'Barnaby,' I said presently, 'how can I turn round and make myself comfortable?'
'The evening is still,' he said, without replying. 'See, there is a bat, and there another. If it were not for the trouble in there' – he pointed to the hut – 'I should be easy in my mind and contented. I could willingly live here a twelvemonth. Why, compared with the lot of the poor devils who must now be in prison, what is ours? They get the foul and stinking clink, with bad food, in the midst of wounded men whose hurts are putrefying, with jail fever, and with the whipping-post or the gallows to come. We breathe sweet air, we find sufficient food – to-morrow, if I know any of the signs, thou shalt taste a roasted hedgehog, dish fit for a king! I found at the bottom of the comb a pot left by some gipsies: thou shalt have boiled sorrel and mushrooms to thy supper. If we stay here long enough there will be nuts and blackberries and whortleberries. Pity, a thousand pities, there is not a drop of drink! I dream of punch and hipsy. Think upon what remains, even if thou canst not bear to think of what is lost. Hast ever seen a tall ship founder in the waves? They close over her as she sinks, and, in an instant, it is as if that tall ship with all her crew had never been in existence at all. The army of Monmouth is scattered and ruined. Well; it is, with us, amidst these woods, just as if there had been no army. It has been a dream perhaps. Who can tell? Sometimes all the past seems to have been a dream. It is all a dream – past and future. There is no past and there is no future; all is a dream. But the present we have. Let us be content therewith.'
He spoke slowly and with measured accents as one enchanted. Sometimes Barnaby was but a rough and rude sailor. At other times, as these, he betrayed signs of his early education and spoke as one who thought.
'It is ten years and more since last I breathed the air of the hills. I knew not that I loved so much the woods and valleys and the streams. Some day, if I survive this adventure, I will build me a hut and live here alone in the woods. Why, if I were alone I should have an easy heart. If I were driven out of one place I could find another. I am in no hurry to get down among men and towns. Let us all stay here and be happy. But there is Dad – who lives not, yet is not dead. Sister, be thankful for thy safety in the woods, and think not too much upon the dead.'
We lived in this manner, the weather being for the most part fine and warm, but with showers now and then, for a fortnight or thereabouts, no one coming up the comb and there being still no sign of man's presence in the hills. Our daily fare consisted of the wild birds snared by Barnaby, such creatures as rabbits, hedgehogs, and the like, which he caught by ingenious ways, and trout from the brook which he caught with a twisted pin or by tickling them with his hand. There were also mushrooms and edible leaves, such as the nettle, wild sorrel, and the like of which he knew. These we boiled and ate. He also plucked the half-ripe blackberries and boiled them to make a sour drink, and one which, like the cider loved by our people, would grip his throat because he could not endure plain cold water. And he made out of the bones of the birds a kind of thin broth for my father, of which he daily swallowed a teaspoonful or so. So that we fared well, if not sumptuously. The bread, to be sure, which Barnaby left for mother and me, was coming to the last crust, and I know not how we should have got more without venturing into the nearest village.
Now, as I talked every night with my brother, I found out what a brave and simple soul it was – always cheerful and hopeful, talking always as if we were the most fortunate people in the world, instead of the most miserable, and yet by keeping the truth before me, preventing me from getting into another Fool's Paradise as to our safety and Robin's escape, such as that into which I had fallen after the army marched out of Taunton. I understand now, that he was always thinking how to smooth and soften things for us, so that we might not go distracted with anxiety and grief; finding work for me, talking about other things – in short, the most thoughtful and affectionate brother in all the world. As for my mother, he could do nothing to move her. She still sat beside her wounded husband, watching all day long for any sign of consciousness or change.
Seeing that Barnaby was so good and gentle a creature, I could not understand how it was that in the old days he used to get a flogging most days for some offence or other, so that I had grown up to believe him a very wicked boy indeed. I put this question to him one night.
He put it aside for a while, replying in his own fashion.
