CHAPTER XII.
"I am a wise fellow; and, which is more, an officer; ... and one that knows the law, go to."—Much Ado about Nothing.
It was one hour after midnight, when the fellow travellers left the lone inn near the Newark cross-road. They had arrived there at eight o'clock in the evening. During their stay, Hal had obtained no sleep but that which he had taken at the table, and which had lasted but a few minutes. Anne had slept perhaps an hour before going down to the parlor. The reader will remember the fatigued condition in which both had come to the inn. Their next rest could not be had until a long and hard ride should achieve for them a probable gain of some hours over the horsemen whom Anthony Underhill had heard. For this gain, Hal counted on the fact that Barnet's horses, more recently ridden, could not be as fresh as his own, and on Barnet's constant necessity of pausing at each branching of the road, to make inquiries. Such were the conditions under which the second full day of the flight began.
It was now a time for drawing on that reserved energy which manifests itself only in seasons of strait. Hal was aware, from past experience, of this stored-up stock of endurance, that serves its possessor on occasions of extremity. To Anne, its existence within her must have come as a new disclosure. Hal, as a man of gentle rearing, had for her a man's compassion for a woman to whom this discovery is made by hardship undergone for the first time. And yet, so does human nature abound in apparent contradictions, he had a kind of satisfaction, almost gleeful, at the toils she had brought upon herself by attempting to overreach him. For, had she used in sleep the time she had spent in that attempt, had she not taken sufficient of the wine to enervate herself somewhat, she would now have been in fresh vigor for the wearing ride before her.
The riders had a slight check at Nottingham, owing to a difference of opinion between Master Marryott and the watch, as to the propriety of their passing through the town at such an hour of the night. Hal was in instant readiness for any outcry on the part of Mistress Hazlehurst. But he looked so resolute, Kit Bottle so formidable, Anthony Underhill so rigid with latent fighting force, that Anne doubtless saw little to be gained from a conflict between her enemy and the unaided dotards of the night watch. A gold piece, to reinforce a story explaining their early riding, proved the magic opener it commonly proves, and obtained a lantern from one of the watchmen, as well; and the fugitives rode free, northward into Sherwood forest.
It was lone riding, and toilsome, through the green-wood where Robin Hood and his outlaws had made merry, and past Newstead Abbey; and would have been next to impossible but for the lantern, with which the Puritan lighted up a few inches of the tree-roofed road ahead. Dawn found them near Mansfield, through which town they soon after passed without stay, and proceeded into Derbyshire.
At seven o'clock, having covered twenty-nine miles in the six hours since their last setting out, and all but Kit Bottle being ready to fall from their saddles, they stopped before a humble hostelry at Scardiff.
They could get but one fresh horse here. Bottle took this one, upon which to ride back to a suitable spot for watching the road behind. The others of the party had to be content with giving their nearly used-up animals what rest might be had in saddle and bridle, and under a penthouse roof at one end of the inn. Hal, before entering the inn, bought the vigilance of a hostler toward keeping his horses in readiness for further going, and against any attempt on Anne's part, through Francis, to disable them while he slept; though, indeed, he saw little likelihood of her employing such means, both she and her page being in the utmost need of immediate sleep; and she unable to purchase treachery of the inn folk, for, as he observed when she paid the hostess in advance, her purse was now sadly fallen away. Hal foresaw, from this last circumstance, two things: a certainty of her resorting soon to desperate measures against him, and an opportunity for his chivalry to display itself in an offer to pay her charges while she continued with deadly purpose to accompany him.
As Hal was about to follow Anne into the house, he was greeted by a pleasant-eyed old fellow who had been sitting on a bench by the door, with a mug of ale at his side; an old fellow whose frieze jacket and breeches proclaimed a yeoman, and whose presence on the outer bench on so cold a morning betokened a lively curiosity as to the doings of his fellow-men.
"God save your worship!" said he, in a mild little voice, rising and bowing with great respect for gentility. "I dare say your honor hasna' fell in with the rascals, on your worship's travels?"
Seeing but a rustical officiousness and news hunger in this speech, Hal paused, and asked:
"What rascals, goodman?"
"Them that ha' pestered travellers, and householders, too, so bad of late, on roads hereabout. Marry, 'tis well to go in plenty company, when robbers ride in such number together! They make parlous wayfaring for gentlefolk, your worship!"
