Richard de Ashby smoothed his brow, and calmed his look, as he crossed from a tavern, where he had been making some inquiries, to a house on the opposite side of the street, not very far from the gates of the castle. It was a large stone building--close to an old church which then stood on that part of the hill--and as it contained several habitations, the entrance of the common staircase was, as usual in such circumstances, left open.
Ascending cautiously, guided by a rope, which passing through iron rings followed the tortuous course of the staircase, Richard de Ashby reached the first floor, and knocked at a small door on his right hand. Nobody appeared, and after waiting for several minutes; he knocked again.
This time he was more successful, the door was opened by a small strange-looking being, dressed in the garb of an old woman, with a brown and wrinkled face, and little, bright, grey eyes. She held a lamp in her hand, and gazing upon the countenance of the visitor with a keen and not very placable look, she asked--"What do you want?"
"I want Father Mark," replied Richard de Ashby.
"He is out visiting the sick," said the old dame.--"Nay, now," she continued, in a petulant tone, "I will answer all your questions at once, before you can put them. They all run in the same round. Father Mark is out--I don't know where he is gone--I don't know when he'll come home.--If you want to see him here, you must come again--If you want him to come to any sick man, you must leave word where.--Now you have it all."
Richard de Ashby had some acquaintance with the world, and fancied that he knew perfectly the character of the person before him. Drawing out, therefore, a small French piece of gold, called an aignel, he slipped it into the old woman's hand, who instantly held it to the lamp, crying, "What's this--what's this?--Gold, as I live! Mary mother! you are a civil gentleman, my son. What is it that you want?"
"Simply an answer to a question," said Richard de Ashby: "Is there a young lady staying here--a pretty young lady--called Kate Greenly? You know her, methinks,--do you not?"
"Know her? to be sure I do," replied the old woman. "A blessing upon her pretty heart, she's been up here many a time, and I've carried a message for her before now; and she gave me some silver pieces, and a bodkin--I've got it somewhere about me now," and she began to feel in her bodice for poor Kate Greenly's gift.
"Then is she not here now?" said Richard de Ashby.
"No, no," answered the old woman, "she was here an hour before sunset, but she went away again. Oh, I know how it is!" she cried, as if a sudden thought had struck her--"you are the gentleman whom good Father Mark has been preaching to her to run away from, because you are living in a state of naughtiness. These friars are so hard upon young folks; and now you'd give another gold piece, like this, I'd swear, to know where she is, and get her to come back again."
"Ay, would I," replied Richard de Ashby, "two."
"Well, well," continued the old woman, "I know something, if I choose to say. She is not in Nottingham, but not far off."
"Can you show me where she is?" demanded Richard de Ashby.
"Not to-night--not to-night!" cried the old woman. "Sancta Maria! I would not go out to-night all that way--not for a purse full of gold. Why it is up, after you get out of the gates, through Back Lane, and down the Thorny Walk till you come to the edge of Thorny Wood, and then you turn to the right by old Gaffer Brown's cottage, and, round under the chapel, and along by the bank where the fountain is, and then up by the new planting, just between it and the fern hill; and then if you go straight on, and take the first to the left, and the fourth to the right, it brings you to old Sweeting's hut, where she has gone to live with him, and his good dame."
Richard de Ashby saw no possible means of discovering the way from the old lady's description, and he was about to propose some other means of arranging the affair, when, with a shrewd wink of the eye, she said--"I am going out to her in the grey of the morning myself, and if you have any message to send her, I can take it; or, if a gentleman chooses to wait at the gate, and walk into the country after an old woman, who can help it?--I mustn't go with you through the town, you know, for that would make a scandal."
"I understand--I understand!" said Richard; "and if by your means I get her back again, you shall have two gold pieces such as that."
"Oh, an open hand gets all it wants," replied the priest's maid--"a close fist keeps what it has got; an open hand gets all it wants. 'Tis a true proverb, Sir Knight--'tis a true proverb. At the north gate, you know, in the grey of the morning. Wait till you see me come out with my basket, and then don't say a word, but come after."
"You are going to her, then?" asked Richard de Ashby.
"Yes, yes," said the old woman, impatiently; "I am going to carry her news, from the good father, of all that happens at the Castle to-night. But go along, now--go along! I am afraid of his coming back and finding you here: then he might think something, you know. At the north gate in the grey of the morning."
"I will not fail," replied Richard de Ashby, and turning away, he slowly descended the stairs.
The old woman paused not to look after him, but closed the door, muttering and talking to herself.
