St. George and St. Michael

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'I told you so, mistress Dorothy!' he said again. 'That rival of
mine has, as I feared, already made a party against me. You see how
my own knaves, before my very face, cheer my enemy! I presume, my
lord,' he went on, turning to the mastiff, and removing his hat, 'it
will be my wisdom to resign castle and title at once, and so
forestall deposition.'

Marquis replied with a growl, and amidst subdued yet merry laughter,
lord Charles hastened to enlighten his father.

'My lord,' he said, 'the dog has done nobly as ever dog, and
deserves reward, not mockery, which it is plain he understands, and
likes not. But it was not the mastiff, it was his fair mistress I
and my men presumed on saluting in your lordship's presence. No dog
ever yet shook off collar of Cranford's forging; nor is Marquis the
only dog that merits your lordship's acknowledgment: O'Brien and Tom
Fool--the lurcher, I mean--seconded him bravely, and perhaps
Strafford did best of all.'

'Prithee, now, take me with thee,' said the marquis. 'Was, or was
not the Great Mogul forth of his cage?'

'Indeed he was, my lord, and might be now in the fields but for
cousin Vaughan there by your side.'

The marquis turned and looked at her, but in his astonishment said
nothing, and lord Charles went on.

'When we got into the yard, there was the Great Mogul with three
dogs upon him, and mistress Dorothy uncollaring Tom Fool and
hounding him at the devilish brute; while poor Shafto, just waking
up, lay on the stones, about three yards off the combat. It was the
finest thing I ever saw, my lord.'

The marquis turned again to Dorothy, and stared without speech or
motion.

'Mean you--?' he said at length, addressing lord Charles, but still
staring at Dorothy; 'Mean you--?' he said again, half stammering,
and still staring.

'I mean, my lord,' answered his son, 'that mistress Dorothy, with
self-shown courage, and equal judgment as to time and order of
attack, when Tom Fool had fled, and poor Shafto, already evil torn,
had swooned from loss of blood, came to the rescue, stood her
ground, and loosed dog after dog, her own first, upon the animal.
And, by heaven! it is all owing to her that he is already secured
and carried back to his cage, nor any great harm done save to the
groom and the dogs, of which poor Strafford hath a hind leg crushed
by the jaws of the beast, and must be killed.'

'He shall live,' cried the marquis, 'as long as he hath legs enough
to eat and sleep with. Mistress Dorothy,' he went on, turning to her
once more, 'what is thy request? It shall be performed even to the
half of--of my marquisate.'

'My lord,' returned Dorothy, 'it is a small deed I have strewn to
gather such weighty thanks.'

'Be honest as well as brave, mistress. Mock me no modesty.' said the
marquis a little roughly.

'Indeed, my lord, I but spoke as I deemed. The thing HAD to be done,
and I did but do it. Had there been room to doubt, and I had yet
done well, then truly I might have earned your lordship's thanks.
But good my lord, do not therefore recall the word spoken,' she
added hurriedly, 'but grant me my boon. Your lordship sees my poor
dog can endure no collar: let him therefore be my chamber-fellow
until his throat be healed, when I shall again submit him to your
lordship's mandate.'

'What you will, cousin. He is a noble fellow, and hath a right noble
mistress.'

'Will you then, my lord Charles, order a bucket of water to be drawn
for me, that I may wash his wounds ere I take him to my chamber?'

Ten men at the word flew to the draw-well, but lord Charles ordered
them all back to the guard-room, except two whom he sent to fetch a
tub. With his own hands he then drew three bucketfuls of water,
which he poured into the tub, and by the side of the well, in the
open paved court, Dorothy washed her four-legged hero, and then
retired with him, to do a like office for herself.

The marquis stood for some time in the gathering dusk, looking on,
and smiling to see how the sullen animal allowed his mistress to
handle even his wounds without a whine, not to say a growl, at the
pain she must have caused him.

'I see, I see!' he said at length, 'I have no chance with a rival
like that!' and turning away he walked slowly into the oak parlour,
threw himself down in his great chair, and sat there, gazing at the
eyeless face of the keep, but thinking all the time of the courage
and patience of his rival, the mastiff.

'God made us both,' he said at length, 'and he can grant me patience
as well as him.' and so saying he went to bed.

His washing over, the dog showed himself much exhausted, and it was
with hanging head he followed his mistress up the grand staircase
and the second spiral one that led yet higher to her chamber.
Thither presently came lady Elizabeth, carrying a cushion and a
deerskin for him to lie upon, and it was with much apparent
satisfaction that the wounded and wearied animal, having followed
his tail but one turn, dropped like a log on his well-earned couch.

