23. Terrible with Banners
He never glanced our way. He and his party were far too intent on the rough ground under them and the dwindling figures of the fugitives.
They swept across our line of vision, not a furlong from us. I heard Sir Philip shout back across his shoulder:
‘They don’t look like the boys!’
‘It’s the horses all right, sir!’ answered the man riding next behind him. I recognized him as Mr Armthwaite’s groom. Mr Armthwaite did not appear to be in the cavalcade. I suppose he had felt he was too old for such a strenuous cross-country expedition.
We watched them all vanish over the brow of the fell. I took Kit’s arm and urged her to run.
‘Come on! They’ll never catch those brutes, but it’ll keep them busy for a little while. Let’s get away while we can.’
We raced away, passed the ill-omened spot where we had been ambushed, reached the forking of the ways, and took the right-hand track.
‘We’d better look out for a good place to hide,’ I panted. ‘We’ll be getting down into the dale soon. There may be a wood.’
‘What shall we do?’ wailed Kit. ‘We’ve no money, no food, no horses – nothing! What shall we do?’
‘Don’t know. Don’t worry. Let’s be thankful we’re not down that pothole. Now, if only we can dodge Sir Philip, we’ll have had our share of good luck for this morning.’
Kit snorted. ‘What about the bad luck?’
Thinking it over later, I couldn’t feel that we’d honestly had bad luck. It wasn’t chance that the colliers had robbed us: the whole thing had been planned after Red-head’s visit to the inn, when he heard of the valuable horses in the stable which we were proposing to ride across the mountain next day. And I’m afraid it wasn’t chance that Sir Philip had appeared hot on our trail: with money to spend on fresh horses, and a tongue in his head to question people on the road, it was inevitable that he should pick up our scent again sooner or later. That he should come into sight when he did had certainly been good fortune. We’d never imagined we should owe our lives to Sir Philip Morton. I’d have liked to see his face if he ever learnt that, by coming five minutes later, he could have been rid of us and the dangerous knowledge we possessed, without trouble to himself!
Our road was beginning to slope steeply downwards, and a valley spread at our feet. On either side of us the fells rose, green with short turf and grey with shale. It was one of those limestone dales in which, unless there are handy crags and caves, there is no cover. The grass is like velvet and wouldn’t hide a beetle. There are no trees but an occasional thorn. There isn’t even – in these upper reaches of the dale – a stream to cut a way between banks. All the water is underground, bubbling away through pothole and cavern, till miles farther down it springs to light as a full-grown river. And you can’t climb out of the dale, not quickly anyhow, because the sides go up at an angle like a high-pitched roof, with occasional terraces of sheer limestone precipice just to make matters more difficult.
There was only one thing to do. Keep on at a steady jog-trot and hope to get into different country before Sir Philip overhauled us. He must know we weren’t far ahead – he would have asked at the Wool Pack, and probably at the Virgin Mine as well – and I didn’t think the false scent would hold him back for long. We might have half an hour. Or at any moment now we might hear the echo of hoof-beats rolling backwards and forwards between the limestone ramparts which imprisoned us.
‘Oh dear,’ said Kit, ‘I’ve got a stitch.’
‘Kneel down and put your chin on your knee.’
‘Ah … yes, that’s better. All right now.’
We trotted on. Our valley was widening. It was about to enter a bigger valley. We could see fresh hills several miles in front, with a road climbing their sides. There were farms and barns, tiny cubes of grey stone, often fringed with a windbreak of firs. Down in the trough of the new, big valley were oak woods, probably bordering a river.
‘Stick it,’ I encouraged her. ‘Another mile or so, and we’ll be all right.’
If we could reach those woods, we’d be safe from Sir Philip. That was all I cared about for the moment. What we’d do after that I didn’t stop to wonder. One step at a time was plenty.
We reached a better road, running crosswise to the rough track we had been following for so long. Instinctively we turned to our left, downhill. We were in the big valley, and only half a mile away the road ran into the gloom of the trees. There were no houses near, which was fortunate. We didn’t want to be seen.
‘Not much farther,’ I grunted. ‘All right?’
