Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (56 page)

“Sir Richard Shelton, ye are well found,” he said. “I owe you one thing that I value little, my life; and one that I can never pay you for, this victory. Catesby, if I had ten such captains as Sir Richard, I would march forthright on London. But now, sir, claim your reward.”

“Freely, my lord,” said Dick, “freely and loudly. One hath escaped to whom I owe some grudges, and taken with him one whom I owe love and service. Give me, then, fifty lances, that I may pursue; and for any obligation that your graciousness is pleased to allow, it shall be clean discharged.”

“How call ye him?” inquired the duke.

“Sir Daniel Brackley,” answered Richard.

“Out upon him, double-face!” cried Gloucester. “Here is no reward, Sir Richard; here is fresh service offered, and, if that ye bring his head to me, a fresh debt upon my conscience. Catesby, get him these lances; and you, sir, bethink ye, in the meanwhile, what pleasure, honour, or profit it shall be mine to give you.”

Just then the Yorkist skirmishers carried one of the shoreside taverns, swarming in upon it on three sides, and driving out or taking its defenders. Crookback Dick was pleased to cheer the exploit, and pushing his horse a little nearer, called to see the prisoners.

There were four or five of them — two men of my Lord Shoreby’s and one of Lord Risingham’s among the number, and last, but in Dick’s eyes not least, a tall, shambling, grizzled old shipman, between drunk and sober, and with a dog whimpering and jumping at his heels.

The young duke passed them for a moment under a severe review.

“Good,” he said. “Hang them.”

And he turned the other way to watch the progress of the fight.

“My lord,” said Dick, “so please you, I have found my reward. Grant me the life and liberty of yon old shipman.”

Gloucester turned and looked the speaker in the face.

“Sir Richard,” he said, “I make not war with peacock’s feathers, but steel shafts. Those that are mine enemies I slay, and that without excuse or favour. For, bethink ye, in this realm of England, that is so torn in pieces, there is not a man of mine but hath a brother or a friend upon the other party. If, then, I did begin to grant these pardons, I might sheathe my sword.”

“It may be so, my lord; and yet I will be overbold, and, at the risk of your disfavour, recall your lordship’s promise,” replied Dick.

Richard of Gloucester flushed.

“Mark it right well,” he said, harshly. “I love not mercy, nor yet mercymongers. Ye have this day laid the foundations of high fortune. If ye oppose to me my word, which I have plighted, I will yield. But, by the glory of heaven, there your favour dies!”

“Mine is the loss,” said Dick.

“Give him his sailor,” said the duke; and wheeling his horse, he turned his back upon young Shelton.

Dick was nor glad nor sorry. He had seen too much of the young duke to set great store on his affection; and the origin and growth of his own favour had been too flimsy and too rapid to inspire much confidence. One thing alone he feared — that the vindictive leader might revoke the offer of the lances. But here he did justice neither to Gloucester’s honour (such as it was) nor, above all, to his decision. If he had once judged Dick to be the right man to pursue Sir Daniel, he was not one to change; and he soon proved it by shouting after Catesby to be speedy, for the paladin was waiting.

In the meanwhile, Dick turned to the old shipman, who had seemed equally indifferent to his condemnation and to his subsequent release.

“Arblaster,” said Dick, “I have done you ill; but now, by the rood, I think I have cleared the score.”

But the old skipper only looked upon him dully and held his peace.

“Come,” continued Dick, “a life is a life, old shrew, and it is more than ships or liquor. Say ye forgive me; for if your life be worth nothing to you, it hath cost me the beginnings of my fortune. Come, I have paid for it dearly; be not so churlish.”

“An I had had my ship,” said Arblaster, “I would ‘a’ been forth and safe on the high seas — I and my man Tom. But ye took my ship, gossip, and I’m a beggar; and for my man Tom, a knave fellow in russet shot him down. ‘Murrain!’ quoth he, and spake never again. ‘Murrain’ was the last of his words, and the poor spirit of him passed. ‘A will never sail no more, will my Tom.”

Dick was seized with unavailing penitence and pity; he sought to take the skipper’s hand, but Arblaster avoided his touch.

“Nay,” said he, “let be. Y’ have played the devil with me, and let that content you.”

