Hugh Gwyeth: A Roundhead Cavalier

by Beulah Marie Dix

For a time it was just breathless riding, with his full weight on the reins to slacken the mare’s speed; for the road was all ruts, and he feared for her slender legs. The mud spattered up even into his eyes, and once, at a dip in the road, he felt his mount make a half-slip in the mire, which sobered her somewhat, so he could ease her down to a slow, careful trot that promised to carry him well through the night. Now he was first able to look about at the broad, dusky fields and back over his shoulder, where Tamworth town and castle were merged into the night. The first exhilaration of the setting forth went from him in the stillness and dark; it was steady, grim work he had before him, yet he felt assured he would come safely into Kingsford, and, spite of the gravity of it all, he found himself smiling a little at the way in which, at last, he was going to his father. He wondered perplexedly how he should greet Captain Gwyeth, and how phrase his message; a formal tone would perhaps be best till he was sure of his welcome. But Sir William had said his father would be glad at his coming; at that thought Hugh pricked on The Jade a little faster.

Once clear of the first village beyond Tamworth he entered a stretch of woodland, where the black tips of the trees showed vivid against the starless gray sky. Below, the undergrowth was all dense darkness and Hugh thought it well to keep a hand on his pistol, for he was drawing into Puritan country where a Cavalier was fair game for an ambuscade. Out beyond he trotted again through fields, only blacker and lonelier now than those by Tamworth. Such cottages as he passed were silent and dark; at one farmstead he heard a dog howl, and once, in a tangled hollow, a bat whizzed by his head, but he saw or heard no other living thing. Though once, as he gazed across the fields on his left, he made out in the distance a gleam of light; a farm must lie yonder, and he pictured to himself the low cottage chamber, where the goodwife would be watching with a restless child. Such shelter and companionship was betokened by the light that he turned in the saddle to gaze at it till a clump of trees shut it from him.

It must have been something after midnight, though under that starless sky he could not tell the time surely, when he clattered into a considerable town. An officious watchman with a bobbing torch ran from a byway, calling on him to stand, so Hugh clapped spurs to The Jade and shot through the street at such a pace that the next watchman could only get out of his course without trying to stay him. But after that he grew wary and, when the outlying houses of the next town came out of the black, turned off into the fields and picked his way about it. The round-about course saved him from interference, but it took much time; by a dull, unbraced feeling, that was not sleepiness nor yet quite weariness alone, he knew he had been many hours in the saddle, and he began to look to the east, in dread lest he catch the first signs of daybreak.

Presently he must give his whole attention to The Jade, for they spattered into a ford where the going was treacherous. While she halted to drink he gazed about at the bushes and the field before him, and, spite of the dark, knew the place. It was home country he was drawing toward now, so he trotted on slowly, with his senses alert and his eyes peering into the dusk for the landmarks that should guide him. So it was that at last on his right hand he caught sight of a big leafless oak, beneath which he pulled up short. True enough, he remembered the way in which the tree stood up bare and alone with scragged common at its back; he could not see well for the dark, but he knew that at the farther edge of the open land was a belt of young oaks that hid the ford of Blackwater.

He lingered beneath the blasted oak, time enough to look to his pistols, and time enough, too, for him to recall the ghostly reputation of the lonely tree, so his nerves were crisping as he rode by it into the common. But he quieted The Jade’s fretty step, and, in the action and the thought of what might be before him, steadied himself till, though his body was trembling with eagerness, his head was cool. He took the precaution of making the mare keep a slow trot that was half muffled in the turf, though he urged her as much as he dared on the uneven ground; for to the east, as he looked over his shoulder, the dark was beginning to pale. The early summer morning must be near at hand, for when he had crossed the open there was light enough for him to make out the break in the trees where the bridle path wound down to the ford.

