Marc'antonio, an hour earlier than usual, came down the track with a bundle of linen under his left arm. I did not see that any one followed him until Nat pulled himself up, clutching at my elbow.
"Princess! Princess!" he cried, and his voice rang shrill towards her under the boughs. "Help her . . . I cannot—"
His voice choked on that last word as she came forward and stood regarding him carelessly, coldly, while I wiped the blood and then the bloody froth from his lips.
"Your friend looks to be in an ill case," she said.
"You have killed him," said I, and looked up at her stonily, as Nat's head fell back, with a weight I could not mistake, on my arms.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE FIRST CHALLENGE.
"The remedye agayns Ire is a vertu that men clepen Mansuetude, that is Debonairetee; and eek another vertu, that men callen Patience or Suffrance. . . . This vertu disconfiteth thyn enemy. And therefore seith the wyse man, `If thou wolt venquisse thyn enemy, lerne to suffre.'"— CHAUCER, Parson's Tale.
"You have killed him." I lowered Nat's head, stood up and accused her fiercely.
She confronted me, contemptuous yet pale. Even in my wrath I could see that her pallor had nothing to do with fear.
"Say that I have, what then?" She very deliberately unhitched the gun from her bandolier, and, after examining the lock, laid it on the turf midway between us. "As my hostage you may claim vendetta; take your shot then, and afterwards Marc'antonio shall take his."
"No, no, Englishman!" Marc'antonio ran between us while yet I stared at her without comprehending, and there was anguish in his cry. "The Princess lies to you. It was I that fired the shot—I that killed your friend!"
The girl shrugged her shoulders indifferently. "Ah, well then, Marc'antonio, since you will have it so, give me my gun again and hand yours to the cavalier. Do as I tell you, please," she commanded, as the man turned to her with a dropping jaw.
"Princess, I implore you—"
"You are a coward, Marc'antonio."
"Have it so," he answered sullenly. "It is God's truth, at all events, that I am afraid."
"For me? But I have this." She tapped the barrel of her gun as she took it from him. "And afterwards—if that is in your mind— afterwards I shall still have Stephanu."
She said it lightly, but it brought all the blood back to his brow and cheek with a rush. Not for many days did I learn the full meaning of the look he turned on her, but for dumb reproach I never saw the like of it on man's face.
Her foot tapped the ground. "Give him the gun," she commanded; and Marc'antonio thrust it into my hands. "Now turn your back and walk to that first tree yonder, very slowly, pace by pace, as you hear me count."
Her face was set like a flint, her tone relentless. Marc'antonio half raised his two fists, clenching them for a moment, but dropped them by his side, turned his back, and began to walk obediently towards the tree.
"One—two—three—four—five," she counted, and paused. "Englishman, this fellow has killed your friend, and you claim yourself worthy to be King of Corsica. Prove it."
"Excuse me, Princess," said I, "but before that I have some other things to prove, of which some are easy and others may be hard and tedious."
"Seven—eight—nine." With no answer, but a curl of the lip, she resumed her counting.
"Marc'antonio!" I called—he had almost reached the tree.
"Come here!"
He faced about, his eyes starting, his cheeks blanched. As he drew nearer I saw that his forehead shone with sweat.
"I have a word for you," I said slowly. "In the first place an Englishman does not shoot his game sitting; it is against the rules. Secondly, he is by no means necessarily a fool, but, if it came to shooting against two, he might have sense enough to get his first shot upon the one who held the musket—a point which your mistress overlooked perhaps." I bowed to her gravely. "And thirdly," I went on, hardening my voice, "I have to tell you, Ser Marc'antonio, that this friend of mine, whom you have killed, was not trying to escape you, but running to seek help for the Princess."
Marc'antonio checked an exclamation. He glanced at the girl, and she at him suspiciously, with a deepening frown.
"Help?" she echoed, turning the frown upon me, "What help, sir, should I need?"
It was my turn now to shrug the shoulders. "Nay," I answered, "I tell you but what he told me. He divined, or at least he was persuaded, that you stood in need of help."
She threw a puzzled, questioning look at the poor corpse, but lifted her eyes to find mine fixed upon them, and shrank a little as I stepped close. Her two hands went behind her, swiftly. I may have made a motion to grip her by the wrists; I cannot tell. My next words surprised myself, and the tone of my voice speaking and the passion in it.
"You have killed my friend," said I, "who desired only your good. You have chosen to humiliate me, who willed you no harm. And now you say 'it shall be vendetta.' Very well, it shall be vendetta, but as I choose it. Keep your foolish weapons; I can do without them. Heap what insults you will upon me; I am a man and will bear them. But you are a woman, and therefore to be mastered. For my friend's sake I choose to hate you and to be patient. For my friend's sake, who discovered your need, I too will discover it and help it; and again, not as you will, but as I determine. For my friend's sake, mistress, and if I choose, I will even love you and you shall come to my hand. Bethink you now what pains you can put on me; but at the last you shall come and place your neck under my foot, humbly, not choosing to be loved or hated, only beseeching your master!"
I broke off, half in wonder at my own words and the flame in my blood, half in dismay to see her, who at first had fronted me bravely, wince and put up both hands to her face, yet not so as to cover a tide of shame flushing her from throat to brow.
"Give me leave to shoot him, Princess," said Marc'antonio. But she shook her head. "He has been talking with some one. . . . With Stephanu?" His gaze questioned me gloomily. "No, I will do the dog justice; Stephanu would not talk."
"Lead her away," said I, "and leave me now to mourn my friend."
He touched her by the arm, at the same time promising me with a look that he would return for an explanation. The Princess shivered, but, as he stood aside to let her pass, recollected herself and went before him up the path beneath the pines.
I stepped to where Nat lay and bent over him. I had never till now been alone with death, and it should have found me terribly alone. . . . I closed his eyes. . . . And this had been my friend, my schoolfellow, cleverer than I and infinitely more thoughtful, lacking no grace but good fortune, and lacking that only by strength of a spirit too gallant for its fate. In all our friendship it was I that had taken, he that had given; in the strange path we had entered and travelled thus far together, it was he that had supplied the courage, the loyalty, the blithe confidence that life held a prize to be won with noble weapons; he who had set his face towards the heights and pinned his faith to the stars; he, the victim of a senseless bullet; he, stretched here as he had fallen, all thoughts, all activities quenched, gone out into that night of which the darkness gathering in this forsaken glade was but a phantom, to be chased away by to-morrow's sun. To-morrow . . . to-morrow I should go on living and begin forgetting him. To-morrow? God forgive me for an ingrate, I had begun already. . . . Even as I bent over him, my uppermost thought had not been of my friend. I had made, in the moment almost of his death and across his body, my first acquaintance with passion. My blood tingled yet with the strange fire; my mind ran in a tumult of high resolves of which I understood neither the end nor the present meaning, but only that the world had on a sudden become my battlefield, that the fight was mine, and at all cost the victory must be mine. It was, if I may say it without blasphemy, as if my friend's blood had baptized me into his faith; and I saw life and death with new eyes.