‘Ye-es!’ Kit was looking pale. I saw she was running with half-closed eyes, and occasionally she stumbled over her own feet. She couldn’t keep this up much longer.
The wood crept nearer. On this sunless day it looked sombre and forbidding, but to us it was a haven of refuge. A quarter of a mile now …
Kit stopped running and walked stiffly, holding her side. ‘Have to – take it – easy – for a – bit,’ she gasped. I turned my head anxiously. I was expecting to see our pursuers at any time now, but there was no sign of them on the road behind.
‘All right,’ I said grudgingly, and slipped my arm round her waist. She was nearly exhausted, and we fairly tottered for that last stretch. As soon as we reached the fringe of the wood she wanted to drop. I wouldn’t let her. I was afraid she might do something silly, like fainting. Well, she could if she wanted to, but not just there by the roadside in full view.
‘You must keep up for another minute,’ I told her, and I dragged the poor girl through a dense thicket, a stream, and a clump of bracken before I let her collapse on a fallen log. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘but there’s no sense in spoiling the ship for a ha’porth of tar. Now we’ve got here we might as well make sure they won’t find us.’
Kit managed to smile. ‘I forgive you, you beast. I – I’ll be better in a few moments. Do you think we’re all right here?’
‘Unless they get a hundred men and beat the woods from end to end.’ I cocked an eye at the treetops. ‘If need be, we shall have to climb.’
‘I can do that. Listen!’
‘What?’
‘I thought I heard voices. There again – hark!’
I listened. There were voices, uncomfortably near, but not behind us. More to the left. Then came the loud whinny of a horse, which increased my alarm. I had thought we were well away from any place to which horses would be likely to penetrate.
‘They’ve soon caught us up,’ she hissed.
‘If it is our old friends.’ I tried to persuade myself it wasn’t, but I had little ground for hope. There weren’t so many people on the road in these parts. Of course it might be men felling timber, and the horses might be there for haulage.
‘Stay here,’ I whispered. ‘I’m going to creep along a bit and see who it is.’
I slipped away into the bracken. The voices weren’t coming any nearer, but, on the other hand, they weren’t receding. The speakers couldn’t be far away.
As soon as I came out of the bracken on the other side I stepped almost on to the high road. I realized to my disgust that it had taken a sharp bend just after we left it, and that all the time I had been dragging Kit (as I thought) into the trackless heart of the wood, we had actually been moving almost parallel with the road we wanted to leave.
Half a dozen horses were grazing under the trees, and I saw at once, with a heart-bound of relief, that these heavy, humdrum creatures did not belong to Sir Philip and his friends. A couple of wagons were drawn up at the roadside, and it was from behind these that the voices came. I heard every word.
‘Lo, with a band of bow-men and of pikes,
Brown bills and targeteers, four hundred strong,
Sworn to defend King Edward’s royal right,
I come in person to your majesty –’
Poetry in a Yorkshire wood? Was I dreaming? A new voice broke in, yet a voice which to me was old and familiar.
‘No, no, man! You’re supposed to be a baron bringing him an army, but you say it as though you were a fishmonger handing him a skate!’
That was enough. I burst cover and ran shouting between the wagons:
‘Mr Desmond! Mr Desmond!’
They were all rehearsing on the grass verge as I’d so often rehearsed with them. Some of the faces were new to me, but there was no mistaking that jovial visage with its comical look of amazement.
‘Peter! By all that’s incredible!’
I turned my head and bawled for Kit. Then, while she was still crackling her way through the undergrowth towards us, I poured out our story to the gasping company.
Desmond rose to the occasion magnificently. ‘We can lend you a couple of horses, and welcome. Money too. But those nags of ours won’t carry you much faster than you can walk. And why should you run for it?’ He waved his hand at the circle of eager faces. ‘Our company’s more than a match for these men who’re after you.’
‘But they’ll be armed,’ I pointed out, ‘and I don’t suppose you’ve more than a sword or two and a pistol between you –’
‘My dear boy, we’ve a positive armoury of pikes and things in the wagon! We’re doing Marlowe’s Edward the Second on this tour, and you know how many –’
‘Yes,’ I interrupted, ‘but they’re only stage weapons: they’re no real good.’
