ROLFE coming down by boat from Varina, had reached the town in the dusk of that day which had seen the arrival of the Santa Teresa, and I had gone to him before I slept that night. Early morning found us together again in the field behind the church. We had not long to wait in the chill air and dew-drenched grass. When the red rim of the sun showed like a fire between the trunks of the pines came my Lord Carnal, and with him Master Pory and Dr. Lawrence Bohun.
My lord and I bowed to each other profoundly. Rolfe with my sword and Master Pory with my lord's stepped aside to measure the blades. Dr. Bohun, muttering something about the feverishness of the early air, wrapped his cloak about him, and huddled in among the roots of a gigantic cedar. I stood with my back to the church, and my face to the red water between us and the illimitable forest; my lord opposite me, six feet away. He was dressed again splendidly in black and scarlet, colors he much affected, and, with the dark beauty of his face and the arrogant grace with which he stood there waiting for his sword, made a picture worth looking upon.
Rolfe and the Secretary came back to us. “If you kill him, Ralph,” said the former in a low voice, as he took my doublet from me, “you are to put yourself in my hands and do as you are bid.”
“Which means that you will try to smuggle me north to the Dutch. Thanks, friend, but I'll see the play out here.”
“You were ever obstinate, self-willed, reckless—and the man most to my heart,” he continued. “Have your way, in God's name, but I wish not to see what will come of it! All's ready, Master Secretary.”
Very slowly that worthy stooped down and examined the ground, narrowly and quite at his leisure. “I like it not, Master Rolfe,” he declared at length. “Here is a molehill, and there a fairy ring.”
“I see neither,” said Rolfe. “It looks as smooth as a table. But we can easily shift under the cedars where there is no grass.”
“Here's a projecting root,” announced the Secretary, when the new ground had been reached.
Rolfe shrugged his shoulders, but we moved again.
“The light comes jaggedly through the branches,” objected my lord's second. “Better try the open again.”
Rolfe uttered an exclamation of impatience, and my lord stamped his foot on the ground. “What is this foolery, sir?” the latter cried fiercely. “The ground's well enough, and there 's sufficient light to die by.”
“Let the light pass, then,” said his second resignedly. “Gentlemen, are you read—Ods blood! my lord, I had not noticed the roses upon your lordship's shoes! They are so large and have such a fall that they sweep the ground on either side your foot; you might stumble in all that dangling ribbon and lace. Allow me to remove them.”
He unsheathed his knife, and, sinking upon his knees, began leisurely to sever the threads that held the roses to the leather. As he worked, he looked neither at the roses nor at my lord's angry face, but beneath his own bent arm toward the church and the town beyond.
How long he would have sawed away at the threads there is no telling; for my lord, amongst whose virtues patience was not one, broke from him, and with an oath stooped and tore away the offending roses with his own hand, then straightened himself and gripped his sword more closely. “I've learned one thing in this d——d land,” he snarled, “and that is where not to choose a second. You, sir,” to Rolfe, “give the word.”
Master Pory rose from his knees, unruffled and unabashed, and still with a curiously absent expression upon his fat face and with his ears cocked in the direction of the church. “One moment, gentlemen,” he said. “I have just bethought me”—
“On guard!” cried Rolfe, and cut him short.
The King's favorite was no mean antagonist. Once or twice the thought crossed my mind that here, where I least desired it, I had met my match. The apprehension passed. He fought as he lived, with a fierce intensity, a headlong passion, a brute force, bearing down and overwhelming most obstacles. But that I could tire him out I soon knew.
The incessant flash and clash of steel, the quick changes in position, the need to bring all powers of body and mind to aid of eye and wrist, the will to win, the shame of loss, the rage and lust of blood,—there was no sight or sound outside that trampled circle that could force itself upon our brain or make us glance aside. If there was a sudden commotion amongst the three witnesses, if an expression of immense relief and childlike satisfaction reigned in Master Pory's face, we knew it not. We were both bleeding,—I from a pin prick on the shoulder, he from a touch beneath the arm. He made a desperate thrust, which I parried, and the blades clashed. A third came down upon them with such force that the sparks flew.
“In the King's name!” commanded the Governor.
