In the great hall at Harby a motley fellowship were assembled. If a stranger from a strange land, wafted thither on some winged Arabian carpet or flying horse of ebony, could have beheld the place and the company, he would have been hard put to it to find any reasonable explanation of what his eyes witnessed. In the middle of the hall some five singular figures stood on line: two tall, powerful lads with foolish faces, flagrant farm-hands; an old, bowed man with the snow of many winters on his hair; an impish lad who might have welcomed fourteen springs; and, finally, a rubicund, buxom woman with very red cheeks, very blue eyes, very brown hair, whose person suggested the kitchen a league off. Each of these persons handled a pike, carrying it at an angle different from that of the others, and each of them gazed with painfully attentive stare at the oaken table near the hearth upon which Hercules Halfman sat learnedly expounding the mysteries of the pike drill, while Thoroughgood stood between him and the awkward squad to illustrate in his own person and with the pike he carried the teachings of the instructor.
“Order your pikes,” Halfman commanded. “Advance your pikes. Shoulder your pikes.” Then, as these orders were obeyed deftly enough by Thoroughgood and with bewildering variety by the others, he continued, “Trail your pikes,” and then broke sharply off to expostulate with one of the farm-hands.
“Now, Timothy Garlinge, call you that trailing of a pike. Why, Gammer Satchell carries herself more soldierly.”
Timothy Garlinge grinned loutishly at this rebuke, but the fat dame whom Halfman’s flourish indicated seemed to dilate with satisfaction.
“It were shame,” she chuckled, “if a handy lass could not better a lobbish lad.”
The impish lad grinned derision.
“Ay,” he commented; “but an old fool’s best at her spits and griddles.”
A most unmilitary titter rippled along the rank but broke upon the rock of Mrs. Satchell’s anger. It might have seemed to many that it were impossible for the dame’s cheeks to be any redder, but Mistress Satchell’s visage showed that nature could still work miracles. With face a rich crimson from chin to forehead, she made to hurl herself upon the leering, fleering mannikin, but was caught in the unbreakable restraint of neighbor Clupp’s clasp.
“You limb, I’ll griddle you!” Mistress Satchell gasped, panting in the embracing arms. Halfman played the peace-maker with a sour smile.
“There, there, goody,” he expostulated; “youth will have its yelp.”
He turned with something of a yawn to Thoroughgood.
“Why a devil did you press gossip cook into the service?”
Thoroughgood shook his head protestingly.
“Nay, the virago volunteered,” he explained, with a look that seemed to supplement speech in the suggestion that it were best to let Mistress Satchell have her own way. This was evidently Mistress Satchell’s own view of the matter.
“Truly,” she exclaimed, “if my lady, being no more than a woman, is man enough to garrison her house against the Roundheads, she cannot deny me, that am no less than a woman, the right to handle a pike.”
Halfman, eying the dame’s assertive rotundities, thought that he would be indeed a quarrelsome fellow who should deny her evident femininity.
“You are a lovely logician,” he approved. “Enough.”
Then resuming his sententious tone of military command, he took up the task where he had left it off.
“Trail your pikes.”
The order was this time obeyed by the company with something approaching resemblance to the action of Thoroughgood, and Halfman went on.
“Cheek your pikes.”
Out of the confused cluttering of weapons which ensued, Timothy Garlinge emerged tremulous.
“Please, sir,” he gurgled, “I’ve forgotten how to cheek my pike.”
Halfman mastered exasperation bravely, as, taking a pike from the hands of Thoroughgood, he strove to illuminate rusticity.
“Use your pike thus, noddy,” he lessoned, good-naturedly, wielding the weapon with the skill of a practised pikeman. But the illustration was as much lost upon Garlinge as the original command, and in his attempt to imitate it he whirled his arm so recklessly that his companions scattered in dismay, and Halfman himself was fain to move a step or two backward to avoid the yokel’s meaningless sweeps.
“Have a care,” he cried. “If you work so wild you will damage your company.”
Mrs. Satchell, taking her post in the now restored line, shook her red fist at the delinquent.
“He had best not damage me,” she thundered, “or I’ll damage him to some purpose.”
“Silence in the ranks!” Halfman commanded, sharply. “Charge your pikes,” he ordered.
This order was obeyed indifferently and tamely enough by all save the egregious Mrs. Satchell, who delivered so lusty a thrust with her weapon that Halfman was obliged to skip back briskly to avoid bringing his breast acquainted with her steel.
“Nay, woman, warily!” he shouted, half laughing, half angry. “Play your play more tamely. I am no rascally Roundhead.”
Mrs. Satchell grounded her weapon and wiped the sweat from her shining forehead with the back of her red hand. There was a deadly earnest in her eyes, a deadly earnest in her speech.
