The Lady of Loyalty House: A Novel

“I shall rout out something to fill my leisure I doubt not,” Evander answered.

“Then hey for the kitchen-garden,” cried Halfman, taking Evander’s arm, and the two men, passing through a yew arch opposite to that by which they had entered, left my lady’s pleasaunce as solitary as they had found it.

XVI

A PURITAN APPRAISED

It did not remain solitary long. Unawares, the steps of Halfman and Evander had been dogged ever since they crossed the moat and set out on their pilgrimage through the gardens. Crouching behind hedges, lingering in coppices, peeping through thickets, two persistent trackers had pursued the unconscious quarry. Scarcely had the shadows of Evander and his companion vanished from the grasses of the pleasaunce than the pursuers emerged from the shelter of a yew screen and ran into the open, staring after the departing pair. Yet these pursuers were no stealthy enemies, but merely creatures spurred by an irresistible curiosity. One was stout and red faced and inclined to breathe hard after the fatigues of the chase. The other was slim and smooth, with ripe cheeks and bright eyes, lodgings for the insolence of youth. In a word, the hunters were Mistress Satchell and pretty Tiffany, who had found their Puritan prisoner and visitor a being of considerable interest.

Mistress Satchell turned a damp, shining face and a questioning eye upon Tiffany.

“Is not he a dashing lad for a Puritan?” she gasped, patting her ample chest with both hands as if to fondle her newly recovered breath. Tiffany, who was bearing her mistress’s lute, shrugged and pouted.

“I see little to like in him,” she snapped. This was not at all true, but she was not going to admit as much to Mistress Satchell, or, for that matter, to herself. Mistress Satchell snorted fiercely, like an offended war-horse.

“Because he has not clipped you round the waist, pinched you in the cheek, kissed you on the lips – such liberties as our rufflers use. But he is a man for my money.”

She spoke with vehemence. Pretty Tiffany made a dainty grimace as she answered:

“I think I am pleasing enough to behold, yet he gave me no more than a glance when he gave me good-day.”

Mistress Satchell’s ample bulk swayed with indignation.

“He is a lad of taste, I tell you. Why should he waste his gaze on such small goods when there was nobler ware anigh? He smiled all over his face when he greeted me.”

Tiffany was sorely tempted to smile all over her face as she listened, but Mistress Satchell’s temper was short and her arm long, so she kept her countenance as she answered, shortly:

“He is little.”

This Mistress Satchell swiftly countered with the affirmation:

“He is great.”

Tiffany thrust again.

“He is naught.”

Again Dame Satchell parried.

“He is much,” she screamed, and her face was poppy-red with passion, but Tiffany, retreating warily and persistent to tease, was about to start some fresh disclaimer of the Puritan’s merits when she caught sight through a yew arch vista of a gown of gold and gray, and her tongue faltered.

“Our lady,” she whispered to Mistress Satchell, who had barely time to compose her ruffled countenance when Brilliana came through the yew arch and paused on the edge of the pleasaunce surveying the belligerents with an amused smile.

“What are you two brawling about?” she asked, as she moved slowly towards the marble seat. Tiffany thrust in the first word.

“Goody Satchell will vex me with praise of the Parliament man.”

By this time Brilliana had seated herself, observing her vehement shes with amusement. She turned a face of assumed gravity upon the elder.

“So, so, Mistress Satchell, have you turned Roundhead all of a sudden?”

Mrs. Satchell shook her head at Brilliana and her fist at Tiffany.

“Tiffany is a minx, but I am an honest woman; and as I am an honest woman, there are honest qualities in this honest Puritan.”

Brilliana knew as much herself and fretted at the knowledge. It cut against the grain of her heart to admit that a rebel could have any redemption by gifts. But she still questioned Mistress Satchell smoothly, thinking the while of a man intrenched behind a table, one man against six.

“What are these marvels?” she asked.

Mistress Satchell was voluble of collected encomiums.

“Why, Thomas Coachman swears he is a master of horse-manage, and he has taught Luke Gardener a new method of grafting roses, and Simon Warrener swears he knows as much of hawking as any man in Oxford or Warwick.”

She paused, out of breath. Brilliana, leaning forward with an air of infinite gravity, commented:

“It were more to your point, surely, if the gentleman had skill in cook-craft.”

Mistress Satchell was not to be outdone; she clapped her hands together noisily and shrilled her triumph.

