“If it’s only pay,” said I, “a word from me to Mr. Bradbury—”
“Bah, I’d not trust Bradbury living, and Bradbury lying in the road when we left him looked more like a corpse than Mother Mag there. Lie down and sleep, you’ll get nothing from me,” and pulling the door to with a crash, he left me.
I ran instantly to the window, and dragged back the sacking; the bars of iron, set there, I took it, for defence in the old days, were bedded firmly in the stone; there was no hope for me to crawl between them. The recurrent light of the cloud-harried moon showed me the nature of my prison; the dust lay thick upon the rotting floor; the oaken panels were riddled by the rats, and dropping in decay from the stone walls; the black, cobwebbed rafters, were high above me. I believed that a trap-door in the ceiling opened beneath the roof; I could hear the rats scurrying over my head. I turned back to the window; and the moon showed me the cobbled courtyard, the high stone wall, the rim of the bowl, in which the house lay, rising blue-black beyond; boughs tossing in the wind upon the rim; through the wild crying of the gale overhead, its battering on the house, I thought I heard the distant drumming of the sea. Again I tried to wrench the bars apart; their red rust had run into the stone and mortar and set them there only the more firmly; though I tested each bar with the full strength of my arms, none shifted. Could I but force them sufficiently apart for me to wriggle through, the drop to the ground would be dangerous but not impossible for me. Staring upwards then I could see nothing of the roof owing to the thickness of the wall and the depth of the window. No, I was held securely; when I tried to peer up the chimney, I found it blocked as Mother Mag had said; the door of thick oak, though mouldering, was clamped with iron. I took it that the house had been built years since, maybe in the troublous times of Charles the Martyr—built stoutly for protection against marauders in that lonely hollow of the moorlands. On the thick high wall about the courtyard I believed that I could discern rusting iron spikes. And knowing myself held fast in a prison chosen for me by my Uncle Charles—surely by him—and guarded by his rogues, I must have despaired but for my hope that Mr. Bradbury might have survived the attack upon the coach, and would not rest till he found and rescued me. I recalled his apprehension when we were overtaken by the darkness, and his play with the pistols before our disaster. I remembered seeing him flung out from the door of the coach, and the red discharge of his pistols, as they struck the road. How had the astute Mr. Bradbury come thus to underestimate his man, Charles Craike, with consequences disastrous to himself and likely to prove disastrous to me?
I was in no mood for lying down on the wretched pallet. I tore off my cravat and bound it about my broken head. I was sick and weary, but I feared to sleep, lest they come upon me silently in the dark, and make an end of me. And I knew that he, whose name they would not utter before me, but who was surely Charles Craike, was expected at the house that night; I determined to overcome my heavy weariness, and stay awake awaiting his coming. I heard their voices, as I stood by the bed. Roger growling yet, and Martin laughing his mocking laugh, while they sat waiting in the room below, whence came that thin smoke rising through the rotting floor. I knelt down then, and with my hands I widened the breach in the rotting wood, hoping to hear what passed between these rogues, and what they plotted against me. The light shone soon more clearly; a chink in the ceiling below was visible; surely I had only to lie down and press my ear against the breach to hear their very words.
I was deterred from my purpose by a sudden cry from the gate, and the loud baying of a hound at the rear of the house. Starting up, I stole to the window, and drawing back the sacking, set me to watch who came. I heard the doors below me open and clash; presently I saw the lantern shine through the dark, for the clouds held the moon, though it seemed rapidly to approach to a break between cloud and cloud. Overhead the wind went wailing; it beat against the house, as though to tumble it to ruins; I stood shivering, for the bitter cold of the night and for my terrors; the strip of sacking bellied out like a sail as I clung to it. And to the crying of the wind he came.
The moon broke through the clouds; the wet cobbles of the court below me gleamed like a pool of silver water. He came riding swiftly to the house, leaving Mother Mag to secure the gate; I saw him sitting stiffly upon a great black horse, a black cloak flapping all about him. A gust swept his hat from his head, but his hand caught it; his silver-white hair was blown out in disorder. He looked up, as he drew in before the door; momentarily I saw a proud and baleful face; cut like a piece of fine white ivory. I saw the very shining of his eyes, as moonlight and the lamplight from the house played fully on him; and on the instant, indeed, I understood from that cruel face—like, yet so much unlike, my father’s—none whom this man hated or feared might hope for mercy from him.
And thus for the first time I looked upon my Uncle Charles Craike of Rogues’ Haven.
Chapter X. Scruples of Roger Galt
As the gentleman entered the house, I slipped back to the bed, purposing, when I was assured that he would not come directly to my room, to test whether I could hear through the break in the ceiling of the room below and the parting of the flooring under my feet what should pass among my enemies. I heard him enter the room; I heard Mother Mag’s return to the house and the clashing of the doors, as she made all fast. I dropped down then, and lying prone, found that by pressing my ears against the parting in the floor I could hear distinctly. And I found the gentleman berating Roger by the fire.
“Mark you, my man, I’ll have no more of this,” he was declaring, in clear, authoritative tone. “You’ll serve me when I will, or how I will, or take the consequences.”