Kitabı oku: «The Lady of Loyalty House: A Novel», sayfa 6
XIV
A PASSAGE AT ARMS
The vane of Halfman’s attitude towards the captive had veered strongly in the past half-hour. He had been ready to treat him well, for such was Brilliana’s pleasure; he was willing to make friends and taste the agreeables of the magnanimous victor. But the conquered man had gained no ground that morning in the heart of one of his conquerors. He ate little, which Halfman pitied; he drank little, which Halfman despised; and it was with a much-augmented disdain that he beheld Evander dash his solitary cup with water.
“Craftily qualified, curse him,” he thought; “the fellow’s a damned Cassio, and will be fumbling with his right hand and his left in a twinkle.”
In this he was disappointed; Evander’s draught wrought no havoc in his speech or demeanor; Halfman was more disappointed that the prisoner took so coldly his laudations of his lady.
“The Roundpoll is so mad to be mastered by a woman that he has not enough gentility in his thin wits to spur him to a compliment.”
His hostile thoughts brewed in his heated brain-pan till their fumes fevered him. As he led the way by stair and corridor, his mood for quarrel grew the keener that he knew his choler could find no hope of ventage with a prisoner committed to his care. And even as he thought this, chance seemed to furnish him with some occasion for satisfaction. They were passing by the open door of a room which had long been used as a place of arms at Harby, and its walls were hung with weapons of the time and weapons of an earlier generation. Halfman had passed much time there with the brisker fellows of the garrison, breaking them in to feats of weapon-play, and he smiled at the memory and the magnitude of his own dexterity. He paused for a moment at the threshold and looked round at Evander.
“Here,” he said, with a smile that was half a leer and an intonation that was little less than a sneer – “here is a spot that will scarce have enough attraction for your worship to merit your worship’s stay.”
Evander, who had been following his guide almost mechanically, enveloped in his own gray reflections, took surprised note of his companion’s changed bearing. Up to now he had been civil enough, even if his civility had not been of a quality greatly to Evander’s liking, yet now his blustering good-humor gave place to something akin to deliberate offence. But he might be mistaken, and it was not for a prisoner to snatch at straws of quarrel. Therefore he protested, courteously:
“Why should you think that a soldier takes no interest in a soldier’s tools?”
Halfman gave a shrug to his shoulders that might or might not be intended to annoy.
“Your worship is too raw a soldier to know much of these same tickers and tappers. Let us rather to the library for volumes of divinity.”
This time the intention to affront was so patent, so patent, too, that Halfman’s temper was getting the better of whatever discretion he possessed, that Evander’s face hardened, and yet for his own reasons he still spoke mildly enough:
“There is no need to call me worship, for I can claim no such title. But I think I know something of these trinkets, and with your leave will examine them.”
He passed by Halfman as he spoke and entered the room, where he immediately busied himself in the examination of some of the weapons displayed there, and apparently ignoring Halfman’s existence. Halfman watched him with a scowl for a moment and then followed him into the room.
“Your honor,” he said – “since you will not be called worship – your honor really has a use for these toys of gentlefolk?”
Evander had taken a handsome Italian rapier from its case against the wall, and, after glancing at its blade, was weighing and testing the weapon in the air. As he gave Halfman no answer, the latter took up the talk again, provocatively:
“I cannot deny that your honor showed fight briskly enough yester evening, but then it seemed little less than fight or die, and even a rat, if you corner him, will snap for dear life. Moreover, you were well ambushed, and there was a gentle lady present who would not see a rat butchered unnecessarily.”
Evander, still weighing the fine Italian blade, turned to Halfman and addressed him with an exasperating composure.
“Friend,” he said, “I have told you that I am not unacquainted with arms. When I am a free man I enforce belief in my word. As it is – ”
He left his sentence uncompleted, and with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders proceeded on his journey round the room, still carrying the Italian rapier in his hand. Under his tan Halfman’s face blazed and his eyes glittered, but he spoke with a forced calm and a feigned civility:
“Say you so much? Why, I believe your honor, surely. Yet, as they say, seeing is believing, and if you are in the vein for a gentle and joyous passage with buttoned arms, I that am here to entertain your honor would not for the world’s width gainsay you.”
Evander eyed him quietly. “Are you ready at fence?” he inquired. “I shall be pleased to take a lesson from you.”
Halfman’s heart warmed at his words. “The coney creeps towards the gin,” he thought, exultantly; then he answered, aloud:
“Why, if you have a stomach for it you shall not be crossed. Here be two buttoned rapiers, true twins – length, weight, workmanship. I will beleather them in a twink. I promise you I would not hurt your honor.”