‘We are actors, not soldiers,’ he retorted. ‘Leave this to me, Peter.’ He turned to the company, and clapped his hand. ‘Get out the costumes. Just a helmet and a cuirass each. A pike or a halberd. Sword, too, if there’s enough to go round. Not you, Nicholas or Charlie. I’ll want you in your usual parts – drum and trumpet behind the scenes. Look lively everyone, or they’ll be here before we are ready.’
It didn’t take them long. Desmond turned to us with an excited, boyish grin, and bowed gravely:
‘Lo, with a band of bow-men and of pikes,
Brown bills and targeteers, four hundred strong,
Sworn to defend our Queen Elizabeth,’
he adapted Marlowe’s lines.
‘I wish there were four hundred of you,’ I said, with a laugh. He pretended to be hurt.
‘You forget I am an actor and a leader of actors! With two men and a boy I can conjure up the hordes of Tamburlaine, the Greek host before Troy, or the armies which fought at Bosworth Field. I can –’
‘You’d better stop talking,’ said his wife, who was looking decidedly anxious.
‘Yes, my dear. And you’d better hide among the trees, out of harm’s way.’
‘No, I’ll go with Nick and Charlie, and bang a drum to help them. Peter and Kit had better come with us.’
‘No,’ said Kit, ‘we must be in this, mustn’t we, Pete? Have you any helmets to spare?’
‘Yes. But, look here, lads, if you’re really willing to show yourselves it had better be as yourselves. We’ll use you as a sort of bait. Come along; I’ll explain the idea as we go.’ He turned to the dozen or so actors. ‘Double your files!’ he roared, and they formed sheepishly into a tiny column. ‘Smarter! Act! Act as if your lives depended on it – maybe they do. Forget you’re rogues and vagabonds! You’re not now – you’re “an army terrible with banners”. Look like one!’
We marched round the bend in the road, out of sight of the ramshackle wagons and the bony horses, which would certainly have spoilt the general effect. I must say that, as they warmed to the work, the actors made a good show. It was a pity there was no sun to glint on their helmets and breastplates, but I’m not sure that the dull light, together with the sombre appearance of the wood, didn’t produce a more sinister result.
‘The main thing is to get them dismounted,’ said Desmond. ‘This Sir Philip, anyhow. Then he’s not so likely to make a bolt for it.’ We accordingly posted ourselves on a rough piece of bank sloping up from the road. At least, Kit, Desmond, and I did, with just two of the pikemen. The others disposed themselves under cover as he directed them.
‘You’d better sit on the ground at first, looking as if you were tied hand and foot,’ he told us.
‘Have you any cord?’ I asked.
‘You don’t need cord. You’re actors. You mime it. You show that you’re tied by your faces and the way you wriggle your shoulders, not by a length of hemp. You shouldn’t need telling that!’
The fear crossed my mind that Desmond’s artistic pride might be the downfall of us all. Perhaps he didn’t realize then what a grim affair this was, and thought that we, being so young, exaggerated.
We had still nearly an hour to wait before we heard the clatter of distant hooves. There could be no doubt who it was. No ordinary traveller would have come pelting down the road at that speed.
In fact, they came so fast that it looked for a moment as though they were going to sweep by without seeing our little group in the green shadows. An hour ago I would have wished for no better luck. Now I was all warmed up to gamble on Desmond’s plan, and strive by a bold stroke to finish this fight for good.
Sir Philip saw us as he drew level. He slackened speed first and began in an ordinary voice: ‘Have you seen –?’ Then he glanced down from Desmond’s stern face to the two small huddled figures on the bank beside him. His voice went up in delighted surprise, and he pulled up his horse with a jerk which almost brought him off. ‘You’ve got the scoundrels! This is splendid!’ As Desmond made no move, he slid from the saddle and came running up the bank to us.
‘My name is Morton,’ he said swiftly. ‘Sir Philip Morton.’ Desmond bowed gravely. ‘These lads are wanted for horse-stealing from Mr Armthwaite, one of our Cumberland Justices.’ He turned and beckoned to a couple of his companions who had reined in below us. ‘I presume, sir, you would have no objection to our taking charge of them? I don’t know how they come to be in your custody, but to begin with they will have to face their trial in our county, and –’ He smiled pleasantly. Sir Philip could make himself immensely pleasant when he chose, otherwise he would never have brought so many men under his influence.
