Kitabı oku: «The Great Mogul», sayfa 2
Walter stepped back, and his right hand crossed to his sword hilt, so evident was the design of the other to insult him.
But Sainton laughed. He caught the would-be bully by the belt.
“Yea, and take the house, too, if the landlord be willing, my pretty buck,” he growled pleasantly, whereon he heaved the swaggerer bodily over the wall, and they heard the crash of his body into the window of a summer house.
Those who stood near were rendered aghast by this feat of strength; they had never seen its like. Young Lord Dereham was no light weight, and his lordship’s wriggling carcass had described sufficient parabola to clear coping-stones set ten feet above the pavement.
The incident passed unheeded by the greater mob in the roadway. For no reason whatever a crowd of struggling men surged around the litter. Mowbray, clutching his undrawn sword, planted his back against the wall from which the discomfited aristocrat would have ousted him; he called to Sainton: —
“Stand by, Roger! There is some treason afoot!”
The words had scarce left his mouth when a Spanish halberdier felled the two nearest litter-bearers, and a shriek of dismay came from behind the drawn curtains as the conveyance dropped to the ground.
Another rush, also preconcerted, enabled some of the well-dressed rascals to possess themselves of the litter-poles. The gates of Gondomar’s garden were suddenly opened, and a move was made to carry the litter thither.
At that instant Eleanor Roe, thrusting aside the curtains, showed her beautiful face, now distraught with fear, and cried aloud for help.
“Be not alarmed, fair one,” said one of her new escort, scarcely veiling his bold stare of admiration by an assumption of good manners. “We have saved you from some roistering knaves, and shall give you a pleasant refuge until the trouble be quelled.”
“Where are my father’s serving-men?” demanded another voice, and Anna looked forth, though anger rather than fear marked her expression.
“Prone in the dust, miladi,” answered the cavalier.
Both girls saw that they were being taken towards Gondomar’s house.
“I pray you convey us to Temple Bar,” cried Anna, an alarmed look now sending shadows across her dark eyes. “’Tis but a step, and there our names shall warrant us bearers in plenty.”
“You are much too pretty to trust to such varlets,” said the spokesman of the party, and, before another word of protest could be uttered, the litter was hustled within the gates, which were closed at once.
Now, both Mowbray and his huge companion were assured that the whole business was a trick. The only sufferers from the riot were the unfortunate litter-bearers and the nobleman who was pitched over the wall. All the rest was make-believe, save the unpleasing fact that two young and beautiful girls were left helpless in the hands of a number of unprincipled libertines such as followed the lead set by Carr, the Scottish page, and maintained, in later years, by “Steenie” and “Baby Charles” in a lewd and dissolute court.
But Mowbray was a comparative stranger in London, and Sainton had never before set eyes on the capital. Common prudence suggested that they should not raise a clamor at the gates of Gondomar, whose great influence with the erratic King was widely known and justly dreaded.
Yet, when did prudence ever withstand the pleading of a pretty face? Mowbray’s blood was boiling, and it needed but little to rouse him to action. The impetus was soon forthcoming.
The noise of the disturbance brought people running from Temple Bar. Others hurried up from the direction of Charing Cross. Then, as now, Londoners dearly loved a street row.
Again, by well-planned strategy, the soldiers and some of the exquisites mingled with the crowd and gave lying assurances that the rogues who fought had run off towards the Convent Garden. Roger recognized the silversmith’s apprentice among the gapers.
“Here, lad,” he said, beckoning him, “ask yon fellow holding a kerchief to his broken head who were the ladies he carried in the litter.”
The man, thus appealed to, gathered his wits sufficiently to answer, and the honored names of Cave and Roe acted as sparks on tinder. Forthwith, a number of city youths gathered round Mowbray and Sainton to hear their version of the fray.
As soon as they knew that the girls had been taken into Gondomar’s house, all the race hatred and religious bigotry of the time flamed forth in ungovernable fury.