“You are very good,” Evander answered, gravely. Halfman was already busy tying two large pads of leather the size of small oranges onto the buttoned blades. While he was at work Evander occupied himself with the contents of the room until Halfman, having finished his job, advanced towards him with the weapons extended. Suddenly he paused.
“Stop!” he said. “Let us make a wager on our game. I always play with more heart so. Here is my stake.”
He began to fumble at his doublet, and presently produced from an inner pocket a great thumb-ring with a ruby in it.
“I gained that,” he said, “at the sacking of a Spanish town. ’Tis worth a pope’s ransom. Set what you please against it.”
Evander lifted the ring from the table where Halfman placed it and took it to the window to look at it closely. Presently he laid it on the table again.
“It is a goodly ring,” he observed. “The setting is old and curious, and the stone, though it has a slight flaw in it, as you have been doubtless told before now, is worth more than any poor possessions I have about my person. Wherefore I would rather we contended for love.”
Halfman shook his head. He was a thought dashed by Evander’s discovery of the blemish in the stone, and he carried off his discomfiture by bravado.
“Nay, nay,” he answered; “there is my stake. Set what you please against it, were it no more than a silver groat. I do not ask to be paid well for my lesson.”
Evander said nothing, but drew his purse from his pocket and laid it on the table. Through the meshes Halfman could see the gleam of a few pieces of gold, and the gleam cheered him, as it always did. He was ever greedy of gold, and thought the death of Crassus not unkingly.
“Choose your blade,” he said. Evander, with a quick glance at the two weapons, selected the one nearest to him, flung his hat onto a chair, stripped off his doublet, and quietly waited for his adversary. Halfman did not keep him long. He flung his hat and doublet on the floor and advanced.
“Are you ready?” he asked. Evander saluted in silence, and in another moment the antagonists engaged and the mock duello began. Halfman expected that it would be short, but it proved much shorter than he expected. He was far too good a swordsman not to know when he had encountered a better. The thing had not happened to him very often; it happened very flagrantly now. In less than five minutes Evander had placed the muffled button of his blade three times on Halfman’s person – once upon either breast, and the third time fair on the forehead, just between the eyes. The last blow was so surely delivered that had it been given with greater force it might have knocked the receiver senseless. As it was, however, it was given with such deliberate delicacy that, though Halfman’s head hummed for the moment and his eyes saw stars, he rallied quickly enough to stare at Evander where he stood with lowered point and to tender him a salutation of honest admiration.
“Great Jove of glory!” he gasped; “who was it that ran liquid steel into your spare body?”
Evander smiled at the new change in his chameleon companion.
“I learned a little fencing when I was in Paris,” he admitted. “I fear I was over-inclined for the pastime.”
“A little fencing!” Halfman ejaculated. “A little fencing! Why, man, that botte between the eyes would have done for me, even if you had not spitted both my lungs first. No one can ever say of you that you held your sword like a dancer. Give me your hand – by God! I must grip your hand.”
“Sir,” said Evander, as the pair clasped hands with the hearty clasp of true combatants, “you overpraise me; yet for your friendly praises I have a favor to ask of you.”
“Name it and it is done,” Halfman asseverated, with an oath, “were it to pluck a purple hair for you from the beard of the Grand Cham himself.”
“’Tis no such matter,” Evander answered. “I do but entreat you of your courtesy to take back your ring, for which in very truth I have no use.”
Halfman protested a little for form’s sake, then gave way, glad enough to pouch his jewel again.
“You are a gentleman,” he declared. “Come, let us taste the air in the gardens.”
XV
MY LADY’S PLEASAUNCE
The gardens of Harby were captain jewels in the crown of Oxfordshire. From the terrace they spread in spaces of changeful beauty over many acres of fruitful earth. Evander had seen to it that no further harm was done to these lovely spaces than was inevitable for the conduct of the siege. There were some in his company, hissing hot zealots, who were all for laying violating hands upon the temples of Baal and the shrines of Ashtaroth, by which Evander rightly interpreted them to mean the pleasaunces of clipped yews, the rose bowers, the box hedges, and the generous autumnal orchards. They were eager to show their scorn of the Amalekites by the lopping of ancient trees and the treading of colored blossoms under the heel of Israel. But Evander was as firm as these were frantic, and the gardens of Harby smiled through familiar process of sun and rain and dew, untroubled by the daily rattle of musketry and the nightly tramp of sentinels.