'I remember Dad,' he said, 'before thou canst, Sister. He was always thin and tall, and he always stooped as he walked. But his hair, which now is white, was brown, and fell in curls which he could not straighten. He was always mighty grave; no one, I am sure, ever saw him laugh; I have never seen him so much as smile, except sometimes when he dandled thee upon his knee, and thou wouldst amuse him with innocent prattle. All his life he hath spent in finding out the way to Heaven. He did find the way – I suppose he hath truly discovered it – and a mighty thorny and difficult way it is, so that I know not how any can succeed in reaching port by such navigation. The devil of it is that he believes there is no other way; and he seemed never so happy as when he had found another trap or pitfall to catch the unwary, and send them straight to hell.
'For my part,' Barnaby went on slowly, 'I could never love such a life. Let others, if they will, find out rough and craggy ways that lead to heaven. For my part, I am content to jog along the plain and smooth high road with the rest of mankind, though it brings us in the end to a lower place, inhabited by the baser sort. Well, I dare say I shall find mates there, and we will certainly make ourselves as comfortable as the place allows. Let my father, therefore, find out what awaits him in the other world; let me take what comes in this. Some of it is sweet and some is bitter; some of it makes us laugh and sing and dance; and some makes us curse and swear and bellow out, as when one is lashed to the hatches and the cat falls on his naked back. Sometimes, Sister, I think the naked negroes of the Guiney Coast the happiest people in the world. Do they trouble their heads about the way to heaven? Not they. What comes they take, and they ask no more. Has it made Dad the happier to find out how few are those who will sit beside him when he hath his harp and crown? Not so. He would have been happier if he had been a jolly ploughboy whistling to his team, or a jolly sailor singing over his pannikin of drink of a Saturday night. He tried to make me follow in his footsteps; he flogged me daily in the hope of making me take, like himself, to the trade of proving out of the Holy Bible that most people are surely damned. The more he flogged, the less I yearned after that trade; till at last I resolved that, come what would, I would never thump a pulpit like him in conventicle or church. Then, if you will believe me, Sister, I grew tired of flogging, which, when it comes every day, wearies a boy at fourteen or fifteen more than you would think. Now, one day, while I was dancing to the pipe and tabor with some of the village girls, as bad luck would have it, Dad came by. "Child of Satan!" he roared, seizing me by the ear, which I verily thought he would have pulled off. Then to the girls, "Your laughter shall be turned into mourning," and so lugged me home and sent me supperless to bed, with the promise of such a flogging in the morning as should make all previous floggings seem mere fleabites or joyous ticklings in comparison. This decided me. So in the dead of night I crept softly down the stairs, cut myself a great hunch of bread and cheese, and ran away and went to sea.'
'Barnaby, was it well done – to run away?'
'Well, Sister, 'tis done; and if it was ill done, 'tis by this time, no doubt, forgotten. Now, remember, I blame not my father. Before all things he would save my soul alive. That was why he flogged me. He knew but one way, and along that way he would drive me. So he flogged me the harder. I blame him not. Yet had I remained he would doubtless be flogging me still. Now, remember again, that ever since I understood anything I have always been enraged to think upon the monstrous oppression which silenced him and brought us all to poverty, and made my mother, a gentlewoman born, work her fingers to the bone, and caused me to choose between being a beggarly scholar, driven to teach brats and endure flouts and poverty, or to put on an apron and learn a trade. Wherefore when I found that Monmouth was going to hoist his flag, I came with him in order to strike a blow, and I hoped a good blow, too, at the oppressors.'
'You have struck that blow, Barnaby, and where are we?'
He laughed.
'We are in hiding. Some of the King's troopers did I make to bite the dust. They may hang me for it, if they will. They will not bring those troopers back to life. Well – Sister, I am sleepy. Good night!'
We might have continued this kind of life I know not how much longer. Certainly, till the cold nights came. The weather continued fine and warm; the hut kept off dews at night; we lay warm among the heather and the ferns; Barnaby found a sufficiency of food; my father grew no worse, to outward seeming; and we seemed in safety.
Then an ill chance and my own foolishness marred all.
One day, in the afternoon, Barnaby being away looking after his snares and gins, I heard, lower down the comb, voices as of boys talking. This affrighted me terribly. The voices seemed to be drawing nearer. Now if the children came up as high as our encampment, they could not fail to see the signs of habitation. There was the hut among the trees and the iron pot standing among the grey embers of last night's fire. The cart stood on one side. We could not possibly remain hidden. If they should come up so far and find us, they would certainly carry the report of us down to the village.
