The Spanish Poniard, being the story of the remorse of Ambrose Drybridge

Front matter

BY THE SAME AUTHOR. JOHN NEWBOLD'S ORDEAL. CROWN 8vo., CLOTH, 6s. " An unmistakably clever book, and, though it often recalls the literary handling both of Anthony Trollope and of Mr. W. E. Norris, it is an original book as well. By the few who know and love good work, it will be found thoroughly enjoyable." — Spectator. " From an old man's nose to a fox-terrier his sketches are quaint and characteristic." — Athenæum. " It is fresh, full of humour, never bitter in its satire. The writer's character sketches can best be described by the homely phrase, 'they are brimful of cleverness.' Contains a mine of amusement." — Morning Post. "We have seldom read a novel that gave us greater pleasure. Those who relish a book because of the stamp it bears of a fresh and original outlook upon life and character will find in this novel much pleasant reading." — Daily News.

" A novel of character, and written in an exceptionally happy vein." — Whitehall Review. " Really a clever novel, full of good things. We can cordially recommend it." — Ctitic. " Not often in a season's reading do we come upon a story as clever as this. There is enough of such cleverness in Mr. Pinkerton's book to make him a reputation as a satirist. He will soon take a prominent place among the novelists of to-day." — British Weekly. " Too short for the mass of amusing character studies and incidents which is crowded into its pages." — Vanity Fair. " A novel to be read." — Liverpool Daily Post. " The characters are cleverly drawn and life-like.'' — Bookseller THE SPANISH PONIARD BEING THE STORY OF THE REMORSE OF AMBROSE DRYBRIDGE THE SPANISH PONIARD BEING THE STORY OF Æftc Ermorsc of &m6rosr ©rg&ritigc BY THOMAS PINKERTON AUTHOR OF "JOHN NEWliOLLf's ORDEAL," ETC.

LONDON SWAN, SONNENSCHEIN & CO PATERNOSTER SQUARE CONTENTS CHAT PAGE, I. THE CENTRE OF ENGLAND ... I II. CAPTAIN GAMAGE'S BABY . . . 12 III. THE LITTLE ELFIN KNIGHT . 29 IV. THE REFORAIATION OF SAUL IRESDEN . . 43 V. AVHERE THE PONIARD AVAS FOUND . . 57 VI. THE AVHITE ROSE OF WARWICK ... 68 VII. IN WHICH COLONEL PUREFOY, OF CALDECOTE, BREAKS BRAZEN IMAGES ... 93 VIII. A DISCLOSURE ..... I07 IX. A DISPUTATION . . . . .124 X. A DUEL IN THE STREET . . . .137 XI. " TO YOUR TENTS, O ISRAEL ! " . . . 1 55 XII. THE CASTLE BESIEGED .... 1 69 XIII. THE FIRST GLIA1PSE OF LIGHT . . . 17S XIV. BLINDING LIGHT ..... I98 XV. ON THE BRINK ..... 2IO XVI. A FRESH DEPARTURE . . . .221 XVII. BIBLE AND WINDING-SHEET . . . 235 XVIII. EDGEHILL .....

Chapter I. The Centre Of England

A short walk out of beautiful Leamington, on the Lillington road, there stands, in the middle of the highway, a vigorous oak-tree. The stranger who asks why this tree is carefully preserved in its singular position, is told — " That is the Shire Oak ; it marks the centre of England." A little before the date of the Accession of Charles the First, the Shire Oak of that time — for, if the present tree is comparatively a young one, there has been, according to local tradition, a Shire Oak from time immemorial — stood in a much wilder country than that which surrounds its successor. A great part of War wickshire consisted of unenclosed land. Besides an immense area of woodland called the Arden, A in the southern part of the county, toward Stratford-on-Avon, there were great remnants of forest tracts, that had supplied fuel to gener ations of iron-workers, in the Felden, the more cultivated northern portion.