“I cry you mercy,” she panted. “But I am a whole-hearted woman, and when you bid me charge I am all for charging.”
Halfman did his best to muffle amusement in a reproving frown. “Limit your zeal discreetly,” he urged, and was again the drill sergeant.
“Shoulder your pikes.”
The weapons followed the words with some show of decorum.
“Comport your pikes.”
Again the evolution was carried out with some degree of accuracy.
“Port your pikes.”
Here all followed the word of command fairly well with the exception of Garlinge’s fellow-rustic, who simply strove to repeat the order already executed. Halfman turned upon him sharply.
“Now, Clupp,” he cried, “will you never learn the difference between port and comport?”
Clupp, the fellow addressed, bashful at finding himself the object of attention, swayed backward and forward with his pikestaff for a pivot, laughing vacantly.
“No, sir,” he gaped, stupidly. Master Halfman’s lip wrinkled menacingly, and he reached his hand to his staff that lay upon the table.
“Indeed!” he said. “Then I must ask Master Crabtree Cudgel to lesson you.”
He advanced threateningly towards the terrified fellow, but long before he could reach him Dame Satchell had interposed her generous bulk between officer and private, not, however, as was soon shown, from any desire to intercede for the culprit.
“Leave him to me, sir,” she entreated, vehemently. “If you love me, leave him to me.”
And, indeed, her angry eyes shone warranty that the offender would fare badly at her hands. Halfman waved her aside with a gesture of impatience.
“Mistress Satchell,” he protested, “you are a valiant woman, but a rampant amazon.”
Dame Satchell’s cheeks glowed a deeper crimson, and her variable anger raged from Clupp to Halfman.
“Call me no names,” she squalled, “though you do call yourself captain, or I’ll call you the son of a—”
However Mistress Satchell intended to finish her objurgation it was not given to the company to learn, for Halfman tripped up her speech with a nimble interruption.
“The son of a pike, so please you,” he suggested, with a smile that softened the virago’s heart. “There, we have toiled enough to-day and it tests our tempers. Dismiss.”
This command he addressed to the whole of his amazing company; to Dame Satchell he gave a congee with a more than Spanish flourish: “To your pots and pans, valorous.”
Dame Satchell, mollified by his compliment, shrugged her fat shoulders. “’Tis little enough I have to put in them,” she grumbled. “Roast or boiled, boiled, fried, or larded, all’s one, all’s none. We’ll be mumbling shoe-leather soon.”
She sighed heavily at the thought, and moved slowly towards the door at the end of the hall beneath the gallery. Halfman, unheeding her, had turned to the table and was intently poring over the large map that lay there together with a loaded pistol. Thoroughgood gave orders to the men.
“Garlinge and Clupp, go scour the pikes. Tom Cropper, find something to keep you out of mischief. As for you, Gaffer Shard, you may rest awhile.”
The old man shook his frosty head vigorously. “Nay, nay,” he piped, “I need no rest. My old bones are loyal and cannot tire in a good cause. God save the King.”
He gave a shrill cheer which was echoed loudly by men and boy, and so cheering they tramped out of the hall in the trail of Mother Satchell, Garlinge staggering under the load of pikes which the lad had officiously foisted on to his shoulder, Clupp laughing vacantly after his manner, and steadfast old Shard waving his red cap and chirping his shrill huzzas.
When they had all gone and the hall was quiet, Thoroughgood came slowly down with a puzzled frown on his honest, weather-beaten face to where Halfman humped over his map.
“Where’s the good of drilling clowns and cooks?” he asked, surlily. He talked like one thoroughly weary, but his mood of weariness seemed to melt before the sunshine of Halfman’s smile as he lifted his head from the map.
“Where’s the harm?” he countered. “’Twas my lady’s idea to keep their spirits up, and, by God! it was a good thought. She knows how it heartens folk to play a great part in a great business: keeps them from feeling the fingers of famine in their inwards, keeps them from whining, repining, declining, what you will. But I own I did not count on the presence of Gammer Cook in the by-play.”
“I could not see why she should be kept out of the mummery,” Thoroughgood responded, “if she had a mind for the masking.”
“Perhaps you are right,” Halfman answered, meditatively. “My lady’s example would make a Hippolyta of any housemaid of them all.”
“I do not know what it would make of them,” Thoroughgood answered; “but I know this, that it matters very little now.”
Halfman swung round on his seat and stared at him curiously.
“Why?” he asked.
“Now that this truce is called,” Thoroughgood answered, “that the Roundhead captain may have speech with my lady.”
“Why, what then?” questioned Halfman, with his eyes so fixed on Thoroughgood’s that Thoroughgood, dogged as he was, averted his gaze.