Yet, for the moment, in finding passion I had also found self; and shame of this self dragged down my elation. I had sprung to my feet in wild rage against Nat's murder; I had spoken words—fierce, unpremeditated words—which, beginning in a boyish defiance, had ended on a note which, though my own lips uttered it, I heard as from a trumpet sounding close and yet calling afar. In a minute or so it had happened, and behold! I that, sitting beside Nat, should have been terribly alone, was not alone, for my new-found self sat between us, intruding on my sorrow.
I declare now with shame, as it abased me then, that for hours, while the darkness fell and the stars began their march over the tree-tops, the ghostly intruder kept watch with me as a bodily presence mocking us both, benumbing my efforts to sorrow. . . . Nor did it fade until calm came to me, recalled by the murmur of unseen waters. Listening to them I let my thoughts travel up to the ridges and forth into that unconfined world of which Nat's spirit had been made free. . . . I went to the hut for a pail, groped my way to the stream, and fetched water to prepare his body for burial. When I returned the hateful presence had vanished. My eyes went up to a star—love's planet—poised over the dark boughs. Thither and beyond it Nat had travelled. Through those windows he would henceforth look back and down on me; never again through the eyes I had loved as a friend and lived to close. I could weep now, and I wept; not passionately, not selfishly, but in grief that seemed to rise about me like a tide and bear me and all fate of man together upon its deep, strong flood. . . .
At daybreak Marc'antonio and Stephanu came down the pass and found me digging the grave. I thought at first that they intended me some harm, for their faces were ill-humoured enough in all conscience; but they carried each a spade, and after growling a salutation, set down their guns and struck in to help me with my work.
We had been digging, maybe, for twenty minutes, and in silence, when my ear caught the sound of furious grunting from the sty, where I had penned the hogs overnight, a little before sundown. Nat had watched me as I numbered them, and it seemed now so long ago that I glanced up with a start almost guilty, as though in my grief I had neglected the poor brutes for days. In fact I had kept them in prison for a short hour beyond their usual time, and some one even now was liberating them.
It was the Princess, of whose presence I had not been aware. She stood by the gate of the pen, her head and shoulders in sunlight, while the hogs raced in shadow past her feet.
Marc'antonio glanced at her across his shoulder and growled angrily.
"Your pardon, Princess," said I, slowly, as she closed the gate after the last of the hogs and came forward. "I have been remiss, but I need no help either for this or for any of my work."
She halted a few paces from the grave. "You would rather be alone?" she asked simply.
"I wish you to understand," said I, "that for the present I have no choice at all but your will."
She frowned. "I thought to lighten your work, cavalier."
I was about to thank her ironically when the sound of a horn broke the silence about us, its notes falling through the clear morning air from the heights across the valley. The Corsicans dropped their spades.
"Ajo, listen! Listen!" cried Marc'antonio, excitedly. "That will be the Prince—listen again! Yes, and they are answering from the mountain. It can be no other than the Prince, returning this way!"
While we stood with our faces upturned to the granite crags, I caught the Princess regarding me doubtfully. Her gaze passed on as if to interrogate Marc'antonio and Stephanu, who, however, paid no heed, being preoccupied.
Again the horn sounded; not clear as before, although close at hand, for the thick woods muffled it. For another three minutes we waited—the Princess silent, standing a little apart, with thoughtful brow, the two men conversing in rapid guttural undertones; then far up the track beneath the boughs a musket-barrel glinted, and another and another, glint following glint, as a file of men came swinging down between the pines, disappeared for a moment, and rounding a thicket of the undergrowth emerged upon the level clearing. In dress and bearing they were not to be distinguished from Marc'antonio, Stephanu, or any of the bandits on the mountain. Each man carried a musket and each wore the jacket and breeches of sad-coloured velvet, the small cap and leathern leggings, which I afterwards learnt to be the uniform of patriotic Corsica. But as they deployed upon the glade—some forty men in all—and halted at sight of us, my eyes fell upon a priest, who in order of marching had been midmost, or nearly midmost, of the file, and upon a young man beside him, toward whom the Princess sprang with a light step and a cry of salutation.
"The blessing of God be upon you, O brother!"
"And upon you, O sister!" He took her kiss and returned it, yet (as I thought) with less fervour. Across her shoulder his gaze fell on me, with a kind of peevish wonder, and he drew back a little as if in the act to question her. But she was beforehand with him for the moment.
"And how hast thou fared, O Camillo?" she asked, leaning back, with a hand upon his either shoulder, to look into his eyes.
He disengaged himself sullenly, avoiding her gaze. There could be no doubt that the two faces thus confronting one another belonged to brother and sister, yet of the two his was the more effeminate, and its very beauty (he was an excessively handsome lad, albeit diminutively built) seemed to oppose itself to hers and caricature it, being so like yet so infinitely less noble.
"We have fared ill," he answered, turning his head aside, and added with sudden petulance, "God's curse upon Pasquale Paoli, and all his house!"
"He would not receive you?"
"On the contrary, he made us welcome and listened to all we had to say. When I had done, Father Domenico took up the tale."
"But surely, brother, when you had given him the proofs—when he heard all—"
"The mischief, sister," he interrupted, stabbing at the ground with his heel and stealing a sidelong glance at the priest, "the mischief was, he had already heard too much."
She drew back, white in the face. She, too, flung a look at the priest, but a more honest one, although in flinging it she shrank away from him. The priest, a sensual, loose-lipped man, whose mere aspect invited one to kick him, smiled sideways and downwards with a deprecating air, and spread out his hands as who should say that here was no place for a domestic discussion.
I could make no guess at what the youth had meant; but the girl's face told me that the stroke was cruel, and (as often happens with the weak) his own cruelty worked him into a passion.
"But who is this man with you?" he demanded, the blood rushing to his face. "And how came you alone with him, and Stephanu, and Marc'antonio? You don't tell me that the others have deserted!"
"No one has deserted, brother. You will find them all upon the mountain."
"And the recruits? Is this a recruit?"
"There are no recruits."
"No recruits? By God, sister, this is too bad! Has this cursed rumour spread, then, all over the countryside that honest men avoid us like a plague—us, the Colonne!" He checked his tongue as she drew herself up and turned from him, before the staring soldiery, with drawn mouth and stony eyes; but stepped a pace after her on a fresh tack of rage.
"But you have not answered me. Who is this man, I repeat? And eh?— but what in God's name have we here?" He halted, staring at the half-digged grave and Nat's body laid beside it.
Marc'antonio stepped forward. "These are two prisoners, O Prince, of whom, as you see, we are burying one."
