The King’s Champion
“And now, schentelmen, about that little inzident at the goronation?” It was his Majesty King William III who spoke, crumpled back into his big chair. His eyes, bright as a sparrow’s, peered from the nest of an enormous wig. His small, shrewd features, diminutive frame, and legs like cribbage-pegs, were the least adapted, one might have thought, to carry the extravagant vesture of his day. He appeared, indeed, to be always lost in it, and as if just on the point of finding his way out. Yet the clothes of a Daniel Lambert would hardly have sufficed for his spirit.
The Marquis of Halifax, his Lord Privy Seal, smiled, and shrugged his stout shoulders deprecatingly. There were four others present in this his Majesty’s somewhat melancholy little Cabinet at Whitehall: Lord Denby, his President of the Council, and three solemn Dutch mynheers—D’Auverquerque, Schomberg, and Zuylestein, who had been appointed respectively the King’s Masters of Horse, Ordnance, and the Robes. These last were all as grave as mustard-pots, and the subject, long-expected and broached at last, made them graver.
It turned upon an incident, slight in itself, significant only in its context, which had struck a discordant note in the tremendous ceremonial of the day before. When the King’s Champion, riding in by the great door of Westminster, had cast his gage upon the floor, offering to prove in person upon the body of whomsoever should challenge the right of King William and Mary his Queen to reign as sovereign inheritors of the realm that that same dissentient lied in his throat and was a false traitor, a most unexpected response had followed. A little old lady, dressed in a watered tabby and mittens, and having large spectacles on her nose and a stiff three-storied commode of lace perched on her white hair, had darted from among the spectators, and, whipping up the steel glove, had returned it to the Champion with a whispered word or two, and then fairly run away, melting into the crowd which thronged about the entrance before anyone could think of interposing.
The affair had caused a momentary stir, and even a titter, instantly subdued to the august occasion, as Sir Charles Dymoke, the Champion, had ridden up the Hall, his face as red as fire, to deliver and re-deliver his cartel.
But it had not passed unobserved by the King himself or by those around him. Extinguished as he had appeared to be in his panoply of purple and ermine and embroidered scarlet, looking, as he had risen at the great table to drink his Champion’s health, for all the world like a little over-swaddled Greek icon elevated against a background of glittering stained glass, his diminutive Majesty had had an ear and an eye for everything within the longest range of either. His birdlike optics, bright as twin buttons sunk amid that pomp of raiment, had been fully cognisant of the little episode, and had watched the after-approach of his Champion with an unwinking interest, which had seemed to concentrate itself to such a challenging focus on the flushed face of the knight as he came near, that that doughty Paladin had fallen into confusion and had something botched the business of the toast that followed. However, he had managed, though crestfallen, to retire presently with sufficient aplomb and his perquisite of a golden beaker; and there for the moment the matter had ended.
“Sir Charles Dymoke——” began Lord Halifax.
“Who is dat man?” interrupted the King. “Vat is his title to the bost?”
“It is claimed by him, sire,” answered the peer, “in his right of the Manor of Scrivelsby. The office was originally deputed, I understand, to Sir Richard de Marmyon by the Conqueror, and hath descended by virtue of that tenure to this day. Sir Charles is its legitimate representative.”
“Well,” said the King, “broduce him before us.”
“Why,” said the Marquis feebly, “that is the odd thing. Sir Charles is nowhere to be found.”
The three Dutch mynheers uttered guttural sounds in their throats, and looked at one another and at the King significantly.
His Majesty’s brows knotted.
“Dat is very vonny,” he said. “Not to be vound, mein vrent?”
“It has been ascertained, your Majesty,” said Lord Denby wearily—he was a picked white bone of a man, with no stomach and yet a perpetual stomach-ache, which naturally aggrieved him—“that Sir Charles rode, immediately after the ceremony, to the ‘Cock’ hostelry in Tothill Street, whence, having disencumbered himself of his panoply, he continued his way to the riding-school of one Dobney, near Islington, where he delivered up his horse and disappeared. Since when he has neither returned to his inn nor vouchsafed the least token of his existence.”
The King considered the matter very glumpily within himself. It appeared a trifle; yet trifles might easily be underestimated in the existing state of things. The incident was something or nothing—a mere meaningless frolic, or a challenge to his title bearing a certain significance. The land swarmed with Jacobites of more or less power and prominence. What if one of them were to meet and defeat his Champion? How, in that event, would his claim stand? What was the procedure? It was an odd contingency, and he put it rather acridly to my Lord Privy Seal.
“He drow de gage; anodder agcept it; dey vight; my man vall. Vat is to vollow?” he demanded.
“Ja! Dat is vat strike idself into me bom-bom,” said Schomberg the warrior.
