The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn: A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot by - (red queen ebook txt) 📗

"That will do; Father Urban shall judge him!" cried a brawny fellow who seemed to be something of a leader with his fellows. "The Father never lied to us yet. He will give him back if he finds him a spy."

Cuthbert was now jostled and hustled, but not in the same angry fashion, to a small narrow door in a deep embrasure, and when this door presently swung back on its hinges, the crowd surged quickly backwards as though in some sort afraid. Within the narrow doorway stood the priest, a small, slim man in rusty black, with a crucifix suspended from his rosary, which he held up before the crowd, who most of them crossed themselves with apparent devotion.

"Peace be with you, my children!" was his somewhat incongruous salutation to the blood-thirsty mob; and then turning his bright but benignant eyes upon Cuthbert, he said:

"This is a leper house, my son. Yet methinks thou wilt be safer here a while than in the street. Dost thou fear to enter? If thou dost, we must e'en talk where we are."

"I have no fear," answered Cuthbert, who indeed only experienced a lively curiosity.

The priest seemed pleased with the answer, and drew him within the sheltering door; and Cuthbert followed his guide into a long, low room, where a table was spread with trenchers and pitchers, whilst an appetizing odour arose from a saucepan simmering on the fire and stirred by one of the patients, upon whom Cuthbert gazed with fascinated interest.

"He is well nigh cured," answered the priest. "Our sick abide on the floor above; but there be not many here now. The plague carried off above half our number last year.

"But now of thine own matters, boy: how comest thou hither? Thou art a bold lad to venture a stranger into these haunts, unless thou be fleeing a worse peril from the arm of the law; and neither thy face nor thy dress looks like that. Hast thou not heard of Whitefriars and its perils? or art thou a rustic knave, unversed in the ways of the town?"

Cuthbert told his story frankly enough. He had lost himself in the streets, and was in the forbidden region before he well knew. A few kindly and dexterous questions from Father Urban led him to tell all that there was to know about himself, his parentage and his past; and the priest listened with great attention, scanning the face of the youth narrowly the while.

"Trevlyn--the name is known to us. It was a good old name once, and may be still again. I have seen thy father, Nicholas Trevlyn. It may be I shall see him again one day. Be true to thy father's faith, boy; be not led away by hireling shepherds. The day is coming on England when the true faith shall spread from end to end of the land, and all heretics shall be confounded! See that thou art in thy place in that day! See that thou art found by thy father's side in the hour of victory!"

Cuthbert hung his head a little, and a flush crept into his cheek; but the priest did not appear to heed these slight indications of embarrassment, as he moved slowly up the stairs to the window above to tell the expectant crowd to disperse, as their victim was no spy, but an honest country lad, whose father was known to the priest, and who had lost his way in London, and strayed inadvertently into their midst.

Then the crowd having dispersed to seek fresh amusement, the priest, at Cuthbert's desire, showed him all over this leper house, and told him much respecting the condition of the miserable inmates before they had been admitted to this place of refuge; and Cuthbert gazed with awe-stricken eyes at the scarred and emaciated sufferers, filled with compassion and not loathing, and at last drew forth one of his golden pieces from his purse and asked the priest to expend it for the benefit of the poor lepers.

"That will I gladly do, my son. But I must not let thee linger longer here; for although I myself hold that the whole and sound are not affected by the taint, there be leeches of repute who swear 'tis death to abide long beside the leper."

"Thou hast not found it so, Father. Dost thou live here?"

"Nay, I have no home. I go hither and thither as duty calls me. But I am often here with these sick folks of mine, whom so few men will dare approach unto. But I myself have never been the worse for my ministrations here, and I have no fears for thee, though I would not have thee linger. We will be going now, and I will be thy guide out of these dens of the earth, else might some more untoward thing befall thee when none might be nigh to succour thee."

The priest and the youth passed out together. The early dusk was beginning to fall, and Cuthbert was glad enough of the protection of Father Urban's companionship. All saluted the priest as he passed by, and few even looked askance at his comrade. The influence of these Roman Catholics over the hearts and feelings of the masses has always been very great--something of an enigma and a grievance to those who would fain see naught but evil within the fold of Rome. But facts are stubborn things, and the facts have been in this matter in their favour. England as a nation was slowly but surely throwing off the Papal yoke, and emerging from a region of darkness and superstition. Nevertheless, the influence of the priest was a living and often a beneficent influence amongst the most degraded of the people, and he could and did obtain a reverent hearing when no man else coming in the name of Christ would have been listened to for a single moment.

As the pair moved along the dark, noisome streets, Father Urban spoke again in his quick, imperious way.

"Thou spakest awhile ago of one Master Robert Catesby; hast thou seen aught of him since thy arrival in London?"

"No," answered Cuthbert; "I have had much else to do and to think of. But I must to him one day, and demand my purse again, else may he think I have been left for dead on the highway."