The Shire Oak, however, stood by itself in the middle of a bare, uncultivated space, across which ran a bridle-path from Lillington to Warwick, passing close to the outer branches of the old tree. Along this path one lowering autumn even ing, just before sundown, Captain Gamage, a burgher of Warwick, was slowly riding. A man of about thirty years of age, of a cheerful countenance, enlivened by a pair of merry blue eyes, and a mouth that readily smiled. He wore a beard cut to a long point and a heavy moustache with curled ends, not so much after the trim manner of the Cavalier, as the more pronounced fashion set by the adventurers to the Spanish Main. Nor was there in this any mere admiring imitation : Captain Gamage had accompanied the great and unfortunate Raleigh in his last expedition to the Oronooko.

But this had been from mere love of adventure, not ot spoil ; for our Captain, when quite a young man, had taken part in so successful a raid upon a Spanish-American town, that he had come off with enough silver, and other rich booty, to make him more than comfortable for the rest of his life. He looked older, perhaps, than thirty, for he had gone to sea at the age of twelve, and had seen much hard service and endured the vicissi tudes of many foreign climes, together with their freer and more jovial manners and customs. His eyes would, when he cogitated deeply, or fixed his attention upon anything, half close, like those of a man accustomed to study the weather : while a blue mark where a pistol had been exploded close to his temple, gave a kind of warrant to the careless and merry expression of his face.

His hair was of a bronzed yellow colour and naturally short and curly. When he walked he bowed one leg a little, the result of the springing of an over charged carronade from its slide, in a sea fight off Trinidad. The Captain, who bestrode a stout nag that had evidently done a good day's work, wore garments of a somewhat foppish, if serviceable, kind ; for although he was returning from a not very courtly or formal expedition, he was a man who did not, as a rule, care to appear in mean or ordinary plight. When not in travel ling trim, his was one of the most gallant and splendid figures in Warwick. By his side hung a long sword, and from holsters protruded the stocks of a couple of handsome pistols. For, if England had never been so peaceable, or prosperous, as it was during the reign of James the First, it was yet necessary for any one going alone across country, to go armed.

That monarch, with his hatred of bloodshed, so ridiculous in a king, at least let his country alone. Nay, the common sense, the obstructed sagacity, and the disposition to let things slide, with which he has been charged, really had beneficial effects. Together they made up a tolerably well-intentioned character ; and so in timate was the correspondence between the welfare of a king and that of his charge, in those days, that for him to be well-intentioned in a sluggish if interfering way was to give, at any rate, the blessing of rest to his country. Such grandfatherly interference as the edict forbidding country gentlemen to come to court, though oppressive and opposed to scientific political economy, was really beneficial. This particular piece of sagacious tyranny, for in stance, kept alive that small circulation of money necessary, when the middle class was confined to a great extent to the towns, to enable the farmers and country people to do business.

In spite of his not being attired in his best, our Captain would have presented a gallant and warlike appearance, save for several de tracting circumstances. The chief of these was a huge, willow pannier, or fish-basket, that was slung at his back, the second was that his tall, pointed hat was rolled about with casts, flies and other tackle, and the third, that, in his hand, instead of the more appropriate lance, he held a fishing rod, in two long pieces, with which he now and then stimulated, by vigorous thwacks, his jaded steed For he was a great angler ; he had left active life at a comparatively early age mainly that he might enjoy the delights of angling. It was his habit to make excursions, of some days' duration, into adjoining counties, in pursuit of his favourite recreation. He had often journeyed as far as Dove Dale ; and in the spring, THE SPANISH PONIARD. he always went into North Wales, and at some snug farmhouse on the Verniew, or the Dee, spent a couple of happy months ; winding up, perhaps, with a fortnight of lake fishing, then little understood.

A certain way he had of in gratiating himself with strangers was of great use to him in rude parts : while the strong man armed and expert in weapons was, of course, even in those times, not the man to be lightly interfered with. Captain Gamage had reached the Shire Oak and had drawn up, as one does when the last stage of a homeward journey has been accomplished, to refresh oneself with the last draught in the flask, when he was startled by hearing a moaning sound that seemed to come from beneath the tree. Pausing a moment, for it might be that the gurgling of his flask, or the rubbingof one bough against another — this latter a thing that causes the weirdest noise of woodland nature — had deceived him, he attentively listened, and soon heard an unmistakeable deep suspiration, or groan of weariness.

