CHAPTER XX

GILES

"The King?" Dick cried, half-incredulously. "The King!" He grew hot, then cold, as he stood there, half-expecting some awful retribution to follow on his audacities. But then the King had not been angry; he had not seemed displeased. "The King!" he cried again.

"The King!" echoed a voice behind him--a voice that carried him back to the leads of Dent. "Have you no word for Giles after all these months?"

"Giles!" Dick cried, spinning round. But there was only the gentleman in white, whom the King had addressed as "My lord".

"Don't you know me, little Captain?" The gentleman moved to the window, where the last glow from the evening sky was lingering still. "See!" he said.

Dick searched the face. Yes, there were the eyes, the gray, kind eyes of Giles; but the hair cut square across the brow, and falling in curls on the shoulders, was not like Giles's. The long beard was gone, too, and under the upturned moustaches was a mouth Dick did not know. But there were the eyes, and as his own scanned more closely the costly dress, he saw his own little dagger in its worn red leather sheath, hanging by the courtier's rapier at his side.

"Giles!" he said softly, and flung himself into his friend's arms.

Some time later Giles said: "But, come! We have affairs, Dick. To business, with what appetite we may!"

"Well, I'm hungry enough," said Dick simply.

There was a tap at the door, and a magnificent gentleman entered.

"Her Majesty holds you excused from supping with her, my lord," he said, bowing. "And His Majesty requests me to add he will not expect to see you these three days, with his farewells to you, and," said the gentleman, almost choking over the words, as if they outraged his sense of propriety, "his love to Sir Richard Chester of Dent."

"Convey my most profound thanks to Her Majesty, sir, for her graciousness," said Giles calmly. "And my humble thanks to His Majesty, also, if you please."

"And my humble thanks also," Dick stammered. "And my love, sir, please say, all Dick Chester's love."

The gentleman visibly shuddered as he bowed.

"Dick! Dick!" Giles said, laughing, "I should never wonder if that gentleman had a fit. What do you mean by sending messages like that, sir? Ah, but you're fickle! First me, then my master, then the--the Lady Dorothy is it? Then again my master. All your love, you pygmy! Cæsar's ghost! Where do you keep it all?"

Dick laughed.

"Don't you love people, then, Giles? You do His Majesty, and--and--"

"And who, prithee?" demanded Giles.

"Why, and me, Giles dear," said Dick serenely.

"Come along," said Giles laughing again. "We've made free with His Majesty's rooms long enough. We will go and hunt up some officer who will take his troop over to your place to-night. 'Twould never do for us to sleep and let John Dent steal a march on us, eh? I know my man! As like as not he'll hear of your coming hither and do his best to outwit us."

"But shall we not go to-night, Giles? Her Ladyship will be so disturbed by my absence."

"Your arrival would disturb her more at this hour, surely, Dick? The officers I send will keep her--her household safe until morning, and one of them, when he has seen that all is well, shall ride back even to-night and report to us."

They were going down the passage that led from the King's rooms to the hall. In the hall the guard saluted Giles, and looked somewhat sourly at Dick.

"Giles," said Dick, pulling his friend back as he was turning towards the door, "there's Lionel! I have but just recalled him."

"Who and what--" began Giles.

"He brought me here," Dick hurriedly explained. "He's a man of my Lord Newcastle's. I want to thank him now." He had dragged Giles to the foot of the steps. "I'd never have got here but for him. Will you come, Giles? He's up here."

"I'll thank him myself, do you leave me breath enough," said Giles good-humouredly.

The corridor above was crowded with noblemen's and ladies' servants and pages, some playing cards, some sitting, some standing, but all, it seemed to Dick, talking at once. He could not see Lionel anywhere. He would have pressed through the throng to seek him, but that, it appeared, was not Giles's way. Drawing Dick back he said quietly, but in a voice that stilled the tumult, and travelled down the corridor and into the passage beyond: "Is there here a man of my Lord Newcastle's--one Lionel?"

In the silence, Lionel, on a bench in a corner, whispered to Prince Rupert's page: "There! Farewell, sir! I'm dead!--dismissed!--undone!"

