“You’ve good eyes, Bennet. I’ve been behind you ever since we left Ashby.”
“By the same token, but I never saw you.”
“Well, let be seeing me or no—wilt guide me to Rugby and back here for another shilling?”
Bates and Leeson accordingly rode away to “a little town called Rugby,” where at the bailiffs house they found nine more worthies, who had finished their supper, and were playing cards. One of these gentry was John Winter—the half-brother of Robert and Thomas,—whose mother was the daughter of Queen Mary’s redoubtable Secretary, Sir John Bourne (Note 4). He was either very simple or very clever, and at this distance of time it is not easy to say which.
Bates delivered the message with which he was charged, that “the gentlemen at Dunchurch desired their company to be merry,” and the nine card-players accordingly returned with him to that place. Having paid the promised shilling to Leeson, Bates took his new convoy into the inn, whence the whole party emerged in about a quarter of an hour.
“That is for thy pains, smith, and I thank thee,” said Catesby, stooping from his saddle to put two shillings in the hand of his guide.
The whole party now rode away in the direction of Coventry.
“Well, that’s a queer start!” said the blacksmith to himself, looking first after the horsemen, and then down at the money in his hand. “If it hadn’t a-been Muster Catesby, now, and Tom Bates, might ha’ thought us ’d been out wi’ the fairies this even. You’re good silver, aren’t you? Let we see. Ay—an Edward shovelboard (Note 5), and a new shilling o’ King James, and three groats o’ Queen Bess—that’s not fairy silver, I ’count. Come along, Yethard!” (Note 6) as he scrambled on the back of his shaggy friend. “Thee and me’ll go home now. Us has done a good night’s work. They shillings ’ll please she, if her’s not in a tantrum. Gee up wi’ thee!”
Note 1. Sicklemore, one of the priests, said with a sigh, “The Divell is in that Lord of Salisbury! All our undoing is his doing, and the execution of Garnet is his only deed.” (Additional Manuscript 6178, folio 165.)