Читать книгу Sword Play - Charles Billings Stilson - Страница 4

Table of Contents

Warm sunshine of an afternoon in early May shone through the leaving branches of gnarled English oaks and yews, and cast its varied patterns upon the greenest grass in the world. In the sheen of it a curving, well-worn road on the long slope of a rolling hill became a pathway floored with powdered gold, such as legend tells leads on to the realm of the fays. Near to the roadside the drifting dust had settled on blades of grass and leaves of plants and trees, and bronzed their green to the soft, dull gleam of that impalpable luster which glamors the wings of butterflies.

On every breeze that blew from the countryside was the invigorating scent of the springtime, the scent of newness and of growing things swelling to the birth of blossoms and of fruits—that perfume which is so faint but so subtle and persistent; that summons which, though voiceless, is so compelling; which calls to the man of the wandering foot and bids him leave the winter’s fire to die upon his hearth and to fare forth along adventure’s road; for the old earth is awaking once more, and he will miss great happenings if he tarries softly at home.

At the foot of the hill the road became a street and wandered and was lost among other streets of a town which spread crescentwise about the rim of a blue bay.

It was a busy town with bustling streets, and the harbor was thick with slender masts. From the wharves a long mole of gray stone jutted out across the water. Beyond it ships with sails of white and dun swung in toward the quays, while others, outward-bound, met and passed them, to disappear around the rocky head of an island which lifted square shoulders from the sea and sheltered the harbor’s mouth.

Not one of those ships now sails the seas. Their sturdy timbers, scattered throughout the world, were long ago rotted into nothingness. Their stout-hearted mariners, under the sod or the waves, are like the yellow dust of the hillside. But the island, the bay, the hill above it, and Portsmouth town below, are there still. And perchance a scanty few of the hard-grained oaks still stand to welcome the sunshine of other Mays, or to sway their strong old branches in creaking defiance of winter blasts, as they stood on that tenth of May, in the year sixteen hundred and seventy-nine, when the second Charles of the Scotch Stuart line was king in England.

Halfway up the hill’s long slope a beggar sat at the roadside, his back against a stone, his legs thrust out in front of him across the dusty grass. Perhaps in a dim way he heard the calling of the young springtime; but it had no savor for him, and he did not heed it. He was very old.

Neither fortune nor men had used him kindly, nor had time itself been gentle with him. The rickety shoes which clad his feet were bound with twisted withes of osier to prevent them from falling away. His hose of gray wool were tattered so as to expose his withered and none too clean shanks. His brown breeches were in little better case, and were buckleless and splayed open below the knees. Though he sat where the sun shone full and warm upon him, he was muffled to the chin in a great cloak of what once had been fair green camlet cloth, but which now was a wreck of nondescript color, frayed and foul with dirt and stains.

It had been a noble garment in its days. Assuredly its buttons had been of gold, and its clasp set with a jewel. But it had fallen from its estate, and had been stripped rudely of its gauds, and had passed on from hand to hand, from worse to worse, until a beggar wore it, caught about his shrunken frame with mean hooks of rusted iron.

Man and cloak were well assorted in their misery. He, too, had once been young and tall and strong. The shoulders, which folded in upon his hollow chest, had been broad and powerful. His eyes had been keen and merry. Now one of them was set and sightless, covered with a bluish and unlovely rheum and the lid of the other drooped upon his cheek. An uncombed mane of hair fell forward over his shoulders and mingled with his beard.

Both were of the same hue, the yellow of unwashed fleece. Such part of his skin as was exposed was creased and grooved and lined until it resembled russet Spanish leather, patterned in sport by a mischievous apprentice with his master’s graving point. In the desolate prospect of that face the only upstanding feature was the nose. High and curved and bony, it thrust out from the general ruin with a pride which made it insolent.

Crown-downward between the knees of the old man sat a rimless, battered remnant of a hat. Anon as passersby fared up and down the hill, he shook it so that the pair of copper farthings which it held chinked together. He accompanied the dolorous music with the whining plaint:

“Mercy, gentlefolk! Charity for a wretched sinner who is blind!”

On those who heeded his appeal he called down blessings, which, issuing from his lips, were hardly less fearsome than the mumbled blasphemies which pursued those who did not give. Such coins as the blessed wayfarers let fall he retrieved at once and pouched hastily within the folds of his ancient cloak, on the shrewd assumption that too great a display of affluence would turn the thrifty from him or tempt the thievish.

The hands with which he took the coins up were frightful instruments, knotted, veinous, taloned, and each lacking its thumb, which at some time had been torn away, leaving hideous scars.

As the afternoon wore on, affairs languished. The beggar nodded drowsily.

