CHAPTER XI

—AND THE GREEN HANDS BEGIN TO MOVE

IN THE FIRST FORTNIGHT, while leaves deepened their green with the flush of May, Fenton learned many things.

He learned to eat the food, mainly meat with heavy rich sauces, which his young digestion enjoyed. Vegetables you could have in moderation, potatoes, eggs, fish, and good cheese. Nobody, he noted in high pleasure, ever pestered you to eat vegetables for your health. Except for potatoes, he discarded them.

He learned to drink, for a beginning, a quart of the heaviest wine without a fuddled head or a noticeable slur of speech. George Harwell marvelled at his sobriety, and swore he was a cursed reformed fellow. Their pronunciation, too, slid more easily to his tongue; he could (almost) speak without thinking.

Tobacco smoking was easier. Though no pipe bowl, save a china one, makes hotter smoking than a clay, the Virginia tobacco was far better than he had expected. It crept up the long stem, deeply soothing to the lungs, without scraping off the roof of his mouth.

Big Tom constructed a toothbrush for him, and another for Lydia, after a design which Fenton drew on paper and carefully explained six times. It was instantly understood by an alert stableboy­ named Dick, who tried to teach Big Tom. As the latter would sit pondering over the design, Dick would rush at him with bursting words, only to be sent flying head over heels into a bush with one sweep of Tom’s hand, while Tom continued to ponder.

On occasion Tom would put the design on the ground and merely walk round it and study it from above. Fenton wondered whether he would ever get that infernal toothbrush.

But this came later. It is regrettable to state that almost his first official order to the household caused tumult and near-riot.

The tumult occurred on May 13th, only one day after he had gone to see Sir John Gilead regarding a cellar half-full of sewage. George, who came to dinner on the previous night, explained the matter.

“Why,” exclaimed George, “where in all this is the difficulty? A small thing of bribery; no more.”

Fenton, more as a historian that a householder, tested certain matters he knew to be true.

“I must bribe everybody, then?”

“Not shops or tradespeople, scratch me! But if it becomes inside the matter of a favour, or a preferment, or some work in control of a Whitehall office, too low for higher name … why, then, plump your money on the table in a bag, and have done with it!”

“An honest practical matter, then?”

“To all but the most squeamish, ay.” George shrugged his shoulders. “My father … hem! We’ll speak no names. Yet a practice so long established, when we buy their parliament men or they buy ours even among nations, holds no deep taint. Have a tack at it, and I’ll tell you how to speak to Sir John Gilead.”

Sir John Gilead’s place of business was in the Treasury Buildings, on the west side of King Street. In his little office at the back, Fenton could look out at the Cockpit, with its red brick and its flattened conical roof painted white, vivid against the greenery of St. James’s Park. There lived my Lord Treasurer, the Earl of Danby. It appeared, as a surprise to Fenton, that both Sir Nick’s father and Sir Nick himself had been close friends of my Lord Treasurer, a financial genius and himself a master of bribery at keeping Members of Parliament hot for the Court party.

This, no doubt, accounted for Sir John’s great civility when he welcomed Fenton. Sir John was a bustling man with octagonal spectacles all but hidden in a great grey periwig.

“And that is the problem,” concluded Fenton. From a big leather box on the floor he took a canvas bag full of gold pieces, tied lightly at the neck, and containing far more than enough for his project. He put down the bag carelessly on his companion’s desk.

“Hum!” said Sir John, placing one finger solemnly on his lip. “A good plan does indeed occur to me.”

He then outlined a scheme whereby a pipe should be run downwards under Fenton’s back garden, under the deep garden wall, so that the sewage should “seep away” under the terraces down to the Mall.

“Now scratch me,” cried Fenton, who had picked up the term from George, “but this lacks good sense. ’Twill also seep upwards, an offence to all nostrils, in His Majesty’s own park! And what if it should reach the Mall?”

“Questionless, there are difficulties.”

“Now my first plan, a pipe run but three hundred yards to a main sewer …”

“It would be costly, my dear sir. Very costly.”

