A Reputed Changeling; Or, Three Seventh Years Two Centuries Ago by Yonge (best short novels of all time txt) 📖

I said seemed to me stabbing you;” and the tears would come now.

“No such thing!  They only showed how true my love is to God and me, and made my heart swell with pride to hear her so cheering me through all.”

His strength seemed to allow her to break down.  She had all along had to bear up the spirits of Sir Philip and Lady Archfield, and though she had struggled for composure, the finding that she had in him a comforter and support set the pent-up tears flowing fast, as he held her close.

“Oh, I did not mean to vex you thus!” she said.

“Vex! no indeed!  ’Tis something to be wept for.  But cheer up, Anne mine.  I have often been in far worse plights than this, when I have ridden up in the face of eight big Turkish guns.  The balls went over my head then, by God’s good mercy.  Why not the same now?  Ay! and I was ready to give all I had to any one who would have put a pistol to my head and got me out of my misery, jolting along on the way to the Iron Gates.  Yet here I am!  Maybe the Almighty brought me back to save poor Sedley, and clear my own conscience, knowing well that though it does not look so, it is better for me to die thus than the other way.  No, no; ’tis ten to one that you and the rest of you will get me off.  I only meant to show you that supposing it fails, I shall only feel it my due, and much better for me than if I had died out there with it unconfessed.  I shall try to get them all to feel it so, and, after all, now the whole is out, my heart feels lighter than it has done these seven years.  And if I could only believe that poor fellow alive, I could almost die content, though that sounds strange.  It will quiet his poor restless spirit any way.”

“You are too brave.  Oh!  I hoped to come here to comfort you, and I have only made you comfort me.”

“The best way, sweetest.  Now, I will seal and address this letter, and you shall take it to Mr. Fellowes to carry to the ambassador.”

This gave Anne a little time to compose herself, and when he had finished, he took the candle, and saying, “Look here,” he held it to the wall, and they read, scratched on the rough bricks, “Alice Lisle, 1685.  This is thankworthy.”

“Lady Lisle’s cell!  Oh, this is no good omen!”

“I call it a goodly legacy even to one who cannot claim to suffer wrongfully,” said Charles.  “There, they knock—one kiss more—we shall meet again soon.  Don’t linger in town, but give me all the days you can.  Yes, take her back, Sir Edmund, for she must rest before her journey.  Cheer up, love, and do not lie weeping all night, but believe that your prayers to God and man must prevail one way or another.”

CHAPTER XXXI
Elf-Land

“Three ruffians seized me yestermorn,
  Alas! a maiden most forlorn;
They choked my cries with wicked might,
  And bound me on a palfrey white.”

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Yet after the night it was with more hope than despondency, Anne, in the February morning, mounted en croupe behind Mr. Fellowes’s servant, that being decided on as the quickest mode of travelling.  She saw the sunrise behind St. Catherine’s Hill, and the gray mists filling the valley of the Itchen, and the towers of the Cathedral and College barely peeping beyond them.  Would her life rise out of the mist?

Through hoar-frosted hedges, deeply crested with white, they rode, emerging by and by on downs, becoming dully green above, as the sun touched them, but white below.  Suddenly, in passing a hollow, overhung by two or three yew-trees, they found themselves surrounded by masked horsemen.  The servant on her horse was felled, she herself snatched off and a kerchief covered her face, while she was crying, “Oh sir, let me go!  I am on business of life and death.”

The covering was stuffed into her mouth, and she was borne along some little way; then there was a pause, and she freed herself enough to say, “You shall have everything; only let me go;” and she felt for the money with which Sir Philip had supplied her, and for the watch given her by King James.

“We want you; nothing of yours,” said a voice.  “Don’t be afraid.  No one will hurt you; but we must have you along with us.”

Therewith she was pinioned by two large hands, and a bandage was made fast over her eyes, and when she shrieked out, “Mr. Fellowes!  Oh! where are you?” she was answered—

“No harm has been done to the parson.  He will be free as soon as any one comes by.  ’Tis you we want.  Now, I give you fair notice, for we don’t want to choke you; there’s no one to hear a squall.  If there were, we should gag you, so you had best be quiet, and you shall suffer no hurt.  Now then, by your leave, madam.”

She was lifted on horseback again, and a belt passed round her and the rider in front of her.  Again she strove, in her natural voice, to plead that to stop her would imperil a man’s life, and to implore for release.  “We know all that,” she was told.  It was not rudely said.  The voice was not that of a clown; it was a gentleman’s pronunciation, and this was in some ways more inexplicable and alarming.  The horses were put in rapid motion; she heard the trampling of many hoofs, and felt that they were on soft turf, and she knew that for many miles round Winchester it was possible to keep on the downs so as to avoid any inhabited place.  She tried to guess, from the sense of sunshine that came through her bandage, in what direction she was being carried, and fancied it must be southerly.  On—on—on—still the turf.  It seemed absolutely endless.  Time was not measurable under such circumstances, but she fancied noon must have more than passed, when the voice that had before spoken said, “We halt in a moment, and shift you to another horse, madam; but again I forewarn you that our comrades here have no ears for you, and that cries and struggles will only make it the worse for you.”  Then came the sound as of harder ground and a stop—undertones, gruff and manly, could be heard, the peculiar noise of horses’ drinking; and her captor came up this time on foot, saying, “Plaguy little to be had in this accursed hole; ’tis but the choice between stale beer and milk.  Which will you prefer?”