“There, too, he meets you. After breakfast this morning, when I asked him how he fared, he overpraised my table, and he gave me a recipe for grilling capons in the Spanish manner – well, you shall know, if you do but live long enough.”

The ruddy dame nodded significantly as she closed thus cryptically her tables of praises. Brilliana uplifted her hands in a pretty air of wonder.

“The phœnix,” she sighed, “the paragon, the nonpareil of the buttery.” Instantly her smiling face grew grave.

“Well, it is not for us to praise him or blame him while he is on our hands. See that you give him good meals, Mistress Satchell.”

Dame Satchell stared at her mistress in some amazement.

“Will he not dine in hall, my lady?”

Brilliana frowned now in good earnest.

“Lordamercy! do you think I would sit at meat with a rebel? Have I not set him a room apart, to spare myself the sight of him? Serve him in his own rooms, but look you serve him well.”

Dame Satchell wagged her head with an air of the deepest significance.

“I warrant you,” she muttered, “he commended my soused cucumbers.”

And so nodding and chuckling she moved like a great galleon over the green, and soon was out of sight. The moment her broad back was well turned, Tiffany permitted herself to utter the protests which had been boiling within her.

“To listen to Dame Satchell, one would think that no man had ever seen a horse or known one dish from another before this.”

Brilliana gave her handmaid a glance of something near akin to displeasure.

“I think you all talk and think too much of the gentleman. I see little to praise in him save a certain coolness in peril. Let us have no more of him. We must use him well, but he will soon be gone, and a good riddance. Is my lute tuned, Tiffany?”

Tiffany answered “Ay,” and her lady took up the lute and picked at a tune, yawning. The world seemed to have grown very tedious all of a sudden, and it did not seem so pleasant as she deemed it would prove to sit again in the yew circle and sing. She began a song or two, to leave each unfinished with a yawn, and, because yawning is contagious, Tiffany yawned too, discreetly behind her fingers. It was while Tiffany looked away to conceal a vaster yawn than its fellows, too vast for masking with finger-tips, that she saw a soldierly figure coming across the garden towards the pleasaunce.

“My lady,” she cried, turning to Brilliana, “here comes Captain Halfman. Let us ask him his mind as to the Parliament man.”

Brilliana’s face brightened. Here was company, and good company. She had believed him too busy to be seen so soon, for she had bade him see about raising a troop of volunteers in the village, and she turned round readily to greet her companion of the siege.

Through the yew portal Halfman came, gravity reigning in his eyes and slaking their wild fire. He saluted Brilliana with the deep reverence he always showed to his fair general. Brilliana turned to her adjutant eagerly:

“Master Halfman, Master Halfman,” she cried, “how do you measure our rebel?”

Halfman’s gravity lightened amazingly at the thought of his prisoner.

“I take him,” he answered, emphatically, “for as proper a fellow as ever I met in all my vagabond days. Barring his primness he would have proved a gallant” – he was going to say “pirate,” but paused in time and said “seaman.” “God pardon him for a Puritan,” he went on, “for he has in him the making of a rare Cavalier.”

Brilliana turned to Tiffany, whose cheeks were very red.

“Hang your head, child,” she cried; “for you are outvoted in a parliament of praise. Beat a retreat, maid Tiffany.”

The crimson Tiffany fled from the pleasaunce.

“Where is your prisoner?” Brilliana asked.

“I have envoyed him over park and garden,” Halfman answered, “and brought him to port in the library.”

“Alas! I pity him,” sighed Brilliana; “it holds few books of divinity. But come, recruiting-sergeant, what of our volunteers?”

“So pleases you, my lady,” Halfman said, “our troop is swelling fast, and the sooner we clap them into colored coats the better.”

Brilliana’s curls danced in denial.

“Alas! friend, I have sad news for you. Of cloth for coats I can indeed command a great plenty” – she paused doubtfully.

“Why this is glad news, not sad news,” Halfman said. “So may you serve it out with all despatch.”

Brilliana dropped her hands to her sides and her lids over her eyes, a pretty picture of despair; but, “Alas! ’tis all white,” she confessed – “wool white, snow white, ermine white. You must needs have patience, good recruiting-sergeant, till I can have it dyed the royal red.”

Halfman pushed patience from him with outspread palms.

“Shall the King lack hands for lack of madder?” he questioned, with humorous indignation. “Not so, I pray you; let us cut our coats from your white cloth. I promise you we will dye it ourselves red enough in the blood of the enemy.” Brilliana sprang to her feet rejoicing.

