A Prince of Good Fellows by Robert Barr (best thriller novels to read txt) 📖

wealthy," commented the king. "Yet it can't be that, for the richest men I know are the greediest."

"No, it isn't that," rejoined the stranger, "but if you wander anywhere about this region you will understand what I mean when I tell you that I'm Baldy Hutchinson."

"Baldy Hutchinson!" echoed the king, wrinkling his brows, trying to remember where he had heard that name before, then with sudden enlightenment,--

"What, not the man who is to be hanged to-day at St. Ninians?"

"The very same, so you see that all the gold ever minted is of little use to a man with a tightening rope round his neck." And the comicality of the situation again overcoming Mr. Hutchinson, his robust sides shook once more with laughter.

The king stopped in the middle of the road and stared at his companion with amazement.

"Surely you are aware," he said at last, "that you are on the direct road to St. Ninians?"

"Surely, surely," replied Baldy, "and you remind me, that we must not stand yammering here, for there will be a great gathering there to see the hanging. All my friends are there now, and if I say it, who shouldn't, I've more friends than possibly any other man in this part of Scotland."

"But, do you mean that you are going voluntarily to your own hanging? Bless my soul, man, turn in your tracks and make for across the Border."

Hutchinson shook his head.

"If I had intended to do that," he said, "I could have saved myself many a long step yesterday and this morning, for I was a good deal nearer the Border than I am at this moment. No, no, you see I have passed my word. The sheriff gave me a week among my own friends to settle my worldly affairs, and bid the wife and the bairns good-bye. So I said to the sheriff, 'I'm your man whenever you are ready for the hanging.' Now, the word of Baldy Hutchinson has never been broken yet, and the sheriff knew it, although I must admit he swithered long ere he trusted it on an occasion like this. But at last he said to me, 'Baldy,' says he, 'I'll take your plighted word. You've got a week before you, and you must just go and come as quietly as you can, and be here before the clock strikes twelve on Friday, for folk'll want to see you hanged before they have their dinners.' And that's what way I'm in such a hurry now, for I'm feared the farmers will be gathered, and that it will be difficult for me to place myself in the hands of the sheriff without somebody getting to jalouse what has happened."

"I've heard many a strange tale," said the king, "but this beats anything in my experience."

"Oh there's a great deal to be picked up by tramping the roads," replied Hutchinson sagely.

"What is your crime?" inquired his majesty.

"Oh, the crime's neither here nor there. If they want to hang a man, they'll hang him crime or no crime."

"But why should they want to hang a man with so many friends?"

"Well, you see a man may have many friends and yet two or three powerful enemies. My crime, as you call it, is that I'm related to the Douglases; that's the real crime; but that's not what I'm to be hanged for. Oh no, it's all done according to the legal satisfaction of the lawyers. I'm hanged for treason to the king; a right royal crime, that dubs a man a gentleman as much as if the king's sword slaps his bended back; a crime that better men than me have often suffered for, and that many will suffer for yet ere kings are abolished, I'm thinking. You see, as I said, I married into the Douglas family, and when the Earl of Angus let this young sprig of a king slip through his fingers, it was as much as one's very life was worth to whisper the name of Douglas. Now I think the Earl of Angus a good man, and when he was driven to England, and the Douglases scattered far and wide by this rapscallion callant with a crown on his head, I being an outspoken man, gave my opinion of the king, damn him, and there were plenty to report it. I did not deny it, indeed I do not deny it to-day, therefore my neck's like to be longer before the sun goes down."

"But surely," exclaimed the beggar, "they will not hang a man in Scotland for merely saying a hasty word against the king?"

"There's more happens in this realm than the king kens of, and all done in his name too. But to speak truth, there was a bit extra against me as well. A wheen of the daft bodies in Stirling made up a slip of a plot to trap the king and put him in hiding for a while until he listened to what they called reason. There were two weavers among them and weavers are always plotting; a cobbler, and such like people, and they sent word, would I come and help them. I was fool enough to write them a note, and entrusted it to their messenger. I told them to leave the king alone until I came to Stirling, and then I would just nab him myself, put him under my oxter and walk down towards the Border with him, for I knew that if they went on they'd but lose their silly heads. And so, wishing no harm to the king, I made my way to Stirling, but did not get within a mile of it, for they tripped me up at St. Ninians, having captured my letter. So I was sentenced, and it seems the king found out all about their plot as I knew he would, and pardoned the men who were going to kidnap him, while the man who wanted to stop such foolishness is to be hanged in his name."

