The Historical Nights' Entertainment, Rafael Sabatini [freenovel24 .txt] 📗

her

sweetly charitable soul.

 

“Very well,” she said, “I will give them entertainment for a week.

Bring them on Tuesday after dark, and come by the back way through

the orchard, that they may not be seen.”

 

And upon this she rose, and took up an ebony cane, herself to

reconduct him and to see to his entertainment before he left. Not

until they came to the kitchen did she realize that he had a

companion. At sight of Barter, who rose respectfully when she

entered, she checked, turned to Dunne, and whispered something,

to which his answer provoked from her a laugh.

 

Now Barter, intrigued by this whispering and laughing, of which he

deemed himself the object, questioned Dunne upon it as they rode

forth again together.

 

“She asked me if you knew aught of the business,” replied Dunne;

“and I answered ‘No.”’

 

“Business, say’st thou?” quoth Barter. “What business?”

 

“Sure, the business on which we came,” Dunne evaded; and he laughed.

 

It was an answer that left Barter uneasy. Nor was his mind set at

rest by the parting words with which Dunne accompanied the half-crown

for his services.

 

“This is but an earnest of what’s to come if you will meet me here

on Tuesday to show me the way to Moyle’s Court again. I shall be

bringing two gentlemen with me - wealthy men, of a half-score

thousand pounds a year apiece. I tell you there will be a fine

booty for my part, so fine that I shall never want for money again

all the days of my life. And, so that you meet us here, you too

may count upon a handsome reward.”

 

Consenting, Barter went his ways home. But as he pondered Dunne’s

silly speech, and marvelled that honest men should pay so

disproportionately for an honest service, he came to the reasonable

conclusion that he had to do with rebels. This made him so uneasy

that he resolved at last to lodge information with the nearest

justice.

 

Now, it happened, by the irony of Fate, that the justice sought by

Barter was one Colonel Penruddock - the vindictive son of that

Penruddock whom the late John Lisle - whilst Lord President of the

High Court - had sentenced to death some thirty years ago for

participation in an unsuccessful Wiltshire rising against the

Commonwealth.

 

The colonel, a lean, stark man of forty-five, heard with interest

Barter’s story.

 

“Art an honest fellow!” he commended him. “What are the names of

these rogues?”

 

“The fellow named no names, sir.”

 

“Well, well, we shall discover that for ourselves when we come to

take them at this trysting-place. Whither do you say you are to

conduct them?”

 

“To Moyle’s Court, sir, where my Lady Lisle is to give them

entertainment.”

 

The colonel stared a moment; then a heavy smile came to light the

saturnine face under the heavy periwig. Beyond that he gave no

sign of what was passing in his mind.

 

“You may go,” he said slowly, at last. “Be sure we shall be at the

tryst to take these rascals.”

 

But the colonel did not keep his promise. To Barter’s surprise,

there were no soldiers at the tryst on Salisbury Plain on the

following Tuesday; and he was suffered to lead Dunne and the two

men with him the short, corpulent Mr. Hicks and the long, lean

Nelthorp - to Moyle’s Court without interference.

 

The rich reward that Dunne had promised him amounted in actual fact

to five shillings, that he had from Nelthorpe at parting. Puzzled

by Colonel Penruddock’s failure to do his part, Barter went off at

once to the colonel’s house to inform him that the pair were now at

Lady Lisle’s.

 

“Why, that is very well,” said the colonel, his smile more sinister

than ever. “Trouble not yourself about that.”

 

And Barter, the unreasoning instrument of Fate, was not to know that

the apprehending of a couple of traitorous Jack Presbyters was of

small account to Colonel Penruddock by comparison with the

satisfaction of the blood-feud between himself and the House of

Lisle.

 

Meanwhile the fugitives were being entertained at Moyle’s Court,

and whilst they sat at supper in a room above-stairs, Dunne being

still of the party, my lady came in person to see that they had all

that they required, and stayed a little while in talk with them.

There was some mention of Monmouth and the battle of Sedgemoor,

which was natural, that being the topic of the hour.

 

My lady asked no questions at the time regarding Hicks’s long, lean

companion. But it occurred to her later that perhaps she should

know more about him. Early next morning, therefore, she sent for

Hicks as he was in the act of sitting down to breakfast, and by her

direct questions elicited from him that this companion was that

Richard Nelthorp outlawed for his share in the Rye House Plot. Not

only was the information alarming, but it gave her a sense that she

had not been dealt with fairly, as indeed she told him.

 

“You will see, sir,” she concluded, “that you cannot bide here. So

long as I thought it was on the score of Nonconformity alone that

you were suffering persecution, I was willing to take some risk in

hiding you. But since your friend is what he is, the risk is greater

than I should be asked to face, for my own sake and for that of my

daughters. Nor can I say that I have ever held plottings and civil

war in anything but abhorrence - as much in the old days as now. I

am a loyal woman, and as a loyal woman I must bid you take your

friend hence as soon as your fast is broken.”

