Полная версия
Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen Elizabeth
“Too fiercely to an open traitor, Frank? Why not have run him through?”
“Nay, I had no clean life for Sundays, Amyas; so I could not throw away my week-day one; and as for the weal of England, I knew that it was little he would damage it, and told him so. And at that he waxed utterly mad, for it touched his pride, and swore that if the wind had not been fair for sailing, he would have fought me there and then; to which I could only answer, that I was ready to meet him when he would; and he parted from me, saying, ‘It is a pity, sir, I cannot fight you now; when next we meet, it will be beneath my dignity to measure swords with you.’
“I suppose he expected to come back a prince at least—Heaven knows; I owe him no ill-will, nor I hope does any man. He has paid all debts now in full, and got his receipt for them.”
“How did he die, then, after all?”
“On his voyage he touched in Portugal. King Sebastian was just sailing for Africa with his new ally, Mohammed the Prince of Fez, to help King Abdallah, and conquer what he could. He persuaded Stukely to go with him. There were those who thought that he, as well as the Spaniards, had no stomach for seeing the Pope’s son King of Ireland. Others used to say that he thought an island too small for his ambition, and must needs conquer a continent—I know not why it was, but he went. They had heavy weather in the passage; and when they landed, many of their soldiers were sea-sick. Stukely, reasonably enough, counselled that they should wait two or three days and recruit; but Don Sebastian was so mad for the assault that he must needs have his veni, vidi, vici; and so ended with a veni, vidi, perii; for he Abdallah, and his son Mohammed, all perished in the first battle at Alcasar; and Stukely, surrounded and overpowered, fought till he could fight no more, and then died like a hero with all his wounds in front; and may God have mercy on his soul!”
“Ah!” said Amyas, “we heard of that battle off Lima, but nothing about poor Stukely.”
“That last was a Popish prayer, Master Frank,” said old Mr. Cary.
“Most worshipful sir, you surely would not wish God not to have mercy on his soul?”
“No—eh? Of course not: but that’s all settled by now, for he is dead, poor fellow.”
“Certainly, my dear sir. And you cannot help being a little fond of him still.”
“Eh? why, I should be a brute if I were not. He and I were schoolfellows, though he was somewhat the younger; and many a good thrashing have I given him, and one cannot help having a tenderness for a man after that. Beside, we used to hunt together in Exmoor, and have royal nights afterward into Ilfracombe, when we were a couple of mad young blades. Fond of him? Why, I would have sooner given my forefinger than that he should have gone to the dogs thus.”
“Then, my dear sir, if you feel for him still, in spite of all his faults, how do you know that God may not feel for him still, in spite of all his faults? For my part,” quoth Frank, in his fanciful way, “without believing in that Popish Purgatory, I cannot help holding with Plato, that such heroical souls, who have wanted but little of true greatness, are hereafter by some strait discipline brought to a better mind; perhaps, as many ancients have held with the Indian Gymnosophists, by transmigration into the bodies of those animals whom they have resembled in their passions; and indeed, if Sir Thomas Stukely’s soul should now animate the body of a lion, all I can say is that he would be a very valiant and royal lion; and also doubtless become in due time heartily ashamed and penitent for having been nothing better than a lion.”
“What now, Master Frank? I don’t trouble my head with such matters—I say Stukely was a right good-hearted fellow at bottom; and if you plague my head with any of your dialectics, and propositions, and college quips and quiddities, you sha’n’t have any more sack, sir. But here come the knaves, and I hear the cook knock to dinner.”
After a madrigal or two, and an Italian song of Master Frank’s, all which went sweetly enough, the ladies rose, and went. Whereon Will Cary, drawing his chair close to Frank’s, put quietly into his hand a dirty letter.
“This was the letter left for me,” whispered he, “by a country fellow this morning. Look at it and tell me what I am to do.”
Whereon Frank opened, and read—
“Mister Cary, be you wary By deer park end to-night. Yf Irish ffoxe com out of rocks Grip and hold hym tight.”“I would have showed it my father,” said Will, “but—”
“I verily believe it to be a blind. See now, this is the handwriting of a man who has been trying to write vilely, and yet cannot. Look at that B, and that G; their formae formativae never were begotten in a hedge-school. And what is more, this is no Devon man’s handiwork. We say ‘to’ and not ‘by,’ Will, eh? in the West country?”