Dismounting, and taking a pistol as the handiest weapon beneath boughs, ior, for all he knew, there might be some treacherous allure ment here, he peered cautiously into the shade. Full in a shaft of light that poured through a lilt where a great branch had been torn away by a winter blast, he saw, leaning against the trunk of the oak, a woman of foreign appear ance, whom he judged to be Spanish. She was young, not more than twenty-three, and extremely beautiful. She was seated on the ground, and appeared to be in an utterly wearied and half-fainting state. By her side, on a cloak spread upon some plucked fronds of fern, slept a pretty boy, about four years of age. The woman's hands were clasped about her knees, and in her right hand she held a long, Spanish-looking poniard, whose keen blade re flected a gleam of the fading steely-tinted sky.

The weapon had an ivory handle, clasped about and ornamented with silver. Loose and nerveless as was her figure, there was yet a singular expression of determination in the way she grasped this dagger. It seemed as if she would not drop it, if she swooned. " Who would arouse her," said Gamage to himself, "had better touch that dagger," and, THE SPANISH PONIARD. he added, " spring back as soon as he has touched it ! " This piteous picture of the homeless stranger keeping watch over her sleeping child, touched the heart of our good Captain. She did not look like a gipsy : her dress was good, and the cloak that enwrapped the child was of rich material. He was puzzled and interested. Did she mean to pass the night where she was ? If so, she was likely to spend a wretched one ; for there were abundant signs of stormy weather.

At this moment, a bough he was holding back cracked, and the woman roused herself. She rose to her feet and looked intently into the Captain's face, the while grasping the long poniard in a way he hardly liked. Then she said in a foreign accent, and as if repeating some formula : " The middle of England — Warwick ? " "Yes," he replied, encouragingly, "you are not far from Warwick." She seemed only to comprehend the last word. " Warwick is at the very heart of England," he repeated, " you are not far from it ! " She appeared to understand the purport of his speech, for she uttered a Spanish word, which he knew meant to-morrow. " But what are you going to do to-night, mistress ? " he asked, eking out his speech with a few Spanish words he had picked up in S. America. At the same time he poured a little liquor into a silver-mounted horn and gave her to drink.

It appeared to revive her. She put the dagger away in a place of concealment, under her dress, and, in obedience to his signs, came from under the tree and looked with some inquietude at the gloomy clouds that were gathering in the west. Then she turned, and, for a moment, scrutinized the face of her well wisher. She seemed reassured by the expression she saw there. Taking up her child, and, appearing to understand that Gamage would perhaps guide her to some place where she could spend the night, she followed him. Soon they came to a little rising ground from which was visible, about two miles away, against the last gleams of sunset, below a black pall of cloud in the western sky, a group of buildings, in which twinkled two or three sparks of light, and above which rose a lofty, square church tower, and several solid and low round towers.

Then Captain Gamage turned and said : — " Warwick." Like many men who have little to do, he was of rather a curious turn of mind. He loved to know the ins and outs of things, and it was with not a little interest that he paused to note the effect, upon the Spanish woman, of the sight of the place she had apparently travelled so far, and with so much toil, to reach. She did not disappoint him by taking the announcement quietly. At first there was an expression of relief, of satisfaction even, on her face. But this was soon succeeded by some more poignant feeling. The shadow of some bitter apprehension, the foretaste of some dire disappointment of her hope, came over her. She clasped her child tightly to her bosom, and looked steadfastly at the distant town. Then, as the possibility of some unhappy ending to her travail strengthened in her heart, her face grew dark with passion.

