Читать книгу Lochinvar - S. R. Crockett - Страница 6

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Walter bowed and returned him his sword, holding it by the blade.

"And now, Lieutenant Scarlett," he said, "I desire to ride back to Amersfort, and you, I doubt not, wish as eagerly to return whence you came—by sea to Flanders, as I guess. I shall be grateful, therefore, if you will draw off your company, and give an order that my horse be brought to that door which is in possession of your own men."

At this moment Haxo the Bull stepped into the room.

"Not so fast by a great deal, master-fighter with windlestraws," he cried. "If it have pleased this friend of yours and traitorous officer of the King of France to make a public bargain upon the issue of a private duel, that has nothing to do with me. There are many other fights to be fought ere you leave this house with the papers safe in your pocket. Listen," he continued, addressing the officers and soldiers standing in the opposite doorway behind Lieutenant Scarlett: "are you to lose your reward and be left without reason or remedy here in the very heart of an enemy's country—your work undone, your doom sealed? For if ye let him escape, this fellow will instantly set the prince's horsemen or his swift Dutch ships upon your track. Better to kill him and take his papers without delay, when rewards and promotions will assuredly be yours on your return to your master."

It was easy to see that this harangue had not been the inspiration of Haxo himself, for he delivered it, now trippingly and now haltingly, like a schoolboy who does not know the meaning of his lesson. But yet it was perfectly comprehensible to all in the room, and Wat could see that the purport of it moved the officers and men greatly. The wide archway behind the table from which the arras had been drawn back was now thronged with faces.

Wat Gordon stood aside whistling an air softly, like one who waits for a discussion to be concluded in which he has no interest. He had not so much as looked at Haxo the Bull while he was speaking.

But John Scarlett grew redder and redder as he listened, and so soon as the butcher was finished he started towards him so abruptly and fiercely that that worthy gat himself incontinently behind the weapons of his allies, the Calf and the Killer, with an alacrity which seemed quite disproportionate to his physical condition.

"I am the commander here," Scarlett cried, "and I am bound by my promise. I am determined to let this man go according to my word. Stand back there!"

But the elder of the two French officers came forward.

He saluted Scarlett and addressed himself directly to him.

"Lieutenant Scarlett," he said, "I am your equal in rank though not in standing. We were sent here under your orders to obtain certain despatches of great importance to our general and to the coming campaign. We shall therefore be compelled to take this man with us, with all the papers in his possession, and to report your conduct to the commander at headquarters."

His words appeared first to amuse and then to infuriate John Scarlett.

Striking suddenly at the triple candlestick on his right, he leaped over the table, crying, "Down with the lights! I am with you, Wat Gordon. Through the door and have at them out into the open. It is your only chance."

Wat, whose sword was ready in his hand, struck sideways at the other group of lights and sent them crashing to the floor. Most of these went out at once in their fall, but one or two continued to burn for a moment with a faint light as they lay among the trampling feet. Wat threw himself at the doorway in which he had heard the laugh, and through which Scarlett had preceded him a moment before. Wat could hear that valiant sworder somewhere in front of him, striking good blows and swearing, "Out with you, devil's brats!" at the top of his voice. So when he reached the end of the passage he found at the outer door Scarlett making brisk play with four or five men, who were endeavoring to hem him into a narrow space where he should not have the liberty of his sword-arm.

Wat ranged himself beside his late enemy, the two long blades began to flicker fatally in the starlight, and the hurt men to cry out and stagger away. Then quite unexpectedly the crowd in front broke and fled.

"Get on your horse, Wat!" Scarlett cried. "I can keep the door against these loons of mine—at least till you are well out of the way."

There were two good horses, one on either side of the doorway—Wat's, and that upon which Haxo had ridden. Wat sprang upon his own, and, with a cut of his sword, Scarlett divided the halter. The horse wheeled and set off at a gallop through the sand-hills. Yet he went reluctantly, for, had it not been for the safety of his papers, Wat would gladly have stayed and helped John Scarlett to engage the whole of the army of France, with any number of Bulls and Killers in addition thereto.

For, as he vanished into the black night, he could hear John Scarlett advising the first man who desired three feet of cold steel through his vitals to step up and be accommodated. And as he turned eastward towards Amersfort, riding beneath the silent bulk of the old castle of Brederode, he heard again the clash of iron and the cry of pain which he knew so well. He smiled a little grimly, and wished nothing better than that his papers had been delivered, and he again at work at his old master's elbow.

Presently, however, having, as it seemed to him, left all possibility of pursuit behind, Wat put his horse into an easier pace, and rode on by silent and unfrequented paths towards the east, judging his direction by the stars—which had been an old study of his when it was his hap to take to the heather in the black days of the Covenant in Scotland.

As he went he became aware of the noise of a horse galloping swiftly behind him. He drew his sword and stood on the defence, lest the sound should betoken a new danger; but presently he heard a voice calling his own name loudly:

"Wat Gordon! I say, Wat Gordon!"

It was the voice of Jack Scarlett, his late enemy and present deliverer.