“Naught’s left but surrender,” he grunted, between his teeth. The words came thickly, but Halfman heard them clearly. He raised his right hand for a moment as if he had a thought to strike his companion, but then, changing his temper, he let it fall idly upon his knee as he surveyed Thoroughgood with a look that half disdained, half pitied.
“My lady will never surrender,” he said, quietly, with the quiet of a man who enunciates a mathematical axiom. “You know that well enough.”
Thoroughgood shrugged plaintive, protesting shoulders.
“We’ve stood this siege for many days,” he muttered. “Food is running out; powder is running out. Even the Lady Brilliana cannot work miracles.”
Halfman rose to his feet. His eyes were shining and he pressed his clinched hands to his breast like a man in adoration.
“The Lady Brilliana can work miracles, does work miracles daily. Is it no miracle that she has held this castle all these hours and days against this rebel leaguer? Is it no miracle that she has poured the spirit of chivalry into scullions and farm-hands and cook-wenches so that not a Jack or Jill of them but would lose bright life blithely for her and the King and God? Is it not a miracle that she has transmuted, by a change more amazing than anything Master Ovid hath recorded in his Metamorphoses, a villanous old land-devil and sea-devil like myself into a passionate partisan? But what of me? God bless her! She is my lady-angel, and her will is my will to the end of the chapter.”
He dropped in his chair again as if exhausted by the vehemence of his words and the emotion which prompted them. Thoroughgood contemplated him sourly.
“You prate like a play-actor,” he snarled. Halfman’s whole being flashed into activity again. He was no more a sentimentalist but now a roaring ranter.
“Because I was a play-actor once,” he shouted, “when I was a sweet-and-twenty youngling.”
Thoroughgood eyed Halfman with a sudden air of distrust.
“You never told me you were a play-actor,” he growled. “You spoke only of soldiering.”
Halfman laughed flagrantly in his face.
“Godamercy, man, there has been scant time to tell you my life’s story. We have had other cats to whip. Yes, I was a play-actor once, and played for great poets, for men whose names have never tickled your ears. But the owl-public would have none of me, and, owllike, hooted me off the boards. But I’ve had my revenge of them. I’ve played a devil’s part on the devil’s stage for thirty red years. Nune Plaudite.”
The Latin tag dropped dead at the porches of John Thoroughgood’s ears, but those ears pricked at part of Halfman’s declamation.
“What kind of parts?” he asked, drawing a little nearer to the soldier of fortune, whose experiences fascinated his inexperience.
Halfman shrugged his shoulders and favored honest Thoroughgood with a bantering, quizzical smile.
“All kinds of parts,” he answered. “How does the old puzzle run? Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, ploughboy, gentleman, thief. I think I have played all those parts, and others, too. Fling beggar and pirate into the dish. But I tell you this, honest John, I have never played a part so dear to me as that of captain to this divine commander. I thank my extravagant stars that steered me home to serve her.”
“You cannot sing her praises too sweetly for my ears,” Thoroughgood answered. “But there is an end to all things, and it looks to me as if we were mighty near to an end of the siege of Harby. Why else should there be a truce called that the Roundhead captain may have speech with my lady.”
“Honest John Thoroughgood,” Halfman answered, with great composure, “you are not so wise as you think. This Roundhead captain has sent us hither the most passionate pleadings to be admitted to parley. Why deny him? It will advantage him no jot, but it is possible we may learn from the leakage of his lips something at least of what is going on in the world.”
“What is there to learn?” asked Thoroughgood. Halfman shook his head reprovingly.
“Why, for my part, I should like to learn why in all this great gap of time nothing has been done to help one side or the other. If the gentry of Harby have made no effort to relieve us, neither, on the other hand, has our leaguer been augmented by any reinforcements. If my lady has been surprised that Sir Blaise Mickleton has made no show of coming to her succor, I, for my part, am woundily surprised that the Cropheads of Cambridge have sent no further levies for our undoing.”
“Why, for that matter—” Thoroughgood began, and then suddenly broke off. “Here comes my lady,” he said, turning and standing in an attitude of respectful attention.
Halfman had known of her coming before his companion spoke. The Lady Brilliana had come out on to the gallery from the door near the head of the stairway, and Halfman was conscious of her presence before he lifted his eyes and looked at her. She was not habited now, as on the day when he first beheld her, in her riding-robe of green, but in a simple house-gown chosen for the ease and freedom it allowed to a great lady who had suddenly found that she had much to do. The color of the stuff, a crimson, as being a royal, loyal color, well became her fine skin and her dark curls and her bright, imperious eyes. She was followed by her serving-woman, Tiffany, a merry girl that Thoroughgood adored, and one that would in days gone over have been likely to tickle the easy whimsies of Halfman. Now he had no eyes, no thoughts, save for her mistress, the lass unparalleled.
Brilliana was speaking to Tiffany even as she entered the gallery.
