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

And as some figures were seen at the end of the road, he pricked the pony with the point of his sword so effectually that it bolted forward, quite beyond Anne’s power of checking it, and in a second or two its speed was quickened by shouts and shots behind.  Anne felt, but scarcely understood at the moment, a sharp pang and thrill in her left arm, as the steed whirled her round the corner of the lane and full into the midst of a party of gentlemen on horseback coming down from the castle.

“Help! help!” she cried.  “Down there.”

Attacks by highwaymen were not uncommon experiences, though scarcely at eight o’clock in the morning, or so near a garrison, but the horsemen, having already heard the shots, galloped forward.  Perhaps Anne could hardly have turned her pony, but it chose to follow the lead of its fellows, and in a few seconds they were in the midst of a scene of utter confusion.  Peregrine was grappling with Burford trying to drag him from his horse.  Both fell together, and as the auxiliaries came in sight there was another shot and two more men rode off headlong.

“Follow them!” said a commanding voice.  “What have we here?”

The two struggling figures both lay still for a moment or two, but as some of the riders drew them apart Peregrine sat up, though blood was streaming down his breast and arm.  “Sir,” he said, “I am Peregrine Oakshott, on whose account young Archfield lies under sentence of death.  If a magistrate will take my affidavit while I can make it, he will be safe.”

Then Anne heard a voice exclaiming: “Oakshott!  Nay—why, this is Mistress Woodford!  How came she here?” and she knew Sir Edmund Nutley.  Still it was Peregrine who answered—

“I captured her, in the hope of marrying her, but that cannot be—I have brought her back in all safety and honour.”

“Sir!  Sir, indeed he has been very good to me.  Pray let him be looked to.”

“Let him be carried to the castle,” said the commander of the party, a tall man sunburnt to a fiery red.  “Is the other alive?”

“Only stunned, my lord, I think and not much hurt,” was the answer of an attendant officer; “but here is a poor blackamoor dead.”

“Poor Hans!  Best so perhaps,” murmured Peregrine, as he was lifted.  Then in a voice of alarm, “Look to the lady, she is hurt.”

“It is nothing,” cried she.  “O Mr. Oakshott! that this should have happened!”

“My lord, this is the young gentlewoman I told you of, betrothed to poor young Archfield,” said Sir Edmund Nutley.

Lord Cutts, for it was indeed William’s favoured ‘Salamander,’ took off his plumed hat in salutation, and both gentlemen perceiving that she too was bleeding, she was solicitously invited to the castle, to be placed under the charge of the lieutenant-governor’s wife.  She found by this time that she was in a good deal of pain, and thankfully accepted the support Sir Edmund offered her, when he dismounted and walked beside her pony, while explanations passed between them.  The weather had prevented any communication with the mainland, so that he was totally ignorant of her capture, and did not know what had become of Mr. Fellowes.  He himself had been just starting with Lord Cutts, who was going to join the King for his next campaign, and they were to represent the case to the King.  Anne told him in return what she dared to say, but she was becoming so faint and dazed that she was in great fear of not saying what she ought; and indeed she could hardly speak, when after passing under the great gateway, she was lifted off her horse, at the door of the dwelling-house, and helped upstairs to a bedroom, where the wife of the lieutenant-governor, Mrs. Dudley, was very tender over her with essences and strong waters, and a surgeon of the suite almost immediately came to her.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, “you should be with Mr. Oakshott.”

The surgeon explained that Mr. Oakshott would have nothing done for him till he had fully made and signed his deposition, in case the power should afterwards be wanting.

So Anne submitted to the dressing of her hurt, which was only a flesh wound, the bone being happily untouched.  Both the surgeon and Mrs. Dudley urged her going to bed immediately, but she was unwilling to put herself out of reach; and indeed the dressing was scarcely finished before Sir Edmund Nutley knocked at the door to ask whether she could admit him.

“Lord Cutts is very desirous of speaking with you, if you are able,” he said.  “Here has this other fellow come round, declaring that Oakshott is the Pilpignon who was in the Barclay Plot, and besides, the prime leader of the Black Gang, of whom we have heard so much.”

“The traitor!” cried Anne.  “Poor Mr. Oakshott was resolved not to betray him!  How is he—Mr. Oakshott, I mean?”

“The surgeon has him in his hands.  We will send another from Portsmouth, but it looks like a bad case.  He made his confession bravely, though evidently in terrible suffering, seeming to keep up by force of will till he had totally exonerated Archfield and signed the deposition, and then he fainted, so that I thought him dead, but I fear he has more to go through.  Can you come to the hall, or shall I bring Lord Cutts to you?  We must hasten in starting that we may bring the news to Winchester to-night.”

Anne much preferred going to the hall, though she felt weak enough to be very glad to lean on Sir Edmund’s arm.

Lord Cutts, William’s high-spirited and daring officer, received her with the utmost courtesy and kindness, inquired after her hurt, and lamented having to trouble her, but said that though he would not detain her long, her testimony was important, and he begged to hear what had happened to her.

She gave the account of her capture and journey as shortly as she could.

“Whither was she taken?”

She paused.  “I promised Mr. Oakshott for the sake of others—” she said.

“You need have no scruples on that score,” said Lord Cutts.  “Burford hopes to get off for the murder by turning King’s evidence, and has told all.”