The life of Richard de Ashby had arrived at one of those moments so fearful, so terrible, in the career of wickedness, when one offence following another has accumulated scheme upon scheme, each implying new crimes, and new dangers, and each, though intended to guard the other, offering, like the weakened frontier of an over extended empire, but new points of peril, but fresh necessity of defence.
"'Tis unfortunate," he thought, as he turned from the door--"'tis unfortunate that I have not found her; but she is absent from the city, and that is one point gained."
The moment, however, that his mind had thus cast off the thought of Kate Greenly, and the secret she possessed, it turned with maddening rapidity to all the other points of his situation.
"What shall I do with the body?" he asked himself. "I cannot let it lie and rot there.--I wonder how fares my cousin Alured? He has surely drank the wine. Oh, yes; I know him, he has drank it, and more too.--If that man Ellerby were not hovering round about, all might be secure still."
The word still showed better than any other the state of his mind, though he hid it from himself. He knew, in short, that he was anything but secure. Over his head hung the awful cloud of coming detection and punishment. He saw it with his eyes, he felt it in his heart, that the tempest was about to descend; and, as those who, in a thunderstorm, gallop away from the flashing lightning, are said to draw it more surely on their own heads, so his desperate efforts to save himself, only called down more surely the approaching retribution.
The next minute his mind reverted to the corpse again. "This carrion of Dighton," he thought; "it were well, perhaps, to dare the thing openly--to give him a simple but a public funeral--to call the priests to aid, and pay them well. With them, one is always sure to get a good word for one's money.--'Tis but to say he was brought to my house in my absence, and died there while I was away. What have I to do with his death? 'Tis no affair of mine.--I will hie up to the castle, and spy what is going on. Oh, that I could prove that Alured has drank wine or broken bread in the room of Hugh de Monthermer!--That were a stroke indeed! But, at all events, he has been with him. Who can tell how a man may be poisoned? 'Tis at all events suspicious, that he should be with him just before his death.--I will not go into the court; I will just look through the gates, and speak with the warder for a moment or two. The gates are not closed till nine." And thus saying, he retrod his steps to the castle gate.
When he reached it there was nobody there; but as he looked through the archway into the court, he saw the figures of the warder and several soldiers standing with their backs turned towards him, gazing towards the other side of the building. There was a bright light coming from that point; and taking a step farther forward, under the archway, he perceived a procession of priests and boys of the chapel, with torches and crucifixes borne before them, while a tall old man was seen carrying reverently the consecrated bread.
The solemn train took its way direct towards the lodging of Alured de Ashby; and turning back with feelings in which were mingled, in a strange and indescribable manner, anguish and satisfaction, horror and relief, Richard de Ashby murmured--"It is done!--It is done!" and sped his way homeward with the quick but irregular footstep of crime and terror.
It were painful to watch him through the progress of that night. Sleep was banished from his eyelids--sleep, that will visit the couch of utter despair, came not near the troubled brain of doubt, and apprehension, and anxiety. He walked to and fro in his chamber--he laid not down his head upon his bed--he sat gloomily gazing on the pale untrimmed lamp--he rested his eyes upon his folded arms, while dizzy images of sorrow and distress, and dying men, and shame, and agony, and scorn, and anguish here, and punishment hereafter, whirled before his mental vision, from which no effort could shut them out.
Thus passed he the hours, till a faint blue light began to mingle with the glare of the expiring lamp; and then, starting up, he hastily threw on a hood and cloak, and, leaving his servants sleeping in the house, proceeded towards the north gate of the town.
It had been an angry and a stormy night, and the rain, which was running off the rocky streets of Nottingham, still hung upon the green blades of grass and the boughs of the trees, which in that day came almost up to the walls of the city. The clouds were clearing off, however, and blue patches were seen mingling with the mottled white and grey overhead, while to the right of the town a yellow gleam appeared in the sky, showing the rapid coming of the sun.
Such was the scene as Richard de Ashby looked through the gate of Nottingham, which was thronged with peasantry, bringing in their wares to the market even at that early hour. It was a sight refreshing and bright to the eye, and might have soothed any other mind than his; but the fire that burnt internally, that throbbed in his heart and thrilled through his veins, made the cool air of the autumnal morning feel like the chill of fever where shivering cold spreads over the outer frame, while the intense heat remains unquelled within.
One of the first objects that his eye lighted upon was the form of the old woman, standing without the gate, and looking back towards it; and hurrying on, he was at her side in a minute.