“Strip more lint, Tiffany,” she ordered; “and bid Andrew be brisk with the charcoal.”
Her voice was as buoyant as the song of a free bird, and her step on the stair as light as if there were no such thing in the world as a leaguer. Tiffany crossed the gallery and disappeared through the opposite door. Brilliana, as she descended the stair, diverted her speech to Thoroughgood.
“John Thoroughgood, I saw from the lattice our envoys bringing the Parliament man down the elm walk. To them at once. They must not unhood their hawk till he come to our presence.”
When Thoroughgood had left the hall and Brilliana came to the floor, Halfman questioned her, very respectfully, but still with the air of one who has earned the friendly right to put questions.
“Why do you see this black-jack?” he asked. Brilliana smiled at him as radiantly as if the holding of a house against armed enemies was the properest, pleasantest business imaginable.
“With the littlest good-will in the world, I promise you,” she answered. “But, you know, he so plagued for the parley that it was easier to try him than deny him. Besides, good friend and captain, I learn from what I read in Master Froissart’s Chronicles that it were neither customary nor courteous to deny conference to a supplicating enemy.”
Halfman adored her for her courage, for her calm assumption of success.
“How if he but come to spy out our strategies?” he asked. “The leanness of our larder? Our empty bandoliers?”
Brilliana beamed back at him with her bewildering confidence.
“I have thought of that, too,” she admitted. “But he shall not find us at our wit’s-end. Seek Simon Butler, friend captain. Though our cellars are near empty he will make shift to find you some full flagons. Bring hither a bunch of your subalterns, the rosiest, the most jovial, if any still carry such colors and boast such spirit; let them gather in the banqueting-hall, where, with such wit as French wine can give, let them sing as if they were merry and well fed. Our sanctimonious spy-out-the-nakedness-of-the-land must think we are well victualled, he must think we are well mannered.”
Halfman made her a sweeping reverence which was not without its play-actor’s grace, though its honesty might have pardoned a greater awkwardness.
“We are well womaned, lady,” he asseverated, “with you for our leader. By sea and by land I have served some great captains, but never one greater than you for constancy and manly valor.”
Brilliana’s bright face took a swift look of gravity and she gave a little sigh.
“The King’s cause,” she said, soberly, “might turn a child into a champion.”
The steady loyalty that made her words at once a psalm and a battle-cry bade Halfman’s pulses tingle. Who could be found unfaithful where this fair maid was so faithful? Yet he remembered their isolation and the memory made him speak.
“I marvel that none of your neighbors have tried to lend us a hand?”
“How could they?” Brilliana asked, astonished. “The brave are with the King at Shrewsbury; the stay-at-homes are not fighters.”
“Hum,” commented Halfman. “What of Master Paul Hungerford?”
Brilliana shrugged her shoulders.
“A miserly daw, who would not risk a crown to save the crown.”
Halfman questioned again.
“What of Master Peter Rainham?”
Brilliana shrugged again.
“A dull, sullen skinflint waiting on event.”
Halfman’s inventory was not complete.
“You have yet a third neighbor,” he said, “and, as I heard, a prodigal in protestation. What of Sir Blaise Mickleton?”
Brilliana’s lips twitched with a derisive smile.
“Sir Blaise, honest gentleman, loves good cheer and good ease. I think he would not quit the board if Armageddon were towards. He will be for eating, he will be for drinking, he will be for sleeping, and in the mean time God’s chosen gentlemen have learned the value of living so long as to grant them a death for their King.”
Her voice had risen to a cry of defiance, but now it dropped again to its former note of bantering irony.
“What a wonderful world it is which can hold at once such men as my cousin Randolph or you or Rufus Quaryll and these hangbacks who shame Harby. These three are professed my very good suitors, but they have made no move to our help. Well, let them hang for a tray of knaves. We need them not. We know that the King’s cause must triumph and so we are wise to be blithe.”
Halfman’s head was swinging with pleasure. She had counted him in so glibly with the chosen ones, with the servants of God and the King. He was very sure now that his watch-word had always been “God and the King.”
“The King’s cause must triumph,” he echoed, his face shining with loyal confidence.
“How we shall all smile a year hence,” Brilliana answered, “to think that such pitiful rebels vexed us. But for the moment there is one of these same rebels to be faced—and to be fooled. About our plan, good captain.”
Halfman saluted her more enthusiastically than he had ever saluted male commander.
“My general,” he vowed, “he shall think these walls hold an army of wassaillers.”
He turned on his heel and marched briskly out of the hall. Brilliana looked after him, with the bright smile on her face, till the door of the banqueting-hall closed behind him; then the smile slowly faded from her face.
“I would my spirits were as blithe as my speech,” she thought, as she went to the table and bent over it, looking at the open map which Halfman had been studying.
