A Gentleman Player Part 17

Taken aback by Hal's threatening tone, the constable looked irresolute, and glanced from Hal to Anne and back again.

Mistress Hazlehurst opened her eyes in a mixture of amazement and alarm, as if it might indeed be possible that her enemy's device should have effect upon this ignorant rustic. She took the supposed Sir Valentine's denial of that name to be a pitiful lie, employed on the spur of the moment. It was not less important to Hal that she should so take it, than it was that the constable should receive it as truth; and he now had to wear toward the officer a manner of veracity, and toward Anne the mien of a ready and brazen liar. This could not but make her loathe him the more, and it went against him to a.s.sume it. But in his mind he could hear the steady hoof-beats of Roger Barnet's horses coming up from the south, and so he must stick firmly to the truth which made him in her eyes a liar.

Her momentary look of alarm died away as the constable continued to gaze in stupid indecision. She waited for others to speak; she had no interest in hastening matters; her hopes were served by every minute of delay. But Hal's case was the reverse.

"Well, man," he said, to the slow-thinking constable. "I am here to answer to any charge made against me in mine own name. If you have aught to say concerning Mr. Harry Marryott, of the lord chamberlain's players, set it forth, for I am in haste. I swear to you, by G.o.d's name, and on the cross of my sword if yon fellow hand it back to me, that I am not Sir Valentine Fleetwood, and that there is no warrant for my apprehension!"

"Perjurer!" cried Anne, with scorn and indignation.

"Nay, madam," quoth the constable, somewhat impressed by Hal's declaration, "an oath is an oath. There be the laws of evidence--"

"Then hear my oath!" she broke in. "I swear, before G.o.d, this gentleman is he that the royal officers are in pursuit of, with proper warrant,--as you shall soon know, when they come hither!"

The constable sat in bewilderment; frowned, gulped, and hemmed; gazed at Hal, at Anne, at the table before him, and into the open mouth of the lean clerk, who waited for something to write down. At last he squeaked:

"'Tis but oath against oath--a fair balance."

"Then take the oath of my page," said Anne, quickly, drawing Francis forward. "He will swear this is the gentleman of whom I told you."

"That I do," quoth Francis, st.u.r.dily, "upon this cross!" And he held aloft his dagger-hilt.

The constable heaved a great sigh of relief, and looked upon Hal with an eased countenance.

"The weight of evidence convicts you, sir," he said. "Let the name of Sir Valentine Fleetwood be taken down, and then his oath, and then the names of these two swearers, and their two oaths--"

"Stay a moment, Master Constable!" cried Hal, his eye suddenly caught by the dismounting of two men from horseback, outside the ale-house window, which had been opened to let fresh air in upon the crowd. "There be other oaths to take down! Ho. Kit Bottle, and Anthony, tie your horses and come hither! Nay, gripe not your swords! Let there be no breach of the peace. But hasten in!"

The general attention fell upon the newcomers, who had ridden hotly.

With a dauntless air Kit Bottle strode through the crowd, handling men roughly to make a way, and followed close by Anthony.

"What a murrain hath befallen--?" Kit was beginning; but Hal stopped him with:

"No time for words! Captain Bottle, you and worthy Master Underhill, testify to this officer my name, the name half London knows me by as a player of the lord chamberlain's company! This lady will have it I am one Sir Valentine Fleetwood. Speak my true name, therefore, upon your oath."

Hal had said enough to inform both Kit and Anthony what name was wanted on this occasion, and the captain instantly answered:

"I will swear to this officer--an thou call'st him such--and maintain it with my sword against any man in England, that thou art no Sir Valentine Fleetwood, but art Master Harry Marryott, and none other, of the lord chamberlain's servants!"

"'Tis the simple truth," said Anthony Underhill, glowering coldly upon the constable. "I will take oath thereto."