I considered, therefore, what to do, and then ran quickly down the comb, keeping among the trees so as not to be seen.
After a little I discovered, a little way off, a couple of boys about nine years of age. They were common village boys, rosy faced and wholesome: they carried a basket, and they were slowly making their way up the stream, stopping now to throw a stone at a squirrel, and now to dam the running water, and now to find a nut or filbert ripe enough to be eaten. By the basket which they carried I knew that they were come in search of whortleberries, for which purpose they would have to get quite to the end of the comb and the top of the hill.
Therefore, I stepped out of the wood and asked them whence they came and whither they were going.
They told me in plain Somersetshire (the language which I love, and would willingly have written this book in it, but for the unfortunate people who cannot understand it) that they were sent by their parents to get whortleberries, and that they came from the little village of Corfe, two miles down the valley. This was all they had to say, and they stared at me as shyly as if they had never before encountered a stranger. I clearly perceive now that I ought to have engaged them in conversation and drawn them gently down the valley in the direction of their village until we reached the first appearance of a road, when I could have bidden them farewell or sent them up the hill by another comb. But I was so anxious that they should not come up any higher that I committed a great mistake, and warned them against going on.
'Boys,' I said, 'beware! If you go higher up the comb you will certainly meet wild men, who always rob and beat boys;' here they trembled, though they had not a penny in the world. 'Ay, boys! and sometimes have been known to murder them. Turn back – turn back – and come no farther.'
The boys were very much frightened, partly at the apparition of a stranger where they expected to find no one, and partly at the news of wild and murderous men in a place where they had never met with anyone at all, unless it might have been a gipsy camp. After gazing at me stupidly for a little while they turned and ran away, as fast as their legs could carry them, down the comb.
I watched them running, and when they were out of sight I went back again, still disquieted, because they might return.
When I told Barnaby in the evening, he, too, was uneasy. For, he said, the boys would spread abroad the report that there were people in the valley. What people could there be but fugitives?
'Sister,' he said, 'to-morrow morning must we change our quarters. On the other side of the hills looking south, or to the east in Neroche Forest, we may make another camp, and be still more secluded. For to-night I think we are in safety.'
What happened was exactly as Barnaby thought. For the lads ran home and told everybody that up in the comb there were wild men who robbed and murdered people: that a lady had come out of the wood and warned them to go no farther, lest they should be robbed and murdered. They were certain it was a lady, and not a country-woman; nor was it a witch; nor a fairy or elf, of whom there are many on Black Down. No; it was a lady.
This strange circumstance set the villagers a-talking; they talked about it at the inn, whither they nightly repaired.
In ordinary times they might have talked about it to their heart's content, and no harm done; but in these times talk was dangerous. In every little village there are one or two whose wits are sharper than the rest, and, therefore, they do instigate whatever mischief is done in that village. At Corfe, the cobbler it was who did the mischief. For he sat thinking while the others talked, and he presently began to understand that there was more in this than his fellows imagined. He knew the hills; there were no wild men upon them who would rob and murder two simple village boys. Gipsies there were, and broom-squires sometimes, and hedge-tearers: but murderers of boys – none. And who was this gentlewoman? Then he guessed the whole truth: there were people lying hidden in the comb; if people hidden, they were Monmouth's rebels. A reward would be given for their capture. Fired with this thought he grasped his cudgel and walked off to the village of Orchard Portman, where, as he had heard, there was lying a company of Grenadiers sent out to scour the country. He laid his information, and received the promise of reward. He got that reward, in short; but nothing prospered with him afterwards. His neighbours, who were all for Monmouth, learned what he had done, and shunned him. He grew moody; he fell into poverty, who had been a thriving tradesman; and he died in a ditch. The judgments of the Lord are sometimes swift and sometimes slow, yet they are always sure. Who can forget the dreadful end of Tom Boilman, as he was called, the only wretch who could be found to cut up the limbs of the hanged men and dip them in the cauldrons of pitch? For he was struck dead by lightning – an awful instance of the wrath of God!