“Bravely said; so shall it be bravely done. I will give orders at once for the cutting and sewing. I will back our white coats against Master Hampden’s green coats, or Essex’s swarm in orange-tawny. Have you conveyed my message to my two miserly neighbors?”

“I sent Clupp to Master Hungerford,” Halfman answered, “and Garlinge to Master Rainham, bidding them to your presence peremptory. But I warn you, my lady, from all I hear, that if you hope to raise coin for the King’s cause from either of the skinflints you will be sadly at a loss.”

“At least I must try,” Brilliana declared. “Am I not the King’s viceroy in Oxfordshire, and are not the two money-bags my proclaimed adorers? It will go hard with me but I compel them to swell the King’s exchequer.”

“You have done marvels,” Halfman admitted. “Can you work miracles? With all due reverence, I doubt. But we shall soon see, for here comes Tiffany tiptoe through the trees. I’ll wager it is to herald one of the vultures.”

As he spoke, Tiffany tripped in pink and grinning.

“My lady,” said she, “Master Paul Hungerford has ridden in and seeks audience.”

Brilliana clapped her hands.

“Go, bring him in, Tiffany; and, Tiffany child, if Master Peter Rainham comes, as I shrewdly expect, keep him apart, on your life, till I know of his coming.”

Tiffany vanished. Brilliana turned to Halfman.

“Stay with me, captain, and aid me to trap these badgers.”

Halfman smiled delight. “I will help you extempore,” he promised. “I will eke out my part with impromptus.”

He stood a little apart, grim mirth in his eyes, as Tiffany ushered into the circle a lean, shabby country-gentleman, whose habit would have shamed a scarecrow. Tiffany disappeared and the new-comer made Brilliana an awkward bow. “Sweet lady, you sent for me and I come, love, quickly.”

XVII

SET A KNAVE TO CATCH A KNAVE

Brilliana had much ado to keep from laughing in the face of the uncouth genuflector, but she kept a grave face and uttered grave complaint.

“Master Hungerford! Master Hungerford! They tell me sad tales of you. Though you are as wealthy as wealthy you will not mend the King’s exchequer.”

Master Paul gave vent to such a wail as a dog makes when one treads unaware upon his tail, and clapped his hands about piteously.

“I wealthy! Forgive you, lady, for listening to such tales. I am not so graced. I am little bigger than a beggar.”

Brilliana wagged her curls.

“Why, now, Master Hungerford, you have a great estate.”

Master Hungerford’s whine rose higher, and he paddled at the air as if he sought to come to some surface and breathe free.

“Great land, lady – great land, if you will, but little cash. My land holds every penny I get together. Why, ’tis well known in the country that I buy land for a thousand pound every year, wherefore I can never boast more than a guinea in ready money.”

Brilliana frowned on the floundering squire.

“This is a sad business, Master Hungerford, for the King is in need and will oblige hereafter those that oblige him now. His Majesty has made me a kind of viceroy here in Oxford. I begin to think that you incline to the Parliament, Master Paul. If I thought that, I would hold you a traitor and make perquisitions at your place.”

Master Hungerford groaned dismally:

“Lordamercy!” he moaned. “I am the loyalest knight in England. Nay, now, if you talk of perquisitions there is my neighbor Peter Rainham. I know him for a skinflint who will deny the King. Yet I know of a chest of his that is stuffed with gold pieces. Were he a true man he would shift his treasure into the King’s sack, as I would if I had such a store.”

A fantastic possibility danced into Brilliana’s brain. She glanced to where Halfman stood moodily ruminating on the method he would employ to loosen Master Hungerford’s purse-strings if he had him at his mercy in a taken town. Brilliana could not read his thoughts, which was as well, but she gave him a glance which stirred him to alertness as she resumed her interrogatory of her niggardly neighbor.

“Why, then, Master Hungerford, if he be as you say, he is little better, if better at all, than a Parliament man, and, therefore, our common enemy.”

Master Paul rubbed his lean hands in delight.

“It is indeed as you say,” he affirmed, with a sour smile that sat very vilely on his yellow face. Brilliana leaned forward, and, governing his shifty eyes, spoke very impressively.

“Now meseems you might win great credit in the King’s eyes, at no cost to yourself, if you were to lay hands on this treasure in the King’s name.”

Master Paul’s alarm asserted itself in a shriek.

“Lordamercy, lady, what of the law of the land? Would you have me turn footpad, house-breaker?”

His jaws shook, his joints twitched, he was abject in alarm. Springing to her feet, Brilliana spoke impatiently.

