The Snow Driver/Chapter 4

T IS ever the way of crowds to mock what they can not understand. And the good folk of Orfordnesse were in no wise different from other crowds; children thumbed their noses at old Master Thorne; young men sharpened their tongues with witticisms at his expense at the White Hart tavern; the elders shook their heads, saying that no good could come of such doings as his, and there was talk of putting him in the pillory. The very dogs of the haven barked at his threadbare heels when he limped to the ale house.

So that now old Master Thorne rarely showed himself in the village, subsisting no one knew just how, but laboring of nights, as the gleam of a candle in the casement showed. Honest men, it was well known, did not work in the hours of darkness.

So they called him the Mad Cosmographer.

He had gathered in the cottage the fruits of years of wandering, of talks with outland shipmen, of studying mariners' journals and the manuscripts of Oxford. He had brought charts from Paris, and once he had been forced to flee from Spain when he managed to copy fairly the world-map of Ptolemy the Astrologer.

For in Venice and Genoa and Seville the secrets of navigation were jealously guarded; the charts of hidalgos errant were the property of the state, and knowledge of the deviation of the compass, and the use of the cross-staff for observation of the sun were kept from other nations.

But Master Thorne labored of nights comparing charts and drawing the coasts of the Western Ocean and the vague Pacific that was supposed to be no more than a wide strait lying between New Spain and Cathay.

“For, my masters,” he said in the White Hart tavern, “how may our shipmen and navigants set forth an they have not true charts of the outer seas? I have seen the wealth of the new worlds swell the coffers of the dons, and great fleets of caravellas come in from the gold coasts and spiceries. What share have we in this trade?

“The notable navigant, Messer John Cabot, did draw a true and fair mappamundi; where is it to be seen now? Where is the good Cabot? Both have met foul play.” To this the folk of the village made response with many a wink and covert nudge.

“Take care, Master Thorne. Thou be'st grown so great in opinion, the hidalgos may prick 'ee. Thou may'st drink a bitter browst of thine own brewing.”

Master Thorne always faced his tormentors defiantly, stick in hand, his high quavering voice cutting through all other talk as a boatswain's whistle pierces the rattle of gear.

“Our fortune lies beyond the known seas and we men of England have no heart to seek it.”

“What boots it,” they made answer, “if cargoes of silk and oil and balm come to us from Cathay, out of the Levant in Venetian bottoms? We have enough of our own, God be praised.”

They fared well enough to their thinking with the coast fisheries and the occasional run into Antwerp or Venice. Only the Hollanders and the Spaniards built the tall vessels that could venture beyond the edge of the known world. And they were soon weary of Thorne's warnings and urgings that some one must set out on the longer voyages.

“We hold no traffic wi' the seas of darkness, nor the pagan folk,” they said.

“Aye,” one added, “'tis true beyond peradventure that mariners who sail over the edge of the known seas enter into the realm and dominion of the Evil One.”

“Art mad, Gaffer Thorne,” gibed a tippler. “Art plaguish wi' thy tongue as thy wildling boy Ralph wi' his sword—he that swashes bucklers and ruffles it among the squires of dames in London town.”

“A foul lie,” cried the old man, drawing his weather stained cloak about him and grasping his stick as if it were the hilt of a sword.

It irked his pride that Ralph had never sought for service on the king's ships, and the wits of Orfordnesse knew it.

“Ralph at least is oversea.”

“Nay, Gaffer Thorne, he's opzee—seas over. He's drunk as a lord.”

“I warrant—” another gibe cut through the shout of laughter that went up at this sally—“the Mad Cosmographer hath come to learn if his lad be master of one of the three tall ships that be standing in past the sand spits.”

N THIS moment, when Sir Hugh Willoughby's three ships had been sighted and many of the folk of Orfordnesse had gathered at the White Hart, Ralph Thorne dismounted from a sweat-darkened horse in the courtyard and entered the taproom, pausing for a moment on the threshold when he heard the words of the last speakers.

He was recognized, although not at once, because he had been a gawky boy in tatters when he left the village some years before. Now his wide gray eyes swept the room tranquilly. The Orfordnesse folk stared at his Spanish boots of good leather, his embroidered baldric and slender rapier, shaped after the new fashion.

They saw a man who could keep his temper at need and his own counsel at will, who walked with a purpose and evidently rode hither with one, since his horse was winded and bore no saddle bags.

“My masters,” he said, “I greet you well. My service, sir, to you.”

He bowed to his father who had been peering at him uncertainly.

“Fulke,” he added to the innkeeper who came up rubbing his hands, aglow with curiosity, “a stable knave to tend my horse and do you draw me a mug of the opzee beer that, by reason of being strong and heady, sits but ill upon a loose tongue.”

And he smiled gravely on the assembled company.

“Why lad—Ralph!”

The wrinkled eyes of the old merchant-adventurer gleamed joyfully; then he drew into himself with a kind of cautious dignity. Making room beside him on the bench, he stole a glance ever and anon at his son's dusty hip boots and excellent weapons.

“Ha, Spanish leather! And one of those Roman toys. Give me a good, broad tuck now, and I would break you that steel spit you call a sword.”

“Fulke,” commanded Thorne when that worthy came up with the beer, “do you fetch this company somewhat to drink. Meseems they are but dull and silent.”

So indeed the men of Orfordnesse had fallen, and all their eyes were for the young squire and their ears for his words.

“Ah,” quoth the landlord glumly, “and who's to pay the reckoning?”

