John Enderby.

by Gilbert Parker.

I

Of all the good men that Lincolnshire gave to England to make her proud, strong and handsome, none was stronger, prouder and more handsome than John Enderby, whom King Charles made a knight against his will.

"Your gracious Majesty," said John Enderby, when the King was come to Boston town on the business of draining the Holland fen and other matters more important and more secret, "the honour your Majesty would confer is well beyond a poor man like myself, for all Lincolnshire knows that I am driven to many shifts to keep myself above water. Times have been hard these many years, and, craving your Majesty's pardon, our taxes have been heavy."

"Do you refuse knighthood of his Majesty?" asked Lord Rippingdale, with a sneer, patting the neck of his black stallion with a gloved hand.

"The King may command my life, my Lord Rippingdale," was Enderby's reply, "he may take me, body and bones and blood, for his service, but my poor name must remain as it is when his Majesty demands a price for honouring it."

"Treason," said Lord Rippingdale just so much above his breath as the King might hear.

"This in our presence!" said the King, tapping his foot upon the ground, his brows contracting, and the narrow dignity of the divine right lifting his nostrils scornfully.

"No treason, may it please your Majesty," said Enderby, "and it were better to speak boldly to the King's face than to be disloyal behind his back. My estates will not bear the tax which the patent of this knighthood involves. I can serve the country no better as Sir John Enderby than as plain John Enderby, and I can serve my children best by shepherding my shattered fortunes for their sakes."

For a moment Charles seemed thoughtful, as though Enderby's reasons appealed to him, but Lord Rippingdale had now the chance which for ten years he had invited, and he would not let it pa.s.s.

"The honour which his Majesty offers, my good Lincolnshire squire, is more to your children than the few loaves and fishes which you might leave them. We all know how miserly John Enderby has grown."

Lord Rippingdale had touched the tenderest spot in the King's mind. His vanity was no less than his impecuniosity, and this was the third time in one day he had been defeated in his efforts to confer an honour, and exact a price beyond all reason for that honour. The gentlemen he had sought had found business elsewhere, and were not to be seen when his messengers called at their estates. It was not the King's way to give anything for nothing. Some of these gentlemen had been benefited by the draining of the Holland fens, which the King had undertaken, reserving a stout portion of the land for himself; but John Enderby benefited nothing, for his estates lay further north, and near the sea, not far from the town of Mablethorpe. He had paid all the taxes which the King had levied and had not murmured beyond his own threshold.

He spoke his mind with candour, and to him the King was still a man to whom the truth was to be told with directness, which was the highest honour one man might show another.

"Rank treason!" repeated Lord Rippingdale, loudly. "Enderby has been in bad company, your Majesty. If you are not wholly with the King, you are against him. 'He that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.'"

A sudden anger seized the King, and turning, he set foot in the stirrup, muttering something to himself, which boded no good for John Enderby. A gentleman held the stirrup while he mounted, and, with Lord Rippingdale beside him in the saddle, he turned and spoke to Enderby. Self-will and resentment were in his tone. "Knight of Enderby we have made you," he said, "and Knight of Enderby you shall remain. Look to it that you pay the fees for the accolade."

"Your Majesty," said Enderby, reaching out his hand in protest, "I will not have this greatness you would thrust upon me. Did your Majesty need, and speak to me as one gentleman to another in his need, then would I part with the last inch of my land; but to barter my estate for a gift that I have no heart nor use for--your Majesty, I cannot do it."

The hand of the King twisted in his bridle-rein, and his body stiffened in anger.

"See to it, my Lord Rippingdale," he said, "that our knight here pays to the last penny for the courtesy of the accolade. You shall levy upon his estate."

"We are both gentlemen, your Majesty, and my rights within the law are no less than your Majesty's," said Enderby stoutly.

"The gentleman forgets that the King is the fountain of all law," said Lord Rippingdale obliquely to the King.

"We will make one new statute for this stubborn knight," said Charles; "even a writ of outlawry. His estates shall be confiscate to the Crown.

Go seek a King and country better suited to your tastes, our rebel Knight of Enderby."

"I am still an Enderby of Enderby, and a man of Lincolnshire, your Majesty," answered the squire, as the King rode towards Boston church, where presently he should pray after this fashion with his subjects there a.s.sembled:

"Most heartily we beseech Thee with Thy favour to behold our most gracious sovereign King Charles. Endue him plenteously with Heavenly gifts; grant him in health and wealth long to live; strengthen him that he may vanquish and overcome all his enemies; and, finally, after this life, he may attain everlasting joy and felicity."

With a heavy heart Enderby turned homewards; that is, towards Mablethorpe upon the coast, which lies between Saltfleet Haven and Skegness, two ports that are places of mark in the history of the kingdom, as all the world knows.

He had never been so vexed in his life. It was not so much anger against the King, for he had great reverence for the monarchy of England; but against Lord Rippingdale his mind was violent. Years before, in a quarrel between the Earl of Lindsey and Lord Rippingdale, upon a public matter which Parliament settled afterwards, he had sided with the Earl of Lindsey. The two Earls had been reconciled afterwards, but Lord Rippingdale had never forgiven Enderby.

In Enderby's brain ideas worked somewhat heavily; but to-day his slumberous strength was infused with a spirit of action and the warmth of a pervasive idea. There was no darkness in his thoughts, but his pulse beat heavily and he could hear the veins throbbing under his ear impetuously. Once or twice as he rode on in the declining afternoon he muttered to himself. Now it was: "My Lord Rippingdale, indeed!" or "Not even for a King!" or "Sir John Enderby, forsooth! Sir John Enderby, forsooth!" Once again he spoke, reining in his horse beside a tall cross at four corners, near Stickford by the East Fen. Taking off his hat he prayed:

"Thou just G.o.d, do Thou judge between my King and myself. Thou knowest that I have striven as an honest gentleman to do right before all men.

