Georgette Heyer (39 page)

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Authors: Royal Escape

BOOK: Georgette Heyer
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  'He is a godly man that puts the Lord's business before earthly gain,' said Westley.
  A snort escaped the squire. He hoped he was a decent, God-fearing man, but he held that the place for parsons was in Church, and not in his house at ten o'clock on a Tuesday morning. 'Does he so?' he said, with grim scepticism. 'Be short with me, parson, if you please, for I am not one who has the whole day to waste!'
  'I will be short, yea, and pungent too! Sir, the traitor Charles Stewart lay in Charmouth yester-night, and left the town a bare hour since!'
  The squire was no King's man, but Westley's words awoke in his breast a feeling of strong dislike. He would not have a Stewart back upon the throne; no, but, God's death, it made him mad to hear a scurvy rogue of a canting, lowbred, sour-faced, upstart minister speak so insolently of his better! He opened his mouth to deliver a blistering reproof, and shut it again, as he recollected the changed times, and his own professed politics. He drew breath, and rapped out: 'What's this? The King at Charmouth? Pho! Pho, I say! Don't believe it!'
  'Friend, recount to Mr Butler what the ostler told you!' Westley commanded.
  Butler whipped round upon the blacksmith. 'Ha, so this is your work, is it? Out with it, then! Let me have this story which brings you from your trade at such a time.'
  The blacksmith moistened his lips, and began halt ingly to recount all that the ostler had told him. The story sounded lame, even to his own ears, and when he came to the end of it he was not much surprised to find the squire incredulous.
  ''Sbud!' said the squire, spitting out the expletive. 'I marvel at you, parson, by God, I do! What a-pox ails you to come plaguing me with this parcel of nonsense? May a party of travellers not be private in an inn without your smelling them out to be Cavaliers? Are there no tall, dark men in England but the King? What the devil brings you to me?'
  Westley looked sternly at him. 'I believe that man to have been Charles Stewart. I see your duty plain, sir, and am come to put you in the way of it.'
  'Plain, d'ye say? So do not I, by God! Come, be brief: what would you have me do?'
  'I would have you issue a warrant to raise the country for the apprehension of the traitor!'
  The squire gave a short crack of laughter. 'Make a laughing-stock of yourself if you please, Master Parson: you shall not make one of me!'
  'Do I understand that you will not do it, sir?' cried Westley.
  'Look 'ee, parson, I know my duty, and am a good Parliament -man, and so you know! But to set up a commotion for the sake of a tall fellow whom a silly ostler tells the blacksmith (which is as big a fool as himself !) is the King, comes not within any duty of mine. If you had seen the man, and suspicioned it was the King, I would have lent an ear, maybe. Upon such testimony as I have, I'll issue no warrant. And so I bid you good-day!'
  'You will rue this, squire,' Westley said in a sombre tone.
  The squire waved him away. He did not believe that the King had been at Charmouth; he did not want to believe it. He was the King's professed enemy, whole hearted for the Parliament; but he thought it would be better, since, unhappily, the King had not been killed at Worcester, that he should escape out of England. For himself, he heartily wished him dead, but he wanted to have no hand in bringing him to the block. It was an ill business, chopping off a King's head. He had not been in London upon that bleak January day, two years and more ago, but he knew those that had. Yes, an ill busi ness: when the King's head had been lifted up by the locks for the crowd to see, from behind the thick hedge of pikes a groan had gone up that had turned a man's guts to water. He knew one, not a squeamish fellow either, who had vomited where he stood. Queer, that, for he had been no King's man. Well, what was done could not be undone: but better not to have it done again. The squire pushed the thought of the tall, dark visitor to Charmouth out of his mind. After all, there was little chance of the fellow's having been Charles Stewart.
  The squire's disbelief, after a few minutes' reflection, began to have some effect upon Mr Westley. He feared that his zeal had led him into too precipitate action. On their way back to the village, Hammet talked of the bills posted up in Lyme, and the suspicion that Hammet and the ostler both had allowed their greed to make them leap to unproved conclusions took strong possession of his mind. He answered the smith shortly, and presently parted from him, going back to his own house to pray for guidance.
  The ostler, meanwhile, was halfway to Lyme, trudging along the coast-road. He wondered what signal reward would be bestowed upon the man who brought about the King's capture. Gold filled his vision: enough gold to keep a man in comfort all the days of his life, he thought. No more soldiering for him; no more sweating in a red coat through a long day's march; no more easing of his rump in the saddle after hours of riding at a jog-trot under a blistering sun; no more work in stables, eking out a bare living. He would buy him a good ale-house, or maybe an inn, the kind of inn that gentlemen patronized, and get him a comfortable wench to wife, besides; and live soft at last.
  When he reached Lyme, he saw one of the bills, nailed up in the market-place. He could not read it, being an unlettered man, but seeing a group of citizens standing by it, he asked to have it explained to him. When this was done, by a stout man in a frieze coat, he felt the palms of his hands grow suddenly damp with starting beads of sweat. A powerful excitement made him tremble; he found himself repeating: 'One thou sand pounds, one thousand pounds!'