The words died in Richard’s throat. He saw, through tears, the poor old man, bemused with liquor and sorrow, go shambling away, with bowed head, across the snow, and the unnoticed dog whimpering at his heels, and for the first time began to understand the desperate game that we play in life; and how a thing once done is not to be changed or remedied, by any penitence.

But there was no time left to him for vain regret. Catesby had now collected the horsemen, and riding up to Dick he dismounted, and offered him his own horse.

“This morning,” he said, “I was somewhat jealous of your favour; it hath not been of a long growth; and now, Sir Richard, it is with a very good heart that I offer you this horse — to ride away with.”

“Suffer me yet a moment,” replied Dick. “This favour of mine — whereupon was it founded?”

“Upon your name,” answered Catesby. “It is my lord’s chief superstition. Were my name Richard, I should be an earl to-morrow.”

“Well, sir, I thank you,” returned Dick; “and since I am little likely to follow these great fortunes, I will even say farewell. I will not pretend I was displeased to think myself upon the road to fortune; but I will not pretend, neither, that I am over-sorry to be done with it. Command and riches, they are brave things, to be sure; but a word in your ear — yon duke of yours, he is a fearsome lad.”

Catesby laughed.

“Nay,” said he, “of a verity he that rides with Crooked Dick will ride deep. Well, God keep us all from evil! Speed ye well.”

Thereupon Dick put himself at the head of his men, and giving the word of command, rode off.

He made straight across the town, following what he supposed to be the route of Sir Daniel, and spying around for any signs that might decide if he were right.

The streets were strewn with the dead and the wounded, whose fate, in the bitter frost, was far the more pitiable. Gangs of the victors went from house to house, pillaging and stabbing, and sometimes singing together as they went.

From different quarters, as he rode on, the sounds of violence and outrage came to young Shelton’s ears; now the blows of the sledge-hammer on some barricaded door, and now the miserable shrieks of women.

Dick’s heart had just been awakened. He had just seen the cruel consequences of his own behaviour; and the thought of the sum of misery that was now acting in the whole of Shoreby filled him with despair.

At length he reached the outskirts, and there, sure enough, he saw straight before him the same broad, beaten track across the snow that he had marked from the summit of the church. Here, then, he went the faster on; but still, as he rode, he kept a bright eye upon the fallen men and horses that lay beside the track. Many of these, he was relieved to see, wore Sir Daniel’s colours, and the faces of some, who lay upon their back, he even recognised.

About half-way between the town and the forest, those whom he was following had plainly been assailed by archers; for the corpses lay pretty closely scattered, each pierced by an arrow. And here Dick spied among the rest the body of a very young lad, whose face was somehow hauntingly familiar to him.

He halted his troop, dismounted, and raised the lad’s head. As he did so, the hood fell back, and a profusion of long brown hair unrolled itself. At the same time the eyes opened.

“Ah! lion driver!” said a feeble voice. “She is farther on. Ride — ride fast!”

And then the poor young lady fainted once again.

One of Dick’s men carried a flask of some strong cordial, and with this Dick succeeded in reviving consciousness. Then he took Joanna’s friend upon his saddle-bow, and once more pushed toward the forest.

“Why do ye take me?” said the girl. “Ye but delay your speed.”

“Nay, Mistress Risingham,” replied Dick. “Shoreby is full of blood and drunkenness and riot. Here ye are safe; content ye.”

“I will not be beholden to any of your faction,” she cried; “set me down.”

“Madam, ye know not what ye say,” returned Dick. “Y’are hurt —  — ”

“I am not,” she said. “It was my horse was slain.”

“It matters not one jot,” replied Richard. “Ye are here in the midst of open snow, and compassed about with enemies. Whether ye will or not, I carry you with me. Glad am I to have the occasion; for thus shall I repay some portion of our debt.”

For a little while she was silent. Then, very suddenly, she asked:

“My uncle?”

“My Lord Risingham?” returned Dick. “I would I had good news to give you, madam; but I have none. I saw him once in the battle, and once only. Let us hope the best.”

CHAPTER V

NIGHT IN THE WOODS: ALICIA RISINGHAM

It was almost certain that Sir Daniel had made for the Moat House; but, considering the heavy snow, the lateness of the hour, and the necessity under which he would lie of avoiding the few roads and striking across the wood, it was equally certain that he could not hope to reach it ere the morrow.