The night was hot, and Dorothy fell asleep with her door wide open.

In the morning Marquis was nowhere to be found. Dorothy searched for
him everywhere, but in vain.

'It is because you mocked him, my lord,' said the governor to his
father at breakfast. 'I doubt not he said to himself, "If I AM a
dog, my lord need not have mocked me, for I could not help it, and I
did my duty."'

'I would make him an apology,' returned the marquis, 'an' I had but
the opportunity. Truly it were evil minded knowingly to offer insult
to any being capable of so regarding it. But, Charles, I bethink me:
didst ever learn how our friend got into the castle? It was
assuredly thy part to discover that secret.'

'No, my lord. It hath never been found out in so far as I know.'

'That is an unworthy answer, lord Charles. As governor of the
castle, you ought to have had the matter thoroughly searched into.'

'I will see to it now, my lord,' said the governor, rising.

'Do, my lad,' returned his father.

And lord Charles did inquire; but not a ray of light did he succeed
in letting in upon the mystery. The inquiry might, however, have
lasted longer and been more successful, had not lord Herbert just
then come home, with the welcome news of the death of Hampden, from
a wound received in attacking prince Rupert at Chalgrove. He brought
news also of prince Maurice's brave fight at Bath, and lord Wilmot's
victory over sir William Waller at Devizes--which latter, lord
Herbert confessed, yielded him some personal satisfaction, seeing he
owed Waller more grudges than as a Christian he had well known how
to manage: now he was able to bear him a less bitter animosity. The
queen, too, had reached Oxford, bringing large reinforcement to her
husband, and prince Rupert had taken Bristol, castle and all. Things
were looking mighty hopeful, lord Herbert was radiant, and lady
Margaret, for the first time since Molly's death, was merry. The
castle was illuminated, and Marquis forgotten by all but Dorothy.

CHAPTER XXV.

RICHARD HEYWOOD.

So things looked ill for the puritans in general, and Richard
Heywood had his full portion in the distribution of the evils
allotted them. Following lord Fairfax, he had shared his defeat by
the marquis of Newcastle on Atherton moor, where of his score of men
he lost five, and was, along with his mare, pretty severely wounded.
Hence it had become absolutely necessary for both of them, if they
were to render good service at any near future, that they should
have rest and tending. Towards the middle of July, therefore,
Richard, followed by Stopchase, and several others of his men who
had also been wounded and were in need of nursing, rode up to his
father's door. Lady was taken off to her own stall, and Richard was
led into the house by his father--without a word of tenderness, but
with eyes and hands that waited and tended like those of a mother.

Roger Heywood was troubled in heart at the aspect of affairs. There
was now a strong peace-party in the parliament, and to him peace and
ruin seemed the same thing. If the parliament should now listen to
overtures of accommodation, all for which he and those with whom he
chiefly sympathised had striven, was in the greatest peril, and
might be, if not irrecoverably lost, at least lost sight of, perhaps
for a century. The thing that mainly comforted him in his anxiety
was that his son had showed himself worthy, not merely in the matter
of personal courage, which he took as a thing of course in a
Heywood, but in his understanding of and spiritual relation to the
questions really at issue,--not those only which filled the mouths
of men. For the best men and the weightiest questions are never seen
in the forefront of the battle of their time, save by "larger other
eyes than ours."

But now, from his wounds, as he thought, and the depression
belonging to the haunting sense of defeat, a doubt had come to life
in Richard's mind, which, because it was born IN weakness, he very
pardonably looked upon as born OF weakness, and therefore regarded
as itself weak and cowardly, whereas his mood had been but the
condition that favoured its development. It came and came again,
maugre all his self-recrimination because of it: what was all this
fighting for? It was well indeed that nor king nor bishop should
interfere with a man's rights, either in matters of taxation or
worship, but the war could set nothing right either betwixt him and
his neighbour, or betwixt him and his God.

There was in the mind of Richard, innate, but more rapidly developed
since his breach with Dorothy, a strong tendency towards the
supernatural--I mean by the word that which neither any one of the
senses nor all of them together, can reveal. He was one of those
young men, few, yet to be found in all ages of the world's history,
who, in health and good earthly hope, and without any marked poetic
or metaphysical tendency, yet know in their nature the need of
conscious communion with the source of that nature--truly the
veriest absurdity if there be no God, but as certainly the most
absolute necessity of conscious existence if there be a first life
from whom our life is born.

