The Golden Galleon Part 9

"'Tis the armour that was worn by Sir Stephen Oglander in the wars of the Roses," the girl informed him. "And the curved sword that is hanging near it on the next panel was taken by my grandfather in a certain battle against the Turks--not this grandfather, you know, but the other one, my mother's father, the Earl of Dersingham."

"Ah! so thine ancestor fought against the Infidels, eh?" said Grenville, and pus.h.i.+ng aside Philip Oglander's cloak, which lay on the bench, he sat down beside her. "Didst know that I too have been in battle against them?"

"No," she answered, open-eyed. "Prithee, tell me of it. Was it by sea or by land?"

"By land for the most part," he returned; "but the greatest battle was by sea, and it took place in the Gulf of Lepanto. 'Twas the most glorious engagement and the most honourable victory I have ever taken part in, saving only the late fight which you wot of against the dons of Spain. I will tell thee of it if thou'rt not too weary. 'Twill pa.s.s the time until your brother comes in."

As he spoke he took up Philip Oglander's rapier, and in mere idleness he drew the long narrow blade from its leathern scabbard, held the weapon out in front of him and glanced along it with critical eye, examined its curious basket hilt of twisted metal, then pressed his thumb against the sharp point, took the point end in one hand and the hilt in the other, and bent the blade to test its flexible spring, and finally held the weapon out once more at arm's-length.

"The battle was betwixt the Turks and the Christians," he went on. But here he was abruptly interrupted. Philip Oglander had risen from the table and crossed the floor towards him.

"Your pardon, my master, but that rapier is mine!" cried the lad in strange excitement, speaking with his mouth full of food.

Sir Richard Grenville glanced up at him in surprise, still retaining the weapon.

"A goodly blade too, o' my conscience," he muttered with a grim smile.

"Fas.h.i.+oned in Toledo, I warrant me. 'Tis not often we see its like in England, save in the hands of our country's foes. But I would warn you, young sir, that 'tis a good three inches too long to suit Queen Elizabeth's regulations. I should counsel you to have it clipped ere you venture to carry it again through English streets."

He handed the rapier to its owner, holding it by the end of the blade.

Philip Oglander received it, sullenly returned it to its scabbard, and strode back to the table, there to continue his supper.

Grenville was about to proceed with his narrative of Lepanto fight when Drusilla laid her fingers upon his arm.

"See!" she cried. "Thou hast wounded thy hand, 'tis bleeding!"

"Nay, but I felt no cut," said he. "And yet," he added, looking at his opened palms, "there is surely blood there. However, Mistress Drusilla, to go on with our story. I was saying that 'twas a fight betwixt the Christians and the Infidels--the Cross against the Crescent--"

"Wait," interrupted the girl. "I heard but this moment the sound of a horse's feet in the courtyard. It must surely be Gilbert returned. I pray you tarry here till I come back." And so saying she tripped lightly to the end of the hall and flung open the door by which her uncle and cousin had lately entered.

There was a murmur of voices from without. The further door at the end of the outer hall stood open, and by the aid of the large hanging lamp in the great arched porchway she could see the form of a horse, with Timothy Trollope and Bob Harvey by its side. They were helping Gilbert down from the horse's back. Drusilla saw his face, and it was very pale; she saw that when they lifted him down to the ground he could scarcely stand, but was obliged to lean for support on Trollope's shoulder.

"I might even have guessed that some ill had happened to thee since thou art so late in coming home, Gilbert," she said, disguising her inward alarm. "Art badly hurt? Hast thou been thrown from thy horse?"

"Nay, 'tis nothing, good my sister," answered Gilbert as cheerily as his weakness allowed. "'Tis naught but a sprained ankle."

"Ay, but the blood!" said she, touching him on his right arm. "What doth this bode?"

"A scratch he got in a tussle we have had with some vagabond gypsies down in the dingle," explained Timothy Trollope, well-nigh breathless after his long run by the horse's side. "Prithee, be not alarmed, Mistress Drusilla." He signed to Bob Harvey. "Take you his heels, Bob, while I take him by the shoulders. We had best carry him within."