"Prisoners? But whence?"
"From England, as they tell us, O Prince."
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE TENDER MERCIES OF PRINCE CAMILLO.
"Tyranny is the wish to have in one way what can only be had in
another."—Blaise Pascal.
The young man eyed me insolently for a moment and turned again to his sister.
"Camilla! will you have the goodness to explain?" he demanded.
But here, while she hesitated, searching her brother's face proudly yet pitifully, as though unable quite to believe in the continued brutality of his tone, I struck in.
"Pardon me, Signore," said I, "but an explanation from me may be shorter."
"Eh? so you are English, and speak Corsican?"
"Or such Tuscan," answered I, modestly, "as may pass or a poor attempt at it. Yes, I am English, and have come hither—as the Princess, your sister, will tell you—on a political errand which you may or may not consider important."
The Princess, who had turned and stood facing her brother again, threw me a quick look.
"I know nothing of that," she said hurriedly, "save that he came with five others in a ship from England and encamped at Paomia below; that, being taken prisoners, they professed to be seeking the Queen Emilia, to deliver her; and that thereupon of the six I let four go, keeping this one as hostage, with his friend, who has since died."
"And the crown," put in Stephanu. "The Princess has forgotten to mention the crown."
"What crown?"
"The crown, sir," said I boldly, seeing the Princess hesitate, "of the late King Theodore of Corsica, given by him into my keeping."
I saw the priest start as if flicked with a whip, and shoot me a glance of curiosity from under his loose upper lids. His pupil stepped up and thrust his face close to mine.
"Eh? So you were seeking me?" he demanded. "You are mistaken, sir," said I, "whatever your reason for such a guess. My companions—one of them my father, an Englishman and by name Sir John Constantine— are seeking the Queen Emilia, whom they understand to be held prisoner by the Genoese. Meanwhile your sister detains me as hostage, and the crown in pawn."
I had kept an eye on the priest as I pronounced my father's name: and again (or I was mistaken) the pendulous lids flickered slightly.
"You do not answer my main question," the young man persisted.
"What are you doing here, in Corsica, with the crown of King
Theodore?"
"I am the less likely to answer that question, sir, since you can have no right to ask it."
"No right to ask it?" he echoed, stepping back with a slow laugh.
"No right to ask it—I! King Theodore's son?"
I shrugged my shoulders. I had a mind to laugh back at his impudence, and indeed nothing but the mercy of Heaven restrained me and so saved my life. As it was, I heard an ominous growl and glanced around to find the whole company of bandits regarding me with lively disfavour, whereas up to this point I had seemed to detect in their eyes some hints of leniency, even of good will. By their looks they had disapproved of their master's abuseful words to his sister, albeit with some reserve which I set down to their training. But even more evidently they believed to a man in this claim of his.
My gesture, slight as it was, gave his anger its opportunity.
He drew back a pace, his handsome mouth curving into a snarl.
"You doubt my word, Englishman?"
"I have no evidence, sir, for doubting King Theodore's," I answered as carelessly as I could, hoping the while that none of them heard the beating of my heart, loud in my own ears as the throb-throb of a pump. "If you be indeed King Theodore's son, then your father—"
"Say on, sir."
"Why, then, your father, sir, practised some economy in telling me the truth. But my father and I will be content with the Queen Emilia's simple word."
As I began this answer I saw the Princess turn away, dropping her hands. At its conclusion she turned again, but yet irresolutely.
"We will find something less than the Queen Emilia's word to content you, my friend," her brother promised, eyeing me and breathing hard. "Where is the crown, Stephanu?"
"In safe keeping, O Prince. I beg leave to say, too, that it was I who found it in the Englishmen's camp and brought it to the Princess."
"You shall have your reward, my good Stephanu. You shall put the bearer, too, into safe keeping. Stand back, take your gun, and shoot me this dog, here beside his grave."
The Princess stepped forward. "Stephanu," she said quietly, "you will put down that gun."
Her brother rounded on her with a curse. For the moment she did not heed, but kept her eyes on Stephanu, who had stepped back with musket half lifted and finger already moving toward the trigger-guard.
"Stephanu," she repeated, "on my faith as a Corsican, if you raise that gun an inch—even a little inch—higher, I will never speak to you again." Then lifting a hand she swung round upon her brother, whose rage (I thank Heaven) for the moment choked him. "Is it meet, think you, O brother, for a King of Corsica to kill his hostage?"
"Is it meet, O sister," he snarled, "for you, of all women, to champion a man—and a foreigner—before my soldiers? Shoot him, Stephanu!"
Her head went up proudly. "Stephanu will not shoot. And you, my brother, that are so careful—I sometimes think, so over-careful—of my honour, for once bethink you that your own deserves attention. This Englishman placed himself in my hands freely as a hostage. From the first, since you force me to say it, I had no liking for him. Afterwards, when I knew his errand, I hated him for your sake: I hated him so that in my rage I strained all duty towards a hostage that I might insult him. Marc'antonio will bear me witness."
"The Princess is speaking the truth before God," said Marc'antonio, gravely. "She made the man a keeper of swine yonder." He waved a hand toward the sty. "And he is, as I understand, a cavalier in his own country."
"I did more than that," the Princess went on. "Having strained the compact, I tempted him to break it—to shoot me or to shoot Marc'antonio, so that one or other of us might be free to kill him."
She paused, again with her eyes on Marc'antonio, who nodded.
"And that also is the truth," he said. "She put a gun into his hands, that he might kill me for having killed his friend. I did not understand at the time."
"A pretty coward!" The young man flung this taunt out at me viciously; but I had enough to do to hold myself steady, there by the grave's edge, and did not heed him.
"I do not think he is a coward," said she. (O, but those words were sweet! and for the first time I blessed her.) "But coward or no coward, he is our hostage, and you must not kill him."
He turned to the priest, who all this while had stood with head on one side, eyes aslant, and the air and attitude of a stranger who having stumbled on a family squabble politely awaits its termination.
"Father Domenico, is my sister right? And may I not kill this man?"
"She is right," answered the reverend father, with something like a sigh. "You cannot kill him consistently with honour, though I admit the provocation to be great. The Princess appears to have committed herself to something like a pledge." He paused here, and with his tongue moistened his loose lips. "Moreover," he continued, "to kill him, on our present information, would be inadvisable. I know—at least I have heard—something of this Sir John Constantine whom the young man asserts to be his father; and, by what has reached me, he is capable of much."
"Do you mean," asked the Prince, bridling angrily, "that I am to fear him?"
"Not at all," the priest answered quickly, still with his eyes aslant. "But, from what I have heard, he was fortunate, long ago, to earn the esteem of the good lady your mother, and"—he paused and felt for his snuff-box—"it would appear that the trick runs in the family."
