19. Besieged

The dog burst into a fury of barking as I staggered up to the door of our farm, and it’s no wonder he didn’t recognize that white bedraggled spectre as one of the family.

‘Down, Snap!’ I tried to say, but the words were soundless on my lips.

The door opened, and there stood Kit against the candlelight. She screamed as I staggered forward, and I thought she was frightened, not knowing me, but it was horror at my graveyard look. She put her arms under mine and guided me across the doorstep. I heard her say, ‘It’s Peter!’ and my mother exclaim, ‘Thank God!’

‘They’ve beaten him!’ said Kit, and it was the only time I have heard her cry.

‘No,’ I said huskily, collapsing on the settee. ‘I – I’ve had a long walk – and a swim – and before that I fell down. That’s all.’ And suddenly I realized how funny it all sounded, and I began to laugh hysterically.

The next thing I knew I was warm and dry in bed, and they were kneeling one on either side, plying me with food.

‘He’ll be all right after a good sleep,’ said Mother cheerfully. She was used to her menfolk coming home half-dead, especially in winter, and it took a lot to send her into a panic.

I couldn’t sleep, though, till I had asked one or two questions.

They told me that all the neighbours were armed and out, searching Blencathra and the surrounding fells for me or my body. As soon as Kit had brought the news, Dad had mustered the neighbours and they’d marched to the peel-tower. There’d been no one there, so they’d battered down the door and ransacked the place from roof to cellar. They’d found nothing. ‘No,’ said Kit, catching my look and my thought, ‘not even –’ She didn’t finish, but I knew she meant, as I meant, poor Tom Boyd. Evidently the conspirators, scared by the discovery of another spy so soon after the first, had abandoned their headquarters at a moment’s notice, making a clean sweep of any evidence which might have served to incriminate them.

‘Everything’s all right; don’t worry,’ said Mother, patting my pillow. ‘Tom and your dad will be in soon; they’ve got the business in hand, and those scoundrels won’t get within a mile of you again.’

I grinned weakly. This was going back to childhood with a vengeance, back to the comforting little world in which Father and Big Brother can save one from every possible peril.

I couldn’t go back like that. These last months had made a man of me, perhaps a little before my time, and, man-like, I had to stand on my own feet.

‘Dad can’t save the Queen’s life in London,’ I said. ‘Now Tom Boyd … hasn’t come back, I’ve got to take on his work.’

‘And I,’ whispered Kit.

Then I poured out the story of what I’d heard in the peel-tower – the plot to assassinate the Queen, to set the North of England aflame with rebellion, and to call in a Spanish fleet. I had to share the secret quickly. It was too big a burden to carry alone. I might be ill in the morning; I might have a raging fever and be out of the fight for days. But Kit, I knew, would send the news if I couldn’t.

‘First thing in the morning,’ I said hoarsely, ‘we find someone we can trust – a magistrate – and have word sent to London. That’s got to be done. Understand?’

‘Of course,’ Kit said.

‘And now sleep,’ said Mother decidedly, taking the empty soup-bowl from my fingers and tucking the bedclothes round my shoulders. ‘Good night, Pete,’ Kit murmured, and they put out the light. They went away into the kitchen, the door closed softly behind them, and that, for me, was the end of a very strenuous day.

When I opened my eyes, Kit was bending over me. ‘I thought you were never going to wake again! Ready for food?’

‘Rather!’

‘Your mother’s on to me to wear some of your sister’s clothes,’ she said, with a grin, as she sauntered away to the kitchen, ‘but I’m staying a man till this thing’s finished. He’s awake,’ she called as she passed through the doorway.

The family gathered round while I sat up and ate. All except my brother, that is: he was out at work, for the daily round of a farm must somehow go on. My father was in his best clothes, and he sat on a stool with his broad hands laid on his knees. He said:

‘Well, young man, this has been a grand to-do! Soon as you’re up and dressed, we’re going to ride straight into Keswick to see Mr Armthwaite. We’ll tell him the whole story. He’s a Justice of the Peace. He’ll know what to do.’

I looked at Dad, and I thought to myself he was taking charge a bit too readily. Wasn’t I a Secret Agent of Her Majesty? Then I looked at Dad again, and decided it wouldn’t be at all wise to argue with him. I might rise to the dizziest heights and become Baron Brownrigg of Lonsdale and be the Queen’s Principal Secretary of State, but to Dad I’d never be anything but his son.

Anyhow, what he said fitted in perfectly with my own plans. Mr Armthwaite, living in his big mansion in Keswick, was as handy a magistrate as we could choose, and he would be able to set the machinery of the law in motion at once. The main thing was to have the warning message dispatched to Sir Robert in London, ensuring the arrest of Somers and all necessary precautions at the performance. I only hoped, for the sake of Shakespeare and all our friends, that they wouldn’t call off the play entirely. It wouldn’t be like Elizabeth to agree to that.

The performance was now six days distant. I wasn’t sure how fast the Government couriers could travel, but I guessed that, with fresh horses ready at every stage and summer weather to favour them, the news should reach Sir Robert within two or three days. That would allow plenty of time for counter-measures in London. The northern ringleaders would presumably be under arrest, and the rising stifled before London was even aware of the danger.