“’Prentices! ’Prentices! Clubs! Clubs!” rang out the yell, and the war-cry of the guilds quickly reached to the city barrier, whence a torrent of youths poured headlong into the Strand.
“We’ll have ’em out, if all the ambassadors in St. James’s barred the way,” shouted the valiant silversmith, who contrived to keep very close to Roger in the press, and, when reinforcements arrived, a decided move was made towards the garden gate.
And now, indeed, a real fight was imminent. Seeing their ruse foiled, Gondomar’s adherents banded together for the defense. The citizens were determined to rescue the daughters of two men respected of all honest burgesses, but, if more numerous, they were not properly armed to attack swordsmen and halberdiers. Hence, blood would be spilt in plenty before they won the gate, had not Roger pulled back Walter Mowbray, who headed the attack.
“Leave ’em to me,” he said. “I’ll side ’em!”
With that he leaped forward into the space cleared by the halberdiers, and made play with his staff. A steel helmet was cracked like a potsherd, three unarmored gallants dropped beneath one blow, and two halberds were broken across as if they had been pipe-stems abhorred by the King.
Before this raging giant, with the tremendous sweep of his long arms and six-foot staff, ordinary swords and ceremonial battle-axes were of no avail. He mowed down his adversaries as a scythe cuts grass, and a few lightning circles described by the ashplant, cleared the way to the gate.
The door was really a wide postern, sunk in the wall, built of stout oak and studded with iron rivets. Without a moment’s pause, Sainton leaned against it. There was a sound of rending wood-work, and the structure was torn from its hinges.
Mowbray parried a vengeful thrust made at his friend by a fallen Spaniard, and jammed the hilt of his sword into the man’s face. Roger, bending his head, entered the garden. Behind him came Walter, and the exulting mob poured in at their heels.
The garden was empty. Leading to the house was a flight of broad steps; at the open door of the mansion stood a tall, grim-looking, clean-shaven priest, a Spaniard, of the ascetic type, a man of dignified appearance, in whose face decision and strength of character set their seal.
At his elbow Mowbray saw the young nobleman who had addressed the girls. He ran forward, fearing lest Roger should open the argument with his cudgel.
“Hold!” cried the ecclesiastic, in good English. “What want ye here in this unbridled fashion?”
“We seek two ladies, daughters of Sir Thomas Cave and Master Robert Roe, who were brought hither forcibly but a few minutes back.”
“They are not here.”
“That is a black lie, black as your own gown,” put in Roger Sainton.
The priest’s sallow face flushed. He was of high rank, and not used to being spoken to so curtly. Mowbray, already cooler now swords had given place to words, restrained Roger by a look and a hand on his arm.
“My friend is blunt of speech,” he explained. “He only means that you are mistaken. It will avoid riot and bloodshed if the ladies are given over forthwith to the safe conduct of those who are acquainted with their parents.”
“Who are you who can venture to speak on behalf of an ignorant and unmannerly gathering which dares to violate the sanctuary of an Embassy?” was the vehement response.
“My name is Walter Mowbray,” was the calm answer. “There is no violation of sanctuary intended. We are here to rescue two ladies inveigled into this house by unworthy device. Either they come out or we come in.”
“Aye, shaven-pate, ’tis ill disputing with him who commands an army,” cried Roger.
The cleric, on whom Mowbray’s reply seemed to have an extraordinary effect, shot glances at both which would have slain them if looks could kill. But the impatient mob was shouting for active measures: it would have asked no greater fun than the sack of Gondomar’s residence; moreover, the majority of the Spaniards and their allies were routed in the street.
So the priest swallowed his wrath and muttered something in a low tone to the silken-clad person by his side. Then he faced Mowbray again.
“When I said there were no ladies here, I meant that none had been conveyed hither forcibly. Two young ladies were sheltered by his Excellency’s retinue, it is true. If they choose they are at liberty to accompany you, and I shall now acquaint them therewith.”