"That seems villainously unfair," said the beggar. "Didn't the eleven try to do anything for you?"

"How do you know there were eleven?" cried Hutchinson, turning round upon him.

"I thought you said eleven."

"Well, maybe I did, maybe I did; yes, there were eleven of them. They never got my letter. Their messenger was a traitor, as is usually the case, and merely told them I would have nothing to do with their foolish venture; and that brings me to the point I have been coming to. You see although I would keep my word in any case, yet I'm not so feared to approach St. Ninians as another man might be. Young Jamie, the king, seems to have more sense in his noodle than he gets credit for. Some of his forbears would have snapped off the heads of that eleven without thinking more of the matter, but he seems to have recognised they were but poor silly bodies, and so let them go. Now the moment they set me at liberty, a week since, I got a messenger I could trust, and sent him to the cobbler, Flemming by name. I told Flemming I was to be hanged, but he had still a week to get me a reprieve. I asked him to go to the king and tell him the whole truth of the matter, so I'm thinking that a pardon will be on the scaffold there before me; still, the disappointment of the hundreds waiting to see the hanging will be great."

"Good God!" cried the beggar aghast, stopping dead in the middle of the road and regarding his comrade with horror.

"What's wrong with you?" asked the big man stopping also.

"Has it never occurred to you that the king may be away from the palace, and no one in the place able to find him?"

"No one able to find the King of Scotland? That's an unheard-of thing."

"Listen to me, Hutchinson. Let us avoid St. Ninians, and go direct to Stirling; it's only a mile or two further on. Let us see the cobbler before running your neck into a noose."

"But, man, the cobbler will be at St. Ninians, either with a pardon or to see me hanged, like the good friend he is."

"There will be no pardon at St. Ninians. Let us to Stirling; let us to Stirling. I know that the king has not been at home for a week past."

"How can you know that?"

"Never mind how I know it. Will you do what I tell you?"

"Not I! I'm a lad o' my word."

"Then you are a doomed man. I tell you the king has not been in Stirling since you left St. Ninians." Then with a burst of impatience James cried, "You stubborn fool, I am the king!"

At first the big man seemed inclined to laugh, and he looked over the beggar from top to toe, but presently an expression of pity overspread his countenance, and he spoke soothingly to his comrade.

"Yes, yes, my man," he said, "I knew you were the king from the very first. Just sit down on this stone for a minute and let me examine that clip you got on the top of the head. I fear me it's worse than I thought it was."

"Nonsense," cried the king, "my head is perfectly right; it is yours that is gone aglee."

"True enough, true enough," continued Hutchinson mildly, in the tone that he would have used towards a fractious child, "and you are not the first that's said it. But let us get on to St. Ninians."

"No, let us make direct for Stirling."

"I'll tell you what we'll do," continued Hutchinson in the same tone of exasperating tolerance. "I'll to St. Ninians and let them know the king's pardon's coming. You'll trot along to Stirling, put on your king's clothes and then come and set me free. That's the way we'll arrange it, my mannie."

The king made a gesture of despair, but remained silent, and they walked rapidly down the road together. They had quitted the forest, and the village of St. Ninians was now in view. As they approached the place more nearly, Hutchinson was pleased to see that a great crowd had gathered to view the hanging. He seemed to take this as a personal compliment to himself; as an evidence of his popularity.

The two made their way to the back of the great assemblage where a few soldiers guarded an enclosure within which was the anxious sheriff and his minor officials.

"Bless me, Baldy!" cried the sheriff in a tone of great relief, "I thought you had given me the slip."

"Ye thought naething o' the kind, sheriff," rejoined Baldy complacently. "I said I would be here, and here I am."

"You are just late enough," grumbled the sheriff. "The people have been waiting this two hours."

"They'll think it all the better when they see it," commented Baldy. "I was held back a bit on the road. Has there no message come from the king?"

"Could you expect it, when the crime's treason?" asked the sheriff impatiently, "but there's been a cobbler here that's given me more bother than twenty kings, and cannot be pacified. He says the king's away from Stirling, and this execution must be put by for another ten days, which is impossible."

"Allow me a word in your ear privately," said the beggar to the sheriff.

"I'll see you after the job's done," replied the badgered man.