“Nay, my child, consider the torture chamber of which thy poor hands bear sufficient evidence, and the terrible strain of the approaching cruel death, of which we bore all the anticipation. Well, at midnight we smuggled thee through the west gate, in a litter, by the connivance of a sentinel, and so down stream to Topsham, dragging the boat with difficulty over the Countess’s Weir; thereby we escaped the pursuers on the road, and favoured by the night, reached this secluded hall unobserved.”
“And when shall we go to Glastonbury and complete our task?”
“Not at present, for they will be looking out for us there, I doubt not; we have a bitter enemy in Sir John Redfyrne; but when a month or so has passed away, we may venture, well disguised.”
“And shall we never dare to return home again?”
“Nay, not while Henry reigns; it would not be worth the risk; there is no sufficient object.”
“They will, I trust, be undisturbed; before our trial I made a gift of the estate to Brother Cyril, late of Glastonbury, under his worldly name: after conviction our property would have become that of the state.”
“Nay, thou shalt see how true thine adopted son will be, God helping him.”
“I know it, dear boy, but it is not so bad as it appears at first sight, for foreseeing an evil day, I had forwarded considerable funds, for thy use and mine, to my old friend the Baron de Courcy, to whose care I purpose committing thee should we ever win our way to France, as now I trust we shall.”
“‘Omne solum forti patria,’ said the heathen poet: how much more true to the Christian! And now, my son, thou must yet repose a while, and ere noon-tide I will bring our kind host and hostess to see thee; they lost their son, an only child, in the Pilgrimage of Grace, where he fought as a volunteer under Robert Aske. I knew the poor boy; they were strangely moved when thou didst arrive; the mother cried, ‘He is so like our Robin.’”
A few days of calm repose varied by walks, cautiously taken on the breezy moor behind the hall, soon restored the hues of health to Cuthbert’s cheeks, and renewed his earlier vigour. Oh, how sweet the boundless freedom of that wilderness, how invigorating the scent of the pine groves, how bright the glimpses of sea down the valleys. Not far off, scarce two miles, was a large farm house on the road to Budleigh Salterton, where a family of the name of Raleigh lived; but their politics were hostile to those of Sir Robin Tremayne and Sir Walter Trevannion; they, the Raleighs, were men who worshipped the rising sun, and who a few years later were eager in the suppression of the Catholic Rebellion in Devon and Cornwall. In that house which our Cuthbert often saw from a distance, was born a bright star to adorn Elizabeth’s Court but a few years later.[48]