Reaching down to the box on the floor, Fenton picked up a second canvas bag, somewhat larger than the first, and set it on the desk.

“Hem!” said Sir John, without seeming to notice. “Why, sir, after giving this matter deep thought,” he added after a time, “I am sure I can dispatch your business.” He arose and beamed through his spectacles. “And for a friend of my Lord Danby, the King’s chief minister, it shall be done speedily.”

And it was, too, beginning next morning.

On that same next morning, rather early, Fenton returned from Lydia’s room, wrapped in his brown bedgown with the scarlet-poppy design. His step was springy, his eyes were bright, his shoulders had the swing of confidence.

“Hark’ee, Insolence,” he bellowed at Giles, though smiling, “from this day there is a new order in the house.”

Giles had opened a door, almost invisible against the panelling, towards the right of the bedroom door as you faced it. This opened into a small room or dressing closet, where the suits were hung, the linen and decorations stored. Being unable to decide which clothes to choose, Giles was in an impudent mood.

“Would move the beds, sir? ’Twould be more convenient if …”

Fenton silenced him. Fenton explained that he must go out and find the best bathtub, even if it had to be constructed, which could be procured. It should be large, and if possible lined with porcelain. It should then be placed in any room on this floor, to be called in straightforward fashion the bathroom, and all furniture cleared away save for a chair or two.

Giles made certain comments, and Fenton fired a heavy riding boot at his head.

But this was not all. In some room off the kitchen, say, there should be installed a bath for the servants: only one bath a week being required. This caused a true revolt among the servants, including six whom he had never even seen.

Here, actually, he met a generation of truly free Englishmen. In any public place—street, tavern, playhouse, cockpit, or any place that did not awe them—they considered themselves as good as any nobleman, and said so. They had no vote, but they had much indulgence because of their power to set up or pull down. They were the “mobile party,” whom my Lord Shaftesbury smilingly hoped to use against the King.

In this battle of the bath, Fenton, who had expected opposition but not near-revolt, floundered out of his depth because he could not understand why they made such objection. Twice he sent Giles to put the question.

“Sir, they say the practice is unclean.”

“Unclean!”

“I can but report what is said, sir.”

Fenton’s countermove won them over. A good master allowed his lower servants one suit of clothes and cloak, or woman’s dress and cloak, each year. Their Sunday or best suits they acquired by various means into which we need not pry. Fenton offered two suits a year, together with a Sunday suit provided by himself. The servants, who worshipped this new Sir Nick because he would not allow them to be kicked or abused, still sent back a compromise.

“Sir,” reported Giles, “all agree with groans to one bath a month. But, since ’tis you, they will shift their undergarments each week to the clean linen you vouchsafe to provide.”

“I’ll accept it!” Fenton said instantly, and so, while workmen still dug up the road in front of the house, the matter was settled without report spreading even to another house. Sir Nick had few friends, since most considered him a surly and murderous dog.

The upstairs bath was installed. Since a pump could not be managed, each day Big Tom carried up bucket after bucket of hot water.

And as for Lydia …

Even Lydia, at first, was disquieted by the notion of a daily bath. Fenton knew that gently, very gently, he must take from her mind the nonsense of her upbringing. Employing his knowledge of Latin authors, as well as French authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, he pointed out its possibilities in ways other than washing, when two persons were present.

She had been brought up to believe that too much washing was bad for health, as noxious as night air, and a sin because it exposed the body. But, when Fenton explained certain matters, Lydia’s feelings changed almost instantly.

He had grown fatuous about her, as well he might. Thinking back to the night he met her, with paint raddling her face and her eyes dull because of the poison, he considered it an age ago. Each day, each week, he watched her change. The eyes were now bright blue, with luminous whites; they sparkled with mirth, or their eyelids drooped in a way he well knew.

Her hair, with all arsenic gone from the roots, grew softer and richer, light-brown with a sheen on it. Even her moods were different, because she was happy. Her skin, instead of being white, ripened into the pink-white of flowing health.

“I think I grow fat,” once exclaimed Lydia, who had a horror of this.

