University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.

The new-comers, as it appeared in a few moments, were no less than a patrolling
party of the Ironsides, consisting of eight privates with their lancepesade or corporal,
and a subaltern officer—a lieutenant, or cornet more probably—commanding them.
Like all the splendid corps of which these soldiers formed a part, they were picked
men, and nothing could be more soldier-like or perfect in its way than their whole
bearing and appointment. There was nothing superfluous; nothing tawdry or tinselly;
nothing defective, much less mean, about them. The strong high-bred black horses
which they rode were accurately groomed and in superb condition, while all their
furniture of plain black leather, mounted with polished steel, showed the severe and
rigorous discipline of the regiment by its exact unsullied brightness.

The men were uniformly clad in scarlet doublets, with low pot-helmets of brightly
burnished steel—the most efficient and least cumbrous head-piece, by the way, that
has been yet invented—and musket-proof cuirasses; the taslets on their thighs being
of lighter substance, though of the same clear and highly-tempered material. Heavy
jack-boots with glittering spurs, buff breeches and stout leather gauntlets extending
almost to the elbow, completed their uniform; while for offensive arms each soldier
carried a long, straight, two-edged broadsword, a brace of pistols at his holsters nearly
two feet in length, and a short, heavy musketoon slung over his left shoulder, and
crossed by the bandoleers containing his ammunition. There was not a particle of
embroidery or lace upon the doublets of the men, nor any distinctive mark in the
uniform of the lancepesade or of the cornet—except that the former had a short scarlet
tuft, and the latter a red feather, in his morion. They came up at a brisk hand-gallop
in double file, the non-commissioned officer leading them, and the subaltern in the
rear; but as they entered the little green before the door of the Stag's Head, the cornet
set spurs to his horse, and coming up to the head of the column wheeled them into a
single line, closing in on both sides the tree, and surrounding the little group between
the inn door and the semicircle of his troopers.

“Halt, ho!” he shouted; “and you, sirs, stand all, and show your names and business,
if ye be honest men. Ha!” he continued in a harsher and more insolent tone, as his
eye fell upon Sherlock and the noble charger, which he had but that moment remounted,
“Ha! what sort of knave have we here? what do you with this warhorse? Verily I
do believe, Elisha Burnet, the dog is leading him out even now to mount that same
malignant, who 'scaped so strangely from us yester even. Doubtless he is even now
within. Unsling your firelocks—prime, load, and make ready! And now, thou most
base knave and dog,” he went on addressing Sherlock, when his orders had been complied
with by the party he commanded, “why dost thou not speak out?”

“I've had no chance to speak,” responded Sherlock doggedly enough, for he was not
well pleased by the tone or manner of his questioner: “I've had no chance to speak.
unless I interrupted you; and in the next place, for that matter, -'ve yet to learn what
you would have me tell you.”

“Who are you, dog, that bandy words with me.?”

“No dog, sir,” answered the other, “but an independent English yeoman—a peaceful
and a loyal subject, troubling no man, and living on mine own land, which lies in
this same parish—my name is John Sherlock—pretty well known in these parts, ay!
and in Worcester too!”

“Ha! thou art he, I did speak with last night upon the bridge? Verily, John, verily,
I misdoubt thee very grievously—my mind misgives me, that thou didst lie unto us this
past night, and that thou art in league with this malignant—speak out, where is the
traitor—see that thou answer truly, else as my soul liveth in the fear of the Lord always,
so surely shalt thou die the death.”

“Of the owner of the horse,” answered the honest yeoman, whose face had flushed
exceedingly red at the imputation of the lie, “I know no more than thou dost—nor so
much as thou dost neither—for thou hast seen him, which I never have, I trow. The
horse I found tied to a ground ash in what we call the heronry wood, within a gunshot
of the bridge where you were on the watch last night.”

“Oh! thou didst—didst thou—and what makest thou with him here, on this by-lane?
mark his words, corporal—whither wert taking him?”

“To Master Selby's at the Hall—to ask him what I had best to do with him,” was
the immediate answer; “and I am on this lane, because it happens to be the nighest
road to the Hall gates.”

“And why to Master Selby's, knave? see that that thou palter not.”

“Because he is my landlord, and my right good friend, and kind master—and the
wisest man too, and the best scholar, for miles round. Why, all the plain folks hereaway
go for good counsel to Master Selby, when they need it.”

“A very palpable lie!” replied the Puritan; “but now thou didst tell me that thou
didst dwell on thine own land—and now thou dost avouch this dreaming dotard to be
thy landlord and thy master. Down from the charger, dog! down with thee in quick
time! pitch him off if he loiter, lancepesade.”