Drusilla went before them while they carried him into the dining-hall.

She was met on the threshold by Sir Francis Drake, who was then on the point of leaving, a saddled horse being already in waiting for him outside to carry him back to Plymouth. On being hurriedly told what had happened he returned into the hall, threw off his cape and hat, turned up his cuffs, and prepared to exercise his surgical skill in attending to Gilbert's hurts.

"A knife, if you please, Mistress Drusilla," he said, when Timothy had laid the wounded lad upon one of the settles near to the fire. And when the knife was brought he quietly ripped open Gilbert's sleeve, discovering the wound.

"'Tis nothing serious," he said rea.s.suringly to Lord Champernoun, who stood near with Raleigh, Grenville, and many others who had crowded round. "Let him have a warm potion to drink and some food, an he will but take it, and when I have bound up the arm he had best be put to bed."

Timothy Trollope moved to the table to get a cup of mulled sack. As he was pa.s.sing behind where Drusilla stood he caught sight of Jasper Oglander and his son, both of whom, having risen from their supper, were looking over the girl's shoulders at Gilbert. There was a subdued look of enmity in Jasper Oglander's eyes, which Timothy did not understand.

He remembered it long afterwards, however, when circ.u.mstances and a better knowledge of the man's nature explained its meaning.

CHAPTER VII.

THE INSTINCT OF A BRUTE DOG.

Jasper Oglander and his son were up betimes on the following morning, and had come down to the lower rooms while yet the housemaids were sweeping up the rushes from the floors and dusting the furniture. Seeing one of the serving-men coming from the b.u.t.tery Jasper called out to him, commanding him to bring two stoups of small ale. The man was waiting to take the emptied vessels, when the sound of a loud bell clanged through the house. At this Philip Oglander bowed his head and crossed himself; whereupon his father trod upon his toe and frowned at him.

"Thou fool!" said Jasper when the man had left them. "Dost want to betray us so soon? Did I not warn thee an hundred times that these people are all of the Protestant faith--heretics and Lutherans who would but despise us and regard us as enemies did they know that we are of the Holy Church? By the Rood, boy, thy forgetfulness hath nearly cost us dearly, for look at who cometh behind thee--thy cousin Drusilla, a saucy maid, by her favour, and it may be a dangerous."

Drusilla was at the moment descending the broad staircase, carrying a little basket of apples in her one hand, and with the other drawing the hood of her mulberry-coloured cloak over her fair hair. She curtsied low and bade them a good-morrow when she came before them into the front hall.

"Art going abroad so early?" asked her uncle, returning her greeting, and taking up his wide-brimmed hat from the bench where he had dropped it when drinking his cup of small ale. "If so, we would go with thee, for I am fain to show thy cousin what manner of home he hath come to. To have such escort as thine will make our inspection doubly agreeable."

"I was but going to the stables to give these apples to my brother's favourite horse," answered Drusilla. "But if ye would see the grounds I will willingly bear you company."

"And how fares Master Gilbert, prithee?" inquired Jasper, leading the way out into the porchway, and standing there a moment looking out across the terrace and the wide expanse of lawn to the misty woodlands beyond.

"The wound in his arm hath troubled him but little," she answered, "but his sprained ankle hath swollen greatly and is very painful. I fear me it will be many days ere he can leave his bed."

"'Tis a pity the rascals who thus a.s.sailed him cannot be caught and brought to a speedy justice," remarked Philip with seeming sympathy in his tone, albeit with an unkindly curl of his upper lip. "Was your brother unarmed that he thus allowed a vagabond gypsy to overcome him?"

he added.

"Nay, for who would go unarmed in these days?" returned Drusilla. "But even the skilfullest swordsman may sometimes be taken at a disadvantage.

Gilbert's foot slipped upon the snow, and his adversary did thrust at him even as he fell. Timothy Trollope knew not of the matter until the three robbers had fled, or else I am very sure they should not have got away so easily."

