Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (294 page)

“Why, they may not come to take a townswoman upon a witness warrant when they have no prisoner. And Edward Colman is safe in Amsterdam till he have sued out his pardon.” Justus Avenel came waddling towards them; he had found a stout and crooked stick that would not break. Before he reached them the Mayor set his finger to his lip, and said to his daughter, “But tell no man this; I am sworn to tell none.” Already he was repenting himself for having told her.

Justus Avenel caught him by the sleeve and held out the stick.

“You shall beat that wench,” he wheezed. “Now, at last! Or we shall cast you out of your Mayoralty. They do that to women-ridden fools. It is in the statute.”

“Why, your wife beats you when you are drunk,” Anne Jeal spoke, with a galling disdain.

The Mayor raised his hand to still her; it appeared to him lamentable to quarrel now that all was in train for peace. But Justus Avenel’s eyes were red with fury, and little, like a boar’s.

“Small wonder the town goes to ruin,” Anne Jeal said, “when the Council are so sackheaded they cannot twice make a row of bricks come to the same number.”

Justus Avenel shuddered all over his body. He raised the stick above his head and lurched, one fat brown hand held out, towards her on the wet and soggy February grass. She gave one great scream; she turned and ran; she pushed through the gate over the stream; her blue, and red, and green figure was in the field beyond.. And suddenly, from the osiers all round her, there sprang out men in steel cuirasses, with leather jerkins and sleeves. When they laid hands upon her she gave one more scream.

And the Mayor’s slow brains were startled to life by the sound of his daughter’s voice; he cursed hideously and ran over the grass to the bridge. A man with a great hat and a sash across his breastplate stood before him, his sword drawn, and he placed one hand upon the Mayor’s chest. The Mayor was running fast, but it stayed him for a minute, and his robes were heavy and his muscles soft. And the other men had Anne Jeal upon a horse in the quagmire, five yards away, where you could not walk.

“Mayor of Rye!” the officer called out, “this is the county of Sussex. If you stay me, who take your daughter by warrant, I will take you too.”

He moved a little back, set his foot in his stirrup where his horse was belly-deep in the reeds, and then was carried away to his horsemen. The Mayor, in his long robes, floundered desolately into the meadows, holding out his hands. Justus Avenel was come to the limit of the little bridge; he stood, his mouth and eyes wide, the stick drooping to the ground; the soldiers with Anne Jeal stayed for a moment to talk. Two poor men had run into the garden from plots beside theirs, and there were already half-a-score of others who had been drawn by the noise to the ends of their own little bridges over the stream — for, in the evening, there were always many that came to watch their hands at work in the garden beds, since in the town there was little to see. And in the silence of amazement that fell upon them all before that prospect of a little group of horse-folk on the long grass of the marsh, that spread away, bluish and flat, into the grey distance of the evening, the voice of Anne Jeal cried out —

“Men of Rye, I take ye all to witness: I have been driven with cudgels out of the Liberties of the town. Justus Avenel drove me here, and here were men lying in wait with a warrant to take me from my father and my home. I believe Justus Avenel brought them here. He is a foul traitor.”

At that the soldiers Seemed to have had enough of her words, for they set their horses in motion and rode away silently over the flats, until, a little black group, they were no longer seen. Beside the bridgeway Justus Avenel stood like a man stricken with plague. The Mayor drew his legs wearily out of the soft clay; he went slowly home through the town, and, because he was considered unfortunate, no one came to speak to him. His brain was quite addled; when he came to his house, he saw upon a chest the little parcel with the seals that his daughter had given him to keep for her. He stood poising it in his band, and it was very heavy. Then it came to him dimly that in it he might find some clue to this mysterious and terrible disaster, and he broke the seals.

The parcel contained a collar of gold and green, of very heavy links of enamelled gold, joined with little links of gold alone; it was like a mayor’s chain-collar, but below it, in a pendant, was a jewel, such as knights wear, of green thistles enamelled upon gold. He thought it was some present that a lover had sent her, and because that struck him as a thing very sad he began to cry — a silly old man in a dark hall-way before his clothes-press of black carved work that had always given him pride.

CHAPTER IV
.

THOUGH he was most often called the Lord Lieutenant of Sussex, the Earl Dalgarno was actually no more than a High Commissioner. The last Lord Lieutenant had been dead two years, and this Scottish earl was one of the great swarm of Scots that had come with the King from the North.

A place had had to be found for him, and, if it was above even the King’s powers to make a man — who had no lands in the county a Lord Lieutenant, it was, most men said, typical of the King that he should irritate his lieges by appointing no new Sussex peer and leaving the post in commission. —

The Lord Lieutenancy was a post of no power and of very little profit; it in nowise filled Dalgarno’s pockets, and his filling it had raised great angers, particularly down Lewes way. The emblem of this county is a hog, and its motto “Wun’t be druv.”