We fell apart, panting, white with rage, staring at the unexpected disturbers of our peace. They were the Governor, the commander, the Cape Merchant, and the watch.
“Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace!” exclaimed Master Pory, and retired to the cedar and Dr. Bohun.
“This ends here, gentlemen,” said the Governor firmly. “You are both bleeding. It is enough.”
“Out of my way, sir!” cried my lord, foaming at the mouth. He made a mad thrust over the Governor's extended arm at me, who was ready enough to meet him. “Have at thee, thou bridegroom!” he said between his teeth.
The Governor caught him by the wrist. “Put up your sword, my lord, or, as I stand here, you shall give it into the commander's hands!”
“Hell and furies!” ejaculated my lord. “Do you know who I am, sir?”
“Ay,” replied the Governor sturdily, “I do know. It is because of that knowledge, my Lord Carnal, that I interfere in this affair. Were you other than you are, you and this gentleman might fight until doomsday, and meet with no hindrance from me. Being what you are, I will prevent any renewal of this duel, by fair means if I may, by foul if I must.”
He left my lord, and came over to me. “Since when have you been upon my Lord Warwick's side, Ralph Percy?” he demanded, lowering his voice.
“I am not so,” I said.
“Then appearances are mightily deceitful,” he retorted.
“I know what you mean, Sir George,” I answered. “I know that if the King's darling should meet death or maiming in this fashion, upon Virginian soil, the Company, already so out of favor, might find some difficulty in explaining things to his Majesty's satisfaction. But I think my Lord Southampton and Sir Edwyn Sandys and Sir George Yeardley equal to the task, especially if they are able to deliver to his Majesty the man whom his Majesty will doubtless consider the true and only rebel and murderer. Let us fight it out, sir. You can all retire to a distance and remain in profound ignorance of any such affair. If I fall, you have nothing to fear. If he falls,—why, I shall not run away, and the Due Return sails to-morrow.”
He eyed me closely from under frowning brows.
“And when your wife's a widow, what then?” he asked abruptly.
I have not known many better men than this simple, straightforward, soldierly Governor. The manliness of his character begot trust, invited confidence. Men told him of their hidden troubles almost against their will, and afterward felt neither shame nor fear, knowing the simplicity of his thoughts and the reticence of his speech. I looked him in the eyes, and let him read what I would have shown to no other, and felt no shame. “The Lord may raise her up a helper,” I said. “At least she won't have to marry him.”
He turned on his heel and moved back to his former station between us two. “My Lord Carnal,” he said, “and you, Captain Percy, heed what I say; for what I say I will do. You may take your choice: either you will sheathe your swords here in my presence, giving me your word of honor that you will not draw them upon each other before his Majesty shall have made known his will in this matter to the Company, and the Company shall have transmitted it to me, in token of which truce between you you shall touch each other's hands; or you will pass the time between this and the return of the ship with the King's and the Company's will in strict confinement,—you, Captain Percy, in gaol, and you, my Lord Carnal, in my own poor house, where I will use my best endeavors to make the days pass as pleasantly as possible for your lordship. I have spoken, gentlemen.”
There was no protest. For my own part, I knew Yeardley too well to attempt any; moreover, had I been in his place, his course should have been mine. For my Lord Carnal,—what black thoughts visited that fierce and sullen brain I know not, but there was acquiescence in his face, haughty, dark, and vengeful though it was. Slowly and as with one motion we sheathed our swords, and more slowly still repeated the few words after the Governor. His Honor's countenance shone with relief. “Take each other by the hand, gentlemen, and then let 's all to breakfast at my own house, where there shall be no feud save with good capon pasty and jolly good ale.” In dead silence my lord and I touched each other's finger tips.
The world was now a flood of sunshine, the mist on the river vanishing, the birds singing, the trees waving in the pleasant morning air. From the town came the roll of the drum summoning all to the week-day service. The bells too began to ring, sounding sweetly through the clear air. The Governor took off his hat. “Let's all to church, gentlemen,” he said gravely. “Our cheeks are flushed as with a fever and our pulses run high this morning. There be some among us, perhaps, that have in their hearts discontent, anger, and hatred. I know no better place to take such passions, provided we bring them not forth again.”