"By God, then, if I may not kill him, I may at least improve on my sister's treatment," swore the young man. "Made him her swine-keeper, did she? I will promote him a step. Here, you! Take and truss him by the heels!—and fetch me a chain, one of you, from the forage-shed. . . ."
In the short time it took him to devise my punishment the Prince displayed a devilishly ingenious turn of mind. Within ten minutes under his careful directions they had me down flat on my back in the filth of the sty, with my neck securely chained to a post of the palisade, my legs outstretched, and either ankle strapped to a peg. My hands they left free, to supply me (as the Prince explained) with food and drink: that is to say, to reach for the loaf and the pannikin of water which Marc'antonio, under orders, fetched from the hut and laid beside me. Marc'antonio's punishment (for bearing witness to the truth) was to be my gaoler and sty-keeper in my room. He was promised, moreover, the job of hanging me as soon as my comrades returned.
In this pleasant posture they left me, whether under surveillance or not I could not tell, being unable to turn my head, and scarce able even to move it an inch either way.
So I lay and stared up at the sky, until the blazing sun outstared me. I will dwell on none of my torments but this, which toward midday became intolerable. Certainly I had either died or gone mad under it, but that my hands were free to shield me; and these I turned in the blistering glare as a cook turns a steak on the gridiron. Now and again I dabbled them in the pannikin beside me, very carefully, ekeing out the short supply of water.
I had neither resisted nor protested. I hugged this thought and meant, if die I must, to die hugging it. I had challenged the girl, promising her to be patient. To be sure protest or resistance would have been idle. But I had kept my word. I don't doubt that from time to time a moan escaped me. . . . I could not believe that Marc'antonio was near me, watching. I heard no sound at all, no distant voice or bugle-call from the camp on the mountain. The woods were silent . . . silent as Nat, yonder, in his grave. Surely none but a fiend could sit and watch me without a word. . . .
Toward evening I broke off a crust of bread and ate it. The water I husbanded. I might need it worse by-and-by, if Marc'antonio delayed to come.
But what if no one should come?
I had been dozing—or maybe was wandering in slight delirium—when this question wrote itself across my dreams in letters of fire, so bright that it cleared and lit up my brain in a flash, chasing away all other terrors. . . .
Mercifully, it was soon answered. Far up the glade a horn sounded— my swine-horn, blown no doubt by Marc'antonio. The hogs were coming. . . . Well, I must use my hands to keep them at their distance.
I listened with all my ears. Yes, I caught the sound of their grunting; it came nearer and nearer, and—was that a footstep, close at hand, behind the palisade?
Something dropped at my side—dropped in the mire with a soft thud.
I stretched out my hand, felt for it, clutched it.
It was a file.
My heart gave a leap. I had found a friend, then!—but in whom? Was it Marc'antonio? No: for I heard his voice now, fifty yards away, marshalling and cursing the hogs. His footstep was near the gate. As he opened it and the hogs rushed in, I slipped the file beneath me, under my shoulder blades.
The first of the hogs, as he ran by me, put a hoof into my pannikin and upset it; and while I struck out at him, to fend him aside, another brute gobbled up my last morsel of crust. The clatter of the pannikin brought Marc'antonio to my side. For a while he stood there looking down on me in the dusk; then walked off through the sty to the hut and returned with two hurdles which he rested over me, one against another, tentwise, driving their stakes an inch or two into the soil. Slight as the fence was, it would protect me from the hogs; and I thanked him. He growled ungraciously, and, picking up the pannikin, slouched off upon a second errand. Again when he brought it replenished, and a fresh loaf of bread with it, I thanked him, and again his only answer was a growl.
I heard him latch the gate and walk away toward the hut. Night was falling on the valley. Through my roof of hurdles a star or two shone down palely. Now was my time. I slipped a hand beneath me and recovered my file—my blessed file.
The chain about my neck was not very stout. I had felt its links with my fingers a good score of times in efforts, some deliberate, others frantic, to loosen it even by a little. Loosen it I could not; the Prince had done his work too cleverly: but by my calculation an hour would suffice me to file it through.
But an hour passed, and two hours, and still I lay staring up at the stars, listening to the hogs as they rubbed flanks and chose and fought for their lairs: still I lay staring, with teeth clenched and the file idle in my hand.
I had challenged, and I had sworn. "Bethink you now what pains you can put upon me. . . ." These tortures were not of her devising; but I would hold her to them. I was her hostage, and, though it killed me, I would hold her to the last inch of her bond. As a Catholic, she must believe in hell. I would carry my wrong even to hell then, and meet her there with it and master her.
I was mad. After hours of such a crucifixion a man must needs be mad. . . . "Prosper, lad, your ideas are naught and your ambitions earth: but you have a streak of damned obstinacy which makes me not altogether hopeless of you!" These had been Nat's words, a month ago; and Nat lay in his grave yonder. . . . The cramp in my legs, the fiery pain ringing my neck, met and ran over me in waves of total anguish. At the point where my will failed me to hold out, the power failed me (I thank Heaven) to lift a hand. Yet the will struggled feebly; struggled on to the verge over which all sensation dropped plumb, as into a pit.
I unclosed my eyes upon the grey dawn; but upon what dawn I knew not, whether of earth or purgatory or hell itself. They saw it swimming in a vague light: but my ears, from a sound as of rushing waters, awoke to a silence on which a small footfall broke, a few yards away. Marc'antonio must have unpenned the hogs; for the sty was empty. And the hogs in their rush must have thrown down the hurdles protecting me; for these lay collapsed, the one at my side, the other across me.
The light footfall drew close and halted. I looked up into the face of the Princess.
She came, picking her way across the mire; and with caution, as if she feared to be overheard. Clearly she had expected to find the sty empty, for even to my dazed senses her dismay was evident as she caught sight of me beneath the hurdle.
"You have not gone! Oh, why have you not gone?"
She was on her knees beside me in the filth. I heard her calling to Marc'antonio, and presently Marc'antonio came, obedient as ever, yet protesting.
"He has not gone!" She moved her hands with a wringing gesture.
I tried to speak, but for answer could only spread my hand, which still grasped the file: and for days after it kept a blue weal bitten across the palm.
I heard Marc'antonio's voice protesting as she took the file and sawed with it frantically across my neck-chain.
"But he must escape and hide, at least."
"He cannot, Princess. The torture has worn him out."
"It were better he died, then. For I must go."
"It were better he died, Princess: but his youth is tough. And that you must go is above all things necessary. The Prince would kill me. . . ."
"A little while, Marc'antonio! The file is working."
"To what end, Princess?—since time is wanting. The bugle will call—it may call now at any moment. And if the Prince should miss you—Indeed it were better that he died—"
Their voices swam on my ear through giddy whirls of mist, I heard him persuade her to go—at the last insist upon her going. Still the file worked.
