The Sword of Gideon

CHAPTER I

To north and south and east and west horsemen were spurring fast on the evening of May 15th, 1702 (N.S.), while, as they rode through hamlets and villages, they heard behind them the bells of the churches beginning to ring many a joyous peal. Also, on looking back over their shoulders, they saw that already bonfires were being lit, and observed the smoke from them curling up into the soft evening air of the springtime.

For these splashed and muddy couriers had called out as they passed through the main streets of the villages that the long expected war with France was declared at last by England, by Austria-or Germany, as Austria was then called-and the States-General of the United Netherlands.

Wherefore, it was no wonder that the bonfires were instantly set blazing and the bells ringing, since now, all said to the others, the great, splendid tyrant who for sixty years had given orders from his throne for battles, for spoliation and aggrandisement, for the humbling of all other countries beneath the heel of France, would meet his match. He-he! this superb arbiter of others' fate, who had in his younger days been called Le Dieudonné and in his older Le Roi Soleil-he who had driven forth from their homes countless Protestants and had cruelly entreated those who had remained by their hearths, while desiring only to worship God in their own way and without molestation, must surely be beaten down at last.

"And-'tis good news! – Corporal John goes, they say," exclaimed several of these horsemen as they drew bridle now and again at some village inn, "as Captain-General of all Her Majesty's forces and chief in command of the allied armies. He has been there before and hates Louis; Louis who, although he gave him command of his English regiment, would not give him command of a French one when he would have served France. Let us see how he will serve him now."

"I pity his generals and his armies when my lord the Earl of Marlborough crushes them between his ranks of steel," said one who stood by; "the more so that Lewis" – as they called him in this country-"has insulted us by espousing the claims of James's son, by acknowledging him as King of England. He acknowledges him who is barred for ever from our throne by the Act of Succession, and also because his father forswore the oath he took in the Abbey."

"He acknowledges the babe who, as I did hear Bishop Burnet say in Salisbury Cathedral," a Wiltshire rustic remarked, "was no child at all of the Queen, but brought into the palace in a warming pan, so that an heir should not be wanting."

"He persecutes all of our faith," a grave and reverend clergyman remarked now; "a faith that has never harmed him; that, in truth, has provided him with many faithful subjects who have served him loyally. And now he seeks to grasp another mighty country in his own hands, another great stronghold of Papistry-Spain. And wrongfully seeks, since, long ago, he renounced all claims to the Spanish throne for himself and his."

A thousand such talks as this were taking place on that night of May 15th as gradually the horsemen rode farther and farther away from the capital; the horsemen who, in many cases, were themselves soldiers, or had been so. For they carried orders to commanders of regiments, to Lord-Lieutenants, to mayors of country towns, and, in some cases, to admirals and sea captains, bidding all put themselves and those under them in readiness for immediate war service. Orders to the admirals and captains to have their ships ready for sailing at a moment's notice; to the commanders of regiments to stop all furlough and summon back every man who was absent; to the Lord-Lieutenants to warn the country gentlemen and the yeomanry. Orders, also, to the mayors to see to the militia-the oldest of all our English forces, the army of our freemen and our State-being called together to protect the country during the absence of a large part of the regular troops. Beside all of which, these couriers carried orders for food and forage to be provided at the great agricultural centres; for horses to be purchased in large quantities; for, indeed, every precaution to be taken and no necessary omitted which should contribute towards the chance of our destroying at last the power of the man who had for so long held the destiny of countless thousands in his hand.

Meanwhile, as all the bells of London were still ringing as they had been ringing from before midday, a young man was riding through the roads that lay by the side of the Thames, on the Middlesex side of it. A young man, well-built and as good-looking as a man should be; his eyes grey, his features good, his hair long and dark, as was plainly to be seen since he wore no wig. One well-apparelled, too, in a dark, blue cloth coat passemented with silver lace, and having long riding-boots reaching above his knees, long mousquetaire riding-gloves to his elbows, and, in his three-cornered hat, the white cockade.