We went in and sat down. Jeremy Sparrow was in the pulpit. Singly or in groups the town folk entered. Down the aisle strode bearded men, old soldiers, adventurers, sailors, scarred body and soul; young men followed, younger sons and younger brothers, prodigals whose portion had been spent, whose souls now ate of the husks; to the servants' benches came dull laborers, dimly comprehending, groping in the twilight; women entered softly and slowly, some with children clinging to their skirts. One came alone and knelt alone, her face shadowed by her mantle. Amongst the servants stood a slave or two, blindly staring, and behind them all one of that felon crew sent us by the King.
Through the open windows streamed the summer sunshine, soft and fragrant, impartial and unquestioning, caressing alike the uplifted face of the minister, the head of the convict, and all between. The minister's voice was grave and tender when he read and prayed, but in the hymn it rose above the people's like the voice of some mighty archangel. That triumphant singing shook the air, and still rang in the heart while we said the Creed.
When the service was over, the congregation waited for the Governor to pass out first. At the door he pressed me to go with him and his party to his own house, and I gave him thanks, but made excuse to stay away. When he and the nobleman who was his guest had left the churchyard, and the townspeople too were gone, I and my wife and the minister walked home together through the dewy meadow, with the splendor of the morning about us, and the birds caroling from every tree and thicket.
THE summer slipped away, and autumn came, with the purple of the grape and the yellowing corn, the nuts within the forest, and the return of the countless wild fowl to the marshes and reedy river banks, and still I stayed in Jamestown, and my wife with me, and still the Santa Teresa rode at anchor in the river below the fort. If the man whom she brought knew that by tarrying in Virginia he risked his ruin with the King, yet, with a courage worthy of a better cause, he tarried.
Now and then ships came in, but they were small, belated craft. The most had left England before the sailing of the Santa Teresa; the rest, private ventures, trading for clapboard or sassafras, knew nothing of court affairs. Only the Sea Flower, sailing from London a fortnight after the Santa Teresa, and much delayed by adverse winds, brought a letter from the deputy treasurer to Yeardley and the Council. From Rolfe I learned its contents. It spoke of the stir that was made by the departure from the realm of the King's favorite. “None know where he hath gone. The King looks dour; 't is hinted that the privy council are as much at sea as the rest of the world; my Lord of Buckingham saith nothing, but his following—which of late hath somewhat decayed—is so increased that his antechambers cannot hold the throngs that come to wait upon him. Some will have it that my Lord Carnal hath fled the kingdom to escape the Tower; others, that the King hath sent him on a mission to the King of Spain about this detested Spanish match; others, that the gadfly hath stung him and he is gone to America,—to search for Raleigh's gold mine, maybe. This last most improbable; but if 't is so, and he should touch at Virginia, receive him with all honor. If indeed he is not out of favor, the Company may find in him a powerful friend; of powerful enemies, God knows, there is no lack!”
Thus the worthy Master Ferrar. And at the bottom of the letter, among other news of city and court, mention was made of the disappearance of a ward of the King's, the Lady Jocelyn Leigh. Strict search had been made, but the unfortunate lady had not been found. “'T is whispered that she hath killed herself; also, that his Majesty had meant to give her in marriage to my Lord Carnal. But that all true love and virtue and constancy have gone from the age, one might conceive that the said lord had but fled the court for a while, to indulge his grief in some solitude of hill and stream and shady vale,—the lost lady being right worthy of such dole.”
In sooth she was, but my lord was not given to such fashion of mourning.
The summer passed, and I did nothing. What was there I could do? I had written by the Due Return to Sir Edwyn, and to my cousin, the Earl of Northumberland. The King hated Sir Edwyn as he hated tobacco and witchcraft. “Choose the devil, but not Sir Edwyn Sandys!” had been his passionate words to the Company the year before. A certain fifth of November had despoiled my Lord of Northumberland of wealth, fame, and influence. Small hope there was in those two. That the Governor and Council, remembering old dangers shared, wished me well I did not doubt, but that was all. Yeardley had done all he could do, more than most men would have dared to do, in procuring this delay. There was no further help in him; nor would I have asked it. Already out of favor with the Warwick faction, he had risked enough for me and mine. I could not flee with my wife to the Indians, exposing her, perhaps, to a death by fierce tortures; moreover, Opechancanough had of late strangely taken to returning to the settlements those runaway servants and fugitives from justice which before we had demanded from him in vain. If even it had been possible to run the gauntlet of the Indian villages, war parties, and hunting bands, what would have been before us but endless forest and a winter which for us would have had no spring? I could not see her die of hunger and cold, or by the teeth of the wolves. I could not do what I should have liked to do,—take, single-handed, that King's ship with its sturdy crew and sail with her south and ever southwards, before us nothing more formidable than Spanish ships, and beyond them blue waters, spice winds, new lands, strange islands of the blest.