There were two courses open to Dick: either to continue to follow in the knight’s trail, and, if he were able, to fall upon him that very night in camp, or to strike out a path of his own, and seek to place himself between Sir Daniel and his destination.

Either scheme was open to serious objection, and Dick, who feared to expose Joanna to the hazards of a fight, had not yet decided between them when he reached the borders of the wood.

At this point Sir Daniel had turned a little to his left, and then plunged straight under a grove of very lofty timber. His party had then formed to a narrower front, in order to pass between the trees, and the track was trod proportionally deeper in the snow. The eye followed it, under the leafless tracery of the oaks, running direct and narrow; the trees stood over it, with knotty joints and the great, uplifted forest of their boughs; there was no sound, whether of man or beast — not so much as the stirring of a robin; and over the field of snow the winter sun lay golden among netted shadows.

“How say ye,” asked Dick of one of the men, “to follow straight on, or strike across for Tunstall?”

“Sir Richard,” replied the man-at-arms, “I would follow the line until they scatter.”

“Ye are, doubtless, right,” returned Dick; “but we came right hastily upon the errand, even as the time commanded. Here are no houses, neither for food nor shelter, and by the morrow’s dawn we shall know both cold fingers and an empty belly. How say ye, lads? Will ye stand a pinch for expedition’s sake, or shall we turn by Holywood and sup with MotherChurch? The case being somewhat doubtful, I will drive no man; yet if ye would suffer me to lead you, ye would choose the first.”

The men answered, almost with one voice, that they would follow Sir Richard where he would.

And Dick, setting spur to his horse, began once more to go forward.

The snow in the trail had been trodden very hard, and the pursuers had thus a great advantage over the pursued. They pushed on, indeed, at a round trot, two hundred hoofs beating alternately on the dull pavement of the snow, and the jingle of weapons and the snorting of horses raising a warlike noise along the arches of the silent wood.

Presently, the wide slot of the pursued came out upon the highroad from Holywood; it was there, for a moment, indistinguishable; and, where it once more plunged into the unbeaten snow upon the farther side, Dick was surprised to see it narrower and lighter trod. Plainly, profiting by the road, Sir Daniel had begun already to scatter his command.

At all hazards, one chance being equal to another, Dick continued to pursue the straight trail; and that, after an hour’s riding, in which it led into the very depths of the forest, suddenly split, like a bursting shell, into two dozen others, leading to every point of the compass.

Dick drew bridle in despair. The short winter’s day was near an end; the sun, a dull red orange, shorn of rays, swam low among the leafless thickets; the shadows were a mile long upon the snow; the frost bit cruelly at the finger-nails; and the breath and steam of the horses mounted in a cloud.

“Well, we are outwitted,” Dick confessed. “Strike we for Holywood, after all. It is still nearer us than Tunstall — or should be by the station of the sun.”

So they wheeled to their left, turning their backs on the red shield of sun, and made across country for the abbey. But now times were changed with them; they could no longer spank forth briskly on a path beaten firm by the passage of their foes, and for a goal to which that path itself conducted them. Now they must plough at a dull pace through the encumbering snow, continually pausing to decide their course, continually floundering in drifts. The sun soon left them; the glow of the west decayed; and presently they were wandering in a shadow of blackness, under frosty stars.

Presently, indeed, the moon would clear the hill-tops, and they might resume their march. But till then, every random step might carry them wider of their march. There was nothing for it but to camp and wait.

Sentries were posted; a spot of ground was cleared of snow, and, after some failures, a good fire blazed in the midst. The men-at-arms sat close about this forest hearth, sharing such provisions as they had, and passing about the flask; and Dick, having collected the most delicate of the rough and scanty fare, brought it to Lord Risingham’s niece, where she sat apart from the soldiery against a tree.

She sat upon one horse-cloth, wrapped in another, and stared straight before her at the firelit scene. At the offer of food she started, like one wakened from a dream, and then silently refused.

“Madam,” said Dick, “let me beseech you, punish me not so cruelly. Wherein I have offended you, I know not; I have, indeed, carried you away, but with a friendly violence; I have, indeed, exposed you to the inclemency of night, but the hurry that lies upon me hath for its end the preservation of another, who is no less frail and no less unfriended than yourself. At least, madam, punish not yourself; and eat, if not for hunger, then for strength.”