A hoarse laugh from the crowd showed that the sophistry did not pass unheeded. Nevertheless, Mowbray’s counsel of moderation swayed the mob into quiescence, and, a minute later, Anna Cave and Eleanor Roe, pale and trembling, hardly knowing what was toward, were carried in their litter to the city by an excited but good-tempered escort.
CHAPTER III
“The attempt, and not the deed,
Confounds us.”
Shakespeare, “Macbeth.”
Anna’s father, jogging along comfortably on the borrowed cob, overtook the rearmost of the rabble near St. Dunstan’s. Anger made him red, and alarm made him white, when he heard the disjointed tales of those who sought to enlighten him.
That the daughter and niece of one who held high place in his native county, and whose brother in the city was loaded with civic dignities, should be waylaid in the Strand by a number of young profligates aping Rochester’s license, was not to be endured. Therefore, Sir Thomas flushed like a turkey, and his right hand, long unaccustomed to more serious weapon than a carving-knife, tightened on the reins in a way that surprised his placid steed.
But it was an equally serious thing that certain youthful hot-heads, led by “a pair of Yorkshire gallants, one of whom was like unto Gog himself,” should have stormed the house of the Spanish Ambassador in order to rescue the two girls. The royal prerogative, already in grave dispute, was sadly abused by this disorder, and Gondomar was well fitted, by diplomatic skill and political acumen, to make the most of the incident. When Sir Thomas thought of the way in which James, with his dagger-proof doublet unfastened and his points tied awry, would stamp up and down his council-chamber in maundering rage, the color fled from his ruddy cheeks and left him pallid, with drawn under lip.
Nevertheless, when he reached the house of Alderman Cave, situate on the north side of Draper’s Garden, his natural dread of the King’s wrath soon yielded to indignation. He found there not only Anna and Eleanor, but Walter Mowbray and Roger Sainton, with a concourse of friends and neighbors drawn together by news of the outrage.
The old knight’s vanity was not proof against the knowledge of the peril from which the girls were saved. He swore roundly that he had been separated from them by a trick, and admitted that the King did not want him at all. With tears in his eyes he thanked the two young men for their timely aid.
“You will be the son of Sir Walter Mowbray who fell in the great sea-fight against the Spanish Armada?” he cried, seizing Walter’s hand effusively.
“Yes. I scarce remember my father. I was but five years old when he died. Yet my mother taught me to regard all Spaniards as false men, so I scrupled the less to take part against Gondomar.”
“Mercy-a-gad, she might justly have given thee sterner counsel. Thy father was a brave and proper man. I knew him well. Were there more of the like to-day these graceless rogues would not treat as courtezans the daughters of honest folk. And thy friend, if he be not Goliath come to life, how is he known?”
“Let me present to your worship Master Roger Sainton, of Wensleydale, in Yorkshire.”
“Ecod, he is well named. I warrant him sain (wholesome) and I trow he weigheth nearest a ton of any man breathing.”
Roger, seldom at a loss for a repartee, waited until the laugh raised by Sir Thomas’s jest had passed.
“’Tis an empty tun at this moment, your Honor,” said he, glancing plainly at the row of shining tankards which graced a sideboard.
“Where are those lasses?” shouted the knight, glad of the diversion afforded by the claims of hospitality. “Zounds! Here be their defenders athirst and not a flagon on the table.”
In truth, Anna and Eleanor, flurried out of their self-possession by the turmoil of the past hour, had escaped to their apartments, whence they sent the excuse that they were engaged in exchanging their out-of-door dresses and cloaks for raiment more suited to the house.
There were servants in plenty, however, to bring wine enough for a regiment, and certain city magnates, arriving about this time, were emphatic in their advice that Mowbray and Sainton should not attempt to traverse the Strand a second time that day in their search for the residence of the North-country nobleman whom Walter meant to visit.
