Martin Hyde (24 page)

After this little brush, with its pitiful accompaniment, which filled me full of a blind anger against the royal party, so much stronger, yet with so much less right than
ours, I was taken in to see Sir Travers Carew. He had just sent off the prisoner to Honiton, much as he would have brushed a fly from his hand. He had that satisfaction with himself, that feeling of having supported the right, which comes to all those who do cruel things in the name of that code of unjust cruelty, the criminal law. He looked at me with rather a grim smile, which made me squirm.

"So," he said, "this is the young rebel, is it? Do you know that I could send you off to Honiton gaol with that poor fellow there? "This made my heart die; but something prompted me to put a good face on it.

"Sir," I said, "I have done what my father thought right. I don't wish to be treated better than any other prisoner. Send me to Honiton, sir."

"No," he said, looking at me kindly. "I shall not send you to Honiton. You are not in arms against the King's peace, nor did you come over from Holland with the Duke. I can't send you to Honiton. Besides, I knew your father, Martin. I was at college with him. He was a good friend of mine, poor fellow. No, sir. I shall keep you here till the Duke's crazy attempt is knocked on the head. I think I can find something better for you to do than that fussy old maid, your uncle, could. But, remember, sir. You have a reputation for being a slippery young eel. I shall take particular pains to keep you from slipping out of my hands. But
I do not wish to use force to your father's son. Will you give me your word not to try to escape?"

"No," I answered, sullenly. "I won't. I mean to get away directly I can."

"Come," he said kindly. "We tricked you rather nastily. But do you suppose, Martin, that your father, if he were here, would encourage your present resolutions? The Duke is coming (nearly unprepared) to bring a lot of silly yokels into collision with fully trained soldiers ten times more numerous. If the countryside, the gentry, the educated, intelligent men, were ready for the Duke, or believed in his cause, they would join him. They do not join him. His only adherents are the idle, ignorant, ill-conditioned rogues of this county, who will neither fight nor obey, when it comes to the pinch. I do not love the present King, Martin, but he is a better man than this Duke. The Duke will never make a king. He may be very fit for court-life; but there is not an ounce of king in him. If the Duke succeeds, in a year or two he will show himself so foolish that we shall have to send for the Prince of Orange, who is a man of real, strong wisdom. We count on that same prince to deliver us from James, when the time is ripe. It is not ripe, yet. I am telling you bitter, stern truth, Martin. Now, then. Let me have your promise not to continue in the service of this doomed princeling, your master. Eh? What shall it be?"

"No," I said, "that's desertion."

"Not at all," he answered. "It is a custom of war. Come now. As a prisoner of war, give me your parole."

"You said just now that I was not a prisoner of war," I answered.

"Very well, then," he said. "I am a magistrate. I commit you as a suspected person. Hart! Hart!" (Here he called in a man-servant.) "Just see that this young sprig keeps out of mischief. Think it over, Mr. Martin. Think it over."

In a couple of minutes I was back in my prison cells, locked in for the night, with neither lamp nor candle. A cot had been made up for me in a corner of the room. Supper was laid for me on the table, which had been brought back to its place. There was nothing for it but to grope to bed in the twilight, wondering how soon I could get away to what I still believed to be a righteous cause in which my father wished me to fight. I slept soundly after my day of adventure. I dreamed that I rode into London behind the Duke, amid all the glory of victory, with the people flinging flowers at us. But dreams go by contraries, the wise women say.