Suddenly it ceased working. It seemed to me that they both had withdrawn, and my neck still remained in bondage, though my legs were free. I knew that my legs were free though I had not the power to test this by drawing them up. I tried once, and closed my eyes, swooning with pain.
Upon the swoon broke a shattering blow, across my legs and below the knees; a blow that lifted my body to clutch with both hands upon night and fall back again upon black unconsciousness.
CHAPTER XIX.
HOW MARC'ANTONIO NURSED ME AND GAVE ME COUNSEL.
"Yet sometimes famous Princes like thyself,
Drawn by report, adventurous by desire,
Tell thee, with speechless tongues and semblance pale,
That without covering, save yon field of stars,
They here stand martyrs, slain in Cupid's wars;
And with dead cheeks advise thee to desist
For going on Death's net, whom none resist."
Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
His honour forbidding him to kill me, the Prince Camillo had given orders to break my legs: and since to abandon me in this plight went against the conscience of his followers (and even, it is possible, against his own), he had left Marc'antonio behind to nurse me—thus gratifying a second spite. The Prince was an ingenious young man.
So much I gathered in faint intervals between anguish while Marc'antonio bound me with rude splints of his own manufacture. Yet he said little and did his surgery, though not ungently, with a taciturn frown which I set down to moroseness, having learnt somehow that the bandits had broken up their camp on the mountain and marched off, leaving us two alone.
"Did the Princess know of this?" I managed to ask, and I believe this was my first intelligible question.
Marc'antonio paused before answering. "She knew that you were to be hurt, but not the manner of it. It was she that brought you the file, by stealth. Why did you not use it, and escape?"
"She brought me the file?" I knew it already, but found a fierce satisfaction in the words. "And she—and you—tried to use it upon my chain here and deliver me: I forced you to that, my friends! As for using it myself, you heard what I promised her, yesterday, before her brother came."
"I heard you talk very foolishly; and now you have done worse than foolishly. I do not understand you at all—no, by the Mother of God, I do not! You had the whole night for filing at your chain: and it would have been better for you, and in the end for her."
"And for you also, Marc'antonio."
He was silent.
"And for you also, Marc'antonio?" I repeated it as a question.
"Your escape would have been put down to me, Englishman. I had provided for that," he answered simply.
"Forgive me," I muttered, thrown back upon sudden contrition. "I was thinking only that you must feel it a punishment to be left alone with me. I had forgot—"
"It is hard," he interrupted, "to bear everything in mind when one is young." His tone was quiet, decisive, as of one stating a fact of common knowledge; but the reproof cut me like a knife.
"The Princess has gone too?" I asked.
"She has gone. They are all gone. That is why it would have been better for her too that you had escaped."
I pondered this for a minute. "You mean," said I, "that—always supposing the Prince had not killed you in his rage—you would now be at her side?"
He nodded. "Still, she has Stephanu. Stephanu will do his best," I suggested.
"Against what, eh?" He put his poser to me, turning with angry eyes, but ended on a short laugh of contempt. "Do not try make-believe with me, O Englishman."
"There is one thing I know," said I, doggedly, "that the Princess is in trouble or danger. And a second thing I know, that you and Stephanu are her champions. But a third thing, which I do not know, is why you and Stephanu hate one another."
"And yet that should have been the easiest guess of the three," said he, rising abruptly and taking first a dozen paces toward the hut, then a dozen back to the shadow of the chestnut tree against the bole of which my head rested as he had laid me, having borne me thither from the sty.
"Campioni? That is a good word, and I thank you for it, Englishman. Yet you wonder why I hate Stephanu? Listen. Were you ever in Florence, in the Boboli gardens?"
"Never. But why?"
"Mbe! I have travelled, for my part." Marc'antonio now and always mentioned his travels with an innocent boastfulness. "Well, in the gardens there you will find a fountain, and on either side of it a statue—the statues of two old kings. They sit there, those two, carved in stone, face to face across the fountain; and with faces so full of hate that I declare it gives you a shiver down the spine—all the worse, if you will understand, because their eyes have no sight in them. Now the story goes that these two kings in life were friends of a princess of Tuscany far younger than themselves, and championed her, and established her house while she was weak and her enemies were strong; and that afterwards in gratitude she caused these statues to be set up beside the fountain. Another story (to me it sounds like a child's tale) says that at first there was no fountain, and that the princess knew nothing of the hatred between these old men; but the sculptor knew. Having left the order with him, she married a husband of her own age and lived for years at a foreign court. At length she returned to Florence and led her husband one day out through the garden to show him the statues, when for the first time she saw what the sculptor had done and knew for the first time that these dead men had hated one another for her sake; whereupon she let fall one tear which became the source of the fountain. To me all this part of the story is foolishness: but that I and Stephanu hate one another not otherwise than those two old kings, and for no very different cause, is God's truth, cavalier."
"You are devoted to her, you two?" I asked, tempting him to continue.
He gazed down on me for a moment with immeasurable contempt.
"I give you a figure, and you would put it into words! Words!" He spat. "And yet it is the truth, Englishman, that once she called me her second father. 'Her second father'—I have repeated that to Stephanu once or twice when I have lost my temper (a rare thing with me). You should see him turn blue!"
I could get no more out of Marc'antonio that day, nor indeed did the pain I suffered allow me to continue the catechism. A little before night fell he lifted me again and carried me to a bed of clean-smelling heather and fern he had prepared within the hut; and, all the night through, the slightest moan from me found him alert to give me drink or shift me to an easier posture. Our total solitude seemed from the first to breed a certain good-fellowship between us: neither next day nor for many days did he remit or falter in his care for me. But his manner, though not ungentle, was taciturn. He seemed to carry about a weight on his mind; his brow wore a constant frown, vexed and unhappy. Once or twice I caught him talking to himself.
"To be sure it was enough to madden all the saints: and the Prince is not one of them. . . ."
"What was enough to madden all the saints, O Marc'antonio?" I asked from my bed.
Already he had turned in some confusion, surprised by the sound of his own voice. He was down on hands and knees, and had been blowing upon the embers of a wood fire, kindled under a pan of goat's milk. The goat herself browsed in the sunlight beyond the doorway, in the circuit allowed by a twenty-foot tether.
"What was enough to madden all the saints, O Marc'antonio?"
"Why," said he, savagely, "your standing up to him and denying his birth and his sister's before all the crowd. I did not think that anything could have saved you."
"If I remember, I added that the Queen Emilia's bare word would be enough for me."
"So. But you denied it on his father's, and that is what his enemies, the Paolists all, would give their ears to hear—yes, and Pasquale Paoli himself, though he passes for a just man."
"Marc'antonio," said I, seriously, "are the Prince and Princess in truth the children of King Theodore?"