“A bonny tale will have reached his Majesty ere this,” ran their comment. “Were the pair of you to be haled before him after Gondomar had poisoned his mind you were like to lose your right hands within the hour for brawling in the streets.”
“Neither Roger nor I broke the peace,” protested Mowbray.
“They say that one of you nearly broke Lord Dereham’s neck,” put in a city sheriff, “and that will be held a grave crime when recited to his Majesty by his crony, Carr (Rochester). No, no, my lads, bide ye in the city until such time as inquiry shall be made with due circumspection. The King hath a good heart and a sound understanding, and I’ll wager my chain of office he shall not be pleased to hear that his name was used to decoy my worthy gossip, Sir Thomas Cave, from the company of his daughter and niece.”
This shrewd comment was greeted with solemn nods and winks. The timely arrival of Alderman Cave, with the intelligence that Gondomar, summoned from play at Beaujeu’s, had ridden furiously to Whitehall, determined Mowbray to accept the safe custody offered to him.
Gradually the assemblage dispersed. A man was sent to the Swan Inn, by Holborn Bridge, where the travelers’ nags and pack-horses were stabled. Hence, ere supper was served, Walter wore garments of livelier hue, and Roger was able to discard his heavy riding coat and long boots for a sober suit of homespun.
The girls were discreetly reserved as to their adventure. True, they said that no incivility was offered them. For all they could tell to the contrary the Marquis of Bath and Sir Harry Revel, who made their names known to them, had really saved them from an affray of rowdies.
“I would I had been there,” vowed young George Beeston, who seemed to resent the part played in the affair by Mowbray and his gigantic friend.
“A yard measure is of little avail when swords are drawn,” cried Anna, tartly. The hit was, perhaps, unworthy of her wonted good nature, for Beeston belonged to the Linen-drapers’ Company.
He reddened, but made no reply, and Sir Thomas took up the cudgels in his behalf: —
“When George weds thee, Ann, thou wilt find that a linen-draper of the city is better able to safeguard his wife than any mongrel popinjay who flaunts it at Whitehall.”
“I am in no mind to wed anyone, father,” said she, “nor do I seek other protection than yours.”
“Nay, lass, I am getting old. Be not vexed with young Master Beeston because he guessed not of your peril.”
“I would brave a hundred swords to serve you,” stammered George. Better had he remained silent. No girl likes love-making in public. Anna seemingly paid no heed to his bashful words, but her eyes sparkled with some glint of annoyance.
Roger Sainton, ever more ready to laugh than to quarrel, smoothed over the family tiff by breaking out into a diatribe on the virtues of the knight’s Brown Devon ale. Mowbray, too, seeing how the land lay, offered more attention to Mistress Eleanor Roe than to her stately cousin.
Herein he only followed his secret inclination. The girl’s shy blue eyes and laughing lips formed a combination difficult to resist, if resistance were thought of. She was dressed in simple white. Her hair, plaited in the Dutch style, was tied with a bow of blue riband, nor was her gown too long to hide the neat shoes of saffron-colored leather which adorned her pretty feet.
She wore no ornaments, and her attire was altogether less expensive than that of Anna Cave. His own experiences had given Mowbray a clear knowledge of domestic values. Judging by appearances, he thought that the house of Roe was not so well endowed with wealth as the house of Cave. He did not find the drawback amiss. He was young enough, and sufficiently romantic in disposition, to discover ample endowment in Eleanor’s piquant face and bright, if somewhat timid, wit.
Anna, who looked preoccupied, quickly upset an arrangement which threatened to leave her and Beeston to entertain each other.
It was not yet dark when the supper was ended. Anna, rising suddenly when a waiting-man produced a dust-covered flagon of Alicant, assumed an animated air.
“I see you sip your wine rather than drink it, Master Mowbray,” she cried. “Will you not join Nellie and me in the garden, and leave to these graver gentlemen the worship of Bacchus?”