 

The corpulent and swarthy Hicks stood dejectedly before her. He

might have pleaded, but at that moment there came a loud knocking

at the gates below, and instantly Carpenter flung into the room

with a white, scared face and whirling gestures.

 

“Soldiers, my lady!” he panted in affright. “We have been betrayed.

The presence of Mr. Hicks here is known. What shall we do? What

shall we do?”

 

She stood quite still, her countenance entirely unchanged, unless

it were to smile a little upon Carpenter’s terror. The mercy of her

nature rose dominant now.

 

“Why, we must hide these poor fellows as best we can,” said she;

and Hicks flung down upon one knee to kiss her hand with

protestations that he would sooner be hanged than bring trouble

upon her house.

 

But she insisted, calm and self-contained; and Carpenter carried

Hicks away to bestow him, together with Dunne, in a hole in the

malthouse under a heap of sacking. Nelthorp had already vanished

completely on his own initiative.

 

Meanwhile, the insistent knocking at the gate continued. Came

shouted demands to open in the name of the King, until from a window

my lady’s daughters looked out to challenge those who knocked.

 

Colonel Penruddock, who had come in person with the soldiers to raid

the house of his hereditary foe, stood forth to answer, very stiff

and brave in his scarlet coat and black plumed hat.

 

“You have rebels in the house,” he announced, “and I require you

in the King’s name to deliver them up to me.”

 

And then, before they could answer him, came Carpenter to, unbar

the door, and admit them to the court. Penruddock, standing

squarely before the steward, admonished him very sternly.

 

“Friend,” said he, “you had best be ingenuous with me and discover

who are in your lady’s house, for it is within my knowledge that

some strangers came hither last night.”

 

The stricken Carpenter stood whitefaced and trembling.

 

“Sir - sir -” he faltered.

 

But the colonel was impatient.

 

“Come, come, my friend. Since I know they are here, there’s an end

on’t. Show me where they are hid if you would save your own neck

from the halter.”

 

It was enough for Carpenter. The pair in the malthouse might have

eluded all search but for the steward’s pusillanimity. Incontinently,

he betrayed the hiding-place.

 

“But, sir, of your charity do not tell my mistress that I have told

you. Pray, sir - “

 

Penruddock brushed him aside as if he had been a pestering fly, and

with his men went in, and straight to the spot where Hicks and Dunne

were lurking. When he had taken them, he swung round on Carpenter,

who had followed.

 

“These be but two,” he said, “and to my knowledge three rogues came

hither last night. No shufing with me, rascal. Where have you

bestowed the other?”

 

“I swear, as Heaven’s my witness, I do not know where he is,”

protested the afflicted steward, truly enough.

 

Penruddock turned to his men.

 

“Make search,” he bade them; and search was made in the ruthless

manner of such searches.

 

The brutal soldiers passed from room to room beating the wainscoting

with pike and musket-butts, splintering and smashing heedlessly.

Presses were burst open and their contents scattered; chests were

broken into and emptied, the searchers appropriating such objects

as took their fancy, with true military cynicism. A mirror was

shattered, and some boards of the floor were torn up because a

sergeant conceived that the blows of his halbert rang hollow.

 

When the tumult was at its height, came her ladyship at last into

the room, where Colonel Penruddock stood watching the operations of

his men. She stood in the doorway leaning upon her ebony cane, her

faded eyes considering the gaunt soldier with reproachful question.

 

“Sir,” she asked him with gentle irony, masking her agitation, “has

my house been given over to pillage?”

 

He bowed, doffing his plumed hat with an almost excessive courtesy.

 

“To search, madame,” he corrected her. And added: “In the King’s

name.”

 

“The King,” she answered, “may give you authority to search my

house, but not to plunder it. Your men are robbing and destroying.”

 

He shrugged. It was the way of soldiers. Fine manners, he

suggested, were not to be expected of their kind. And he harangued

her upon the wrong she had done in harbouring rebels and giving

entertainment to the King’s enemies.

 

“That is not true,” said she. “I know of no King’s enemies.”

 

He smiled darkly upon her from his great height. She was so frail

a body and so old that surely it was not worth a man’s while to

sacrifice her on the altar of revenge. But not so thought Colonel

Penruddock. Therefore he smiled.

 

“Two of them, a snivelling Jack Presbyter named Hicks and a rascal

named Dunne, are taken already. Pray, madame, be so free and

ingenuous with me aye, and so kind to yourself - as if there be any

other person concealed in your house - and I am sure there is

somebody else - to deliver him up, and you shall come to no further

trouble.”

 

She looked up at him, and returned him smile for smile.

 

“I know nothing,” she said, “of what you tell me, or of what you

ask.”

 

His countenance hardened.

 

“Then, mistress, the search must go on.”

 

But a shout from the adjoining room announced that it was at an end.

Nelthorp had been discovered and dragged from the chimney into which

he had crept.

 

Almost exactly a month later - on August 27th the Lady Alice Lisle

was brought to the bar of the court-house at Winchester upon a

charge of high treason.

 

The indictment ran that secretly, wickedly, and traitorously she

did entertain, conceal, comfort, uphold, and maintain John Hicks,