Читать книгу The Jacobite Trilogy - D. K. Broster - Страница 18

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But Ewen’s own powder, satin and lace were, apparently, as good as a disguise to him, for it was quite clear that Captain Windham had not recognised in this fine gentleman the tartan-clad victor of Loch Oich side, nor even his seven days’ host—no, even though he was now looking at his capture more directly, and saying, with military abruptness, “You are my prisoner, sir!”

Ewen drew himself up. “By what right, if you please?” he demanded. “By what right indeed do you break at all into a private house? The Lord Provost shall know of this to-morrow,” he went on, with a sudden idea of passing himself off as an ordinary peaceful burgess. “The Lord Provost shall know of it, and will require an explanation from General Guest.”

Alas, his voice, at any rate, was not unfamiliar, like his hair and costume. Captain Windham suddenly strode forward, gave an exclamation, and recoiled a little. “What! It is you, Ardroy! Then I know that the Pretender’s son is in this house, for you are one of his aides-de-camp! Sergeant, leave a couple of men here, and search the next floor with the others; I will follow in a moment.”

“Is that your pretext for breaking into an old lady’s house at this hour of night?” asked Ewen with a fine show of indignation, as the sergeant withdrew. “Surely you know the way to Holyrood House, Captain Windham—though in truth it may not be so easy to force an entrance there!”

In spite of his anxiety he was able to view with pleasure Captain Windham’s visible annoyance at this speech. “Mr. Cameron,” said the soldier, with a steely light in his eyes, “I am not to be played with like this! The Pretender’s son, with three companions, was seen to enter this house a short while——”

“I am sorry to disappoint you, sir,” broke in Ewen, “but it was I who entered with three companions. As you see, I have just been mistaken anew for the Prince. My three friends have left—yes, those are their wineglasses on the table—Lady Easterhall has retired, and I was beginning to write a letter when I fell into the doze which your noisy and illegal entry has cut short.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Keith starkly, though at the mention of the letter his eyes had strayed for a second to the escritoire—and Ewen immediately wished he had not called attention to it. “Nor do I believe that our informant mistook you for the Pretender’s son; tall though he is, you are much taller. He is somewhere hidden in this house.”

“Tall . . . taller . . .” observed Ewen meditatively. “Ah, yes, I was forgetting your opportunities of observation at Glenfinnan. I suppose you were able to tell them his exact height at Fort William after you had so craftily given me the slip.”

This effort at provoking an argument about the ethics of that action was unsuccessful, though he could see that his late prisoner did not relish the expression which he had applied to it. But Captain Windham merely repeated, with more emphasis, “He is somewhere hidden in this house!”

“If so, then perhaps you will have the good fortune to find and recognise him,” said Ewen with an air of levity. “Or if not His Royal Highness, one of the other two, perhaps.”

“I have no doubt I shall,” replied Keith shortly. “Meanwhile—your sword, if you please, Mr. Cameron!”

This object Ewen had not the slightest intention of surrendering. But any kind of parley with the enemy gained time, which was the important matter. So, after a long look at the floor, as though seeking counsel there, he put his hand to the hilt, and very slowly drew the small-sword from its velvet sheath. But, once the blade was out, his fingers retained their grip.

“After all, I find that I dislike making you an unconditional gift of it,” he announced coolly, while the candle-light played menacingly up and down the steel. “But I cannot prevent your taking it, Captain Windham—if you think it worth the trouble.” And with his free hand he tucked his lace ruffle out of the way.

But, as he had expected—half hoped, yet half feared, for at bottom he was pining for a fight—the Prince’s pursuer did not wish to engage either himself or his men in personal conflict while part of the house still remained unexplored. “I’ll deal with you later, Mr. Cameron,” he replied curtly, and turned to the soldiers. “See that the prisoner does not move from that spot, men. I am going to fasten the door.” He went out and, sure enough, could be heard to bolt the door on the outside.

