Walter Besant

I know not whom I expected to find in consequence of Barnaby's words, as we went up the dark and dirty stairs which led to the upper room. Robin was not a prisoner. Why—then—but I knew not what I thought, all being strange and dreadful.

At the top of the stairs we found ourselves in a room of the same size as the lower chamber, but not so high, and darker, being a gloomy place indeed, insomuch that it was not for some minutes that one could plainly discern things. It was lighted by a low, long window, set very close with thick bars, the shutters thrown open so that all the light and air possible to be admitted might come in. It had a great fireplace, but there was no fire burning, and the air of the room struck raw, though outside it was a warm and sunny day. The roof was supported, as in the room below, by means of thick square pillars, studded with great nails set close together, for what purpose I know not. Every part of the woodwork in the room was in the same way stuck full of nails. On the floor lay half a score mattresses, the property of those who could afford to pay the warders an exorbitant fee for the luxury. At Ilminster, as I am told, at Newgate, the chief prison of the country, the same custom obtains of exacting heavy fees from the poor wretches clapped into ward. It is, I suppose, no sin to rob the criminal, the debtor, the traitor, or the rebel. For those who had nothing to pay there were only a few bundles of straw, and on these were lying half a dozen wretches, whose white faces and glazed eyes showed that they would indeed cheat Tom the Hangman, though not in the way that Barnaby hoped. These were wounded either in the Sedgemoor fight or in their attempt to escape.

My father lay on a pallet bed. His face showed not the least change; his eyes were closed, and you would have thought him dead; and beside him, also on a pallet, sat, to my astonishment, none other than Sir Christopher himself.

He rose and came to meet us, smiling sadly.

'Madam,' he said, taking my mother's hand, 'we meet in a doleful place, and we are, indeed, in wretched plight. I cannot bid you welcome; I cannot say that I am glad to see you. There is nothing that I can say of comfort or of hope, except, which you know already, that we are always in the hands of the Lord.'

'Sir Christopher,' said my mother, 'it was kind and neighbourly in you to come. But you were always his best friend. Look at his poor white face!' she only thought upon her husband. 'You would think him dead! More than a fortnight he hath lain thus—motionless. I think he feels no pain. Husband, if thou canst hear me, make some sign—if it be but to open one eye! No!' she cried. 'Day after day have I thus entreated him and he makes no answer! He neither sees nor hears! Yet he doth not die; wherefore I think that he may yet recover speech and sit up again, and presently, perhaps, walk about, and address himself again unto his studies.'

She waited not for any answer, but knelt down beside him and poured some drops of milk into the mouth of the sick man. Sir Christopher looked at her mournfully and shook his head.

Then he turned to me, and kissed me without saying a word.

'Oh! Sir,' I cried, 'how could you know that my father would be brought unto this place? With what goodness of heart have you come to our help!'

'Nay, child,' he replied gravely, 'I came because I had no choice but to come. Like your father and your brother, Alice, I am a prisoner.'

'You, Sir? You a prisoner? Why, you were not with the Duke.'

'That is most true. And yet a prisoner. Why, after the news of Sedgemoor fight I looked for nothing else. They tried to arrest Mr. Speke, but he has fled; they have locked up Mr. Prideaux, of Ford Abbey; Mr. Trenchard has retired across the seas. Why should they pass me over? Nay, there were abundant proofs of my zeal for the Duke. My grandson and my grandnephew had joined the rebels. Your father and brother rode over to Lyme on my horses; with my grandson rode off a dozen lads of the village. What more could they want? Moreover, I am an old soldier of Lord Essex's army; and, to finish, they found in the window-seat a copy of Monmouth's Declaration—which, indeed, I had forgotten, or I might have destroyed it.'

'Alas! alas!' I cried, wringing my hands. 'Your Honour, too, a prisoner!'

Since the Sergeant spoke to Barnaby about the interest of friends, I had been thinking that Sir Christopher, whose power and interest, I fondly thought, must be equal to those of any Lord in the land, would interpose to save us all. And he was now a prisoner himself, involved in the common ruin! One who stands upon a bridge and sees with terror the last support carried away by the raging flood feels such despair as fell upon my soul.

'Oh, Sir!' I cried again. 'It is Line upon Line—Woe upon Woe!'

He took my hand in his, and held it tenderly.

'My child,' he said, 'to an old man of seventy-five what doth it matter whether he die in his bed or whether he die upon a scaffold? Through the pains of death, as through a gate, we enter upon our rest.'

'It is dreadful!' I cried again. 'I cannot endure it!'