“Not in the least degree or kind,” he assured her truthfully, “beyond what is exactly proper to you.”

“And it’s because all arsenic hath gone from me?”

“In part,” Fenton said gravely. “In part.”

Meanwhile, on a clear blue afternoon when the lime trees made rich lacework in Pall Mall, Lord George Harwell and old Mr. Reeve rode up to his door on good horses. Though Fenton was no very able judge of horseflesh, he considered those he had seen for the most part as coarse-blooded, lacking line: well enough for heavy cavalry, no doubt, but not for a horse match at Newmarket.

When the horses had been taken round to the stables, Fenton led his guests into the long dark dining room, where so many portraits of Sir Nick’s forebears were painted on wood instead of canvas. The latest to be added was a portrait of Sir Nick’s father, with his sword and half-armour slung below it according to his wish.

Fenton thought it would please the old Cavalier, and it did. Yet, even as he stood before the portrait, taking off a very broad-brimmed hat which restored the saint-like appearance of his long hair and bald crown, Mr. Reeve’s wheezing from his great stomach seemed a trifle worried.

George, drawing out a chair from the long table and sitting down, went straight to business.

“Nick,” he said, “d’ye know what day this is?”

Fenton very well knew. Each day he marked down and crossed off in a book he kept locked away in a drawer in the study. Though he prayed that all danger had been removed from Lydia by the removal of Kitty, he felt in his heart that this could not be so. It was too simple, too easy.

“The day,” he replied, “is the 19th May.”

“So ’tis!” said George, and slapped the edges of his fingers against the table. “This morning my Lord Shaftesbury was contemptuously dismissed His Majesty’s council and ordered to depart from London. Exactly as you prophesied.”

Fenton looked down at the polished table. “Well?” he said.

“Report of it,” said George, “went like fire through every tavern and coffeehouse from the Greyhound to Garraway’s.” (One was at Charing Cross, the other off Cornhill.) “In one day, Nick! Don’t ye hear nimble tongues a-clack, many of them, and all Green Ribboners?”

“I can conceive of it, truly. But what’s your meaning?”

Today George was all in red: red-velvet coat and breeches, even red hat, except for yellow waistcoat with ruby buttons, and yellow hose above shoes with gold buckles. He also looked down at the table, the yellow plume astir on his red hat, while he hesitated too.

“Nick, ye go seldom into company. Who finds you at a court ball at Whitehall, or at one of the great houses? Who finds you but at a foul boozing-ken, or among books in your study? Yet here’s your miraculous swordplay. Here are you, last November, on sudden an orator to inchant Parliament as Mr. Betterton inchants a playhouse. And here’s your prophesying­ to a very day!”

“I repeat, George: well?”

George gulped, with perspiration running down under his periwig.

“Some, who are fools, call you a black-a-vised dog who hath made a compact with the devil …”

Fenton looked at him strangely.

“Why,” he thought with surprise, “these so-called fools are quite right. So I have. Yet I possess only ordinary knowledge.”

“Now let’s be open!” appealed George. “Men of sense know—ay, despite Sir Matthew Hale’s hanging of poor crazed wretches at Bury St. Edmunds, because the law still runs so—men of sense know that these ghosties and witches are but our ancestors’ foolery.”

“And if this be so?”

“Why, scratch me, the thing’s plain! Nick, you are deep in the counsel of His Majesty; ’tis but natural you should learn beforehand.”

“George, that is not true.”

George gave him a brief glance. Then he brushed his leather riding glove slowly across the table, and back again. Presently he fetched up a deep sigh.

“Some there are,” he muttered, “who say an underground tunnel runneth from your house to Whitehall Palace, and that is why no man ever sees you there. This—” George paused, and smote the table. “Nay, Nick; forgive me; I’ll not pry.”

“You cannot pry, old friend. By God’s body I swear I have never exchanged one word with His Majesty, and I have no more power of soothsaying than yourself!”

“Why, then,” replied George with relief, “you say it; and I consent thereunto. There’s an end to it. Besides, with my Lord Shaftesbury away from London, there can as yet be no danger to you …”

“Danger? What danger?”

