Idonia: A Romance of Old London Part 21

"On conditions I will."

"Ah--conditions?"

"That you admit me to your house."

"Never! Besides I have no house. I am homeless and dest.i.tute, master; indeed I am in bitter want."

"I will mend that," said I, and drew forth a gold piece from the pouch at my belt. "But now, ponder the alternatives well, and as you choose, so shall it be yours to have. Either you grant me presently the liberty of that part of Petty Wales which you were used to inhabit, and take this n.o.ble for your pains, or else I will hale you to yonder watch, and denounce your theft of those silks you have about you."

He shivered throughout at my proposals, and after hung as limp upon my arm as a drenched clout.

"If I should do as you desire, good master," said he, in a voice I could scarce hear for its thinness, "our Captain would kill you out of hand."

"Forewarned is forearmed," said I. "Your next reason?"

"That the place is locked."

"Otherwise I should have had no need of you. The next?"

"Oh," he wailed pitifully, "do not drive me thus, master. I dare not obey you."

"Forward then with a good heart," said I cheerfully, and bore him a further ten paces down the street.

"Stay, stay," cried the poet, "I yield, I capitulate, I open the gates ... and now give me my gold."

I did so, and released him, when, cautioning me to be silent, he left the street by a certain byway, and threading such devious pa.s.sages as in the growing darkness I could scarce distinguish to follow him by, he led me on, up and down, through courts and alleys, beneath penthouse roofs and neglected arches, until I came near to doubting his good faith and was about to use my old device of retaining his allegiance at the sword's point, when he came out suddenly into the lane, at the opposite end to that I had before entered it from Tower Hill; and so stood still before the secret low door. In the little light there was (for the lane was lit by no lantern nor lamp of any sort) I could not see whether the door was still barricaded, but judged it to be so by Mr. Plat's climbing up about a fathom's height of the naked wall, setting his feet within some shallow crevices he knew of, but I could not perceive, until he made his standing sure, when, he giving a little strange cry like a bird's, immediately a stone of the wall seemed to be removed, some three spans' breadth, and into the opening thus made Plat incontinently disappeared. I was mad to be fooled thus, for I questioned not but he would now leave me to shift for myself: when with an equal suddenness his head was thrust forth again, and he said--

"If you list you may mount up hither, though I warn you a second time, that all here within, me only excepted, be unG.o.dly thieves, pilferers, cut-throat knaves, railers against the State, having no honesty nor purpose to do well, illiterate, owning no government, lawless, base men that acknowledge no merit of authors nor rules of prosody, ignorant beasts, amongst whom I, a singular sweet singer, remain until a better fate calls me hence to crown me with never-fading bay and myrtle," and so, without more ado, he went away from the aperture, which nevertheless he left open, as he had promised; but whither he went I know not, for I did not see him after, nor have I come by his published poems that were to render him immortal.

I gazed after him a great while, as in doubt whether he would return, but then shifting my new sword behind me, I addressed myself to the ascent of the wall, which, after much sc.r.a.ping of my flesh, and one or two falls headlong, I surmounted, and had my hands fast upon the nether edge of the vent. It was but a brief while ere I had drawn myself up and scrambled through; when I found I stood in a narrow and void chamber, very foul and ill-smelling, from which I was glad enough to be gone.

But scarce had I gone forth into the pa.s.sage beyond, when I heard such a tumult and angry debate of voices as remembering Plat's a.s.sertion of the Trappist silence that was in this house enjoined upon pain of death I could not but suppose some very especial cause to have hurried the thieves into so presumptuous an offence. It was now altogether night within the building, and with these stifled cries sounding in my ears, and execrations of men I knew to be desperate villains, I confess my heart quailed within me and my strength all leaked away, so that I could not even fly by the way I had come, but stood with my back to the wall, sweating and staring, with never a thought but to remain unperceived. Of the fashion and plan of the house I was perfectly ignorant, having but once before been within it, and then trusting to another to guide me through its secret recesses; yet I remembered that there was somewhere that great wide staircase which Plat had said was the common room and meeting-place of the thieves, where they transacted their affairs and shared their food and treasure. 'Twas, then, with a clutch of horrid surprise that I now saw, low down before me, a sort of men bearing lanterns that issued from the shadows, and began to scale the stairs; for by the uncertain light I could both distinguish them and that I myself was standing in one of the open galleries that surrounded the stairhead and overlooked the body of the hall. But no sooner had I understood this, than any further discovery was thwarted by a man's brushing past me in the dark, so close I could hear him fetch his breath, and instantly upon that there followed the click of a snaphance.

