solemn Pharisees, by turning that good man, Lord Charles and his friends out of his own province, and by setting up parson Yeo in a fat benefice under the wing of an established church.”
”Read on,” said Lord Baltimore, ”and you shall see the sum of all, in the argument that it is not fit Papists should bear rule over the free-born subjects of the English crown; and, as a conclusion to that, a summary order to discharge every friend of our holy church from my employ.”
Talbot read the letter to the end.
”So be it!” he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, as he threw the letter from him, and flung himself back into his chair. ”You will obey this high behest? With all humbleness, we will thank these knaves for their many condescensions, and their good favours. Your uncle, the Chancellor here, our old frosted comrade, is the first that your Lords.h.i.+p will give bare-headed to the sky. As for myself, I have been voted an incarnate devil in a half dozen conclaves--and so Fendall shall be the surveyor. I hope your Lords.h.i.+p will remember that I have a military command--a st.u.r.dy stronghold in the fort of Christina--and some stout fellows with me on the border. It might be hard to persuade them to part company with me.”
”Peace, I pray you, peace!” interrupted the Proprietary; ”you are nettled, Talbot, and that is not the mood for counsel.”
”These pious cut-throats here,” said Talbot, ”who talk of our degeneracy, slander us to the whole world: and, faith, I am not of the mind to bear it! I speak plainly what I have thought long since--and would rather do than speak. I would arrest the ring-leaders upon a smaller scruple of proof than I would set a vagrant in the stocks. You have Fendall now, my Lord--I would have his fellows before long: and the s.p.a.ce between taking and trying should not add much to the length of their beards:--between trying and hanging, still less.”
”As to that,” said the Proprietary, ”every day brings us fresh testimony of the sedition afoot, and we shall not be slow to do justice on the parties. We have good information of the extent of the plot against us, and but wait until an open act shall make their guilt unquestionable. Master Coode is now upon bail only because we were somewhat too hasty in his arrest. There are a.s.sociates of Fendall's at work who little dream of our acquaintance with their designs.”