I got out of bed and put on clean clothes. They were clothes I hadn’t worn since I left home, and I got a shock to find how short in the sleeve and tight across the shoulders they were. Apart from a few tender places where I had scratched or bruised myself, I felt none the worse for my adventures. I’d been living roughly for so long.

Just as I passed through into the kitchen and said I was ready, my brother Tom came striding in, the axe dangling in his hand.

‘Sir Philip’s coming up our way,’ he said quietly.

Dad looked at him. ‘Alone?’

‘Not likely! There’s five of ’em.’

‘Give me that axe, lad. I’ll finish splitting those logs for you.’ Outside, the dog gave loud warning that strangers were getting near. ‘Kit and Peter must hide upstairs in the loft. The rest of you carry on with your ordinary jobs. And mind, now – you none of you know anything, beyond what I say.’

‘Do be careful,’ begged my mother as he went out.

‘I’ll be careful of myself,’ he promised, smiling back over his shoulder from the door.

I took Kit’s hand. ‘Come on; we’d better do as Dad says.’ There was a small loft over the bedroom upstairs, and we made ourselves comfortable along the beams. A few chinks of sunlight showed between the roof-slabs, and we could hear the voices outside quite plainly.

‘Good morning, Mr Brownrigg,’ said Sir Philip very civilly.

‘Morning, Sir Philip. What can I do for you?’

‘I want to know where your younger son is.’

‘So do I,’ said Dad shortly.

‘You surely don’t mean that you don’t know?’

‘Well,’ rumbled my father, ‘seeing that I was out looking for him on the fells all yesterday till long after dark, with most of the neighbours helping …’Tisn’t likely we’d do that if we knew where he was. Is it? I may be a fool, but my neighbours aren’t.’

‘Yesterday isn’t today.’

‘No, but today’ll soon be yesterday if we stand wasting time like this.’ And I heard the ring of the axe as Dad brought it down on a log, splitting it cleanly. I should think Sir Philip felt glad the blow hadn’t landed on his own head.

Kit nudged me in the darkness. ‘I like your father,’ she whispered.

‘There’s no need to waste any of your time,’ said Sir Philip coldly. ‘I just want to look inside your house, and I can do that without your assistance.’

‘You can do nothing of the sort, Sir Philip. My house is my house. And no one enters without my invitation. There’s not many men in Cumberland who wouldn’t be right welcome, but I’m sorry to say you’re one of the few.’

‘Indeed? If you are going to take that line, I can produce a warrant signed by magistrates –’

‘No doubt! Friends of yours!’

‘You don’t seem to realize the position, Brownrigg. Your son is a dangerous young criminal.’

‘I know – you say he slung a stone at you last year!’

‘It may be news to you that within the last twenty-four hours he has savagely assaulted two other gentlemen. Sir Walter Percy may not recover.’ (He must be tough, I thought to myself, to have survived that roll down the scree at all.)

‘Ay,’ said my father meaningly, ‘there’s been a deal of lawbreaking in these parts lately. I only hope everyone comes to the justice he deserves.’

‘Including your son?’

‘Everyone guilty. No matter who it is.’ At that I can imagine he gave Sir Philip a straight look which the knight didn’t relish. Then Dad’s voice changed. It was sharp now. ‘If those friends of yours go any nearer my door, I won’t answer for what happens to them!’

‘Come on!’ Sir Philip shouted. ‘It’s quite clear he’s got the young scoundrel inside!’

There was a confused din then a frantic dog and rearing horses. A pistol snapped and the bullet thudded against the house.

‘Come on,’ I said, and dropped down from the loft. At the same moment the door slammed downstairs with an echoing crash, and by the time we reached the kitchen it was safely barred. I was relieved to see Dad unhurt.

‘Best barricade the windows,’ he ordered. Luckily, they were small, and it was an easy matter to block them. All the time we were doing it, Sir Philip’s friends were kicking and hammering at the door.

‘They’ll not break that down in a hurry,’ said my brother. ‘What else shall we do, Dad? I wish we’d a musket.’

‘The old longbow’s a sight better than any musket,’ said my father, who was conservative in many ways and could never see that gunpowder had been a useful addition to life.

‘But it makes no noise,’ Tom explained. ‘If we’d a musket and fired it off, maybe the Bells or some of the other neighbours would hear it and come along.’

‘I’ve a pistol,’ said Kit, pulling out the one Tom Boyd had given her.

‘So have we – and one of those fellows outside has already fired his. But they only make a bit of a snap: they’d not be heard down the dale.’

‘Bide quiet a minute,’ said Dad. ‘They’ve stopped beating on the door. What are they up to?’

We all listened. Our besiegers had moved away. We could hear only a distant murmur of voices in consultation. We couldn’t make out what they were saying.

‘I suppose they couldn’t break in anyhow at the back?’ Kit asked.

‘No; there’s only that tiny slit of a window to keep the dairy cool. They’d never get through that,’ said Mother.

It was lucky that our house backed so closely on the mountainside, so that there were no doors or windows to guard there.