She could not help accepting the milk, and she was taken down to drink it, and a hunch of coarse barley bread was given to her, with it the words, “I would offer you bacon, but it tastes as if Old Nick had smoked it in his private furnace.”

Such expressions were no proof that gentle blood was lacking, but whose object could her abduction be—her, a penniless dependent?  Could she have been seized by mistake for some heiress?  In that moment’s hope she asked, “Sir, do you know who I am—Anne Woodford, a poor, portionless maid, not—”

“I know perfectly well, madam,” was the reply.  “May I trouble you to permit me to mount you again?”

She was again placed behind one of the riders, and again fastened to him, and off they went, on a rougher horse, on harder ground, and, as she thought, occasionally through brushwood.  Again a space, to her illimitable, went by, and then came turf once more, and by and by what seemed to her the sound of the sea.

Another halt, another lifting down, but at once to be gathered up again, and then a splashing through water.  “Be careful,” said the voice.  A hand, a gentleman’s hand, took hers; her feet were on boards—on a boat; she was drawn down to sit on a low thwart.  Putting her hand over, she felt the lapping of the water and tasted that it was salt.

“Oh, sir, where are you taking me?” she asked, as the boat was pushed off.

“That you will know in due time,” he answered.

Some more refreshment was offered her in a decided but not discourteous manner, and she partook of it, remembering that exhaustion might add to her perils.  She perceived that after pushing off from shore sounds of eating and low gruff voices mingled with the plash of oars.  Commands seemed to be given in French, and there were mutterings of some strange language.  Darkness was coming on.  What were they doing with her?  And did Charles’s fate hang upon hers?

Yet in spite of terrors and anxieties, she was so much worn out as to doze long enough to lose count of time, till she was awakened by the rocking and tossing of the boat and loud peremptory commands.  She became for the first time in her life miserable with sea-sickness, for how long it was impossible to tell, and the pitching of the boat became so violent that when she found herself bound to one of the seats she was conscious of little but a longing to be allowed to go to the bottom in peace, except that some great cause—she could hardly in her bewildered wretchedness recollect what—forbade her to die till her mission was over.

There were loud peremptory orders, oaths, sea phrases, in French and English, sometimes in that unknown tongue.  Something expressed that a light was directing to a landing-place, but reaching it was doubtful.

“Unbind her eyes,” said a voice; “let her shift for herself.”

“Better not.”

There followed a fresh upheaval, as if the boat were perpendicular; a sudden sinking, some one fell over and bruised her; another frightful rising and falling, then smoothness; the rope that held her fast undone; the keel grating; hands apparently dragging up the boat.  She was lifted out like a doll, carried apparently through water over shingle.  Light again made itself visible; she was in a house, set down on a chair, in the warmth of fire, amid a buzz of voices, which lulled as the bandage was untied and removed.  Her eyes were so dazzled, her head so giddy, her senses so faint, that everything swam round her, and there that strange vision recurred.  Peregrine Oakshott was before her.  She closed her eyes again, as she lay back in the chair.

“Take this; you will be better.”  A glass was at her lips, and she swallowed some hot drink, which revived her so that she opened her eyes again, and by the lights in an apparently richly curtained room, she again beheld that figure standing by her, the glass in his hand.

“Oh!” she gasped.  “Are you alive?”

The answer was to raise her still gloved hand with substantial fingers to a pair of lips.

“Then—then—he is safe!  Thank God!” she murmured, and shut her eyes again, dizzy and overcome, unable even to analyse her conviction that all would be well, and that in some manner he had come to her rescue.

“Where am I?” she murmured dreamily.  “In Elf-land?”

“Yes; come to be Queen of it.”

The words blended with her confused fancies.  Indeed she was hardly fully conscious of anything, except that a woman’s hands were about her, and that she was taken into another room, where her drenched clothes were removed, and she was placed in a warm, narrow bed, where some more warm nourishment was put into her mouth with a spoon, after which she sank into a sleep of utter exhaustion.  That sleep lasted long.  There was a sensation of the rocking of the boat, and of aching limbs, through great part of the time; also there seemed to be a continual roaring and thundering around her, and such strange misty visions, that when she finally awoke, after a long interval of deeper and sounder slumber, she was incapable of separating the fact from the dream, more especially as head and limbs were still heavy, weary, and battered.  The strange roaring still sounded, and sometimes seemed to shake the bed.  Twilight was coming in at a curtained window, and showed a tiny chamber, with rafters overhead and thatch, a chest, a chair, and table.  There was a pallet on the floor, and Anne suspected that she had been wakened by the rising of its occupant.  Her watch was on the chair by her side, but it had not been wound, and the dim light did not increase, so that there was no guessing the time; and as the remembrance of her dreadful adventures made themselves clear, she realised with exceeding terror that she must be a prisoner, while the evening’s apparition relegated itself to the world of dreams.

Being kidnapped to be sent to the plantations was the