Early next morning, about five of the clock, I sat before the hut in the shade. Barnaby was up and had gone to look at his snares. Suddenly I heard steps below, and the sound as of weapons clashing against each other. Then a man came into sight – a fellow he was with a leathern apron, who stood gazing about him. There was no time for me to hide, because he immediately saw me and shouted to them behind to come on quickly. Then a dozen soldiers, all armed, ran out of the wood and made for the hut.
'Gentlemen,' I cried, running to meet them, 'whom seek you?'
'Who are you?' asked one, who seemed to be a Sergeant over them. 'Why are you in hiding?'
Then a thought struck me. I know not if I was wise or foolish.
'Sir,' I replied, 'my father, it is true, was with the Duke of Monmouth. But he was wounded, and now lies dead in this hut. You will suffer us to bury our dead in peace.'
'Dead is he? That will we soon see.'
So saying, he entered the hut and looked at the prostrate form. He lifted one hand and let it drop. It fell like the hand of one who is recently dead. He bent over the body and laid his hand upon the forehead. It was cold as death. The lips were pale as wax, and the cheeks were white. He opened an eye: there was no expression of light in it.
'Humph!' he said; 'he seems dead. How did he come here?'
'My mother and I drove him here for safety in yonder cart. The pony hath run away.'
'That may be so; that may be so. He is dressed in a cassock: what is his name?'
'He was Dr. Comfort Eykin, an ejected minister and preacher in the Duke's army.'
'A prize, if he had been alive!' Then a sudden suspicion seized him. He had in his hand a drawn sword. He pointed it at the breast of the dead man. 'If he be truly dead,' he said, 'another wound will do him no harm. Wherefore' – he made as if he would drive the sword through my father's breast, and my mother shrieked and threw herself across the body.
'So!' he said, with a horrid grin, 'I find that he is not dead, but only wounded. My lads, here is one of Monmouth's preachers; but he is sore wounded.'
'Oh!' I cried, 'for the love of God suffer him to die in peace!'
'Ay, ay, he shall die in peace, I promise you so much. Meanwhile, Madam, we will take better care of him in Ilminster Jail than you can do here. The air is raw upon these hills.' The fellow had a glib tongue and a mocking manner. 'You have none of the comforts which a wounded man requires. They are all to be found in Ilminster prison, whither we shall carry him. There will he have nothing to think about, with everything found for him. Madam, your father will be well bestowed with us.'
At that moment I heard the footsteps of Barnaby crunching among the brushwood.
'Fly! Barnaby, fly!' I shrieked. 'The enemy is upon us!'
He did not fly. He came running. He rushed upon the soldiers, and hurled this man one way and that man another, swinging his long arms like a pair of cudgels. Had he had a cudgel I believe he would have sent them all flying. But he had nothing except his arms and his fists; and in a minute or two the soldiers had surrounded him, each with a bayonet pointed, and such a look in every man's eye as meant murder had Barnaby moved.
'Surrender!' said the Sergeant.
Barnaby looked around leisurely.
'Well,' he said, 'I suppose I must. As for my name, it is Barnaby Eykin; and, for my rank, I was Captain in the Green Regiment of the Duke's valiant army.'
'Stop!' said the Sergeant, drawing a paper from his pocket. '"Captain Eykin,"' he began to read, '"has been a sailor. Rolls in his walk; height, about five foot five; very broad in the shoulders; long in the arms; of great strength."'
'That is so,' said Barnaby, complacently.
'"Legs short and figure stumpy."'
'What?' cried Barnaby, 'stumpy?'
'"Legs short and figure stumpy,"' repeated the Sergeant reading.
'That is so set down is it? Then,' said Barnaby, looking down at his limbs, ''twas a pity that, with such legs as these, I did not deny my name. Call these short, brother?'
CHAPTER XXV.