There seemed naught that I could do, naught that she could do. Our Fate had us by the hands, and held us fast. We stood still, and the days came and went like dreams.
While the Assembly was in session I had my part to act as Burgess from my hundred. Each day I sat with my fellows in the church, facing the Governor in his great velvet chair, the Council on either hand, and listened to the droning of old Twine, the clerk, like the droning of the bees without the window; to the chant of the sergeant-at-arms; to long and windy discourses from men who planted better than they spoke; to remarks by the Secretary, witty, crammed with Latin and traveled talk; to the Governor's slow, weighty words. At Weyanoke we had had trouble with the Indians. I was one who loved them not and had fought them well, for which reason the hundred chose me its representative. In the Assembly it was my part to urge a greater severity toward those our natural enemies, a greater watchfulness on our part, the need for palisades and sentinels, the danger that lay in their acquisition of firearms, which, in defiance of the law, men gave them in exchange for worthless Indian commodities. This Indian business was the chief matter before the Assembly. I spoke when I thought speech was needed, and spoke strongly; for my heart foreboded that which was to come upon us too soon and too surely. The Governor listened gravely, nodding his head; Master Pory, too, the Cape Merchant, and West were of my mind; but the remainder were besotted by their own conceit, esteeming the very name of Englishman sentinel and palisade enough, or trusting in the smooth words and vows of brotherhood poured forth so plentifully by that red Apollyon, Opechancanough.
When the day's work was done, and we streamed out of the church,—the Governor and Council first, the rest of us in order,—it was to find as often as not a red and black figure waiting for us among the graves. Sometimes it joined itself to the Governor, sometimes to Master Pory; sometimes the whole party, save one, went off with it to the guest house, there to eat, drink, and make merry.
If Virginia and all that it contained, save only that jewel of which it had robbed the court, were out of favor with the King's minion, he showed it not. Perhaps he had accepted the inevitable with a good grace; perhaps it was but his mode of biding his time; but he had shifted into that soldierly frankness of speech and manner, that genial, hail-fellow-well-met air, behind which most safely hides a villain's mind. Two days after that morning behind the church, he had removed himself, his French valets, and his Italian physician from the Governor's house to the newly finished guest house. Here he lived, cock of the walk, taking his ease in his inn, elbowing out all guests save those of his own inviting. If, what with his open face and his open hand, his dinners and bear-baitings and hunting parties, his tales of the court and the wars, his half hints as to the good he might do Virginia with the King, extending even to the lightening of the tax upon our tobacco and the prohibition of the Spanish import, his known riches and power, and the unknown height to which they might attain if his star at court were indeed in the ascendant,—if with these things he slowly, but surely, won to his following all save a very few of those I had thought my fast friends, it was not a thing marvelous or without precedent. Upon his side was good that might be seen and handled; on mine was only a dubious right and a not at all dubious danger. I do not think it plagued me much. The going of those who had it in their heart to wish to go left me content, and for those who fawned upon him from the first, or for the rabble multitude who flung up their caps and ran at his heels, I cared not a doit. There were still Rolfe and West and the Governor, Jeremy Sparrow and Diccon.