"Stay there, you creeping lice!" he said, speaking in a cool middle voice, "or I will shoot you down, man by man, where you stand."

At this unlooked-for interruption, the men upon the stair came to a sudden stand, while some that had advanced higher than the rest, fell back, so that all hung crowded together, their lanterns raised and their eyes seeking upward for the man that held them at bay. I have never seen so dastardly and scarce human visages as they showed, some with bleared eyes and matted hair, others dark and vengeful, their brows and cheeks scarred with wounds or open sores. Here a man went half-naked like a savage Indian; there one wore a ragged coat guarded with silver; all were armed, though with such a hazardous sort of weapons, that but for the a.s.sured skill and practice with which they wielded them, one might have dared oppose the whole rout single-handed.

But in their hands these weapons seemed proper as claws to beasts, or tushes to a wild boar, and instinctively, as the man raised his pistol, I drew my sword from the sheath. The noise I made attracted the man's attention to me, and he would perhaps have spoken, had not the bloodthirsty rout, recking no further opposition, sprung forward again.

"Hold, I say," cried the man, and this time with a dreadful menacing vehemence. "I am your Captain, and you know me well. Another step, and there's a soul writhing in h.e.l.l. Back, go, you and your eggers-on!

I understand this business, as I understand too who 'twas inflamed you to mutiny."

"You took my wife, you sc.u.m!" shouted a great fellow clad in a shipman's garb, that held a rust-bitten cutla.s.s in his hand, and struggled forward through the press.

"Ay, did I, Jack?" quoth the Captain satirically, "but 'twas to provide you with another bride, a bonny la.s.s that the Churchmen say we shall all embrace by turns. 'Tis that world-old witch I mean, named Death,"

and at the word, he discharged his piece full in the other's blotched face, and laid him bleeding on the topmost stair.

A great hush came over the mutineers when they saw this deed, that moreover so sickened me that I had already raised my sword to stab the murderer in the back and have done with him, when the thieves suddenly broke with a yell of defiance and charged upward in the ma.s.s. What I would have done had I had longer to deliberate I know not, but in default of any counsel to direct me, I sprang into action on the side of the very man I had intended to slay, and shoulder to shoulder with him, fought down those ghastly cruel faces and reaching hands.

It was soon enough over. They were no match against the arms we used, and the Captain calmly loading and discharging his piece, the while I kept the stairhead clear with my sword, we made them give back foot by foot, until at length each was scrambling to be the hindmost, and even used his knife upon his companion in the urgency of his retreat. All the lanterns were out now, save one that a dead man held in his stark and upraised hand; and by that light the Captain wiped his smoking barrel clean.

"It is well concluded," said he, "and I thank you for your help, young sir."

I said nothing, so deeply did I loathe him.

"We must be gone," he said, "and that quickly. The watch is up, and the whole place will be searched before dawn. They will be caught like rats in a drain," he added softly, drawing in his breath. "Follow me."

He led me to the room I had left, and helped me to get through the hole in the masonry, after which he followed me.

"This way," said he, and took me through the lane until he came onto Tower Hill, when, skirting the precincts of the Tower, we crept unchallenged through the postern in the wall and turned down a narrow cart-way to the eastward, I beside him, but neither speaking one word, until after an hour or more, with waiting and going forward, we got to Wapping a little ere daybreak, to a desolate mean tavern of shipmen close beside the river, which we entered without question, for none seemed to be stirring; and here, in the filthy guestroom, the Captain flung himself down.

"A good night's work, master," said he, grinning, "in which you did your part so well that it grieves me much to name you my prisoner."