ILMINSTER CLINK
How can I tell – oh! how can I sit down to tell in cold blood the story of all that followed? Some parts of it for very pity I must pass over. All that has been told or written of the Bloody Assize is most true, and yet not half that happened can be told. There are things, I mean, which the historian cannot, for the sake of pity, decency, and consideration for living people, relate, even if he hath seen them. You who read the printed page may learn how in one place so many were hanged; in another place so many; how some were hung in gemmaces, so that at every cross-road there was a frightful gibbet with a dead man on it; how some died of small-pox in the crowded prisons, and some of fever; and how Judge Jeffreys rode from town to town, followed by gangs of miserable prisoners driven after him to stand their trial in towns where they would be known; how the wretched sufferers were drawn and quartered, and their limbs seethed in pitch, and stuck up over the whole country; how the women and boys of tender years were flogged through market-towns – you, I say, who read these things on the cold page presently (even if you be a stickler for the Right Divine and hold rebellion as a mortal sin) feel your blood to boil with righteous wrath. The hand of the Lord was afterwards heavy upon those who ordered these things; nay, at the very time (this is a most remarkable Judgment, and one little known) when this inhuman Judge was thundering at his victims – so that some went mad and even dropped down dead with fear – he was himself, as Humphrey hath assured me, suffering the most horrible pain from a dire disease; so that the terrors of his voice and of his fiery eyes were partly due to the agony of his disease, and he was enduring all through that Assize, in his own body, pangs greater than any that he ordered! As for his miserable end, and the fate that overtook his master, that we know; and candid souls cannot but confess that here were truly Judgments of God, visible for all to see and acknowledge. But no pen can truly depict what the eye saw and the ear heard during that terrible time. And, think you, if it was a terrible and a wretched time for those who had no relations among the rebels, and only looked on and saw these bloody executions and heard the lamentations of the poor women who lost their lovers or their husbands, what must it have been for me, and those like me, whose friends and all whom they loved – yea, all, all! – were overwhelmed in one common ruin, and expected nothing but death?
Our own misery I cannot truly set forth. Sometimes the memory of it comes back to me, and it is as if long afterwards one should feel again the sharpness of the surgeon's knife. Oh! since I must write down what happened, let me be brief. And you who read it, if you find the words cold where you would have looked for fire; if you find no tears where there should have been weeping and wailing, remember that in the mere writing have been shed again (but these you cannot see) the tears which belonged to that time, and in the writing have been renewed (but these you cannot hear) the sobbings and wailings and terrors of that dreadful autumn.
The soldiers belonged to a company of Grenadiers of Trelawny's Regiment, stationed at Ilminster, whither they carried the prisoners. First they handcuffed Barnaby, but, on his giving his parole not to escape, they let him go free; and he proved useful in the handling of the cart on which my unhappy father lay. And, though the soldiers' talk was ribald, their jests unseemly, and their cursing and swearing seemed verily to invite the wrath of God, yet they proved honest fellows in the main. They offered no rudeness to us, nor did they object to our going with the prisoners; nay, they even gave us bread and meat and cider from their own provisions when they halted for dinner at noon. Barnaby walked sometimes with the soldiers, and sometimes with us; with them he talked freely, and as if he were their comrade and not their prisoner: with us he put in a word of encouragement or consolation, such as 'Mother, we shall find a way out of this coil yet;' or 'Sister, we shall cheat Tom Hangman. Look not so gloomy upon it;' or, again, he reminded us that many a shipwrecked sailor gets safe ashore, and that where there are so many they cannot hang all. 'Would the King,' he asked, 'hang up the whole county of Somerset?' But he had already told me too much. In his heart I knew he had small hope of escape; yet he preserved his cheerfulness, and walked towards his prison (to outward seeming) as insensible of fear, and with as unconcerned a countenance as if he were going to a banquet or a wedding. This cheerfulness of his was due to a happy confidence in the ordering of things rather than to insensibility. A sailor sees men die in many ways, yet himself remains alive. This gives him something of the disposition of the Oriental, who accepts his fate with outward unconcern, whatever it may be. Perhaps (I know not) there may have been in his mind that religious Assurance of which he had told me. Did Barnaby at this period, when death was very near unto him, really believe that there was one religion for landsmen and another for sailors – one way to heaven for ministers, another for seamen? Indeed, I cannot tell; yet how otherwise account for his courage and cheerfulness at all times – even in the very presence of death?
'Brother,' he asked the Sergeant, 'we have been lying hid for a fortnight, and have heard no news. Tell me, how go the hangings?'
'Why, Captain,' the fellow replied with a grin, 'in this respect there is little for the rebels to complain of. They ought to be satisfied, so far, with the attentions paid to them. Lord Feversham hanged twenty odd to begin with. Captain Adlan and three others are trussed up in chains for their greater honour; and, in order to put the rest in good heart, one of them ran a race with a horse, being promised his life if he should win. When he had beaten the horse, his Lordship, who was ever a merry man, ordered him to be hanged just to laugh at him. And hanged he was.'