It was convulsed with the fury of Southern anger ; a burning desire for revenge shone in her eyes. Her right hand was hidden in the folds of her dress. He knew it was clasping that keen, deadly poniard. But he was to see a more pleasant expression upon the face of the foreign woman, ere he parted with her. He took her to a tiny cottage on the outskirts of a little village, and privately giving to an ancient, peasant woman, who lived in it with her grandson, a boy of ten, a piece of money, explained that his charge wanted shelter for the night. Noting the ready acquiescence of the old crone, the Spanish woman smiled upon Captain Gamage, and, with a gesture of singular delicacy and subtlety, turned the face of her child who had been awakened by the walk, towards him, with the suggestion that her benefactor would find his satisfaction in helping that innocent and tender creature, rather than in helping her. The good Captain pinched the cheek of the pretty boy, and then, not at all dissatisfied with himself, resumed his homeward journey.

Chapter II. Captain Gamage's Baby

On the following morning, Captain Gamage, attired in a manner befitting his station as, perhaps, the richest bachelor in Warwick, took his usual after-breakfast stroll toward the guard-room of the Castle. To have a chat, or play a game or two at shovel-board, with the soldiers of the guard was, with him, an almost daily custom. What enabled them to lighten weary hours, was a welcome diversion to Gamage. The fact that he could at any moment choose some other scene, or mode, of amusement made that which was a mere device to kill time with them, to him an agreeable method of passing it. In the early part ofthe seventeenth century there was, about a great nobleman, very little affectation of the private gentleman. He was a man entirely apart. There was, until the CAPTAIN GAMAGE S BAB V. 13 invention of the meaningless title of baronet, a great gulf between him and even the richest country squire ; and service under him, especially of the military sort, was considered to give honourable position.

Thus his armed retainers were nearly all of good blood ; many of them were young men of birth who had spent their patrimony ; or younger sons who thought that they might just as well ruffle it at the little court of a great Baron, as remain the servile adherents of their elder brothers in some dull country neighbourhood. It must be borne in mind that this peaceful reign hardly encouraged those enterprises which give opportunities of distinction to young men of spirit. Many young gallants who had been forbidden by the king's decree to go to Court, had no other resource toward a jolly life than to attach themselves to a great nobleman. Although James had commenced to dilute the peeiage with miscellaneous creations, the nobility was still a very limited class, that had been en nobled for considerations of royal blood and high civil and military distinction.

It was not until two reigns later, that a flood of parasite and courtezan blood commenced a system of vitiation that, in course of time, was to render the term nobleman, in any grand sense, all but meaningless. Having no standing army, the country looked to this class for leadership and instruction in military discipline. The militia of any county would not have been very efficient without these little nuclei of perma nently armed men, to provide rallying points and keep the military spirit alive. Thus, when a foreign expedition was on foot, the military service of the country naturally adjusted it self, and the contingent from any county went into battle like a band of brothers. There was still justification for feudalism. This kind of free, careless society was exactly that in which our jovial Captain found himself at home ; nor, apart from his good-fellowship, did his comparative indifference as to what he lost or won at play, or his willingness to lend a comrade a jacobus now and then, make him an unpopular person.

He did not spend a half of his income in ordinary expenses, and he would often ride in the train of the owner of the castle, when that nobleman journeyed to Lon don, or elsewhere, and enliven the journey for his comrades by profuse hospitality, if I may CAPT ALN GAMAGE 'S BAB}. 15 so call it, at the different hostelries on the road. On this particular morning, Gamage was not intent on amusement ; he wished to meet a certain Captain Saul Iresden, a fellow campaigner of old, whose opinion he wished to take concerning the adventure of yesterday evening. The more he dwelt upon the incident the more he was puzzled by it. For what purpose was this strange woman coming to Warwick ? He was anxious to ask his friend if he knew of any, beside themselves, who had been in Spain. Saul Iresden was a tall, dark-complexioned man, of about the same age as his friend, but of a very different temper.

He might very pro perly, when his long, sallow face, piercing black eyes and expression of uneasy disdain were studied in his quiet moments, be pronounced a sullen and melancholy man : but this impression was constantly contradicted by his behaviour ; he was always the first and the most eager and energetic person in the town at bear-baitings, masques, drinking-bouts and other amusements ; into which he entered with a kind of ferocious eagerness. Reflective people were astonished to see a man, who in his rare, quiet moments looked as morose and pitiless as an inquisitor, so habitually hare-brained and incalculable. Drink, fighting, dice and the other enjoyments of a soldier's life, he pursued with intense avidity. It seemed as if there must be some devil in this man, that kept him continually striving after fierce enjoyment.

