“It is not your intention, I presume, Captain Stelfax, to hold forth to me like a preacher at a conventicle,” the old Cavalier observed, contemptuously. “What have you to tell me concerning my son?”
“I do not desire to give you needless pain, colonel,” Stelfax. “But it is plain you have not received intelligence of your son’s fate. Learn, then, that he was amongst the slain at Worcester.”
“My son amongst the slain!” the colonel exclaimed.
“His body was found, recognized, and buried on the field of battle,” Stelfax returned. “But you need not repine. Many an adherent of the Man Charles Stuart suffered greater loss on that day—glorious to us, if disastrous to your cause. Neither need you grieve, fair damsel, for this poor youth,” he added to Dulcia, “A better man may be found to supply his place.”
“Were he lost, his place could never be supplied to me!” Dulcia murmured.
“Colonel Maunsel,” Stelfax now said to the old Cavalier, “I sent for you to give you a warning. You are known to be ill-affected towards the Commonwealth—”
“I am known for my loyalty to my king, whom Heaven preserve!” the colonel cried.
“Take heed you give not Charles Stuart shelter. Take heed you aid him not so that he escape beyond sea,” Stelfax said, sternly, “or you will find little mercy from your judges.”
“I expect none,” the colonel rejoined—”neither mercy nor justice. Have you done, sir?”
“For the present—yes,” Stelfax rejoined.” Yet hold! It is part of my duty, Colonel Maunsel, to make a strict inquisition of your house—Ovingdean Grange, I think ’tis called—to ascertain whether any fugitive malignant be concealed within it. Should you find me there on your return, you need not feel surprised. And now, my men, forward!—Farewell, sweet Dulcia! We shall soon meet again.” So saying, he departed with his troop towards Iford.
Colonel Maunsel rode on in silence and great anxiety towards Kingston, until the Parliamentary leader and his men had disappeared from view. He then said to the younger Saxby, “Thou art swift of foot, Ninian. Dost think that thou canst reach the Grange before yon redcoats?”
“Ay, marry can I,” the young falconer rejoined.
“Off with thee, then,” the colonel cried. “On the instant of thine arrival, seek out John Habergeon—thou wilt find him in my chamber—and acquaint him with the intended visit of this rebel captain. Say to him—and say to the whole house—that my son is reputed to have been slain at Worcester—dost understand?”
“Perfectly, your honour,” Ninian replied. And mounting Kingston Hill with the lightness and swiftness of a deer, he ran across the summit, and then dashed down on the further side of the eminence.
Meanwhile, Colonel Maunsel and Dulcia, attended by Eustace Saxby, rode on towards Lewes.
Book IV
The Search by the Ironsides
I
THE PRIORY RUINS
APPROACHING Lewes by the picturesque suburb of Southover, the little party halted near the ruins of the once magnificent priory of Saint Pancrace.
Here, quitting the road, the colonel and Dulcia, followed by the ostreger, with the merlin on his fist and the spaniels at his heels, entered a smooth, green area, of several acres in extent, surrounded by crumbling walls and arches, partly overgrown by ivy and brambles, and giving some slight evidence of the vast dimensions of the majestic pile formerly occupying the spot.
The Priory of Lewes, the first of the Cluniac order in England, was founded in the latter part of the eleventh century by William de Warenne and Gundreda his wife, daughter of the Conqueror, and was ruthlessly destroyed at the period of the Reformation by command of Thomas Lord Cromwell. The size and splendour of the conventual church—a portion only of the monastery—may be estimated by the report of Cromwell’s commissioner, John Portmarus—a name to be held in abhorrence by the antiquary—who thus wrote to his employer in 1538: “I advertised your lordship of the length and greatness of this church, how we had begun to pull the whole down to the ground, and what manner and fashion we used in pulling it down. I told your lordship of a vault on the right side of the high altar, that was borne with four pillars, having about it five chapels, which be compassed in with the walls, 70 steps of length, that is feet 210. Now we are plucking down a higher vault borne up by four thick and gross pillars, 14 foot from side to side, about in circumference 45 feet.”