"As God hears me, cavalier, they are his twin children, born in the convent of Santa Maria di Fosciandora, in the valley of the Serchio, some leagues to the north of Florence; and on the feast-day of Saint Mark these sixteen years ago."
"Then King Theodore either knew nothing of it, or he was a liar."
"He was a liar, cavalier."
"Stay a moment. I have a mind to tell you the whole story as it came to me, and as I should have told it to the Prince Camillo, had he treated me with decent courtesy."
Marc'antonio ceased blowing the fire and sitting back on his heels
disposed himself to listen. Very briefly I told him of my journey to
London, my visit to the Fleet, and how I received the crown with
Theodore's blessing.
"That he denied having children I will not say: but (I remember well) my father took it for granted that he had no children, and he said nothing to the contrary. Indeed on any other assumption his gift of the crown to me would have been meaningless."
Marc'antonio nodded, following my argument. "But there is another difficulty," I went on. "My father, who does not lie, told me once that King Theodore returned to the island in the year 'thirty-nine, where he stayed but for a week; and that not until a year later did his queen escape across to Tuscany."
But here Marc'antonio shook his head vigorously. "Whoever told your father that, told him an untruth. The Queen fled from Porto Vecchio in that same winter of 'thirty-nine, a few days before Christmas. I myself steered the boat that carried her."
"To be sure," said I, "my father may have had his information from
King Theodore."
"The good sisters of the convent," continued Marc'antonio, "received the Queen and did all that was necessary for her. But among them must have been one who loved the Genoese or their gold: for when the children were but ten days old they vanished, having been stolen and handed secretly to the Genoese—yes, cavalier, out of the Queen's own sleeping-chamber. Little doubt had we they were dead—for why should their enemies spare them? And never should we have recovered trace of them but for the Father Domenico, who knew what had become of them (having learnt it, no doubt, among the sisters' confessions, to receive which he visited the convent) and that they were alive and unharmed; but he kept the secret, for his oath's sake, or else waiting for the time to ripen."
"Then King Theodore may also have believed them dead," I suggested. "Let us do him that justice. Or he may never have known that they existed."
Marc'antonio brushed this aside with a wave of his hand.
"The cavalier," he answered with dignity, "may have heard me allude to my travels?"
"Once or twice."
"The first time that I crossed the Alps"—great Hannibal might have envied the roll in Marc'antonio's voice—"I bore the King tidings of his good fortune. It was Stephanu who followed, a week later, with the tale that the children were stolen."
"Then Theodore did believe them dead."
"At the time, cavalier; at the time, no doubt. But more than twelve years later, being in Brussels—" Here Marc'antonio pulled himself up, with a sudden dark flush and a look of confusion.
"Go on, my friend. You were saying that twelve years later, happening to be in Brussels—"
"By the merest chance, cavalier. Before retiring to England King Theodore spent the most of his exile in Flanders and the Low Countries: and in Brussels, as it happened, I had word of him and learned—but without making myself known to him—that he was seeking his two children."
"Seeking them in Brussels?"
"At a venture, no doubt, cavalier. Put the case that you were seeking two children, of whom you knew only that they were alive and somewhere in Europe—like two fleas, as you might say, in a bundle of straw—"
I looked at Marc'antonio and saw that he was lying, but politely forbore to tell him so.
"Then Theodore knew that his children were alive?" said I musing.
"Yet he gave my father to understand that he had no children."
"Mbe, but he was a great liar, that Theodore? Always when it profited, and sometimes for the pleasure of it."
"Nevertheless, to disinherit his own son!"
Marc'antonio's shoulders went up to his ears. "He knew well enough what comedy he was playing. Disinherit his own son? We Corsicans, he might be sure, would never permit that: and meanwhile your father's money bought him out of prison. Ajo, it is simple as milking the she-goat yonder!"
"If you knew my father better, Marc'antonio, you would find it not altogether so simple as you suppose. King Theodore might have told my father that these children lived, and my father would yet have bought his freedom for their sake; yes, and helped him to the last shilling and the last drop of blood to restore them to the Queen their mother."
"Verily, cavalier, I knew your father to be a madman," said
Marc'antonio, gravely, after considering my words for awhile.
"But such madness as you speak of, who could take into account?"
"Eh, Marc'antonio? What acquaintance have you with my father, that you should call him mad?"
"I remember him well, cavalier, and his long sojourning with my late master the Count Ugo at his palace of Casalabriva above the Taravo, and the love there was between him and my young mistress that is now the Queen Emilia. Lovers they were for all eyes to see but the old Count's. Mbe! we all gossiped of it, we servants and clansmen of the Colonne—even I, that kept the goats over Bicchivano, on the road leading up to the palace, and watched the two as they walked together, and was of an age to think of these things. A handsomer couple none could wish to see, and we watched them with good will; for the Englishman touched her hand with a kind of worship as a devout man touches his beads, and they told me that in his own country he owned great estates—greater even than the Count's. Indeed, cavalier, had your father thought less of love and more of ambition there is no saying but he might have reached out for the crown, and his love would have come to him afterwards. But, as the saying goes, while Peter stalked the mufro Paul stole the mountain: and again says the proverb, 'Bury not your treasure in another's orchard.' Along came this Theodore, and with a few lies took the crown and the jewel with it. So your father went away, and has come again after many years; and at the first I did not recognize him, for time has dealt heavily with us all. But afterwards, and before he spoke his name, I knew him—partly by his great stature, partly by his carriage, and partly, cavalier, by the likeness your youth bears to his as I remember it. So you have the tale."
"And in the telling, Marc'antonio," said I, "it appears that you, who champion his children, bear Theodore's memory no good will."
"Theodore!" Marc'antonio spat again. "If he were alive here and before me, I would shoot him where he stood."
"For what cause?" I asked, surprised by the shake in his voice.
But Marc'antonio turned to the fire again, and would not answer.
As I remember, some three or four days passed before I contrived to draw him into further talk; and, curiously enough, after trying him a dozen times per ambages (as old Mr. Grylls would have said) and in vain, on the point of despair I succeeded with a few straight words.
"Marc'antonio," said I, "I have a notion about King Theodore."
"I am listening, cavalier."
"A suspicion only, and horribly to his discredit."
"It is the likelier to be near the truth."
"Could he—think you—have sold his children to the Genoese?"
Marc'antonio cast a quick glance at me. "I have thought of that," he said quietly. "He was capable of it."
"It would explain why they were allowed to live. A father, however deep his treachery, would make that a part of the bargain."
Marc'antonio nodded.
"I would give something," I went on, "to know how Father Domenico came by the secret. By confession of one of the sisters, you suggest. Well, it may be so. But there might be another way—only take warning that I do not like this Father Domenico—"
"I am listening."
"Is it not possible that he himself contrived the kidnapping—always with King Theodore's consent?"