"Serves you right," said the page sweetly. "Don't mind my toes--a dead man has his privileges."

"There he is," said Dick, as Lionel, looking by no means cheerful, came out of the listening and looking crowd. Dick darted forward, shook hands with him, and overwhelmed him with thanks. Then Giles stretched his hand to the embarrassed youth.

"There are my thanks, too, my friend," he said. "This is Sir Richard Chester, and we are all right glad to have him here."

"And I'm in no trouble, my lord?" Lionel gasped, turning the gold pieces Giles had left in his palm.

"Not a breath," said Giles.

"Who'll bear the torch?" Dick asked. "What will my Lord Newcastle say when he finds no boy at all with you, Lionel?"

"Eh?" Giles said, "what torch?"

Dick explained, and Lionel looked a little doubtful and distressed.

"Oh, say to his lordship I stole his torchbearer!" Giles said coolly. "Say it was Sir Richard Chester, my man. He will hold you without blame. Good-night!"

"What think you to those?" Lionel asked, as, having pushed his way through the curious crowd, he sat down again by the page, and spread out his gold pieces.

"Bribes," said the page, sniffing. "Who is the child?"

"The child who held Dent Castle, and disappeared from Lumley."

The page whistled.

"Oh, Lionel! a perfect gold-mine! I wish that I'd discovered and recovered the pretty treasure."

The "pretty treasure" and Giles were by this time out in the streets of Arncastor, which were thronged with merry people going across the river to view from the meadows the masque in the Queen's gardens. They stopped at a house whence came a sound of singing, where the light from an unshuttered upper window shone out into the street. By this light Dick, chancing to look up at Giles, saw a subtle change in him. A minute since he had been laughing and kindly, now he was grave, unapproachable. As they climbed the stairs a high, clear voice was singing a song, and as Giles opened the door of the festal chamber out rolled a rollicking chorus, with a clinking of glasses and stamping of feet that almost deafened Dick. About twenty gentlemen were gathered about a table, with doublets undone, belts on the floor, sashes untied, and making clamour enough for a town. Giles waited, surveying them, till the end of the song, and then asked, in his well-modulated voice and a tone of ice:

"Is Captain Slingsby here?"

"My lord," cried one of the company, "a health! a health! The King!"

"God save the King!" cried another.

"God save the King, with all my heart!" said Giles, taking the glass pushed towards him, and drinking, hat in hand.

"Confusion to his foes!" cried another voice.

"Ah!" said Giles, "I see enough and to spare amongst his friends, gentlemen. Is Captain Slingsby here?"

"Be not too hard on us, my lord," said a young man at the end of the table, rising and bowing. "Gentlemen, I give you my lord, his health!"

"Your health, my lord!" they all cried together, and the glasses clinked again.

Giles bowed gracefully, and asked in exactly the same tone as before:

"Is Captain Slingsby here?"

A tall young man, very flushed, with a handsome face and fair love-locks, came forward unwillingly. Giles slowly looked him over from head to foot.

"I was about to apologize, sir, for coming in the middle of supper. I am too late. I perceive you are long past the end," he said.

The young man's face darkened.

"'Tis not for you to say if I have had enough," he observed sulkily.

"Enough?" Giles replied, with a lift of the eyebrow. "I doubt that word would not have occurred to me, sir, to describe the--er--quantity in question. I will not trouble you, sir. Good-night."

But in the meantime the other gentlemen had demanded Dick's name, and having learnt it, had drunk his health noisily. The boy, imitating Giles, bowed when they had finished.

"We have all heard of Sir Richard Chester," said the gentleman at the head of the table. "How is it, Sir Richard, that you are not amongst us?"

"I live with my cousin," said simple Dick, somehow feeling an excuse was needed for his not appearing amongst the King's friends. "She lives alone. She cannot spare me yet."

"She?" cried another gentleman. "Is she fair, Sir Richard?"

"Is she young?" questioned a second.

"Hath she eyes like yours?" another asked eagerly.

"Ay, doth that melting orb run in the family?" enquired another.

"A health!" shouted the one at the head of the table. "Give us her health, Sir Richard," and he pushed Dick a glass of wine.