'Ay,' said Barnaby, 'thus do the Indians in America torture their prisoners first and kill them afterwards.'
'There are two hundred prisoners laying in Weston Zoyland church,' the Sergeant went on; 'they would have been hanged, too, but the Bishop interfered. Now they are waiting to be tried. Lord! what signifies trial, except to give them longer rope?'
'Ay, ay; and how go things in Bridgwater and Taunton?'
'From Weston to Bridgwater there is a line of gibbets already; in Taunton, twenty, I believe, have swung – twenty, at least. The drums beat, the fifes played, and the trumpets sounded, and Colonel Kirke drank to the health of every man (such was his condescension!) before he was turned off. 'Twould have done your heart good, Captain, only to see the brave show.'
'Ay, ay,' said Barnaby, unmoved; 'very like, very like. Perhaps I shall have the opportunity of playing first part in another brave show if all goes well. Hath the Duke escaped?'
'We heard yesterday that he is taken somewhere near the New Forest. So that he will before long lay his lovely head upon the block. Captain, your friends have brought their pigs to a pretty market.'
'They have, Brother; they have,' replied Barnaby, still with unmoved countenance. 'Yet many a man hath recovered from worse straits than these.'
I listened with sinking heart. Much I longed to ask if the Sergeant knew aught of Robin; but I refrained, lest merely to name him might put the soldiers on the look-out for him, should he, happily, be in hiding.
Next the Sergeant told us (which terrified me greatly) that there was no part of the country where they were not scouring for fugitives; that they were greatly assisted by the clergy, who, he said, were red-hot for King James; that the men were found hiding, as we had hidden, in linneys, in hedges, in barns, in woods; that they were captured by treachery – by information laid, and even, most cruel thing of all, by watching and following the men's sweethearts who were found taking food to them. He said also that, at the present rate, they would have to enlarge their prisons to admit ten times their number, for they were haling into them not only the men who had followed Monmouth, but also those who had helped him with money, arms, or men. The Sergeant was a brutal fellow, yet there was about him something of good nature, and even of compassion for the men he had captured. But he seemed to take delight in speaking of the sufferings of the unfortunate prisoners. The soldiers, he told us, were greatly enraged towards the rebels – not, I suppose, on account of their rebellion, because three years later they themselves showed how skin-deep was their loyalty, but because the rustics, whom they thought contemptible, had surprised and nearly beaten them. And this roused in them the spirit of revenge.
'Captain,' said the Sergeant, ''tis pity that so lusty a gentleman as thou shouldst die. Hast thou no friends at Court? No? Nor any who would speak for thee? 'Tis pity. Yet a man can die but once. With such a thick neck as thine, bespeak, if so much grace be accorded thee, a long rope and a high gallows. Else, when it comes to the quartering' – he stopped and shook his head – 'but there – I wish you well out of it, Captain.'
In the evening, just before sunset, we arrived at Ilminster, after a sad and weary march of ten miles, at least; but we could not leave the prisoners until we knew how and where they were bestowed; and during all this time my mother, who commonly walked not abroad from one Sabbath to the next, was possessed with such a spirit that she seemed to feel no weariness. When we rode all night in order to join the Duke she complained not; when we rode painfully across the hills to Taunton she murmured not; nor when we carried our wounded man up the rough and steep comb; no, nor on this day, when she walked beside her husband's head, careful lest the motion of the cart should cause him pain. But he felt nothing, poor soul! He would feel nothing any more.
Ilminster is a goodly town, rich and prosperous with its spinners and weavers. This evening, however, there was no one in the streets except the troopers, who swaggered up and down or sat drinking at the tavern door. There is a broad open place before the market, which stands upon great stone pillars. Outside the market is the Clink, whither the soldiers were taking their prisoners. The troopers paid not the least heed to our mournful little procession – a wounded man; a prisoner in scarlet and lace, but the cloth tattered and stained and the lace torn. They were only two more men on their way to death. What doth a soldier care for the sight of a man about to die?