The Historical Nights' Entertainment by Rafael Sabatini (most important books to read .txt) 📖
- Author: Rafael Sabatini
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sweetly charitable soul.
“Very well,” she said, “I will give them entertainment for a week.
Bring them on Tuesday after dark, and come by the back way through
the orchard, that they may not be seen.”
And upon this she rose, and took up an ebony cane, herself to
reconduct him and to see to his entertainment before he left. Not
until they came to the kitchen did she realize that he had a
companion. At sight of Barter, who rose respectfully when she
entered, she checked, turned to Dunne, and whispered something,
to which his answer provoked from her a laugh.
Now Barter, intrigued by this whispering and laughing, of which he
deemed himself the object, questioned Dunne upon it as they rode
forth again together.
“She asked me if you knew aught of the business,” replied Dunne;
“and I answered ‘No.”’
“Business, say’st thou?” quoth Barter. “What business?”
“Sure, the business on which we came,” Dunne evaded; and he laughed.
It was an answer that left Barter uneasy. Nor was his mind set at
rest by the parting words with which Dunne accompanied the half-crown
for his services.
“This is but an earnest of what’s to come if you will meet me here
on Tuesday to show me the way to Moyle’s Court again. I shall be
bringing two gentlemen with me - wealthy men, of a half-score
thousand pounds a year apiece. I tell you there will be a fine
booty for my part, so fine that I shall never want for money again
all the days of my life. And, so that you meet us here, you too
may count upon a handsome reward.”
Consenting, Barter went his ways home. But as he pondered Dunne’s
silly speech, and marvelled that honest men should pay so
disproportionately for an honest service, he came to the reasonable
conclusion that he had to do with rebels. This made him so uneasy
that he resolved at last to lodge information with the nearest
justice.
Now, it happened, by the irony of Fate, that the justice sought by
Barter was one Colonel Penruddock - the vindictive son of that
Penruddock whom the late John Lisle - whilst Lord President of the
High Court - had sentenced to death some thirty years ago for
participation in an unsuccessful Wiltshire rising against the
Commonwealth.
The colonel, a lean, stark man of forty-five, heard with interest
Barter’s story.
“Art an honest fellow!” he commended him. “What are the names of
these rogues?”
“The fellow named no names, sir.”
“Well, well, we shall discover that for ourselves when we come to
take them at this trysting-place. Whither do you say you are to
conduct them?”
“To Moyle’s Court, sir, where my Lady Lisle is to give them
entertainment.”
The colonel stared a moment; then a heavy smile came to light the
saturnine face under the heavy periwig. Beyond that he gave no
sign of what was passing in his mind.
“You may go,” he said slowly, at last. “Be sure we shall be at the
tryst to take these rascals.”
But the colonel did not keep his promise. To Barter’s surprise,
there were no soldiers at the tryst on Salisbury Plain on the
following Tuesday; and he was suffered to lead Dunne and the two
men with him the short, corpulent Mr. Hicks and the long, lean
Nelthorp - to Moyle’s Court without interference.
The rich reward that Dunne had promised him amounted in actual fact
to five shillings, that he had from Nelthorpe at parting. Puzzled
by Colonel Penruddock’s failure to do his part, Barter went off at
once to the colonel’s house to inform him that the pair were now at
Lady Lisle’s.
“Why, that is very well,” said the colonel, his smile more sinister
than ever. “Trouble not yourself about that.”
And Barter, the unreasoning instrument of Fate, was not to know that
the apprehending of a couple of traitorous Jack Presbyters was of
small account to Colonel Penruddock by comparison with the
satisfaction of the blood-feud between himself and the House of
Lisle.
Meanwhile the fugitives were being entertained at Moyle’s Court,
and whilst they sat at supper in a room above-stairs, Dunne being
still of the party, my lady came in person to see that they had all
that they required, and stayed a little while in talk with them.
There was some mention of Monmouth and the battle of Sedgemoor,
which was natural, that being the topic of the hour.
My lady asked no questions at the time regarding Hicks’s long, lean
companion. But it occurred to her later that perhaps she should
know more about him. Early next morning, therefore, she sent for
Hicks as he was in the act of sitting down to breakfast, and by her
direct questions elicited from him that this companion was that
Richard Nelthorp outlawed for his share in the Rye House Plot. Not
only was the information alarming, but it gave her a sense that she
had not been dealt with fairly, as indeed she told him.
“You will see, sir,” she concluded, “that you cannot bide here. So
long as I thought it was on the score of Nonconformity alone that
you were suffering persecution, I was willing to take some risk in
hiding you. But since your friend is what he is, the risk is greater
than I should be asked to face, for my own sake and for that of my
daughters. Nor can I say that I have ever held plottings and civil
war in anything but abhorrence - as much in the old days as now. I
am a loyal woman, and as a loyal woman I must bid you take your
friend hence as soon as your fast is broken.”