“What is going on in England, the King’s England, little England, that should not be big enough to have any room for traitors?”
She put her finger on the spot where Harby figured on the sheet.
“Here,” she mused, “we have been sundered from the world for all these days by this Roundhead leaguer, hearing no outside news but the ring of rebel shots and the sound of rebel voices. What has happened? What is happening? When we began the King was at Shrewsbury and the Parliament ruled London. What has come to the Parliament since? What has come to the King? Well, Loyalty House will carry the King’s flag so long as one stone tops another. We will live as long as we can for his Majesty, and then die for him gamely.”
A sound of heavy steps disturbed her meditations. She stood up from her map, blinked down the tears that tried to rise, and turned to face new fortune.
“Here is our enemy,” she said to herself, and she forced back the confident color to her cheeks, the confident light to her eyes. The door from the park opened, and John Thoroughgood entered the room, holding by the hand a man in the staid habit of a Puritan soldier, whose eyes were muffled by a folded scarf of silk. Blindfolded though he was, the Puritan followed his guide with a steady and resolute step.
“Halt!” cried Thoroughgood. The stranger stood quietly as if on parade, while Thoroughgood saluted his mistress.
“Unhood your hawk,” Brilliana ordered. Thoroughgood, obedient, unpicked the knot of the handkerchief, revealing his companion’s face. Brilliana observed with a hostile curiosity a tallish, well-set, comely man of about thirty years of age, whose smooth, well-featured face asserted high breeding and a gravity which deepened into melancholy in the dark expressive eyes and lightened into lines of humor about the fine, firm mouth. For a moment, with the removal of the muffle, he seemed dazzled by the change from dark to light; then, as command of his vision returned, he observed Brilliana and made her a courteous salutation which she returned coldly. She made a gesture of dismissal to Thoroughgood, who went out, and the Lady of Loyalty was left alone with her enemy.
There was a moment’s silence as the pair faced each other, the man quietly discreet, the woman openly scornful. She was under the same roof with a rebel in arms, and the thought sickened her. She broke the silence.
“You petitioned to see me.” With the sound of her voice she found new vehemence, new indignation. “Do your rebels offer unconditional surrender?”
The circumstances of the astonishing question brought for the moment a slight smile to the grave face of the Parliament man.
“It was scarcely with that thought,” he answered, “that I sought for a parley.”
Though the man’s smile had been short-lived, Brilliana had seen it and loathed him for it. Though the man’s manner was suave, it seemed to wear the suavity of success and she loathed him for that, too.
“We waste time,” she cried, impatiently, “with any other business than your swift submission.”
Then as she saw him make an amiably protesting gesture she raged at him with a rising voice.
“Oh, if you knew how hard it is for me to stand in the same room with a renegade traitor you would, if such as you remember courtesy, be brief in your errand.”
The man showed no consciousness of the insult in her words and in her manner save than by a courteous inclination of the head and a few words of quiet speech.
“Much may be pardoned to so brave a lady.”
Brilliana struck her hand angrily upon the table once and again.
“For God’s sake do not praise me!” she almost screamed, “or I shall hate myself. Your errand, your errand, your errand!”
The enemy was provokingly imperturbable.
“You have a high spirit,” he said, “that must compel admiration from all. That is why I would persuade you to wisdom. I came hither from Cambridge by order of Colonel Cromwell.”
Brilliana’s lips tightened at the sound of the name which the envoy pronounced with so much reverence.
“The rebel member for Cambridge,” she sneered—“the mutinous brewer. Are you a vassal of the man of beer?”
There was a quiet note of protest in the reply of the envoy.
“Colonel Cromwell is not a brewer, though he would be no worse a man if he were. I am honored in his friendship, in his service. He is a great man and a great Englishman.”
“And what,” Brilliana asked, “has this great man to do with Harby that he sends you here?”
“He sends me here,” the Puritan answered, “to haul down your flag.”
“That you shall never do,” Brilliana answered, steadily, “while there is a living soul in Harby.”
The Puritan protested with appealing hands.
“You are in the last straits for lack of food, for lack of fuel, for lack of powder.”
Brilliana made a passionate gesture of denial.
“You are as ignorant as insolent,” she asserted. “Loyalty House lacks neither provisions nor munitions of war.”
There was a kind of respectful pity in the stranger’s face as he watched the wild, bright girl and hearkened to the vain, brave words.
“Nay, now—” he began, out of the consciousness of his own truer knowledge, but what he would have said was furiously interrupted by a volume of strange sounds from the adjoining banqueting-hall. There was a rattle and clink as of many pewter mugs banged lustily upon an oaken table; there was a shrill explosion of laughter, the work of many merry voices; there was the grinding noise of heavy chairs pushed back across the floor for the greater ease of their occupants; there was a tapping as of pipe-bowls on the board, and then over all the mingled din rose a voice, which Brilliana knew for the voice of Halfman, ringing out a resonant appeal.