'The shame and ignominy of this death,' he said, 'I shall, I trust, regard lightly. We have struck a blow for Freedom and for Faith. Well; we have been suffered to fail. The time hath not yet come. Yet, in the end, others shall carry on the Cause, and Religion shall prevail. Shall we murmur who have been God's instruments?'

'Alas! alas!' I cried again.

'To me, sweet child, it is not terrible to contemplate my end. But it is sad to think of thee, and of thy grave and bitter loss. Hast thou heard news of Robin and of Humphrey?'

'Oh, Sir!—are they also in prison—are they here?'

'No; but I have news of them. I have a letter brought to me but yesterday. Read it, my child, read it.'

He pulled the letter out of his pocket and gave it to me. Then I read aloud, and thus it ran:—

'Honoured Sir and Grandfather,

'I am writing this letter from the prison of Exeter, where, with Humphrey and about two hundred or more of our poor fellows, I am laid by the heels, and shall so continue until we shall all be tried.

'It is rumoured that Lord Jeffreys will come down to try us, and we are assured by report that the King shows himself revengeful, and is determined that there shall be no mercy shown. After Sedgemoor fight they hanged, as you will have heard, many of the prisoners at Weston Zoyland, at Bridgwater, and at Taunton, without trial. If the King continue in this disposition it is very certain that, though the common sort may be forgiven, the gentlemen and those who were officers in the rebel army will certainly not escape. Therefore I have no hope but to conclude my life upon the gallows—a thing which, I confess, I had never looked to do. But I hope to meet my fate with courage and resignation.

'Humphrey is with me, and it is some comfort (though I know not why) that we shall stand or fall together; for if I was a Captain in the army he was a Chyrurgeon. That he was also a secret agent of the exiles, and that he stirred up the Duke's friends on his way from London to Sherborne, that they know not, or it would certainly go hard with him. What do I say? Since they will hang him, things cannot very well go harder.

'When the fight was over, and the Duke and Lord Grey fled, there was nothing left but to escape as best we might. I hope that some of the Bradford lads will make their way home in safety: they stood their ground and fought valiantly. Nay, if we had been able to arm all who volunteered and would have enlisted, and if our men had all shown such a spirit as your valiant lads of Bradford Orcas, then, I say, the enemy must have been cut to pieces.

'When we had no choice left but to run, I took the road to Bridgwater, intending to ride back to that place, where, perhaps, our forces might be rallied. But this proved hopeless. There I found, however, Humphrey, and we resolved that the safest plan would be to ride by way of Taunton and Exeter, leaving behind us the great body of the King's army, and so escape to London if possible, where we should certainly find hiding-places in plenty, until the pursuit should be at an end. Our plan was to travel along byways and bridle-paths, and that by night only, hiding by day in barns, linneys, and the like. We had money for the charges of our journey. Humphrey would travel as a physician returning to London from the West as soon as we had gotten out of the insurgents' country; I was to be his servant. Thus we arranged the matter in our minds, and already I thought that we were safe, and in hiding somewhere in London, or across the seas in the Low Countries again.

'Well, to make short my story, we got no further than Exeter, where we were betrayed by a rascal countryman who recognised us, caused us to be arrested, and swore to us. Thereupon we were clapped into jail, where we now lie.

'Hon'd Sir: Humphrey, I am sorry to write, is much cast down, not because he dreads death, which he doth not, any more than to lie upon his bed; but because he hath, he says, drawn so many to their ruin. He numbers me among those—though, indeed, it was none of his doing, but by my own free will, that I entered upon this business, which, contrary to reasonable expectation, hath turned out so ill. Wherefore, dear Sir, since there is no one in the world whose opinion and counsel Humphrey so greatly considers as your own, I pray you, of your goodness, send him some words of consolation and cheer.'

'That will I, right readily,' said Sir Christopher. 'At least the poor lad cannot accuse himself of dragging me into the Clink.'