"Ha, ha!" she said, in her usual broken and tremulous voice, "you are a lie-a-bed--I thought you were not coming. Well, let us speed on." And forward she walked, certainly not at the most rapid pace, while Richard de Ashby asked her many a question about old Gaffer Sweeting and his good dame--what was his age? whether he had any sons, and whether there were many cottages thereabout?
The old woman answered querulously, but none the less satisfactorily. He was an old man of seventy-three, she said, and he had had two sons; but one had died in consequence of a fall from a tree, and another had been killed at Lewes.
"Houses!" she exclaimed. "Few houses, I trow. Why; that's the very reason that good Father Mark sent the girl there. Wherever there are houses or young men, there is temptation for us, poor women. But this place is quite a desert, like that where the Eremites lived that he talks of. If you don't tempt her, I don't know who will, there."
Thus talking, she tottered on, leading the way through sundry lanes and hamlets; and explaining to her companion, at each new house they came to, that this was such a place which she had mentioned the night before, and that was another. Very soon, however, the cottages grew less and less in number, for towns had not at that time such extensive undefended suburbs as they have acquired in more peaceful days and at length they came to the chapel which she had named, the bell of which was going as they approached. The good dame would needs turn in to say a prayer or two, and it was in vain that Richard de. Ashby urged her to go forward, for she seemed one of those who harden themselves in their own determinations, as soon as they see themselves in the slightest degree opposed.
"No, no," she said, "you would not have me pass the chapel, and the bell going, would you? It's very well for you men, who have no religion at all--so, go on, go on, if you will, I will not be a minute. I have five aves, and a pater-nosier, and a credo to repeat, and that wont take me a minute. You can't miss the way. Go on, I will soon overtake you."
Richard de Ashby did not think that the usual rate of the old lady's progression would produce that result; but, as the idea of prayer, and all connected with it, was unpleasant to his mind, he strode gloomily on, for some hundred yards, from the chapel, revolving still the same painful images which had tormented him during the livelong night.
In a shorter time than he had expected, however, the old woman came out of the chapel; and he again proceeded on the path, walking on before her, and losing all sight of human habitation, but following a small bye-way, along the sandy ground of which might be traced sundry footsteps, and the marks of a horse's hoofs. Though his step was slow, the old woman did not overtake him for near three quarters of a mile, still keeping in sight and talking to herself as she came after.
The trees soon grew thicker on the left hand, the country more wild and broken on the right; and, at length, about a hundred and fifty yards in front, appeared a small, low cottage, or rather hut, resting on the edge of the wood. The path now spread out into an open green space, a sort of rugged lane some forty yards broad, extending from the spot where Richard de Ashby first saw the cottage, to the low and shattered door; and the place looked so poor and miserable that he said to himself, "If this be the abode the priest has assigned to her, 'twill not be difficult to persuade her to come back to softer things. I will tell her I am going to take her with me to London, and to the gay things of the capital.--Is this the cottage, good dame?" he continued, turning his head over his shoulder, and speaking aloud to the old woman, who was now not more than a couple of yards behind.
"To be sure," replied she; "did I not tell you it was here?"
Richard de Ashby took two or three steps more in advance, straining his eyes upon the hut; but then, he thought he saw first one figure and after that another dart from the wood, and disappear behind the cottage, with a rapidity of movement not like that of old age. A sudden fear came over him, and stopping short, he exclaimed, "What is this, old hag?--There are men there?"
Dropping the basket from her hand in an instant, with a bound like that of a wild beast, and a loud scream, unlike any tone of a human voice, the old woman sprang upon the shoulders of Richard de Ashby, and writhed her long thin arms through his, with tightening folds, like those of a large serpent.
"Ha, ha, ha!" she shouted. "Come forth, my merry men!--come forth! Tangel has got him!--Tangel has got him! We'll eat his heart!--we'll eat his heart!--and roast him over a slow fire!"
In vain Richard de Ashby writhed--in vain he struggled to cast off the grasp of the strange being who held him. With a suppleness and strength almost superhuman, Tangel clung to him like the fatal garment of Alcides, not to be torn away. His fingers seemed made of iron--his arms were as ropes; and Richard de Ashby, casting himself down, rolled over him upon the ground, struggled, and turned, and strove to break loose, without unclasping in the slightest degree the folds in which he held him.
At the same time, the steps of men running fast reached his ear; his eye caught the figures of several persons hurrying from the cottage; and, when Tangel at length relaxed his grasp, Richard de Ashby found himself a prisoner, bound hand and foot.
