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

tide awhile close to the shore than to use their oars and betray their close proximity to their foes.

"We shall know him again; and if he dares to show his face in the city, we will have him at last, even if we have to search for him in Alsatia with a band of soldiers. He has too long escaped the doom he merits, the plotter and schemer, the vile dog of a seminary priest! Once let us get him into our hands and he shall be hanged, drawn, and quartered, like those six of his fellows. No mercy for the Jesuits; it is not fit that such fellows should camber the earth. There will be no peace for this realm till we have destroyed them root and branch."

The boat had now drifted too far for the conversation to be any longer audible. Jacob gave a long, low whistle, and took to the oars. Cuthbert, who sat beside the priest in the stern, had his hand upon the tiller; and as the fog cloud lifted just a little, so that the darkness about them became hardly more than that of twilight, he looked at the silent, motionless figure beside him, and exclaimed in surprise:

"Father Urban!"

A slight smile hovered for a moment over the wan face of the priest. He lifted his thin hand and said solemnly:

"Peace be with thee, my son."

Cuthbert bent his head in reverence, and then turned again towards the Father.

"What hast thou done that they should rail at thee thus--thou the friend of the poor, the friend even of the leper? What has come to them that they turn thus against thee? Sure, but a few short weeks ago and thou didst hold back an angry crowd by the glance of thine eye."

"My son, trust not in the temper of the crowd, in the goodwill of the multitude. Was it not the same crowd who on the Sabbath shouted, 'Hosanna to the Son of David!' that on the Friday yelled, 'Crucify Him! crucify Him!' Never put faith in man, still less in the multitude that is ever swayed like a reed, and may be driven like a wave of the sea hither and thither as the wind listeth.

"And then I was not amongst mine own flock. I had--rashly, perchance--adventured myself further than I ought, for I had a message of consequence to execute, and I have not been wont to hide myself from my fellow men. But there is no knowing in these fearful times of lawlessness and savage hate what will be the temper either of rulers or people. It seems that I am known--that there is some warrant out against me. So be it. If I must flee from this city to another, holier men have done the like ere now. I would mine errand had been completed. I would I had accomplished my task. But--"

The priest's voice had been growing fainter for some moments. Cuthbert supposed it to be a natural caution on his part, lest even Jacob should hear him as he plied his oars; but as he came to this sudden stop, he felt that the slight frame collapsed in some way, and leaned heavily against him as he sat. Turning his eyes from the dim, rippling water, so little of which could be seen in the darkness and the fog, to the face of the priest, he saw that it had turned ghastly pale, and that the eyes were glazing over as if with the approach of death. Plainly the fugitive had received some bodily hurt of which he had not spoken, and the question what to do with their helpless burden became a difficult one to answer.

"My father will not receive him," said Jacob, shaking his head, as he leaned upon his oars and let the boat drift along with the tide that was carrying them towards the bridge. "He hates the priests worse than your good uncle and mine, who has something of a fellow feeling for them in these days of common persecution; and you know well what sort of a welcome we should receive from him did we arrive with a seminary priest in our arms."

"And I trow the mob would be upon us ere we had got him safe housed, and for aught we could do to stop it might tear him limb from limb in our very sight."

"Ay, there is always some rumour afoot of a new Papist plot; and whether it be true or no, the people set on to harry the priests as dogs harry the hunted hare. I know not what to do. To land with him will do neither good to him nor to us. A fine coil there would be at home if my father heard of me mixing myself up with Jesuit traitors; and Martin Holt would not be much better pleased neither."

"Martin Holt is not my father," answered Cuthbert, with a touch of haughtiness; "and let him say what he will, I must save this man's life, even if it cost me mine own. Thou knowest how he saved me that day in the dens of Whitefriars. To leave him to the mercy of the howling mob would be an act of blackest treachery; it would disgrace my manhood for ever."

"Tush, man, who asked that of thee?" answered Jacob, with something of a smile at the lad's impetuosity. "I love not a black cassock nor a tonsured head so passing well; but a man is a man, even though he be a priest, and I call shame upon those who would thus maltreat a brother man, and the more so when he is one who has visited the sick and tended the leper, and been the friend of those who have no friends in this great city. I would no sooner than thou give him up to the will of the mob; but we must bethink ourselves where he may be in safety stowed, else the mob will have him whether we will or no. All I was meaning by my words was that neither my home nor thine could be the place for him."

"I ask thy pardon, good Jacob, for my heat," answered Cuthbert humbly. "I should have known better thy good heart than to have thought such a thing of thee."

"Nay, nay; I am no hero."