“Oh, scratch me! There’s my clacking tongue again! —Let be: I’ll say it! Do you recall what else you prophesied before the Green Ribbon Club?”

“Some nonsensical stuff or other! I forget.”

“They don’t, Nick. They say ye prophesied that soon there would be a great and bloody uprising of Papists, who would cut our throats and burn London.”

Fenton rose slowly to his feet.

First he spat out oaths. Slightly, very slightly, the fastidious ex-don was coarsening to meet the mood of the time in which he now lived. Then he walked up and down the room, a dim cavern twinkling with silver, to quell any spring of Sir Nick.

“I spoke no such words,” he finally said, in an even tone. “To be more exact: they quote the precise opposite of what I said. I said there would be a lie and plot against innocent Catholics, many of whom would die bloody deaths.”

Old Mr. Reeve for the first time turned round from the portrait and the half-armour hung below it.

Gently he had touched the breastplate, and the tassets, or thigh guards, which hung below. His bloated tippler’s face seemed grotesque against the long white hair.

“I can testify as much,” he said. “And so can Lord George Harwell. What other man will do so?”

Dragging a chair far from the table to accommodate his stomach, he turned his shrewd old eyes on Fenton. His long sword scabbard rattled on the floor.

“This knowledge,” and he gestured towards George, “comes in most part from me. I am, as they call it, an ear; a hired spy, though now revealed to the Country party as such. But have you taken thought, lad, to the meaning of all this?”

“I … I have … Nay, I …”

The rheumy eyes were still fixed on Fenton; gently, but steadily.

“When you spoke plain against my Lord Shaftesbury in that upstairs room,” Mr. Reeve continued, “all men were vexed to raving, and confused of mind. They recall well the ‘19th May,’ since you so often hurled it at my lord. But what else can they recall? Even the most honest, with a bemused head, is uncertain. They heard, to be short, what my lord told them they heard.

“If you foretold a bloody Papist uprising—why, ’tis clear you must yourself be involved in it, perhaps a leader of cutthroats. Assuredly (thus spake and smiled my lord) the Duke of York must be privy to the design. Perhaps His Majesty as well? Lad, lad! If my Lord Shaftesbury were yet strong enough, which I am sure he is not, you’d ha’ opened the bottle of civil war!”

Still Fenton paced up and down.

“With myself,” he asked sardonically, “as the cork?”

A look of puzzled impatience crossed Mr. Reeve’s Bacchus-like face.

“Sir Nicholas,” he said formally, “d’ye find no import in this? D’ye not perceive the offence they say you’ve committed?” He struck his fist on the table. “Treason, no less! Would ye see the inside of the Tower?”

Fenton stopped pacing, and turned to him.

“I—I am not insensible of danger,” he protested. “But your news comes so amiss, so sudden and troublesome, that … that …”

“Come, that’s better! A man would have guessed you cared not a groat.”

“But what am I to do?”

“Why, this!” said Mr. Reeve, smiling and softly tapping his finger on the table. “If you have told us truth this day, it becomes simple. Seek a private audience with His Majesty, which is most easily attained …”

Here he paused slightly, wincing a little because he had never done this for himself or in his own interest. But Mr. Reeve blew it away with a puff of his lips.

“Tell the King, if he doth not know it already, that you used your judgment and had but a stab of luck with that date of May 19th. Explain how my Lord Shaftesbury did twice have you set on by bullyrocks, and that you (good!) became bored by his attentions. Tell His Majesty what in truth you did say, pouring out moonstruck prophecies to affright my lord as though with an enorm spectre. Above all …”

George, at the other end of the table, could fidget no longer.

“Above all,” he burst out, “why you made the statement, as flat as a man can, that this ‘Popish plot’ would begin three years from now. The Green Ribboners would have it ‘three months’! You must say ’twas all lies.”

Mr. Reeve silenced him with a stately wave of the hand.

“There is all you have to do,” smiled Mr. Reeve. “His Majesty must be well disposed towards you. He was in the Painted Chamber, I hear, when you spoke against Shaftesbury. Tell him, and he will laugh at them, as he … as he tries to laugh at all.”

