Midwinter

The road which had begun as a rutted cart-track sank presently to a grassy footpath among scrub oaks, and as the boughs whipped his face the young man cried out impatiently and pulled up his horse to consider. He was on a journey where secrecy was not less vital than speed, and he was finding the two incompatible. That morning he had avoided Banbury and the high road which followed the crown of Cotswold to the young streams of Thames, for that way lay Beaufort’s country, and at such a time there would be jealous tongues to question passengers. For the same reason he had left the main Oxford road on his right, since the channel between Oxford and the North might well be troublesome, even for a respectable traveller who called himself Mr. Andrew Watson, and was ready with a legend of a sea-coal business in Newcastle. But his circumspection seemed to have taken him too far on an easterly course into a land of tangled forests. He pulled out his chart of the journey and studied it with puzzled eyes. My Lord Cornbury’s house could not be twenty miles distant, but what if the twenty miles were pathless? An October gale was tossing the boughs and whirling the dead bracken, and a cold rain was beginning. Ill weather was nothing to one nourished among Hebridean northwesters, but he cursed a land in which there were no landmarks. A hilltop, a glimpse of sea or loch, even a stone on a ridge, were things a man could steer by, but what was he to do in this unfeatured woodland? These soft south-country folk stuck to their roads, and the roads were forbidden him.

The speaker had looked over his shoulder, and the traveller, following his glance, became aware that close on the edge of the thicket a small tent was pitched. The night had fallen thick and moonless, but the firelight, wavering in the wind, showed it as a grey patch against the gloom of the covert. As the conversation droned on, that patch held his eyes like a magnet. There was a man there, someone with the strange name of Midwinter, someone whom these moor-men held in reverence. The young man had the appetite of his race for mysteries, and his errand had keyed him to a mood of eager inquiry. He looked at the blur which was the tent as a terrier watches a badger’s earth.

The talk round the fire had grown boisterous, for someone had told a tale which woke deep rumbling laughter. Suddenly it was hushed, for the thin high note of a violin cleft the air like an arrow.

The sound was muffled by the tent-cloth, but none the less it dominated and filled that lonely place. The traveller had a receptive ear for music and had heard many varieties in his recent wanderings, from the operas of Rome and Paris to gypsy dances in wild glens of Apennine and Pyrenees. But this fiddling was a new experience, for it obeyed no law, but jigged and wailed and chuckled like a gale in an old house.

In the circle of the lantern’s light the horseman, a big shambling fellow, stood swaying as if in extreme fatigue, now steadying himself by a hand on the animal’s neck, now using the support of the groom’s shoulder. His weak eyes peered and blinked, and at the sight of the gentlemen he made an attempt at a bow.

“My lord!” he gasped with a dry mouth. “Do I address my lord Cornbury?”

He did not wait for an answer. “I am from Chastlecote, my lord. I beg⁠—I supplicate⁠—a word with your lordship.”

“Now?”

“Now, if it please you. My business is most urgent. It is life or death, my lord, the happiness or despair of an immortal soul.”

“You are the tutor from Chastlecote, I think. You appear to have been trying your beast high.”

“I have ridden to Weston and to Heythrop since midday.”

“Have you eaten?”

“Not since breakfast, my lord.” The man’s eyes were wolfish with hunger and weariness.

“Then you shall eat, for there can be no business between a full man and a fasting. The groom will see to your horse. Follow me.”

Lord Cornbury led the way past the angle of the house to where the lit windows of the dining-room made a glow in the dark.

“ ’Tis a night of queer doings,” he whispered to Alastair, as they heard the heavy feet of the stranger stumbling behind them.

He slept lightly, and woke to see the candle, which he had left burning, guttering over the edge of the iron candlestick. A swift shadow ran across the wall before him, and a sudden waft of air caused the candle-end to flare like a torch. He glanced at the door, and it seemed to move. Then the place was quiet again, but it was brighter, for a new light had come into it. He scrambled from the bed to see the glow of a shaded lantern, and a slim cloaked figure slipping the key from the door.

The lantern was set beside the candle on the table. The figure wore a furred bed-gown and a nightcap of lace and pink satin, and its brown eyes in the shadow were bright as a squirrel’s and very merry.

“La, la, such a commotion ere I could come to you, sir,” she said. “Giles must carry Nunkie to bed and hoist Squire Bretherton and Sir Ambrose on their horses, and get a message from me to Black Ben, and pass a word to Stable Bill about Moonbeam. You have slept, wise man that you are? But it is time to be about your business of escaping, for in three hours it will be daylight.”

She was like a pixie in the half darkness, a tall pixie, that had a delicious small stammer in its speech. Alastair was on his feet now, bowing awkwardly.

The other looked puzzled, and the gypsy rose and, dancing to a far end of the room, opened a large rough door like a partition in a cowshed. Instantly a great gust swept the place, driving clouds of fine dust from the hearth. A noise came from that darkness beyond the door, a steady rumbling and grinding which had been a mere undercurrent of sound when the door was shut, but now dominated the place⁠—a sound like millstones working under a full press of water, joined with a curious shuddering like wind in an old garret. The gypsy stood entranced, one hand to his ear, his eyes glittering.

“That’s him we call Journeyman John. Hark to him grinding his old teeth! Ah, John, hungry again! But cheer up, there’s a fine supper a-coming.”

He shut the door as a showman shuts a cage. The light died out of his eyes, leaving only smouldering fires.

“That’s the deepest pothole in all the land,” he said, “and John like a scaly serpent lies coiled at the foot of it. Nothing that goes in there comes out⁠—leastways only in threads and buttons by way of Eldingill, and that long after. There’s your bed made for you, master, and it’s Ben’s duty to tuck you in. Oh, Ben’s a kind mammy.”

The young man’s brain had been slow to grasp the fate prepared for him, but the crazy leer which accompanied the last words brought a hideous illumination, and at the same time the faintest ray of hope. The man was clearly a madman, and therefore incalculable. With a great effort Alastair steeled his heart and composed his voice.

“What of supper?” he asked. “That comes before bed in a hospitable house.”