“When just now you chanced upon me,” he concluded, “I was playing hero and lover, author and mummer all in one, and playing them all so unsuccessfully that I never found myself in a more vexatious part. On my soul, if there lay no debt between us already, you must have rendered me your debtor now that you can rescue my mind for an hour or so from the tormenting thought of that sweet baggage who keeps me on the rack. You saw, perhaps, how the little wanton used me.” He laughed, and yet through his laughter ran a note of bitterness. “But I contrived the mummery clumsily, as she reproached me. And no doubt I deserved to be laughed off the stage, which is what happened. But she shall pay me, and with interest, one of these fine days, for all the trouble she has given me. She shall.... Oh, but a plague on the creature! It is of yourself, sir, that I would hear. What are you now, that were once a Commonwealth man?”
“Nobody’s man at present. I have seen a deal of service since those days, both at home and abroad, yet it has brought me small gear, as you can see for yourself.”
“Faith, yes.” Buckingham regarded him more critically. “I should not judge your condition to be prosperous.”
“You may judge it to be desperate and never fear to exaggerate.”
“So?” The Duke raised his eyebrows. “Is it so bad? I vow I am grieved.” His face settled into lines of courteous regret. “But it is possible I may be of service to you. There is a debt between us. I should welcome the opportunity to discharge it. What is your name, sir? You have not told me.”
“Holles—Randal Holles, lately a colonel of horse in the Stadtholder’s service.”
The Duke frowned reflectively. The name had touched a chord of memory and set it faintly vibrating in his brain. Awhile the note eluded him. Then he had it.
“Randal Holles?” he echoed slowly, questioningly. “That was the name of a regicide who.... But you cannot be he. You are too young by thirty years....”