“There'd go two words or more to that same bargain,” answered John, dismounting
slowly, “if you were alone, my gay lad! For 'spite your toasting-fork and pop-guns,
I'd find you work with a stout arm and a good crab-tree staff, and make your tin pot
there ring, that it should fancy itself i' the tinkler's hand again. A man can't own one
farm, I trow, and rent another of his landlord—hey, master officer. I'd not get down
now neither, but that the nag is none of mine, nor I don't want him!”

“Ha! ha! well said, John Sherlock—well said—mine old friend! And if thou
need'st a backer, count upon me for one!” exclaimed Frank Norman the forester, with
a hearty laugh, who had listened with much disgust to the insolence of the Puritan
soldier.

“Ha! lancepesade; link bridles, and dismount your men—and seize me these
malignants.” A momentary bustle followed, during which Norman coolly loosened his
whittle in its sheath, and very deliberately cocking his musketoon, levelled it full a
the head of the speaker.

“The first man of you,” he said, speaking through his set teeth with extreme firm
ness, “that stirs one step to lay a hand on me- an ounce ball's in your leader's brain
pan.”

“Who art thou, that darest thus resist awful superiors?” asked the cornet, not—to
do him him justice—apparently alarmed by the threat, which the other stood evidently
prepared to execute.

“Frank Norman,” was the ready answer; “head-forester, and wood-ranger, to the
Lord Ferdinando Fairfax, on his estate and manor here of Oaklands—so put that in
your pipe and smoke it, master cornet, after you have laid the strong hand on the lord-general's
servitor!”

“Hold vour hands, lancepesade,” cried he, turning very pale at the announcement,
“this is an error all. He is an honest fellow, doubtless, though somewhat malapert.
Hold your hands all! Is the Lord Fairfax at the manor now—how called you it—on
his lands in Yorkshire?”

“He is at Oaklands,” answered the forester, lowering his rifle as he saw that no violence
would now be offered to him; “he came from the north three weeks since, if it
concerns you anything to know.”

“Well, well! good fellow, be not, I prithee, sullen—no evil has been done, nor any
meant, I trow. Thou mayest go hence, I have no call with thee.”

“But I have a call here,” muttered Frank, “and so I'll even tarry.”

“Well, be it so then. Lancepesade, look to that fellow Sherlock, that he escape
not—guard him, but harm him not—while I look to these others.” And as he finished
speaking he leaped down from his horse, and strode up to the old warrener.

“Now, sir, whose knave art thou—and what dost thou here?”

“No one's knave,” answered old Brent, “but Squire Mark Selby's warrener, for
those last score of years.”

“Ha! and thou—marry, thou art a pestilent-looking thief—a spy of the malignants,
I'll be sworn;” addressing the peddler, on whose full bags the Ironsides had been for
some time casting greedy glances.

“Not so, most noble sir,” replied that worthy—“not so, most valiant captain,” in a
strange sanctimonious snuffle widely at variance with his quick keen eye and somewhat
roving air; “a poor but honest peddler—licensed by the most worshipful house of parliament—trafficking
in a poor way, fair sir—a very small poor way—and judging it a gain
alway, I do profess it in the sight of Heaven—a gain not carnal, nor pertaining to mere
worldly lucre, but a great gain to the immortal soul, if I can spoil somewhat in the way
of trade those overproud Egyptians—the malignants—even as excellent Moses despoiled
Pharaoh, and his court. Verily, yea! indeed—if it be but a few poor pennies on the
ell measure, it is still somewhat.”

A grim smile curled the lip of one or two of the soldiers at this outburst—but nothing
could exceed the entertainment of the young forester manifested by a stentorian roar
of laughter, which burst as it were irrepressibly from his lungs, till the tears fairly rolled
down his sunburnt cheeks, at the peddler's ludicrous and somewhat overstrained imitation
of the puritanic snuffle. With no friendly eye did the officer regard his mirth—nor
was he in the least persuaded by the peddler's eloquence.

“Show me thy license, sirrah! I do misdoubt thee yet, for all thy seeming honesty.
Surely 'tis no rare thing for the wolves now-a-days don the sheep's clothing. Show
me thy license. Well, it is right, I see,” he added after a pause, “but I shall search
thy pack, before I let thee go, I promise thee. Now, lancepesade, take three of your
best men—bring all the women folk together into one place, and set a sentry over them;
but see they take no harm. Then search the hostlery from the cellar upward, and if
ye find him, as well I wot ye will, tarry not to ask questions or make prisoners—but
shoot him dead upon the instant, and hew his head off from his shoulders—there is a
price set on it, that will pay the labor. Thou, Anderson, picket the horses there beside
the horse-trough. You, sirs, stand to your firelocks, and see that none of these stir
hence; unless it be that fellow of Lord Fairfax's following. Ha! who is this? I saw
him not before,” he continued, stepping out as he spoke, toward the idiot boy; “who
art thou?”

“He is an idiot lad!” said Sherlock, speaking very quickly, “witless, and almost
speechless, from his cradle—he cannot answer thee if he would—vex him not—if thou
art a man!”

`Keep your breath, my good fellow, I advise you,” retorted the other, “for your own
porridge—which you'll find hot enough anon, I deem it very probable—and you, sir,
answer me straightway, if you would avoid the strapado!” and with the words he laid
his hand roughly on the poor idiot's shoulder, who glared up into his face with an unmeaning
vacant stare, but answered not a word.

“Speak, sirrah fool!” continued the other brutally, giving him at the same time a
slight shake—but at that moment the old mastiff bitch, which had slept without moving
during all that had passed heretofore, but had roused herself up as the soldier drew near
her hapless trust, uttered a savage yell, and flew at his tormentor. But he, seeing at
half a glance that she was toothless and quite impotent to do him any harm, drew back
a little so as to give the utmost impetus to the blow, and kicked her in the chest with
the full swing of his heavy boot—her furious yell was changed into a dolorous howl as
she rolled over and over, sprawling and struggling close to the feet of one of the privates,
who, following up his officer's brutality by a piece of his own, instantly knocked her
brains out with the iron-plated butt of his heavy carbine.

A deep red flush crossed the bold features of the forester, and again left them pale
as death; but he saw that it was useless to interfere, and that to do so might in fact only
produce worse usage. Not so John Sherlock, who struggled so violently with the two
Ironsides who held him, swearing and calling them by every vituperative and contemptuous
term the cavaliers had applied to their party, that one of them gave him to understand
that he should share the same fate as the mastiff, if he did not hold himself still
on the instant.

But in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the whole expression of the idiot's face
was changed—the unmeaning, bead-like eyes glared with a strange unnatural fire—he
champed his strong white teeth, till the foam flew from them like the froth churned
from the angry tushes of a hunted boar—he sprang upon his feet, uttering a long protracted
howl more like the cry of some fierce and terrible wild beast man any voice of
man, and brandishing his hands, contorted into the semblance of an eagle's talons, he
seized the strong man by the throat, and, nerved by the supernatural force of madness,
throttled him till his face grew purple, and his breath rattled in his throat, and shook
him to and fro as if he was the merest stripling in the hug of a practiced athlete. For
a few seconds' space the men stood mute and motionless in consternation, but roused
to a perception of their officer's danger, for the boy still clung to him like an enraged
tiger, giving vent to his fury all the while by the most appalling sounds that can be conceived
to issue from a human throat—sounds terribly chorused by the deep sobs and
inarticulate ejaculations of the half-strangled soldier, and by the thrilling shrieks of the
imprisoned women from within—three almost simultaneously sprang forward. But, as
the foremost stretched forth his hand to grasp the idiot, Norman advanced one pace
with a swift stride, and shifting his rifle rapidly into his left hand, struck him a flush hit
in the face with all the strength and quickness of a skilful boxer—between the actual
force of the blow, and the impetus with which the Puritan rushed to meet it, the effect
was tremendous—headlong was the wretch hurled, as if he had been shot from some
engine, with the blood spouting from nose, eyes, and mouth; and when he struck the
ground with all his steel accountrements clanging about him as he fell—he lay there
prostrate and motionless, as if he had been killed upon the spot. Almost at the same
point of time in which Norman struck that hearty blow in his defence, the paroxysm
of the idiot's attack was over. Relaxing his hold on the half-strangled Puritan, he
staggered backward, and sunk into his wicker chair in the rigid seizure of an epileptic
fit, slavering fearfully through his grinded teeth, rolling his eyes upward till the whites
alone were visible, and clenching his hands till the blood started from his palms under
the pressure of his nails. As he did so, the other two privates, who had sprung forth
in the first instance to release their officer, seeing him now freed from his assailant,
rushed on the forester, and taking him entirely by surprise disarmed him, ere he could
use his rifle, and bound his hands behind him with a sword belt. At the same moment
the corporal, with the three privates who had accompanied him returned from their
search, and announced it fruitless—for that there was clearly no person in the house
except its usual inmates, and further, that they had found no signs of any recent visitor;
while freed from the restraint of the sentry, the women ran out to the assistance of the
wretched idiot and carried him in, still altogether senseless and inanimate. It was a
little while before the cornet, by whose brutality the whole disturbance had been caused,

recovered from the confusion into which the assault of the witless boy had thrown him
—but when he did so—his face livid with all bad passions, and his cool malignant eye
proclaimed him dangerous, no lesss surely than did the first words which he uttered.

“Lancepesade—draw up instantly three file—tie the dog forester to yonder horsepost,
and shoot him in two minutes, for an example to all treasonable brawlers. I'll teach
him, that to serve a lord is no excuse for treason!”

Not a shade paler did the cheek of the stout-hearted Norman grow, as he heard the
fell sentence, and saw the minions of his enemy clustering around him, and preparing
to carry into effect the atrocious mandate; nor did one muscle tremble in his sinewy
frame, although he saw that no mere threat or mockery was intended, but that it was
cold and stern reality, without one hope of rescue. He did not speak a word, but his
lips moved as he prayed fervently in silence.

“By God!” exclaimed John Sherlock, almost in a shout, as he looked on in impotent
but furious indignation, at the preparations for the murder of his friend: “By
God! to see this, a man would think there was no law in England—no justice under
heaven!”

“Then would a man think most unwisely,” answered a clear, harmonious, and well-pitched
voice from behind the group, all of whose faces were turned either toward the
house, or down the lane to the eastward—“then would a man, I say, John Sherlock,
think most unwisely; for there are laws in England, and while I am a magistrate,
there shall be justice too!”

The eyes of all were directed in an instant to the sound; and there, just at the western
entrance of the lane into the little green, upon a fine bay hunter, which he had
just pulled up as he came suddenly, and most unexpectedly, upon the scene of so foul
violence, sat the speaker. He was a fine-looking young man, of eight or nine-and-twenty
years, with a broad ample forehead, from which a profusion of dark chestnut-colored
hair fell off in loose and natural curls over the collar of his doublet; large clear
gray eyes, and a set of features not in themselves so eminently handsome, as they were
remarkable for their intellectual cast, and for the stamp of worth and calm unaffected
majesty which they wore, as if it were their every-day accustomed garment; not a disguise
assumed to suit occasions, and thrust at other times aside lest it should mar the
aims, or clash with the pursuits of the wearer. In person he was broad-shouldered,
and deep-chested, and long-limbed, and sat his horse with that easy grace which can
be acquired only by long practice, and with something of a military air.

His dress was a complete riding-suit of fine pearl-colored cloth, slightly but tastefully
embroidered with silk of the same color, high cavalry boots carefully polished, and a
broad-leafed hat of gray beaver, with a silk hat-band fastened by a broad silver buckle,
but without any feather or cockade. His sword, a handsome silver-hilted rapier in a
steel scabbard, was girt about his waist by a rich scarf of silvery satin, presenting, with
the aid of the snow-white linen and lace border of his Heemskirke cravat, a picture of
the most graceful and finished neatness that can be imagined; although from the soberness
of its colors, and the absence of all tawdry ornament, it was evident that the
wearer belonged to the parliamentarian party, which was generally—and for the most
part, it must be admitted, justly—stigmatized by the cavaliers as careless and ill-appointed,
if not actually sordid, in appearance. There were holsters at his saddle-bow,
and the butts of a pair of handsomely-mounted pistols showed that they were not
there for mere show.

When he had spoken those few words, in a voice and manner that accorded perfectly
with the calm dignity of his demeanor, he rode slowly forward toward the house,
followed by no less than six servant men dressed in plain liveries of dark drab cloth,
superbly mounted on bay horses, and all well armed with sword and pistol; who drew
out from the lane and quietly fell into line without any word given, but with a regular
and business-like method, that showed very clearly that both men and horses had been
accustomed to military manœuvres, and had performed them not only on the holiday
fields of practice, but under the hot fire of squadrons.

A bright smile played across the face of Norman, the moment that he heard the
voice of the young gentleman, chasing away the shadows that had gathered there,
even as the summer sunshine dispels the mist that shrouds some striking landscape;
and a still broader expression of delight gleamed out upon the sturdy lineaments of
good John Sherlock. The others appeared, indeed, somewhat confused and disappointed
at the interruption; but their commanding officer seeing that his force was still
superior to that of the new comers, hastily ordering his men to fall in and look well to
their carbines, walked forward a few steps, and said—addressing himself to the leader
of the party, with something more of respect than he had hitherto displayed to any person
present, but still abruptly, and almost rudely: “And pray, sir, who may you be,
who talk so loudly about justice? I am Cornet Despard, at your service, of his excellency
the Lord General Cromwell's own regiment of Ironsides; and if, as your words
seem to show, you be in truth an admirer of justice, and you think well to tarry here
some six or seven minutes, then you are like to see it done upon as sturdy a knot of
malignants as an honest man need light upon in one September day.”

“I thank you for your information, Cornet Despard,” returned the other, in the same
cool sonorous voice which he had used before—“I thank you for your information, sir;
and have the honor to reply to you, that I am Major General Henry Chaloner, colonel
of the fifth regiment of horse, and commander-in-chief of this district here of Worcester.
And now to speak of justice, sir, I trust that on looking somewhat more narrowly into
these matters, it may not appear that you have overstepped the limits of its more accurate
construction.”