“The King’s health, friends, to begin with.”
All the noises that had died down to allow Halfman a hearing began again with fresh vigor. It was obvious to the most unsophisticated listener that here was the fag end of a feast and the moment for the genial giving of toasts. Many voices swelled a loyal chorus of “The King, the King!” and had the great doors of the banqueting-hall been no other than bright glass it would have been scarce easier for the man and woman in the great hall to realize what was happening, the revellers rising to their feet, the drinking-vessels lifted high in air with loyal vociferations, and then the silence, eloquent of tilted mugs and the running of welcome liquor down the channels of thirsty throats. This silence was broken by some one calling for a song, to which call he who had proposed the King’s health answered instantly and with evident satisfaction. His rich if somewhat rough voice came booming through the partitions, carolling a ballad to which the Puritan listened with a perfectly unmoved countenance, while the Lady Brilliana’s eager face expressed every signal of the liveliest delight.
This was the song that came across the threshold:
A yell of pleasure followed this verse, and a tuneless chorus thundered the refrain, “Oh, such a knave’s a Roundhead,” with the most evident relish for the sentiments of the song. Brilliana looked with some impatience at the unruffled face of her adversary, and when the immediate clamor dwindled she addressed him, sarcastically:
“These revellers,” she said, “would not seem to be at the last extremity. But their festival must not deafen our conference.”
She advanced to the door of the banqueting-room and struck against it with her hand. On the instant silence she opened the door a little way and spoke through softly, as if gently chiding those within.
“Be merry more gently, friends. Sure, I cannot hear the gentleman speak. Though,” she added, reflectively, as she closed the door and returned again to the table she had quitted—“though God knows he talks big enough.”
The Puritan clapped his palms together as if in applause, an action that somewhat amazed her in him, while a kindly humor kindled in his eyes.
“Bravely staged, bravely played,” he admitted, while he shook his head. “But it will not serve your turn, for it may not deceive me. I had a message this morning from my Lord Essex. There has been hot fighting; Heaven has given us the victory; the King’s cause is wellnigh lost at the first push.”
Brilliana felt her heart drumming against her stays, but she turned a defiant face on the news-monger.
“I do not believe you,” she answered. “The King’s cause will always win.”
The soldier took no notice of her denial; he felt too sure of his fact to hold other than pity for the leaguered lady. He quietly added:
“My Lord Essex advises me further that reinforcements are marching to me well equipped with artillery against which even these gallant walls are worthless. Be warned, be wise. You cannot hope to hold out longer. For pity’s sake, yield to the Parliament.”
Brilliana waved his pleas away with a dainty, impatient flourish.
“You chatter republican vainly. I have store of powder. I will blow this old hall heaven high when I can no longer hold it for the King.”
Her visitor looked at her sadly, made as if to speak, paused, and then appeared to force himself to reluctant utterance.
“Lady,” he said, slowly, “though we be opponents, we share the same blood. Let a kinsman entreat you to reason.”
If the civil-spoken stranger had struck her in the face with his glove Brilliana could not have been more astonished or angered. She moved a little nearer to him, interrogation in her shining eyes and on her angry cheeks.
“Are you mad?” she gasped. “How could such a thing as you be my kinsman?”
She had taunted him again and again during their brief interview and he had shown no sign of displeasure. He showed no sign of displeasure now, answering her with simple dignity.
“Very simply. A lady of your race, your grandsire’s sister, married a poor gentleman of my name and was my father’s mother.”
Brilliana drew back a little as if she had indeed received a blow. Involuntarily, she put up her hand to her eyes as if to shut out the sight of this importunate fellow.
“I have heard something of that tale,” she whispered, “but dimly, for we in Harby do not care to speak of it. When my grandsire’s sister shamed her family by wedding with a Puritan her people blotted her from their memory. You will not find her picture on the walls of Harby.”
“The loss is Harby’s,” the soldier answered, “for I believe she was as fair as she was good. She married an honest gentleman named Cloud, whose honesty compelled him to profess the faith he believed in. My name is Evander Cloud.”
He waited for a moment as if he expected her to speak, but she uttered no word, only faced him rigidly with hatred in her gaze.
Seeing her silent, he resumed:
“It was this sad kinship pushed me to a parley wherein, perhaps, I have something strained my strict duty. But the voice of our common blood cried out in me to urge you to reason. You have done all that woman, all that man could do. Yield now, while I can still offer you terms, and your garrison shall march out with all the honors of war, drums beating, matches burning, colors flying.”
He was very earnest in his appeal, and Brilliana heard him to the end in silence, with her clinched hands pressed against her bosom. Then she turned fiercely upon him and her voice was bitter.
