Rafael Sabatini - The Wedding Gift

Sir George Jeffreys, Lord Chief Justice of England, looked up from the papers before him, and fixed his melancholy eyes upon his visitor, the Lady Mary Ormington.

"You have done the State a great service, ma'am, said he, his voice gentle, his utterance slow. "Of that there is no more doubt than that you'll be setting a price on't."

And his red lips — startling red in so pale a face — were twisted never so faintly in a sneer.

He was arrayed in his scarlet, ermine-bordered robes, for he was fresh from the court-house of Dorchester, where, pursuing the instructions of his Royal master, and venting a savage humour, sprung, perhaps, from the awful disease that ravaged him, he had horribly dealt out the dread, unsparing justice that was to make his name a by-word of blood-lust.

Yet you had looked in vain for a trace of the man's ferocious nature in that pale face, its oval outline sharpened by the heavy periwig that framed it. It was a countenance mild and comely; the eyes were large and liquid, and haunted by a look of suffering.

"My lord," said the Lady Mary, wisely. "I have not come to bargain, but to do my duty by my King. Were it otherwise, I would have begun by naming the price of my disclosures."

"Instead of ending by it?" he questioned drily.

She flushed under the humourously scornful glance, and fidgeted an instant with her riding-switch.

"In no case can there be a question of price," said she, "though there may be a question of rewarding a service, which your lordship has acknowledged to be great."

Sire George's smile broadened.

"I have no doubt that you will find His Majesty graciously generous. What is the reward you seek?"

Her increasing pallor was dissembled by the shadows of her wide, plumed hat; but the strained tones betrayed her anxiety.

"I seek a small thing — a small thing to His Majesty, though to me a great one — I seek the pardon of a misguided gentleman who has borne arms against His Majesty in the late rising — Stephen Vallancey is his name.

Having uttered the name, she watched him breathlessly.

"Stephen Vallancey!" he croaked, and then fell silent, frowning at the papers on the table.

Presently, he began to smile, and her fears grew, for the smile's significance eluded her swimming senses.

"Stephen Vallancey," he repeated. "Hum! His arrest is expected by tomorrow. We are informed that he is in hiding in the neighborhood of St. Mary Ottery; and a troop of dragoons set out to find him an hour ago. A very desperate and dangerous man."

He looked up to find her leaning for support against the table; her face was grey, her eyes wide with fear. He was moved to a pity that was unusual in him, and to a liking for the foolish young rebel whose life she begged.

It was her good fortune to have come to him in such an hour as this. The pain by which all day he had been tormented had receded half-an-hour ago, when the Court adjourned, and the reaction brought now a mood of kindliness. Besides, his petitioner was a woman of handsome shape and face, and to the appeal of beauty the libertine Chief Justice was oddly, weakly susceptible.

Now it fell out that he gave full consideration to the circumstance that Lady Mary Ormington came of a family staunchly loyal to King James, and was staunchly loyal herself, as she had just proved by the service she had done the State in revealing the details of the plot against the life of His Majesty.

"You ask much," he said, as if demurring.

"I have given much," she answered, and pointed to the papers.

"True," he admitted. He put forth a hand, white and slender as a woman's, and took up a quill. "His Majesty, no doubt, will not find the price exorbitant. I will undertake its payment, but on condition that Mr. Vallancey shall withdraw from England, and remain absent during His Majesty's lifetime, or at least, during His Majesty's pleasure."

"I pledge his word for it," she cried in a glad tone.

He nodded, dipped his quill, and began to write.

"So much is not necessary. I am setting it for that if Mr. Vallancey is in England seven days from now, he will be hanged if taken. There!" He sealed the document, and thrust it across to her. "Mr. Vallancey is very fortunate in his advocate, and very enviable. "

She thanked him with a simple and touching earnestness; dropped him a curtsey, and departed hurriedly.

At the stairs' foot she found her elderly servant awaiting her.

"Quick, Nat," said she, "the horses. We ride at once."

Half-an-hour later, in that same room in which he had received her, the Lord Chief Justice, half drunk, was cursing himself for having paid the price too readily; another hour, and, racked by pain, he reviled himself for having paid the price at all.

Meanwhile, Lady Mary rode briskly amain in the cool of that September evening, attended by her single groom.

The news Sir George had given her, that the dragoons were ahead, bent upon Vallancey's capture, increased her haste. Accidents might occur. Vallancey at bay might offer a rash resistance, preferring a soldier's death to the hangman's rope that must await him were he taken. Therefore must she outpace the troops, and reach his hiding-place ahead of them.

She was well mounted, and she knew the country as she knew the palm of her own hand. Often had she ridden to hounds across it, but never quite at such a breakneck pace as she rode in the dusk of that September evening, to the great alarm of her attendant. She left the road, and seemed to him bent upon going to St. Mary Ottery as the crow flies, or as nearly so as might be possible for a woman on horseback.

Ahead of them the saffron of the sky grew paler; it became faintly violet, then grey. The stars came out, and the night deepened. Still she pounded on relentlessly, uphill, downhill, by meadow and moorland, over wall and hedge, across brooks and through fords. Twice did her horse stumble, unseating her on the second occasion. Yet undaunted, she pursued her headlong way.

A fearless, high-spirited woman was Lady Mary, as Nat, old groom, was fully aware; and she was as resourceful as she was spirited.

It was midnight when two reeking, steaming horses pulled up on the very borders of Devonshire, at an inn that stood on the left bank of the Char. It was the last inn in England where you would have expected to find relays. But Lady Mary had provided for everything against the success of interview with Jeffreys, and a pair of stout nags were at once forthcoming, to dash Nat's hope that it might be her ladyship's good pleasure to lie the night in that hovel.

The saddles being transferred, they mounted the fresh horses, went splashing through the ford and on. By daybreak they had left Colyton behind them, and were breasting the slopes above the valley of the Otter. On the heights they paused to breathe their nags.

The mellow, golden light of the new-risen sun flooded the country at their feet. They beheld St. Mary Ottery still sleeping below them, and beyond it the gleaming river. For miles they could see the road that wound about the foot of the hills, and nowhere was there a sign of troops. In her reckless cross-country gallop she had outpaced them. She looked at the haggard old groom, and laughed, well pleased.

All fatigue fell from her in that moment of victory. There was no sign of weariness in her fine eyes, her cheeks were delicately flushed, and there was an uprightness in her carriage which made it seem incredible that she should have ridden fifty miles between sunset and sunrise.

Gently they ambled down the slope and through the township, heading for a homestead by the river, a mile or so beyond St. Mary. Across an old stone bridge, barred by a gate which Nat got down to unlatch, they came straight into the yard of the farm, scattering a cloud of poultry in clucking terror. A dog barked furiously, and then, before Nat raised his whip to knock, the door was opened, and a tall, heavy man came forth into the light to challenge them.