The Master of Stair 51
“I can make you rich,” she continued quickly. “We can do anything for
you—ask it—anything. Jock can twirl Scotland round his finger. He will
give ye any place ye like if ye will be silent.”
A slow flush overspread Caryl’s smooth face. “Why—you can hardly know
what you ask,” he said. “It is that I should sanction murder and the
murder of a man who spared my life and the lives of all my friends—do
you—a woman—wish to see that done?”
She answered desperately:
“I dinna care—if Jock is engaged in the matter—I am Jock’s wife.”
She sat silent a moment, then broke forth again:
“We would pay ye vera weel—consider,” Jerome Caryl laughed.
“You have utterly mistaken me. I am not a spy to be bought by the
highest bidder. Nothing shall prevent me from warning the Prince.”
She flared into a kind of contemptuous despair. “The Prince! What is he
to ye?”
“A man—a gentleman—you cannot say so much for Berwick—or any of his
crew.”
“In your eyes a usurper,” she cried, striving to goad him, “a foreign
usurper—”
“Madam—he said to me—‘there are some things I will not do’—and I say
the same to you now—I will not let that man be murdered.”
She was silent again as if she had nothing to oppose against his
resolution; she gazed in a strange terrified manner at his calm, soft
face, his melancholy hazel eyes and the color of excitement leaped into
her cheeks to pale and leaped thither again.
“We must be near the river,” he said, and put out his hand to lift the
blind.
But she flung out her arm and intercepted him.
“Nay—not yet—not yet—and keep the night shut out. Oh, God, the night!”
The next second she was on her knees on the floor of the coach.
“For pity—for God’s sake—” she cried passionately. “Ye dinna ken what
it means to me—”
He sprang up in his amazement and the shock of seeing her crouching
before him with upturned white face, brought the color to his cheek.
“Lady Breadalbane!”
She clung to him in an eager agony of entreaty.
“Show this mercy now—by all ye ever held dear. I canna find words to
entreat ye deep enough.”
“Lady Breadalbane, I must warn the Prince.”
“Ye know not what ye are doing!”
Down at his very feet now she pleaded; her white arms and her fallen
hair hid her face as she knelt there, her voice faint with the
intensity of her entreaties, as if she strove for her life—her soul.
He lifted her up, trembling a little, and put her on the seat; her
hands touched his and he found them cold, her head brushed his shoulder
for a moment and her face was close to his.
“Will ye—will ye?” she panted.
“No! no!”
The coach swung on its way groaning. “Where do we ride?” he demanded.
“We go over smooth ground now—a country road—”
“No,” she breathed, and clung to him when he would have risen and
looked from the window. “No! we ride aright!”
It was not London’s cobbled streets that they sped over now; smoothly
and swiftly they rode along.
“Where do ye take me?” he cried again.
She leaned heavily against his shoulder so that he could not rise.
“Be merciful,” she cried. “Dinna gang to Kensington!”
But her emotion, her passionate entreaties, the strange hint of warning
in her voice were powerless to touch his set purpose.
“Neither God nor man,” he said, “can move me—I have sworn to myself to
warn the Prince.”
The coach suddenly stopped.
“I also have sworn,” answered Lady Breadalbane.
They both rose; something fell with a clatter on the floor.
It was his sword.
She put her foot on it; he looked in her eyes and saw that she had
unbuckled it while she had lain against him.
“By God—trapped!” he said softly.
The coach door was opened from without and the bitter night mists
floated in. The moon was shining dimly; Jerome Caryl strode to the
door; he saw a vast spread of fields before him; Hounslow Heath.
A frosty vapor lay over everything; now and then the moon was hidden; a
cruel iciness was in the air.
Guarding the door stood the two Highland servants, immovable, waiting
orders.
Jerome Caryl looked from them to the woman behind him.
“Is it to be murder?” he asked with a faint smile.
She shuddered violently.
“Swear on the most sacred thing ye know that ye willna’ gang to
Kensington.”
“The alternative, madam.”
She was silent; she trembled so that his sword jangled under her foot,
yet she held herself straight and there was no flinching in her eyes.
He answered himself: “It is obvious.”
He glanced at the three silent faces.
“No one save a woman would have tricked my sword away—give it back to
me.”
She caught her breath sharply.
“No—there must be no fighting.”
Jerome Caryl’s eyes narrowed: “So you are going to have me
butchered—like a dog.”
She called out in Gaelic to the Highlanders. They advanced to the coach
door; a wild scorn sprang into Jerome Caryl’s soft face. “Give me my
sword,” he said fiercely. “I am a gentleman.”
Lady Breadalbane made no answer; she never lowered her eyes from his
gaze; nor bent her head nor moved, but she could not speak.
He turned to the coach door and leaped to the ground.
A fine drizzle of rain was falling and the grass was sodden beneath his
feet; the coach lamps shone on the two steaming white horses and showed
a bare branched tree that grew nearby; the place was solitary, silent,
ghostly. Jerome Caryl looked round him and his blood rose strangely.
He turned to the great Highlander who blocked his path.
“Let me pass.”
For answer they seized him, each by one shoulder; at the feel of their
hands on him, the blood rushed to his face, but he held himself still.
Lady Breadalbane came to the door of the coach and looked down on him.
“Will ye swear not to warn the Prince?” she shivered. “Then ye may gang
awa’ a free man.”
His beautiful face turned to her unmoved. “I have answered you.”
“Then I hav’na’ a choice,” she moaned.
Her black figure was outlined against the light interior of the coach
as she stood with a hand on either side to support herself, her eyes
were very resolute, though her voice fell and broke.
“I met you in the inn,” said Jerome looking up. “And I had seen you
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