Red Eve | Page 8

good, Eve, though perhaps
before all is done we may often think it evil. And now let's away,
though I wish that you were dressed in another colour."
"Red Eve they name me, and red is my badge, because it suits my dark
face best. Cavil not at my robe, Hugh, for it is the only dowry you will
get with Eve Clavering. How shall we go? By the Walberswick ferry?

You have no horses."
"Nay, but I have a skiff hidden in the reeds five miles furlongs off. We
must keep to the heath above Walberswick, for there they might know
your red cloak even after dark, and I would not have you seen till we
are safe with Sir Arnold in the Preceptory. Mother of Heaven! what is
that?"
"A peewit, no more," she answered indifferently.
"Nay, it is my man Dick, calling like a peewit. That is his sign when
trouble is afoot. Ah, here he comes."
As he spoke a tall, gaunt man appeared, advancing towards them. His
gait was a shambling trot that seemed slow, although, in truth, he was
covering the ground with extraordinary swiftness. Moreover, he moved
so silently that even on the frost-held soil his step could not be heard,
and so carefully that not a reed stirred as he threaded in and out among
their clumps like an otter, his head crouched down and his long bow
pointed before him as though it were a spear. Half a minute more, and
he was before them--a very strange man to see. His years were not so
many, thirty perhaps, and yet his face looked quite old because of its
lack of colouring, its thinness, and the hard lines that marked where the
muscles ran down to the tight, straight mouth and up to the big
forehead, over which hung hair so light that at a little distance he
seemed ashen-grey. Only in this cold, rocky face, set very far apart,
were two pale-blue eyes, which just now, when he chose to lift their
lids that generally kept near together, as though he were half asleep,
were full of fire and quick cunning.
Reaching the pair, this strange fellow dropped to his knee and raised
his cap to Eve, the great lady of the Claverings--Red Eve, as they called
her through that country-side. Then he spoke, in a low, husky voice:
"They're coming, master! You and your mistress must to earth unless
you mean to face them in the open," and the pale eyes glittered as he
tapped his great black bow.

"Who are coming, Dick? Be plain, man!"
"Sir John Clavering, my lady's father; young John, my lady's brother;
the fine French lord who wears a white swan for a crest; three of the
nights, his companions; and six--no seven--men-at-arms. Also from the
other side of the grieve, Thomas of Kessland, and with him his marsh
men and verderers."
"And what are they coming for?" he asked again. "Have they hounds,
and hawk on wrist?"
"Nay, but they have swords and knife on thigh," and he let his pale eyes
fall on Eve.
"Oh, have done!" she broke in. "They come to take me, and I'll not be
taken! They come to kill you, and I'll not see you slain and live. I had
words with my father this morning about the Frenchman and, I fear, let
out the truth. He told me then that ere the Dunwich roses bloomed
again she who loved you would have naught but bones to kiss. Dick,
you know the fen; where can we hide till nightfall?"
"Follow me," said the man, "and keep low!"
Plunging into the dense brake of reeds, through which he glided like a
polecat, Dick led them over ground whereon, save in times of hard frost,
no man could tread, heading toward the river bank. For two hundred
paces or more they went thus, till, quite near to the lip of the stream,
they came to a patch of reeds higher and thicker than the rest, in the
centre of which was a little mound hid in a tangle of scrub and rushes.
Once, perhaps a hundred or a thousand years before, some old marsh
dweller had lived upon this mound, or been buried in it. At any rate, on
its southern side, hidden by reeds and a withered willow, was a cavity
of which the mouth could not be seen that might have been a chamber
for the living or the dead.
Thrusting aside the growths that masked it, Dick bade them enter and
lie still.

"None will find us here," he said as he lifted up the reeds behind them,
"unless they chance to have hounds, which I did not see. Hist! be still;
they come!"
CHAPTER II
THE FIGHT BY THE