"You cannot be ignorant that this affair is like to end badly for you, Mr. Denis." Chapter XIX

"You acknowledge your part to be contrary to Her Majesty's, then?"

"I said so. Now as you answer me, I swear I will deal with you. I will fling the door wide and let you go forth freely to Mistress Idonia, whose present hiding-place I know; or else I will deliver you over to those who shall choke your discretion in your fool's throat."

"Your treason hath not commenced so well," said I, leaning back from the table, "that hath begun in distrust of each other."

"Be not over long about it," said Malpas darkly; "I am not used to repeat my offers, that, moreover, you see are abundantly generous."

"So generous," I replied, "that I doubt their worth."

"They be surely worth more," said my captor, upon whose brow the blue veins stood out, so sharp a curb did he put upon his mood; "they be of more worth to you, a thousandfold, than the favour or disfavour of that damned, cogging, glib-spoken traitor, your uncle."

He had let it slip at last! My uncle Botolph and Skene were one. And here, beyond belief, I held 'twixt my naked finger and thumb the steelyard by which my uncle's fate should be weighed, who had crossed me at every turn. A word of mine, and he that had first ruined my father's life, and after had robbed him of his fortune, might be contemptuously blotted out, as a man blots out some gross error in a letter he has writ; for that was how Malpas would serve him, could I bring myself to say he stood for the Queen. A little word spoken, and he was condemned, but I was free ... I and Idonia!

Indeed, it was clear justice, both to myself and to my uncle. For I was not to name the man a traitor to his Sovereign; rather, to speak well of him, as I expected a man should do of me. It was (now I was come to think on't) mere decency that I should not be dumb in my uncle's praise whom I had never had any, or at the least overt, cause to mistrust. Put the case the other way; that I thought my uncle's conduct treasonable. Should I denounce him to the Lord Treasurer and the Council? I knew I should not. Should I then denounce him to Malpas for the contrary cause, and upon the slight grounds I had, as of the confession he made to me when the Jesuit was found in hiding in his house? No, certainly.

Why, all that was required of me was that I should confess I thought my uncle honest, as likely enough he was. What should follow upon so fair a declaration imported me nothing. I was concerned with no grudges nor disputes of these men, to bethink me how a plain answer should work with them. Nay, I stood for the Queen's Majesty, upon oath to serve her, and would so stand, God willing, come what might; as Malpas was well assured, who yet had passed his word I was within an hand's breadth of going free; it only stayed upon my word. Then why should I not deal with another so, allowing the honour due to a like steadfastness with my own? My uncle would doubtless be let go free too; or perhaps he was not even so much as come into jeopardy. I had no suspicion but that he was still at large.... Indeed it was very probable.

All this while I sat still, musing upon that I should say, and Malpas stood above me, expecting it. More than once I tried to speak, and Heaven forgive me as I believe, had I spoken then, I should have sent my uncle to his death; but somehow the words would not come. The sophistry was too palpable; the truth too black a lie. I met my captor's eyes.

"If I tell you where my uncle is at this moment concealed," said I, "will you let me go free?"

Snatching at the apparent advantage: "I add it to the conditions of your safety that you do so," he replied swiftly.

"Then you have lost your game," said I, and getting up, I kicked the chair aside and watched his baffled face of rage. "For if you know not that, neither do you know where Idonia is, as you made pretence to do."

"You cursed trickster!" he swore, his voice shaking with an uncontrolled passion; "petty cheat and viper! So, that is it to be! Ay, white face, laugh that you have run me these lengths; I should have known you. 'Sdeath, ye be true Cleeves, uncle and nephew, unprofitable knaves both! Well, I have done my part, but there's more to follow yet and soon enough, uncle and nephew! Ah! and who shall be Idonia's guardian then, when you lie stark? ... Never a word of truth he gave me, that old fox, but kept me still dangling. 'He could not promise me her hand, forsooth, but yet he liked me. She would come to like me too, in time, no doubt; but I must have patience.' Patience—had he such patience to wait when her mother lived, or did he fob off Miles Avenon her father upon that fool's adventure wherein he was presently slain, as Uriah was slain, Bathsheba's man? Ho! a prosperous sleek lover, I warrant you, and a laugher too, until his Margaret died.... I knew that Miles, and though I was but a child when he went away, I remember the pride he had in his pretty frail wife and his joy of Idonia, for she was his proper child, though Cleeve named himself her guardian, for her mother's sake.

"It was that made him terrible, that death of Margaret, and few men dared go near him. But the fit passed. There have been Margarets enow since, in good sooth! though he still held by the child. Perdition! but there needs money to that game, a store, and he was glad of our help at first, and for many a long day after. It was to be fair sharing in all, and whiles I think he parted to the hair. Even to your coming I trusted him, and spied upon you as he bade me, being content to take the brunt, while he lay close. 'Twas then I claimed the maid as a right, but he shook his grey sleek head and paltered. Patience! that was the word, then. But it's another word now, Master Denis, for you and for him. Ay, and another word for Idonia Avenon...."

I was amazed hearing him talk so wild, whom I had thought tutored to a perfect secrecy; but his blood was up at my catching him in that baseness of lying, besides that he was disappointed of the hope I had extended and withdrawn, of setting him upon my uncle, whose treachery in their plot he so evidently feared. Why he did not spring upon me there and then with his knife I did not understand, though it was likely he reserved me a morsel to fling amongst his foul co-partners in this business, and a grateful sacrifice.

"Enough of this chat," said I, at length, "for I well perceive your purpose both toward me and my uncle. But I warn you for the last time I shall that 'tis safest you suffer me, Her Majesty's servant, to go hence free."