"You mean that a band of highway robbers, more than common bold, hath been in the neighborhood?"
"Ay, and I would any man might say the rogues were yet out of it! They have terrified constables, and the justices sleep over the matter, and the sheriff hath his affairs elsewhere; so God look after honest travellers, say I, sir!"
"You say well," replied Marryott, casting a glance at Anne, who also had stopped to listen to the countryman's words. She took from Hal's countenance a sense of the further obligation she must needs be under for his protection, now that a particular known danger was at hand; but this sense only moved her to the inward resolve of ending alike that obligation and their northward travel, by some supreme effort to entrap him. He read her thought in her face, and his look defied her. She hastened to her room, he to his; she, attended by Francis, he by Anthony Underhill.
Marryott and Anthony soon despatched the scant meal brought to their chamber. Before placing himself for sleep, Harry looked into the passage. The boy Francis was at his customary post outside his mistress's door.
Hal and the Puritan were asleep before eight o'clock. At ten, Hal awoke. After he had glanced out of the window, and seen no one about the inn, something—he knew not what—impelled him to take another view of the passage. He did so; and this time he beheld no Francis.
He awakened Anthony, and the two stepped softly into the passage. They stood for an instant before Mistress Hazlehurst's door, but heard no sound from within. Down-stairs they went, surveying the public room of the house as they passed out to the open air. The room was empty. They hastened to the shed where the horses were. The horses were now but two,—Marryott's and Anthony's. Those of Mistress Hazlehurst and her Page_were gone.
With Hal's quick feeling of alarm, there came also a chilling sense of sudden loneliness. A void seemed to have opened around him.
"The devil!" was all that he could say.
"She cannot have given up, and gone back," volunteered Anthony. "She would have had to pass your man Bottle, and he would have ridden hither to tell you she was stirring."
"Ay, 'tis plain enough she hath not fled southward, where Kit keeps watch for Barnet's men. She hath ridden forward! Ho, John Ostler, a murrain on you!" cried Hal. "The lady—whither hath she gone, and when? Speak out, or 'twill fare hard with you!"
"'Twas but your own two beasts your honor bade me guard," said the hostler, coming from the stables. "As for the lady, her and the lad went that way, an hour since or so!" And the fellow pointed northward.
"Haste, Anthony!" muttered Hal, untying his own horse. "Ride yonder for Kit Bottle, and then you and he gallop after me! She hath gone to raise the country ahead of us! Failure of other means hath pushed her to belie her declaration."
"A woman's declaration needeth little pushing, to be o'erthrown," commented Anthony, sagely, as he mounted.
"Tut, knave, 'tis a woman's privilege to renounce her word!" replied Master Marryott, sharply, having already leaped to saddle.
"It may be so; I know not," said Anthony, with sour indifference; and the two made for the road together.
"Well, see that Kit and you follow speedily, while I fly forward to stay that lady, lest we be caught 'twixt Barnet's men behind us, and a hue and cry in front!" Whereupon, without more ado, Hal spurred his horse in the direction that Anne had taken, while Anthony turned southward in quest of Bottle.
As Hal sped along, he did not dare confess which of the two motives more fed his anxious impatience: solicitude for his own cause, or fear that Anne might meet danger on the road,—for he recalled what the countryman had told him of highway robbers infesting the neighborhood.
He put four miles behind him, neither winning glimpse of her nor being overtaken by Kit and Anthony. Seeking naught in the forward distance but her figure—now so distinct in his imagination, so painfully absent from his real vision,—he paid no heed, until he had galloped into the very midst of it, to a numerous crowd of heavy-shod countrymen that lined both sides of the road at the entrance to the village of Clown.
So impetuous had been Hal's forward movement, so complete the possession of his mind by the one image, that he had seen this village assemblage with dull eyes, and with no sense of its possibly having anything to do with himself; yet it was just such a gathering that he ought to have expected, and against which he ought to have been on his guard. Not until it closed about him, not until a huge loutish fellow caught the rein of his suddenly impeded horse, and a pair of rustics drew across the road—from a side lane—a clumsy covered coach that wholly blocked the way, and a little old man on the edge of the crowd brandished a rusty bill and called out in a squeaky voice, "Surrender!" did Hal realize that he had ridden right into the hands of a force hastily gathered by the village constable to waylay and take him prisoner.
