“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.”
VII
MISTRESS AND MAN
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.”
VIII
THE ENVOY
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