When I have seen my sin, oh, Lord, I have repented! Now I have come upon perilous times, the gins are set for my feet. Oh, Lord, establish me in true strength! Not for my sake do I ask that Thou wilt be with me and Thy wisdom comfort me, but for the sake of my good children. Wilt Thou spare my life in these troubles until they be well formed; till the lad have the bones of a man, and the girl the wise thought of a woman--for she hath no mother to shield and teach her. And if this be a wrong prayer, my G.o.d, forgive it: for I am but a blundering squire, whose tongue tells lamely what his heart feels."

His head was bowed over his horse's neck, his face turned to the cross, his eyes were shut, and he did not notice the strange and grotesque figure that suddenly appeared from among the low bushes by the fen near by.

It was an odd creature perched upon stilts; one of those persons called the stilt-walkers. They were no friends of the King, nor of the Earl of Lindsey, nor of my Lord Rippingdale, for the draining of these fens took from them their means of living. They were messengers, postmen and carriers across the wide stretch of country from Spilsby, even down to the river Witham, and from Boston Deep down to Market Deeping and over to the sea. Since these fens were drained one might travel from Market Deeping to the Wolds without wetting a foot.

"Aw'll trooble thee a moment, maister," said the peasant. "A stilt-walker beant nowt i' the woorld. Howsome'er, aw've a worrd to speak i' thy ear."

Enderby reined in his horse, and with a nod of complaisance (for he was a man ever kind to the poor, and patient with those who fared ill in the world) he waited for the other to speak.

"Thoo'rt the great Enderby of Enderby, maister," said the peasant, ducking his head and then putting on his cap; "aw've known thee sin tha wast no bigger nor a bit gra.s.s'opper i' the field. Wilt tha ride long, Sir John Enderby, and aw'll walk aside thee, ma grey nag with thy sorrel." He glanced down humorously at his own long wooden legs.

Enderby turned his horse round and proceeded on his way slowly, the old man striding along beside him like a stork.

"Why do you dub me Knight?" he asked, his eyes searching the face of the old man.

"Why shouldna aw call thee Knight if the King calls thee Knight? It is the dooty of a common man to call thee Sir John, and tak off his hat at saying o' it." His hat came off, and he nodded in such an odd way that Enderby burst out into a good honest laugh. "Dooth tha rememba little Tom Dowsby that went hoonting wi' thee when tha wert not yet come to age?" continued the stilt-walker. "Doost tha rememba when, for a jest, thee and me stopped the lord bishop, tha own uncle, in the highway at midnight, and took his poorse from him, and the rich gold chain from his neck? And doost tha rememba that tha would have his ap.r.o.n too, for tha said that if it kept a bishop clean, wouldna it keep highwaymen clean, whose work was not so clean as a bishop's? Sir John Enderby, aw loove thee better than the King, an' aw loove thee better than my Lord Rippin'dale-ay, theere's a sour heart in a goodly body!"

John Enderby reined up his horse and looked the stilt-walker in the face.

"Are you little Tom Dowsby?" exclaimed he. "Are you that scamp?" He laughed all at once as though he had not a trouble in the world. "And do you keep up your evil practices? Do you still waylay bishops?"

"If aw confessed to Heaven or man, aw would confess to thee, Sir John Enderby; but aw'll confess nowt."

"And how know you that I am Sir John Enderby?"

"Even in Sleaford town aw kem to know it. Aw stood no further from his Majesty and Lord Rippin'dale than aw stand from you, when the pair talked by the Great Boar inn. Where doos tha sleep to-night?"

"At Spilsby."

"To-night the King sleeps at Sutterby on the Wolds. 'Tis well for thee tha doost not bide wi' his Majesty. Theer, aw've done thee a service."

"What service have you done me?"

"Aw've told thee that tha moost sleep by Spilsby when the King sleeps at Sutterby. Fare-thee-well, maister."

Doffing his cap once more, the stilt-walker suddenly stopped, and, turning aside, made his way with an almost incredible swiftness across the fen, taking the ditches with huge grotesque strides. Enderby looked back and watched him for a moment curiously. Suddenly the man's words began to repeat themselves in Enderby's head: "To-night the King sleeps at Sutterby on the Wolds. 'Tis well for thee tha doost not bide wi' his Majesty." Presently a dozen vague ideas began to take form. The man had come to warn him not to join the King at Sutterby.

There was some plot against Charles! These stiltwalkers were tools in the hands of the King's foes, who were growing more powerful every day.

He would sleep to-night, not at Spilsby, but at Sutterby. He was a loyal subject; no harm that he could prevent should come to the King.

Before you come to Sutterby on the Wolds, as you travel north to the fenland, there is a combe through which the highway pa.s.ses, and a stream which has on one side many rocks and boulders, and on the other a sort of hedge of trees and shrubs. It was here that the enemies of the King, that is, some stilt-walkers, with two dishonourable gentlemen who had suffered from the King's oppressions, placed themselves to way lay his Majesty. Lord Rippingdale had published it abroad that the King's route was towards Horncastle, but at Stickney by the fens the royal party separated, most of the company pa.s.sing on to Horncastle, while Charles, Lord Rippingdale and two other cavaliers proceeded on a secret visit to a gentleman at Louth.