“Sir,” she cried, “if I hated you before for a detested rebel, think how I hate you now, if you be, even in so base a way, my kinsman.”
She turned away from him, lifting her clasped hands as if in supplication.
“Oh, Heaven, to think that a disloyal, hypocritical, canting Puritan could brag to my face that he carries one drop of our loyal blood in his false heart.”
She turned to him again with new fury.
“You are doubly a traitor now, and if you are wise you will keep out of my power, for my heart aches with its hate of you. Go! Five minutes left of your truce gives you just time to return to your rebels. If you overlinger in our lines but one minute you are no longer an envoy: you are an enemy and a spy and shall swing for it.”
She reached out her hand to strike the bell upon the table, while Evander Cloud, still impassive, paid a salutation to his unwilling hostess and made a motion to depart. But on the instant both were chilled into immobility by an amazing interruption. Brilliana’s hand never touched the bell; Evander’s hand never found the handle of the door. For between the beginning and the end of their action came a sudden rattle of musketry, distant but deafening, followed on the instant by a whirlwind of furious cries and noise.
The man and the woman glared at each other, each in swift suspicion of treason. The Lady of Harby was the quickest to act upon impulse. She snatched up the pistol that lay upon the table and levelled it with a steady hand at Evander.
“Do you use your trust to betray us?” she shrilled. “It shall not save you.”
Even a less-experienced soldier could have seen from the sure way in which Brilliana handled her weapon that his life was in real peril, but he paid no more heed to her menace than if she was threatening him with her glove or her fan.
“Fighting outside!” he cried. Turning to the woman he asked, with a fierceness that contrasted with his previous calm, “Who is the traitor here?”
His sword was naked in his hand as he spoke and he made a rush for the door. But before he could reach it it was flung open in his face and Halfman rushed in, waving his drawn sword, and followed by Thoroughgood carrying a gun and Garlinge and Clupp armed with pikes.
Inevitably bewildered by the sudden turn in the tide of events, Evander Cloud gave ground for a moment before the onrush, while Halfman, staggering like a drunken man, reeled forward towards Brilliana, shrieking:
“There is fighting in the rebel lines. Help has come at last.”
Whatever joy the tidings gave to Brilliana, she wasted no words from the needs of the moment. Pointing to Evander where he stood, irresolute in surprise, she commanded, “Secure that man!”
Evander’s resolution returned to him with the sound of her voice, but he was one against too many. While he tried to engage the blade of Halfman, a swinging blow from the pike of Garlinge knocked his weapon out of his hand, and in another moment he was gripped in the grasp of the two young country giants, while Thoroughgood covered him with his musketoon.
“This is treachery,” he gasped; but no one paid any attention to his protest. Halfman, convinced that the Puritan was a sure prisoner, swaggered up to Brilliana with all the arrogance of a stage herald.
“Dear lord,” he shouted, “dear lady, a company of Cavaliers are galloping up the avenue, a-shouting like devils for the King.”
He was flushed and drunk with exhilaration; he could speak no more; the timely episode tickled his tired brain like wine; he caught at the table for support and muttered inarticulately. Thoroughgood, who had secured Evander’s fallen sword, interpolated a word of explanation.
“It is Sir Rufus, my lady—Sir Rufus and his friends.”
The interruption had been so sudden, the things that had chanced had passed so swiftly, that Brilliana still stood as she had stood when she gave the command to secure Evander. But now all her being seemed alive with a new life.
“I hear them; I hear them!” she cried, exultantly. And, indeed, the sounds came very clearly now of fierce young voices shouting for the King.
“The King! The King!” Brilliana cried, in an ecstasy, and as the loyal syllables died on her lips there came a trampling of near feet, and then through the yawning doorway rushed a covey of young gentlemen waving their drawn swords and yelling their cry, “The King! The King!” As they flooded into the room, bright foam on the wave of victorious loyalty, Brilliana knew them all. Sir Rufus Quaryll, her neighbor and hot lover; the Lord Fawley, who had vainly wooed her for wife; Sir John Radlett, who had the sense to love her and the sense to hold his tongue; Captain Bardon, the bold and bluff; and young Lord Richard Ingrow, with the delicate, girlish face that masked the amazing rake. She seemed to see them as in some golden dream, seemed to hear a-down the vistas of dreams the echoes of their gallant cries of “God save the King!” Then as the new-comers knelt before her she knew that all was true.
“God bless you, gentlemen!” she cried, from a full heart. “You are very well come.”
Rufus Quaryll, neighbor and wooer, was the first to speak, looking up at her with rapture in his eyes of reddish brown.
“Imperial lady, the siege of Harby is raised.”
Brilliana flung out her hands to him, and as he caught and kissed them she raised him to his feet.
“Your news is music,” she said, and her voice was as blithe as a song.
