He swayed and caught Midwinter’s shoulder. “Forgive me, old friend. I have been riding for forty hours, and have fought and argued in between, and before that I rose off a sickbed. … But I must on to Derby. Get a fresh horse, my brave one.”
Midwinter drew him to an armchair, and seemed to fumble with his hands for a second or two at his brow. When Johnson looked again Alastair was asleep, while the other dressed roughly the hole in his shoulder made by Sir John’s sword.
“Festina lente, Mr. Johnson. I can provide fresh beasts, but not fresh legs for the riders. The pair of you will sleep for five hours and then sup, for Derby is a far cry and an ill road, and if you start as you are you will founder in the first slough.”
XVIII
In Which Three Gentlemen Confess Their Nakedness
Fresh horses were found, and at four in the morning, four hours before daylight in that murky weather, Alastair and Johnson left the inn. At the first crossroads Midwinter joined them.
“Set your mind at ease about Sir John,” he said. “He will travel securely to the Cherwell side, and none but the Spoonbills will know of his journey. I think you have read him right, sir, and that he is a prosy fellow who by accident has slipped into roguery and will return gladly to his natural rut. But in case you are mistaken, he will be overlooked by my people, for we are strong in that countryside. Be advised, sir, and ride gently, for you have no bodily strength to spare, and your master will not welcome a sick man.”
“Do you ride to Derby with us?” Alastair asked.
“I have business on that road and will convey you thus far,” was the answer.
It was a morning when the whole earth and sky seemed suffused in moisture. Fog strung its beads on their clothes, every hedgerow tree dripped clammily, the roads were knee-deep in mud, floodwater lay in leaden streaks in the hollows of flat fields, each sluggish brook was a torrent, and at intervals the air would distil into a drenching shower. Alastair’s body was still weary, but his heart was lightened. He had finished now with dalliance and was back at his old trade; and for the moment the memory of Claudia made only a warm background to the hopes of a soldier. Little daggers of doubt stabbed his thoughts—he had sacrificed another day and night in his chase of Sir John, and the Prince had now been at Derby the better part of forty hours without that report which he had promised. But surely, he consoled himself, so slight a delay could matter nothing; an army which had marched triumphant to the heart of England, and had already caused the souls of its enemies to faint, could not falter when the goal was within sight. But the anxiety hung like a malaise about the fringes of his temper and caused him now and then to spur his horse fifty yards beyond his companion.
The road they travelled ran to Derby from the southwest, and its deep ruts showed the heavy traffic it had lately borne. By it coaches, wagons and every variety of pack and riding horse had carried the timid folks of Derbyshire into sanctuaries beyond the track of the Highland army. Today the traffic had shrunk to an occasional horseman or a farmer’s wife with panniers, and a jovial huntsman in red who, from his greeting, seemed thus early to have been powdering his wig. Already the country was settling down, thought Alastair, as folk learned of the Prince’s clemency and goodwill. … The army would not delay at Derby, but was probably now on the move southward. It would go by Loughborough and Leicester, but cavalry patrols might show themselves on the flank to the west. At any moment some of Elcho’s or Pitsligo’s horse, perhaps young Tinnis himself, might canter out of the mist.
He cried to Midwinter, asking whether it would not be better to assume that the Prince had left the town, and to turn more southward so as to cut in on his march.
“Derby is the wiser goal,” Midwinter answered. “It is unlikely that His Highness himself will have gone, for he will travel with the rearguard. In three hours you will see All Saints’ spire.”
At eight they halted for food at a considerable village. It was Friday, and while the other two attacked a cold sirloin, Alastair broke his fast on a crust, resisting the landlord’s offer of carp or eels from the Trent on the ground that they would take too long to dress. Then to pass the time while the others finished their meal he wandered into the street, and stopped by the church door. The place was open, and he entered to find a service proceeding and a thin man in a black gown holding forth to an audience of women. No Jacobite this parson, for his text was from the 18th chapter of Second Chronicles. “Wilt thou go up with me to Ramoth-Gilead?” and the sermon figured the Prince as Ahab of Israel and Ramoth-Gilead as that (unspecified) spot where he was to meet his fate.
“A bold man the preacher,” thought Alastair, as he slipped out, “to croak like a raven against a triumphing cause.” But it appeared there were other bold men in the place. He stopped opposite a tavern, from which came the sound of drunken mirth, and puzzled at its cause, when the day’s work should be beginning. Then he reflected that with war in the next parish men’s minds must be unsettled and their first disposition to stray towards alehouses. Doubtless these honest fellows were celebrating the deliverance of England.
But the words, thickly uttered, which disentangled themselves from the tavern were other than he had expected:
“George is magnanimous,
Subjects unanimous,
Peace to us bring.”
ran the ditty,