'Am I not free now?' he said to himself, as he lay on his bed in his
own gable of the many-nooked house; 'Am I not free to worship God
as I please? Who will interfere with me? Who can prevent me? As to
form and ceremony, what are they, or what is the absence of them, to
the worship in which my soul seeks to go forth? What the better
shall I be when all this is over, even if the best of our party
carry the day? Will Cromwell rend for me the heavy curtain, which,
ever as I lift up my heart, seems to come rolling down between me
and him whom I call my God? If I could pass within that curtain,
what would Charles, or Laud, or Newcastle, or the mighty Cromwell
himself and all his Ironsides be to me? Am I not on the wrong road
for the high peak?'

But then he thought of others--of the oppressed and the
superstitious, of injustice done and not endured--not wrapt in the
pearly antidote of patience, but rankling in the soul; of priests
who, knowing not God, substituted ceremonies for prayer, and led the
seeking heart afar from its goal--and said that his arm could at
least fight for the truth in others, if only his heart could fight
for the truth in himself. No; he would go on as he had begun; for,
might it not be the part of him who could take the form of an angel
of light when he would deceive, to make use of inward truths, which
might well be the strength of his own soul, to withdraw him from the
duties he owed to others, and cause the heart of devotion to
paralyze the arm of battle? Besides, was he not now in a low
physical condition, and therefore the less likely to judge truly
with regard to affairs of active outer life? His business plainly
was to gain strength of body, that the fumes of weakness might no
longer cloud his brain, and that, if he had to die for the truth,
whether in others or in himself, he might die in power, like the
blast of an exploding mine, and not like the flame of an expiring
lamp. And certainly, as his body grew stronger, and the impulses to
action, so powerful in all healthy youth, returned, his doubts grew
weaker, and he became more and more satisfied that he had been in
the right path.

Lady outstripped her master in the race for health, and after a few
days had oats and barley in a profusion which, although far from
careless, might well have seemed to her unlimited. Twice every day,
sometimes oftener, Richard went to see her, and envied the rapidity
of her recovery from the weakness which scanty rations, loss of
blood, and the inflammation of her wounds had caused. Had there been
any immediate call for his services, however, that would have
brought his strength with it. Had the struggle been still going on
upon the fields of battle instead of in the houses of words, he
would have been well in half the time. But Waller and Essex were
almost without an army between them, and were at bitter strife with
each other, while the peace-party seemed likely to carry everything
before them, women themselves presenting a petition for peace, and
some of them using threats to support it.

At length, chiefly through the exertions of the presbyterian
preachers and the common council of the city of London, the
peace-party was defeated, and a vigorous levying and pressing of
troops began anew. So the hour had come for Richard to mount. His
men were all in health and spirits, and their vacancies had been
filled up. Lady was frolicsome, and Richard was perfectly well.

The day before they were to start he took the mare out for a gallop
across the fields. Never had he known her so full of life. She
rushed at hedge and ditch as if they had been squares of royalist
infantry. Her madness woke the fervour of battle in Richard's own
veins, and as they swept along together, it grew until he felt like
one of the Arabs of old, flashing to the harvest field of God, where
the corn to be reaped was the lives of infidels, and the ears to be
gleaned were the heads of the fallen. That night he scarcely slept
for eagerness to be gone.

Waking early from what little sleep he had had, he dressed and armed
himself hurriedly, and ran to the stables, where already his men
were bustling about getting their horses ready for departure.

Lady had a loose box for herself, and thither straight her master
went, wondering as he opened the door of it that he did not hear
usual morning welcome. The place was empty. He called Stopchase.

'Where is my mare?' he said. 'Surely no one has been fool enough to
take her to the water just as we are going to start.'

Stopchase stood and stared without reply, then turned and left the
stable, but came back almost immediately, looking horribly scared.
Lady was nowhere to be seen or heard. Richard rushed hither and
thither, storming. Not a man about the place could give him a word
of enlightenment. All knew she was in that box the night before;
none knew when she left it or where she was now.

He ran to his father, but all his father could see or say was no
more than was plain to every one: the mare had been carried off in
the night, and that with a skill worthy of a professional
horse-thief.