“Of course.”
“And ‘man,’ instead of ‘him’?”
“True, O Daniel! But am I to do nothing therefore?”
“On that matter I am no judge. Let us ask much-enduring Ulysses here; perhaps he has not sailed round the world without bringing home a device or two.”
Whereon Amyas was called to counsel, as soon as Mr. Cary could be stopped in a long cross-examination of him as to Mr. Doughty’s famous trial and execution.
Amyas pondered awhile, thrusting his hands into his long curls; and then—
“Will, my lad, have you been watching at the Deer Park End of late?”
“Never.”
“Where, then?”
“At the town-beach.”
“Where else?
“At the town-head.”
“Where else?”
“Why, the fellow is turned lawyer! Above Freshwater.”
“Where is Freshwater?”
“Why, where the water-fall comes over the cliff, half-a-mile from the town. There is a path there up into the forest.”
“I know. I’ll watch there to-night. Do you keep all your old haunts safe, of course, and send a couple of stout knaves to the mill, to watch the beach at the Deer Park End, on the chance; for your poet may be a true man, after all. But my heart’s faith is, that this comes just to draw you off from some old beat of yours, upon a wild-goose chase. If they shoot the miller by mistake, I suppose it don’t much matter?”
“Marry, no.”
“‘When a miller’s knock’d on the head, The less of flour makes the more of bread.’”“Or, again,” chimed in old Mr. Cary, “as they say in the North—
“‘Find a miller that will not steal, Or a webster that is leal, Or a priest that is not greedy, And lay them three a dead corpse by; And by the virtue of them three, The said dead corpse shall quicken’d be.’”“But why are you so ready to watch Freshwater to-night, Master Amyas?”
“Because, sir, those who come, if they come, will never land at Mouthmill; if they are strangers, they dare not; and if they are bay’s-men, they are too wise, as long as the westerly swell sets in. As for landing at the town, that would be too great a risk; but Freshwater is as lonely as the Bermudas; and they can beach a boat up under the cliff at all tides, and in all weathers, except north and nor’west. I have done it many a time, when I was a boy.”
“And give us the fruit of your experience now in your old age, eh? Well, you have a gray head on green shoulders, my lad; and I verily believe you are right. Who will you take with you to watch?”
“Sir,” said Frank, “I will go with my brother; and that will be enough.”
“Enough? He is big enough, and you brave enough, for ten; but still, the more the merrier.”
“But the fewer, the better fare. If I might ask a first and last favor, worshipful sir,” said Frank, very earnestly, “you would grant me two things: that you would let none go to Freshwater but me and my brother; and that whatsoever we shall bring you back shall be kept as secret as the commonweal and your loyalty shall permit. I trust that we are not so unknown to you, or to others, that you can doubt for a moment but that whatsoever we may do will satisfy at once your honor and our own.”
“My dear young gentleman, there is no need of so many courtier’s words. I am your father’s friend, and yours. And God forbid that a Cary—for I guess your drift—should ever wish to make a head or a heart ache; that is, more than—”
“Those of whom it is written, ‘Though thou bray a fool in a mortar, yet will not his folly depart from him,’” interposed Frank, in so sad a tone that no one at the table replied; and few more words were exchanged, till the two brothers were safe outside the house; and then—
“Amyas,” said Frank, “that was a Devon man’s handiwork, nevertheless; it was Eustace’s handwriting.”
“Impossible!”
“No, lad. I have been secretary to a prince, and learnt to interpret cipher, and to watch every pen-stroke; and, young as I am, I think that I am not easily deceived. Would God I were! Come on, lad; and strike no man hastily, lest thou cut off thine own flesh.”
So forth the two went, along the park to the eastward, and past the head of the little wood-embosomed fishing-town, a steep stair of houses clinging to the cliff far below them, the bright slate roofs and white walls glittering in the moonlight; and on some half-mile farther, along the steep hill-side, fenced with oak wood down to the water’s edge, by a narrow forest path, to a point where two glens meet and pour their streamlets over a cascade some hundred feet in height into the sea below. By the side of this waterfall a narrow path climbs upward from the beach; and here it was that the two brothers expected to meet the messenger.