Evander reaped a reward for which he had not labored in his chivalry to a belligerent and besieged lady. For the gardens that a conqueror had preserved were now very fair indeed for a conquered man to walk in. The October sun shone as if the royal triumph, yonder at Edgehill and here at Harby, had rekindled summer on the chilling altar of the year, and the hues of the lingering flowers flamed in the celestial fires.
If Evander’s thoughts were sable, he did not allow them to stain the fair day and his companion’s gayety. Halfman swam now in the extravagance of admiration for so miraculous a Puritan. Halfman loved the apostles best on spoons of silver in a sea-bag swollen with loot, but of the men he had the best word for Peter, who could use a sword on occasion. And here was one of the saints on earth playing his rapier as bravely as if he had been a gentleman born or gentleman adventurer made, and had skimmed the seas and kissed and killed and pilfered.
He plied Evander, as they paced, with questions of swordsmanship and schools of arms and masters, of the Italian method and the Spanish method and the French method, and never caught his new Hector tripping over a push or a parade. They moved over danceable lawns or under the canopies of dim avenues, chattering of arms, till the soft October air tingled with the names of famous fencers, and Halfman was in fancy a lubber lad again at his first passado.
But his wonder grew with their wanderings. They paused at the bowling-green and played a game which Evander won. They visited the stables where the horses now were rallied, that had lived hidden in farm-yard and cottage garden during the siege. Here Halfman learned that Evander liked hawks and loved horses, and knew their manage better than himself. Had Evander proclaimed himself a whisperer, it would not now have astonished Halfman.
Again, as they passed by the orchard where Luke Gardener was busy, Halfman must needs bring Luke and Evander acquainted, whereupon the pair set straight to talking of garden talk and airing of weather wisdom in speech long since to him as unfamiliar as Hebrew. Here Evander’s science wearied him, and he fairly dragged his captive away, declaring that there was yet much to see more honorable than herbs or brambles. Evander obeyed very contentedly, but they had not moved many paces when Luke came hobbling after, and, catching Halfman, drew him by the arm apart.
“Is yonder truly a damnable Roundhead?” he questioned. Halfman nodded his head.
“Well,” continued Luke, “for that he deserves to be hanged, and yet he has taught me a trick of grafting roses which he says the Dutch use that might serve to save a worser man from the gallows.”
Without a word Halfman shook his arm free and rejoined Evander, who was moving slowly along a pathway leading towards an enclosure of fantastically clipped yews. Hearing the footsteps behind him, Evander halted till Halfman joined him.
“How the devil came you to fathom flower knowledge?” Halfman asked. Evander smiled faintly.
“I would rather you unsaddled the devil from your question,” he answered, rebuking in his mind a woman; “but I have always loved gardens. You have one here who is skilled in topiary,” and he pointed towards the trim yew hedge they were approaching.
“Those are the green walls of my lady’s pleasaunce,” Halfman answered, “and the learned in such trifles call them mighty fine. But all I know of woodcraft is hatcheting me a path through virgin forest.”
“Where, indeed, your topiarist would be ill at ease,” Evander answered. “But I pray you let us retire, lest we intrude upon your lady.”
“Never fear for that,” said Halfman. “My lady is busy enough in-doors to-day, setting her house to rights, and you should not miss the comeliest nook in all the domain.”
As he spoke he passed under an archway of clipped yew, and, Evander following, the pair came upon a grassy space entirely girdled with yew hedges, the sight of which instantly justified to Evander the praise of his companion. The enclosure made a circle some half an acre in size of the greenest turf imaginable, orderly bordered with seats of white marble and belted all about with the black greenness of the yew-tree hedge, which was fashioned like an Italian colonnade. The arches afforded vistas of different and delightful prospects of the park at every quarter of the card – woodland, savanna-like lawns, flower-gardens, kitchen-gardens, and orchards in their pride.
“This is a lovely place,” protested Evander. “One might sit here and dream of seeing the shy wood-nymphs flitting through these aisles – if one had no better thoughts for one’s idleness,” he added. Halfman laughed.
“There peeped out the Puritan,” he said. “I had lost him this long while, but run him to earth in my lady’s pleasaunce. Yet you are a queer kind of Puritan, too. You can fence like a Frenchman, you can play bowls as Father Jove plays with the globes of heaven, and you can ride like Diomed, the jolly Greek, who knew that horses could be stridden as well as driven.”