Ewen smiled to himself to think how little he desired to quit his self-chosen position. “You’ll not object to my sitting down, I hope?” he observed politely to his two guardians, and, turning round the chair from which he had risen—casting, too, a quick glance at the panel behind him, still in place—he sat down, facing his gaolers, his sword across his knees. Though they had no orders to that effect, he thought it just possible that they might attempt to disarm him, but they showed no sign of such a desire, standing stiffly by the door with their muskets and screwed bayonets, and glancing nervously at him out of the corners of their eyes, mere young north-country English lads, overawed by his dress and his air. Had they not been there, however, he could have decamped through the secret door, and what a charming surprise that would have been for Captain Windham when he returned—Fassefern House the other way round! But on second thoughts Ewen was obliged to admit to himself that this withdrawal would not have been feasible in any case, because he could not close the panel from the inside.

Meanwhile Captain Windham, in pursuit of a prey already (please God!) out of the snare, was presumably searching Lady Easterhall’s bedchamber, and, a still more delicate matter, Miss Cochran’s. Ewen could not suppose that the task would be to his liking, and the thought of his opponent’s embarrassment afforded him much pleasure, as he sat there with one silk-stockinged leg crossed over the other. His ill-temper had gone. Too young a man to have at all enjoyed the rôle of disapproving critic forced upon him this evening, with his two elders covertly sneering at his prudence, and even the Prince amused at him, he was more than relieved to be free of his ungrateful part. Events had most amply justified his attitude, and now, with rising spirits, he was free to try what his wits—and perhaps, in the end, his arm—could accomplish against Captain Windham and his myrmidons. It was true that, short of getting himself killed outright, he did not see much prospect of escaping imprisonment in the Castle, but at any rate he might first have the satisfaction of a good fight—though it was to be regretted that he had not his broadsword instead of this slender court weapon. Still, to get the chance of using it against what he knew to be overwhelming odds was better than having to submit to being told that he had an old head on young shoulders!

Sooner than he had expected he heard returning feet, and now Captain Windham and he would really come to grips! It was by this time, he guessed, some twenty minutes since the Prince had slipped down the stair, and, provided that there had been no difficulty about exit, he must be almost back at Holyrood House by this time. But one could not be sure of that. And in any case Ewen had no mind to have the way he took discovered. Here, at last, was an opportunity of repaying to Captain Windham the discomfiture which he had caused him last August over his expired parole, perhaps even of wiping out, somehow, the insult of the money which he had left behind. The young man waited with rather pleasurable anticipations.

And Captain Windham came in this time, as Ewen knew he would, with an overcast brow and a set mouth. He was followed in silence by the sergeant and five men, so that the room now contained nine soldiers in all.

“Ah, I was afraid that you would have no luck,” observed Ewen sympathetically. He was still sitting very much at his ease, despite his drawn sword. “A pity that you would not believe me. However, you have wasted time.”

Keith Windham shot a quick, annoyed, questioning glance at him, but made no reply. His gaze ran rapidly round Lady Easterhall’s drawing-room, but there was in it no article of furniture large enough to afford a hiding-place to a man, and no other visible door. He turned to the two soldiers whom he had left there. “Has the prisoner made any suspicious movement?”

“He has not moved from yonder chair,” he was assured in a strong Lancashire accent.

“And yet this is the room they were in,” muttered the Englishman to himself, looking at the disordered chairs and the used wineglasses. After frowning for a moment he started to tap the panelling on his side of the room, a proceeding which made Ewen uneasy. Had they heard up at the Castle of the existence of a secret passage somewhere in this house? It was unpleasantly possible. But when Captain Windham came to the three windows giving on to the Grassmarket he naturally desisted. And the farther side of the room—that where Ewen and his writing-table were situated—faced, obviously, down the close by which the soldiers had entered, so (if the Highlander followed his reasoning correctly) Captain Windham concluded that there was no room there for a hiding-place, and did not trouble to sound the wall.

Ewen, however, judged it time to rise from his chair.