  'Ay, that's what it says. Three thousand broad pieces for him as lays hands on Charles Stewart! Well, it's a mort of money, sure enough.'
  'Or lays information!' the ostler said anxiously. 'That's what it says, don't it?'
  'Ay, that's it. But who's to know him, that's what I'd like to know? Ah, there's many an honest poor man as would be glad of the money, but it's not the likes of us as'll see the colour of one of them broad pieces.'
  'I dunno as I'd want to, not when all's said,' remarked an elderly man on the outskirts of the group. 'Seems to me it wouldn't be well come-by. King or no King, it's blood-money. I warrant it'll do no good to them as gets it.'
  'There ain't no King nowadays. You read what it says there: the traitor Charles Stewart: that's what it says. It's different, laying your hands on a traitor.'
  'Maybe it is. I wouldn't like to have it on my conscience, though. Seems to me, I wouldn't sleep easy in my bed, knowing as I'd sold a man to his death.'
  'But he's an enemy to the Commonwealth!' protested the stout man. 'You'm talking like you was a King's man, Henry Daw!'
  'Well, I ain't. All I say is, let the Commonwealth catch the King, if it can, and make an end of him, without putting dirty work on to honest men's shoul ders. Blood-money's blood-money, say what you will.'
  The ostler edged his way out of the group. He thought how the fools would stare, and that cavil ling fellow change his tune to one of envy, if it were known that he had it in his power to earn the promised reward.
  He hurried up the street, walking so fast that the sweat from his body made his clothes stick uncomfort ably to his skin. An obscure dread that someone might be before him with his news drove him on; when he reached the guard-house he was red with heat, and panting so that he had to pause to get his breath before he could speak intelligibly.
  The troopers lounging about the door were unim pressed by the urgency of his demand to have speech with their Captain. His greed made him over-cunning; he would not divulge the nature of his business; and when he said that it was a matter touching the State, he was laughed at so loudly that he lost his temper, and hit out at the nearest grinning face.
  The arrival of the sergeant put an end to the brawl before it was fairly started. Discipline in Cromwell's New Model was a real thing, not lightly set aside. The troopers looked abashed, mumbled excuses and drew off; and the ostler, trying to straighten his tumbled clothes, and smooth his shock of short hair, repeated, but in humbler accents, his request to speak with the Captain.
  He was told that he must wait; and left to kick his heels in the guardroom for half an hour. His body grew cool again; his rough shirt now felt clammy, and had rucked itself up round his stomach; he was thirsty, too: the vision of gold had no power to ease his bodily discomforts.
  When he was taken to the Captain, his brief excite ment had waned; he was sullen, for he thought if the Captain heeded his story it would be for his own ends. There was little a poor man could do, if one of his betters chose to claim the reward that properly belonged to him. He scowled when the Captain sharply asked him his business, and said: 'If I tell what I know, shall I have the money?'
  Captain Macey subjected him to a hard stare: 'What money, rogue?'
  He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. 'For taking up Charles Stewart.'
  Macey started up out of his chair, with his square blunt-fingered hands resting heavily on the table before him. 'What's this? Speak out, man!'
  'Shall I have the money?' the ostler repeated obsti nately.
  'We'll see that! If you speak not what you know, I'll loosen your tongue with a stirrup-leather!'
  The ostler shot him a rancorous look. But he had guessed how it would be, after all. 'He was in Char mouth last night, at the Queen's Head.'
  Macey's baldrick was slung over the back of his chair; he reached a hand behind him, fumbling for it. 'Are you certain of this? Is he there now?'
  'Nay, but I know where he's gone to.'
  'Where, then? What proof have you it was Charles Stewart?'
  'Nay, I know not that, but he was a great, black fellow, with his hair cut short, like a countryman's. But he spoke very fair, mince-mouthed, like he was town bred, and kept himself private all night in the parlour.'
  A flush rose to Macey's cheeks; he put on his baldrick, saying: 'It may well be! It may well be! Where is he gone, fellow? Who is of his company?'
  'Bridport way. He's gone with a wench riding behind him, but the fat lord set out for Lyme.'
  'When was this?'
  'It was early, eight o'clock, may be.'
  'Fool, do you know it is already noon?' shouted the Captain.
  He did not wait for an answer, but snatched his hat from a chair, and went stamping out with a great jingle of spurs, and clatter of his scabbard swinging against the lintel of the door. The ostler ran after him, calling out: 'Shall I have the money?' He was thrust out of the way; the Captain was shouting orders to his troop. In a very few minutes horses' hooves were clattering on the cobbles outside the guardroom. The ostler, elbowed this way and that, ran into the street in time to see the Captain hoist himself into his saddle. ''Twas me brought the news!' he cried despairingly.
  'If I catch up with the traitor you shall not lose by it,' called Macey, over his shoulder, as the troop began to move forward.
  The ostler stood still, glowering after him. If I get a hundred broad pieces out of the whole three thou sand, it'll be the most I'll see, he thought. Then he remembered that he was a poor man, and had told his tale without witnesses, and he thought ten pieces would be as much as Macey would give him, or maybe five.

