“No, not with me now,” Strangwayes answered; “I cannot quit the kingdom, Hugh, while there’s a blow to be struck. Even though I be a volunteer—”
“Dick!” Hugh cried, “you’ve lost your commission through me?”
“No, no, no,” Strangwayes said hastily. “Only ’twould be awkward to come to the front and claim it while this duel is still remembered. Sir William will always keep me a place in his regiment. And when you are cured, ’tis my purpose to go into the North to fight. I’ll not be easily recognized now my beard is grown, and I’ll put another name to me. There in the North I may chance to do something that will bring us a pardon for what we had a share in.”
All of which Hugh only half heeded as he sat with his head in his hands. For it was worse than the realization that he had killed a man to know that he had wrought Dick’s fortunes such a terrible shock.
Strangwayes said what he could that was generous, and ended with the old proposition to send Hugh, so soon as he was recovered, into the Low Countries, where he would be safe from all pursuit. But Hugh shook his head. “I cannot, Dick; I’d rather be hanged here on English ground, or whatever else they would do to me. Why, I could not speak their queer language yonder. And you’ve pampered me so, I durst not venture out among strangers again. I’ll do as you do, change my name, and volunteer somewhere else.”
It was at this time he made a resolution, which he had a chance to carry out perhaps a week later, when Ridydale paid him a cautious visit. Sir William’s regiment marched northward in two days, the corporal explained, bound to garrison Tamworth, and he had thought it well to come see Master Hugh ere he went, and bring him his accoutrements from his quarters at Oxford. Hugh watched his chance till Dick had left them alone, then prayed Ridydale get Bayard from Turner’s stable and sell him. “I have been a heavy charge unto my friends, and am like to be heavier,” he explained painfully. “And in any case I cannot keep the horse, for he is known as mine, and might draw suspicion to me. He’s a good beast and should fetch a fair price. Only try your best, Corporal, to sell him unto some one will use him kindly.”
Ridydale demurred, then yielded; and before he left Oxford, brought Hugh five sovereigns, the purchase money. Then there was an explanation with Strangwayes, who was downright angry, but finally laughed at himself. “Only a fool would quarrel with such a remnant of a fellow as you look now,” he concluded.
Hugh felt the term was justified the first time he dragged on his clothes, which seemed cut for a lad of vastly greater brawn, and, contriving to hobble into the adjoining chamber, got sight of himself in the glass. Eyes, mouth, and a raw scar sheer across his left cheek, seemed all that was left of his face, and his close-cut hair added to the unfamiliarity of his look. “Scars are good adornments for a soldier,” he said bravely, but he tried in vain to find a complimentary phrase for the painful stiffness that lingered in his thigh.
By dint of stumbling about his chamber, however, the lameness wore off, till he could walk with some surety of not falling against the furniture; and then there came a night he never forgot, when Strangwayes helped him carefully down the stairs, and, pacing slowly across the bowling green, they sat down on a bench that Hugh remembered. It was a clear spring evening, with the stars numerous and bright, and an earthy smell in the soft air. Hugh felt the ground beneath his feet once more, and stared at the poplars that still looked bare in the nighttime, while his heart grew full at the thought that he was alive to enjoy the spring and all the deeds that were yet to do. He spoke it all out, as he leaned against Strangwayes, by saying: “I am well again now, Dick. When shall we be off to the North?”
“North? Not for you at present, lad,” Strangwayes replied. “You’re no figure for a camp yet. So I am going to carry you to a farm called Ashcroft, somewhat toward Warwickshire, where dwells a distant kinswoman of Sir William Pleydall and of my mother. ’Tis a good, bluff widow, whom I shall bid keep you well hidden, and see you go to bed betimes, and do not run off to kill Roundheads till I give the word. When you have back your strength again, you shall join me in Yorkshire, and we’ll go a-soldiering together again.”