What now was the poor fellow to do? If I were to tell the
truth--namely, that he wept--so courageous are the very cowards of
this century that they would sneer at him; but I do tell it
notwithstanding, for I have little regard to the opinion of any man
who sneers. Whatever he may or may not have been as a man, Richard
felt but half a soldier without his mare, and, his country calling
him, oppressed humanity crying aloud for his sword and arm, his men
waiting for him, and Lady gone, what was he to do?

'Never heed, Dick, my boy,' said his father.--It was the first time
since he had put on man's attire that he had called him Dick,--
'Thou shalt have my Oliver. He is a horse of good courage, as thou
knowest, and twice the weight of thy little mare.'

'Ah, father! you do not know Lady so well as I. Not Cromwell's best
horse could comfort me for her. I MUST find her. Give me leave, sir;
I must go and think. I cannot mount and ride, and leave her I know
not where. Go I will, if it be on a broomstick, but this morning I
ride not. Let the men put up their horses, Stopchase, and break
their fast.'

'It is a wile of the enemy,' said Stopchase. 'Truly, it were no
marvel to me were the good mare at this moment eating her oats in
the very stall where we have even but now in vain sought her. I will
go and search for her with my hands.'

'Verily,' said Mr. Heywood with a smile, 'to fear the devil is not
to run from him!--How much of her hay hath she eaten, Stopchase?'
he added, as the man returned with disconsolate look.

'About a bottle, sir,' answered Stopchase, rather indefinitely; but
the conclusion drawn was, that she had been taken very soon after
the house was quiet.

The fact was, that since the return of their soldiers, poor watch
had been kept by the people of Redware. Increase of confidence had
led to carelessness. Mr. Heywood afterwards made inquiry, and had
small reason to be satisfied with what he discovered.

'The thief must have been one who knew the place,' said Faithful.

'Why dost thou think so?' asked his master.

'How swooped he else so quietly upon the best animal, sir?' returned
the man.

'She was in the place of honour,' answered Mr. Heywood.

'Scudamore!' said Richard to himself. It might be no light--only a
flash in his brain. But that even was precious in the utter
darkness.

'Sir,' he said, turning to his father, 'I would I had a plan of
Raglan stables.'

'What wouldst thou an' thou hadst, my son?' asked Mr. Heywood.

'Nay, sir, that wants thinking. But I believe my poor mare is at
this moment in one of those vaults they tell us of.'

'It may be, my son. It is reported that the earl hath of late been
generous in giving of horses. Poor soldiers the king will find them
that fight for horses, or titles either. Such will never stand
before them that fight for the truth--in the love thereof! Eh,
Richard?'

'Truly, sir, I know not,' answered his son, disconsolately. 'I hope
I love the truth, and I think so doth Stopchase, after his kind; and
yet were we of those that fled from Atherton moor.'

'Thou didst not flee until thou couldst no more, my son. It asketh
greater courage of some men to flee when the hour of flight hath
come, for they would rather fight on to the death than allow, if but
to their own souls, that they are foiled. But a man may flee in
faith as well as fight in faith, my son, and each is good in its
season. There is a time for all things under the sun. In the end,
when the end cometh, we shall see how it hath all gone. When, then,
wilt thou ride?'

'To-morrow, an' it please you, sir. I should fight but evil with the
knowledge that I had left my best battle-friend in the hands of the
Philistines, nor sent even a cry after her.'

'What boots it, Richard? If she be within Raglan walls, they yield
her not again. Bide thy time; and when thou meetest thy foe on thy
friend's back, woe betide him!'

'Amen, sir!' said Richard. 'But with your leave I will not go
to-day. I give you my promise I will go to-morrow.'

'Be it so, then. Stopchase, let the men be ready at this hour on the
morrow. The rest of the day is their own.'

So saying, Roger Heywood turned away, in no small distress, although
he concealed it, both at the loss of the mare and his son's grief
over it. Betaking himself to his study, he plunged himself
straightway deep in the comfort of the last born and longest named
of Milton's tracts.

The moment he was gone, Richard, who had now made up his mind as to
his first procedure, sent Stopchase away, saddled Oliver, rode
slowly out of the yard, and struck across the fields. After a
half-hour's ride he stopped at a lonely cottage at the foot of a
rock on the banks of the Usk. There he dismounted, and having
fastened his horse to the little gate in front, entered a small
garden full of sweet-smelling herbs mingled with a few flowers, and
going up to the door, knocked, and then lifted the latch.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE WITCH'S COTTAGE.