"Not possible," decided Marc'antonio, after a moment's thought. "No more than you do I like the man: but consider. It was he who sent us to find and bring them back to Corsica. At this moment, when (as I will confess to you) all odds are against it, he holds to their cause; he, a comfortable priest and a loose liver, has taken to the bush and fares hardly for his zeal."
"My good friend," said I, "you reason as though a traitor must needs work always in a straight line and never quarrel with his paymaster; whereas by the very nature of treachery these are two of the unlikeliest things in the world. Now, putting this aside, tell me if you think your Prince Camillo the better for Father Domenico's company? . . . You do not, I see."
"I will not say that," answered Marc'antonio, slowly. "The Prince has good qualities. He will make a Corsican in time. But, I own to you, he has been ill brought up, and before ever he met with Father Domenico. As yet he thinks only of his own will, like a spoilt child; and of his pleasures, which are not those of a king such as he desires to be."
Said I at a guess, "But the pleasures—eh, Marc'antonio?—such as a forward boy learns on the pavements; of Brussels, for example?"
I thought for the moment he would have knifed me, so fiercely he started back and then craned forward at me, showing his white teeth. I saw that my luck with him hung on this moment.
"Tell me," I said, facing him and dragging hard on the hurry in my voice, "and remember that I owe no love to this cub. You may be loyal to him as you will, but I am the Princess's man, I! You heard me promise her. Tell me, why has she no recruits?"
He drew back yet farther, still with his teeth bared. "Am I not her man?" he almost hissed.
"So you tell me," I answered, with a scornful laugh, brazening it out. "You are her man, and Stephanu is her man, and the Prince too, and the Father Domenico, no doubt. Yes, you are all her men, you four: but why can she collect no others?" I paused a moment and, holding up a hand, checked them off contemptuously upon my fingers. "Four of you! and among you at least one traitor! Stop!" said I, as he made a motion to protest. "You four—you and Stephanu and the Prince and Fra Domenico—know something which it concerns her fame to keep hidden; you four, and no other that I wot of. You are all her men, her champions: and yet this secret leaks out and poisons all minds against the cause. Because of it, Paoli will have no dealing with you. Because of it, though you raise your standard on the mountains, no Corsicans flock to it. Pah!" I went on, my scorn confounding him, "I called you her champion, the other day! Be so good as consider that I spoke derisively. Four pretty champions she has, indeed; of whom one is a traitor, and the other three have not the spirit to track him down and kill him!"
Marc'antonio stood close by me now. To my amazement he was shaking like a man with the ague.
"Cavalier, you do not understand!" he protested hoarsely: but his eyes were wistful, as though he hoped for something which yet he dared not hear.
"Eh? I do not understand? Well, now, listen to me. I am her man, too, but in a different fashion. You heard what I swore to her, that day, beside my friend's body; that whether in hate or love, and be her need what it might, I would help her. Hear me repeat it, lying here with my both legs broken, helpless as a log. Let strength return to me and I will help her yet, and in spite of all her champions."
"In hate or in love, cavalier?" Marc'antonio's voice shook with his whole body.
"That shall be my secret," answered I. (Yet well I knew what the answer was, and had known it since the moment she had bent over me in the sty, filing at my chain.) "It had better be hate—eh, Marc'antonio?—seeing that for some reason she hates all men, except you, perhaps, and Stephanu, and her brother."
"We do not count, I and Stephanu. Her brother she adores. But the rest of men she hates, cavalier, and with good cause."
"Then it had better be hate?"
"Yes, yes"—and there was appeal in his voice—"it had a thousand times better be hate, could such a miracle happen." He peered into my eyes for a moment, and shook his head. "But it is not hate, cavalier; you do not deceive me. And since it is not—"
"Well?"
"It were better for you—far better—that Giuse had died of the wound you gave him."
"Why, what on earth has Giuse to do with this matter?" I demanded.
Indeed I had all but forgotten Giuse's existence.
"Only this; that had Giuse died, they would have killed you out of hand in vendetta."
"You are an amiable race, you Corsicans!"
"And you came, cavalier, meaning to reign over us! Now, I have taken a liking to you and will give you a warning. Be like your father, and give up all for love."
"Suppose," said I, after a pause, "that for love I choose rather to dare all?"
"Signore"—he stepped back and, raising himself erect, flung out both hands passionately—"Take her, if you must take her, away from Corsica! She is innocent, but here they will never understand. What she did she did for her brother, far from home: yet he—he has no thanks, no bowels of pity, and here at home it is killing her! There was a young man, a noble, head of the family of Rocca Serra by Sartene—" Marc'antonio broke off, trembling.
"You must finish," said I, in a voice cold and slow as the chilled blood about my heart.
"There was no harm in her. By her brother's will they were betrothed. She hated the youth, and he—he was eager—until the day before the marriage—"
"What happened, Marc'antonio?"
"He slew himself, cavalier. Some story reached him, and he slew himself with his own gun. O cavalier, if you can help us, take her away from Corsica!"
He cast up both hands and ran from me.
CHAPTER XX.
I LEARN OF LIBERTY, AND AM RESTORED TO IT.
"A! Fredome is a noble thing:
Fredome mayse man to haif liking."
BARBOUR, The Bruce.
"Non enim propter gloriam divitas aut honores pugnanus,
sed propter libertatem solummodo, quam nemo bonus nisi cum vita
amittit.—"
Lit. Comit. et Baron. Scotoe ad Pap. A.D. 1320
(quoted by BOSWELL).
"When corn ripeth in every steade
Mury it is in feld and hyde;
Sinne hit is and shame to chyde.
Knyghtis wolleth on huntyng ride,
The deor galopith by wodis side,
He that can his tyme abyde,
At his wille him schal betyde."
Alisaunder.
More than this Marc'antonio would not tell me, though I laid many traps for more during the long weeks my bones were healing. But although he denied me his confidence in this matter, he told me much of this Corsica I had so childishly invaded, and a great deal to make me blush for my random ignorance; of the people, their untiring feud with Genoa, their insufferable wrongs, their succession of heroic leaders. He did not speak of their passion for liberty, as a man will not of what is holiest in his love. He had no need. It spoke for itself in the ring of his voice, in the glooms and lights of his eyes, as we lay on either side of our wood fire; and I listened, till the embers died down, to the deeds of Jean Paul de Leca, of Giudice della Rocca, of Bel Messer, of Sampiero di Ornano, of the great Gaffori and other chiefs, all famous in their day, each in his turn assassinated by Genoese gold. I heard of Venaco, where the ghost of Bel Messer yet wanders, with the ghosts of his wife and seven children drowned by the Genoese in the little lake of the Seven Bowls. I heard of the twenty-one shepherds of Bastelica who marched down from their mountains, and routed eight hundred Greeks and Genoese of the garrison of Ajaccio; how at length they were intercepted and slain between the river and the marshes—all but one youth, who, stretched among his comrades and feigning death, was taken and led to execution through the streets of the town, carrying six heads, and each a kinsman's. I heard how Gaffori besieged his own house; how the Genoese, having stolen his infant son, exposed the child in the breach to stop the firing; and how Gaffori called to them "I was a Corsican before I was a father," and the cannonade went on, yet the child miraculously escaped unhurt. I heard of Sampiero's last fight with his murderers, in the torrent bed under the castle of Giglio; of Maria Gentili of Oletta, who died to save her brother from death. . . . And until now these had not even been names to me! I had adventured to win this kingdom as a man goes out with a gun to shoot partridges. I could not hide my shame of it.