Hal clapped hand to sword-hilt, and surveyed the crowd with a sweeping glance. The constable had evidently brought out every able-bodied man in the near neighborhood. Three or four were armed with long bills, hooked and pointed, like that borne by the constable himself. Others carried stout staves. Emboldened by the example of the giant who had seized Hal's rein, the clowns pressed close around his horse. Ere Hal could draw sword, his wrist was caught in the iron grasp of one of the giant's great brown paws. Two other burly villagers laid hold of his pistols. With his free hand, Hal tried to back his horse out of the press, but was prevented both by the throng behind and by the big fellow's gripe of the rein. Marryott thereupon flashed out his dagger, and essayed to use it upon the hand that imprisoned his wrist. But his arm was caught, in the elbow crook, by the hook of a bill that a yeoman wielded in the nick of time. The next instant, a heavy blow from a stave struck the dagger from Hal's hand. His legs were seized, and he was a captured man.
All this had occurred in short time, during the plunging of Hal's horse and the shouting of the crowd. It had been a vastly different matter from the night encounter with Mistress Hazlehurst's servants. These yokels of Clown, assembled in large number, led by the parish Hercules, bearing the homely weapons to which they were used, opposing afoot and by daylight a solitary mounted man to whom their attack was a complete surprise, were a force from whom defeat was no disgrace. Yet never did Master Marryott know keener rage, humiliation, and self-reproach —self-reproach for his heedless precipitancy, and his having ridden on without his two men—than when he found himself captive to these rustics; save when, a moment later, his glance met an open casement of an ale-house at one side of the road, and he saw Anne Hazlehurst! Her look was one of triumph; her smile like that with which he had greeted her after the incident of the locked door at Oakham. And, for the space of that moment, he hated her.
"Sir Valentine Fleetwood," cried the constable, in his senile squeak, pushing his way with a sudden access of pomposity from his place at the crowd's edge, "I apprehend you for high treason, and charge you to get down from your horse and come peaceably to the justice's house."
"Justice's house!" cried Hal, most wrathfully. "Of what do you prate, old fool? What have I to do with scurvy, rustical justices?"
"To Justice Loudwight's, your honor," replied the constable, suddenly tamed by Hal's high and mighty tone. "In good sooth, his house is pleasant lodging, even for a knight, or lord either, and his table and wine—"
"Devil take Justice Loudwight's table and wine, and a black murrain take yourself!" broke in Hal, from his horse. "Give me my weapons, and let me pass! What foolery is this, you rogue, to hinder one of her Majesty's subjects travelling on weighty business?"
"Nay, sir, I know my duty, and Mr. Loudwight shall judge. I must hold you till he come back from Chesterfield, whither he hath gone to—"
"I care not wherefore Mr. Loudwight hath gone to Chesterfield, or if every other country wight in Derbyshire hath gone to visit the foul fiend! Nor can I tarry for their coming back," quoth Hal, truly enough, for such tarrying meant his detention for the arrival of Roger Barnet. "Let me pass on, or this place shall rue this day!"
"I be the constable, and I know my duty, and I must apprehend all flying traitors, whether they be traitors or no, which is a matter for my betters in the law to give judgment on."
The constable's manner showed a desire to prove himself an authoritative personage, in the eyes of the community and of Mistress Hazlehurst. He was a quailing old fellow, who pretended boldness; a simple soul, who affected shrewdness.
"Know your duty, say you?" quoth Hal. "Were that so, you would know a constable may not hold a gentleman without a warrant. Where is your writ?"
"Talk not of warrants! I'll have warrants enough when Justice Loudwight cometh home. Though I have no warrant yet, I have information," and the constable glanced at the window from which Anne looked down at the scene.