Desmond kept him waiting long enough for him to feel uncomfortable. Desmond, in helmet and cuirass, made a fine figure. He spoke at last, very deliberately.
‘As you see, sir, I hold the Queen’s commission –’
‘Of course! But surely –’
‘And I happen myself to be on my way to Cumberland.’
‘Indeed? But an officer of the Queen won’t wish to be burdened with the company of young criminals.’
‘I should explain,’ continued Desmond, ‘that I command merely an advance-guard detachment of the army.’
Sir Philip stared. That remark had jolted him. ‘May I ask what army, sir?’
‘Certainly. The army which Her Majesty is dispatching to occupy the northern counties and stifle the rebellion which, we understand, has been plotted –’
‘Good heavens! You appal me, sir!’ Sir Philip’s loyal horror was beautifully acted: it was not for nothing that he had been so keen a playgoer. ‘A rebellion? Can you tell us anything more?’
‘Certainly, Sir Philip Morton. You, and your friends, are under arrest for participation in the conspiracy.’ It was grand to hear the long words rolled off Desmond’s tongue. It would scarcely have surprised me if he had broken suddenly into perfect blank verse.
‘Arrest? You’re mad –’
‘We know everything!’ thundered Desmond, who hadn’t even listened to half of the little we’d time to tell him.
But those words were the cue we had arranged. Desmond whipped out one of the few real pistols we possessed. Sir Philip leapt down into the road to remount. ‘Come on!’ he shrieked. ‘There aren’t enough of them to stop us! We can –’
Then he saw the six pikemen who had suddenly jumped from the wood and thrown themselves in a bristling line across the road, and the words died on his lips. He turned his head. Another rank of soldiers barred the road below. From round the bend, out of sight, came the tattoo of drums, the martial wail of a trumpet, the slow tramp of hooves.
I sympathized with Sir Philip at that moment. He saw the end as clearly in front of him as we thought we had seen it when the miners dragged us towards the chasm a few hours before. He looked down that empty road, and I don’t think he saw the shadowy oak woods or the green moors above the treetops. He saw the other long, dreary road which leads to Tower Hill.
‘We’ll cut our way out!’ he shrieked again, and swung himself into the saddle. His hand went to his sword, and the thin blade was half out of its scabbard when I flung myself at his leg, heaved it sharply upwards, and toppled him over the other side of his horse.
There wasn’t much fight in the others. In five minutes they were all disarmed and pinioned, without any serious injuries to either side.
‘March them to the wagons, my hearties!’ said Desmond, unable any longer to act as gravely as befitted an officer and a gentleman.
As we marched triumphantly round the bend in the road the drum rolled again, the trumpet sounded, and you could have sworn that a troop of cavalry was about to ride into view. The disgust on the faces of our captives when they saw the ‘army terrible with banners’! There was Nick blowing away expertly at his trumpet, so that a loud call seemed to be answered by a faint one half a mile away. There was Charlie brandishing the drumsticks and shouting orders at the top of his voice. And there was Mrs Desmond, to cap all, making the poor old carthorses shamble round and round in a never-ending circle.
But I think the greatest shock Sir Philip had was when he came face to face with Kit. His face flamed.
‘Yes, Philip.’
‘You – you little vixen!’
‘Think yourself lucky,’ she retorted coldly. ‘You might have married me.’
All of which, naturally, involved more explanations to the Desmonds and their company. And exclamations from them.
‘We can’t stop here gossiping for ever,’ Kit pointed out laughingly. ‘Remember – there’s the Queen.’
That thought sobered us.
‘Look here,’ I said, ‘if you people will look after the prisoners, and see them safely jailed, Kit and I will borrow the best of their horses and ride on. We’ve plenty of time; the show isn’t till Saturday.’
‘Saturday?’ Desmond stared at me, and I saw the horror dawn in his eyes. ‘Didn’t you know? The date was altered – brought forward two days! You can’t possibly do it in the time!’
In the terrible silence which followed I heard someone laughing inside one of the wagons. It was Sir Philip.