“Aye,” growled George Beeston, spurred into a display of spirit, “though Venus may be coy the god of wine never refuses his smile.”
“Take an old man’s advice, George,” said Sir Thomas confidentially, “and never seek to woo a girl with a glum face.”
“Better still,” said Roger, reaching for the flagon, “wait until she woos thee. Gad, a woman plagues a man sufficiently after he is wed that his heart should ache before the knot is tied.”
“If your heart ached, Master Sainton, its size would render the ailment of much consequence,” said Eleanor.
“Mayhap ’tis like an August mushroom, which, when overgrown, hath the consistency of hide,” he answered, and his jolly laugh caused even young Beeston to smile.
“Roger and I were bred together,” said Mowbray, as he walked with the two girls into the small public garden which faced the house. “I vow he never cared for woman other than his mother.”
“Belike it is the fashion in Wensleydale,” was Anna’s comment.
“Nay, Mistress Cave, such fashion will not commend itself anywhere. Certes, I have observed that it does not prevail in London.”
This with a glance at Eleanor, but the retort told Anna that although Mowbray came from the shires his wits were not dull.
As his hostess, however, she curbed the inclination to make some one suffer vicariously for poor George Beeston.
“May I make bold to ask if you seek advancement at court?” she inquired civilly.
“Yes, if it help one at court to wish to fight for his Majesty. That is my desire. After much entreaty, my mother allowed me to travel hither, in the hope that my distant kinsman, the Earl of Beverley, might procure me the captaincy of a troop of horse. As for Roger, his mother was my mother’s foster-sister, so the worthy dame sent her son to take care of me.”
“What will the good ladies say when they hear that you had not been in London an hour ere you stormed Gondomar’s house to succor a couple of silly wenches?” put in Eleanor.
“My mother will remember that my father lamed two men who sought to stop their wedding, but Mistress Sainton will clap her hands and cry, ‘Mercy o’ me! what manner o’ fules be those Spaniards that they didna run when they set eyes on my Roger? They mun be daft!’”
His ready reproduction of the Yorkshire dialect brought a laugh to their lips; it aided Eleanor in no small degree to hide the blush which mantled her fair cheeks when Walter so aptly turned the tables on her.
But Anna, if restrained in her own behalf, thought that this young spark’s wooing of her friend should be curbed.
“There was purpose in your father’s prowess,” she said. “Sir Harry Revel told me he wished us no indignity, so, perchance, you erred in your boldness, though, indeed, I do not cavil at it.”
“Sir Harry Revel lied. When I meet the fop I shall tell him so.”
“Nay, nay. You take me too seriously. I pray you forget my banter. It would ill requite your service were careless words of mine to provoke another encounter.”
“For my part, I plead with you on behalf of the Marquis of Bath. He is but a goose, though he carries the feathers of a peacock,” added Nellie.
In their talk they passed along the north side of the garden. Here, a number of trees gave grateful shade in the daytime. A wall beyond, with foliage peeping over it, showed that another smaller enclosure, belonging to some civic dignitary, occupied one of the few open spaces remaining within the city defenses.
At this moment, though darkness had not yet fallen, the gloom cast by the trees rendered persons near at hand indistinct. Their voices must have given warning of their coming, for a tall cavalier, wrapped in a cloak, suddenly stepped from behind a broad-beamed elm.
“Anna!” he said, “and Nellie! But whom else have we here?”
The girls started, and Mowbray would have resented the newcomer’s manner had not Eleanor cried: —
“My brother!”
Anna, too, quickly intervened.
“This is Master Walter Mowbray,” she said, “and his breeding, no less than the help he rendered so freely to-day, warrants more courteous greeting from Sir Thomas Roe.”
The stranger, a young man of dignified appearance, made such amends for the abruptness of his challenge that Mowbray wondered how it happened that so elegant and polished a gentleman should have startled two ladies with a peremptory challenge.
