Sweet Mace: A Sussex Legend of the Iron Times

“Sixty-four,” growled Wat quietly, as he took out his flint and steel and screwed up his grim weather-beaten face.

“Then it’s a disgrace to you!”

“Disgrace? What’s being sixty-four got to do with it?”

“Why you’re an old man, sir!”

“Old man? Not I, captain. I’m as young as ever I was, and as fond of a pretty girl. I’m not old; and, if I was, I get fonder of ’em every year I live.”

“It is disgraceful, sir!” cried Gil, angrily. “You ought to be thinking of your coffin instead of pretty girls.”

That touched Wat home, and he sprang to his feet with the activity of a boy.

“No, I oughtn’t, skipper,” he cried, excitedly. “And, look here, don’t you say that there terrifying word to me again – I hate it. When it’s all over, if you don’t have me dropped overboard, just as I am, at sea, or even here at home in the little river, I’ll come back and haunt you. Coffin, indeed! Talk about such trade as that! Just as if I hadn’t sailed round the world like a man.”

He reseated himself, and began once more to use his flint and steel, but this time viciously.

“Once for all then, Wat, I will not have this sort of thing here. A man of your years hanging about after that great ugly dairy wench.”

“Who did?” cried Wat sharply. “Nay, captain, never.”

“Have I been mistaken, then?” cried Gil, eagerly. “Stop, though – you don’t mean to say that you have been casting your ancient eyes on Janet?”

“Why not?” cried Wat, leaping up once more. “She’s as pretty a creature as ever I set my ancient eyes, as you call ’em, on.”

“Why, man, she’s eighteen, and you are sixty-four.”

“All the better,” cried Wat. “Janet it is, and I’m going to wed her.”

“Does she know it?”

“Not quite, captain, not yet. Look ye here, skipper, my poor old mother had a plum grow on a tree by the cottage wall, and when I was a boy I meant to have that plum. Did I go and pick it right off and eat it there and then? Nay, I set my eyes on that plum while it was young and green, and saw it grow day by day rounder and redder, and covered with soft down and riper purple, and more rich and plump, and at last, when I picked that plum, I had a hundred times more ’joyment than if I’d plucked it when I saw it first. That’s what I’m doing with little Janet, and that’s what Master Peasegood calls a parabole.”

Gil felt that he might just as well argue with a rock as with his rugged old follower, so he changed the subject.

“When will the Golden Fleece be fit for sea again?”

“It’ll be a month before they’ve got in the new keel, captain, and then she’s got to be well overhauled.”

“It will be two months, then, before we can load up?”

“Ay, all that,” was the reply. “Go on getting in the meal and bacon. Have it ready for placing in store. We must have everything ready there for putting on board.”

“Ay, ay, skipper.”

“Keep the men from going near. Let there be no hanging about the valley on any pretence. See to that with those two last lads.”

“Ay,” growled Wat. “The others can be trusted, of course.”

Gil nodded, and walked away, while Wat went on striking a light.

“He’s half afraid I should get in his way,” growled the old fellow, “but he needn’t be. Much better be afraid of some one finding out the store. There’s a new man come to live here, and a new cottage built. The place is getting too thick with people, and if we don’t mind we shall be found out. Who’s yonder?” he continued, shading his eyes, and gazing through the wood. “Churr and Mother Goodhugh. An’ if we’re ever found out, that Churr’s the man who will do it. And if – if – if – he – does – the captain – will – hang – him – at – th’ yard-arm – sure – as – he’s – a – sinful – soul – hah!”

There was a puff in lighting the pipe between each of these last words, ending with an expiration, after which Wat Kilby leaned back on the moss, half-closed his eyes, and lay watching the couple he had named as they stood talking in the wood.

How Mistress Anne sought a Spell

The days passed swiftly on in the lonely little valley where Jeremiah Cobbe had cast his lot. The trees flourished, and the wondrous variety of wild-flowers, for which that part of the Sussex weald has always been famed, succeeded each other, and made gay the banks and shaughs, while beneath the spreading oaks and beeches in the great forest the verdant carpet was always bright. The many streamlets went on carving their way through the yellow sandrock, and fell in a thousand tiny cascades, whose soft spray moistened the fronds of the luxuriant ferns. All was beautiful, for nature seemed there never to resent the fact that the ironmaster’s workers delved ore from the hill-side, cut down the woods and burned them to charcoal, and then melted the iron to run in orange streams in the deftly-formed moulds for howitzer, culverin, or simple gun. There had been accidents, when, with a sudden roar, some powder-shed had blown up, blasting the herbage and leaves around; but a few showers and the bright hot sun soon restored all to its pristine state, and, embowered in trees, the works sent up their charcoal fumes without poisoning the air, or doing more harm than the saline breezes that swept over the hills from off the sea.

Mistress Anne Beckley, with Sir Thomas, and at times with Dame Beckley herself, was a constant attendant at the Pool with simples and wonderful decoctions of camomile, agrimony, balm, and bitter cress, all of which the dame declared were certain to subdue the fever in Sir Mark’s brain; but somehow they did not, and he lingered on at the Pool-house, listening to the nightingales, gathering wild-flowers, refusing to see a leech, and declaring that he only wanted time.