My lord and I met, perforce, in the street, at the Governor's house, in church, on the river, in the saddle. If we met in the presence of others, we spoke the necessary formal words of greeting or leave-taking, and he kept his countenance; if none were by, off went the mask. The man himself and I looked each other in the eyes and passed on. Once we encountered on a late evening among the graves, and I was not alone. Mistress Percy had been restless, and had gone, despite the minister's protests, to sit upon the river bank. When I returned from the assembly and found her gone, I went to fetch her. A storm was rolling slowly up. Returning the long way through the churchyard, we came upon him sitting beside a sunken grave, his knees drawn up to meet his chin, his eyes gloomily regardful of the dark broad river, the unseen ocean, and the ship that could not return for weeks to come. We passed him in silence,—I with a slight bow, she with a slighter curtsy. An hour later, going down the street in the dusk of the storm, I ran against Dr. Lawrence Bohun. “Don't stop me!” he panted. “The Italian doctor is away in the woods gathering simples, and they found my Lord Carnal in a fit among the graves, half an hour agone.” My lord was bled, and the next morning went hunting.
The lady whom I had married abode with me in the minister's house, held her head high, and looked the world in the face. She seldom went from home, but when she did take the air it was with pomp and circumstance. When that slender figure and exquisite face, set off by as rich apparel as could be bought from a store of finery brought in by the Southampton, and attended by a turbaned negress and a serving man who had been to the wars, and had escaped the wheel by the skin of his teeth, appeared in the street, small wonder if a greater commotion arose than had been since the days of the Princess Pocahontas and her train of dusky beauties. To this fairer, more imperial dame gold lace doffed its hat and made its courtliest bow, and young planters bent to their saddlebows, while the common folk nudged and stared and had their say. The beauty, the grace, the pride, that deigned small response to well-meant words,—all that would have been intolerable in plain Mistress Percy, once a waiting maid, then a piece of merchandise to be sold for one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco, then the wife of a poor gentleman, was pardoned readily enough to the Lady Jocelyn Leigh, the ward of the King, the bride to be (so soon as the King's Court of High Commission should have snapped in twain an inconvenient and ill-welded fetter) of the King's minion.
So she passed like a splendid vision through the street perhaps once a week. On Sundays she went with me to church, and the people looked at her instead of at the minister, who rebuked them not, because his eyes were upon the same errand.
The early autumn passed and the leaves began to turn, and still all things were as they had been, save that the Assembly sat no longer. My fellow Burgesses went back to their hundreds, but my house at Weyanoke knew me no more. In a tone that was apologetic, but firm, the Governor had told me that he wished my company at Jamestown. I was pleased enough to stay, I assured him,—as indeed I was. At Weyanoke, the thunderbolt would fall without warning; at Jamestown, at least I could see, coming up the river, the sails of the Due Return or what other ship the Company might send.
The color of the leaves deepened, and there came a season of a beauty singular and sad, like a smile left upon the face of the dead summer. Over all things, near and far, the forest where it met the sky, the nearer woods, the great river, and the streams that empty into it, there hung a blue haze, soft and dream-like. The forest became a painted forest, with an ever thinning canopy and an ever thickening carpet of crimson and gold; everywhere there was a low rustling underfoot and a slow rain of color. It was neither cold nor hot, but very quiet, and the birds went by like shadows,—a listless and forgetful weather, in which we began to look, every hour of every day, for the sail which we knew we should not see for weeks to come.
Good Master Bucke tarried with Master Thorpe at Henricus, recruiting his strength, and Jeremy Sparrow preached in his pulpit, slept in his chamber, and worked in his garden. This garden ran down to the green bank of the river; and here, sitting idly by the stream, her chin in her hand and her dark eyes watching the strong, free sea birds as they came and went, I found my wife one evening, as I came from the fort, where had been some martial exercise. Thirty feet away Master Jeremy Sparrow worked among the dying flowers, and hummed:—
He and I had agreed that when I must needs be absent he should be within call of her; for I believed my Lord Carnal very capable of intruding himself into her presence. That house and garden, her movements and mine, were spied upon by his foreign hirelings, I knew perfectly well.
As I sat down upon the bank at her feet, she turned to me with a sudden passion. “I am weary of it all!” she cried. “I am tired of being pent up in this house and garden, and of the watch you keep upon me. And if I go abroad, it is worse! I hate all those shameless faces that stare at me as if I were in the pillory. I am pilloried before you all, and I find the experience sufficiently bitter. And when I think that that man whom I hate, hate, hate, breathes the air that I breathe, it stifles me! If I could fly away like those birds, if I could only be gone from this place for even a day!”