"My cousin!" said Dick bravely, lifting the brimming glass.

"Nay, her name! Her name! Give us her name!" they cried.

Dick looked along the table at the flushed faces, the unsteady hands. Either the thought of his cousin's name on those lips awoke a delicacy in him, or the expression on Giles's face had warned him, but suddenly their mirth and their manners repelled him.

"You're none of you fit to speak her name," he said, "and your glasses have had a score of healths drunk out of them to-night."

He was unprepared for the explosion of wrath that followed. Someone else was, though. Giles laid his hand on his shoulder, and took the glass out of his hand.

"He is right," he said, "though he cuts us, gentlemen. We are not fit--there is no company fit--for her name to be called in. So I give you 'Dick's Cousin!' her health! and not another out of the glass."

He tossed off the wine, and flung the glass over his shoulder. With a shout the gentlemen sprang to their feet and followed his lordship's lead. The crash of glass made Dick's ears tingle.

"And there is my purse to pay the host's bill," cried Giles.

A cheer followed them downstairs and into the street.

"When you don't want your head broken, Dick," Giles remarked, "and yet want to express disapproval, say 'we'. It hath a pleasant sound, and puts your hearers on your side, keeping out ill-blood."

"What now, Giles?" Dick asked, as they once again halted before a house with lighted casements and sounds of life within.

"To find an officer sober enough for our work, Dick. Slingsby promised me to keep clear of that set of ribald idiots, and there he is with them again. Let's try this man, Captain Harland."

He left the boy in a parlour below, for he saw he was tired out by this time, and in a few minutes returned.

"We'll sup here now, Dick," he said cheerfully, "and then, what say you to spending the night over the river at your friends' of the Blue Boar? My man shall take my things over. Three days' absence! Dick, lad, what if her Ladyship won't take me in, even for one?"

Dick smiled sleepily.

"She will, Giles, when she sees you," he said.

After supper Giles took Dick out to see Captain Harland and his troopers start. The sight roused him for the moment. He caught sight of young Captain Slingsby casting wistful eyes at Giles.

"Why are you here, sir?" Giles demanded, when he saw the young officer.

"I--I ran after you to ask pardon," Slingsby stammered. "I'm quite sober. I--I got them to pump on my head."

He moved his neck uneasily under his damp yellow curls.

"Captain Harland is commanding for me, sir," said Giles.

"I can ride to serve you, my lord, if I may not command," said the young man quietly, "and I will, unless you forbid me. God knows I'm a fool!"

"Harland," Giles called to the man at the head of the troop, "you know what I said of sending someone back to-night with news?"

"Yes, my lord."

"Be good enough to return to me yourself, and leave the command to Slingsby."

"Very good, my lord," said the officer, smiling.

Young Slingsby leant from the saddle and wrung Giles's hand. The troop clattered off down the narrow street, out of sight.

"Now, we'll go and find my man, and over the water to bed, Dick," said Giles.

"Giles," said Dick, "I like what you did for that man. He's a nice man, too. But, I say, Giles, when you're angry you cut."

"I am rather a bad brute when I'm rubbed the wrong way, Dick. Hold up!"

Dick stumbled.

"I'm that sleepy, Giles," he explained apologetically, "I can scarcely walk."

"My lord," said a man, running up to them at this moment, "I followed you from the inn."

"Oh, good!" said Giles, stopping. "I shall be away for three days. Bring my things to the Blue Boar, over the river. Run, there's a good lad."

The servant ran off.

"That's my man, Dick," said Giles. "We need go no farther that way."

Dick had a very vague idea of what followed after that. He thought they were stopped on the bridge, and he heard Giles call out "Lumley!" and someone said, laughing: "Pardon! I did not see--did not recognize your lordship"; and Giles called "Good-night!" as they went on again. It appeared to Dick that he was not walking, and he wondered what Giles was doing, and why both he and the officer had laughed when the latter said he had not recognized him. It was curious, also, that he could see nothing but stars.

"Where am I, Giles?" he murmured, moving his limbs uneasily.

"In the arms of Morpheus, my dear fellow," said Giles. "And do not kick him in the wind, I beg of you, or he will probably let you fall."