Hal thought of the surely fatal consequences of his remaining in custody till either Justice Loudwight should come home or Roger Barnet arrive. His heart sank. True, Kit Bottle and Anthony Underhill might appear at any moment; but their two swords, unaided by his own, would scarce avail against the whole village toward effecting a rescue. He pondered a second; then spoke thus:
"Look you, Master Constable! You have information. Well, information is but information. Mine affairs so press me onward that I may not wait to be judged of your Mr. Loudwight. Hear you, therefore, the charge against me, and mine answer to't. While the justice is away, is not the constable the main pillar of the law? And shall not a constable judge of information that cometh to him first? Ods-light, 'tis a pretty pass when one may say this-and-that into the ears of a constable, and bid him act upon it as 'twere heaven's truth! Hath he no mind of his own, by which he may judge of information? If he have authority to receive information, hath he not authority to receive denial of it, and to render opinion 'twixt the two?"
The constable, flattered and magnified—he knew not exactly why—by Hal's words and mien, expanded and looked profound; then answered, with a sage, approving nod:
"There is much law and equity in what you say, sir!"
Quick to improve the situation, Hal instantly added:
"Then face me with your informer, Master Constable, and judge lawfully between us!"
"Bring this worshipful prisoner before me!" commanded the constable, addressing the giant and the others in possession of Hal's horse, legs, and weapons; and thereupon walked, with great authority, into the ale-house. Hal was promptly pulled from his saddle, and led after him. The constabulary presence established itself behind a table at one side of the public room. The giant and another fellow held Hal, while a third tied his hands behind with a rope.
The villagery crowded into the room, pushing Hal almost against the constable's table. But, after a moment, the crowd parted; for Anne Hazlehurst, having witnessed the course of events from her window, had come down-stairs without being summoned, and she now moved forward to Hal's side, closely followed by Francis. Meanwhile, at the constable's order, a gawkish stripling, whose looks betokened an underdone pedagogue, took a seat at the table's end, with writing materials which the officer of the peace had commanded from the ale-house keeper in order to give an imposing legal aspect to the proceedings.
"Now, sir," began the constable, with his best copy of a judicial frown, "there is here to be examined a question of whether this offender be in truth a pursued traitor—"
"Pardon me, Master Constable," objected Hal. "Sith it is questionable whether I be that traitor. I may not yet be called an offender."
"Sir," replied the constable, taking on severity from the presence of Anne, "leave these matters to them that stand for the laws. Offender you are, and that's certain, having done offence in that you did resist apprehension."
"Nay, if I be the pursued traitor I am charged with being," said Hal, "then might that apprehension have been proper, and I might stand guilty of resistance; but if I be no such traitor, the apprehension was but the molesting of a true subject of the queen, and my resistance was but a self-defence, and the offence was of them that stayed me."
The constable began to fear he was in deep waters; so cleared his throat for time, and at last proceeded:
"There is much can be said thereon, and if it be exhibited that there was resistance, then be sure justice will be rendered. If it be proven you are no traitor, then perhaps it shall follow that there was no resistance. But yet I say not so for certain. What is your name, sir?"
Before Hal could answer, Mistress Hazlehurst put in:
"His name is Sir Valentine Fleetwood, and he is flying from a warrant—"
"Write down Sir Valentine Fleetwood," said the constable, in an undertone, to the youth with quill, ink-horn, and paper.
"Write down no such name!" cried Hal. "Write down Harry Marryott, gentleman, of the lord chamberlain's company of players!" And Hal faced Anne, with a look of defiance. Ere any one could speak, he went on, "This lady, whom I take to be your informer, will confess that, if I be not Sir Valentine Fleetwood, I am not the person she doth accuse."
During the silence of the assemblage, Anne regarded Hal with a contemptuous smile, as if she thought his device to escape detention as shallow and foolish as had been her own first attempt to hinder him.
"What name shall I put down?" asked the puzzled scribe, of the constable.
"Write Sir Valentine Fleetwood!" repeated Anne, peremptorily. "This gentleman's sorry shift to evade you, Master Constable, is scarce worthy of his birth."
"Write down Sir Valentine Fleetwood," ordered the constable. "Is not this the examination of Sir Valentine Fleetwood, and whose name else—?"
"If it be the examination of Sir Valentine Fleetwood," interrupted Hal, "then 'tis not my examination, and I demand of you my liberty forthwith; for I do not acknowledge that name! I warn you, constable!"
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 assume 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 God'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 God, 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, sturdily, "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 participation in the recent rush of events, absently tore to pieces his sheet of paper, on which he had written nothing.