The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses

“Nay, Dicky Bowyer, not so,” returned the knight. “It likes me not. Y’are sly indeed, but not speedy. Ye were a laggard ever.”

“An’t be so, Sir Daniel, here am I,” cried another.

“The saints forfend!” said the knight. “Y’are speedy, but not sly. Ye would blunder me head-foremost into John Amend-All’s camp. I thank you both for your good courage; but, in sooth, it may not be.”

Then Hatch offered himself, and he also was refused.

“I want you here, good Bennet; y’are my right hand, indeed,” returned the knight; and then several coming forward in a group, Sir Daniel at length selected one and gave him the letter.

“Now,” he said, “upon your good speed and better discretion we do all depend. Bring me a good answer back, and before three weeks, I will have purged my forest of these vagabonds that brave us to our faces. But mark it well, Throgmorton: the matter is not easy. Ye must steal forth under night, and go like a fox; and how ye are to cross Till I know not, neither by the bridge nor ferry.”

“I can swim,” returned Throgmorton. “I will come soundly, fear not.”

“Well, friend, get ye to the buttery,” replied Sir Daniel. “Ye shall swim first of all in nut-brown ale.” And with that he turned back into the hall.

“Sir Daniel hath a wise tongue,” said Hatch, aside, to Dick. “See, now, where many a lesser man had glossed the matter over, he speaketh it out plainly to his company. Here is a danger, ’a saith, and here difficulty; and jesteth in the very saying. Nay, by St. Barbary, he is a born captain! Not a man but he is some deal heartened up! See how they fall again to work.”

This praise of Sir Daniel put a thought in the lad’s head.

“Bennet,” he said, “how came my father by his end?”

“Ask me not that,” replied Hatch. “I had no hand nor knowledge in it; furthermore, I will even be silent, Master Dick. For look you, in a man’s own business there he may speak; but of hearsay matters and of common talk, not so. Ask me Sir Oliver – ay, or Carter, if ye will; not me.”

And Hatch set off to make the rounds, leaving Dick in a muse.

“Wherefore would he not tell me?” thought the lad. “And wherefore named he Carter? Carter – nay, then Carter had a hand in it, perchance.”

He entered the house, and passing some little way along a flagged and vaulted passage, came to the door of the cell where the hurt man lay groaning. At his entrance Carter started eagerly.

“Have ye brought the priest?” he cried.

“Not yet awhile,” returned Dick. “Y’ ’ave a word to tell me first. How came my father, Harry Shelton, by his death?”

The man’s face altered instantly.

“I know not,” he replied, doggedly.

“Nay, ye know well,” returned Dick. “Seek not to put me by.”

“I tell you I know not,” repeated Carter.

“Then,” said Dick, “ye shall die unshriven. Here am I, and here shall stay. There shall no priest come near you, rest assured. For of what avail is penitence, an ye have no mind to right those wrongs ye had a hand in? and without penitence, confession is but mockery.”

“Ye say what ye mean not, Master Dick,” said Carter, composedly. “It is ill threatening the dying, and becometh you (to speak truth) little. And for as little as it commends you, it shall serve you less. Stay, an ye please. Ye will condemn my soul – ye shall learn nothing! There is my last word to you.” And the wounded man turned upon the other side.

Now, Dick, to say truth, had spoken hastily, and was ashamed of his threat. But he made one more effort.

“Carter,” he said, “mistake me not. I know ye were but an instrument in the hands of others; a churl must obey his lord; I would not bear heavily on such an one. But I begin to learn upon many sides that this great duty lieth on my youth and ignorance, to avenge my father. Prithee, then, good Carter, set aside the memory of my threatenings, and in pure good-will and honest penitence give me a word of help.”

The wounded man lay silent; nor, say what Dick pleased, could he extract another word from him.

“Well,” said Dick, “I will go call the priest to you as ye desired; for howsoever ye be in fault to me or mine, I would not be willingly in fault to any, least of all to one upon the last change.”

Again the old soldier heard him without speech or motion; even his groans he had suppressed; and as Dick turned and left the room, he was filled with admiration for that rugged fortitude.

“And yet,” he thought, “of what use is courage without wit? Had his hands been clean, he would have spoken; his silence did confess the secret louder than words. Nay, upon all sides, proof floweth on me. Sir Daniel, he or his men, hath done this thing.”

Dick paused in the stone passage with a heavy heart. At that hour, in the ebb of Sir Daniel’s fortune, when he was beleaguered by the archers of the Black Arrow and proscribed by the victorious Yorkists, was Dick, also, to turn upon the man who had nourished and taught him, who had severely punished, indeed, but yet unwearyingly protected his youth? The necessity, if it should prove to be one, was cruel.

“Pray Heaven he be innocent!” he said.

And then steps sounded on the flagging, and Sir Oliver came gravely towards the lad.

“One seeketh you earnestly,” said Dick.

“I am upon the way, good Richard,” said the priest. “It is this poor Carter. Alack, he is beyond cure.”

“And yet his soul is sicker than his body,” answered Dick.

“Have ye seen him?” asked Sir Oliver, with a manifest start.

“I do but come from him,” replied Dick.

“What said he? what said he?” snapped the priest, with extraordinary eagerness.

“He but cried for you the more piteously, Sir Oliver. It were well done to go the faster, for his hurt is grievous,” returned the lad.

“I am straight for him,” was the reply. “Well, we have all our sins. We must all come to our latter day, good Richard.”

“Ay, sir; and it were well if we all came fairly,” answered Dick.

The priest dropped his eyes, and with an inaudible benediction hurried on.

“He, too!” thought Dick – “he, that taught me in piety! Nay, then, what a world is this, if all that care for me be blood-guilty of my father’s death? Vengeance! Alas! what a sore fate is mine, if I must be avenged upon my friends!”

The thought put Matcham in his head. He smiled at the remembrance of his strange companion, and then wondered where he was. Ever since they had come together to the doors of the Moat House the younger lad had disappeared, and Dick began to weary for a word with him.

About an hour after, mass being somewhat hastily run through by Sir Oliver, the company gathered in the hall for dinner. It was a long, low apartment, strewn with green rushes, and the walls hung with arras in a design of savage men and questioning bloodhounds; here and there hung spears and bows and bucklers; a fire blazed in the big chimney; there were arras-covered benches round the wall, and in the midst the table, fairly spread, awaited the arrival of the diners. Neither Sir Daniel nor his lady made their appearance. Sir Oliver himself was absent, and here again there was no word of Matcham. Dick began to grow alarmed, to recall his companion’s melancholy forebodings, and to wonder to himself if any foul play had befallen him in that house.

After dinner he found Goody Hatch, who was hurrying to my Lady Brackley.

“Goody,” he said, “where is Master Matcham, I prithee? I saw ye go in with him when we arrived.”

The old woman laughed aloud.

“Ah, Master Dick,” she said, “y’ have a famous bright eye in your head, to be sure!” and laughed again.

“Nay, but where is he, indeed?” persisted Dick.