From the purse Stratford had given him Thorne pulled a gold piece and spun it on the table top.

“So you may know it sound and full weight,” he assured Fulke.

“Ralph,” whispered the cosmographer, “you've been serving the king's majesty. Perhaps you've been on a tall ship of war, eh?”

“Not I.”

“Then it may have happened, you've surely an appointment as ship's captain.”

Thorne shook his head.

“Not even for a row-galley?”

“Faith, nor a cockboat.” He glanced down at his father quizzically. “Nay, you can not make me out a personage; no more than an armiger.”

“An arms-bearer. An esquire-at-arms. Pfaugh, it hath an outlandish ring. And I”

He broke off as he was about to tell Ralph of the persecution he had endured. Grimly he closed his lips, reflecting that it was ever the way of the Thornes to choose their own path in the world, to keep their own counsel and ask favors of no one.

“I did think that you were a follower of the worshipful Master Cornelius Durforth who is a ship's captain upon Sir Hugh Willoughby's fleet. Aye, he was pleased to make mention of your name, asking if you had come to Orfordnesse.”

“Where abides Durforth?”

“In the manor house, with my lord Renard who is new come from London.”

Thorne emptied his mug and looked in to it thoughtfully. Durforth must have changed horses several times during the three days ride from London to reach Orfordnesse ahead of him. He had not known until then that D'Alaber's companion was one of Sir Hugh's gentlemen, and captain of a ship.

“Where did you speak Durforth?” he asked.

“At the cottage.” The old cosmographer lifted his head and nodded proudly. “Aye, he had heard of my poor work. Master Durforth is a skilled navigant. He spared some praise for my charts of the northern seas, and did ask my aid in a vexatious problem.”

“In what?”

Master Thorne blinked shrewdly and lifted a warning finger.

“Nay, Ralph you were loutish indeed to think the secrets of cosmography are to be blabbed in a pothouse.”

Ralph had some knowledge of his father's stubbornness.

“Then must I talk with you this night.”

“Nay, the reverend Master Cabot hath sent word that he will visit me, upon the evening Sir Hugh makes bis landfall, or perhaps it was the next morning. My memory—ah!”

A boy had run in crying that the ships had come to anchor and boats were putting off. Straightway the throng in the tavern dwindled as the Orfordnesse folk went out to stare at the vessels and their crews.

“Enough!” cried Master Thorne, hobbling to his feet and seizing his stick. "We have tarried too long. Come, Ralph, we must greet these worshipful gentlemen; aye, and talk with them concerning the course they will sail and the charts. Now I wonder what charts they would have? What, will you not come?”

He stamped off, forgetting everything else in his eagerness, leaving Ralph smiling at his father's familiar eccentricity.

But, once he had the tap room to himself, the smile vanished and he stared into space with a furrowed brow.

Durforth was in Orfordnesse. Surely the man had been bound hither when he left London with D'Alaber. And the Fox himself was lying at the manor house near by. Durforth had spoken with Renard.

“Fulke,” he called to the landlord, who was leaving the room, “how many followers hath lord Renard in his train?”

“A round score of lusty fellows, who have turned out the stables to make place for their nags,” responded the innkeeper sullenly.

Stables! Thorne recalled the guard posted at Stratford's gate, and the attack upon himself that followed. He had spoken to no one of his mission, yet Durforth had known that he was riding to Orfordnesse. Stratford must have told the ship's captain, or possibly D'Alaber. But why?

“Fulke,” he called the landlord back again, “here is a fair purse of gold crowns. I fear me 'tis attained with Spanish treachery and so will have none of it. Will you take it?”

He tossed the embroidered sack on the sand that lay underfoot and the tavern keeper caught it up, hefting it in his fist. Then, with a glance around to see that no one was looking he edged over to the armiger and bent down his hairy face.

“Hark 'ee, Maister Ralph, what's the lay? What's i' the wind? I can do a pretty trick for him as is free-handed. Is it a matter of, or a wench”

“'Od's life, Fulke, you have a belly that refuses naught. I'm over fanciful as to such tools. Now get you gone and let me think.”

CRATCHING his head and with more than one backward glance, the innkeeper obeyed, and presently bethought him that Ralph was the son of the Mad Cosmographer and so might reasonably be expected to share his sire's lunacy. And after the events of that night Fulke was certain of it, though he never showed the purse to prove his point.

Meanwhile, head clasped between his clenched fists, the armiger was considering hew he was going to warn Sir Hugh—whom he had never seen—of a danger that confronted the knight and his ships.

Renard would never have come to Orfordnesse unless high stakes were on the table. Evidently a blow was to be struck at Sir Hugh. But how? The Spaniard's retainers were too few to risk a fight; moreover even the Fox would not dare do that as yet.

Thorne was morally certain that Durforth was an agent of the Spaniard's party. In that brief moment in the mist he had read guilt in the other's startled face. Certainly Durforth had not scrupled to use a pistol on him. Moreover this same ship's captain had by ill chance—he cursed his father's dotage and pride—seen the maps in the Thorne cottage. Renard would be interested in those.

To go to Sir Hugh with the tale? What proof had he to offer? It would be his word against Durforth's, and the matter of D'Alaber's death might be charged against him. That would not serve.

After a while he took up his sword. Here was no matter for words. Two attempts had been made on his life, and he intended to make the third move. He would go among the voyagers, listen to what was said and, if he still suspected Durforth, would pick a quarrel with the man and leave the issue to the swords.