Shrewsbury: A Romance

Surely now, I thought, getting no answer, he would come up, and my heart stood. But it seemed he called only to make sure, and not because he thought that she was above; for he went back into the lower room, and I heard him moving to and fro, and going about to light a fire, the crackling of which gave an odd note of cheerfulness in the house. I was beginning to weigh the possibility of slipping by the half-open door, on the chance of finding the outer door unfastened; and with this in view, had risen to my feet, when a key again grated in the lock, and supposing it to be Smith, I returned to my former position.

Had it been Smith, it would have been some comfort to me; for I thought him more prudent if no less dangerous than the plotter, and I fancied that I had more to fear from one than from two. But the step that entered was lighter than a man's, while Ferguson's greeting told the rest and made the situation clear.

"Ha, you are here at last, are you!" he cried with an angry oath. "Did you want me to break every bone in your body, lass, that you stayed out till now, and I to have the fire to light? You should have a pretty good tale to tell or have kept clear of this! D'ye hear me? Speak, you viper, and don't stand there glowering like a wood-cat!"

"I am here now," was the answer. My heart leapt, for the voice was Mary's; the tone, sullen and weary, I could understand.

"Here now!" he retorted. "And that is to be all, is it? Perhaps, my girl, I will presently show you two minds about that. Where is the baggage?"

"It is not here."

"Not here?" he cried.

"No," she answered.

"And why not, you Jezebel?"

"You need not misname me," she answered coolly. "I was followed and could not come here; and I could not carry it about with me all day. And I could not send it, for there was no one here to take it in. It is at the Spread Eagle in Gracechurch Street, to go by tomorrow's waggon to Colchester. That is what I told them, but it can be fetched away to-morrow."

"If I did not think you were a big liar, girl?" he answered doubtfully; but I knew by his tone that he believed her.

"You may think what you like," she replied.

"And how do you think I am to do for to-night?" he answered querulously.

"You must do as you can," she said. "You have your Hollands, and I have brought some bread and meat."

"It is a dog's life," he said, with a snarl.

"It is the life you choose," she retorted sharply.

"Peste!" he answered after a pause of sheer astonishment at her audacity. "What is it to you, you slut?"

"Why, a dog's life too! and not of my choice!" she cried passionately, her voice breaking. "What am I better, as I live, than an orange girl in the streets? What do I get, and walk the pavement on your errands night and day? What do I get? And always hiding and sneaking, hiding and sneaking! And for what?"

"For your living, yon beggarly baggage!" he roared. "Who feeds you and clothes you, you graceless hussy? Who boards you and lodges you, and finds you in meat and malt, you feckless toad? You shameless-"

"Ay, call names!" she answered bitterly-and it was not hard to discern that she was beside herself with the long sick waiting and the disappointment. "It is what you are good for! It is all that your plots end in! Call names, and you are happy! But I am tired, and tired of it, I tell you. I am tired of bare boards and hiding, and all for what? For those that, when you have brought them back, you will be as fierce to oust as you are now to restore! And shameless it is you call me?" she continued with feverish rapidity. "Shameless? Have you not sent me out into the streets a hundred times, and close on midnight, and not a thought or care what would happen to me so long as your letter went safe? Have you not sent me where to be taken was to be jailed and whipped, and not a thought of pity or what a life it was for a girl? Have you not done this and more?" she continued, breathless with passion. "And more? And yet you take praise for feeding me! And call me graceless and shameless-"

She paused and gave him room to speak, but though he put on a show of bluster it was evident her violence alarmed him. "Odd's name, and what is all this?" he said. "What ails the girl? What has set you up now, you vixen?"

"You!" she cried vehemently. "You and your trade!"

"Well," he said, with a sort of sullen reasonableness, "and what is the matter with the trade? What is wrong with the trade, I say? I'll tell you this, my lass, you would live badly without it."

"I would live honestly," she cried. "And as my father lived!"

"You drab!" he cried. "Leave that alone."

At that, and when judging from the tone of his voice I expected him to break out with fresh oaths and curses, there was instead an astonishing silence, which fell for me at an unlucky moment, for forgetting, in my desire to see as well as hear, the risk I ran, I had crept down the stairs, and now lacked but a pace of seeing into the room. The noise ceasing, I dared neither take that step nor retreat; and it was only when the silence had continued so long that curiosity overcame fear, that I ventured the advance, and looking in, saw that the girl, her fire and fury gone, was leaning against the wall beside the hearth, her face averted; while Ferguson himself, in an attitude of dejection scarcely less marked, stood near her, his head bowed and his blood-shot eyes fixed on the fire.

"Ay, he lived honestly, your father," he muttered at last. "It is true, my lass. I grant it. But he had a fair wind, had Alan, and a short course; and if he had lived to be sixty, God knows! We are what we are made. I mind him well, and the burn we fished and the pickle things we took out, and your mother that played with us in her cutty sark, and not a shoe between us nor a bodle of money; but the green hills round us, and all we knew of the world that it lay beyond them. And that was all your father ever knew, my lass. And well for him! Ay, well for him! But woe's me, and woe to the man who took my living, and woe to the evil King!"