For a long time Fenton stood motionless, gripping the high back of a chair, his eyes tightly closed. So many thoughts jostled through his brain that he could not sort them out. Yet on one thing he was determined. He opened his eyes.

“Sir,” he said to Mr. Reeve, “I cannot do this.”

“Cannot? Wherefore not?”

“That is what I durst not explain.”

“Again I must softly remind you: would you see the inside of the Tower?”

“Yes! Rather than see the inside of Bedlam amid howling madmen! That is where they would put me. Besides …”

“We listen, Sir Nick.”

“My heart, my life, my—my whole being has gone into naught but the study of history! Strange it may seem to you, and in truth,” said Fenton, “strange to me. But I’ll not mock or make sport of it.”

“Sir Nick, what kind of madness is this?”

“Every word I said to Shaftesbury was true. I don’t prophesy it; I know it! Would you hear the exact date on which first intelligence of the mythical ‘Popish plot’ will be communicated to the King? Let me tell you: it will be on August 13th, 1678.”

George leaped to his feet, with terror showing in his face. But old Mr. Reeve sat quietly wheezing, like a patient schoolmaster, and tugged at his small white tuft of chin beard. Even his gruff cracked voice remained soft.

“Now I suppose,” he said, “when you were good enough to show me that portrait a while ago, you never imagined I should recognize it? Save as another old Cavalier like myself?”

“Well!” said Fenton, his wits now attacked from another side. “I remembered, certes, Meg’s house at—at Epsom,” he lied, “and your visits there. Yet, when we met that night at the King’s Head, you did not seem to know or even recognize me.”

Mr. Reeve’s eyelids drooped.

“Know you?” he said. “Not know you?” And his gaze wandered away. “Boy, I rode side by side with your father in Rupert’s charge against Ireton at Naseby fight.”

Again, for a moment, it seemed that his wits had gone away too.

“We charged uphill, ye’ll recall. On our right flank there was a hedge, with Okey’s Dragoons (poor devils) a-sputtering and spitting at us with muskets that dropped scarce a man from the saddle. When we struck Ireton’s line,” and now a kind of glory shone in his eyes, “we broke it like a china plate; like a thunderbolt on a rotted tree; like …”

His lifted hand dropped slowly to the table, and he awakened.

“But these are old things,” he declared wryly; “and, when all’s said, we lost the battle. Lad, in the dust fog I saw your father’s sword—that one on the wall—cleave through a lobster-tail helmet with one overarm cut. That night, when all was over, we lurked together beyond the campfires; we saw the pious Roundheads slit the noses of our women camp followers …”

Again, with hard effort, he stopped.

“Come; enough of that! But have I no interest in my friend’s son? What strange malady is on you I know not. But, if you’ll not help yourself, I swear I’ll help you notwithstanding!”

Then George completely lost his head.

“You?” he shouted contemptuously, and looked at the patched, ragged clothes. “Worn-out tosspot? Soldier, yet spy? Who are you to help anyone?”

And at last Mr. Reeve was stung from his silence.

Slowly he pushed back his chair. Slowly he rose to his feet, towering half a head over George.

“I am the Earl of Lowestoft,” he said, with terrible clarity in that quiet room.

He groped down for his ancient hat, but straightened up again.

“I was born to that title, and twelve generations before me, as I was born to my name of Jonathan Reeve. Rascals may filch away title and estate; I use them not; but they are mine.” The strong voice hesitated and faltered. “I much fear, young sir, that the remainder of what you say is true. But there are some few who still remember.”

Again, in deathly silence, he groped for and found his hat. A man of great age sees clearly only the past; that is green, that is bright; and he sees, with helpless clarity, the man he might have been. Perhaps, if you add old thin blood, that is why his emotions are so close to the surface. A thing happened which horrified him: tears appeared in his eyes, threatening to trickle down old cheeks.

“Under favour,” he said, hastily turning his head away. “I must take leave. I—I have work to do.”