Soon this bewilderment passed. They strolled on in company, and they had not been discoursing five minutes before he discovered that Sir Thomas Roe was favored of Anna if young Beeston was favored of her father.
A certain reluctance on their part to return to the more open part of the garden did not escape him, and, although there was no actual pairing off, he found little difficulty in addressing his conversation exclusively to the bewitching Eleanor.
In the half light of evening she was fairy-like, a living dream of beauty, a coy sprite, who laughed, and teased, and tantalized by her aloof propinquity. It was strange, too, that a youngster who could hold his own so fairly in an encounter of wits with Anna should be suddenly overtaken by one-syllable bashfulness when left alone with Eleanor. Yet, if Master Mowbray’s confusion were inexplicable, what subtle craft can dissipate the mystery of Nellie Roe’s change of manner? From being shy, she became pert. She seemed to pass with a bound from demure girlhood to delightful womanhood. When Walter strove to rally her with an apt retort she overwhelmed him with a dozen. Her eyes met his and looked him out of face. It might be that the presence of her brother gave her confidence, that the sweet gloaming of a summer’s eve enchanted her, that the day’s adventures flashed a new and wondrous picture into the undimmed mirror of her mind. Whatever the cause, Mowbray was vanquished utterly, and, being of soldierly stock, he recognized his defeat.
There came to him, in that magic garden, the first dazzling vision of love. Never before had he met a maid to whom his heart sang out the glad tidings that here was his mate. Somehow, the wondrous discovery, though it thrilled his very soul, sobered his thoughts. And then, with quick alternation of mood, he found his tongue again, and behold, Mistress Roe must fain listen, with many a sigh and sympathetic murmur, whilst he poured forth his day-dreams of founding anew the fortunes of his house.
Ah, those summer nights, when hearts are virginal: they are old as Paradise, young as yester eve!
Unhappily, true love does not always find a rose-strewn path. Absorbed though they were in their talk, and ever drawing nearer until a rounded arm touched by chance was now pressed with reassuring confidence, they could not help seeing, when they met Anna and Sir Thomas Roe in a little open space, that the lady had been crying.
Indeed, she herself made no secret of it, but bravely carried off the situation by vowing that old friends should never say “Good-by.”
“Here is your brother, Nell, come to tell us that he sails forthwith for some far-off land he calls Guiana,” she cried, striving to laugh in order to hide the nervous break in her voice. “Not content with that, he must need add that he hopes to discover the limits of that wild river of the Amazons, as if there were greater fortunes for men of intelligence in savage countries than in our own good city.”
“Can it be true that you leave us so soon?” cried Eleanor, disengaging her arm from Mowbray’s hand in quick alarm.
“It is, indeed, but a matter of hours,” he said lightly. “I did but break in on your after-supper stroll to ask your fair gossip for some token which should cheer my drooping spirits by kind remembrance when England shall have sunk below the line.”
“A most reasonable request,” put in Walter. “Had I another such keepsake from a lady whom I honor most highly I would seek the further privilege of going with you on your travels.”
“Lack-a-day! at this rate we shall lose every youth of our acquaintance,” said Anna, who found in excited speech the safest outlet for her emotions. “Yet, lest it be said that I would restrain young gentlemen of spirit who would fain wander abroad, I have here a memento of myself which Sir Thomas Roe shall carry as a talisman against all barbarians.”
She took from beneath a ruff of lace on her breast a small oval object which was fastened by a tiny gold chain around her neck. Even in the dim light they could see it was a miniature.
“It is the work of that excellent painter, Master Isaac Olliver,” she added hastily, “and, from what I know of his skill, I vow his brush was worthy of a better subject.”
“Anna, it is your own portrait!” cried Roe.
“Indeed, would any woman give you the picture of another?”
“Not unless she wished me well and gave me yours.”
“Have you also sat to this Master Olliver?” whispered Mowbray to Eleanor.