"He is a good man and a true," said the priest. "Thou wilt do well to keep his friendship an thou mayest. Catesby and Trevlyn come of a good stock; it were well they should consort together."

Cuthbert recalled some of the strange words spoken by Master Robert on the road, and wondered if he recalled them aright. They seemed to partake of the character of fierce threats. He was not certain that he altogether relished the thought of such friendship.

"Mine uncle might not wish me to consort with him," said the lad, with a little hesitation. "He is but a wool stapler, as I have told thee, and his friends are simple folks like himself. He meddles not in matters that gentlefolks love. He has no fine company to his house. Since it be my lot to abide beneath his roof--"

"Thou must needs conform to his ways; is that so, boy?" asked the Father, interrupting the rather lame and confused speech, and smiling as he did so. "Ay, conform, conform! Conformity is the way of the world today! I would not bid thee do otherwise. Yet one bit of counsel will I give thee ere we part. Think not that thou canst not conform and yet do thy duty by the true faith, too. Be a careful, watchful inmate of thine uncle's house; yet fear not to consort with good men, too, when thy chance comes. Thou needst not tell thine uncle all. Thou hast reached man's estate, and it is ordained of God that men should shake off the fetters that bind them in youth, and act and judge for themselves. My counsel is this: be wary, be prudent, be watchful, and lose no opportunity of gaining the trust of all men. So wilt thou one day live to do service to many; and thou wilt better understand my words the longer thou livest in this great city, and learnest more of what is seething below the surface of men's lives."

And with a few words of dismissal and blessing the Father sent Cuthbert on his way, standing still and looking after him till the slight figure was lost to sight in the darkness.

"There goes a man who by his face might have a great future before him," mused the priest. "It is with such faces as that that men have gone to prison and to death."

Cuthbert bent his steps towards the bridge, interested and excited by his recent adventure, his thoughts directed into a new channel, his memory recalling the first companion of his lonely journey, and the charm of that companion's personality and address. So many other things had passed since, impressions had jostled so quickly one upon the other, that he had scarce thought again of Master Robert Catesby or the purse he had to claim from him. His new uncle's liberality had made him rich, and a certain natural reserve had held him silent in his Puritan relative's house about any person not likely to find favour in Martin Holt's estimation. He had been equally reticent about his strange adventure with the gipsies, though he scarce knew why he should not speak of that. But, as a matter of fact, every day brought with it such a crowd of new impressions that the earlier ones had already partially faded from his mind.

But the words of the priest had awakened a new train of thought. Cuthbert resolved not to delay longer the reclamation of his own property. He spoke to Cherry that same evening about his lost purse, giving her a brief account of his ride across Hammerton Heath, and she was eager for him to ask his own, lest he should lose it altogether.

"For gay gallants are not always to be trusted, for all that they look so fine and speak so fair," she said, nodding her pretty curly head, an arch smile in her big gray eyes. "I have heard my father say so a hundred times. I would go quickly and claim mine own again. But tell me the rest of the adventure. What didst thou, left thus alone upon the lone heath? I trow it was an unmanly and unmannerly act to leave thee thus. What befell thee then?"

Cuthbert looked round cautiously; but there was no one listening to the chatter of this pair of idlers in the window. Mistress Susan's voice was heard below scolding the serving wench, and Martin Holt was poring over some big ledger whilst Jemima called over the figures of a heap of bills. Keziah was at her spinning wheel, which hummed merrily in the red firelight; and Cherry was seizing advantage of her aunt's absence to chatter instead of work.

Cherry had from the first been Cuthbert's confidante and friend. It was taken for granted by this time that this should be so. Nobody was surprised to see them often together, and Cherry had never found the house on the bridge so little dull as when Cuthbert came in night by night to give her the most charming and exciting accounts of his doings and adventures. Once, too, she had gone with him to see some sights. They had paraded Paul's Walk together, and Cuthbert had been half scandalized and wholly astonished to see a fine church desecrated to a mere fashionable promenade and lounging place and mart. They had watched some gallants at their tennis playing another day, and had even been present at the baiting of a bear, when they had come unawares upon the spectacle in their wanderings. But Cuthbert's ire had been excited through his humanity and love for dumb animals, and Cherry had been frightened and sickened by the brutality of the spectacle. And when Martin Holt had inveighed against the practice with all a Puritan's vehemence, Cuthbert had cordially agreed, and had thus drawn as it were one step nearer the side of the great coming controversy which his uncle had embraced.

These expeditions together had naturally drawn the cousins into closer bonds of intimacy. Cherry felt privileged to ask questions of Cuthbert almost at will, and he had no wish to hide anything from her.

"I will tell thee that adventure some day when we are alone," he answered. "I have often longed to share the tale with thee, but we have had so much else to speak of. I was taken prisoner by the robbers, and conveyed to a ruined mill, where some of their comrades and some wild gipsies dwell, as I take it, for the greater part of the inclement winter. I thought my end had surely come when first I saw the fierce