“A Parliament man is outside the King’s law; his goods are forfeit, and to confiscate them as legal as loyal. I thought you might choose to serve the King and please me.” This last was said with an accent of disdain which made the unhappy squire shiver. “I was in error, so no more words of it. Good-day to you.”

And my Lady Brilliana made Master Paul a courtesy so contemptuous and a gesture of dismissal so decisive that Master Hungerford’s terror deepened. If the King’s cause were to go well, if the lady indeed had favor with his Majesty, to offend her would be verily a piece of mortal folly. He came nigh to falling on his knees as he pleaded.

“Nay, nay, never so hot, now; I am your suitor, in faith, I am your very good servant. I would serve your will in this if I could but march with the law.”

Brilliana jumped at his concession. She saw Tiffany in the distance crossing the garden towards her and guessed that she came to announce the arrival of the other miser; so she was eager to clinch the business with Master Hungerford.

“Why, so you ever shall, with the King’s law. What more easy? I represent the King in this district; this fellow is a suspected rebel; I give you leave to search his house for arms.”

Master Paul pricked his ears. “Ah, so, for arms, you say?”

Tiffany paused in the archway and jerked her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the house. Brilliana shrugged her shoulders, impatient of Master Paul’s denseness.

“If you find gold in your search for steel, so much the better. Come, come, this is your happy time, for I am told Master Rainham is abroad.”

She gave a glance for confirmation at Halfman, who lounged forward.

“That he is,” he asserted, briskly. “He has gone a-marketing.”

“Then to it at once!” Brilliana cried, eying the waverer encouragingly. “Take such of my people as you will. You will find some at the stables yonder,” and as she spoke she pointed in the direction opposite to the house. “Master Rainham’s miserliness keeps but a small retinue. You will meet with no resistance. Go forth, my knight.”

Master Paul almost skipped with delight and he cracked his fingers vigorously. He seemed even less pleasing merry than terrified.

“You call me your knight.” He turned and took Halfman to witness. “She calls me her knight. I’ll do it. I’ll do it,” he voiced, exultingly.

Brilliana, with strenuous self-restraint, seemed to applaud his antics.

“Bravely said, Chivalry!” she cried. “Let it be done, and well done, ere dusk.”

Master Paul quavered before her in an ecstasy of delighted obedience.

“I fly, enchantress – I fly!” he chirruped. Then, as he turned to go, another thought struck him, and he entreated, grotesquely languishing, “Prithee, your hand to kiss first.”

Brilliana denied him affably.

“By-and-by, maybe, as the prize of your triumph. Farewell.”

After sundry strange scrapings, Master Hungerford took his departure in the direction of the stables. As soon as his back was turned, Brilliana questioned her maid.

“Well, Tiffany, is it Master Rainham?”

“Ay, my lady,” Tiffany answered, demurely. She knew there was some manner of mystification forward and yearned for the key to it. “He chafes in the music-chamber.”

“Send him here top-speed,” Brilliana commanded. With a whisk of flying skirts Tiffany scuttered back to the house, and Brilliana turned to Halfman, the laughter in her eyes seeking and finding the laughter in his.

“Well,” she said, “our angling prospers blithely. We have tickled one fish. Now for the other chub.”

Halfman, who had been swaying with silent merriment ever since the departure of Master Paul, suddenly grew steady again and looked warnings.

“He asks for another kind of angling, as I gather,” he suggested. Brilliana looked daintily wise.

“As I bait the hook I believe I will land him. It will be rare if I can make Paul rob Peter while Peter plunders Paul. How dare they be so close-fisted while the King’s flag is flying and England’s honor in peril!”

If she said this with any idea of palliating the possible lawlessness of her action in the eyes of her companion, she wasted her words. Halfman had not been so happy since his return to England, not even in the briskest days of the siege, as he was now in the staging of this lawless comedy. The old pirate jigged in him at this fair maid’s strategy.

“By St. Nicholas,” he swore, “they should be bled white for a brace of knaves! This, I take it, is your other honor-bankrupt atomy.”

XVIII

SERVING THE KING

It was indeed Master Peter Rainham whom Tiffany now brought into the presence of her mistress, and left there standing and staring. Master Peter, eyed and appraised by the searching scrutiny of Halfman, resolved himself into a thick-set, boorish fellow, whose flying forehead, little, angry eyes, and assertive, yellow teeth made him, to Halfman’s mind, resemble nothing in the world so much as a boar’s head on an ale-house sign. Yet the fellow stood his ground sturdily enough, and stared at Brilliana with no sense of distress at his dirty homespun or his dirty hands.