He had been expressly commanded to inquire into the various misdemeanours that flourished in that stubborn and inaccessible tract of land, which is all hills and woods and ironpits and clay roads; but, after eleven months of progresses and inquiries, he had got together no evidence at all — and he was now come to the extreme eastern border of the county where it joins Kent. The crimes that were said most to flourish in the world were those of mayhem, Catholicism, owling, witchcraft and Puritanism, whilst Jews were said to be harboured in certain of the ports.

But up to that day he had found nothing; it was all the more difficult for him in that he spoke one incomprehensible tongue and the men of Sussex another. It had been very much of a relief to him to speak with Anne Jeal in French, and it was still more of a relief to come upon traces of prisoners and evidence. Thus when, towards noon of that day, he had received a message from Anne Jeal that he might take her if he would to London town, where she would give testimony against owling and the Dutch Puritans — when he received her message he had little of hesitation in taking her. She proposed to him in set terms that he should send, at a quarter after three, to the little gate by the Tillingham brook, men with a show of force and a warrant to take her. She would contrive so to anger her father, or another man, that he should raise his hand to beat her, then she would run out of the gate and be taken with much noise. Thus it would appear that she had been betrayed and came against her will, though it was true that there was nothing she had ever done more willingly. She asked him to send her, in token of his consent, his collar of the Order of the Thistle, that she would keep in a safe place as hostage of her return and good treatment. It wrung his loins to part with his collar: it was the best part of the wealth that he had in the world. But, on the other hand, he was like enough to lose his collar and his few poor acres in Scotland and his starved castle if he could make no show of aiding the King’s visitation upon illdoers. He had been eleven months out of London, and he had left behind him at least a hundred Scotsmen who wished him very ill. For, in London, as it had been in Scotland, the Scots nobles had been starved, cliquish, hating each other, combining in knots to bring one another down, bearing evil tales. And this poor lord knew well that one of his own cousins had been to the King with the story that, if he made no prisoners, it was because he was bribed by the Sussex peers to baffle and ill use the King’s justice.

And this Lord Dalgarno, for all he was bitter, in solent and haughty to men like the Lords of Polegatte and Widmington, and though he threatened the Lord Warden with the King’s vengeance — it was because he was a Scotsman, and the Scots’ manner at that day was bitter and proud.
Fier comme un Escossais
it was customary to say. Yet he was so poor that he adopted with avidity the new custom of wearing yellow ruffs, because they needed to be washed and repaired very seldom, and with an equal eagerness the habit of dressing like the Spaniards, all in black, because black was a cheap colour with cloth merchants. And it made him shudder to contemplate the cloaks and coats of the Englishmen around him, after the fashion of the last reign, sewn with pearls and embroidered with gold upon purple or red cramosyn and velvet, such’ cloaks and coats as, it was said, cost one hundred pounds. He made himself fit in with his formal dress by walking with an odd gait, dragging his long and thin legs, speaking Scots interlaced with Spanish words, raising his eyebrows high and pointing all round him with his long and thin fingers.

He awaited Anne Jeal booted and spurred, but thus posturing to himself, alone in the great hall of the Manor of Udimore that was still a royal residence.

“Muy hermosa Alcaldina,”
he said, an’d flourished his fingers. “My horse is at the door: now we will ride, ere night is deep, to Little Tonbridge and sleep well.”

“Why,” she answered, “this is very sudden. I am not yet certain that I will come with you, and I await my garments that shall follow me.”

He shrugged his shoulders up to his ears, so that his yellow ruff went up too and peeped over his crown.

“Very worshipful Mayoress,” he said, “I have lain three days in this house, which is all I may do at the cost of the village. Would you have me maintain at mine own charges an intolerable troop of hungry men and horses?”

It was true that he might not live at the King’s charges for longer than three days: that was why, perhaps, he had found so little evidence, for he had perpetually flitted from place to place to avoid being at his own costs, and was hardly ever long enough together in one place for the discontented, if they would, to find him.

“And, as for your worship’s willingness or unwillingness to come,” he said, “that, lamentably, lieth out of your or my power to decide.”

“Aye,” she said calmly; “but I have your collar of knighthood.”

“Aye,” he answered her, calmly too; “but supposing you should, let us say, send an order for my collar to be broken to pieces, the penalty for so breaking a collar of a very sacred order is death and maiming.”

She shrugged her shoulders in turn.

“I think,” she said, “the penalty of doing such a thing to a woman for whom it is a hostage would be the finger of scorn all your life hereafter.”

He answered that to a mind conscious of righteousness the finger of scorn was a very little thing, and then, drawing his right leg round in a halfcircle, he spoke smoothly and slowly —

“It is a folly to quarrel. If you would come swiftly out of these parts and not be rescued we must, I trow, ride off hot foot. For I have a force of but ten Swords, with mine own true Toledo. And what is that against half a mutinous shire in arms? For, full surely, they will seek to succour one so fair.”

“Why, they will rise to succour me,” she said. He drew both his heels together; he had a thin face, a greyish beard and narrow eyes.