Evander, who had seated himself and had been tracing cabalistic signs on the grass with his staff, looked up into his companion’s face.
“Are not you rather a queer kind of Cavalier,” he asked, “if you think that a Puritan must needs be a fool?”
Halfman laughed back at him, and as he laughed he showed his teeth so seeming white by contrast with his sunburned cheeks, and he seemed to Evander more than ever like some half-tamed beast of prey.
“You are no fool, Puritan,” Halfman shouted, “or Heaven would not have wasted its time in gracing you with such skill at sports. So great with the rapier, so wise on the bias. No, no; you are no fool. I am almost sad to think you quit us so soon, enemy though you be.”
While Halfman had been babbling, Evander had again been busy with his staff. Halfman had paid no heed to his actions, being far too deep in his own phrases. Had he been attentive he might have noticed that at first Evander wrote on the green grass, as vainly as he might have written in water, a word, a name: Brilliana. Had he been attentive he might have noticed that Evander now wrote another word that was also a name and more than a name: Death. But he did not notice, and as he ended with his odd tribute to his enemy, Evander looked up at him with a calm face.
“I shall not quit you so soon,” he said, in an even voice. “I have come to stay at Harby.”
Halfman looked at him, puzzled.
“Stay at Harby,” he repeated. “Nonsense, man; what are you thinking of? You will be riding hence in three days’ time, when Sir Randolph is released.”
Evander shook his head.
“Sir Randolph will not be released,” he said. The quiet positiveness in his tone staggered Halfman. Stooping, with his hands resting on his knees, his unquiet eyes stared into Evander’s quiet eyes.
“Sir Randolph will not be released! Why the devil will Sir Randolph not be released?”
Evander rose from his seat and rested his hand for a moment lightly on Halfman’s arm, while he said, impressively:
“Say nothing of this to your lady, for Sir Randolph is her kinsman, and I think she holds him dear. Let ill news come late. But if Colonel Cromwell has taken a spy prisoner, that spy will very surely die.”
Halfman stiffened himself. His eyes had never left Evander’s, and he knew that Evander spoke what he believed. He gave a short laugh.
“And very surely if Sir Randolph be shot over yonder you will be shot down here.”
“That,” said Evander, still smiling, “is why I say that I have come to stay at Harby.”
“You take your fate blithely,” Halfman commented, scanning Evander with curiosity. He was familiar with the sight of men in peril of death; in most men he took courage for granted, but it was courage of a gaudier quality than the composure of the young Puritan, who had fenced with him and played bowls with him that very morning and talked so learnedly of roses with Luke, the gardener. Was there really something in the Puritan stuff that strengthened men’s spirits? Evander answered his words and unconsciously his thoughts.
“I should not have taken up arms if I held my life too precious. It will need three days to get the answer, the inevitable answer, and in the mean time the autumn air is kind and these gardens delightful.”
Halfman stared at him in an ecstasy of admiration, and then dealt him an applauding clap on the shoulder.
“Come to the kitchen-garden, philosopher,” he cried. “A fellow of your phlegm should find pleasure in the contemplation of cabbages.”
“It is a sage vegetable,” Evander answered. “But I fear I tax your time. There must be much for you to do.”
“I have done much already,” Halfman replied. “But, indeed, these be busy times.”
“Then,” protested Evander, “when I have stared my fill at your meditative cabbage I shall entreat no more of your kindness but that you convoy me to the safe port of the library, where I shall be content enough.”
“As you please,” Halfman responded. “I was never a bookish man; I care for no books but play-books and these I carry here,” and he beat his brown forehead. “But you may nose out some theologies in odd corners, as a pig noses truffles.”
“I shall rout out something to fill my leisure I doubt not,” Evander answered.
“Then hey for the kitchen-garden,” cried Halfman, taking Evander’s arm, and the two men, passing through a yew arch opposite to that by which they had entered, left my lady’s pleasaunce as solitary as they had found it.
XVI
A PURITAN APPRAISED
It did not remain solitary long. Unawares, the steps of Halfman and Evander had been dogged ever since they crossed the moat and set out on their pilgrimage through the gardens. Crouching behind hedges, lingering in coppices, peeping through thickets, two persistent trackers had pursued the unconscious quarry. Scarcely had the shadows of Evander and his companion vanished from the grasses of the pleasaunce than the pursuers emerged from the shelter of a yew screen and ran into the open, staring after the departing pair. Yet these pursuers were no stealthy enemies, but merely creatures spurred by an irresistible curiosity. One was stout and red faced and inclined to breathe hard after the fatigues of the chase. The other was slim and smooth, with ripe cheeks and bright eyes, lodgings for the insolence of youth. In a word, the hunters were Mistress Satchell and pretty Tiffany, who had found their Puritan prisoner and visitor a being of considerable interest.