He rode up beside Walter, very strange to look upon, clad in some suit of white or pale blanket-color that glimmered in the dusk of the night.

"I gave half a dozen of the rascals that which it will be two days or they get the better of, I'se warrant," he said, chuckling to himself; "and then, thinking that mayhap I might not be welcome any longer in the army of France, I e'en came my ways after you. As I rode I cast my uniform and left my commission in the pocket of my coat. So I am but poor masterless Jack Scarlett once more—a free comrade looking for a regiment, and equipped with nothing but his thews and his long sword, which, God be thanked, are both his own. Think ye the States-General and the Yellow Prince have need of such as I?"

"And how now about the anointed king?" Wat could not help saying.

"The anointed king is safe in Whitehall, and can afford to wait till Jack Scarlett is a little less hungry," answered the free-lance, frankly.

Having been thus fortunate in obtaining the only two good horses about the inn of Brederode (for the Frenchmen had come by sea to the little port of Lis-op-Zee, and the horses of the Calf and the Killer were but sorry jades), Scarlett had ridden all the way back without a challenge, or so much as encountering any sound more threatening than the roopy chuckle of disturbed poultry on the farm-house roosts as he clattered by on his way.

As the two horsemen came nearer to the city, and the east began to send up a fountain of rosy hues to mingle with the gray spaces of the early morning, Wat could not help laughing at the figure his comrade presented. The master-at-arms was attired simply and Spartanly in such darned and patched underclothing as he had amassed during half a dozen campaigns. These were not all of the same material nor color. They were not, indeed, at all points strictly continuous, the native hide being allowed to show itself through here and there, while only the long sword belted about the waist and the cavalry boots remained to tell of the well-seasoned man of wars and stratagems.

Jack Scarlett was noways offended at Wat's frank laughter. He even glanced down at himself with a comically rueful air.

"I wish to the saints that I had met somebody else in this garb," he said; "and then I own I could have laughed myself off my horse."

But, nevertheless, laugh he did, and that most heartily, like a good-humored carle, at the figure of sin he cut in the morning light; and specially he was delighted at the paralyzed astonishment of a lank, hobbledehoy gooseherd who came trolloping along a path towards a canal bridge, yawning so that his lower jaw and his head well-nigh dropped apart. For at sight of the red-bearded man in the white sacking and top-boots the wand-twirling yokel gave a yell sudden as the popping of a cork, and forthwith fled, running fleet-foot along the edge of the canal as though the devil himself had been tattering at his tail.

"This guiser's mode will never do to enter the city of Amersfort withal!" quoth Scarlett, looking down at his own inconsequent ragamuffin swathings.

And he paused to consider the problem, while Wat divided himself between chuckling at his late enemy's dilemma, thinking what he would say in his coming interview with Barra in the camp, and (what occupied nine out of every ten minutes) wondering how Kate McGhie would receive him in the street of Zaandpoort.

At last the man in the white bandagings had an idea. He clapped his hand suddenly to his brow.

"What a dull dotard am I to forget Sandy Lyall!"

"I know," he continued in explanation, "a certain honest fool of a Scot that hath wedded a wife of the country. He lives but a mile from here and breeds young Flamands for the prince's armies, and ducks for the Amersfort market. We will e'en go find him, and make him deliver of the best in his wardrobe. For he and I count kin in some seventeenth or eighteenth degree, though this is the first time I ever bethought me of claiming it."

And with no more words John Scarlett turned his horse briskly down a side lane, just as the sun was rising and beginning to shine ruddily brown through the morning haze. The sails of a score of windmills darted up suddenly black in the level rush of light, and every hissing goose and waddling, matronly hen had a rosy side and a gray side, together with an attenuated shadow which stretched up the dikes and away across the polders.

Presently Scarlett and his companion, at the foot of a leafy by-lane, came to the house of the Scot who had married the Flemish wife for the very practical purposes described by Scarlett.

The madcap figure in white went forward to the door, while Wat remained behind cackling helplessly with idiot laughter. Scarlett thundered on the warped and sun-whitened deal of the panels with the hilt of his sword. Then, receiving no response, he kicked lustily with his boots and swore roundly at the unseen occupants in a dozen camp dialects.

During his harangues, sulky maledictions grumbled intermittently from the house. Presently an upper window flew open, a splash of dirty water fell souse on the warrior, and still more sadly bedraggled the preposterous quixotry of his attire.

The temper of the master-at-arms was now strained to the breaking-point. "Sandy Lyall," he cried—and to do him justice, his voice was more full of sorrow than of anger—"Sandy Lyall, of Pittenweem, listen to me, John Scarlett, gin ye dinna come doon this minute and get me a suit o' claes, warm and dry, I'll thraw your dirty Fifish neck—aye, like a twist of rotten straw at a rick-thatching."

But even this explicit malediction threatened to go by without effect.

But at long and last there looked out of the small diamond-paned window from which the jar of water had fallen the head of a respectable enough woman, who wore a red shawl wrapped round her coarse black hair in the fashion of a nightcap.