The Story of Francis Cludde. Weyman Stanley John
got there," he muttered hurriedly. "There, strapped to the saddle, you fool. You do not want that, give it me. Do you hear? Quick, give it me," he cried, raising his voice and clutching at it fiercely, his face dark with greed and fear.
"I see," I replied, as I unstrapped it. "I am to steal the horse that you may get the cloak. And then you will lay the lot on my shoulders. Well, take it!" I cried, "and go your way as fast as you can."
Throwing it at him as hard as I could, I shook up the reins and went off down the road at a gallop. The wind whistled pleasantly past my ears. The sounds of the town grew faint and distant. Each bound of the good hack carried me farther and farther from present danger, farther and farther from the old life. In the exhilaration and excitement of the moment I forgot my condition; forgot that I had not a penny-piece in my pocket, and that I had left an unpaid bill behind me; forgot even that I rode a-well, a borrowed horse.
CHAPTER IV
TWO SISTERS OF MERCY
A younger generation has often posed me finely by asking, "What, Sir Francis! Did you not see one bishop burned? Did you not know one of the martyrs? Did you never come face to face with Queen Mary?" To all which questions I have one answer, No, and I watch small eyes grow large with astonishment. But the truth is, a man can only be at one place at a time. And though, in this very month of February, 1555, Prebendary Rogers-a good, kindly man, as I have heard, who had a wife and nine children-was burned in Smithfield in London for religion, and the Bishop of Gloucester suffered in his own city, and other inoffensive men were burned to death, and there was much talk of these things, and in thousands of breasts a smoldering fire was kindled which blazed high enough by and by-why, I was at Coton End, or on the London Road, at the time, and learned such things only dimly and by hearsay.
But the rill joins the river at last; and ofttimes suddenly and at a bound, as it were. On this very day, while I cantered easily southward with my face set toward St. Albans, Providence was at work shaping a niche for me in the lives of certain people who were at the time as unconscious of my existence as I was of theirs. In a great house in the Barbican in London there was much stealthy going and coming on this February afternoon and evening. Behind locked doors, and in fear and trembling, mails were being packed and bags strapped, and fingers almost too delicate for the task were busy with nails and hammers, securing this and closing that. The packers knew nothing of me, nor I of them. Yet but for me all that packing would have been of no avail; and but for them my fate might have been very different. Still, the sound of the hammer did not reach my ears, or, doing so, was covered by the steady tramp of the roadster; and no vision, so far as I ever heard, of a dusty youth riding Londonward came between the secret workers and their task.
I had made up my mind to sleep at St. Albans that night, and for this reason, and for others relating to the Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, in which county Stony Stratford lies, I pushed on briskly. I presently found time, however, to examine the packet of letters of which I had made spoil. On the outer wrapper I found there was no address, only an exhortation to be speedy. Off this came, therefore, without ceremony, and was left in the dirt. Inside I found two sealed epistles, each countersigned on the wrapper, "Stephen Winton."
"Ho! ho!" said I. "I did well to take them."
Over the signature on the first letter-it seemed to be written on parchment-were the words, "Haste! haste! haste!" This was the thicker and heavier of the two, and was addressed to Sir Maurice Berkeley, at St. Mary Overy's, Southwark, London. I turned it over and over in my hands, and peeped into it, hesitating. Twice I muttered, "All is fair in love and war!" And at last, with curiosity fully awake, and a glance behind me to make sure that the act was unobserved, I broke the seal. The document proved to be as short and pithy as it was startling. It was an order commanding Sir Maurice Berkeley forthwith in the Queen's name, and by the authority of the Council, and so on, and so on, to arrest Katherine Willoughby de Eresby, Duchess of Suffolk, and to deliver her into the custody of the Lieutenant of the Tower, "These presents to be his waranty for the detention of the said Duchess of Suffolk until her Grace's pleasure in the matter be known."