"It is refused," he replied curtly, and turning upon his heel, strode out of the room and into the street.

Seeing him gone thus, without mounting any especial guard upon me, I bethought me to examine the defences with my own eyes, and therefore followed him leisurely to the door. A stout sea-faring man was there already, his arms crossed, blocking it. I saw the gleam of a cutlass end beneath his rough jacket.

"Be thou the host of this tavern?" he inquired, with a grin.

Being unconcerned in his needs, I made no answer, and returned to my room. The windows, which were all unglazed, were strongly barred, and I at once saw useless to be attempted. Passing then to the hind part of the house I noted a little postern door that seemed to give onto a sort of jetty or wharf, the inn standing upon the riverside as I have already said; but when I approached it, there was the neat tapster that had brought my meal whistling some catch of a sea song, and polishing of a great arquebus.

"Ho! come not too nearly, master," he sang out, when he saw me, "for these pieces be tickle things, a murrain of 'em! And I not comprehending the least of the machine, it may chance shoot off unawares."

Perceiving that he had his finger pressed to the snaphance, and the barrel turned my way, I judged it expedient to leave Mr. Jocelin to his polishing and retire. Every avenue then was guarded, as I had looked it should be, and so, without any particular design, I walked slowly up the narrow, rotten stair into the chambers aloft. I went into three or four, all vacant and ungarnished by any piece of furniture or hanging, which meant sorry enough entertainment in a place purporting to be an inn, thought I, though proper enough to a prison.

But scarce had I gone forth into the gallery again, when I thought I heard a sound that proceeded from a chamber I had not till then observed, in a retired and somewhat darksome corner beyond the stairs. I held my breath to listen, and the little rustling noise beginning again after a space, I went directly to the door and opened it.

Mistress Avenon sat within, in a nook by the window, tearing a paper she had in her hands.

"Idonia!" I cried, and running forward had her in my arms and her hot face close against mine. "My bird," said I—for so she seemed as a dainty bird caught in an iron trap—"my bird, who hath brought you into this infamous place?"

She leant back a little from my shoulder, yet without loosing me, and looked up into my eyes with such a deal of honest, sweet pleasure to see me there, that I had to pretermit my anxiety some while, and indeed had near lost it by the time I renewed my question.

"Why infamous?" inquired Idonia in her turn, "save that I knew not you were here too. But now it is certainly not infamous, though something lacking of luxuries, and a thought slack in the attendance they bestow upon guests!"

"You must not misconstrue my insistence," I said, "and you will not, when you shall have heard all I have to tell you. But for the first, where is Mr. Skene?"

"He brought me here early last night," said she, but with a little of reproach in her voice that I knew meant I wasted good time idly.

"And whither is he gone?"

"Do you desire he should be present, then?" asked Idonia, very innocently.

"No, but I would warn him if I could," I replied gravely, and so told her everything as it had befallen me.

"Always that Malpas!" whispered the maid, and trembled so I had to clasp her tight to me.

"He does not know you are here, that is clear," I said, as indeed it was manifest to both of us.

"My guardian hath used this place often ere this," said Idonia, "and I suppose none thought to prate of what happened ordinarily."

"Perhaps he has left you to seek out Malpas," I conjectured, and at this she nodded.

"They have had some design in hand together this great while, of which I know nothing."

I did not tell her that I knew it well enough, and was even commissioned to prevent it, but said—

"Wherever he hath gone, Malpas hath certainly gone to seek him; but he must not be found."

"You owe him small thanks," whispered Idonia, her head low down, "and if this intends a danger to you..."

I did not suffer her to finish, but asked whether she were well enough acquainted with the house to know of any means of egress from it, besides the doors that were so straitly watched. She thought a great while before she replied how, once, it might be eight years since, she being lodged there, she had gone upon some occasion into the cellars, and remembered to have noted that the window which lighted it was a sort of grate within the river wall and was even then decayed and corrupted by the salt water, so that by this time it should, she thought, be easily broken through.

"The tide is out," said I, "so that if I may but get through, there is the dry bank above the pirates' gallows to go by; and after, the rest should be plain enough." Which gallows I spoke of (now all rotten) yet stood in the ooze to be flooded at high tide, it having been formerly used against such pirates and river thieves as were caught and there hanged, until, the tide rising, they were drowned.

In reply to my further questionings, she said that Skene was to be sought amidst the streets about the Tower Royal, which was where I had gone that day I lost my way in the fog, when Idonia found me, and, indeed, was no great distance from Chequer Lane.

"When you shall have found him, or however it fall out, you will return to me, dear heart?" said Idonia, who was now weeping so bitterly that I could scarce keep hold of my resolution to be gone. But I did so at length, and, going downstairs to the room I had left, found it to my delight still free. Nigh choked with the beating of my heart, I soon discovered the stone steps that led down to the cellars, which were a narrow passage-room lit with a swinging lantern, and having three or four locked doors of other vaults (used, I supposed, for storage of wines and such-like) to the right and left of it. But in the river-wall, when I looked, I could perceive no grid nor aperture of such sort as Idonia had spoken, and for some moments remained as one lost, for mere disappointment. However, recovering myself a little, I felt along the whole, length of the wall, high and low, until to my infinite pleasure my hand struck upon a new oaken door, bolted with a great bolt that I slid back without the least noise. For the door itself, I clearly perceived, it had been found necessary to put it in place of the old, decayed grid, and 'twas sure as provident a repairing as any it hath been my fortune to light on!

Well, I think it stands not upon me to relate the several stages of my prison-breaking, nor of my lurking along the river-bank under the very eyes of my warders into safety; though I confess that more than once my back burnt hot with the thought of the little peering tapster and of that great arquebus he so diligently polished.