The constable held up three fingers of one hand, on Hal's side, and two fingers of the other hand, on Anne's side, and said to her:

"Mistress, here be three oaths against two; thou'rt clearly outsworn!"

"Perjurers!" said Anne, facing Master Marryott and his men.

"Nay, nay, madam!" quoth the constable, becoming severe on the victorious side. "An there be charge of perjury in the case, look to thyself! Since these three have sworn truly, it followeth that thy two oaths be false oaths!"

"Rascal!" cried Hal. "Do you dare accuse this lady of false swearing?"

"Why, why, surely your three oaths be true--"

"True they are, and see you to't my horse and weapons be rendered up to me straightways! But this lady swore what she thought true. She had good reason for so thinking, and village rogues would best use fair words to her!"

He cast a side-glance at Anne, as he finished speaking; but at that instant she turned her back upon him, and went from the room, as swiftly as the crowd could let her. Hal, perforce, stayed to be unbound by the rustics that had held him. At the further orders of the constable, who speedily dwindled into obsequious nothingness under the swaggering disdain of Captain Bottle, Hal's weapons were restored to him. When he went out to the road, he found his horse ready, with Kit's and Anthony's. The huge coach, recently used by the rustics to obstruct the way, had been moved back into the lane. Hal remarked aloud upon this, as he made ready to mount.

"Ay, your worship," said a villager, who had overheard him, "we opened the way again, when the lady rode off a minute ago."

"The lady!" cried Hal, and exchanged a blank look with Kit and Anthony.

He had lost sight of her, while being released and repossessed of his weapons. "A plague on my dull wits!" he added, for the ears of his two men alone. "She hath gone to try the same game in the next parish, and fortune will scarce favor me with such another choice organ of the law as this constable!"

Meanwhile, in the ale-house, the constable, after some meditation, called for ale to be brought to the table at which he had been sitting, and said, thoughtfully, to his ally of the pen and ink-horn:

"Thou mayst tear what thou hast taken down of the examination, William."

And William, muddled by partic.i.p.ation in the recent rush of events, absently tore to pieces his sheet of paper, on which he had written nothing.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE PRISONER IN THE COACH.

"It smites my heart to deal ungently with thee, lady."--_The Fair Immured._

"She is like to find some magistrate of knowledge and resources next time!" continued Hal, alluding to Anne. "Well, there's naught to do but ride after her!"

"But what then?" put in Kit. "What shall hinder her from crying out?"

Hal, just mounted, happened to glance at the coach in the lane. He had, in one moment, a swift series of thoughts.

"Would that a dozen horses were to be had!" quoth he.

"Why, now," said Kit, "here come a score of horses, but with men upon their backs."

Hal turned a startled look southward. No, the riders were not Barnet's men; they rode together in too great disorder. Something impelled Hal to wait their coming up. In a few minutes it could be seen that they were a diverse company, some bravely dressed, some raggedly, some in both bravery and rags at once. Some had reckless faces, some uneasy, some stealthy, some sheepish. Their leader, a tall man, who would have been handsome but for his low brow and an inequality between the two halves of his visage, looked a mixture of insolent boldness and knavish servility.

"Why, G.o.d's body!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Kit Bottle, with sudden astonishment and gladness. "'Tis that same rascal, the very rogue himself, and none else!

I had thought we might fall in with him hereabouts!"

"Of whom speak you?" asked Hal, curtly.

"Of that villain Rumney,--mine old comrade that turned robber; him I once told you of. Ho. Rumney, thou counterfeit captain! Well met, thou rogue, says Kit Bottle!"

And while the one "captain" rode out to welcome the other, Hal remembered what the yeoman at Scardiff had told him of the highway robbers; he scanned the villainous faces of these men, and was thankful in his heart that Anne Hazlehurst had not ridden their way; and then he thought of her on the road ahead, and looked again at the coach, and at the horses of the newcomers.

By the time the two former companions in arms had finished their first salutations, Hal had formed his plan. He called Kit back to him, and said: