Chapter 52 - No Quarter! by Mayne Reid
At Home Again
There was rejoicing at Ruardean. After two years of forced absence, the master of Hollymead had returned to his ancestral home, and the faces of his beautiful daughters once more gladdened the eyes of the villagers.
Out of the world’s way as was this quaint little place, it too had suffered the severities of the war. More than one visit had been paid to it by patrols and scouting parties of the Royalist soldiery; which meant very much the same as if the visitors had been very bandits. They made free with everything they could lay hands on worth the trouble of taking—goods, apparel, furniture, even to the most cherished household goods; invading the family sanctuary, and at each re-appearance stripping it cleaner and cleaner.
Ruardean had, indeed, become an impoverished place, as all the rural district around. The “chimney tapestry” had disappeared from the farmer’s kitchen, neither flitch nor ham to be seen in it; empty his pigsties, unstocked his pastures; and if a horse remained in his stable it was one no Cavalier would care to bestride. The King’s Commissioners of Array had requisitioned all, calling it a purchase, and paying with bits of stamped paper, which the reluctant vendor knew to be worth just nothing. But, nolens volens, he must accept it, or take the alternative, sure of being made severe for him.
So afflicted ever since the surrender of Bristol to Rupert, no wonder the Forest people had grown a-weary of the war, and were glad when they heard of Wintour’s defeat at Beachley, and soon after of Monmouth being taken by the Parliamentarians. It seemed earnest of a coming peace; while to the people of the Ruardean district Ambrose Powell once more appearing among them was like the confirmation of it.
Something besides gave them security, for the time at least. A squadron of horse had taken up quarters in their village; not the freebooting Cavaliers, bullying and fleecing them; but soldiers who treated them kindly, paid full price for everything, in short, behaved to them as friends and protectors. For many of them were their friends their own relatives, the body of horse being that commanded by Colonel Walwyn, with Rob Wilde as its head sergeant.
Alike secure felt the ladies in Hollymead House, safe as within Gloucester. How could it be otherwise, with Sir Richard having his headquarters there and Eustace Trevor under the same roof?
The happy times seemed to have returned; and the sisters, after their long irksome residence in walled towns, more than ever enjoyed that country life, to which from earliest years they had been accustomed.
And once again went they out hawking, with the same cast of peregrines and the same little merlin. For Van Dorn, living in a sequestered spot, and unaffected by the events of the war, had kept the falcons up to their training.
Once more to the marsh at the base of Ruardean Hill, the party almost identical with that which had repaired thither two years before. And as before rang out the falconer’s hooha-ha-ha-ha! and shrill whistle, as a heron rose up from the sedge; again a white heron, the great egret! Singular coincidence, and strangely gratifying to the fair owner of the peregrines, for she especially wanted an egret. How she watched as it made for upper air, with the falcons doing their best to mount above it; watched with eager, anxious eyes, fearing it might get away. Not that she was cruel, only just then she so desired to have a white heron; would give anything for one.
She did not need to have a fear. Van Dorn had done his duty by the hawks, and, the chased bird had no chance of escaping. Soon its pursuers were seen above it, with spread trains and quivering sails; then one stooped, raked, and rose over again; while the other stooped to bind; both ere long becoming bound; when all three birds came fluttering back to earth.
With triumphant “whoop?” the falconer pronounced it a kill; but this time, seemingly without being told, he plucked out the tail coverts, and handed them to his young mistress. Days before, however, Van Dorn had received injunctions to procure such if possible. There was a hat that wanted a plume.
“To replace that you lost, dear Eustace,” she said, passing them over to him.
“’Tis so good of you to think of it, darling?”
How different their mode of addressing one another from the time when they were last upon that spot! No painstaking coyness now; but heart knowing heart, troth plighted, and loves mutually reliant.
“I shall take better care of this one,” he added, adjusting the feathers into a panache. “Never man sadder than I when the other was taken from me. For I feared it would be the loss of what I far more valued.”
“Your life. Ah! so feared I when I heard you were wounded—”
“No, not my life,” he said, interrupting. “Something besides.”
“What besides?”
“Your love, Vaga; at least your esteem.”
“Eustace! How could you think that?”
“From having lost my own, along with my character as a soldier. To be taken as in a trap.”
“Never that, dearest! All knew there was treason. If you were taken so might a lion, with such numbers against you. And how you delivered yourself!”
She had learnt all the particulars of his escape—a deed of daring to be proud of. And proud was she of it.
“Do you know, Eustace,” she continued, without waiting his rejoinder, “that you spared me a journey, and perhaps some humiliation?”
“A journey! Whither?”
“To Goodrich Castle first; and it might have been anywhere after.”
“But why?”
“To throw myself at Sir Henry Lingen’s feet, and crave mercy for you.”
“That would have been humiliation indeed, darling. And I’m glad that chance hindered you from it.”
“Chance! No love: your courage did it, and—”
“My horses’s heels, rather say. But for them I should not be here.”
He was upon that horse’s back then; she on a palfrey by his side.
“Noble Saladin!” she exclaimed, drawing closer, and passing her gloved hand caressingly over his arched neck. “Dear, good Saladin! If you but knew how grateful I am!”
Saladin did seem to know, as in soft, gentle neighing he turned his head round to acknowledge the caress.
A fair picture these betrothed lovers formed as they sate in their saddles under the greenwood tree. Some change was there in them since they had been there before. He handsome as ever, perhaps handsomer. His cheeks embrowned with two years’ campaigning, his figure braced to a terser, firmer manhood; on Saladin’s back he seemed the personification of a young crusader just returned from the Holy Wars.
She lovelier than of erst, if that were possible. A woman now, her girlhood’s beauty had done all Major Grenville said of it, and more. Sager had she grown, made so by the vicissitudes and trials of the time; and it became her. Not now clapped she her hands, and echoed the falconer’s “whoop!” when the hawks struck their quarry down. Instead, took it all quietly; so different from former days!
But there was another cause now sobering, almost saddening, her, one which affected both. The war was not yet at an end. At any hour, any moment, might come a summons which would again separate them, perchance never more to meet! In that tranquil sylvan scene they felt as on the deck of a storm-tossed, wreck-threatened ship, in the midst of angry ocean! Cruel war, to beget such reflections—such fears!
And, alas! they were realised almost on the instant. Following the old course, the hawking party had ascended to the summit of the hill to give the merlin its turn. The game of its pursuit, more plentiful, was easily found and flushed, so that soon the courageous creature made a kill—a landrail the quarry.
But ere it could be cast-off for a second flight, just as once before, the sport was interrupted by, their seeing a horseman on the opposite hill coming down the road from the Wilderness to Drybrook.
He might not have been noticed but for the pace, which was a rapid gallop. This down the steep declivity told of some pressing purpose, while the sun’s glitter upon arms and accoutrements proclaimed him a soldier.
More definite was the knowledge got of him through a telescope, which one of the attendants carried. Glancing through it, Sir Richard recognised the uniform of a Parliamentarian dragoon—one of Massey’s own regiment. Coming that way, and at such a speed, the man must be a messenger with despatches; and for whom but himself?
Separating from his party, and taking Hilbert with him, the knight trotted off to the nearest point where the Ruardean road passed over the shoulder of the hill, there halting till the dragoon should come up. Nor had he long to wait. As conjectured, the man was a messenger, bearing a despatch that called for all haste in the delivery, and therefore came galloping up the slope without lessening his pace. He seemed some little disconcerted at seeing two horsemen drawn up on the road before him, but a word from Sir Richard reassured him, as he perceived it was the knight himself.
As the despatch was for Sir Richard, this brought his gallop to an end; and, drawing up, he handed over the document, simply saying—
“From Governor Massey, Colonel.”
Addressed “Colonel Walwyn,” it read,—
“Gerrard has slipped through out of South Wales, by Worcester, and now en route to join the King at Oxford. I’ve got orders from the Committee to march out and intercept him, if possible at Evesham, or before he can cross the Cotswolds. I shall want every man of my command. So draw off from the Ruardean, for Gloucester, and reinforce its garrison. Start soon as you get this—lose not a moment. Time is pressing.
“E. Massey.”
When Sir Richard returned to the hawking party his hurried manner, with the serious expression upon his features, admonished Vaga Powell that her presentiment was on the eve of being fulfilled. Sure was she of it on hearing his answer to Sabrina, who had anxiously questioned him on his coming up.
“Yes, dearest! A courier from Massey at Gloucester. I’m commanded to proceed thither in all haste. We must home.”
And home went they to Hollymead, hurriedly as once before. But not to stay there; only to leave the ladies within a few minutes in getting ready for the “route.” Then back down to Ruardean to order the “Assembly” sounded; soon after “Boots and saddles”; in fine, the “Forward, march!” and before the sun had sunk over the far Hatteral Hills, the sequestered village had resumed its wonted tranquillity, not a soldier to be seen in its streets, nor anywhere round it.