Frank insisted on taking his station below Amyas. He said that he was certain that Eustace himself would make his appearance, and that he was more fit than Amyas to bring him to reason by parley; that if Amyas would keep watch some twenty yards above, the escape of the messenger would be impossible. Moreover, he was the elder brother, and the post of honor was his right. So Amyas obeyed him, after making him promise that if more than one man came up the path, he would let them pass him before he challenged, so that both might bring them to bay at the same time.
So Amyas took his station under a high marl bank, and, bedded in luxuriant crown-ferns, kept his eye steadily on Frank, who sat down on a little knoll of rock (where is now a garden on the cliff-edge) which parts the path and the dark chasm down which the stream rushes to its final leap over the cliff.
There Amyas sat a full half-hour, and glanced at whiles from Frank to look upon the scene around. Outside the southwest wind blew fresh and strong, and the moonlight danced upon a thousand crests of foam; but within the black jagged point which sheltered the town, the sea did but heave, in long oily swells of rolling silver, onward into the black shadow of the hills, within which the town and pier lay invisible, save where a twinkling light gave token of some lonely fisher’s wife, watching the weary night through for the boat which would return with dawn. Here and there upon the sea, a black speck marked a herring-boat, drifting with its line of nets; and right off the mouth of the glen, Amyas saw, with a beating heart, a large two-masted vessel lying-to—that must be the “Portugal”! Eagerly he looked up the glen, and listened; but he heard nothing but the sweeping of the wind across the downs five hundred feet above, and the sough of the waterfall upon the rocks below; he saw nothing but the vast black sheets of oak-wood sloping up to the narrow blue sky above, and the broad bright hunter’s moon, and the woodcocks, which, chuckling to each other, hawked to and fro, like swallows, between the tree-tops and the sky.
At last he heard a rustle of the fallen leaves; he shrank closer and closer into the darkness of the bank. Then swift light steps—not down the path, from above, but upward, from below; his heart beat quick and loud. And in another half-minute a man came in sight, within three yards of Frank’s hiding-place.
Frank sprang out instantly. Amyas saw his bright blade glance in the clear October moonlight.
“Stand in the queen’s name!”
The man drew a pistol from under his cloak, and fired full in his face. Had it happened in these days of detonators, Frank’s chance had been small; but to get a ponderous wheel-lock under weigh was a longer business, and before the fizzing of the flint had ceased, Frank had struck up the pistol with his rapier, and it exploded harmlessly over his head. The man instantly dashed the weapon in his face and closed.
The blow, luckily, did not take effect on that delicate forehead, but struck him on the shoulder: nevertheless, Frank, who with all his grace and agility was as fragile as a lily, and a very bubble of the earth, staggered, and lost his guard, and before he could recover himself, Amyas saw a dagger gleam, and one, two, three blows fiercely repeated.
Mad with fury, he was with them in an instant. They were scuffling together so closely in the shade that he was afraid to use his sword point; but with the hilt he dealt a single blow full on the ruffian’s cheek. It was enough; with a hideous shriek, the fellow rolled over at his feet, and Amyas set his foot on him, in act to run him through.
“Stop! stay!” almost screamed Frank; “it is Eustace! our cousin Eustace!” and he leant against a tree.
Amyas sprang towards him: but Frank waved him off.
“It is nothing—a scratch. He has papers: I am sure of it. Take them; and for God’s sake let him go!”
“Villain! give me your papers!” cried Amyas, setting his foot once more on the writhing Eustace, whose jaw was broken across.
“You struck me foully from behind,” moaned he, his vanity and envy even then coming out, in that faint and foolish attempt to prove Amyas not so very much better a man.
“Hound, do you think that I dare not strike you in front? Give me your papers, letters, whatever Popish devilry you carry; or as I live, I will cut off your head, and take them myself, even if it cost me the shame of stripping your corpse. Give them up! Traitor, murderer! give them, I say!” And setting his foot on him afresh, he raised his sword.
Eustace was usually no craven: but he was cowed. Between agony and shame, he had no heart to resist. Martyrdom, which looked so splendid when consummated selon les regles on Tower Hill or Tyburn, before pitying, or (still better) scoffing multitudes, looked a confused, dirty, ugly business there in the dark forest; and as he lay, a stream of moonlight bathed his mighty cousin’s broad clear forehead, and his long golden locks, and his white terrible blade, till he seemed, to Eustace’s superstitious eye, like one of those fair young St. Michaels trampling on the fiend, which he had seen abroad in old German pictures. He shuddered; pulled a packet from his bosom, and threw it from him, murmuring, “I have not given it.”