He passed now the old church at Chelsea on the river's brink, and smiled softly to himself at the tintamarre made by the bells, while, as he drew rein the better to guide his horse betwixt the old waterside houses and all the confusion of wherries and cordage that lumbered the road, or, rather, the rutty passage, he said to himself:

"The torch is lighted. At last! 'Tis a grand day for England. And, though I say it not selfishly, for me. Oh!" he went on, as now his left hand fell gently to the hilt of his sword and played lovingly with its curled quillon; "if I may draw you once again for England and the Queen, and for all you represent for us," glancing at the old church, wherein lay the bodies of such men as Sir Thomas More, who, in his self-written epitaph, described himself in the bitterness wrung from his heart as "hereticisque" John Larke, an old rector of Chelsea, executed at Tyburn for his Protestantism; and many other staunch reformers. "Ah, yes," he continued, "if I may draw you against Spain and her hateful Inquisition, against France and the tyrant who persecutes all who love the faith you testify to; if I may but once more get back to where I stood before, then at last shall I be happy. Ah, well! I pray God it may be so. Let me see what cousin Mordaunt can do."

He was free now of the encumbered road betwixt the river and the old houses: the way before him lay through open fields in some of which there grew a vast profusion of many kinds of vegetables and orchard fruits, while, in others, the lavender scented all the afternoon air; whereupon, putting his horse to the canter, he rode on until he came to an open common and, next, to a kind of village green-a green on two sides of which were antique houses of substance, and in which was a pond where ducks disported themselves.

On the east side of the green, facing the pond, there stood embowered in trees an old mansion, known as the Villa Carey. In after days, when this old house had given place to a new one, the latter became known as Peterborough House, doubtless to perpetuate the memory of the dauntless and intrepid man who now inhabited it.

Arrived at the old, weather-beaten oak gate, against which the storms that the southwesterly gales brought up had beaten for more than two centuries, the young man summoned forth an aged woman and, on her arrival, asked if Lord Peterborough were within.

"Ay, ay," the old rosy-cheeked lodge-keeper murmured; "and so in truth he is. And to you always, Master Bracton. Always, always. Yet what brings you here? Is't anything to do with the pother the bells are making at Fulham and Putney and all around? And what is it all about?"

"You do not know? You have not heard?" Bevill Bracton answered, as he asked questions that were almost answers. "You have not heard, even though my lord is at home. For sure he knows, at least."

"If he knows he has said nothing-leastways to me. After midday he sat beneath the great tulip tree, with maps and charts on the carpet spread at his feet above the grass, and twice he has sent off messengers to Whitehall and once to Kensington, but still none come anigh us in this quiet spot. But, Master Bevill," the old woman went on, laying a knotted finger on the young man's arm-she had known him from boyhood-"those two or three who have passed by say that great things are a brewing-that we are going to war again as we went in the late King's reign, and with France as ever; and that-and that-the bells are all a-ringing because 'tis so."

"And so it is, good dame Sumner. We are going to see if we cannot at least check the King of France, who seeks now to make Spain a second half of France. But come; we must not trifle with time. Let me hook my bridle rein here, and you may give my horse a drink of water when he is cool, and tell me where my lord is now. Great deeds are afoot!"

"He is in the long room now. There shall you find him. Ay, lord! what will he be doing now that war is in the air again? He who is never still and in a dozen different cities and countries in a month."

With a laugh at the old woman's reflections on her master's habits-which reflections were true enough-Bevill Bracton went on towards the house itself and, entering it by the great front door, crossed a stone-flagged hall, and so reached a polished walnut-wood door that faced the one at the entrance. Arrived at it, he tapped with his knuckle on the panel, and a moment later heard a voice from inside call out:

"Who's there?"

"'Tis I-Bevill."

"Ha!" the voice called out again, though not before it had bidden the young man come in, "and so I would have sworn it was. Why, Bevill," the occupant of the room exclaimed, as now the young man stood before him, and when the two had exchanged handshakes, "I expected you hours before. When first the news came to me this morning-"

"Your lordship knows?"