He was never quiet, never satisfied. As a soldier, Gamage knew that he had been pre-eminently daring and courageous. No danger had ever appalled him ; no fatigue had been too great for his iron frame. At the same time, no debauchery had been too repulsive : and, in cruelty and utter neglect of all considerations of humanity with respect to his foes or prisoners, he had often made his hardened comrades pause in astonish ment. With all this, he was by no means an ill-looking man. When he liked to be ingratiating, which was sometimes the case of an evening, after the consumption of generous liquor, or generally the case when he was speaking to a pretty woman, there was a certain seductive deference and lofty courtesy in his demeanour that suited CAPTAIN GAMAGE'S BABY. 17 well with his tall, lean figure, the foreign style of his black moustache twirled up in Spanish fashion, and his short two-pointed beard.

In fact he was far more successful in pleasing women than his friend Captain Gamage ; and this, together with the manner in which he stalked about the place, much as if he were in the streets of a conquered town, made him, on the whole, dis liked and indeed hated, by not a few of the good burghers of Warwick. Many a yeoman grasped his cudgel as Captain Iresden strolled through the market square, bestowing his con descension upon the country good-wives and damsels ; and many a small squire, whose son had been seduced into a whirl of dissipation and then cast off with contempt, wished from the bottom of his heart that he had but half the mastery of fence possessed by this man ; who had once been assaulted by three desperate footpads and had slain two of them with his long rapier, and brought the third into Warwick tied to his saddle bow.

In spite of all this, Saul Iresden was no mere vulgar ruffian. He never, for a low motive, courted the society of any man of wealth, or schemed to enjoy anyone's money : to the B value of which he had always been profoundly indifferent, or he might have come back rich, like his friend, from the Spanish Main. There appeared to be some aching and unappeasable, yet undiscoverable want, or craving, in his soul, that led him to continually seek for fresh excitement. Thus, after a debauch which had rendered his comrades helplessly stupid, he would seem, so invulnerable was his iron con stitution, to be at his clearest and finest point of intellectual lucidity ; and would sit for hours possessed by a frightful consciousness of the inexplicable vacuity of his life and the deep mystery of the necessity, and aim, of, or reason for, his existence.

Then he would commence to drink, as it were, in earnest, until his mind was excited by imaginary delights of battle, or horrid joys of rapine and destruction. That such a man, to whom the meaner sort of citizen was a creature who must yield to his humour or be spurned — not that he met with much opposition, the terror he excited was too great for that — that such a firebrand should be allowed to occupy a powerful position in a quiet town, was an unfortunate feature of the times. He was under the protection of Lord Brooke, CAPTAIN GAMAGE' S BAB Y. 19 who might not be very well acquainted with his servant's character, except that he knew him to be the strictest disciplinarian and the best military instructor in his train. Moreover, the nobility had not yet got into the way of looking upon the vulgar as people to be treated with any particular consideration ; much less as men whose enmity might ever be formidable.

Thus, a nobleman, though as powerful and magnanimous as was Fulke Greville, was the focus ofa certain amount of oppression ; just as a peer of to-day, however harmless and un obtrusive, cannot prevent himself from being the centre of not a little unpreventable snob bery. Indeed, the few instances that might be quoted to prove that there prevailed any idea of consideration for their inferiors by great lords, are almost all mixed up in a quaintly suggestive manner with the interest of the titled bene factor : as, for example, when a Beauchamp, having discovered that his excessive tolls had driven traders from the markets of the town, did " at the suit of his Lady " — a common and suggestive formula in such cases, qualifying too direct and compromising condescension — "and for the benefit of his own soul and his ancestors' souls, free them from terrage, stal lage," and other impositions.

