“He’s alone, sir,” she said, “and your own room’s waiting if you’re ready for it.”
“Will you go up to him?” the charcoal-burner asked, and Alastair followed the old woman. She led the way up a narrow staircase with a neat sheepskin rug on each tread, to a tiny corridor from which two rooms opened. The one on the left they entered and found an empty bedroom, cleanly and plainly furnished. A door in the wall at the other end, concealed by a hanging cupboard, gave access to a pitch-dark passage. The woman took Alastair’s hand and led him a yard or two till she found a door-handle. It opened and showed a large chamber with daylight coming through windows apparently half cloaked with creepers. Alastair realised that the room had been hollowed out of the steep behind the house, and that the windows opened in the briars and heath of the face.
A fire was burning and a man sat beside it reading in a book. He was the fiddler of Otmoor, and in the same garb, save that he had discarded his coat and wore instead a long robe de chambre. A keen eye scanned the visitor, and then followed a smile and an outstretched hand.
“Welcome, Alastair Maclean,” he said. “I heard of you in these parts and hoped for a meeting.”
“From whom?”
“One whom you call the Spainneach. He left me this morning to go into Derbyshire.”
The name stirred a question.
“Had he news?” Alastair asked. “When I last saw you you prophesied failure. Are you still of that mind?”
“I do not prophesy, but this I say—that since I saw you your chances and your perils have grown alike. Your Cause is on the razor-edge and you yourself may have the deciding.”
IX
Old England
“Yesterday morning your Prince was encamped outside Carlisle. By now the place may have fallen.”
“Who told you?” Alastair asked.
“I have my own messengers who journey in Old England,” said Midwinter. “Consider, Captain Maclean. As a bird flies, the place is not a hundred and fifty miles distant, and no mile is without its people. A word cried to a traveller is taken up by another and another till the man who rubs down a horse at night in a Chester innyard will have news of what befell at dawn on the Scotch Border. My way is quicker than post-horses. … But the name of inn reminds me. You have the look of a fasting man.”
Food was brought, and the November brume having fallen thick in the hollow, the windows were curtained, a lamp lit, and fresh fuel laid on the fire. Alastair kicked the boots from his weary legs, and as soon as his hunger was stayed fell to questioning his host; for he felt that till he could point a finger to the spy who had dogged him he had failed in his duty to the Cause. He poured out his tale without reserve.
Midwinter bent his brows and stared into the fire.
“You are satisfied that this servant Edom is honest?” he asked.
“I have observed him for half a day and the man is as much in the dark as myself. If he is a rogue he is a master in dissimulation. But I do not think so.”
“Imprimis, you are insulted in the Flambury inn by those who would fasten a quarrel on you. Item, you are arrested and carried before this man Thicknesse, and one dressed like a mummer presses the accusation. Item, in a warrant you and your purposes are described with ominous accuracy. You are likewise this very day tricked by your gypsy guide, but that concerns rather my lady Norreys. These misfortunes came upon you after you had supped with Kyd, and therefore you suspected his servant, for these two alone in this countryside knew who you were. A fairly argued case, I concede, and to buttress it Kyd appears to have been near Flambury last night, when he professed to be on the road for Wiltshire. But you have ceased to suspect the servant. What of the master?”
Alastair started. “No, no. That is madness. The man is in the very heart of the Prince’s counsels. He is honest, I swear—he is too deep committed.”
Midwinter nodded. “If he were false, it would indeed go ill with you; for on him, I take it, depends the rising of Wales and the Marches. He holds your Prince in the hollow of his hand. And if all tales be true the omens there are happy.”
Alastair told of the message from Brother Gilly, and, suddenly remembering Edom’s papers, drew them from his pocket, and read them again by the firelight. Here at last was news from Badminton and from Monmouth and Hereford: and at the foot, in the cipher which was that most commonly used among the Jacobites, was a further note dealing with Sir Watkin Wynn. The writer had concerted with him a plan, by which the Welsh levies should march straight through Gloucester and Oxfordshire to cut in between Cumberland and the capital. To Alastair, the thing was proved authentic beyond doubt, for it bore the password which had been agreed between himself and Sir Watkin a week before at Wynnstay.
He fell into a muse from which he was roused by Midwinter’s voice.
“Kyd receives messages and forwards them northward, while he himself remains in the South. By what channel?”
“It would appear by Sir John Norreys, who is now, or soon will be, at Brightwell under the Peak.”
As he spoke the words his suspicions took a new course. Johnson had thought the man a timeserver, though he had yesterday recanted that view. Sir Christopher Lacy at Cornbury had been positive that he was a rogue. The only evidence to the contrary was that his wife believed in him, and that he had declared his colours by forsaking his bride for the Prince’s camp. But he had
