CHAPTER XIII

A DASH FOR FREEDOM

Nick awoke from a heavy, burning sleep, aching from head to foot. The master-player, up and dressed, stood by the window, scowling grimly out into the ashy dawn. Nick made haste to rise, but could not stifle a sharp cry of pain as he staggered to his feet, he was so racked and sore with riding.

At the boy's smothered cry Carew turned, and his dark face softened with a sudden look of pity and concern. "Why, Nick, my lad," he cried, and hurried to his side, "this is too bad, indeed!" and without more words took him gently in his arms and carried him down to the courtyard well, where he bathed him softly from neck to heel in the cold, refreshing water, and wiped him with a soft, clean towel as tenderly as if he had been the lad's own mother. And having dried him thoroughly, he rubbed him with a waxy ointment that smelled of henbane and poppies, until the aching was almost gone. So soft and so kind was he withal that Nick took heart after a little and asked timidly, "And ye will let me go home to-day, sir, will ye not?"

The master-player frowned.

"Please, Master Carew, let me go."

"Come, come," said Carew, impatiently, "enough of this!" and stamped his foot.

"But, oh, Master Carew," pleaded Nick, with a sob in his throat, "my mother's heart will surely break if I do na come home!"

Carew started, and his mouth twitched queerly. "Enough, I say--enough!"

he cried. "I will not hear; I'll have no more. I tell thee hold thy tongue--be dumb! I'll not have ears--thou shalt not speak! Dost hear?"

He dashed the towel to the ground. "I bid thee hold thy tongue."

Nick hid his face between his hands, and leaned against the rough stone wall, a naked, shivering, wretched little chap indeed. "Oh, mother, mother, mother!" he sobbed pitifully.

A singular expression came over the master-player's face. "I will not hear--I tell thee I will not hear!" he choked, and, turning suddenly away, he fell upon the sleepy hostler, who was drawing water at the well, and rated him outrageously, to that astounded worthy's great amazement.

Nick crept into his clothes, and stole away to the kitchen door. There was a red-faced woman there who bade him not to cry--'t would soon be breakfast-time. Nick thought he could not eat at all; but when the savory smell crept out and filled the chilly air, his poor little empty stomach would not be denied, and he ate heartily. Master Heywood sat beside him and gave him the choicest bits from his own trencher; and Carew himself, seeing that he ate, looked strangely pleased, and ordered him a tiny mutton-pie, well spiced. Nick pushed it back indignantly; but Heywood took the pie and cut it open, saying quietly: "Come, lad, the good G.o.d made the sheep that is in this pie, not Gaston Carew. Eat it--come, 'twill do thee good!" and saw him finish the last crumb.

From Towcester south through Northamptonshire is a pretty country of rolling hills and undulating hollows, ribboned with pebbly rivers, and dotted with fair parks and tofts of ash and elm and oak. Straggling villages now and then were threaded on the road like beads upon a string, and here and there the air was damp and misty from the gra.s.sy fens along some winding stream.

It was against nature that a healthy, growing lad should be so much cast down as not to see and be interested in the strange, new, pa.s.sing world of things about him; and little by little Nick roused from his wretchedness and began to look about him. And a wonder grew within his brain: why had they stolen him?--where were they taking him?--what would they do with him there?--or would they soon let him go again?

Every yellow cloud of dust arising far ahead along the road wrought up his hopes to a Bluebeard pitch, as regularly to fall. First came a cast-off soldier from the war in the Netherlands, rakishly forlorn, his breastplate full of rusty dents, his wild hair worn by his steel cap, swaggering along on a sorry hack with an old belt full of pistolets, and his long sword thumping Rosinante's ribs. Then a peddling chapman, with a dust-white pack and a cunning Hebrew look, limped by, sulkily doffing his greasy hat. Two st.u.r.dy Midland journeymen, in search of southern handicraft, trudged down with tool-bags over their shoulders and stout oak staves in hand. Of wretched beggars and tattered rogues there was an endless string. But of any help no sign.

Here and there, like a moving dot, a ploughman turned a belated furrow; or a sweating ditcher leaned upon his reluctant spade and longed for night; or a shepherd, quite as silly as his sheep, gawked up the morning hills. But not a sign of help for Nick.

Once, pa.s.sing through a little town, he raised a sudden cry of "Help!

Help--they be stealing me away!" But at that the master-player and the bandy-legged man waved their hands and set up such a shout that his shrill outcry was not even heard. And the simple country b.u.mpkins, standing in a grinning row like so many Old Aunt Sallys at a fair, pulled off their caps and bowed, thinking it some company of great lords, and fetched a clownish cheer as the players galloped by.

Then the hot dust got into Nick's throat, and he began to cough. Carew started with a look of alarm. "Come, come, Nicholas, this will never do--never do in the world; thou'lt spoil thy voice."

"I do na care," said Nick.