He was not confined to his bed, but lounged on couch and easy chair, or walked slowly in the garden, languid and pale, with his arm supported in a sling, receiving with a patient smile the sympathising glances of Mistress Anne, who fawned upon him and tenderly watched his every change.

But he could not leave the Pool-house, and shook his head sadly when, urged by his daughter, Sir Thomas protested that the invalid ought to be brought back to the Moat.

Dame Beckley’s preparations did not seem to do the good she anticipated; still they did some, for, being composed of so much water and vegetable juices, they must have had beneficial effects upon the roses and other plants around his bedroom window – plants which the young courtier duly moistened from the vessel sent to him. Otherwise fared the wine, for of that he partook liberally, as well as of Jeremiah Cobbe’s strong drinks.

It must have been from dissatisfaction with her mother’s treatment of the patient that one day, – after a visit to the Pool-house, in whose quiet cool parlour she had found Sir Mark lying back in an easy chair with a snowy pillow beneath his head, and with Mace seated near reading to him at his wish from a little book of ballads written by one Sir Thomas Wyatt, – Mistress Anne, instead of going straight back home, sent the serving-man, who was her guardian, to spend an hour with the men at the mill, and herself turned down a narrow winding track almost overgrown with bearbind, briony, and grass.

“I hate her,” she said to herself, as she set her teeth and drove her nails into her palms. “I saw – I saw her looking at me with triumph flashing out of her wicked eyes; and I’ll kill her, I’ll poison her, before she shall beat me again. If he would only get well – if he would only get well.”

A slight rustle on her left made her start, but it was only a blackbird bursting through the dense mass of tangled growth that rose like a vast hedge on either side of the winding track, from which the wanton brambles and lithe boughs kept thrusting across young shoots like friendly hands to grasp each other and join in claiming the rugged lane as their own by conquest’s right.

A little further on a snake that had been sunning itself on a stump raised its head, uttered a low hiss, and glided rapidly away amidst the dense undergrowth; while again, a few yards further on, she came upon a short thick adder, lying right in her path, and apparently very careless about leaving it.

It was remarkable now that Anne Beckley displayed no fear of the wild animals she met. She had started at the blackbird’s rustle, believing that she was watched, but on seeing the reptiles, now that there was no Sir Mark to whom she might cling for support, she broke off a slight hazel branch, and cut sharply at the adder where it lay; and as it raised its head and struck at her she cut it again and again till she had disabled it, and ended by crushing its head in the earth.

Then throwing aside her stick she hastened on, but the exertion had made her warm, and seating herself upon a mossy part of the bank she stayed to rest in the cool damp shade, beneath a great oak-tree.

Before she had been seated there many minutes she became aware of a slight movement in the grass, and, as she watched, a long lithe weasel bounded into sight, stopped, with its neck stretched up and head erect, watching her; but as she did not move the animal ran up the bank and crept down a mouse-hole, so small that it seemed impossible for it to have passed.

There was something about that weasel that attracted Anne, who remained watching the little hole, till all at once a mouse in an apparent state of collapse was thrust out, the neck and body of the weasel followed, and away the long thin creature bounded into the thick grass and disappeared.

A minute later there came a robin to settle upon a twig, and watch her with its great round eyes, but the loud chink-chink of a blackbird sent the robin away, and the orange-billed bird hopped down into the lane and began poking and peering about among the leaves till it secured a snail, in the dampest, darkest, spot, which unfortunate it bore into the path and hammered upon a stone till the shell was broken, when the soft-bodied snail was daintily picked out, swallowed, and the blackbird flew away.

Almost before Mistress Anne had noticed that the blackbird was gone, the robin came back to gaze at the intruder, with its head on one side, and then made a flit to where the leaves upon the moist bank had been disturbed by the blackbird. Here the robin’s quick eyes had spied out a large lobworm hastily making its escape, under the impression that there was danger below.

This long worm the robin seized and bore, writhing and twining, in its bill to the path, where it set down its prize, but only to seize it again and give it a series of fierce nips from end to end, accompanying each nip with a sharp shake to stop the twining, which, however, was not entirely done, for when the little redbreast seized its victim by the head there was a slight undulating motion going on – a movement continued as the bird began rapidly to gulp it down.

This feat seemed to fascinate Mistress Anne, who watched the last bit of tail disappear, the robin having succeeded in taking down a worm nearly twice its own length; such a feat, indeed, as a man would have accomplished had he made a meal of a serpent some ten or eleven feet long, swallowing it, writhing and twisting, whole.

“How cruel Nature is!” said Mistress Anne, in a low thoughtful voice, and as she spoke there was a strange light in her eyes. “Everything for its own pleasure seems to kill what it wills. Why should I not be cruel too?”

She laughed then – a curious unpleasant laugh; and rising, the robin flitted away over the low undergrowth, apparently none the heavier for its meal, and there was a sharp rustle and a bound in the grass.

Mistress Anne Beckley seemed now to be too much occupied by her thoughts to pay much heed to the objects she passed as she walked slowly on.

Once more she said softly, “Why should not I be cruel too?” Then she laughed in a very unpleasant way, and half-closed her eyes.