"You have taught me much in these evenings, O Marc'antonio," said I.
"And you, cavalier, have taught me much."
"In what way, my friend?"
Marc'antonio looked across the fire with a smile, and held up a carved piece of wood he had been sharpening to a point. In shape it resembled an elephant's tusk, and it formed part of an apparatus to keep a pig from straying, two of these tusks being so fastened above the beast's neck that they caught and hampered him in the undergrowth.
"Eccu!" said Marc'antonio. "You have taught me to be a swinekeeper, for instance. There is no shame in any calling but what a man brings to it. You have taught me to endure lesser things for the sake of greater, and that is a hard lesson at my age."
From Marc'antonio I learned not only that this Corsica was a land with its own ambitions, which no stranger might share—a nation small but earnest, in which my presence was merely impertinent and laughable withal—but that the Prince Camillo's chances of becoming its king were only a trifle less derisory than my own. Marc'antonio would not admit this in so many words; but he gave me to understand that Pasquale Paoli had by this time cleared the interior of the Genoese, and was thrusting them little by little from their last grip on the extremities of the island—Calvi and some smaller strongholds in the north, Bonifacio in the south, and a few isolated forts along the littoral; that the people looked up to him and to him only; that the constitution he had invented was working and working well; that his writ ran throughout Corsica, and his laws were enforced, even those which he had aimed at vendetta and cross-vendetta; and that the militia was faithful to him, almost to a man. "Nor will I deny, cavalier," he added, "that he seems to me an honest patriot and a wise one. They say he seeks the Crown, however."
"Well, and why not?" I demanded. "If he can unite Corsica and win her freedom, does he not deserve to be her king?"
Marc'antonio shook his head.
"Would your Prince Camillo make a better one?" I urged.
"It is a question of right, cavalier. I love this Paoli for trouncing the Genoese; but for denying the Prince his rights I must hate him, and especially for the grounds of his denial."
"Tell me those grounds precisely, Marc'antonio."
But he would not; and somehow I knew that they concerned the
Princess.
"Paoli is generous in that he leaves us in peace," he answered, evading the question; "and I must hate him all the more for this, because he spares us out of contempt."
"Yet," said I, musing, "that priest must have a card up his sleeve. Rat that he looked, I cannot fancy him sticking to a ship until she foundered."
Certainly we were left in peace. For any sign that reached to us there, in our cup of he hills, the whole island might have been desolate. The forest and the beasts in it, tame and wild, belonged—so Marc'antonio informed me—to the Colonne; the slopes between us and the sea to the lost great colony of Paomia. No one disturbed us. Week followed week, yet since the Prince had passed with his men no traveller came down the path which ran between our hut and Nat's grave, over which the undergrowth already was pushing its autumn shoots. Indeed, the path led no whither but to the sea and the forsaken village. Twice a week Marc'antonio would leave me for five or six hours and return with bread, and at whiles with a bag of dried figs or a basket of cheeses and olives for supplement. I learned that he purchased them in a paese to the southward, beyond the forest and beyond the ridge of the hills; but he made a mystery of this, and I had to be content with his word that in Corsica folk in the bush need never starve. Also, sometimes I would hear his gun, and he would bring me home five or six brace of blackbirds strung on a wand of osier; and these birds grew plumper and made the better eating as autumn painted the arbutus with scarlet berries.
To me, so long held a prisoner within the hut, this change of season came with a shock upon the never-to-be-sufficiently-blessed day when Marc'antonio, having examined and felt my bones and pronounced them healed, lifted and bore me, as you might carry a child, up the path to the old camp on the ridge. He was proud (good man) as he had a right to be. Surgeons in Corsica there might be none, as he assured me, or none capable of probing an ordinary bullet wound. But in youth he had learnt the art of bone-setting, and practised it upon the sheep which slipped and broke themselves in the gorge of the Taravo; and his care of me was a masterpiece, to be boasted over to his dying day. "The smallest limp, at the outside!" he promised me; he would not answer entirely for the left leg, that thrice-teasing, thrice-accursed fracture. Another ten days, and we might be sure; he could not allow me to set foot to ground under ten days. But while he carried me he whistled a lively air, and broke off to promise me good shooting before a month was out—shooting of blackbirds, of deer perhaps, perhaps even of a mufro. Here the whistling grew largo espressivo.
And I? I drew the upland air into my lungs, and the scent of the recovered macchia through my nostrils, and inhaled it as a man inhales tobacco-smoke, and could have whooped for joy. Not by one-fifth was the scent so intense as I have since smelt it in spring, when all Corsica breaks into flower; yet intense enough and exhilarating after the dank odours of the valley. But the colours! On a sudden the macchia had burst into fruit—carmine berries of the sarsaparilla, upon which a few late flowerets yet drooped, duller berries of the lentisk, olive-like berries of the phillyria, velvet purple berries of the myrtle, and (putting all to shade) yellow and scarlet fruit of the arbutus, clustering like fairy oranges, here and there so thickly that the whole thicket was afire and aflame, enough to have deceived Moses! God, how good to see it and be alive!
Marc'antonio bore me up through the swimming air and laid me in the shadow of the cave—her cave. It was empty as she had left it, and my back pressed the very bed of fern on which she had lain. The fern was dry now, after long winnowing by the wind that found its way into every crevice of this mountain summit.
How could I choose but think of her? Thinking of her, how could I choose but weary myself in vain speculation, by a hundred guesses attempting to force my way past the edge of the mystery, the sinister shadow which wrapped her round, and penetrate to the heart of it? I recalled her beauty, childlike yet sullen; her eyes, so forthright at times and transparently innocent, yet at times so swiftly clouded with suspicion, not merely shy, but shy with terror, like the eyes of a wild creature entrapped; her bearing, by turns disdainful and defiant with a guarded shame. This turf, these boulders, had made her bower, these matted creepers her curtain. Here she had lived secure among savage men, each one of them ready to die—so Marc'antonio assured me, and all that I had seen confirmed it—rather than injure a hair of her head or suffer it to be injured. She was a king's daughter. Yet this lad of the Rocca Serras, noble, of the best blood of the island, had turned his own gun upon himself rather than wed with her.