“Yes,” added Sir Edmund; “and poor Oakshott managed to say, ‘Tell her she need keep nothing back.  It is all up.’”

So Anne answered all the questions put to her, and they were the fewer both out of consideration for her condition, and because the governor wanted to take advantage of the tide to embark on the Medina.

In a very few hours the Archfields would have no more fears.  Anne longed to go with Sir Edmund, but she was in no state for a ride, and could not be a drag.  Sir Edmund said that either his wife would come to her at once and take her to Parkhurst, or else her uncle would be sure to come for her.  She would be the guest of Major and Mrs. Dudley, who lived in the castle, the actual Lord Warden only visiting it from time to time; and though Major Dudley was a stern man, both were very kind to her.

As a Whig, Major Dudley knew the Oakshott family, and was willing to extend his hospitality even to the long-lost Peregrine.  The Lord Warden, who was evidently very favourably impressed, saying that there was no need at present to treat him as a prisoner, but that every attention should be paid to him, as indeed he was evidently a dying man.  Burford and another of his associates were to be carried off, handcuffed, with the escort to Winchester jail, but before the departure, the soldiers who had been sent to the Chine returned baffled; the place was entirely deserted, and Barclay had escaped.

Anne allowed herself to be put to bed, being indeed completely exhausted, and scarcely able to think of anything but the one blessed certainty that Charles was safe, and freed from all stigma.  When, after the pain in her arm lulled enough to allow her to sleep, she had had a few hours’ rest, she inquired for Peregrine, she heard that for many hours the surgeon had been trying to extract the balls, and that they considered that the second shot had made his case hopeless, as it was in the body.  He was so much exhausted as to be almost unconscious; but the next morning, when Anne, against the persuasions of her hostess, had risen and been dressed, though still feeling weak and shaken, she received a message, begging her to do him the great kindness of visiting him.

Deadly pale, almost gray, as he looked, lying so propped with pillows as to relieve his shattered shoulder, his face had a strange look of peace, almost of relief, and he smiled at her as she entered.  He held out the hand he could use, and his first word was of inquiry after her hurt.

“That is nothing—it will soon be well; I wish it were the same with you.”

“Nay, I had rather cheat the hangman.  I told those doctors yesterday that they were giving themselves and me a great deal of useless trouble.  The villains, as I told you, could not believe we should not betray them, and meant to make an end of us all.  It’s best as it is.  My poor faithful Hans would never have had another happy moment.”

“But you must be better, Peregrine,” for his voice, though low, was steady.

“There’s no living with what I have here,” he said, laying his hand on his side; “and—I dreamt of your mother last night.”  With the words there was a look of gladness exceeding.

“Ah! the Evil Angel is gone!”

“I want your prayers that he may not come back at the last.”  Then, as she clasped her hands, and her lips moved, he added, “There were some things I could only say to you.  If they don’t treat my body as that of an attainted traitor, let me lie at your mother’s feet.  Don’t disturb the big Scot for me, but let me rest at last near her.  Then tell Robin ’tis not out of want of regard for him that I have not bequeathed Pilpignon to him, but he could do no good with a French estate full of Papists; and there’s a poor loyal fellow, living ruined at Paris—a Catholic too—with a wife and children half starved, to whom it will do more good.”

“I meant to ask—Shall a priest be sent for?  Surely Major Dudley would consent.”

“I don’t know.  I have not loved such priests lately.  I had rather die as near your mother as may be.”

“Miss Woodford,” said a voice at the door, and going to it, Anne found herself clasped in her uncle’s arms.  With very few words she led him to the bedside, and the first thing he said was “God bless you, Peregrine, for what you have done.”

Again Peregrine’s face lighted up, but fell again when he was told of the Portsmouth surgeon’s arrival at the same time, saying with one of his strange looks that it was odd sort of mercy to try to cure a man for Jack Ketch, but that he should baffle them yet.

“Do not set your mind on that,” said Dr. Woodford, “for Lord Cutts was so much pleased with you that he would do his utmost on your behalf.”

“Much good that would do me,” said poor Peregrine, setting his teeth as his tormentor came in.

Meantime, in Mrs. Dudley’s parlour, while that good lady was assisting the surgeon at the dressing, Anne and her uncle exchanged information.  Mr. Fellowes had arrived on foot at about noon, with his servant, having only been released after two hours by a traveller, and having been deprived both of money and horses, so that he could not proceed on his journey; besides that he had given the alarm about the abduction, and raised the hue and cry at the villages on his way.  There had been great distress, riding and searching, and the knowledge had been kept from poor Charles Archfield in his prison.  Mr. Fellowes had gone on to London as soon as possible, and Dr. Woodford had just returned from a fruitless attempt to trace his niece, when Sir Edmund Nutley and Lord Cutts appeared, with the joyful tidings, which, however, could be hardly understood.

Nothing, Dr. Woodford said, could be more thorough than the vindication of Charles Archfield.  Peregrine had fully stated that the young man had merely interposed to prevent the pursuit of Anne Woodford, that it was he himself who had made the first attack, and that his opponent had been forced to fight in self-defence.  Lord Cutts had not only shown his affidavit to Sir Philip, but had paid a visit to the Colonel himself in his prison, had complimented him highly on his services in the Imperial army, only regretting that