“Swear to me that these are all the papers which you have in cipher or out of cipher. Swear on your soul, or you die!”
Eustace swore.
“Tell me, who are your accomplices?”
“Never!” said Eustace. “Cruel! have you not degraded me enough already?” and the wretched young man burst into tears, and hid his bleeding face in his hands.
One hint of honor made Amyas as gentle as a lamb. He lifted Eustace up, and bade him run for his life.
“I am to owe my life, then, to you?”
“Not in the least; only to your being a Leigh. Go, or it will be worse for you!” And Eustace went; while Amyas, catching up the precious packet, hurried to Frank. He had fainted already, and his brother had to carry him as far as the park before he could find any of the other watchers. The blind, as far as they were concerned, was complete. They had heard and seen nothing. Whosoever had brought the packet had landed they knew not where; and so all returned to the court, carrying Frank, who recovered gradually, having rather bruises than wounds; for his foe had struck wildly, and with a trembling hand.
Half-an-hour after, Amyas, Mr. Cary, and his son Will were in deep consultation over the following epistle, the only paper in the packet which was not in cipher:—
“‘DEAR BROTHER N. S. in Chto. et Ecclesia.
“This is to inform you and the friends of the cause, that S. Josephus has landed in Smerwick, with eight hundred valiant Crusaders, burning with holy zeal to imitate last year’s martyrs of Carrigfolium, and to expiate their offences (which I fear may have been many) by the propagation of our most holy faith. I have purified the fort (which they are strenuously rebuilding) with prayer and holy water, from the stain of heretical footsteps, and consecrated it afresh to the service of Heaven, as the first-fruits of the isle of saints; and having displayed the consecrated banner to the adoration of the faithful, have returned to Earl Desmond, that I may establish his faith, weak as yet, by reason of the allurements of this world: though since, by the valor of his brother James, he that hindered was taken out of the way (I mean Davils the heretic, sacrifice well-pleasing in the eyes of Heaven!), the young man has lent a more obedient ear to my counsels. If you can do anything, do it quickly, for a great door and effectual is opened, and there are many adversaries. But be swift, for so do the poor lambs of the Church tremble at the fury of the heretics, that a hundred will flee before one Englishman. And, indeed, were it not for that divine charity toward the Church (which covers the multitude of sins) with which they are resplendent, neither they nor their country would be, by the carnal judgment, counted worthy of so great labor in their behalf. For they themselves are given much to lying, theft, and drunkenness, vain babbling, and profane dancing and singing; and are still, as S. Gildas reports of them, ‘more careful to shroud their villainous faces in bushy hair, than decently to cover their bodies; while their land (by reason of the tyranny of their chieftains, and the continual wars and plunderings among their tribes, which leave them weak and divided, an easy prey to the myrmidons of the excommunicate and usurping Englishwoman) lies utterly waste with fire, and defaced with corpses of the starved and slain. But what are these things, while the holy virtue of Catholic obedience still flourishes in their hearts? The Church cares not for the conservation of body and goods, but of immortal souls.
“If any devout lady shall so will, you may obtain from her liberality a shirt for this worthless tabernacle, and also a pair of hose; for I am unsavory to myself and to others, and of such luxuries none here has superfluity; for all live in holy poverty, except the fleas, who have that consolation in this world for which this unhappy nation, and those who labor among them, must wait till the world to come.1
“Your loving brother,
“N. S.”
“Sir Richard must know of this before daybreak,” cried old Cary. “Eight hundred men landed! We must call out the Posse Comitatus, and sail with them bodily. I will go myself, old as I am. Spaniards in Ireland? not a dog of them must go home again.”
“Not a dog of them,” answered Will; “but where is Mr. Winter and his squadron?”
“Safe in Milford Haven; a messenger must be sent to him too.”
“I’ll go,” said Amyas: “but Mr. Cary is right. Sir Richard must know all first.”
“And we must have those Jesuits.”
“What? Mr. Evans and Mr. Morgans? God help us—they are at my uncle’s! Consider the honor of our family!”
“Judge for yourself, my dear boy,” said old Mr. Cary, gently: “would it not be rank treason to let these foxes escape, while we have this damning proof against them?”
“I will go myself, then.”