“I would beg leave to take you home, to Weyanoke,” I said after a pause, “but I cannot go and leave the field to him.”
“And I cannot go,” she answered. “I must watch for that ship and that King's command that my Lord Carnal thinks potent enough to make me his wife. King's commands are strong, but a woman's will is stronger. At the last I shall know what to do. But now why may I not take Angela and cross that strip of sand and go into the woods on the other side? They are so fair and strange,—all red and yellow,—and they look very still and peaceful. I could walk in them, or lie down under the trees and forget awhile, and they are not at all far away.” She looked at me eagerly.
“You could not go alone,” I told her. “There would be danger in that. But to-morrow, if you choose, I and Master Sparrow and Diccon will take you there. A day in the woods is pleasant enough, and will do none of us harm. Then you may wander as you please, fill your arms with colored leaves, and forget the world. We will watch that no harm comes nigh you, but otherwise you shall not be disturbed.”
She broke into delighted laughter. Of all women the most steadfast of soul, her outward moods were as variable as a child's. “Agreed!” she cried. “You and the minister and Diccon Demon shall lay your muskets across your knees, and Angela shall witch you into stone with her old, mad, heathen charms. And then—and then—I will gather more gold than had King Midas; I will dance with the hamadryads; I will find out Oberon and make Titania jealous!”
“I do not doubt that you could do so,” I said, as she sprang to her feet, childishly eager and radiantly beautiful.
I rose to go in with her, for it was supper time, but in a moment changed my mind, and resumed my seat on the bank of turf. “Do you go in,” I said. “There's a snake near by, in those bushes below the bank. I'll kill the creature, and then I'll come to supper.”
When she was gone, I walked to where, ten feet away, the bank dipped to a clump of reeds and willows planted in the mud on the brink of the river. Dropping on my knees I leaned over, and, grasping a man by the collar, lifted him from the slime where he belonged to the bank beside me.
It was my Lord Carnal's Italian doctor that I had so fished up. I had seen him before, and had found in his very small, mean figure clad all in black, and his narrow face with malignant eyes, and thin white lips drawn tightly over gleaming teeth, something infinitely repulsive, sickening to the sight as are certain reptiles to the touch.
“There are no simples or herbs of grace to be found amongst reeds and half-drowned willows,” I said. “What did so learned a doctor look for in so unlikely a place?”
He shrugged his shoulders and made play with his clawlike hands, as if he understood me not. It was a lie, for I knew that he and the English tongue were sufficiently acquainted. I told him as much, and he shot at me a most venomous glance, but continued to shrug, gesticulate, and jabber in Italian. At last I saw nothing better to do than to take him, still by the collar, to the edge of the garden next the churchyard, and with the toe of my boot to send him tumbling among the graves. I watched him pick himself up, set his attire to rights, and go away in the gathering dusk, winding in and out among the graves; and then I went in to supper, and told Mistress Percy that the snake was dead.
SHORTLY before daybreak I was wakened by a voice beneath my window. “Captain Percy,” it cried, “the Governor wishes you at his house!” and was gone.
I dressed and left the house, disturbing no one. Hurrying through the chill dawn, I reached the square not much behind the rapid footsteps of the watch who had wakened me. About the Governor's door were horses, saddled and bridled, with grooms at their heads, men and beasts gray and indistinct, wrapped in the fog. I went up the steps and into the hall, and knocked at the door of the Governor's great room. It opened, and I entered to find Sir George, with Master Pory, Rolfe, West, and others of the Council gathered about the great centre table and talking eagerly. The Governor was but half dressed; West and Rolfe were in jack boots and coats of mail. A man, breathless with hard riding, spattered with swamp mud and torn by briers, stood, cap in hand, staring from one to the other.
“In good time, Captain Percy!” cried the Governor. “Yesterday you called the profound peace with the Indians, of which some of us boasted, the lull before the storm. Faith, it looks to-day as though you were in the right, after all!”
“What 's the matter, sir?” I asked, advancing to the table.
