Beau Brocade | Page 2

King to shelter or harbour, clothe or feed any such persons who are vile traitors and rebels to their King and country: and that any subject of His Majesty who kills such a traitor or rebel doth thereby commit and act of justice and loyalty, for which he may be rewarded by the sum of twenty guineas."
It was this last paragraph that made the gaffers shake their heads and say "Lordy! Lordy! to think on it! to think on it!" For it seemed but yesterday that the old Moor, aye, and the hamlets and villages of Derbyshire, were ringing with the wild shouts of Prince Charlie's Highland Brigade, but yesterday that his handsome face, his green bonnet laced with gold, his Highland plaid and rich accoutrements, had seemed to proclaim victory to the Stuart cause from one end of the country to the other.
To be sure, that glorious, mad, merry time had not lasted very long. All the wiseacres had foretold disaster when the Prince's standard broke, just as it was taken into my Lord Exeter's house in Full Street. The shaft had snapped clean in half. What could that portend but humiliation and defeat?
The retreat from Derby was still fresh in everyone's memory, and there were those from Wirksworth who remembered the rear-guard of Prince Charlie's army, the hussars with their half-starved horses and bedraggled finery, who had swept down on the villages and homesteads round about Ashbourne and had pillaged and plundered to their heart's content.
But then those were the fortunes of war; fighting, rushing, running, plundering, wild huzzars, mad cavalcades, noise, bustle, excitement, joy of victory, and sorrow of defeat;--but this!!... this Proclamation which the Corporal had brought all the way from Derby, and which had been signed by King George himself, this meant silence, hushed footsteps, a hidden figure perhaps, pallid and gaunt, hiding behind the boulders, or amidst the gorse on the Moor, or perishing mayhap at night, lost in the bog-land up Stretton way, whilst Judas-like treads crept stealthily on the track. It meant treachery too, the price of blood, a fellow-creature's life to be sold for twenty guineas.
No wonder the gaffers could think of nothing to say; no wonder the young men looked at one another shamefaced, and in fear.
Who knows? Any Derbyshire lad now might become a human bloodhound, a tracker of his fellow-creatures, a hunter of men. There were twenty guineas to be earned, and out there on the Heath, in the hut of the shepherd or the forge of the smith, many a pale wan face had been seen of late, which...
It was terrible to think on; for even out here, on Brassing Moor, there existed some knowledge of Tyburn Gate, and of Tower Hill.
At last the groups began to break up, the Corporal's work was done. His Majesty's Proclamation would flutter there in the cool September wind for awhile; then presently the crows would peck at it, the rain would dash it down, the last bit of dirty rag would be torn away by an October gale, but in the meanwhile the few inhabitants of Brassington and those of Aldwark would know that they might deny a starving fellow-creature bread and shelter, aye! and shoot him too, like a wild beast in a ditch, and have twenty guineas reward to boot.
"I've seen nought of John Stich, Master Inch," said the Corporal at last. "Be he from home?"
And he turned to where, just in the fork of the road, the thatched cottage, with a glimpse of the shed beyond it, stood solitary and still.
"Nay, I have not observated that fact, Master Corporal," replied Master Inch, clearing his throat for some of those words which had gained for him wide-spread admiration for miles around. "I had not observated that John Stich was from home. Though in verity it behooves me to say that I do not hear the sound of Master Stich's hammer upon his anvil."
"Then I'll go across at once," said the Coporal. "Forward, my men! John Stich might have saved me the trouble," he added, groping in his wallet for another copy of His Majesty's Proclamation.
"Nay, Master Corporal, do not give yourself the futile trouble of traversing the muddy road," said Mr. Inch, sententiously. "John Stich is a loyal subject of King George, and by my faith! he would not harbourgate a rebel, take my word for it. Although, mind you, Mr. Corporal, I have oft suspicionated..."
Mr. Inch, the beadle, looked cautiously round; all the pompousness of his manner had vanished in a trice. His broad face beneath the bob-tailed wig and three-cornered hat looked like a rosy receptacle of mysterious information, as he laid his fat hand on the Corporal's sleeve.
The straggling groups of yokels were fast disappearing down the muddy tracks; some were returning to Brassington, others