“Why not? You may keep all straight, and Will shall go with you. Call a groom, Will, and get your horse saddled, and my Yorkshire gray; he will make better play with this big fellow on his back, than the little pony astride of which Mr. Leigh came walking in (as I hear) this morning. As for Frank, the ladies will see to him well enough, and glad enough, too, to have so fine a bird in their cage for a week or two.”
“And my mother?”
“We’ll send to her to-morrow by daybreak. Come, a stirrup cup to start with, hot and hot. Now, boots, cloaks, swords, a deep pull and a warm one, and away!”
And the jolly old man bustled them out of the house and into their saddles, under the broad bright winter’s moon.
“You must make your pace, lads, or the moon will be down before you are over the moors.” And so away they went.
Neither of them spoke for many a mile. Amyas, because his mind was fixed firmly on the one object of saving the honor of his house; and Will, because he was hesitating between Ireland and the wars, and Rose Salterne and love-making. At last he spoke suddenly.
“I’ll go, Amyas.”
“Whither?”
“To Ireland with you, old man. I have dragged my anchor at last.”
“What anchor, my lad of parables?”
“See, here am I, a tall and gallant ship.”
“Modest even if not true.”
“Inclination, like an anchor, holds me tight.”
“To the mud.”
“Nay, to a bed of roses—not without their thorns.”
“Hillo! I have seen oysters grow on fruit-trees before now, but never an anchor in a rose-garden.”
“Silence, or my allegory will go to noggin-staves.”
“Against the rocks of my flinty discernment.”
“Pooh—well. Up comes duty like a jolly breeze, blowing dead from the northeast, and as bitter and cross as a northeaster too, and tugs me away toward Ireland. I hold on by the rosebed—any ground in a storm—till every strand is parted, and off I go, westward ho! to get my throat cut in a bog-hole with Amyas Leigh.”
“Earnest, Will?”
“As I am a sinful man.”
“Well done, young hawk of the White Cliff!”
“I had rather have called it Gallantry Bower still, though,” said Will, punning on the double name of the noble precipice which forms the highest point of the deer park.
“Well, as long as you are on land, you know it is Gallantry Bower still: but we always call it White Cliff when you see it from the sea-board, as you and I shall do, I hope, to-morrow evening.”
“What, so soon?”
“Dare we lose a day?”
“I suppose not: heigh-ho!”
And they rode on again in silence, Amyas in the meanwhile being not a little content (in spite of his late self-renunciation) to find that one of his rivals at least was going to raise the siege of the Rose garden for a few months, and withdraw his forces to the coast of Kerry.
As they went over Bursdon, Amyas pulled up suddenly.
“Did you not hear a horse’s step on our left?”
“On our left—coming up from Welsford moor? Impossible at this time of night. It must have been a stag, or a sownder of wild swine: or may be only an old cow.”
“It was the ring of iron, friend. Let us stand and watch.”
Bursdon and Welsford were then, as now, a rolling range of dreary moors, unbroken by tor or tree, or anything save few and far between a world-old furze-bank which marked the common rights of some distant cattle farm, and crossed then, not as now, by a decent road, but by a rough confused track-way, the remnant of an old Roman road from Clovelly dikes to Launceston. To the left it trended down towards a lower range of moors, which form the watershed of the heads of Torridge; and thither the two young men peered down over the expanse of bog and furze, which glittered for miles beneath the moon, one sheet of frosted silver, in the heavy autumn dew.
“If any of Eustace’s party are trying to get home from Freshwater, they might save a couple of miles by coming across Welsford, instead of going by the main track, as we have done.” So said Amyas, who though (luckily for him) no “genius,” was cunning as a fox in all matters of tactic and practic, and would have in these days proved his right to be considered an intellectual person by being a thorough man of business.
“If any of his party are mad, they’ll try it, and be stogged till the day of judgment. There are bogs in the bottom twenty feet deep. Plague on the fellow, whoever he is, he has dodged us! Look there!”
It was too true. The unknown horseman had evidently dismounted below, and led his horse up on the other side of a long furze-dike; till coming to the point where it turned away again from his intended course, he appeared against the sky, in the act of leading his nag over a gap.
“Ride like the wind!” and both youths galloped across furze and heather at him; but ere they were within a hundred yards of him, he had leapt again on his horse, and was away far ahead.
“There is the dor to us, with a vengeance,” cried Cary, putting in the spurs.