"Know? Why, i' faith, of course I know. Is there anything Charles Mordaunt does not know when mischief is in the wind? – Mordanto, as Swift calls me; Sir Tristram, as others describe me; I, whose 'birth was under Venus, Mercury, and Mars,' and who, like those planets, am ever wandering and unfixed. Be sure I know it. As, also, I knew you would come. Yet, kinsman, one thing I do not know-that one thing being, what it is you expect to gain by coming, unless it is the hope of finding the chance to see those Catholics, amongst whom you lived as a youth, beaten down by sturdy Protestants like yourself."

"For that, and to be in the fray. To help in the good cause-the cause we love and venerate. Through you. By you-a kinsman, as you say."

"You to be in the fray-and by me? Yet how is that to be? You are-"

"Ah, yes! I know well. A broken soldier-one at odds with fortune. Yet-"

"Yet?"

"Not disgraced. Not that-never that, God be thanked."

"I say so, too. But still broken, though never disgraced. What you did you did well. That fellow, that Dutchman, that Colonel Sparmann, whom you ran through from breast to back-he may thank his lucky stars your spadroon was an inch to the left of his heart-deserved his fate."

"He insulted England," Bracton exclaimed. "He said that without King William to teach us the art of war we knew not how to combat our enemies. For that I challenged him, and ran him through. Pity 'twas I did not-"

"Nay; disable thine enemy-there is no need to kill him. All the same," Lord Peterborough continued drily, "King William broke you for challenging and almost killing a superior officer."

"King William is dead. Death pays all debts."

"I would it did! There are a-many who will not forgive me when I am dead."

"Queen Anne reigns, the Earl of Marlborough is at the head of the army. My lord, I want employment; I want to be in this campaign. Oh, cousin Mordaunt," Bevill Bracton said, with a break in his voice, "you cannot know how I desire to be a soldier once again, and fighting for my religion, my country, and the Queen. To be moving, to be a living man-not an idler. I have never parted with this," and he touched the hilt of the sword by his side, "help me; give me the right; find me the way to draw it once more as a soldier."

"How to find the way! There's the rub. Marlborough and I are none too much of cater-cousins now. We do not saddle our horses together. And he is-will be-supreme. If you would get a fresh guidon you had best apply to him."

"Even though I may have no guidon nor have any commission, still there will surely be volunteers, and I may go as one."

"There will be volunteers," Lord Peterborough said, still drily, "and I, too, shall go as one."

"You!"

"Yes, I. Only it will be later. When," and he smiled his caustic smile, "the others are in trouble. If Marlborough, if Athlone, or Ormond, who goes too, finds things going criss-cross and contrary, then 'twill be the stormy petrel, Mordanto, who will be looked to."

"But when-when?" Bevill Bracton asked eagerly.

"When they have had time to flounder in the mire; when Ginkell-I mean my Lord Athlone-has, good honest Dutchman as he is, fuddled himself with his continual schnapps drinking; or when Jack Churchill, sweet as his temper is and well under control, can bear no more contradictions and cavillings from his brother commanders. Then-then Charles Mordaunt will be looked to again; then-for I can cast my own horoscope as well as any hag can do it for me-I shall be invited to put my hand in my pocket, to stake my life on some almost impossible venture, to give them the advice that, when I attempt to offer it, they never care to take."

"But-but," Bevill said, "the time! The time!"

"'Twill come. Only you are young, impatient, hot-headed. I am almost old, yet I am the same sometimes-but you will not wait. What's to do, therefore?"

"I cannot think nor dream-oh, that I could!"

"Then listen to me. 'Tis not the way of the world to do so until it is too late; in your case you may be willing. Do you know Marlborough?"

"As the subaltern knows the general, not being known by him. But no more."

"'Tis pity. Yet-yet if you could bring yourself before his notice; if-if-you could do something that should come under his eyes-some deed of daring-"

"I must be there to do it-not here. At St. James's or Whitehall I can do nought. The watch can do as much as I."

"That's very true; you must be there. There! there! Let me see for it. Where are the charts?" and Lord Peterborough went towards a great table near the window, which was all littered with maps and plans that made the whole heterogeneous mass look more like a battlefield itself after a battle than aught else.