The corpulent and swarthy Hicks stood dejectedly before her. He
might have pleaded, but at that moment there came a loud knocking
at the gates below, and instantly Carpenter flung into the room
with a white, scared face and whirling gestures.
“Soldiers, my lady!” he panted in affright. “We have been betrayed.
The presence of Mr. Hicks here is known. What shall we do? What
shall we do?”
She stood quite still, her countenance entirely unchanged, unless
it were to smile a little upon Carpenter’s terror. The mercy of her
nature rose dominant now.
“Why, we must hide these poor fellows as best we can,” said she;
and Hicks flung down upon one knee to kiss her hand with
protestations that he would sooner be hanged than bring trouble
upon her house.
But she insisted, calm and self-contained; and Carpenter carried
Hicks away to bestow him, together with Dunne, in a hole in the
malthouse under a heap of sacking. Nelthorp had already vanished
completely on his own initiative.
Meanwhile, the insistent knocking at the gate continued. Came
shouted demands to open in the name of the King, until from a window
my lady’s daughters looked out to challenge those who knocked.
Colonel Penruddock, who had come in person with the soldiers to raid
the house of his hereditary foe, stood forth to answer, very stiff
and brave in his scarlet coat and black plumed hat.
“You have rebels in the house,” he announced, “and I require you
in the King’s name to deliver them up to me.”
And then, before they could answer him, came Carpenter to, unbar
the door, and admit them to the court. Penruddock, standing
squarely before the steward, admonished him very sternly.
“Friend,” said he, “you had best be ingenuous with me and discover
who are in your lady’s house, for it is within my knowledge that
some strangers came hither last night.”
The stricken Carpenter stood whitefaced and trembling.
“Sir - sir -” he faltered.
But the colonel was impatient.
“Come, come, my friend. Since I know they are here, there’s an end
on’t. Show me where they are hid if you would save your own neck
from the halter.”
It was enough for Carpenter. The pair in the malthouse might have
eluded all search but for the steward’s pusillanimity. Incontinently,
he betrayed the hiding-place.
“But, sir, of your charity do not tell my mistress that I have told
you. Pray, sir - “
Penruddock brushed him aside as if he had been a pestering fly, and
with his men went in, and straight to the spot where Hicks and Dunne
were lurking. When he had taken them, he swung round on Carpenter,
who had followed.
“These be but two,” he said, “and to my knowledge three rogues came
hither last night. No shufing with me, rascal. Where have you
bestowed the other?”
“I swear, as Heaven’s my witness, I do not know where he is,”
protested the afflicted steward, truly enough.
Penruddock turned to his men.
“Make search,” he bade them; and search was made in the ruthless
manner of such searches.
The brutal soldiers passed from room to room beating the wainscoting
with pike and musket-butts, splintering and smashing heedlessly.
Presses were burst open and their contents scattered; chests were
broken into and emptied, the searchers appropriating such objects
as took their fancy, with true military cynicism. A mirror was
shattered, and some boards of the floor were torn up because a
sergeant conceived that the blows of his halbert rang hollow.
When the tumult was at its height, came her ladyship at last into
the room, where Colonel Penruddock stood watching the operations of
his men. She stood in the doorway leaning upon her ebony cane, her
faded eyes considering the gaunt soldier with reproachful question.
“Sir,” she asked him with gentle irony, masking her agitation, “has
my house been given over to pillage?”
He bowed, doffing his plumed hat with an almost excessive courtesy.
“To search, madame,” he corrected her. And added: “In the King’s
name.”
“The King,” she answered, “may give you authority to search my
house, but not to plunder it. Your men are robbing and destroying.”
He shrugged. It was the way of soldiers. Fine manners, he
suggested, were not to be expected of their kind. And he harangued
her upon the wrong she had done in harbouring rebels and giving
entertainment to the King’s enemies.
“That is not true,” said she. “I know of no King’s enemies.”
He smiled darkly upon her from his great height. She was so frail
a body and so old that surely it was not worth a man’s while to
sacrifice her on the altar of revenge. But not so thought Colonel
Penruddock. Therefore he smiled.
“Two of them, a snivelling Jack Presbyter named Hicks and a rascal
named Dunne, are taken already. Pray, madame, be so free and
ingenuous with me aye, and so kind to yourself - as if there be any
other person concealed in your house - and I am sure there is
somebody else - to deliver him up, and you shall come to no further
trouble.”
She looked up at him, and returned him smile for smile.
“I know nothing,” she said, “of what you tell me, or of what you
ask.”
His countenance hardened.
“Then, mistress, the search must go on.”
But a shout from the adjoining room announced that it was at an end.
Nelthorp had been discovered and dragged from the chimney into which
he had crept.
Almost exactly a month later - on August 27th the Lady Alice Lisle
was brought to the bar of the court-house at Winchester upon a
charge of high treason.
The indictment ran that secretly, wickedly, and traitorously she
did entertain, conceal, comfort, uphold, and maintain John Hicks,
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