‘I’m going upstairs to see what they’re doing,’ I said, and ran up to the little bedroom window, low under the eaves, which gave a clear view of all that was going on in front of the house.

All the men had dismounted, and their horses were grazing beside the beck. The men – among whom I recognized our old adversary, the yellow gentleman, though now very foppishly dressed in pale lilac – were grouped round a log which was lying ready to be turned into fuel. I saw their idea at once.

‘They’re going to use that log as a battering-ram!’ I called down to the family.

‘Let them try,’ growled my father. He came tramping slowly upstairs, and I saw that the old bow was ready strung in his hand. ‘Hold those arrows,’ he ordered. ‘I may need them in a hurry.’

We waited tensely. Outside, it was just an ordinary summer’s day. The beck sang the same rippling song which had been part of my life ever since I could remember. The hens strutted hither and thither, scratching for food, sublimely indifferent to the human combat. Only Snap skirmished round, snarling at the intruders.

The men picked up the length of tree-trunk, two each side, for it was not long enough to provide handhold for six. Neither Sir Philip nor Sir David helped, but they drew their rapiers, as if to lead the assault once a breach was made.

‘That’s a good weight of timber,’ grunted Dad, without taking his eyes off them. ‘But I didn’t fell it for this. Give me an arrow.’

He drew back the bowstring and let fly. There was a yelp of pain from the group, and I saw that one man’s hand was pinned to the log. His friends helped to draw out the arrow, and he danced away, swearing and clutching his wound. The log was dropped hurriedly, and they all withdrew behind some trees. It looked as if the battering-ram idea was unpopular.

‘The next one,’ Dad announced calmly, ‘will be a leg or a shoulder.’ He might have been discussing joints for dinner, he was so quiet about it. ‘But if I have to shoot a third time, it’s Sir Philip, heart or throat. And hang the consequences! A man must defend his own home and his folk.’

Sir Philip had no intention, apparently, of exposing himself to such peril. I caught a glimpse of him in the deep shade of the sycamores, pointing and gesticulating. Suddenly two of the men dashed forward, grabbed the log, and hauled it away into cover. My father kept his arrow notched on the string. He would not shoot unless they approached the house.

‘I see their game,’ I said. ‘They’re going to sneak round the side, behind the stone fence.’

‘Let them. They can’t batter down solid walls.’

‘No, Dad, but they can get to the door that way without coming straight at us across the open ground.’

‘You’re right, Peter.’ Dad knitted his brow, stooped down and peered through the little window. Our walls were so thick that we couldn’t see the ground immediately in front of the house. There was a strip ten paces deep which was hidden from us – ample space for the men to swing their ram, if they could get there without crossing the danger zone. They could do it, too, by creeping up to the house from the flank.

‘We can drop boiling water on their heads,’ he said cheerfully, and shouted down to Mother to see that the biggest pot should be ready on the hearth.

‘We can’t hold them off for ever like that, Dad,’ said my brother, joining us at the window. ‘We’ll have to get help somehow.’

‘How?’

‘If you threw open the door suddenly and I ran out, and then you barred it quick behind me, I reckon I could take them by surprise. I’d get down to Bell’s and rouse up the whole dale. We’d chase these chaps off in no time.’

‘It’s too risky, lad.’

Tom looked hurt. ‘It’s time I took a few risks,’ he grumbled.

‘I’ve a better idea,’ I said. ‘Suppose I squeezed through the little dairy window? The fern’s standing tall at the back of the house. I could creep right along to the waterfall, and then down the new fence; there’s a good cover halfway to Bell’s.’

‘Not even you could get through that window,’ said Dad.

‘I could – at least, I could once.’ I flushed at the memory. One day when I’d been in disgrace, and forbidden to leave the house, I’d sneaked out by that very way and in again two hours afterwards. My father had been working in front of the house the whole time, and he’d never seen me crawling through the bracken on the mountainside above. Yes, I knew what I was talking about. But that had been two or three years ago, and I was smaller then.

‘If Pete’s too fat, I might manage it,’ said Kit.

At another time we might have argued for some time as to which of the two was the rounder at the part most likely to stick in a windowframe, but the situation was too serious. We ran downstairs and into the dim room at the back, where the air always struck as cold as a cave. I pushed aside a pan of milk and knelt on the stone slab. The window was tall but very thin, and the great thickness of our walls did not help matters. Still, by wriggling and scraping my shoulders, and letting Kit shove vigorously from the rear, I succeeded at last in popping out of that hole like a bung out of a barrel.

Kit followed. I got hold of her under the armpits and pulled, and she knocked me backwards into the bracken as she came.

‘You’d best not come back yourselves,’ said Dad, putting his head through.

‘Not come back?’

‘No, till we know how this little to-do is going to end. Just tell the neighbours, and they’ll see we’re all right. Once you’re out of the way, you’d better keep out of the way. Those horses you brought are still waiting in Mr Bell’s stable. You’d best make for Keswick at once, while Sir Philip’s occupied here, and see Mr Armthwaite.’

‘All right, Dad. Goodbye!’ We dropped on all fours and slid through that bracken like adders.