CHAPTER XIX

IN WHICH I COME TO GRIPS WITH MR. MALPAS

In the wan light, with which the room was now gradually filling, I looked at the man I had been so strangely moved to succour, and knew him for my old antagonist, Guido Malpas. However, I said no more at that time, but that, prisoner or no, I sufficiently loathed him; and so, crouching myself together upon a settle by the hearth (for I was exceeding weary), I fell asleep.

It was bright day when I awoke, stiff and uneasy, and sat up on my bench. The room was empty, and 'twas some while ere I could collect the pa.s.sages incident to my being there, which, when they had skulked back like tired truants to my brain, yet so monstrous did they seem as I could scarce believe them to be acted events, but rather fantasies left caught in the web of my waking; while as to that boast of the thieves' Captain, that I was detained prisoner in an open hostelry, I laughed aloud at the recollection.

I got off my plank bed, and going to the door called for the host to fetch me something to breakfast on, but he not immediately answering to my demand, I thought fit to show him something of my quality, as befitting an agent of the Queen's, and was for jangling down my accoutrements on the table (which never fails of bringing your tapsters running to attend on a man) when, to my astonishment, I found sword and belt both wanting, and my purse gone with the rest.

I stood horror-stricken at this catastrophe, for I perceived that while I slept that malignant thief had shorn me, and so clapped my hand to the bosom of my jerkin, where I had put up a letter I had received from the Lord Treasurer, or rather from his secretary, touching my late appearance before the Council; but almost before I had my hand in, I knew certainly that it had been stolen, as indeed it was. Now, here I saw instantly was matter enough to ruin me either way; with them that employed me, whose secret I had so slovenly betrayed; with them I was to spy upon, if (as I could nowise doubt) Malpas was of their company and privy to their designs. Nevertheless, come what would, I must report my delinquency to Sir Edward Osborne, and abide by his censure, and for the rest hope that 'twas not yet too late to supersede me by some other agent upon that voyage wherein I had promised myself no small success and glory.

Very heavy, then, but otherwise determined to do my plain duty in this affair, I went out by the door with a firm step, pondering all the cross accidents that had befallen me within so short a s.p.a.ce, and very wishful that all were at an end.

"Not so fast, Mr. Agent," said that sneering voice of Malpas, whom I near stumbled over as he sat on an upturned cask by the door. "I have been expecting you this two hours, but would not disturb you; for it is unprofitable discoursing with a man of your capacity to slumber. Well, do you walk in your sleep now, little Denis, and dream upon treasons?

or have you your waking sense yet? I trow you seem reasonable glad to see me, by which I suppose you to be in your right mind, and so bid you good-morrow."

For answer I drew off my glove, and struck him a stinging blow across the mouth with it; upon which he leapt up, and, being extraordinarily powerful, flung me from him into the tavern, where I lay p.r.o.ne upon the flags. He did not shut the door, but stood in the doorway, of which his head brushed the lintel, and, folding his arms, proceeded quietly--

"That was unwisely done, Denis. This house is well respected, and not known for brawling. Besides, I mean we should be friends; that is, should understand each other, as friends do--and traders. For in the way of trade all goes by mutual understanding and a common trust; as I to sell certain commodities and you to remit certain moneys; or contrariwise, you to part with such merchandise as I am willing to lay up in store and to render a good account of, little Denis--as you shall confess, at the proper season. 'Tis a settlement somewhat deferred doubtless, having had its beginning, if I mistake not, in a street before a barber's I used formerly; whereafter was added to the bill a shrewd item or two, whereby I come near to losing all credit: a grave chance for such a merchant-adventurer as I; but I am since restored. I allow a handsome rebate, Denis, that you put into the reckoning yesterday. But the balance, upon the whole, going against me, it remains that I must pay."

"Had I known you last night," I said bitterly, "I would have cut off my right hand rather than second you in that pa.s.s."

He laughed long and low at that.

"Do you regret the issue so much?" said he, "Then it was your ignorance more than your sword I have to thank, it seems. Well, 'tis no more than the world's way, that generally sees good deeds done at random, but calculated villainies."

"As stealing that poor devil's wife," said I.

"Ay, or the lying-in-wait for Captain Spurrier upon commission," said he. "So all's one for that."

"You have read my packet, then?"