Basket on arm, a girl came swinging up the hillside, a crofter’s sturdy lass, with the ease of rolling meadows in her gait. Black-browed and swarthy as any Spaniard she was. Her hair was bound in a yellow snood. A bit of blue ribbon flaunted beside her ear, and a gay rosette of scarlet adorned the bosom of her brown kirtle. As she walked she sang a Whig ditty of the period, which had lately strayed from London town, and in which was scant respect for the Scottish monarch, whose father had lost his head:

Halloo! The hunt’s begun;

Like father, like son!

At the sound of her voice the ancient mendicant’s thin nose twitched, and he stirred into sudden action. With a single, furtive motion of his adroit fingers he removed the farthings from his hat and held them clutched within his cloak. The girl saw the gesture, and laughed as she paused in the roadway before him.

“What luck of the day, Gaffer Hatshaw?” she asked teasingly. “How many the honest folk have ’e cozened of their blunt?”

“Whoy, it be Tom Peake’s Bess, for sure,” quavered Hatshaw, with well-feigned surprise. “Eh, lass,” he continued, raising his seamed face eagerly, “what be a happening in Portsmouth town this day? Say, lass, there was a crowd in the marketplace, I warrant.”

“Aye, and a plenty of jolly sailor lads in the streets,” returned the girl; “and out yonder at the end of the mole lies a ship from the far seas, the Indies or the like. She have on board a copper-red heathen body who walks the deck naked to his belt and weareth breeches of leather all fringed along the seams, and hath his shoon decked bravely wi’ colored beads, and——”

“Aye, I have seen his like. Happen the ship comes from the Americas,” broke in Hatshaw with impatience. “But in the town, lass—in the marketplace? There was a deal of honest bartering, and good pieces passing from hand to pouch, say?”

“Oh, aye; the same as other market days,” answered Bess indifferently.

“And my place, my seat by the church-step on the square?” persisted Hatshaw, his beak twitching convulsively. “Doan’t ’e go for to say as how another has my seat, lass. Nay, Dick Teviston would not have that. May the fiend blow hot fire in his entrails!” snarled the old man in an access of senile rage. “A murrain on him, bailiff though he be, for turnin’ of me from my seat in the square, the which I’ve held in fair weather and foul ten years come Whit Monday!”

Bess shook her blue ribbon and considered Hatshaw out of her bold black eyes.

“Now that I mind, there was a mumper by the church-step, a legless sprat from St. Alban’s, wi’ a little lad standing by to call for him,” invented the girl maliciously, and with surprising effect.

An inarticulate screech of such concentrated rage burst from the gaffer that Bess, hardy as she was, sprang back a pace in alarm. Seizing a long staff which lay beside him, the beggar heaved himself upright with an amazing energy, and stood mowing and yammering like a thing possessed.

His ire wrought another strange transformation; for the lid of his rheumy eye closed, and the one which had drooped upon his cheek opened wide, disclosing an orb as black and sparkling as Bess’s own. His mustache and beard separated, and in the rift between appeared a writhing tongue and half a dozen fangs, jagged and yellow as those of an ancient hound.

“Hell’s fire!” he shrieked, recovering his voice. “Blight of Holy Trinity up’n Dick Teviston for a foul and lying knave! A legless waistrel, say ’e? Ag-h-h! Natheless, he shall dance! I’ll teach him to take my place i’ th’ marketplace!” And Hatshaw, leaning heavily upon his staff, tottered toward the roadway, recking naught that he trod his hat into the turf.

Bess’s fear was of short duration. Setting her hands to her hips, she laughed heartily at the storm which she had aroused.

“Whither now, Gaffer Hatshaw?” she queried.

“To bash the head of this master Jack-no-legs, to be sure!” spat the old man; “and Dick Teviston’s after him!”

“Nay! set ’e down again, old gander-shanks. I did but pleasant ’e. Noan has thy seat, after all.”

“Whoy—Bess—lass——”

A spasm of coughing choked Hatshaw’s utterance, and he sank, weak and breathless, into his former position against the stone. While he coughed he shook his mutilated fists at his tormentor.

“Tha brass-faced huzzy!” he wheezed, frowning at her with his solitary piercing eye. “Ha! Make no doubt tha coomst fairly by thy double tongue—and thy dark looks as well.” He grinned evilly. “I mind, I do, the black-a-vised sailor-man wi’ golden rings in his ears has trailed thy mother round about before she wedded red Tom Peake——”

A stone flung by a willing but unskilled hand buzzed past his ear and shortened Hatshaw’s scandalous relation. It was the wrath of Bess that was flaming hotly now.

“Hold thy clack, tha ruddled old bag-o’-bones!” she screamed furiously. “An’ tha’s an ounce o’ red juice in thy wizen carcass, I’ll let it form ’e at tha neck!”