Mistress Satchell turned a damp, shining face and a questioning eye upon Tiffany.
“Is not he a dashing lad for a Puritan?” she gasped, patting her ample chest with both hands as if to fondle her newly recovered breath. Tiffany, who was bearing her mistress’s lute, shrugged and pouted.
“I see little to like in him,” she snapped. This was not at all true, but she was not going to admit as much to Mistress Satchell, or, for that matter, to herself. Mistress Satchell snorted fiercely, like an offended war-horse.
“Because he has not clipped you round the waist, pinched you in the cheek, kissed you on the lips – such liberties as our rufflers use. But he is a man for my money.”
She spoke with vehemence. Pretty Tiffany made a dainty grimace as she answered:
“I think I am pleasing enough to behold, yet he gave me no more than a glance when he gave me good-day.”
Mistress Satchell’s ample bulk swayed with indignation.
“He is a lad of taste, I tell you. Why should he waste his gaze on such small goods when there was nobler ware anigh? He smiled all over his face when he greeted me.”
Tiffany was sorely tempted to smile all over her face as she listened, but Mistress Satchell’s temper was short and her arm long, so she kept her countenance as she answered, shortly:
“He is little.”
This Mistress Satchell swiftly countered with the affirmation:
“He is great.”
Tiffany thrust again.
“He is naught.”
Again Dame Satchell parried.
“He is much,” she screamed, and her face was poppy-red with passion, but Tiffany, retreating warily and persistent to tease, was about to start some fresh disclaimer of the Puritan’s merits when she caught sight through a yew arch vista of a gown of gold and gray, and her tongue faltered.
“Our lady,” she whispered to Mistress Satchell, who had barely time to compose her ruffled countenance when Brilliana came through the yew arch and paused on the edge of the pleasaunce surveying the belligerents with an amused smile.
“What are you two brawling about?” she asked, as she moved slowly towards the marble seat. Tiffany thrust in the first word.
“Goody Satchell will vex me with praise of the Parliament man.”
By this time Brilliana had seated herself, observing her vehement shes with amusement. She turned a face of assumed gravity upon the elder.
“So, so, Mistress Satchell, have you turned Roundhead all of a sudden?”
Mrs. Satchell shook her head at Brilliana and her fist at Tiffany.
“Tiffany is a minx, but I am an honest woman; and as I am an honest woman, there are honest qualities in this honest Puritan.”
Brilliana knew as much herself and fretted at the knowledge. It cut against the grain of her heart to admit that a rebel could have any redemption by gifts. But she still questioned Mistress Satchell smoothly, thinking the while of a man intrenched behind a table, one man against six.
“What are these marvels?” she asked.
Mistress Satchell was voluble of collected encomiums.
“Why, Thomas Coachman swears he is a master of horse-manage, and he has taught Luke Gardener a new method of grafting roses, and Simon Warrener swears he knows as much of hawking as any man in Oxford or Warwick.”
She paused, out of breath. Brilliana, leaning forward with an air of infinite gravity, commented:
“It were more to your point, surely, if the gentleman had skill in cook-craft.”
Mistress Satchell was not to be outdone; she clapped her hands together noisily and shrilled her triumph.
“There, too, he meets you. After breakfast this morning, when I asked him how he fared, he overpraised my table, and he gave me a recipe for grilling capons in the Spanish manner – well, you shall know, if you do but live long enough.”
The ruddy dame nodded significantly as she closed thus cryptically her tables of praises. Brilliana uplifted her hands in a pretty air of wonder.
“The phœnix,” she sighed, “the paragon, the nonpareil of the buttery.” Instantly her smiling face grew grave.
“Well, it is not for us to praise him or blame him while he is on our hands. See that you give him good meals, Mistress Satchell.”
Dame Satchell stared at her mistress in some amazement.
“Will he not dine in hall, my lady?”
Brilliana frowned now in good earnest.
“Lordamercy! do you think I would sit at meat with a rebel? Have I not set him a room apart, to spare myself the sight of him? Serve him in his own rooms, but look you serve him well.”
Dame Satchell wagged her head with an air of the deepest significance.
“I warrant you,” she muttered, “he commended my soused cucumbers.”