“We are heralds of victory,” Rufus said, as he stood and looked into her eyes.
My Lord Fawley rose from his knees with a whoop.
“We have pelted the rebels from Edgehill,” he shouted. Sir John Radlett caught him up. “We banged them finely,” he trumpeted. Young Ingrow, with a flush on his fine cheeks, sang out a shrill “Hurrah for Prince Rupert!” and bluff Bardon rubbed his hands as he chuckled, “He brushed them into dust.”
All the Cavaliers spoke rapidly and eagerly, flinging their phrases each on top of the other. Rufus summed up all in a single splendid sentence.
“The road lies plain to London.”
“Heaven be praised,” Brilliana ejaculated, and then, wonder treading on the heels of thankfulness, she questioned, “How came you here so timely?”
My Lord Fawley broke into a boisterous laugh which seemed to rattle among the rafters.
“Oh, Lord, the best jest in the world,” he bellowed. Bardon clapped a hand on lad Ingrow’s shoulder.
“Our Ingrow writes a clerky hand,” he asserted. Ingrow, stabbing at Bardon’s stout ribs with slender fingers, riposted:
“And our Bardon has a merry invention.”
Brilliana looked commands and entreaties at the row of jolly, laughing faces.
“Do not play the sphinx with me,” she pleaded. Rufus immediately made himself interpreter of the mirth.
“Why, between us we forged a letter from my lord high damnable traitor Essex to your enemy here, advising him of reinforcements, assuring him of the King’s defeat.”
“Yes,” chirruped the Lord Fawley, “and the gull-gaby swallowed the bait.”
“When we rode up but now,” Radlett interposed, “his rascals received us with open arms.”
Rufus smiled sardonically as he completed the story of the entrapment.
“They took us for Essex men because of our orange-tawny scarves, but they found out when too late that we were right-tight Cavalier lads and no crop-eared curmudgeons. Why, we were in the thick of them with sword and pistol before they had stayed from snuffling their psalms of welcome.”
Brilliana held out her hand again for her cousin’s hand and clasped it manfully.
“How rich is the ring of victory in your loyal voice,” she sighed. “My last public news was of the King’s stay at Shrewsbury. Then these curmudgeons raced hot-foot from Cambridge to pull down my flag. But ‘This is Loyalty House,’ says I, and ‘Go to the devil,’ says I—forgive me, sirs, if I raged unmaidenly—and I slammed the door in their sour faces. Then came such a tintamar, rebels firing on us, we firing on rebels, and so in such noise and thunder we have been eclipsed out of the world these weary days.”
“Never were such days better lived through since the world began,” said Rufus. “You do well to call this Loyalty House which has held out so well against the King’s enemies.”
Brilliana now turned to where Halfman stood apart, his hands resting on the hilt of his sword, and the shadow of a frown on his forehead as he eyed the babbling gallants.
“That Loyalty House should hold out so long as it could was from the first my purpose,” she said. “But that it was able to hold out so long as it did was greatly due to the courage and the counsels of this brave gentleman.”
As she spoke she pointed to Halfman, whose dark face flushed with pleasure as he gave back the stares of the astonished Cavaliers who up to now had left him unnoticed.
“Gentles,” she went on, “this is Captain Halfman, who warned me of my danger, who helped me in my peril with his soldier’s knowledge and his soldier’s sword, and who was of my own mind rather to die than to surrender Harby.”
Halfman strode forward with a studied grace. He felt like Faulconbridge; he felt like Harry at Agincourt; he felt like Coriolanus; he felt exceedingly happy.
“Gallants,” he said, with a magnificent salutation, “to have served this lady makes a man know how it had seemed to serve Alexander or Cæsar. Wherefore, a soldier of good-fortune salutes you.”
Rufus, who had watched him with something of a sullen eye from the moment of Brilliana’s introduction, now answered him with a clearer countenance.
“We greet you, sir,” he said, gravely, “with great gratitude and great envy, for, indeed, there is none among us who would not have given his life to be lieutenant to this lady.” He accorded the beaming Halfman a military salute, and then, turning to Brilliana, continued:
“Bright Brilliana, your servants and swains yearned to ride to your help when we heard of your peril, but we could not leave the King in the beginning of his enterprise. He gave us glad leave after the victory. ‘Tell the brave lady,’ he said, ‘she shall be our viceroy in Oxfordshire.’”
Brilliana’s cheeks blazed with pleasure. “Oh, the dear man,” she cried, with clasped hands of rapture. But there was more to come.
“I think,” continued Rufus, “it is more than likely that his Majesty will visit Harby—I should say Loyalty House—ere he rides to London.”
Brilliana thrilled with pride—with pleasure. The air about her seemed to swoon with music, to be sweet as roses, to be spangled with golden motes.