"And, prithee, who may be this Timothy of whom you speak, cousin?"

pursued Philip.

Drusilla answered:

"He is Gilbert's good and faithful servant--the same who brought him in yesternight. He is the son of Master Peter Trollope, the barber-surgeon of Plymouth town."

"Ah! methought I had seen him once before," observed Jasper. "He was even in his father's shop whilst I was there having my beard trimmed.

And now--let us to the stables first, Mistress Drusilla, and then when we have made the round of the mansion and had a peep at the hawks in the mews and the deer in the chase, we shall haply go within again and introduce ourselves to your brother. Fortunate Gilbert, to be the heir to such vast and valuable estates as these!" he added covetously, as, standing at the end of the terrace where a s.p.a.cious flight of stone steps led down to the lawn, he glanced towards the avenues of tall old trees that opened out before him. "Were I their owner, however, I should hew down those unsightly trees; they do but interrupt the view, and so much stout oak is but wasted while there be battle-s.h.i.+ps to be built--to say naught of the price one might get in exchange for the timber withal."

Drusilla conducted her new-found relatives over the stables. They had a distant sight of the farm buildings, where the cows, having been newly milked, were wandering out through the gates in slow and irregular procession towards the pasture lands. Then they went round to the kennels and looked at the hounds, and to the mews, where Hawksworth and his fellows were feeding the falcons. Thence through the orchard, now bare of fruit, and the kitchen-garden, where Lord Champernoun, at the instance of his friend Sir Walter Raleigh, had in the last season grown a wondrous crop of potatoes and other vegetable products of the New World. Then round into the park to where a herd of deer, browsing in the wet gra.s.s, started off, alarmed at their approach, and ran with great fleetness to a misty hollow among the trees.

At first Drusilla had been strangely shy with her two companions; but they showed such interest in the home of her childhood and treated her with such graceful courtesy that she soon became familiar with them, and answered their many questions freely and eagerly. She pointed out the old oak-tree in the middle of the park under whose spreading branches the village children had crowned her as Queen of the May in the last spring-time. She took them to the side of the lake where Gilbert and she had been wont to sail their boats, and where Gilbert only a week ago had caught a pike. And then, coming back by the front of the house, she pointed out the little latticed window of her chamber, half-hidden among the clambering ivy. From where they were they could see the full extent of the great baronial mansion, with its ab.u.t.ting wings end many gables flanking the tall central turret,--on which the gilt weather-vane shone bright in the morning sunlight,--its stone-shafted oriel windows, and its curiously-twisted chimneys. It was all very magnificent, albeit Drusilla thought less of it for this fact than for the reason that it was sanctified as the residence of so many of her ancestors.

"Ah, 'tis in truth a palace fit for a king!" declared Jasper Oglander aside to his son. "I marvel that I ever had the foolishness to leave it.

What wouldst thou say, Phil, an thy father were the owner and master of the place? Nay, do not smile, boy; less likely things than this have come to pa.s.s; and remember there be but two frail lives between me and it--your grandfather, poor addle-pated pantaloon, and this stripling Gilbert as they call him, touching whom I should have been by no means sorry had his a.s.sailant of yesternight done his work more completely.

Mark you, Phil," he reiterated with emphasis, "I had not been sorry--nay, why boggle the matter?--I had in truth been exceeding glad had the wound you wot of been a span nearer to his heart."

Whatever Philip might have said in reply to this cruel remark was cut short by the return of Drusilla, who had but ran forward a few paces to greet Nero, the bloodhound, at the entrance of the courtyard. The dog as it approached the father and son hung down his furrowed head and growled ominously--which was a habit quite unusual with him, in spite of his aspect of ferocity.

"Come, Brutus--Hector--Pompey--what is thy name? Come, good dog," said Jasper Oglander caressingly, snapping his finger and thumb together in invitation to the dog. But Nero still hung his head, and growlingly sniffed about the man's feet, coming finally to Philip and growling yet again. "Ah! he doth well discern that we are strangers to him,"

continued Jasper, "or else he doth smell the brine about our clothes.