When it was too late I trembled to think what I had done. To meddle with matters of state might be more dangerous a hundred times than stealing horses, or even than ducking the Chancellor's messenger! Seeing at this moment a party of travelers approach, I crammed the letter into my pocket, and rode by them with a red face, and a tongue that stuttered so feebly that I could scarcely return their greetings. When they had gone by I pulled out the warrant again, having it in my mind to tear it up without a moment's delay-to tear it into the smallest morsels, and so get rid of a thing most dangerous. But the great red seal dangling at the foot of the parchment caught my eye, and I paused to think. It was so red, so large, so imposing, it seemed a pity to destroy it. It must surely be good for something. I folded up the warrant again, and put it away in my safest pocket. Yes, it might be good for something.
I took out the other letter. It was bound with green ribbon and sealed with extreme care, being directed simply to Mistress Clarence-there was no address. But over Gardiner's signature on the wrapper were the words, "These, on your peril, very privately."
I turned it over and over, and said the same thing about love and war, and even repeated to myself my old proverb about a sheep and a lamb. But somehow I could not do it. The letter was a woman's letter; the secret, her secret; and though my fingers itched as they hovered about the seals, my cheek tingled too. So at last, with a muttered, "What would Petronilla say?" I put it away unopened in the pocket where the warrant lay. The odds were immense that Mistress Clarence would never get it; but at least her secret should remain hers, my honor mine!
It was dark when I rode, thoroughly jaded, into St. Albans. I was splashed with mud up to the waist and wetted by a shower, and looked, I have no doubt, from the effect of my journeying on foot and horseback, as disreputable a fellow as might be. The consciousness too that I was without a penny, and the fear lest, careful as I had been to let no one outsrip me, the news of the riot at Stratford might have arrived, did not tend to give me assurance. I poked my head timidly into the great room, hoping that I might have it to myself. To my disgust it was full of people. Half-a-dozen travelers and as many townsfolk were sitting round the fire, talking briskly over their evening draught. Yet I had no choice. I was hungry, and the thing had to be done, and I swaggered in, something of the sneak, no doubt, peeping through my bravado. I remarked, as I took my seat by the fire and set to drying myself, that I was greeted by a momentary silence, and that two or three of the company began to eye me suspiciously.
There was one man, who sat on the settle in the warmest corner of the chimney, who seemed in particular to resent my damp neighborhood. His companions treated him with so much reverence, and he snubbed them so regularly, that I wondered who he was; and presently, listening to the conversation which went on round me, I had my curiosity satisfied. He was no less a personage than the Bailiff of St. Albans, and his manner befitted such a man; for it seemed to indicate that he thought himself heir to all the powers of the old Abbots under whose broad thumb his father and grandfather had groaned.
My conscience pricking me, I felt some misgiving when I saw him, after staring at me and whispering to two or three of his neighbors, beckon the landlord aside. His big round face and burly figure gave him a general likeness to bluff King Hal and he appeared to be aware of this himself, and to be inclined to ape the stout king's ways, which, I have heard my uncle say, were ever ways heavy for others' toes. For a while, however, seeing my supper come in, I forgot him. The bare-armed girl who brought it to me, and in whom my draggled condition seemed to provoke feelings of a different nature, lugged up a round table to the fire. On this she laid my meal, not scrupling to set aside some of the snug dry townsfolk. Then she set a chair for me well in the blaze, and folding her arms in her apron stood to watch me fall to. I did so with a will, and with each mouthful of beef and draught of ale, spirit and strength came back to me. The cits round me might sneer and shake their heads, and the travelers smile at my appetite. In five minutes I cared not a whit! I could give them back joke for joke, and laugh with the best of them.
Indeed, I had clean forgotten the Bailiff, when he stalked back to his place. But the moment our eyes met, I guessed there was trouble afoot. The landlord came with him and stood looking at me, sending off the wench with a flea in her ear; and I felt under his eye an uncomfortable consciousness that my