Hugh went in cautiously, with the reins taut in his left hand and his right on his pistol; but for all that The Jade’s feet splashed in the sloughs of the pathway with a loudness that startled him. He pulled up a moment and listened; ahead he could hear the lap, lap of swift water, but for the rest the wood was silent. He was about to press the mare forward with a touch of the spur, when, flinging up her head, she whickered shrilly. Right upon that, somewhere to the front by the water’s edge, a horse neighed.

Next moment Hugh felt the lash of low boughs across his neck, as he pulled The Jade round with her haunches in among the bushes by the path. Spite of the crash of the branches, and the pounding of the blood in his temples that near deafened him, he caught the sound of hoof-beats on his left, coming down on him from the common as well as up from the river. At that he urged The Jade forward, straight into the bushes at the other side of the path, where the limbs grew so low that he bent down with his bare head pressed against her mane. For all the hurry and tumult, his ears were alert, and presently he heard their horses crashing behind him among the trees at the right. Then, cautiously as he could pick his way in the gray dimness, he turned The Jade’s head to the common. Brushing out through the last of the oaks he faced southward, and, as he did so, cast a glance behind him. Out of the shadows of the trees in his rear he saw the dim form of a horseman take shape, and a command, loud in the hush of morning, reached him: “Halt, there!”

Hugh laid the spurs to The Jade’s sides and, as she ran, instinctively bent himself forward. Behind him he heard a shot, then the patter of many hoofs upon the turf, and a second shot. Right upon it he felt a dull shock above the shoulder blade; the ball must have rebounded from his cuirass. After that he was in among the trees once more; through the wood behind him men were crashing and shouting; and even such scant shelter as the oaks gave was ending, as they grew sparser and sparser, till he dashed into an open stretch that sloped to the Arrow. To the front he had a dizzy sight of more horsemen straggling from cover; there were two patrols closing in on him, he realized, and with that, jerking the mare to the right, he headed for the river.

Before him he could see the slope of hillside, the dark water under the bank beyond, even the dusky sedge of the low opposite shore. He saw, too, a horseman, bursting out from the trees, halt across his path, but he neither stayed nor swerved, just drove the spurs into The Jade and braced himself for the shock. He must have struck the other horse on the chest; he had an instant’s sight of a trooper’s tense face and a horse’s sleek shoulders, then only black water was before him and men behind him were shouting to pull up. There came a sickening sense of being hurled from the earth; a great splashing noise and spray in his face. After that was a time of struggling to free his feet from the stirrups, to clear himself from the frightened mare; all this with water choking and strangling him and filling his ears and beating down his head. He had no thought nor hope nor conscious plan of action, only with all the strength of his body he battled clear till he found himself in mid-stream, with the current tugging at his legs, and his boots and cuirass dragging him down. Once his head went under, and he rose gasping to a dizzy sight of gray sky. He struck out despairingly while he tried in vain to kick free from his boots. The current was twisting and tossing him helplessly; he turned on his back a moment, and still the sky was rushing past above him and whirling as it went. Above the din of the water he heard faint shouts of men and crack of musket-shot. A base end for a soldier, to drown like a rat! he reflected, and at the thought struck out blindly. The water swept him down-stream, but he fought his way obliquely shoreward till of a sudden he found the tug of the current had abated. He could rest an instant and look to his bearings; quite near him lay the shore, a dark sweep of field with a hedge that ran down to the water, and on the farther side the hedge he saw horsemen following down the stream.

Hugh struck out with renewed strength, till, finding the bottom beneath his feet at last, he splashed shoreward on the run, and, stumbling through the sedge and mire of the margin, panted upward into the field. Off to the left were the roofs of Kingsford, so far the current had swept him, but near at hand there was no hiding-place, nor even a tree to set his back against, and, with his boots heavy with water and his breath exhausted with the past struggle, he had no hope to run. He halted where he was, in the midst of the bare field, and pulled out his sword, just as the foremost horseman cleared the hedge at a leap. It was not so dark but Hugh recognized the square young figure, even before the man charged right upon him. “Good morrow, Cousin Peregrine,” he cried out, and dodged aside so the horse might not trample him. “Get down and fight.”