"Bah!" his lordship went on, picking up first a plan and then a chart, and throwing them down again. "Catalonia, Madrid, Barcelona, Cadiz. No good! no good! Marlborough will not be there. The war may roll, must roll, towards Spain, yet 'tis not in Spain that he will be. But Holland-Brabant-Flanders. Ha!" he cried at the two latter names. "Brabant-Flanders. And-why did I not think of it? – she is there, and there's the chance, and-and, fool that I am! for the moment I had forgotten it."

"She! The chance! Brabant! Flanders!" Bevill Bracton repeated, the words stumbling over each other in his excitement. "She! Who? And what have I to do with women-with any woman? I, who wish to do all a man may do in the eyes of men?"

"Sit down," Lord Peterborough said now, in a marvellously calm, a suddenly calm, voice. "Sit down. I had forgotten my manners when I failed to ask you to do so earlier."

"Ah, cousin Mordaunt, no matter for the manners at such a moment as this. Alas! you set my blood on fire when you speak of where the war will be, of where it must be, and then-then-you pour a douche of chill cold water over me by talking of women-of a woman."

"Do I so, indeed? Well, hearken unto me," and his lordship leant forward impressively and looked into the young man's eyes. "Hearken, I say. This woman of whom I speak may be the guiding star that shall light you along the path that leads to Marlborough, and all that he can do for you. This woman, who may, in very truth, be your own guiding star or-"

"Or?"

"She may lead to your undoing. Listen again."

CHAPTER II

Had there been any onlooker or any listener at that interview now taking place in the old house at Parson's Green, either the eyes of the one or the ears of the other could not have failed to be impressed by what they saw or heard.

Above all, no observer could have failed to be impressed by the character of the elder man, Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough and Monmouth, who, although so outwardly calm, was in truth all fire within.

For this man, who was now forty-seven years of age, had led-and was still to lead for another thirty years-a life more wild and stirring than are the dreams of ordinary men. As a boy he had seen service at sea against the Tripoli corsairs, he had next fought at Tangiers, and, on the death of Charles II., had been the most violent antagonist of the Papist King James. An exile next in Holland, he had proposed to the Prince of Orange the very scheme which, when eventually adopted, placed that ungracious personage on the English throne, yet, at the time, he had received nothing but snubs for his pains. He had, after this, escaped shipwreck by a miracle, and, later, lay a political prisoner in the Tower, from which he emerged to become not long afterwards Governor of Jamaica. In days still to come he was to capture Barcelona by a scheme which his allies considered to be, when it was first proposed to them, the dream of a maniac; he was to rescue beautiful duchesses and interesting nuns and other religieuses from the violence of the people, to be then sent back to England as a man haunted by chimeras, next to be given the command of a regiment, to be made a Knight of the Garter, and to be appointed an Ambassador. Nor was this all. He flew from capital to capital as other men made trips from Middlesex to Surrey; one of his principal amusements was planting the seeds and pruning the trees in his garden with his own hands; he would buy his own provisions and cook them himself in his beautiful villa, and he was for many years married to a young and lovely wife, who had been a public singer, and whom he never acknowledged until his death was close at hand.

As still Lord Peterborough foraged among the mass of papers on the table, turning over one after the other, and sometimes half a dozen together, Bevill Bracton recognised that he was seeking for some particular scroll or document amidst the confused heap.

"What is it, my lord?" the young man asked. "Can I assist you?"

"Nay. If I cannot find what I want for myself, 'tis very certain none can do it for me. Ah!" he suddenly exclaimed, pouncing down like an eagle on a large, square piece of paper which was undoubtedly a letter. "Ah! here 'tis. A letter from the woman who is to give you your chance."

"I protest I do not comprehend-"

"You will do so in time. Bevill," his lordship went on, "do you remember some ten years ago, before you got your colours in the Cuirassiers and, consequently, before you lost them, a little child who played about out there?" and the Earl's eyes were directed towards the great tulip tree on the lawn.

"Why, yes, in very truth I do. I played with her oft, though being several years older than she. A child with large, grey eyes fringed with dark lashes; a girl who promised to be more than ordinary tall some day; one well-favoured too. I do recall her very well. She was the child of a friend of yours, and her name was-was-Sophia, was it now? – or Susan? Or-"

"Neither; her name was Sylvia, and is so still-Sylvia Thorne."

"Sylvia Thorne-ay, that is it. She promised to become passing fair."

