“I think my fellows will hold their tongues now, betwixt threats and bribes,” Butler went on. “But after this you’d best do as you should have done at the first, shelter yourself among honest soldiers, who’d die ere they’d let a comrade come to harm, just for spitting a paltry civilian.”
In the end Hugh thought it best to take the advice; if he returned to Ashcroft there was no reason that Cavalier marauders should not stray thither again, and a second apprehension might not end so happily. Then, besides, he was glad, after his weeks of illness and dependence, to be once more among men, who accepted him as an equal and did not fret him with constant care. Holding this feeling rather ungrateful, he took pains to write a very civil and thankful letter to the Widow Flemyng, which George Allestree conveyed to her, when he rode to Ashcroft with one of the men to fetch away Hugh’s clothes and accoutrements.
Allestree had welcomed Hugh boisterously, although he had an alarming habit of almost forgetting to call him Burley; the blue-eyed Irish volunteer, Mahone, received him with open arms; and even the lieutenant, Cartwright, unbent a little toward him. Before a fortnight was out Hugh understood, for by then he felt he could have fallen on the neck of the meanest scamp, just for joy at sight of a new face in the garrison. Woodstead lay close upon the borders of Warwickshire, where the rebels were up in strength, so none were allowed to venture forth far from the house. All day long there was nothing to do but to walk up and down the cramped enclosure, to converse with the troopers as to sick dogs and lame horses, or to watch Butler’s cocks mangle each other in fight, till in sheer disgust Hugh turned away. But within the house he found still less amusement; there was not even a Gervase Markham or a Palmerin to read, so he was reduced to persuading Allestree or Mahone into fencing with him, and, that failing, could only play at cards or watch the others at dice, and listen to Cartwright’s same old stories or the everlastingly same chatter of the younger men.
Once, to be sure, there came a day of excitement, when a part of the troop prepared to ride away to forage in the hostile country. They set forth bravely in the mid-afternoon, and till they were lost in dust Hugh, with neither a horse to ride nor sufficient strength for the work, watched them wistfully from the entrance gate. Then he loitered away to his lonely supper with Cartwright, who cursed the luck that left him behind to command the garrison, and drank so deeply Hugh must call a man to help him to bed. Next day Butler and his men came back, noisy and victorious, with cartloads of grain and much miscellaneous plunder that the common soldiery had taken to themselves. They brought also a Roundhead lieutenant, half-stripped, grimy, and sullen, whom Butler clapped into an obscure room on a spare diet till he could find leisure from his more serious affairs to look to him. For the captain had laid hands on a considerable amount of strong waters, so for two days there was high carousing at Woodstead, which shocked Hugh, used though he had become among these comrades to the sight of hard drinking.
While Butler and his officers shouted and smashed glasses below stairs, and the men in their turn let discipline slip, Hugh, in the hope of getting some tidings of his Oldesworth kindred, bribed his way in to speak with the Roundhead prisoner. The man was defiant at first, then more communicative when Hugh smuggled him in some bread and meat, but, being of a Northamptonshire regiment, he could give little of the information Hugh sought, save that he had heard of Captain Thomas Oldesworth and had had speech with Hugh’s other uncle, Lieutenant David Millington, who was in garrison with his company of foot at Newick in Warwickshire. For his Roundhead kinsfolk’s sake Hugh lent the lieutenant a coat, and, when Butler, in a shaky, white state of sobriety, packed him off under guard to prison at Oxford, gave five shillings to the corporal who had charge of the squad, and urged him to use the prisoner as civilly as he could. Considering the temper of the squad, however, and the fact that his old acquaintance, the surly Garrett, was one of them, Hugh decided those five shillings had probably been expended for nothing.
Near a week later the men came back, and, in his joy at any new sight in his monotonous life, Hugh turned out to meet them. He counted them idly, as they came pacing in at the gate, till his eyes fell upon a horse that Garrett led, a bay horse, all saddled, which put up its head and whickered. “Bayard!” Hugh cried, plunging into the press, and, getting the horse clear, fair put his arms about its neck in the face of the whole garrison. “Where did you find him?” he questioned Garrett a moment later, sharply, to preserve his dignity.
The man explained they had come home by a way that took them near Ashcroft, for he held there might be letters Master Burley would gladly pay a price for, and there they had found both a letter and the horse, which had been waiting him some days.
Hugh paid generously, the more so as he saw the letter was directed in Dick’s black hand; that made the sending of Bayard no longer a mystery, for doubtless Dick would have him come northward now and so had sent him the horse. He could hardly wait to see the beast stabled before he ran up to the chamber he shared with Allestree, and tore open the letter that should summon him. Then he read:—
Sweet Friend:
It doth grieve me to bring you aught of disappointment, but patience perforce, lad. Sir W. hath need of ammunition and of fieldpieces, so he hath commissioned me, because of old acquaintance in those parts, to go into the Low Countries and see what may be procured. I would I could take you with me, but my time is short, for the ship only waits a prosperous wind. When my task yonder is done I shall come quietly to the place you know of to confer with Sir W. I will convey you a word, and if you will join me there we will try another bout with Fortune together. Till then you were best keep yourself close. There is a rumor that the lord you know of hath no such big voice in the king’s counsels as he used. Time, then, and patience may bring all right with us. Commend me to good Mistress Flemyng, and be assured at longest I shall send for you ere the end of summer.