Sir Ludar / A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess

by Talbot Baines Reed

I had no time to think if I had done well or ill, or what the upshot of it all was like to be. Time enough for that when I had won clear. The led horses, after their first fright, jibbed at the reins and struggled to get free. So, as they checked my speed, I let them go, and saw them plunge away among the trees, no easy capture for their lawful owners. Meanwhile, I dashed forward whithersoever the horse took me. I remember, even amid my panic, what a delight it was to sit astride of so noble a beast, who seemed to scorn my weight, and skim the earth as lightly as if he carried a child. Had it been my own sorry nag I should long since have been by the heels.

Once clear of the wood I suddenly sighted Oxford towers to my left, and found myself on the road by which I had passed but an hour ago with the angry Welshman. I had forgotten him, and ’twas well for him that I had.

I had no mind to put myself again within reach of his worship, the Mayor of Oxford, and his merry men; so I tugged my right rein and kept my horse’s head turned to the wooded hills northward. There, thought I, I can at least find time to draw breath and determine what must be done next. To the forest I sped, then, marvelling at the pace of my brave horse, and wondering if the Bishop’s man was yet on the road at my heels.

On the steeper ground my horse slackened a bit, but I urged him forward till we were deep in the wood, with a choice of four or five paths, any of which led, heaven knows where. Here I let him stand and get his wind, while I turned over in my mind what should be my best course.

While I was debating, to my surprise, my horse pricked up his ears and gave a loud neigh, which was answered from no great distance by another. At first I supposed his companions had followed us, or that our pursuers were nearer than I reckoned for. But, on listening, I perceived that the strange horse was ahead of us, not behind. I therefore moved slowly forward in the direction of the sound. What was my surprise when I saw my own poor nag tethered to a tree, with my cloak—the cause of all this trouble—laid carelessly over his back.

Master Penry’s wild pupil was nowhere near, yet I scarce gave him a thought at the time, so overjoyed was I to recover my long-lost prize. I sprang from my borrowed horse, letting him stray where he would, and fell upon the garment like a mother on her lost child, except that I, having taken it to my arms, whipped out my knife and proceeded to rip it up from top to bottom.

Master Penry had been right! The cloak was stoutly padded with printed sheets, of which I took out fully three score. They were all the same, a short tractate of twelve pages duodecimo, set in my master’s type (for I recognised the letter and the flowered initials), and printed, there was no doubt now, at his secret press.

The title of the tractate was “A Whip for the Bishops,” and to my wrath and confusion as I read, I found it contained wicked and scandalous abuse of their Graces of Canterbury and London, whom it called wolves in sheep’s clothing, antichrists, and I know not what horrid names besides! And it was to carry this wicked libel I had been sped on this journey, decked with my brave cloak, and commended to that Welsh varlet, who, no doubt, was the author, and counted on me as the tool to help him to disseminate his blasphemous treason! He little knew Humphrey Dexter. Although I had put a queen’s officer in the duck-pond; although I had assaulted a mayor; although I had defied a bishop’s warrant, and made off on a bishop’s horse, I yet was a loyal subject of Her Majesty, and hated schismatics as I hated the Pope himself. They had played me a trick among them; I would play them one back.

So I gathered up the libels, and dropped them one and all, together with the false lining of the coat, into the hollow of a rotten tree; where, for all I know, they may be to this day. And if, years hence, some lover of the curious should seek to add to the treasures of his library a true copy of that famous lost tract, “A Whip for the Bishops,” let me tell him in his ear, the book is to be had cheap, midway across Shotover wood, somewhere to the left of the lower path which leads to Heddendon. Nowhere else was it ever published, to that I can vouch.

I had scarcely finished my task when I heard a whoop from among the trees, followed immediately by the whiz of an arrow which glanced betwixt my cheek and my shoulder, and buried its head deep in the trunk of a near tree.