Richard was met on the threshold by mistress Rees, in the same old-
fashioned dress, all but the hat, which I have already described. On
her head she wore a widow's cap, with large crown, thick frill, and
black ribbon encircling it between them. She welcomed him with the
kindness almost of an old nurse, and led the way to the one chair in
the room--beside the hearth, where a fire of peat was smouldering
rather than burning beneath the griddle, on which she was cooking
oat-cake. The cottage was clean and tidy. From the smoky rafters
hung many bunches of dried herbs, which she used partly for
medicines, partly for charms.

To herself, the line dividing these uses was not very clearly
discernible.

'I am in trouble, mistress Rees,' said Richard, as he seated
himself.

'Most men do be in trouble most times, master Heywood,' returned the
old woman. 'Dost find thou hast taken the wrong part, eh?--There be
no need to tell what aileth thee. 'Tis a bit easier to cast off a
maiden than to forget her--eh?'

'No, mistress Rees. I came not to trouble thee concerning what is
past and gone,' said Richard with a sigh. 'It is a taste of thy
knowledge I want rather than of thy skill.'

'What skill I have is honest,' said the old woman.

'Far be it from thee to say otherwise, mother Rees. But I need it
not now. Tell me, hast thou not been once and again within the great
gates of Raglan castle?'

'Yes, my son--oftener than I can tell thee,' answered the old woman.
'It is but a se'night agone that I sat a talking with my son Thomas
Rees in the chimney corner of Raglan kitchen, after the supper was
served and the cook at rest. It was there my lad was turnspit once
upon a time, for as great a man as he is now with my lord and all
the household. Those were hard times after my good man left me,
master Heywood. But the cream will to the top, and there is my son
now--who but he in kitchen and hall? Well, of all places in the
mortal world, that Raglan passes!'

'They tell strange things of the stables there, mistress Rees: know
you aught of them?'

'Strange things, master? They tell nought but good of the stables
that tell the truth. As to the armoury, now--well it is not for such
as mother Rees to tell tales out of school.'

'What I heard, and wanted to ask thee about, mother, was that they
are under ground. Thinkest thou horses can fare well under ground?
Thou knowest a horse as well as a dog, mother.'

Ere she replied, the old woman took her cake from the griddle, and
laid it on a wooden platter, then caught up a three-legged stool,
set it down by Richard, seated herself at his knee, and assumed the
look of mystery wherewith she was in the habit of garnishing every
bit of knowledge, real or fancied, which it pleased her to
communicate.

'Hear me, and hold thy peace, master Richard Heywood,' she said. 'As
good horses as ever stamped in Redware stables go down into Raglan
vaults; but yet they eat their oats and their barley, and when they
lift their heads they look out to the ends of the world. Whether it
be by the skill of the mason or of such as the hidden art of my lord
Herbert knows best how to compel, let them say that list to make
foes where it were safer to have friends. But this I am free to tell
thee--that in the pitched court, betwixt the antechamber to my
lord's parlour that hath its windows to the moat, and the great bay
window of the hall that looks into that court, there goeth a
descent, as it seemeth of stairs only; but to him that knoweth how
to pull a certain tricker, as of an harquebus or musquetoon, the
whole thing turneth around, and straightway from a stair passeth
into an easy matter of a sloping way by the which horses go up and
down. And Thomas he telleth me also that at the further end of the
vaults to which it leads, the which vaults pass under the marquis's
oak parlour, and under all the breadth of the fountain court, as
they do call the other court of the castle, thou wilt come to a
great iron door in the foundations of one of the towers, in which my
lord hath contrived stabling for a hundred and more horses, and
that, mark my words, my son, not in any vault or underground
dungeon, but in the uppermost chamber of all.'

'And how do they get up there, mother?' asked Richard, who listened
with all his ears.

'Why, they go round and round, and ever the rounder the higher, as a
fly might crawl up a corkscrew. And there is a stair also in the
same screw, as it were, my Thomas do tell me, by which the people of
the house do go up and down, and know nothing of the way for the
horses within, neither of the stalls at the top of the tower, where
they stand and see the country. Yet do they often marvel at the
sounds of their hoofs, and their harness, and their cries, and their
chumping of their corn. And that is how Raglan can send forth so
many horseman for the use of the king. But alack, master Heywood! is
it for a wise woman like myself to forget that thou art of the other
part, and that these are secrets of state which scarce another in
the castle but my son Thomas knoweth aught concerning! What will
become of me that I have told them to a Heywood, being, as is well
known, myself no more of a royalist than another?'

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