“Nay, Bess, stay thy hand, lass!” Hatshaw laughed soundlessly at the success of his repartee, at the same time shielding his face apprehensively with lifted arm. Bess sought another stone.

“Peace, lass! We be but quits!” he called, as she found it and poised for her aim. “Come, buss me, lass, and we’ll be friends once again. Tha’rt a winsome baggage, Bess,” he wheedled, chuckling into his beard.

“I’d liefer buss a six-months’ corpse!” responded Bess. But she was somewhat mollified; for she let fall the stone.

Despite his great age—Hatshaw might have passed for a disreputable cousin of Jonah the prophet—the gaffer’s ears were keen. A noise on the highway at the brow of the hill drew his attention, and he inclined his head to listen.

“Tsst!” he hissed; “here be gentles a coming on horses!”

He hastily composed the folds of his cloak, rehabilitated his crushed hat, and spread his maimed hands on his knees, where they would show to the best advantage.

“Them as goes on four feet be ever twice as free i’ th’ hand as them as rides shank’s mare, lass,” he muttered as he made those preparations. “Now stow thy gabble, mayhap I’ll give ’e a farden, if they prove kind.”

Two horsemen rounded a turn in the roadway and came down the hill at a slow trot. Hatshaw appraised them in a flashing glance of his good eye ere he closed it and opened the sightless one. He lifted his horrible hands.

“Pity, gentles!” he cried out in his droning, professional whine. “Charity for an old soldier o’ king and realm, that Providence have stricken blind.”

“Wait a bit, Concino,” called one of the horsemen in a clear young voice. He drew rein and gazed down at the beggar with curiosity, not unmixed with repulsion. His comrade halted beside him.

He who had spoken was young, not out of his teens. He was of medium height and finely made, with small hands and feet. From under a wide hat fell on his shoulders dark auburn hair, which a great dame might well have envied him. The countenance which the hat-brim shaded was delicately featured. It might have been almost girlish but for the salience of the cheek-bones and a certain hardness of the square chin, which betokened a determination which was anything but effeminate. The eyes, which, to match the hair, should have been blue or brown, were gray, and though merry were extraordinary level and direct.

The cavalier was clad in good cloth of sober blue, with a showing of lace at wrists and collar. A single white plume curled around the crown of his hat, and its brim was caught up by a silver clasp. Above the tops of his light riding-boots, buckles of the same metal adorned his breeches. At his side swung an antique rapier of unusual length, the grip of which gleamed in the sunlight with the glow of something more precious than silver.

His companion was a sturdy fellow of about his own height, but much more broad and thick of chest. The lines in his swarthy, foreign face told him as of middle age, though there was not a thread of white in his curling, dark hair, and he bore his body with all the swing and flexibility of youth.

Judged by his plain brown habit and his bearing, he was not a gentleman; but he was assuredly more than a mere servant. At his side swung the twin to the rapier carried by the lad. As he pulled up his horse, it was to be seen that the first joint of the little finger of his left hand was missing.

“Soldier——” repeated the younger horseman in a voice that betrayed a slightly foreign accent, and he continued to gaze down at Hatshaw, whose crippled paws seemed to fascinate him. “And what mischance of the wars cost you such a mutilation, old man?”

“You see before you, gentles, Anthony Hatshaw, taken by the murdering Spanish dons while a-fighting for good King James at Cadiz, in October of the year o’ grace 1625, and by them maimed, tortured and put to divers trials o’ soul and body, and now driven to beg bread by the roadsides when he be nigh five-score!” chanted the gaffer, in his high sing-song, without pausing to take breath. “Charity, gentles! Charity!”

Sudden pity shone in the eyes of the lad, and his hand sought his purse and drew forth a piece of silver.

“A worthy man, I doubt not, Concino,” he said half apologetically to his fellow rider. He poised the coin.

Bess, who had hovered near, between curiosity and a slender faith in Hatshaw’s promise to divide the spoils, had eyed the young man with frank and growing approval. When she saw the glitter of the silver, she loosed a treacherous tongue to spare the object of her admiration from what she deemed a foolish waste.

“Doan’t ’e believe th’ lyin’ rogue, my young lord,” she interposed hastily, and bobbed a curtsy with finger at chin. “An’ truth mun be said, he lacketh thumbs for that he drew too skilled a bow on the king’s red deer these many yearn agone. He be blind o’ one eye right enow; but tother have looked upon a deal o’ mischief.”

“May the fiend fly away with ’e for a meddling besom!” shrilled the beggar, “and me likewise, an’ I warm not thy smock!” Gripping his staff, he struggled to his feet, and in his anger confirmed at least a part of Bess’s treachery by opening his piercing eye to glare at her.