Gamage had not proceeded far when he saw Iresden strolling up the street in front of him. He quickly caught him up and they stood to gether, the most unpopular man and the most popular in the place. The two figures suited well with the pictur esque, ill-paved, narrow street, with its irregular, overhanging gabled houses, from which hung quaint signs, and before which, on trestles and benches, were exposed goods and manufactures of all varieties and colours. Gamage's robust person, his florid, good-humoured face, with blue eyes and slightly irresolute mouth and chin, denoted amiable jollity and sound good fellowship. He wore a splendid buff doublet and a short, blue cloak, lined with fine leather. His plumed hat, his silver-mounted sword-belt and other gallant appointments, contrasted well with the soldierly head-gear and dark purple doublet, that of the Warwickshire militia, of his friend.

The latter was at least a head taller than Gamage, being not less than six feet four inches in height. His swarthy complexion and determined expression were extremely CAPTAIN GAMAGE'S BABY. 21 striking, whilst his long limbs and careless attitude, one hand resting on his hip, and the other twirling his moustache, gave him an appearance of conscious power and arrogance. His was a truly formidable figure. His piercing, restless, black eyes, seemed able to penetrate the dark little dens or unglazed shops, and cow the bravest of the hosiers and leathersellers in their recesses, and dare them to resent the freedom with which he scanned the lattices above, in search of feminine response to his bold glances. Nor were his glances powerless. There was a kind of animal fascination in his gaze ; and the composed matron who carelessly stood her ground without betraying that she noticed him, and the blushing maiden who shrank timidly back, each felt a secret flutter of agitation, under his regard.

The man had fire in his blood, though it was not, perhaps, instinct with the allurement of heaven. The two were standing before a shop upon the stall of which was spread a quantity of books, chiefly bibles, primers, and the few Latin authors used in education. In the low interior, which seemed to burrow under the house like a rabbit-hole into an overhanging bank, could be dimly seen shelves containing rarer books ; and, on a counter, was spread a number of ancient buckles, belts, silver vessels, and other antiquarian curiosities. In pigeon-holes and on shelves, were stowed away reams of the coarse paper and stationery used by lawyers, and those of the gentry and commonalty who could write. At the upper end of this burrow, in a tiny, inner sanctum secluded from the shop by a wooden screen, surrounded by a small collection of some of the choicest printed books in existence, old manuscripts and heraldic charts, genealogies, portfolios of prints, and maps refer ring to County Histories and other antiquarian matters, stood a little, middle-aged man, who was dressed in sad-coloured garments of a quasi clerical appearance.

His clean-shaven face was chubby and ruddy, his nose was long and his eyes were small and twinkling. There was about his face a look of simplicity and sagacity. You would speak to him softly, so as to adapt yourself to a possibly Arcadian view of things, and receive an answer that told you you were speaking to a man of the world, who was rather inclined to a touch of cynicism than otherwise. CAPTAIN GAMAGE'S BABY. 23 Master Solomon Belding prided himself upon being a man of the world. He was not a very good scholar, as far as Latin and Greek were concerned, but he had considerable reading in Divinity, and he had prodigious acquaintance with antiquarian matters, especially those con nected with the Church. As may readily be supposed he passed, in Warwick, for a scholar of enormous knowledge and experience.

There was one thing he valued better than his reputation for learning, or his position as perhaps the best genealogist and family historian in the countyr, and that was his position as a churchwarden, or rather the churchwarden, for every thing was left to him by his admiring fellow official of St. Mary's Church. He was greatly encouraged and patronised by the leading families of the county ; a state of things of which he was not a little proud. He was an old bachelor. Belding had been for some time peering through his burrow at the two Cavaliers in the street. He now took out of a cupboard a dusty flask and a little silver stoup, and commenced clinking the one against the other, in a suggestive, not to say seductive, manner, in order to attract the attention of the two captains. Before Gamage had touched upon the subject upon which he wished to take his friend's opinion, Iresden had noticed this invitation to a morning draught, and, taking his comrade's arm, marched him up the shop, both stooping a little to avoid the beams of the low ceiling.