“You sent for me?” he challenged. “Have you changed your mood? I am ever of the same mind, and will wed when you will.”

The wolf look leaped into Halfman’s eyes, and the loutish squire’s life was, all unawares, in the greatest peril it had ever fringed. But Brilliana, intent only on her purposes, beamed on her blunt suitor as if he had scattered flowers at her feet.

“You are a wonderful wooer,” she protested. “But whatever admiration of your person I may, without unbecoming effrontery, confess, I would have you to know, plain and square, from this moment, that I will hearken to none but a King’s man.”

The boor’s little eyes glinted and the boor’s rusty fingers rasped at his stubble chin as he answered emphatically:

“Then I am a King’s man, root and branch.”

But his face showed less loyal confidence at Brilliana’s next words.

“Then you must know his Majesty is in straits for ready money. Will you, who are reputed rich, come to his aid with a round sum?”

Master Peter showed his teeth in a snarl and flung up his hands.

“Reputed rich! Oh, what a bitter thing is a bad reputation. I am Job-poor; both ends will not meet, I tell you. If I had for lending-money a guinea in one pocket, why, I should lend it to the other pocket.”

“Why do you woo me if you be so poor?” Brilliana asked, with a fine show of heat, and Halfman nodded his head as much as to say, “Ay, ay, answer me that, if you can.”

Master Peter strove to answer, lamely enough.

“Poor in pennies, lady, poorer in shillings, poorest in guineas. I may own half the country-side and have no coin to clink against the other.”

Brilliana scoffed at his protest.

“Why, ’tis not so long ago Master Paul Hungerford told me you were a very Crœsus.”

Master Peter clinched and unclinched his horny hands as if he were coming to grips with his traducer.

“Master Hungerford told you that? I would I had my hands knotted about his lying throat. He that is as rich as a Jew, that has a treasure of gold plate in his sideboard that would keep the King in arms and men for a month of Sundays, he so to slander my poverty.”

Brilliana heaved a sympathetic sigh.

“I fear he is but a bad man. Do you think he cherishes the King’s cause?”

Master Peter flamed with virtuous indignation.

“He, the black heart! Never think it. He is a rank Parliament scoundrel and worships Mr. Pym.”

“Is it so?” cried Brilliana. “A rebel, a renegade. Why, now, Master Rainham, I see a pretty piece of loyal work for you.”

Master Peter glowered at her suspiciously.

“Anything for you, anything for the King; except give what I have none of – money.”

“In the King’s name,” said Brilliana, heroically, “go forth and ransack this rebellious gentleman’s house for arms.”

Master Peter snorted sceptically.

“Arms! I think he hath none but an old rusty fire-lock and a breast and back that have seen better days.”

Brilliana beamed on him, a yielding sphinx.

“But then, supposing you should pick up some plate on the way, some gold plate by chance – ”

Master Peter rubbed his grimy hands.

“Why, it were fine,” he admitted, gleefully; then added, with cunning, “Are you sure he is a Roundhead?”

“I am very sure he is your enemy,” Brilliana answered, sharply, “for he makes you his daily jape.”

The ugly boar-head looked uglier as it growled:

“Does he, the dog! I’d jape him if I gad my two hands upon him.”

“Why,” Brilliana asserted, now in the full tide of make-believe, “if you are a King’s man, he will be of the other side, he hates you so. I cannot think how you have earned his hatred, unless, indeed – ” and she broke off suddenly and looked aside. Halfman would have given a shilling for a lonely place to laugh his fill in.

“Well, madam, well?” Master Rainham questioned, eagerly.

Brilliana faltered her answer.

“ – unless he believes you stand higher in the graces of a certain lady than he can ever hope to stand.”

Master Rainham’s smile gave Halfman the feel of goose-flesh. Brilliana’s face was, happily, averted.

“Madam, assure me ’tis so,” grunted boar’s-head.

“I must not say much,” Brilliana protested, “no more than this, that in this enterprise, if you but achieve it, you will win great credit with the King at no cost to yourself, you spoil a rival, and – but this is very private – you will give great pleasure to that same nameless lady.”

Master Peter shouted, “Why, then, all’s well. I will pick him as clean as a whistle.” Again caution overcrowded cheer. “But I must pick my time, look you.”

On this, Brilliana became emphatic.