His voice was beginning to rise; in a moment he would have reached his usual pitch of denunciation, of which even now some of his many writings afford a pale reflection; but at the word King there came a sharp knocking at the door, and he paused. For me, I turned in a panic, and, heedless what noise I made, hurried up the stairs. The steps creaked under me, but fortunately the knocking was repeated so quickly and persistently that it covered the sound of my flight; and before I had more than ensconced myself in the old place, Ferguson, doubtless in obedience to some signal, was at the door and had opened it.

Immediately half-a-dozen men poured noisily in, breathing hard and growling in low tones, and passed into the room below. But until the outer door was closed and secured, nothing I could catch, though fear sharpened my ears, was said. Then, as Ferguson went in after them, one of the newcomers raised his voice in answer to a question, and cried with a rattling oath, "What is up? What is up, old fox? Why, all is up! And we'll all swing for it before the month is over, if we cannot clear out to-night! You are a clever one, Mr. Ferguson, but you are caught this time, with better men. God! if I had the sneak here that peached on us, I would cut his liver out! I would-"

Two or three voices joined in to the same tune and drowned his words, one asking where Prendergast was, another where Porter was, a third indulging in threats so horrid and blasphemies so profane that I turned cold where I crouched. I began to understand what had happened, and my situation; but that nothing might be spared me Ferguson, in a quavering voice that proved all was news to him, asked again what was the matter.

"The Blues are moved," cried three or four at once. "They were marching out when we left. The guards at Kensington are doubled, and the orders for the King's hunting to-morrow are cancelled. They were hurrying to and fro calling the Council when we came away, and messengers were beginning to go round the taverns."

"And they have seized the horses at the King of Bohemia's Head," added another, "so they know a lot."

"But is it-certain?" Ferguson asked, with a break in his voice.

"Ay, as certain as that we shall hang if we do not get over!" was the brutal answer.

"And the Captain?"

"I have been at his lodgings. He has not been heard of since noon. He ordered his horse then and they say took the road; and hell to it, if that is so, he is half way to France by this! And safe! Safe, you devils, and we are left here caught like rats!"

"Ay, we'll go farther than France!" one shrieked. "As for me I am off. I shall-"

"No, by God, you don't!" cried another; and flung himself, as it seemed to me, between him and the door. "You don't go and sell the rest of us, and save your own neck. You-"

"Where is Porter?" a third struck in.

"And Prendergast?"

"They are not here! Nor Sir William! Nor Friend! So what is the good of talking like that?"

"He will make a fat hang, will Sir William!" said one, with a mad laugh that died in his throat. "It will cure his gout."

At that, one of the others cried with furious oaths for liquor; and I judged that Ferguson gave them of his Hollands. But it was little among so many, and was gone in a moment, and they calling for more. "There is a keg upstairs," said he. "In the back-room. But get it for yourselves. You have hung me. To think that I should have played the game with such fools."

They laughed recklessly, a savage note in their voices. "Ay, you should have stuck to your pen, old fox," one cried. "Then it was only the printer hung. But we'll drink your health before you swing. Up, Keyes, and fetch the stuff. It may be bad, but we'll drink to the squeezing of the rotten orange once more; if it be the last toast I drink!"

CHAPTER XXVII

The terror that had gripped me on their first entrance, and driving all the blood in my body to my heart had there set it bounding madly-this terror I should vainly try to describe to persons who have never been in such a situation or within a few feet of death, as I then found myself. That, reckless and driven to the wall, the conspirators would sacrifice me to their vengeance if they discovered me I felt certain; and at any moment they might come up and discover me. Yet behind me were the confining walls of the rooms whence I knew of no exit, and before me, where alone evasion seemed to be possible, the open door of the room below, and the flood of light that issued from the doorway, forbade the attempt. I lay sweating and listening therefore, while they snarled and cursed in the black mood of men betrayed and hopeless; and yet because of the chance that after all they might go out as they had come, I could so far keep my terror within bounds.

Not so, when I heard Ferguson bid the man mount and fetch the keg. Had he come without a light I might still have controlled myself and kept quiet; and holding my breath though I were suffocated, and silencing my heart though I died, might have lain and let him pass in the darkness. Nay, had I crouched low, he need not have observed me with a light; for I was a little beside the stairhead, and to enter the room whence I had broken out he need not face me. But when I heard him stumbling upwards, a sudden sense of the loneliness of the house in that far corner of town came on me; and with it, an overwhelming perception of my helplessness and of the life and death struggle to which the men below were committed-so that death seemed to be in the air; which together so far overcame me that I did the last thing I should have expected. As the man came up the stairs, the light in his hand, I rose up and stood, gasping at him.

He paused and held up the light. "The devil!" he said, staring. And then, "Who the – are you? Here, Ferguson! Here's your man!"

The only answer from below was a roar for liquor.

"What are you doing here?" he went on, puzzled as much by my silence as my presence.