“Nay, nay!” cried the young man, looking from one to the other of them and breaking into a ringing laugh. “Such a wrangle is not seemly. Peace! Here’s the sixpence for you, old man—and one for you.” A coin fell in the gaffer’s hat, and another spun through the air toward Bess, who caught it adroitly in her basket.

So absorbed were the four in their parley beside the road that they did not, until it was close upon them, notice a cavalcade which swept down the hill at breakneck speed. First around the turn of the road came four outriders, urging their lathered horses at a run, and stirring up a brave cloud of dust. Behind them galloped a half-dozen young English bloods, shouting, laughing and laying wagers upon their steeds.

With cries of “ ’Ware! ’Ware! Make way!” the servants, crouched low in their saddles and riding in a clump, dashed past the group at the roadside and on down the hill. Those behind rode more recklessly. Strung out irregularly, they filled the highway from side to side, and did not seem inclined to yield the road.

Concino called a warning and urged his horse in under the oaks and out of harm’s way. But the younger man, either because of stubbornness or because he feared injury to the beggar and the girl, who stood gaping scarcely a yard from his horse’s shoulder, continued to sit calmly in the path of the oncoming riders; although he turned slightly in his saddle to observe them.

Foremost was a tall young man in a scarlet coat astride a powerful roan horse. He rode well to the side of the road and made no attempt to turn to one side; but with a laugh and a curse drove straight on until the roan, better-sensed than its master, veered, despite him.

The man in the path, seeing that it was coming to a matter of shin-bruising, with mayhap broken bones as well, swung his leg over his saddle and leaped nimbly to the ground beside Hatshaw.

Too late, he of the red coat attempted the same maneuver. The toe of his boot struck against the withers of the other horse as he passed. The impact lifted him free from his own animal and pitched him, sprawling headlong, in the soft dust, where he rolled over three times before he came to a stop, and narrowly escaped being crushed under the hoofs of his companions’ horses. His bones were solid, for he was up again in an instant, though his eyes goggled dizzily and his step was somewhat unsteady.

Seeing his mishap, his comrades pulled up their horses and rode back up the hill, followed by the servants, all of them crying a chorus of excited questions. One of the grooms led back the fallen man’s horse.

As they drew rein beside him, a big green coach, drawn by four horses, rumbled down the hill and came to a stop twenty yards above the spot where the riders were gathering. The head of a young woman, whose features were shadowed by the rolling brim of a broad hat, and further concealed by a mask of silken scrim, was thrust out of one of the windows of the vehicle. At her command, a footman left the coach and ran forward to learn the cause of the mêlée in the highway.

“By St. George, Roger, that was a perilous fall!” cried one of the returning horsemen, a thickly built youngster with a pleasant face and a shock of curls as yellow as wheaten straw. He sprang from his saddle and seized his discomfited friend by an elbow. “I thought to have found you with your back cracked clean in twain!”

Roger’s wits had been jarred sadly. The touch of his friend’s hand brought him back to himself. He spat out a mouthful of dust and frowned darkly.

“No bones cracked, Harry,” he growled. He looked down at himself. His face, which the sudden peril had paled, reddened with a wave of angry blood.

His gay, scarlet coat was rent across the breast, and it and his thick black hair was powdered with dust. His hat was gone. His waistcoat was all awry, and his shirt was soiled and torn. At his feet lay what had been a magnificent gold watch, which a pounding hoof had smashed into irretrievable ruin. Mechanically he lifted it by its fob and dangling seals and stowed it in his pocket.

“No bones cracked,” he repeated; “but shall be presently, that I trow!”

His anger mounting at every step, he strode back and fronted the man in whom he saw the cause of his downfall.

“Why did you block the road, sirrah?” he demanded fiercely. “Could you not see that it was a race?”

Gray eyes, cool and steady, with just a hint of apprehension in them, looked into brown eyes which were insolent and furious, and reddened by recent wine. It was a duello of glances.

With fingers that trembled slightly, the smaller man stroked the muzzle of his horse.

“There were these others to be considered, monsieur,” he replied quietly, with a nod of his head indicating Hatshaw and the girl; “and, besides,” still more quietly, with a quietness that was not fear, “monsieur and his friends already had all of the road that was their right.”

“ ‘Monsieur!’ ” echoed Roger, his voice thin with fury, and the veins standing out upon his forehead. “Gods blood! The insolence of you Frenchmen passeth all understanding! Why, for a scurvy beggar and a silly wench you would have had me break my neck! You do need a lesson, Frenchman! I care not if, as gossips tell, Charles Stuart is spending Louis Capet’s gold, you shall not lack it for long! Humphrey!”

“Aye, my lord,” answered one of the grooms who had come up.

“Lay me your whip about the ears of this upstart cockerel, and see to it that you lay on smartly!”

“Yes, my lord.”

Humphrey rode forward with whip uplifted to do his master’s bidding.