And so nodding and chuckling she moved like a great galleon over the green, and soon was out of sight. The moment her broad back was well turned, Tiffany permitted herself to utter the protests which had been boiling within her.
“To listen to Dame Satchell, one would think that no man had ever seen a horse or known one dish from another before this.”
Brilliana gave her handmaid a glance of something near akin to displeasure.
“I think you all talk and think too much of the gentleman. I see little to praise in him save a certain coolness in peril. Let us have no more of him. We must use him well, but he will soon be gone, and a good riddance. Is my lute tuned, Tiffany?”
Tiffany answered “Ay,” and her lady took up the lute and picked at a tune, yawning. The world seemed to have grown very tedious all of a sudden, and it did not seem so pleasant as she deemed it would prove to sit again in the yew circle and sing. She began a song or two, to leave each unfinished with a yawn, and, because yawning is contagious, Tiffany yawned too, discreetly behind her fingers. It was while Tiffany looked away to conceal a vaster yawn than its fellows, too vast for masking with finger-tips, that she saw a soldierly figure coming across the garden towards the pleasaunce.
“My lady,” she cried, turning to Brilliana, “here comes Captain Halfman. Let us ask him his mind as to the Parliament man.”
Brilliana’s face brightened. Here was company, and good company. She had believed him too busy to be seen so soon, for she had bade him see about raising a troop of volunteers in the village, and she turned round readily to greet her companion of the siege.
Through the yew portal Halfman came, gravity reigning in his eyes and slaking their wild fire. He saluted Brilliana with the deep reverence he always showed to his fair general. Brilliana turned to her adjutant eagerly:
“Master Halfman, Master Halfman,” she cried, “how do you measure our rebel?”
Halfman’s gravity lightened amazingly at the thought of his prisoner.
“I take him,” he answered, emphatically, “for as proper a fellow as ever I met in all my vagabond days. Barring his primness he would have proved a gallant” – he was going to say “pirate,” but paused in time and said “seaman.” “God pardon him for a Puritan,” he went on, “for he has in him the making of a rare Cavalier.”
Brilliana turned to Tiffany, whose cheeks were very red.
“Hang your head, child,” she cried; “for you are outvoted in a parliament of praise. Beat a retreat, maid Tiffany.”
The crimson Tiffany fled from the pleasaunce.
“Where is your prisoner?” Brilliana asked.
“I have envoyed him over park and garden,” Halfman answered, “and brought him to port in the library.”
“Alas! I pity him,” sighed Brilliana; “it holds few books of divinity. But come, recruiting-sergeant, what of our volunteers?”
“So pleases you, my lady,” Halfman said, “our troop is swelling fast, and the sooner we clap them into colored coats the better.”
Brilliana’s curls danced in denial.
“Alas! friend, I have sad news for you. Of cloth for coats I can indeed command a great plenty” – she paused doubtfully.
“Why this is glad news, not sad news,” Halfman said. “So may you serve it out with all despatch.”
Brilliana dropped her hands to her sides and her lids over her eyes, a pretty picture of despair; but, “Alas! ’tis all white,” she confessed – “wool white, snow white, ermine white. You must needs have patience, good recruiting-sergeant, till I can have it dyed the royal red.”
Halfman pushed patience from him with outspread palms.
“Shall the King lack hands for lack of madder?” he questioned, with humorous indignation. “Not so, I pray you; let us cut our coats from your white cloth. I promise you we will dye it ourselves red enough in the blood of the enemy.” Brilliana sprang to her feet rejoicing.
“Bravely said; so shall it be bravely done. I will give orders at once for the cutting and sewing. I will back our white coats against Master Hampden’s green coats, or Essex’s swarm in orange-tawny. Have you conveyed my message to my two miserly neighbors?”
“I sent Clupp to Master Hungerford,” Halfman answered, “and Garlinge to Master Rainham, bidding them to your presence peremptory. But I warn you, my lady, from all I hear, that if you hope to raise coin for the King’s cause from either of the skinflints you will be sadly at a loss.”
“At least I must try,” Brilliana declared. “Am I not the King’s viceroy in Oxfordshire, and are not the two money-bags my proclaimed adorers? It will go hard with me but I compel them to swell the King’s exchequer.”
“You have done marvels,” Halfman admitted. “Can you work miracles? With all due reverence, I doubt. But we shall soon see, for here comes Tiffany tiptoe through the trees. I’ll wager it is to herald one of the vultures.”