Fenton threw his arm round the old man’s shoulders, slapping awkwardly at his far shoulder.

“My lord,” he said, with so deep a courtesy that it almost stung tears again, “allow me to escort you. This matter of title and estate shall be set right, I promise you!—whether I use the law or the sword, it shall be set right!”

“Nay, don’t trouble. Nay, I beg of you! Yet ’tis God’s truth I can help you. I go never to the court. But there are friends, the sons and grandsons of friends. They well know I won’t pocket their money, and they tell me every whisper that’s bruited from the matted gallery to the council chamber. You shall hear all; and thereby be at guard.”

George, who knew the old Bacchus had been a man of title and had merely blurted out any words that came to his mind, was in an agony of remorse.

“Stay!” cried George. “I am but slow of wit; I meant no hurt!”

“And d’ye think,” said the eighty-year-old, who had secretly got rid of tears for chuckles, “I was not sensible of that? You are young, lad, you scorn weakness. Nay, I’ll ride wi’ ye. Give me leave to go a little first. My foot is grown unseemly to the stirrup, and my right leg something painful in the heaving over. I would have it seen only by a stableboy.”

Then he added the old form of the salutation.

“God b’ye,” said Jonathan Reeve, Earl of Lowestoft, Viscount Stowe, lumbering from the room, with a sting still behind his eyes, but as proudly as though he went to meet Prince Rupert.

Fenton detained George with a fierce gesture. No man on earth could look quite as guilty as George.

“And who are you,” asked Fenton, “to call any man tosspot, drunkard, or the like?”

“Nick, I spoke wildly … ’twas in you own interest, because you would not see danger, and spoke like a Bedlamite!”

“Well, well! Let be. But, when we returned from the King’s Head for a carouse at the Swan, you swore you would seek Meg and with honeyed words carry her away.”

“Nick, I did but endeavour to advance my courage, and took a step too far.”

Fenton gnawed at his underlip.

“I … the matter is not of import; but have you communicated with her since?”

“Ay; the next day, as I forgot to tell you. You’ll recall the man-lass, Captain Duroc, the be-painted giant, the led captain you struck so hard he flew over the balustrade and fell downstairs. Well, yon tapster was right. He did break his left leg; and hath been since retained at the chiurgien’s, a-raving in boards and bandages, but not yet well.”

“And Meg?”

“Meg is installed alone in his lodgings—fine lodgings, I hear, with a Madam Somebody to preside—and Meg is pleased. I sent her a note, pleading; ay, pleading! She replied that she was prepared to admit only …”

“Captain Duroc?”

“Nay; yourself,” growled George, his face darkening. If he had not been Honest George, Fenton sensed, George might have hated him. “I’ll dally no more with her: here’s a thousand jillflirts to be had for the rent of a pretty house and a few gowns! But Nick, Nick! A word of advice!”

“I am desirous to hear it, George.”

“You are besotted with Lydia! You are as overfond, as doting, as old Pinchwife in the play! You spend so much time a-pleasuring her that ’tis wonder you have strength left to hold a knife at table. I say no word against Lydia; but ’ware your enemies. My Lord Shaftesbury will depart from town; but he can’t be kept away. You lose your wits, as I heard with my own two ears a moment gone. Take care you don’t lose your eye for swordplay.”

And George, in his heavy-lined red silk, with his sword scabbard tilting up the skirt of his coat, stamped away in a huff.

“Your eye for swordplay.”

Though Fenton was far from unaware of the dangers about him, still one matter lurked in his mind and forever scratched there. It was simply this: that he had never handled a true sword. Sooner or later he must fight. In his heart he knew he feared no wound, not even a bad one, but he would not show himself a blunderer, fool, incompetent.

Well, how far would his long experience with a feather-light foil avail against a heavier weapon, hard driven in a skilled hand? He must test that.

Hence that same evening, as he stood at the wall of his back garden, looking out over the Park, he sent word to fetch Giles Collins. Westwards, after sunset, the sky was a clear bright yellow, stretching lower to the south amid long low clouds.