“Then let us make a pact,” he said. “Upon mine honour as an Earl of the kingdom of Scotland and upon mine oath’ as a knight you shall come to London and back unmolested by me, for I have a wife and am a man not given to gallantries.” She moved her shoulders at this as if it were a matter of little import.

“In other things,” he continued, “our interests do leap together. You shall come before the King and his council; you shall give such evidence as you will. If you will have a certain man down so will I very heartily and so will the King. If you would have a certain heresy rooted out, so would I and so also the King. London is a foul place and a sooty, but there is good feeding and junketing there, and no doubt the King, who is a good and gracious King, shall see you well bestowed and well entreated whilst you stay. Such is his habit.”

“Why,” she said, “if you will swear that I shall give mine evidence, I will come with you at once.” He strode, with great steps, to a table before a disused chair and laid his hand upon a great book there, chained with iron chains, and he took a great oath that she should give her evidence....

It was the middle of the night before they came to the manor of Little Tonbridge, on this side of the county border. They had pressed their horses heavily, so that they might reach a place where there was no longer any fear of pursuit or rescue, and so that the Earl Dalgarno might reach another place where he might lodge rent free, because, in the villages where there was a royal manor house, the villagers must pay for his food; and thus they had ridden over twenty miles over very bad roads and mostly in the darkness, with only the light of a great lanthorn carried by the cornet at his saddle-bar. It was a very new thing for Anne Jeal to be abroad thus in this darkness, and it shows how her mind was shaken by the going of Edward Colman and set upon one only thought of revenge that never afterwards did she remember anything of that ride, save only the lanthom light shining on the cornet’s boot-toes, the ears of her own horse and little wisps of mist that made them shiver in the hollows. Once only, she remembered, on coming to herself where they crossed the little river Biddle. It was swollen so high that she must, like one in a dream, cross her legs over her saddle and draw her skirts high. And at one moment, when her horse was off his feet, she came back to see the river water gleaming all around her out of the darkness and the soft and glowing lanthorn held high on the further bank to show where to guide the horses to. At that one moment the horse was swept slowly downwards, and she felt a sudden fear of the water, the darkness and all that it hid. But, with a smooth rising upwards, the horse found the ground, and then it was all one again.

But when she came to the Little Tonbridge manor house, where the sheriff had lights and wine awaiting them, as by custom prescribed, she called out whilst she was going up the great and shining staircase very wearily —

“Why, your candles are of mutton fat. I will have wax torches!”

The writs that prescribed a Lord Lieutenant’s housing were very old, so old that wax candles were hardly known when they had been granted. Thus mutton candles were all that had been found by the sheriff, and the Earl Dalgarno cried up at her from the bottom of the stairs, where he was scraping the mud from his boots with an iron knife — he was not minded to bear the expense of a page-boy to do such things for him —

“Senora Mayoress, this wine is very good, and here are bread and salt. But wax candles do not grow on Sussex trees.”

“I will have wax torches!” she cried out.

And, when she was in the great room that had been set aside for her, still she would have torches of wax, until at last the cornet, who was very mindful to purchase her favours, went at last to buy her two long sconces of wax from the old keeper of the house — an ancient soldier and knight of Queen Elizabeth’s Flemish wars, who had been granted this residence to live in for his lifetime in lieu of pension. He had these two candles of wax, that had come from a church near Bergen-op-Zoom, treasured up against his dying when they were to have stood at the head of his bed. The cornet had only time to tell her that they were blessed candles of the old faith and to mark how her eyes leapt and flamed at that news, when she put her hand upon his chest and thrust him back out of the room, not waiting to hear how dearly he had purchased them nor how hard it had been to entreat the old man.

She slammed the door before his nose; she hung her cloak over the keyhole; she went very swiftly to the east corner of the large and dim room and laid the candles on the floor in the form of a cross. The clock struck one, and she had five hours, at that time of year, till cockcrow. It was also the first of March, a propitious day.

She hurried very much in her actions; but her eyes were so filled with tears, because Edward Colman was gone, that when she set the great iron crock that was on the rack in the ingle forward and over the fire, she had to peer aside or over the drops as if she had worn spectacles. Her coat was scarlet and her skirt green, and, in the huge darkness, as she went about she sobbed and moaned.

He was gone away over the sea!

She set a little basin down beside the crossed candles of yellow wax, she laid in it a little embroidery stiletto that she drew from her housewife at her girdle; she bared her left breast and it stood out, white and firm from her red coat, as if she were about to give suck to a child. She knelt down between the western-most arm of the crossed candles, she folded her hands with the index fingers pointing downwards, and then, after a great crisis of sobbing, she bethought her of the words she had to say. Then she spoke, and her voice wandered away among the dark pillars of the bed, the dark hangings, the dark presses that had carved on them the arms of the Queen Anne Boleyn, painted in red and gold and blue, but very much faded.

“Malo a nos libera sed — tentationem in inducas nos ne et
...”

She made with her left hand the sign of the cross backwards, and then repeated the prayer of our Saviour backwards and very carefully so that she might have no word wrong up to —