No Quarter!. Reid Mayne
set foot on the soil of England. For there the Saxon Duke Godric lorded it over his churls and swineherds; his iron rule at the Conquest replaced by that of the Marshalls, and later the Talbots, alike stern and severe.
Looking beyond, and north-westward, a wide stretch of country came under the eye, thickly wooded and undulating, the ancient kingdom of Erchyn – now called Archenfield – backed in the far distance by a horizon of hills, many with a mountain aspect, and some real mountains, as the curious Saddlebow, with a depression or “col” between its twin summits; Garway, the Cerriggalch, and the long dark range of the Hatterals.
To the west was a very conglomeration of mountains, seemingly crowded against one another, yet all apart, each distinguishable by an outline and aspect of its own. Most conspicuous of these, the conical Sugarloaf, the two Skyrrids – one of them named Holy Mountain – and the Blorenge, all towering above the town of Abergavenny, which is surrounded and embraced by them as the arena of an amphitheatre by its outer and more elevated circle.
Sweeping round the sky line, north and north-east the eye was met by many a bold projection, as the Longmynds and Clee hills, with their blue basalt, and the Haugh wood, summit of the famed Silurian upcast of Woolhope. Farther on to the east the Malvern Beacons of true mountain aspect, remarkable from their isolation, but still more in that there the geologist can see rocks the earliest stratified on earth, some metamorphosed, and all trace of stratification destroyed; while there, too, are visible the rocks of igneous agency, upheaved both by plutonic and volcanic forces – the gneisses, basalts, syenites, and granites.
Eastward over the Forest edge could be seen, extending far as vision’s verge, the wide plains of Worcester and Gloucester – as said, an ancient sea bed – through which now flows the yellow Severn; and on a clear day bends and reaches of this grand river might be distinguished glistening, gold-like, in the sun; the level expanse of its valley diversified by several isolated and curious eminences – hills and ridges – as May and Breddon due east, and, more to the south, the Mendips and Cotswolds.
Alone looking southward from Hollymead no mountains met the eye; in that direction only the undulations of the Forest itself, clad in its livery of green – all trees. But immediately in front of the house, and sloping gently away from it, was a wide and long stretch of park-like pasture land, where the trees stood solitary or in clumps, a double row of grand oaks bisecting it centrally, guarding and shading the avenue which led to the public road outside. This passed from Ruardean out of the forest by a steep descent down to Walford, thence on to Ross.
Architecturally, Hollymead House was a singular structure. For it was in the early Tudor style, built when bricks were a scarce and dear commodity, and timber, in the inverse ratio, plentiful and cheap. The walls were a framework of hewn oak – uprights, cross-beams, and diagonal ties – due to the handiwork of the carpenter, only the spaces between showing the skill of the mason. And, as if to keep ever in record the fact of this double yet distinct workmanship, the painter and whitewasher had been now and then called upon to perpetuate it by giving separate and severely contrasting colours to what was timber and the interspacing material of mortar and brick. The result a striped and chequered aspect of the oddest and quaintest kind. Sir Richard might have had it in his mind when he made the figurative allusion to a cage and pair of pretty birds. Still it was not exactly cage-shaped, but more like several set together, some smaller ones stuck against or hanging from a large one that stood central; the congeries due to a variety of wings, projecting windows, dormers, and other outworks.
Equally odd and irregular the arrangement inside. An entrance-hall with a wide stairway carried up around it, the oak balusters very beams, with a profusion of carving on them; on each landing, corridors dimly lighted leading off to rooms no two on the same level; some of them bed-chambers, only to be got at by passing through other sleeping apartments interposed between. And, turn which way one would, along passages, or from room to room, short flights of stairs, or it might be but a step or two, were encountered everywhere, to the imminent risk of leg or neck-breaking.
Though such a structure may appear strange to the modern eye, it did not so then, for there was nothing uncommon in it Hollymead House was but one of many like mansions of the day, though one of the largest and most imposing. Nor are they all gone yet. Scores of such still stand throughout the shires of the marches, and in perfect repair, to commemorate the architectural skill, or rather the absence of it, which distinguished our ancestry in the Tudor times.
The owner of Hollymead, Ambrose Powell, was a man of peculiar tastes and idiosyncrasies, some evidence of which appears in the baptismal names he had bestowed upon his daughters. A fancy, having its origin in the fact that from a hill above the house could be seen the two great western rivers, Wye and Severn – poetically, Vaga and Sabrina– themselves in a sense sisters, nurslings from the same breast of far Plinlimmon. From the summit of that “tump” his elder daughter had looked on her name-mother at a later date than she made pretence of when urging the younger up the ridge between Ruardean and Drybrook. It was a wild, witching spot, the grey rocks of mountain limestone here and there peeping out from a low growth of hazel, hawthorn, yew, and holly. But the summit itself was bare, affording on all sides a varied and matchless panorama of landscape. Being within the boundaries of their own domain, Sabrina oft climbed up to it; not for the view’s sake alone, but because it was to her hallowed ground, sacred as the place where she had made surrender of her young heart, when she told Sir Richard Walwyn it was his. There was a pretty little summer house, with seats, and many an hour Ambrose Powell himself spent there, in the study of books and the contemplation of Nature – his delight. Not in a mere meditative way, or as an idle dreamer; but an active observer of its workings and searcher after its secrets. Nor did he confine himself to this, but also took an interest in the affairs of man, so strong as to have studied them in every aspect – probed the social and political problems of human existence to their deepest depths. Which had conducted him to a belief – a full, firm conviction – in the superiority of republican institutions; as it must all whose minds are as God made or intended them, and not perverted by prejudice or corrupted by false teachings. He was, in point of fact, a Puritan, though not of the extreme stern sort; in his ways of thinking rather as Hampden and Sir Harry Vane, or with still closer similitude to a people then scorned and persecuted beyond all others – the “Friends.” It is difficult in these modern days, under the light of superior knowledge, and a supposed better discrimination between right and wrong, to comprehend the cruelties, ay barbarous atrocities, to which were submitted the “Friends,” or, as commonly called, “Quakers.” A people who, despite their paucity of numbers, did then, and since then have done and been doing, more to ennoble the national character of England than all the apostles of her Episcopacy, with her political boasters and military braggarts to boot. If neither the most notorious nor glorious, no names in England’s history can compare in goodness and gracefulness with the Penns of 1640 and the Brights of 1880.
Though not a professed “Friend,” Ambrose Powell was a believer in their faith and doctrines; and in his daily walk and life acted very much in accordance with them. But not altogether. From one of their ideas he dissented – that of non-resistance. Of a proud, independent spirit, despite his gentle inclinings, he would brook no bullying; the last man to have one cheek smitten and meekly turn the other to the smiter. Instead, he would strike back. A scene we are now called upon to record, and which occurred on that same evening, gives appropriate illustration of this phase of his character.
Chapter Nine
A Right Royal Epistle
The girls had got home, hard breathing, panting, from the haste they had made. But though supper was announced as set, they did not think of sitting down to it, but instead, entered the withdrawing-room, a large apartment, with windows facing front. In the bay of one of these, their dresses unchanged and their hoods still on, they took stand, with eyes bent down the avenue, all visible from the window. At intervals along the road they had heard behind them the trampling of hoofs, and knew from what horses it proceeded. The sounds, at first faint and distant, had grown more distinct as they reached the park gate, and they had come up the avenue with a run, to the surprise and somewhat alarm of their father, who at the time was outside awaiting their return.
Already in wonder at their being so late, he would have inquired into the cause. But they anticipated