“I told you, Captain Windham, that my friends had gone,” he remarked, brushing some fallen powder off his coat. “Will you not now take your own departure, and allow an old lady to resume the rest which I suppose you have just further disturbed?”

He saw with satisfaction that the invader (who was, after all, a gentleman) did not like that thrust. However, the latter returned it by responding dryly: “You can render that departure both speedier and quieter, Mr. Cameron, by surrendering yourself without resistance.”

“And why, pray, should I be more accommodating than you were last August?” enquired Ewen with some pertinence.

Keith Windham coloured. “To bring back the memory of that day, sir, is to remind me that you then put me under a deep obligation, and to make my present task the more odious. But I must carry it out. Your sword, if you please!”

Ewen shrugged his shoulders in the way Miss Cameron condemned as outlandish. “I had no intention, sir, of reminding you of an obligation which I assure you I had never regarded as one. But why should I render your task, as you call it, more pleasant? And why make a task of it at all? The Prince, as you see, is not here, and Generals Guest and Preston will find me a very disappointing substitute.”

Keith Windham came nearer and dropped his voice. His face looked genuinely troubled. “I wish, Ardroy, for your own sake, that you would let me take you unharmed! Take you I must; you are a chieftain and the Prince’s aide-de-camp, as I happen to know. It is the fortune of war, as it was last August, when our positions were reversed. So, for the sake of the courtesy and hospitality which I then received from you——”

“My sorrow!” burst out Ewen. “Must my past good conduct, as you are pleased to consider it, lead to my undoing now? . . . And I very much doubt whether our positions are reversed, and whether any further disturbance—and you have made not a little already—do not bring the guard from the West Bow about your ears. If I might give advice in my turn, it would be to get back to the Castle while yet you can!”

“Thank you,” said Keith with extreme dryness; “we will. Sergeant, have your men secure the prisoner.”

He stood back a little. Ewen had already decided in the event of a fight to abandon his post by the writing-table, where, on one side at least, he could be taken in flank, and where any shifting of the table itself, highly probable in a struggle, would cause the panel to reveal its secret. (Not that that would greatly matter now.) Immediately the Englishman stepped back, therefore, he darted across the room and ensconced himself in the corner by the nearest window, hastily wrapping his cloak, which he had snatched up for the purpose, round his left arm. His eyes sparkled; he was going to have his fight!

“I am ready,” he remarked cheerfully, seeing the much slower preparations of his assailants. “Is it to be a charge with the bayonet, or are you going to use the butt, my friends?”

“You’ll not use either!” said Keith sharply to his men. “I do not wish this gentleman injured.”

“Then make him put up his sword, sir,” retorted the sergeant in justifiable indignation. “Else it’s ourselves will be injured, I’m thinking!”

Ewen was about to endorse this opinion when a familiar and most welcome sound came to him through the closed window behind him. No mistaking that strain; and that the soldiers should hear it too he turned a little and dashed his elbow, protected by the curtain, through the nearest pane of glass. In it flowed, wailing and menacing, the Cameron rant: ‘Sons of the dogs, come hither, come hither and you shall have flesh . . .’

“I think you had best call off your men altogether, Captain Windham, if they are to save their own skins!” And in the uneasy silence which he had procured Ewen added, with some exultation, “It is my own clan, the Camerons; they are coming down the West Bow into the Grassmarket. There will not be much left of you, my good fellows, if you so much as scratch me!” And, seeing the effect of his words, he tugged aside the curtain, flung open the partly shattered casement, and called out in Gaelic to the line of kilted figures just emerging from the West Bow.

The long yell of the slogan answered him as he swung quickly back on guard. But there was no need of his sword. Prestonpans had taught the Castle garrison exaggerated terror of those who uttered such cries. The soldiers, the sergeant included, were already huddling towards the door, and Keith Windham was not in time to get between them and the exit. He stamped his foot in fury.