"She is passing fair-or was, when I saw her last, two years ago. She is not vastly altered if I may judge by this," and Lord Peterborough went to a cabinet standing by one of the windows and, after opening a drawer, came back holding in his hand a miniature.

"Regard her," he said to Bracton, as he handed him the miniature; "learn to know what Sylvia Thorne is like. Learn to know the form and features of the woman who may lead to restoring you to all you would have, or-you are brave, so I may say it-send you to your doom."

"Why," Bracton exclaimed while looking at the miniature and, in actual fact, scarce hearing Lord Peterborough's words, so occupied was he, "she is beautiful. Tall, stately, queen-like, lovely. Can that little child have grown to this in ten years?"

In absolute fact the encomiums the young man passed upon the form and features that met his eye were well deserved.

The miniature, a large one, displayed a full, or almost full length portrait of a young woman of striking beauty. It depicted a young woman whose head was not yet disfigured by any wig, so that the dark chestnut hair, in which there was now and again a glint of that ruddy gold such as the old Venetians loved to paint, waved free and unconfined above her forehead. And the eyes were as Bevill Bracton recalled them, grey, and shrouded with long dark lashes. Only, now, they were the eyes of a woman, or one who was close on the threshold of womanhood, and not those of a little child; while a straight, small nose and a small mouth on which there lurked a smile that had in it something of gravity, if not of sadness, completed the picture. As for her form, she was indeed "more than common tall," and, since there was no suspicion of hoop beneath the rich black velvet dress she wore, Bracton supposed that it was donned for some ball or festival.

"She is beautiful!" he exclaimed again. "Beautiful!"

"Ay, and good and true," Lord Peterborough said. "Look deep into those eyes and see if any lie is hidden therein; look on those lips and ponder if they are highroads through which falsehood is like to pass."

"It is impossible. If the eyes are the windows of the soul, as poets say, then truth, and naught but truth, shelters behind them. And this is Sylvia Thorne But still-still-I do not comprehend. How shall she bring me before my Lord Marlborough? How advance my hopes and desires? Stands she so high that she has power with him?"

"She is a prisoner of France."

"What? She, this beautiful girl, she a prisoner of France, of chivalrous France, for chivalrous France is, though our eternal foe?"

"Yes, in company with some thousands of others, mostly Walloons-muddy Hollanders all-and mighty few English, if any. She is shut up in Liége, and the whole bishopric of Liége is in the hands of France under the command of De Boufflers."

"What does she there-she, this handsome English girl, in a town of Flanders now possessed by the French-she whom, I take it, since now I begin to comprehend-and very well I do! – I am to rescue?"

"One question is best answered at a time. Martin Thorne, her father, was my oldest friend. When James mounted the throne of England he, like your father and myself, was one of those honest adherents of the Stuarts who could not abide the practices James put in motion. He himself had been in exile with Charles and James while Cromwell lived, and he, again like your father, went into exile when James became a Papist."

"My father never returned from abroad," Bevill remarked.

"I know-I know. But Thorne returned only to go abroad again. Your father was, however, well to do. Thorne was not so. When a young exile during Cromwell's rule he had been in Liége, in a great merchant's house, since it was necessary he should find the means whereby to live. When he returned to Liége twenty-six years afterwards he had some means, and he became on this second occasion a merchant himself."

"I begin to understand."

"He thrived exceedingly. 'Tis true England was almost always at war with France, but war is good for commerce. Thorne profited by this state of affairs, and so grew rich. Sylvia is rich now, but the French hold Liége. She would escape from that city."

"Will they not let her go? She is a woman. What harm can she do either by going or staying?"

"They will let none go now who are strangers. Ere long this war, which the claims of Louis to the Spanish succession on behalf of his grandson have aroused, will have two principal seats-Flanders and Spain. There are such things as hostages; there are such things as rich people buying their liberty dearly. And Sylvia is rich, and they know it. Much of her wealth is placed in England, 'tis true, but much also is there, in Liége. Short of one chance, the chance that, in the course of this campaign Liége should fall into the hands of one of our allies, she may have to remain there until peace is made-and that will not be yet. Not for months-perhaps years."