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Updated: June 5, 2025
Then I related to him the behaviour of them all in the inn; and how Rumbald had shewn no surprise in seeing that I was a gentleman after all; and how my Lord Essex had talked in what would have been the maddest manner, if his intention had been as Chiffinch had thought it to be; and with every word that I said the page's face grew longer. "Well," he cried, "it is beyond me altogether.
When the two men came through the gate, Rumbald was very particular to leave me immediately, that I might, as he thought, send my man to Newmarket to put off the King's coming; and have no interruption. "I will leave you," said he. "You shall see how much I trust you." I waited till he was gone in and the door shut.
A plan of this farm had been laid before some of the conspirators by Rumbald, who showed them how easy it would be, by overturning a cart, to stop at that place the king's coach; while they might fire upon him from the hedges, and be enabled afterwards, through by-lanes and across the fields, to make their escape.
Rumbald, who was a maltster, possessed a farm, called the Ryehouse, which lay on the road to Newmarket, whither the king commonly went once a year, for the diversion of the races.
The walls seemed immensely strong and well-built; and, though the place could not stand out for above an hour or two against guns, in the old days it could have faced a little siege of men-at-arms, very well. Rumbald, when he had seen me shut the door behind me, went across to the table and put down his whip upon it. "Sit down, sir," he said. "Here is my little stronghold."
Chiffinch had expressly spoken of to me. Yet how did Mr. Rumbald know that we knew one another? I made haste to salute him; for he too, I thought, had an air of eagerness. "Come in and sit down, Mr. Mallock," he said. "We have dined early; and are presently off to town again. Are you riding our way?" "Why, yes," I said, "I am going up to my lodgings for a little."
James was already on his way to Hoddesdon, and would be there if I needed him. No harm was done if my conjectures were at fault; I had left no loophole that I could see, if they were not. Rumbald himself standing astraddle in the doorway. I must confess however that the sight of him gave me a little check. He appeared to me more truculent than I had ever seen him.
I was uneasy, and had no determined plans. I would tell Rumbald, if he came out, that I was but holding myself ready to ride out if I were needed. Then, as I came past the front of the house, I heard, very distinctly in the still air, the tramp of horses far away on the hill to the north; and I knew enough of that sound to tell me that there were at least eight or nine coming, and coming fast.
I related the whole of my adventure in the inn, and how I got the paper, and tried to read it, and could not: then, how I took it to Hare Street and put it where he had described: then how I very nearly had asked a Jesuit priest if he had any skill in cypher; and then how, once more, it had all slipped my mind, and that, a long time having elapsed, even when Rumbald became prominent again, even then I had not remembered it.
Rumbald the maltster I am to be heard of here at any time, for I come up on my business every week though I was not always a maltster." I promised I would remember him: and indeed after a while all England has remembered him ever since.
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