"Thou art a kindly hearted and an honest man, which I misdoubt me if all the world's heroes are," answered Cuthbert quickly. "And now, Jacob, it behoves us to think. Yes, I have it. We must ask counsel of Master Anthony Cole. He would be the one to hide Father Urban if it could be done. Let me land nigh to the bridge, and go to them and tell them all; and do thou push out once more and anchor the craft beneath the pier on which their house rests. Methinks when I have taken counsel with them I can make shift to slip down the wooden shaft of that pier, and so hold parley with thee. Walter has done the like before now, and I am more agile in such feats than he; moreover, I can swim like a duck if I should chance to miss my hold, and so reach the water unawares. That will be the best, for the boat may not linger at the wharf side. We know not what news may be afoot in the city, nor that there may not be searchers bent on finding Father Urban, let him land where he may."

Whether or not Jacob relished this adventure, he was too stanch and too honest hearted to turn back now. The priest lay insensible at the bottom of the boat, his head pillowed upon the cloaks the youths had sacrificed for his better comfort. It was plainly a matter of consequence that he should soon be housed in some friendly shelter. His gray face looked ghastly in the dim moonlight which began to struggle through the fog wreaths. When Cuthbert leaped lightly ashore hard by the bridge, and Jacob sheered off again in the darkness, he felt as though he were out alone on the black river, with only a corpse for company.

"If it were but for Cherry's sake, I would do ten-fold more," he murmured, as he glanced up in the direction of the wool stapler's shop, and pictured pretty Cherry stepping backwards and forwards at her spinning wheel. "But I trow she will hear naught of it; or if she does, she will think only of Cuthbert's share. Alack! I fear me she will never think of me now. Why should she, when so proper a youth is nigh? If he should go away and leave her, perchance her heart might turn to me for comfort; but I fear me he looks every day more tenderly into her bright eyes. How could he live beneath the roof and not learn to love her? He would be scarce human, scarce flesh and blood, were he to fail in loving her; and what is my chance beside his? I might, almost as well yield her at once, and take good Kezzie instead. Kezzie would make a better housewife--my mother has told me so a hundred times; and I am fond of her, and methinks she--"

But there Jacob stopped short, blushing even in the darkness at the thought of what he had nearly said. Anchoring against the wooden piles of the bridge, and letting his fancy run riot as it would, he indulged in a shifting daydream, in which pain and a vague sense of consolation were oddly blended. He sighed a good many times, but he smiled once or twice likewise, and at last he gave himself a shake and spoke out aloud.

"At least it shall make no cloud and no bitterness betwixt us twain. He is a fine lad and a noble one, and he deserves more at Dame Fortune's hands than such a clown as I. Shall I grudge him his luck if he gets her? never a whit! There may not be more than one Cherry in the world, but there are plenty of good wives and honest maidens who will brighten a man's home for him."

Musing thus, Jacob kept his watch, and was not long in hearing strange and cautious sounds above his head. Looking up, he beheld a lithe form slipping, in something of a snake fashion, down the woodwork of the bridge, and the next moment Cuthbert sprang softly down, so deftly that the wherry only rolled a little at the shock.

"Hast thought me long? Hast been frozen with cold? I have made all the haste I could. All is planned. This is not strange work to them. See, I have brought with me this cradle of cord. We can place Father Urban within, and they will draw him up from above, that no man shall see him enter their house. All the windows be shuttered and barred by now. None will see or hear. They have harboured many a fugitive before, I take it. They had all the ropes and needful gear ready beneath their hand at a moment's notice."

Whilst he was speaking, Cuthbert was wrapping the inanimate figure in the cloaks, and placing it gently in the hammock, as we should call it, that, suspended by strong cords from above, had assisted him in his descent to the boat. Then at a given signal this hammock, with its human load, was slowly and steadily drawn upwards, with a cautious, silent skill that betokened use and experience; and as the eager watchers pushed out their boat a little further into the river, they saw the bulky object vanish at last within the dimly-lighted window of the tall, narrow house. A light was flashed for a moment from the window, and then all was wrapped in darkness.

"All is well," exclaimed Cuthbert, with an accent of relief; "and I trow that not a living soul but our two selves knows whither the priest has fled. He is safe from that savage, howling mob. Methinks I hear their cries still! It was just so they yelled and hooted round me when Father Urban came so timely to my rescue."

Mistress Susan chid Cuthbert somewhat roundly for being late for supper that night. But when he said he had been belated by the fog on the river with Jacob, the excuse was allowed to stand. Cherry was eager to know the progress making with her namesake, and no inconvenient questions were asked of Cuthbert when once her chattering tongue had been unloosed.

Cuthbert's dreams were a little troubled and uneasy that night; but he woke in good spirits, and was anxious to know the state of Father Urban. He made an early excuse for visiting the Coles' abode, and found the elder man busy over his type.

He looked up with a smile as Cuthbert appeared, but laid his fingers on his lips.

"Be cautious;