Justin McCarthy - The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel

“How we shall all smile a year hence,” Brilliana answered, “to think that such pitiful rebels vexed us. But for the moment there is one of these same rebels to be faced – and to be fooled. About our plan, good captain.”

Halfman saluted her more enthusiastically than he had ever saluted male commander.

“My general,” he vowed, “he shall think these walls hold an army of wassaillers.”

He turned on his heel and marched briskly out of the hall. Brilliana looked after him, with the bright smile on her face, till the door of the banqueting-hall closed behind him; then the smile slowly faded from her face.

“I would my spirits were as blithe as my speech,” she thought, as she went to the table and bent over it, looking at the open map which Halfman had been studying.

“What is going on in England, the King’s England, little England, that should not be big enough to have any room for traitors?”

She put her finger on the spot where Harby figured on the sheet.

“Here,” she mused, “we have been sundered from the world for all these days by this Roundhead leaguer, hearing no outside news but the ring of rebel shots and the sound of rebel voices. What has happened? What is happening? When we began the King was at Shrewsbury and the Parliament ruled London. What has come to the Parliament since? What has come to the King? Well, Loyalty House will carry the King’s flag so long as one stone tops another. We will live as long as we can for his Majesty, and then die for him gamely.”

A sound of heavy steps disturbed her meditations. She stood up from her map, blinked down the tears that tried to rise, and turned to face new fortune.

“Here is our enemy,” she said to herself, and she forced back the confident color to her cheeks, the confident light to her eyes. The door from the park opened, and John Thoroughgood entered the room, holding by the hand a man in the staid habit of a Puritan soldier, whose eyes were muffled by a folded scarf of silk. Blindfolded though he was, the Puritan followed his guide with a steady and resolute step.

“Halt!” cried Thoroughgood. The stranger stood quietly as if on parade, while Thoroughgood saluted his mistress.

“Unhood your hawk,” Brilliana ordered. Thoroughgood, obedient, unpicked the knot of the handkerchief, revealing his companion’s face. Brilliana observed with a hostile curiosity a tallish, well-set, comely man of about thirty years of age, whose smooth, well-featured face asserted high breeding and a gravity which deepened into melancholy in the dark expressive eyes and lightened into lines of humor about the fine, firm mouth. For a moment, with the removal of the muffle, he seemed dazzled by the change from dark to light; then, as command of his vision returned, he observed Brilliana and made her a courteous salutation which she returned coldly. She made a gesture of dismissal to Thoroughgood, who went out, and the Lady of Loyalty was left alone with her enemy.

There was a moment’s silence as the pair faced each other, the man quietly discreet, the woman openly scornful. She was under the same roof with a rebel in arms, and the thought sickened her. She broke the silence.

“You petitioned to see me.” With the sound of her voice she found new vehemence, new indignation. “Do your rebels offer unconditional surrender?”

The circumstances of the astonishing question brought for the moment a slight smile to the grave face of the Parliament man.

“It was scarcely with that thought,” he answered, “that I sought for a parley.”

Though the man’s smile had been short-lived, Brilliana had seen it and loathed him for it. Though the man’s manner was suave, it seemed to wear the suavity of success and she loathed him for that, too.

“We waste time,” she cried, impatiently, “with any other business than your swift submission.”

Then as she saw him make an amiably protesting gesture she raged at him with a rising voice.

“Oh, if you knew how hard it is for me to stand in the same room with a renegade traitor you would, if such as you remember courtesy, be brief in your errand.”

The man showed no consciousness of the insult in her words and in her manner save than by a courteous inclination of the head and a few words of quiet speech.

“Much may be pardoned to so brave a lady.”

Brilliana struck her hand angrily upon the table once and again.

“For God’s sake do not praise me!” she almost screamed, “or I shall hate myself. Your errand, your errand, your errand!”

The enemy was provokingly imperturbable.

“You have a high spirit,” he said, “that must compel admiration from all. That is why I would persuade you to wisdom. I came hither from Cambridge by order of Colonel Cromwell.”

Brilliana’s lips tightened at the sound of the name which the envoy pronounced with so much reverence.

“The rebel member for Cambridge,” she sneered – “the mutinous brewer. Are you a vassal of the man of beer?”

There was a quiet note of protest in the reply of the envoy.

“Colonel Cromwell is not a brewer, though he would be no worse a man if he were. I am honored in his friendship, in his service. He is a great man and a great Englishman.”

“And what,” Brilliana asked, “has this great man to do with Harby that he sends you here?”

“He sends me here,” the Puritan answered, “to haul down your flag.”

“That you shall never do,” Brilliana answered, steadily, “while there is a living soul in Harby.”

The Puritan protested with appealing hands.

“You are in the last straits for lack of food, for lack of fuel, for lack of powder.”

Brilliana made a passionate gesture of denial.

“You are as ignorant as insolent,” she asserted. “Loyalty House lacks neither provisions nor munitions of war.”

There was a kind of respectful pity in the stranger’s face as he watched the wild, bright girl and hearkened to the vain, brave words.

“Nay, now – ” he began, out of the consciousness of his own truer knowledge, but what he would have said was furiously interrupted by a volume of strange sounds from the adjoining banqueting-hall. There was a rattle and clink as of many pewter mugs banged lustily upon an oaken table; there was a shrill explosion of laughter, the work of many merry voices; there was the grinding noise of heavy chairs pushed back across the floor for the greater ease of their occupants; there was a tapping as of pipe-bowls on the board, and then over all the mingled din rose a voice, which Brilliana knew for the voice of Halfman, ringing out a resonant appeal.

“The King’s health, friends, to begin with.”

All the noises that had died down to allow Halfman a hearing began again with fresh vigor. It was obvious to the most unsophisticated listener that here was the fag end of a feast and the moment for the genial giving of toasts. Many voices swelled a loyal chorus of “The King, the King!” and had the great doors of the banqueting-hall been no other than bright glass it would have been scarce easier for the man and woman in the great hall to realize what was happening, the revellers rising to their feet, the drinking-vessels lifted high in air with loyal vociferations, and then the silence, eloquent of tilted mugs and the running of welcome liquor down the channels of thirsty throats. This silence was broken by some one calling for a song, to which call he who had proposed the King’s health answered instantly and with evident satisfaction. His rich if somewhat rough voice came booming through the partitions, carolling a ballad to which the Puritan listened with a perfectly unmoved countenance, while the Lady Brilliana’s eager face expressed every signal of the liveliest delight.