I was a full fortnight, or a little more, a prisoner in that house. They treated me very kindly. Aurelia was like an elder sister. Old Sir Travers used to jest at my being a rebel. But I was a prisoner, shut in, watched,
kept close. The kindness jarred upon me. It was treating me like a child, when I was no longer a child. I had for some wild weeks been doing things which few men have the chance of doing. Perhaps, if I had confided all that I felt to Aurelia, she would have cleared away my troubles, made me see that the Duke's cause was wrong, that my father would wish his son well out of civil broils, however just, that I had better give the promise that they asked from me. But I never confided really fully in her. I moped a good deal, much worried in my mind. I began to get a lot of unworthy fancies into my head, silly fancies, which an honest talk would have scattered at once. I began to think from their silence about the Duke's doings that his affairs were prospering, that he was conquering, or had conquered, that I was being held by this loyalist family as a hostage. It was silly of me; but although in many ways I was a skilled man of affairs, I had only the brain of a child, I could not see the absurdity of what I came to believe. It worried me so much that at the end of my imprisonment I became very feverish; really ill from anxiety, as prisoners often are. I refused food for the latter part of one day, hoping to frighten my captors. They did not notice it, so I had my pains for nothing. I went to bed very early; but I could not sleep. I fidgeted about till I was unusually wakeful. Then I got out of bed to try if there was a way of escape by the old-fashioned chimney, barred across as it was, at intervals, by strong
old iron bars. I had never thought the chimney possible, having exainmed it before, when I first came to that house; but my fever made me think all things possible; so up I got, hoping that I should have light enough to work by.

CHAPTER XXII

THE
PRIEST
'
S
HOLE

I
T
was too dark to do much that night, but I spent an hour in picking mortar from the bricks into which the lowest iron bar had been let. After a brief sleep I woke in the first of the light (at about one o'clock) ready to go at it again. My fever was hot upon me. I don't think that I was quite sane that day; but all my reason seemed to burn up into one bright point, escape, escape at all costs, then, at the instant. I must tell you that the chimney, like most old chimneys, was big enough for a big boy to scramble up, in order to sweep it. For some reason, the owners of the house had barred the chimney across so that this could not be done. They swept it, probably, in the effective old-fashioned way by shooting a blank charge of powder from a blunderbuss straight up the opening. The first two iron bars were so placed that it was only necessary to remove one to make room for my body. Further up there were others, more close together. The fire had not been lighted for many years; there was no soot in the passage. There was a jackdaw's nest high up. I could see the old jackdaw looking down at me.
Up above her head was a little square of sky. I did not doubt that when I got to the top I should be able to scramble out of that square on to the leads, then down by a water-spout, evading the sentries, over the garden wall to freedom. After half an hour of mortar picking I got one end of the lowest iron bar out of its socket. Then I picked out the mortar from the other end, working the bar about like a lever, to grind the fulcrum into dust. Soon I had the bar so loose that I was able to thrust it to one side, leaving a passage big enough for my body.

I was very happy when this was done. I went back to the room to make up a packet of food to take with me. This I thrust into an inner pocket, before launching out up the hole. When I had cleaned up the mess of mortar, I started up the chimney, carefully replacing the bar behind me. Soon I was seven or eight feet above the room, trying to get at the upper bars. I was scrambling about for foothold, when I noticed, to my left, an iron bar or handle, well concealed from below by projecting bricks. I seized hold of it with my left hand, very glad of the support it offered, when, with a dull grating noise, it slid downwards under my weight, drawing with it the iron panel to which it was clamped. I had come upon a secret chamber in the chimney; there at my side was an opening big enough for a man's body. I was pretty well startled by it, not only by the suddenness of the discovery, but from the fear I had lest it should lead to some inhabited room, where my
journey would be brought to an end. I peered into it well, before I ventured to enter. It was a little low room, about five feet square, lit by two loopholes, which were concealed from outside by the great growth of ivy on the side of the house. I clambered into it with pleasure, keeping as quiet as I could. It was a dirty little room, with part of its floor rotten from rain which had beaten in through the loopholes. It had not been used for a great while. The pallet bed against the wall was covered with rotten rags, dry as tinder. There were traces of food, who could say how ancient, in a dish by the bed. There was a little crucifix, with a broken neck-chain, lying close to the platter. Some priest who had used this priest-hole years before had left it there in his hurry; I wondered how. Something of the awe which had been upon him then seemed to linger in the place. Many men had lain with beating hearts in that room; the room seemed to remember. I have never been in a place which made one's heart move like that room. Well. The priest's fears were dead as the priest by this time. Nothing but the wreck of his dinner, perhaps the last he ever ate, remained to tell of him, beside the broken symbol of his belief. I shut-to the little panel-door by which I had entered, so that I might not have the horrible fancy that the old priest's shaven head was peering up the chimney at me, to see what I was doing in his old room, long since given over to the birds.