“If I don’t know it,” thought Fenton, “I must somehow learn it. Somehow!”

The garden was broad and very long, of close-cropped grass, and shut away from the stables by high yew hedges. Along each narrow side ran a line of beech trees in bloom. Fenton now understood how the back of Pall Mall, as he knew it in the twentieth century, could go down so easily to the Mall below. One drop of ground floor was added by the kitchen of a house. A very long garden added length; and its wall dropped down in a brick wall to a shady walk beneath.

From this, grassy terraces sloped down to the reddish-yellow stretch of the Mall, along which by day lumbered leather-slung coaches of gilt or lacquer, and horsemen showing off their prances to pretty ladies at coach windows.

“You desired my presence, sir?” inquired Giles behind him.

Fenton started slightly as he turned round. Giles, hands folded, with white turn-back sleeves and white collar spreading down over his coat, stood lean in the yellow evening light.

“From certain remarks you have passed, carrot-top,” said Fenton, “I hazard a guess you are, or were, a good swordsman?”

“Sir,” Giles asked slowly, with the beginning of an impudent smile fading to dead seriousness, “did your father never tell you who truly I am?”

“No; never.”

“Then keep the riddle; don’t read it. As for the rest, I accounted myself—ay, and still do!—among the very masters of fence.”

“That’s well. For I have it in mind to try for a little practice …”

Fenton knew it could not be foils, since the buttoned foil would not be invented for more than a hundred years from now. A glitter of joy leaped into Giles’s eyes; but it died dismally away

“Sir, that has been thought on before. If you put great corks on the swords, the corks fly wide in play or the point pierces through. If you would blunt the point with masses of soft stuff in a glued binding, then play becomes ill and cumbersome. A wooden sword …”

“What do you say to breastplates?” Fenton demanded.

“Breastplates?”

“Yes! Sure there are many old breastplates in the lumber-room. True, we may thrust only between shoulder and waist, yet—”

“Ecod, sir, have done!” said Giles, somewhat upset. “Aside from saying the point will be dulled or the sword broken against a steel breastplate …”

“Then we grind a new point or buy a new blade!”

“Sir, ’tis not that. The blade, striking, will fly wide. Even though there be a gorget,” and Giles ran his finger round the upper part of his throat, “the point may fly upwards into the throat or face. Or into an arm. Or,” here the corners of his mouth went down, “it may strike downwards, with most unhappy result of all.”

“Giles, I command you! Fetch the breastplates! I have the Clemens Hornn here; choose what blade you like from among mine.”

Giles hesitated, bowed, and hurried away.

Since Giles was only an inch or more shorter than Fenton’s present height, they soon found that several tolerably clean and polished breastplates would fit them. But how to fasten them to the body was different. They were compelled to wear a useless backplate as well, since each was a part of the other and the plates buckled together. It would interfere somewhat with lunging, but …

Kicking aside useless armour and discarded swords, they stood up and faced each other.

Under the still-fading yellow sky, Giles stood with his back to the tall thick hedge which fenced off the stable yard. The gleam of the breastplate seemed grotesque against Giles’s black clothes and long face. Giles had chosen a blade of just the same length and weight as Fenton’s, but with round convex guard of steel wrought to lace pattern.

The cropped green turf was firm under their feet. On either side of them stretched a line of beech trees. There was not a sound, not even from the stable yard. Then up went Giles’s voice, not loudly, but with a queer raspy sound Fenton had never heard there.

“Sir, I would warn you,” Giles said. “The moment we fight, we are no longer master and servant. I will hit you, and hit you as many times as I can.”

Fenton’s throat felt dry to the lips. His heart beat far more heavily than it had done when he stood before my Lord Shaftesbury.

“Agreed!” he said.

There existed, as yet, no formal business of saluting and engaging. They moved towards each other, blades feeling out.

Instantly Giles, very quick on his feet, darted out to lunge in low tierce. Fenton, as he caught the blade close to his guard and swept his hand to the left, automatically and without thinking gave a slight turn of his wrist to send Giles’s blade wider. Back went Fenton’s return lunge in quarte, aimed at an imaginary spot on the breastplate to represent the heart.

