My Lady Rotha Part 5

'The town!' he answered, panting up to my stirrup. 'There is fighting going on, Master Martin. They are pulling down Klink's house.'

'So, so,' I answered, for at the first sight of his face I had feared worse. 'Have you closed the gate at the head of the steps?'

'Yes,' he said, 'and my lord's men are guarding it.'

'Right!' I answered. And then my lady came up, and I had to break the news to her. Of course the young Waldgrave heard also, and I saw his eyes sparkle with pleasure.

'Ha! the rascals!' he cried. 'Now we will trounce them! Trust me, cousin, we will teach these boors such a lesson as they shall long remember. But what is it?' he continued, turning to my lady who had not spoken. 'The Queen of Heritzburg is not afraid of her rebellious subjects?'

My lady's eyes flashed. 'No, I am not afraid,' she said, with contempt. 'But Klink's house? Do you mean the Red Hart, Martin?'

I said I did.

She plucked her horse by the head, and stopped short under the arch of the gateway. I think I see her now bending from her saddle with the light on the woods behind her, and her face in shadow. 'Then those people are in danger!' she said, her voice quivering with excitement.

'Martin, take what men you have and go down into the town. Bring them off at all risks! See to it yourself. If harm come to them, I shall not forgive you easily.'

The Waldgrave sprang from his horse, and cried out that he would go.

But my lady called to him to stay with her.

'Martin knows the streets, and you do not,' she said, sliding una.s.sisted to the ground. 'But he shall take your men, if you do not object.'

We dismounted, in a confused medley of men and horses, in the stable court, which is small, and being surrounded by high buildings, was almost dark. The grooms left at home had gone to the front of the house to see the sight, and there was no one to receive us. I bade the five men who had ridden with us get their arms, and leaving the horses loose to be caught and cared for by the lad who had met us, I hastened after my lady and the Waldgrave, who had already disappeared under the arch which leads to the Terrace Court.

To pa.s.s through this was to pa.s.s from night to day, so startling was the change. From one end to the other the terrace was aglow with red light. The last level beams of the sun shone straight in our eyes as we emerged, and so blinded us, that I advanced, seeing nothing before me but a row of dark figures leaning over the parapet. If we could not see, however, we could hear. A hoa.r.s.e murmur, unlike anything I had heard before, came up from the town, and rising and falling in waves of sound, now a mere whisper, and now a dull savage roar, caused the boldest to tremble. I heard my lady cry, 'Those poor people! Those poor people!' and saw her clench her hands in impotent anger; and that sight, or the sound--which seemed the more weirdly menacing as the town lay in twilight below us, and we could make out no more than a few knots of women standing in the market-place--or it may be some memory of the helpless girl I had seen at Klink's, so worked upon me that I had got the gate unbarred and was standing at the head of the steps outside before I knew that I had stirred or given an order.

Some one thrust a half pike into my hand, and mechanically I counted out the men--four of the Waldgrave's and five, six, seven of our own.

A strange voice--but it may have been my own--cried, 'Not by the High Street. Through the lane by the wall!' and the next moment we were down out of the sunlight and taking the rough steps three at a time.

The High Street reached, we swung round in a body to the right, and plunging into Shoe Wynd, came to the locksmith's, and thence went on by the way I had gone that other evening.

The noise was less down in the streets. The houses intervened and deadened it. At some of the doors women were standing, listening and looking out with grey faces, but one and all fled in at our approach, which seemed to be the signal, wherever we came, for barring doors and shooting bolts; once a man took to his heels before us, and again near the locksmith's we encountered a woman bare-headed and carrying something in her arms. She almost ran into the midst of us, and at the last moment only avoided us by darting up the side-alley by the forge.

Whether these people knew us for what we were, and so fled from us, or took us for a party of the rioters, it was impossible to say. The narrow lanes were growing dark, night was falling on the town; only the over-hanging eaves showed clear and black against a pale sky. The way we had to go was short, but it seemed long to me; for a dozen times between the castle steps and Klink's house I thought of the poor girl at her prayers, and pictured what might be happening.