As I expected, there was a way of escape from the hiding-place. A big stone in the wall seemed to project unnecessarily; the last comer to that room had shut the door carelessly; otherwise I might never have found it. Seeing the projecting stone, I took it for a clue feeling all round it, till I found that underneath it there was a groove for finger tips. The stone was nothing more than a large, cunningly fashioned drawer, which pulled out, showing a passage leading down, down, along narrow winding steps, just broad enough for one man to creep down at a time. The stairs were more awesome than the room, for they were dark. I could not see where they led; but I meant to go through this adventure, now that I had begun it. So down I crept cautiously, clinging to the wall, feeling with my feet as I went, lest there should be no step, suddenly, but a black pit, far down, into which a man might fall headlong, on to who knows what horrors. I counted the steps. I thought that they would never end. There were thirty-seven altogether. They brought me to a dark sort of room, with damp earth for its floor, upon which water slowly dropped from some unseen stalactite. I judged that I must be somewhere under the bath-chamber, not more than ten feet from the abbot's old fish-pond. If there was a way out I felt that it must be to my left, under the garden; not to my right, which would lead back under the body of the house.

Very cautiously I felt along to my left, till I found
that there was indeed a passage; but one so low that I had to stoop to get along it. A few steps further brought me with a shock against a wall, a sad surprise to me, for I thought that I was on the road to safety. When I recovered from my fear I felt along the wall till I found that the passage zigzagged like a badger's earth. It turned once sharply to the right, going up a couple of steps, then again sharply to the left, going up a few more steps, then again to the right up one step more, to a broader open stretch, lit by one or two tiny chinks, more cheering to me than you can imagine. I guessed that I was passing at last under the garden, having gone right below the house's foundations. The chinks of light seemed to me to come from holes worn in the roof by rabbits or rats. They were pleasant things to see after all that groping in the blackness of night. On I went cautiously, feeling my way before me, till suddenly I stopped dead, frightened terribly, for close to me, almost within touch as it seemed, some men were talking to each other. They were evidently sitting just above my head, in the cool morning, watching for me to come through my window, as I suppose. They were some of Sir Travers's sentries. A moment's thought told me that I had little to fear from them, if I moved quietly in my burrow. However, as my walk was often noisy, through stumblings on stones, I waited till they moved off, which was not for some minutes. One of the men was asking the other what was the truth about the Duke.

"Why," his mate answered, "they say as he got beat back coming towards London. They say he be going to Bridgewater, now, to make it a castle, like; or perhaps he be a coming to Taunton. They say he have only a mob, like, left to en, what with all this rain. But I do-an't know. He be very like to come here agen; so as us'll have to watch for our stock."

"Ah?" said the first. "They did say as there was soldiers come to Evilminster. So as to shut en off, like. I seed fires out that way, myself, like camp-fires, afore it grew light. They do say the soldiers be all for the Duke."

"Yes," the other answered, "he be very like to win if it come to a battle. He'd a got on to London, I daresay, if the roads had but been dry."

"What do ee say to a bit of tobaccy, master?" said the first, after a pause.

"Why, very well," said the other. At this instant, without any warning, something in the wall of my passage gave way, some bit of rotten mortar which held up a stone, or something of the sort. At any rate, a stone fell out, with a little rush of rotten plaster, making a good deal of noise, though of course it seemed more to me than to the men outside.

"What ever in the world was that?" said one of them.

"I dunno," said the other. "It seemed to come from down below somewhere, under the earth, like. Do you think as it could be a rabbit?"

"It did sound like a stone falling out of a wall," came the answer. "I dunno. Where could it a come from?"