Sixteen

'I Know We Are Pursued'

The King's little party, climbing the hill out of Char mouth, rode at an easy pace towards Bridport, following the direct road through Morecamblake and Chideock. Juliana, who had not been able to sleep much during the night's interminable hours, but had tossed rest lessly from side to side in the smothering billows of a feather-bed, was looking pale and a little heavy-eyed; but once the last straggling cottages of Charmouth had been left behind, she began to revive, her spirits, which had been oppressed by the night's alarms, lifting with all the resilience of youthful optimism. She roused the King by her chatter from the fit of tacitur nity which had descended upon him. Not very sensi tive to impression, nor fully appreciative of the danger the King stood in while he remained in England, she did not feel the melancholy that made him silent, and was not altogether sorry to know that he meant to return to Trent. The Colonel, more perceptive than she, felt the King's melancholy like a wound in his own flesh. He made a movement with his hand as though to check Juliana's prattle. She did not notice it; he saw then that the King was not teased by his cousin, but rather diverted, and he held his peace. By the time they had covered the seven miles that lay between Charmouth and the larger town of Bridport, the sombre look had vanished from the King's eyes, and he had begun to discuss with the Colonel new plans for his escape.

  Upon their entering Bridport, the most unwelcome sight of a red-coat met their eyes. A few hundred yards farther on they saw more red-coats, and discovered, to the Colonel's dismay, that the town swarmed with them.
  Juliana was afraid of night, of stuffy inns and guttering candles, and the moan of the wind under the door; danger in the form of prosaic soldiers lounging through sun-lit streets, looking homely, and rather hot in their muddied uniforms, quickened her nerves only to a fright that had in it something of enjoyment. She stole her arms round the King's waist, murmuring: 'Ah, this is what I was promised! This is as it was when you rode with Mrs Jane Lane! I can be as brave as she, I promise you!'

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