Emma Orczy

Beau Brocade Emma Orczy

After their recent defeat, the hamlets and villages of Derbyshire are no longer ringing with the wild shouts of Bonny Prince Charlie's Highland Brigade; instead troops loyal to King George are looking for those accused of high treason and are offering a reward of twenty guineas for the death of any traitor or rebel. Philip James Gascoyne, eleventh Earl of Stretton, is in hiding, in fear for his life after being wrongly accused by Sir Humphrey Challoner of being a traitor to the KingWhen the Corporal had finished reading the Royal Proclamation, one or two of them sighed in a desultory fashion, others murmured casually, "Lordy! Lordy! to think on it! Dearie me!"The young ones neither sighed nor murmured. They looked at one another furtively, then glanced away again, as if afraid to read each other's thoughts, and in a shamefaced manner wiped their moist hands against their rough cord breeches. There were no women present fortunately: there had been heavy rains on the Moor these last three days, and what roads there were had become well-nigh impassable. Only a few men-some half-dozen perhaps-out of the lonely homesteads from down Brassington way, had tramped in the wake of the little squad of soldiers, in order to hear this Act of Parliament read at the cross-roads, and to see the document duly pinned to the old gallows-tree. Fortunately the rain had ceased momentarily, only a cool, brisk nor'-wester came blustering across the Heath, making the older men shiver beneath their thin, well-worn smocks.