Lord Halifax smiled rather sheepishly. He was a large, tolerant soul of sixty, repudiating all sentiment and subject to much. He had been called the “Trimmer”; but, then, no man of humour can ever be a man of convictions. Kind, witty, and cynical, he was yet so fond of Reason that he could make a fool of himself with her. He was even worked upon to do so in the present case.
“There is positively no precedent, sire,” he said. “To my certain knowledge the thing has never happened before.”
“Bot zhould it jost zo happen?” insisted his master.
“Ach!” said D’Auverquerque penetratingly.
“With deference, sire,” said his lordship, “is it not something premature to assume any hostile intent in the matter? The good lady——”
“Posh!” put in the King irritably. “Neither goot nor lady.”
“Zo it strike itself into mein head bom-bom,” said Schomberg.
“Dat dress vas a masguerade,” said William—“a vact we zhould haf gonsidered, blain to the stupidest indelligence.”
“Certainly, certainly,” agreed Lord Halifax nervously.
“Vell, sir—vat den?”
“Ach! vat den?” demanded D’Auverquerque cunningly.
“I vill dell your lordship,” said Schomberg. “Dere was a vine swordsman gonzealed under dose bettigoats.”
The Lord Privy Seal, considering the subject, woke to a certain trepidation.
“It is impossible,” he admitted, “to avoid attaching a measure of importance to the affair, or to gauge its consequences should it be carried through. Surely Sir Charles could not be so foolish as to risk a serious encounter? But he must be found and warned at all costs.”
His mood communicated itself to the others. The matter began to assume with them all an increasingly sinister aspect. Majesty was not yet so safe on its throne that omens could be disregarded. The King, prompt and tireless, for all his sickly constitution, in business—the little man who was to regain for England her reputation for workaday sanity—had yet, at this beginning, a vast estate to recover from chaos, and his path was beset with perils. The country was still in two minds, and each distracted; a trifle might upset the balance. Deliberating in this sort, a species of hysteria communicated itself after a time from one to another of the little Council, until it definitely came to perceive in the episode a daring ruse for bringing about a reaction in popular sentiment. What if the meeting were actually to occur, and the Champion to be overthrown? It was not to be doubted that the event would have been provided for, and those engaged in bringing it about forearmed. Defeat might result in riot, and riot in revolution. Arrived at that pitch of the debate, the six gentlemen, including his Majesty, were all speaking together in considerable agitation.
It was the personality of the mysterious Mohock, once convicted of masculinity, which most exercised their minds. He was certainly an individual of importance, as so momentous a mission would hardly have been entrusted to a nonentity. But who? A dozen names suggested themselves, Berwick, Tyrconnel, Lord Henry Fitzjames, the ex-monarch’s natural son, Marlborough himself, and others. It was Zuylestein, speaking for the first and last time, who finally put the spark to all this accumulating tow. “Vat,” he said, “if it is James himselv, zegretly gom over from St. Germains and resolved upon venturing dis bigduresque abbeal to de poblic?”
“Bom-bom!” said Schomberg.
He rose, Halifax rose, they all rose, and faced the King.
“Ik dank U, mijnheer,” said his Majesty; “it is a very blausible suggestion.”
The words were equivalent to a bid to action. The Council broke up hurriedly, and within an hour the Dutch troops had been beaten to arms, the militia called out, the magistrates warned, and the whole city placed under a surveillance of the most searching description. It was at this momentous pass, when panic was in the air, that Sir Charles Dymoke walked unconcerned into the “Cock” tavern, in Tothill Street, and was immediately arrested by the guard set to watch that hostelry, and conveyed in a state of complete stupefaction to Whitehall. He was taken at once before the King sitting in Council.
“Vere haf you been?” demanded William sternly.
“Your Majesty!” gasped the Champion, a sturdy gallant of middle age.
“Answer, sir,” said the monarch—“and vidout eguivocation.”
“I have been with a friend,” stammered Sir Charles, all amazement.
“Ach!” exclaimed his Majesty sarcastically. “The vrow, vas it, vat returnt you your gage in the Hall yesterday?”
“Certainly not, sire,” said the Champion, the flush of outrage on his cheek.
“Not?” said the King. “Who vas she, den, dat voman?”
“The wife of Dobney, the horse-tamer, sire.”
“The vife—vat! Vat had she said to you?”
“She said, your Majesty, ‘Didn’t I warn you not to throw it down in front of her nose, unless you want her to kneel and pick it up?’”
“She? Who?”
“The mare, sire. She performs at Islington.”
“Your Majesty,” said the Lord Privy Seal very softly, “shall we thank Sir Charles and proceed to the order of the day?”
“Bom-bom!” said Schomberg under his breath.