“You attacked us!” I protested. He smiled smugly. “That won’t be so when I tell it,” he said, “and my father is a power here. I will see all of you hang. There’s a highwayman about here, and I will swear,” he pointed a thick finger at Kory, “that you are he, and that the rest are your confederates.
“I shall see you hang,” he said grimly, “and when you do, I shall smile.”
Two of the others were getting to their feet. One lad, scarcely older than I, was still on his horse.
“If you have attacked us in this manner,” Bransbee said, “you will have abused others. It is in your nature. We will find those others. We will get our own witnesses.”
The young man smiled. He was perhaps eighteen in years, four years older than I now was. “None will speak against me,” he replied cheerfully. “All about are my friends—or they’ll live in fear of what may follow. Oh, I shall see you hang, all right! I shall have the witnesses, and my family owns all about here. You will see.”
“What a beast you are!” I said coolly. “You are a bully, and no doubt a coward as well.”
He looked at me tauntingly. “A bully? Oh, yes! I like being a bully to all you riffraff, you vagabonds. But a coward? That I do not know, and I never shall, for I am larger, stronger, and a better swordsman than any about. I can defeat them all. As for you, had they not fallen around me, I should have beaten you blind.
“That was what I intended, you know, to blind you. I shall do so yet, and these others also, if they live.”
He turned, gathered up the fallen reins of his horse, and swung to its saddle. “Come!” he said to the others. “I must arrange for these to be taken.”
Abruptly he rode off and the others followed—all but the lad who had not dismounted. He lingered a bit.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I am just lately come home and did not know what he has become. Be off with you, for he will do as he says. His father is a lord here, and will hear no evil of him. He is a tremendous fighter and a bad one, evil in all ways. He can do everything he says.”
He looked at me. “You,” he said, “he will hate. I know. Get away, if you can.”
He rode off and over the rise.
Kory moved swiftly. He turned to Porter Bill, the nearest of the two pugilists. “Get your cart and follow me! There is a lane yonder!”
We fled. Yet our carts could move but slowly, and I wondered what it was Kory had in mind: yet there was some plan, for he was a gypsy as were Porter Bob and Porter Bill, the twin fighters.
We ran our donkeys and ponies until, a short distance along, he turned sharply into a lane past a haycock. Behind him he replaced the bars of a gate and brushed out the tracks of our turning.
We ran our animals a mile, then another half until we came upon some old haycocks and he turned from the hidden lane down which we had traveled. In the field he pulled aside some hay. There was an opening there, for the haycocks were old and were like hives. There was room under them for three carts, four if need be. Swiftly, we came out, rearranged the hay, and mounted upon the animals. We were one shy, and I shook my head at them.
“Go!” I said. “I shall meet you later. I can run and hide afoot: I have done it most of my life, it seems. Do you try to escape.”
They hesitated, then Kory tossed me one of the two sticks he carried. “See? It is a sword-cane. Use it if you need.”
And they were gone.
They were gone, and I was alone. Alone once more.
Quickly, I looked about. There was little time. Nor did I need any warning when it came to that big youth. I had seen the look in his eye. He was one who thrived on cruelty.
Turning swiftly, I went down the hill.
10
There was no time to think, no time to plan; distance was what I needed. I guessed that my mounted friends would head south and try to lose themselves among the lanes. They would scatter out, too, taking their loss as they would, or sending gypsy friends back for their hidden carts.
I ran down the slope to a stream, then along it under the trees to a lane. I knew not how much estate was claimed by the father of the large young man, nor which direction would find me safest, but I fled.
My condition was good. Well over a year of traveling along the lanes and byroads, walking much of the time, always active, fencing, boxing, wrestling, had left me in fine shape.
It angered me to be treated so shamefully by the leader of those rascals. There were many of their kind about, young ruffians albeit of good family, taking advantage of their position to raid and bully and steal. No man was safe from them, and no girl, either. They were thoroughly vicious.
We had lately crossed a wild and broken moor not too far from the sea. It was there that I directed my steps. Once, when I had begun to climb, I looked back.
Parties of riders could be seen sweeping along the lanes. I kept from sight and plodded on. Soon they would come this way, and I must find a place to hide. Wandering the lanes as we did, we usually paid small mind to where we were, and I only knew that somewhere off to the west lay the sea. We were in the Lake Country or near it, and as once I had fled to the sea and escaped, it was in my mind to do so again. Soon I reached the cover of an oak wood and then a deep ravine where I climbed carefully over some mossy rocks, using my cane to good effect. Clambering out of the ravine, I crossed over a grassy place and entered a clump of yew that covered a knoll. There, under shelter of the woods, I paused to consider my course.
Undoubtedly when the lads who attacked us had set the countryside upon us, they had told some tale of violence or theft. Many parties of horsemen and others would be scouring the country in search of us, and were we found it would go hard. For no explanation would suffice against the accusation of one of their own.
The place I had now reached was on a steep mountainside and the yew was thick. No horseman would ride down this slope, and I doubted that any of the ruffians who attacked us would. Such folk were not apt to go where the traveling was hard. So it might be best to remain where I was for the time and not chance the moors or grassland above until darkness fell. What I feared most was dogs. If they brought dogs to search for us, we would be found. At least, I would be.
It was late afternoon and if the next hour or two were passed in safety, I might yet go free.
Below me the land lay wide under the mouth of the ravine. Here and there were clumps of yew, then patches of oak, and below a checkerboard of fields and pastures. A lovely, peaceful land, but not for me. I was again in flight … Would there never be a place to rest? Never a place where I could stop and serve? Where I could do something of worth without forever living in fear?
It came to me then that I must be away from England if I wished to be free. And yet I had grown to love this land and many of its people.
Why must London forever hold out a beckoning finger? What awaited me there, if anything? Had not many warned me against the hazards of that city?
Slowly the shadows gathered behind me while the valley below still lay bathed in sunlight. Here and there I could see distant troops of horsemen wending their homeward way. Had they found my friends?
The haycocks now … how had Kory known of them? Were there many such, scattered about in unused fields or ancient pastures, places of which the gypsies knew, and to which they could resort in time of need? No doubt, I decided, there were.
At last I arose. If I were to choose my way, I must be going now, before all was darkness. Slowly, I walked through the yew and emerged upon the hillside. My muscles were stiff from sitting on the damp earth and I was tired from the running and climbing, but I knew I must get on.