“’Tis clear you come from the country, sir. His repute is such that to procure one of his miniatures would cost me my dress for a year or more.”
“Then he has not seen you, or, being an artist, he would beseech you to inspire his pencil.”
Already they were alone again, for Roe and his lady might reasonably be expected to say something in privacy concerning that painting, and there is no telling what topic Walter would have pursued with Eleanor, his dumbness having passed away wholly, had not the noise of some one running hastily in their direction along the gravel path drawn the four together with the men in front.
It was now nearly dark, and they knew not, until he was upon them, that the individual in such urgency was George Beeston.
“Master Mowbray!” he called out, “Master Mowbray, an you be in the company, I pray you answer.”
“Here I am. Is aught amiss?”
“But there is another, yet I left your good friend Sainton at the door?”
“We are accompanied by Sir Thomas Roe, with whom you are acquainted,” intervened Anna, in the clear, cold accents which were but too familiar in Beeston’s ears.
“Ah!”
The little word meant a good deal, but the young man was too single-minded to seek a quarrel with a rival at that moment. Gulping back the bitter exclamation which rose to his lips, he said quietly: —
“I am glad it is none other. Here be ill news to hand. The King has sent officers demanding the instant rendition of two strangers, one Mowbray by name and the other a maniac of monstrous growth, who committed grave default to-day without the confines of the city. The requisition is made in proper form, under his Majesty’s sign manual. The sheriff cannot withstand it. He hath sent a privy warning, and he comes hither with some pomp quick on the heels of his messenger.”
“Then the King’s orders must be obeyed. What sayeth Sir Thomas Cave?” said Mowbray.
“His worship is greatly perturbed. He fears that Gondomar has poisoned the King’s mind. You had best consult with him instantly.”
“The sheriff did not give warning without motive,” said Sir Thomas Roe. “He conveyed a hint that those he sought had better be absent. Unhappily, Sir Thomas Cave would not be pleased by my presence in his house, or I would accompany you. Nevertheless, I advise you to avoid arrest.”
“Tell us, brother dear, how this can be accomplished.”
There was a tremulous anxiety in Eleanor Roe’s question that sent a thrill of joy through one listener at least. Unnoticed in the darkness, Walter sought and pressed her hand.
Again Roe’s natural air of domination made itself felt. Even Beeston, who would gladly have run him through the body, found himself waiting for his sage counsel.
“Return, all of you, to the dwelling,” said Roe. “Let Master Mowbray bring his friend hither, and I shall conduct them both to a place of safety. None need know of my presence here. If Master Beeston desires an explanation thereof I shall accord it fittingly hereafter.”
“For my part I shall be equally ready to receive it, when these Yorkshire gentlemen are provided for,” said Beeston.
“Then these polite rejoinders are needless,” cried Anna softly, “for Sir Thomas Roe sails forthwith for the Spanish main. Come! No more idle words. Our feet are more needed than our tongues.”
They raced away together, Walter thinking no harm in helping Nellie by catching hold of her slender wrist.
They found Sir Thomas Cave’s house in some disorder of frightened domestics. The knight himself was raging at the garden door.
“A nice thing,” he roared at the girls, “gadding about among the bushes and gilliflowers when men’s lives are at stake. Here be arquebusiers by the score come from Whitehall – ”
“Where is Sainton?” demanded Mowbray, wishful to cut short any discussion that threatened to waste time.
“Gone to don his suit of leather. He says he has no mind to see his mother’s good homespun cut by steel bodkins. Gad! he is a proper man. But this is a bad business, Master Mowbray. I pray you demand fair trial, yet anger not the King by repartee. He is fair enough when the harpies about him leave him to his pleasure. I have some little favor at court. It shall be exerted to the utmost, and backed by my last penny if need be. Never shall it be said that I left my daughter’s protectors to languish in gaol, maimed for life, without striving with all my power – ”