“Do your duty, you dirty cowards!” he shouted, pointing at the figure by the window. But a second heartshaking yell came up from the Grassmarket: ‘Chlanna nan con, thigibh an so, thigibh an so . . .’ Perfectly deaf to their officer’s objurgations, the English soldiers were occupied only with the question of which should be first from the room. Keith seized the last fugitive by the collar, but the only result of this appeal to force was that the man, who was very powerful, shook him off, thrust him back with small regard for his rank, and banged the door behind himself. Captain Windham, livid, threw himself upon the handle to pluck it open again—but the knob merely turned in his hand. The violent slam had evidently shot to the bolt on the outside. Hunter and quarry—only now it was hard to know which was which—were equally prisoners.

Ewen, over at the window, laughed aloud; he could not help it. “You seem always to be unfortunate in your men, Captain Windham,” he remarked, and, shaking the cloak off his left arm, slid his blade back into the scabbard. “I fear it is I who shall have to ask you for your sword. Would you prefer to give it up to me before the guard arrives?”

He got it . . . but not in the fashion which he had expected. Keith, quite beside himself with mortification and rage, had already whipped out his weapon while Ewen, with bent head, was sheathing his own, and now, really blind to the fact that the Highlander was for the moment defenceless and off his guard, Captain Windham sprang furiously at him without warning of any sort. Ewen had no chance to draw again, no space to spring aside, no time for anything but to catch wildly at the blade in the hope of diverting it. At the cost of a badly cut right hand he succeeded in saving himself from being spitted, and the deflected point, sliding through his clutching fingers, went by his hip into the panelling where, both men loosing their hold at the same moment, the weapon stuck for the fraction of a second, and then fell ringing to the floor.

Horrified and sobered, Keith had sprung back; Ewen, after a first instinctive movement to catch him by the throat, had checked himself, and, clasping his bleeding hand tightly with the other, leant back against the wall and looked at him with a mixture of sternness and enquiry. His breath was coming rather quickly, but, compared with his assailant, he was the image of calm.

“My God!” stammered the Englishman, as white as a sheet. “I never saw . . .” He indicated Ardroy’s sheathed sword. “I might have killed you. . . .” He took a long breath and drew a hand across his eyes. Still looking at him curiously his victim fished out his lace-bordered handkerchief and began to wrap it round his palm, a very inadequate precaution, for in a moment the cambric was crimson.

In another Keith was at his side. “How deeply is it cut? Let me . . .” And he pulled out his own more solid handkerchief.

“I don’t know,” answered Ewen composedly, putting back his Mechlin ruffle, which had slipped down again. “Pretty deeply, it seems.” He surrendered his hand. “Thanks; over mine then—tie it tighter still.”

“Good God, I might have killed you!” said Keith again under his breath as he bandaged and knotted. “I . . . I lost my temper, but, as Heaven’s my witness, I thought you had your sword out.”

“Why, so I had, a moment earlier,” replied Ewen. “You did not intend murder, then?”

“I deserve that you should think so,” murmured the soldier, still very much shaken. “Perhaps as it is I have disabled you for life.”

Ewen had nearly retorted, “Why should that trouble you?” but he was so much astonished at the depth of feeling in his enemy’s tone that he merely stared at his bent head as he tied the last knot.

“These handkerchiefs are not enough,” said Keith suddenly, relinquishing the wounded hand. He pushed aside the little brass gorget at his neck, untied and unwound his own lace cravat, and bound that over all. Then he stood back.

“You will soon get attention now, Ardroy. Keep your hand up, so. . . . There is my sword.” He made a jerky movement towards the floor, and walking abruptly away to the hearth, stood there with his back turned.