'I hear,' continued Robin's letter, 'that my mother hath gone with Mr. Boscorel to London, to learn if aught can be done for us. If she do not return before we are finished, bid her think kindly of Humphrey and not to lay these things to his charge. As for my dear girl, my Alice, I hear nothing of her. Miss Blake, who led the Maids when they gave the flags to the Duke, is, I hear, clapped into prison. Alice is not spoken of. I am greatly perturbed in spirit concerning her, and I would gladly, if that might be compassed, have speech with her before I die. I fear she will grieve and weep; but not more than I myself at leaving her, poor maid! I hear, also, nothing concerning her father, who was red-hot for the Cause, and therefore, I fear, will not be passed over or forgotten. Nor do I hear aught of Barnaby, who, I hope, hath escaped on shipboard, as he said that he should do if things went ajar. Where are they all? The roads are covered with rough men, and it is not fit for such as Alice and her mother to be travelling. I hope that they have returned in safety to Bradford Orcas, and that my old master, Dr. Eykin, hath forgotten his zeal for the Protestant Duke, and is already seated again among his books. If that is so, tell Alice, Honoured Sir, that there is no hour of the day or night but I think of her continually; that the chief pang of my approaching fate is the thought that I shall leave her in sorrow, and that I cannot say or do anything to stay her sorrow. Comfort her I cannot, save with words which will come better from the saintly lips of her father. I again pray thee to assure her of my faithful love. Tell her that the recollection of her sweet face and steadfast eyes fills me with so great a longing that I would fain die at once so as to bring nearer the moment when we shall be able to sit together in heaven. My life hath been glorified, if I may say so in humility, by her presence in my heart, which drove away all common and unclean things. Of such strength is earthly love. Nay, I could not, I now perceive, be happy even with the joys of heaven if she were not by my side. Where is she, my heart, my love? Pray God, she is in safety.

'And now, Sir, I have no more to say: The prison is a hot and reeking place; at night it is hard to bear the foulness and the stench of it. Humphrey says that we may shortly expect some jail fever or small-pox to break out among us, in which case the work of the Judges may be lightened. The good people of this ancient city are in no way afraid of the King's vindictiveness, but send in of their bounty quantity of provisions—fruit, eggs, fresh meat, salted meat, ale, and cider—every day for the poor prisoners, which shows which way their opinions do lean, even although the clergy are against us. Honoured Sir, I am sure and certain that the miscarriage of our enterprise was caused by the conduct of those who had us in hand. In a year or two there shall be seen (but not by us) another uprising; under another leader with another end.

'So no more. I send to thee, dear and Honoured Sir, my bounden duty and my grateful thanks for all that I owe to your tender care and affection. Pray my mother, for me, to mourn no more for me than is becoming to one of her piety and virtue.

'Alas! it is thinking upon her, and upon my poor lost Alice, that my heart is wellnigh torn in pieces. But (tell Humphrey) through no fault—no—through no fault of his.

'From thy dutiful and obedient grandson,—

'R. C.'

I read this all through. Then I folded up the letter and returned it to Sir Christopher. As he took it the tears came into his dear and venerable eyes and rolled down his cheeks.

'My dear—my dear,' he said, 'it is hard to bear. Everyone who is dear to thee will go; there is an end of all; unless some way, of which we know nothing, be opened unto us.'

'Why,' I said, 'if we were all dead and buried, and our souls together in heaven'——

'Patience, my dear,' said the old man.

'Oh! must they all die—all? My heart will burst! Oh! Sir, will not one suffice for all? Will they not take me and hang me, and let the rest go free?'

'Child,' he took my hand between his own, 'God knows that if one life would suffice for all, it should be mine. Nay, I would willingly die ten times over to save thy Robin for thee. He is not dead yet, however. Nor is he sentenced. There are so many involved that we may hope for a large measure of mercy. Nay, more. His mother hath gone to London, as he says in his letter, with my son-in-law, Philip Boscorel, to see if aught can be done, even to the selling of my whole estate, to procure the enlargement of the boys. I know not if anything can be done, but be assured Philip Boscorel will leave no stone unturned.'

'Oh! can money buy a pardon? I have two hundred gold pieces. They are Barnaby's'——

'Then, my dear, they must be used to buy pardon for Barnaby and thy father—though I doubt whether any pardon need be bought for one who is brought so low.'

Beside the bed my mother sat crouched, watching his white face as she had done all day long in our hiding-place. I think she heeded nothing that went on around her, being wrapped in her hopes and prayers for the wounded man.

Then Sir Christopher kissed me gently on the forehead.

'They say the King is unforgiving, my dear. Expect not, therefore, anything. Say to thyself, every morning, that all must die. To know the worst brings with it something of consolation. Robin must die; Humphrey must die; your brother Barnaby must die; your father—but he is wellnigh dead already—and I myself, all must die upon the scaffold if we escape this noisome jail. In thinking of this, remember who will be left. My dear, if thou art as a widow and yet a maiden, I charge thee solemnly that thou forget thine own private griefs and minister to those who will have none but thee to help them. Live not for thyself, but to console and solace those who, like thyself bereaved, will need thy tender cares.'