"But I do," said Carew, sharply. "So we'll have no more of it!" and he clapped his hand upon his poniard. "But, nay--nay, lad, I did not mean to threaten thee--'tis but a jest. Come, smooth thy throat, and do not shriek no more. We play in old St. Albans town to-night, and thou art to sing thy song for us again."

Nick pressed his lips tight shut and shook his head. He would not sing for them again.

"Come, Nick, I've promised Tom Heywood that thou shouldst sing his song; and, lad, there's no one left in all the land to sing it if thou'lt not.

Tom doth dearly love thee, lad--why, sure, thou hast seen that! And, Nick, I've promised all the company that thou wouldst sing Tom's song with us to-night. 'Twill break their hearts if thou wilt not. Come, Nick, thou'lt sing it for us all, and set old Albans town afire!" said Carew, pleadingly.

Nick shook his head.

"Come, Nick," said Carew, coaxingly, "we must hear that sweet voice of thine in Albans town to-night. Come, there's a dear, good lad, and give us just one little song! Come, act the man and sing, as thou alone in all the world canst sing, in Albans town this night; and on my word, and on the remnant of mine honour, I'll leave thee go back to Stratford town to-morrow morning!"

"To Stratford--to-morrow?" stammered Nick, with a glad, incredulous cry, while his heart leaped up within him.

"Ay, verily; upon my faith as the fine f.a.g-end of a very proper gentleman--thou shalt go back to Stratford town to-morrow if thou wilt but do thy turn with us to-night."

Nick caught the master-player's arm as they rode along, almost crying for very joy: "Oh, that I will, sir--and do my very best. And, oh, Master Carew, I ha' thought so ill o' thee! Forgive me, sir; I did na know thee well."

Carew winced. Hastily throwing the rein to Nick, he left him to master his own array.

As for Nick, as happy as a lark he learned his new lines as he rode along, Master Carew saying them over to him from the ma.n.u.script and over again until he made not a single mistake; and was at great pains to teach him the latest fashionable London way of p.r.o.nouncing all the words, and of emphasizing his set phrases. "Nay, nay," he would cry laughingly, "not that way, lad; but this: 'Good my lord, I bring a letter from the duke'--as if thou hadst indeed a letter, see, and not an empty fist. And when thou dost hand it to him, do it thus--and not as if thou wert about to stab him in the paunch with a cheese-knife!" And at the end he clapped him upon the back and said again and again that he loved him, that he was a dear, sweet figure of a lad, and that his voice among the rest of England's singers, was like clear honey dropping into a pot of grease.

But it is a long ride from Towcester to St. Albans town in Herts, though the road runs through a pleasant, billowy land of oak-walled lanes, wide pastures, and quiet parks; and the steady jog, jog of the little roan began to rack Nick's tired bones before the day was done.

Yet when they marched into the quaint old town to the blare of trumpets and the crash of the kettledrums, all the long line gaudy with the coat-armour of the Lord High Admiral beneath their flaunting banners, and the horses p.r.i.c.ked up their ears and arched their necks and pranced along the crowded streets, Nick, stared at by all the good townsfolk, could not help feeling a thrill of pride that he was one of the great company of players, and sat up very straight and held his head up haughtily as Master Carew did, and bore himself with as lordly an air as he knew how.

But when morning came, and he danced blithely back from washing himself at the horse-trough, all ready to start for home, he found the little roan cross-bridled as before between the master-player's gray and the bandy-legged fellow's sorrel mare.

"What, there! cast him loose," said he to the horse-boy who held the three. "I am not going on with the players--I'm to go back to Stratford."

"Then ye go afoot," coolly rejoined the other, grinning, "for the hoss goeth on wi' the rest."

"What is this, Master Carew?" cried Nick, indignantly, bursting into the tap-room, where the players were at ale. "They will na let me have the horse, sir. Am I to walk the whole way back to Stratford town?"

"To Stratford?" asked Master Carew, staring with an expression of most innocent surprise, as he set his ale-can down and turned around. "Why, thou art not going to Stratford."

"Not going to Stratford!" gasped Nick, catching at the table with a sinking heart. "Why, sir, ye promised that I should to-day."

"Nay, now, that I did not, Nicholas. I promised thee that thou shouldst go back to-morrow--were not those my very words!"

"Ay, that they were," cried Nick; "and why will ye na leave me go?"

"Why, this is not to-morrow, Nick. Why, see, I cannot leave thee go to-day. Thou knowest that I said to-morrow; and this is not to-morrow--on thine honour, is it now?"

"How can I tell?" cried Nick, despairingly. "Yesterday ye said it would be, and now ye say that it is na. Ye've twisted it all up so that a body can na tell at all. But there is a falsehood--a wicked, black falsehood--somewhere betwixt you and me, sir; and ye know that I have na lied to you, Master Carew!"

Through the tap-room door he saw the open street and the hills beyond the town. Catching his breath, he sprang across the sill, and ran for the free fields at the top of his speed.

CHAPTER XIV