For a moment or two Ewen also stood quite still where he was, looking at that back. That Captain Windham was ashamed of his attack on a practically unarmed man he could understand; he would have had precisely the same scruples in his place, and he would certainly have felt the same rage and humiliation had he been deserted by his followers in so disgraceful a manner (though he could not imagine Highlanders ever acting so). And, observing the dejection revealed in Captain Windham’s attitude, where he stood with bowed head and folded arms by the dying fire, and the complete absence in him of any of that mocking irony with which he himself had more than once made acquaintance at Ardroy, Ewen began to feel less vindictive about the incident of the guineas. Captain Windham, being an Englishman, did not understand Highland pride, and had probably never intended any insult at all. And now, with this sudden turning of the tables, he was again a prisoner, made in rather an absurd and ignominious fashion. Ewen could find it in his heart to be sorry for him. And what would be the advantage of yet another prisoner? The officers taken at Gladsmuir had had to be paroled and sent away. . . .

He picked up the fallen sword, faintly smeared with red along its edges, and went over to the hearth.

“Captain Windham!”

The scarlet-clad figure turned. “Your Camerons are very tardy!” he said with a bitter intonation. “Or are those yells all we are to know of them?” It was indeed sufficiently surprising that the rescuers had not entered the house some minutes ago, particularly as the door was broken open.

Ewen listened. “I think that they are possibly chasing . . . a retreating enemy. But in any case”—he held out Keith’s sword—“I cannot stomach taking advantage of your being left in the lurch by those rascals. Put on your sword again, and I’ll convey you safely out of the house.”

A dull flush swept over the English soldier’s face. “You mean that I am to run the gauntlet of those caterans, when they return, under your protection? No; I have been humiliated enough this evening; it would be less galling to go as a prisoner. Keep my sword; ’tis the second of mine you have had, Mr. Cameron.”

Yes, he was sore, and no wonder! Ewen decided that he would not even mention the objectionable guineas.

“I cannot hold this sword much longer,” he said lightly, “having but the one hand at present.—No, the caterans shall not see you at all, Captain Windham, and you shall go alone. Only, for Heaven’s sake, be quick, for some of them must soon be here!”

Bewildered, half reluctant, Keith closed his fingers on the hilt held out to him, and Ewen drew him to the escritoire on the right of the hearth. When he pushed it aside the panel behind slid slowly back.

Keith Windham stood before the gap momentarily speechless. “That, then——” he began at last, thickly.

“Yes, that is the way my friends went. But you can use the same road. It comes out, I understand, in the West Bow; there you will have to trust to chance, but it seems a dark night. Here, take my cloak,”—he went and picked it up—“ ’twill cover your uniform. And you must have a candle to light you down.”

To these directions and the proffered candlestick and cloak the baffled hunter paid no heed. “Your friends!” he said between his teeth. “The Pretender’s son, you mean! He was here this evening, then, in this very room!”

“Yes, but he was gone a little time before you entered,” answered Ewen soothingly. “I was only troubled lest the door should slide open and betray the path he took. But ’tis of no moment now.”

“No, it’s of no moment now!” repeated Windham bitterly. Wrath, reluctant admiration, disappointment and concern for what he had so nearly done—and not in fair fight—to the man before him strove openly in his tone as he went on: “Is this your revenge for——”—he pointed to the swathed right hand—“and for my outwitting you last August? It’s a sharp one, for all that it’s generous. . . . Yes, you have fairly outmanœuvred me, Ardroy, with your secret stair and your clansmen so pat to the moment, like a stage play! But I warn you that this mumming will turn to grim earnest some day; there’ll be a bloody curtain to the comedy, and you will regret that ever you played a part in it!”

“That depends, does it not, on how many more battles of Gladsmuir we have?” retorted Ewen, with a smile on his lips and a sparkle in his eyes. “But go—go!” for at last there had come a rush of feet up the stairs, and the rescue party (oblivious of the bolt) were hammering upon the door with cries. He thrust the candlestick and the cloak—the Prince’s cloak—into the Englishman’s hands, calling out something in Gaelic over his shoulder the while. “Go—they’ll have the door down in another minute!”

He almost pushed Captain Windham into the aperture, pressed the spring, and wedged the returning panel with the table, only a second or two before the unfortunate door of Lady Easterhall’s drawing-room fell inwards with a crash, and Cameron kilts plunged over it.