Yet we could not have been more than five minutes going from the steps to the corner beyond the forge, whence we could see Klink's side window. A red glare shone though it, and cleaving the dark mist which filled the alley fell ruddily on the town wall. It seemed to say that we were too late; and my heart sank at the sight. Nor at the sight only, for as we turned the corner, the hoa.r.s.e murmur we had heard on the Terrace, and which even there had sounded ominous, swelled to an angry roar, made up of cries and cursing, with bursts of reckless cheering, and now and again a yell of pain. The street away before us, where the lane ran into it, was full of smoky light and upturned faces; but I took no heed of it, my business was with the window. I cried to the men behind me and hurried on till I stood before it, and clutching the bars--the gla.s.s was broken long ago--looked in.

The room was full of men. For a moment I could see nothing but heads and shoulders and grim faces, all crowded together, and all alike distorted by the lurid light shed by a couple of torches held close to the ceiling. Some of the men standing in such groups as the constant jostling permitted, were talking, or rather shouting to one another.

Others were savagely forcing back their fellows who wished to enter; while a full third were gathered with their faces all one way round the corner where I had seen the sick man. Here the light was strongest, and in this direction I gazed most anxiously. But the crowded figures intercepted all view; neither there nor anywhere else could I detect any sign of the girl or child. The men in that corner seemed to be gazing at something low down on the floor, something I could not see. A few were silent, more were shouting and gesticulating.

I stretched my hands through the bars, and grasping a man by the shoulders, dragged him to me. 'What is it?' I cried in his ear, heedless whether he knew me, or took me for one of the ruffians who were everywhere battling to get into the house--at the window we had antic.i.p.ated some by a second only. 'What is it?' I repeated fiercely, resisting all his efforts to get free.

'Nothing!' he answered, glaring at me. 'The man is dead; cannot you see?'

'I can see nothing!' I retorted. 'Dead is he?'

'Ay, dead, and a good job too!' the rascal answered, making a fresh attempt to get away. 'Dead when we came in.'

'And the girl?'

'Gone, the Papist witch, on a broomstick!' he answered. 'Through the wall or the ceiling or the keyhole, or through this window; but only on a broomstick. The bars would skin a cat!'

I let him go and looked at the bars. They were an inch thick, and a very few inches apart. It seemed impossible that a child, much more a grown woman, could pa.s.s between them. As the fellow said, there was barely room for a cat to pa.s.s.

Yet my mind clung to the bars. Klink might have hidden the girl, for without doubt he had neither foreseen nor meant anything like this.

But something told me that she had gone by the window, and I turned from it with renewed hope.

It was time I did turn. The crowd had got wind of our presence and resented it. All who could not get into the house to slake their curiosity or anger, had pressed into the narrow alley where we stood, while the air rang with cries of 'No Popery! Down with the Papists!'

When I turned I found my fellows hard put to it to keep their position. To retreat, close pressed as we were, seemed as difficult as to stand; but by making a resolute movement all together, we charged to the front for a moment, and then taking advantage of the interval, fell back as quickly as we could, facing round whenever it seemed that our followers were coming on too boldly for safety.

In this way, the knaves with me being stout and some of them used to the work, we retreated in good order and without hurt as far as the end of Shoe Wynd. Then I discovered to my dismay that a portion of the mob had made along the High Street and were waiting for us on the steep ascent where the wynd runs into the street.

Hitherto no harm had been done on either side, but we now found ourselves beset front and back, and to add to the confusion of the scene night had set in. The narrow wynd was as dark as pitch, save where the light of a chance torch showed crowded forms and snarling faces, while the din and tumult were enough to daunt the boldest.

That moment, I confess, was one of the worst I have known. I felt my men waver; a little more and they might break and the mob deal with us as it would. On the other hand? I knew that to plunge, exposed to attack as we were from behind, into the ma.s.s of men who blocked the way to the steps, would be madness. We should be surrounded and trodden down. There were not perhaps fifty really dangerous fellows in the town; but a mob I have noticed is a strange thing. Men who join it, intending merely to look on, are carried away by excitement, and soon find themselves cursing and fighting, burning and raiding with the foremost.