The point struck steel with a slurred thud, dead on the mark he had chosen. At the same instant his blade bent, hissed sideways, and flew wide without touching Giles’s arm. Fenton had barely time to parry the return thrust.

“Not bad,” he was thinking. “Not bad. Steady!”

On Giles’s breastplate he had put in imagination a number of points in a shape like an X. He was fighting in regulation style, not closed-up like Sir Nick. Drawing a deep breath, he drove in to attack.

Fifteen minutes later, when the light grew so dim that play was dangerous, both lowered points and sat down. The play had gone in short, sharp bursts, of course, with intervals for breathing between. But Giles was very pale; new lines seemed to be carved deeply in his face, and he was panting.

Fenton, though not much winded, was so dazed with amazement that the grass, the beech trees, the whole garden seemed slowly to revolve round him, as in a dance. He still could not understand. Giles Collins, a highly skilled and dangerous swordsman, had not once touched his breastplate. And yet, after he had set a series of points drawn in the form of an X, he had scored dead to the mark on more than half of them.

This was fantastic! In his brain he could still hear the thud-slither, or only the sharpened thud, as his point struck. But, in a swift bout, men’s minds grow confused. …

“Giles, Giles!” he said in hurried contrition, really seeing Giles for the first time. “I had forgot you were not a young man! You must go and lie on your bed!”

“Faugh!” answered Giles, with something like a sneer. He held himself propped at seated position until his breathing slowed. “Look to yourself! You have done me no mischief.”

Fenton’s mind circled, as so often his blade had swiftly circled Giles’s.

“Giles,” he stammered, “I regret that my swordplay today was not … not …”

“Hark to me, Sir Nick Fenton,” said Giles, pointing a finger. “I am no flatterer, as you can testify. Rather am I a wasp to sting you, as your father wished. But, sir! You were today as swift of foot as ever. Your eye, perhaps, was a thought less than its best. But I have in my whole life never seen swordplay so good or so deadly!”

“What?”

Again Giles pointed. Incredibly something like pride glittered in his eye.

“This also I tell you. I would lay a thousand guineas, if I had ’em, that not a man in London could stand against you for twenty seconds! —Now enough of praise, sot and sinner!”

“Giles, you must take rest. Pay no heed to these bits of armour or swords thrown aside. Go.”

Giles rose up stiffly, and tottered away.

Fenton, his sword still in his hands, walked at a dull step towards the low brick wall at the back of the garden. A single yellow line lay low and murkily along the sky.

And suddenly he realized the great blunder he had made.

In this present year of 1675, the art of fence was still in its age of clumsy development. It would not attain near-perfection until the end of the eighteenth century, a hundred and twenty-odd years from now. Present-day parries were mere slaps, though Sir Nick must be more skilled at this. Thrusts were unsubtle; in many lines but easy to parry. Feints were childish to anticipate. These people had never heard of wrist-turn in parry, or many sword tricks except those of foul play. Their guards were almost wide open.

Against this he could set his thirty-odd years’ experience of foil play (a very competent man in any salle d’armes), together with the knowledge of several hundred years, in the catfooted and vigorous body of a young man. Some authorities maintained the lightness of the foil as of no value. But others pointed out that long practice counted most; that any stroke learned deeply and done with agility, all the craft of fence, could beat the duelling sword.

And they were right. What Fenton had believed his greatest danger was, in fact, his greatest strength. He was a better swordsman than Sir Nick.

Drawing deeply into his lungs the sweet-scented air of grass and trees, Fenton stood back. His bewilderment fell away. For some time Sir Nick had been completely quiescent; there was not even the rattle of a coffin lid. And he rested now, in fleshless satisfaction.

But across Fenton’s lips went a curious smile, which was not like—at least, only very faintly like—the murderous smile of Sir Nick. It vanished; Fenton forgot it. Nevertheless he held out the sword blade sideways, so that the dim yellow light gave it a last glitter.

“Who comes at me now,” Fenton said aloud, “is delivered into my hands!”