A brief pause and I gave the word to face about again. As I expected, the gang in the alley gave way before us, and the pursued became the pursuers. My men's blood was up now, their patience exhausted; and for a few moments pike and staff played a merry tune. But quickly the mob behind closed up on our heels. Stones began to be thrown, and presently one, dropped I think from a window, struck a man beside me and felled him to the ground.

That was our first loss. Drunken Steve, a great gross fellow, always in trouble, but a giant in strength, picked him up--we could not leave the man to be murdered--and plunged on with us bearing him under his arm.

'Good man!' I cried between my teeth. And I swore it should save the drunkard from many a sc.r.a.pe. But the next moment another was down, and him I had to pick up myself. Then I saw that we were as good as doomed. Against the stones we had no shield.

The men saw it too, and cried out, beside themselves with rage. We were as rats, set in a pit to be worried--in the dark with a hundred foes tearing at us. And the town seemed to have gone mad--mad! Above the screams and wicked laughter, and all the din about us, I heard the great church bell begin to ring, and hurling its notes, now sharp, now dull, down upon the seething streets, swell and swell the tumult until the very sky seemed one in the league against us!

Blind with fury--for what had we done?--we turned on the mob which followed us and hurled it back--back almost to the High Street. But that way was no exit for us; the crowd stood so close that they could not even fly. Round we whirled again, wild and desperate now, and charged down the alley towards the West Gate, thinking possibly to win through and out by that way. We had almost reached the locksmith's--then another man fell. He was of the Waldgrave's following, and his comrade stooped to raise him; but only to fall over him, wounded in his turn.

What happened after that I only knew in part, for from that moment all was a medley of random blows and stragglings in the dark. The crowd seeing half of us down, and the rest entangled, took heart of grace to finish us. I remember a man dashing a torch in my face, and the blow blinding me. Nevertheless I staggered forward to close with him. Then something tripped me up, something or some one struck me from behind as I fell. I went down like an ox, and for me the fight was over.

Drunken Steve and two of the Waldgrave's men fought across me, I am told, for a minute or more. Then Steve fell and an odd thing happened.

The mob took fright at nothing--took fright at their own work, and coming suddenly to their senses, poured pell-mell out of the alley faster than they had come into it. The two strangers, knowing nothing of the way or the town, knocked at the nearest door and were taken in, and sheltered till morning.

CHAPTER V.

MARIE WORT.

There never was one of my forefathers could read, or knew so much as a horn-book when he saw it; and therefore I, though a clerk, have a brain pan that will stand as much as any scholar's and more than many a simple man's. Otherwise the blow I got that night must have done me some great mischief, instead of merely throwing me into a swoon, in which I lay until the morning was well advanced.

When I came to myself with an aching head and a dry mouth, I was hard put to it for a time to think what had happened to me. The place in which I lay was dark, with spots of red lights like flaming eyes here and there. An odour of fire and leather and iron filled my nostrils. A hoa.r.s.e soughing as of a winded horse came and went regularly, with a dull rumbling and creaking that seemed to shake the place. Dizzy as I was, I rose on my elbow with an effort, and looked round. But my eyes swam, I could see nothing which enlightened me, and with a groan I fell back. Then I found that I was lying on a straw-bed, with bandages round my head, and gradually the events of the night came back to me.

My mind grew clearer. Yet it still failed to tell me where I was, or whence came the hoa.r.s.e choking sound, like the sighing of some giant of the Harz, which I heard.

At last, while I lay wondering and fearing, a door opened and let into the dark place a flood of ruddy light. Framed in this light a young girl appeared, standing on the threshold. She held a tray in her hand, and paused to close the door behind her. The bright glow which shone round her, gave her a strange unearthly air, picking out gold in her black locks and warming her pale cheeks; but for all that I recognised her, and never was I more astonished. She was no other than the daughter of the Papist Wort--the girl to rescue whom we had gone down to the Red Hart.

I could not restrain an exclamation of surprise, and the girl started and stopped, peering into the corner in which I lay.

'Master Martin,' she said in a low tone, 'was that you?'

I had never heard her speak before, and I found, perhaps by reason of my low state, and a softness which pain induces in the roughest, a peculiar sweetness in her voice. I would not answer for a moment. I made her speak again.