“Matter enough!” he answered. “This man has come, post haste, from the plantations above Paspahegh. Three days ago, Morgan, the trader, was decoyed into the woods by that Paspahegh fool and bully, Nemattanow, whom they call Jack of the Feather, and there murdered. Yesterday, out of sheer bravado, the Indian turned up at Morgan's house, and Morgan's men shot him down. They buried the dog, and thought no more of it. Three hours ago, Chanco the Christian went to the commander and warned him that the Paspaheghs were in a ferment, and that the warriors were painting themselves black. The commander sent off at once to me, and I see naught better to do than to dispatch you with a dozen men to bring them to their senses. But there 's to be no harrying nor battle. A show of force is all that 's needed,—I'll stake my head upon it. Let them see that we are not to be taken unawares, but give them fair words. That they may be the sooner placated I send with you Master Rolfe,—they'll listen to him. See that the black paint is covered with red, give them some beads and a knife or two, then come home. If you like not the look of things, find out where Opechancanough is, and I'll send him an embassy. He loves us well, and will put down any disaffection.”
“There's no doubt that he loves us,” I said dryly. “He loves us as a cat loves the mouse that it plays with. If we are to start at once, sir, I'll go get my horse.”
“Then meet us at the neck of land,” said Rolfe.
I nodded, and left the room. As I descended the steps into the growing light outside, I found Master Pory at my side.
“I kept late hours last night,” he remarked, with a portentous yawn. “Now that this business is settled, I'll go back to bed.”
I walked on in silence.
“I am in your black books,” he continued, with his sly, merry, sidelong glance. “You think that I was overcareful of the ground, that morning behind the church, and so unfortunately delayed matters until the Governor happened by and brought things to another guess conclusion.”
“I think that you warned the Governor,” I said bluntly.
He shook with laughter. “Warned him? Of course I warned him. Youth would never have seen that molehill and fairy ring and projecting root, but wisdom cometh with gray hairs, my son. D' ye not think I'll have the King's thanks?”
“Doubtless,” I answered. “An the price contents you, I do not know why I should quarrel with it.”
By this we were halfway down the street, and we now came upon the guest house. A window above us was unshuttered, and in the room within a light still burned. Suddenly it was extinguished. A man's face looked down upon us for a moment, then drew back; a skeleton hand was put out softly and slowly, and the shutter drawn to. Hand and face belonged to the man I had sent tumbling among the graves the evening before.
“The Italian doctor,” said Master Pory.
There was something peculiar in his tone. I glanced at him, but his broad red face and twinkling eyes told me nothing. “The Italian doctor,” he repeated. “If I had a friend in Captain Percy's predicament, I should bid him beware of the Italian doctor.”
“Your friend would be obliged for the warning,” I replied.
We walked a little further. “And I think,” he said, “that I should inform this purely hypothetical friend of mine that the Italian and his patron had their heads mighty close together, last night.”
“Last night?”
“Ay, last night. I went to drink with my lord, and so broke up their tete-a-tete. My lord was boisterous in his cups and not oversecret. He dropped some hints”—He broke off to indulge in one of his endless silent laughs. “I don't know why I tell you this, Captain Percy. I am on the other side, you know,—quite on the other side. But now I bethink me, I am only telling you what I should tell you were I upon your side. There's no harm in that, I hope, no disloyalty to my Lord Carnal's interests which happen to be my interests?”
I made no answer. I gave him credit both for his ignorance of the very hornbook of honor and for his large share of the milk of human kindness.
“My lord grows restive,” he said, when we had gone a little further. “The Francis and John, coming in yesterday, brought court news. Out of sight, out of mind. Buckingham is making hay while the sun shines. Useth angel water for his complexion, sleepeth in a medicated mask such as the Valois used, and is grown handsomer than ever; changeth the fashion of his clothes thrice a week, which mightily pleaseth his Majesty. Whoops on the Spanish match, too, and, wonderful past all whooping, from the prince's detestation hath become his bosom friend. Small wonder if my Lord Carnal thinks it's time he was back at Whitehall.”
“Let him go, then,” I said. “There's his ship that brought him here.”
“Ay, there 's his ship,” rejoined Master Pory. “A few weeks more, and the Due Return will be here with the Company's commands. D' ye think, Captain Percy, that there's the slightest doubt as to their tenor?”
“No.”
“Then my lord has but to possess his soul with patience and wait for the Due Return. No doubt he'll do so.”
“No doubt he'll do so,” I echoed.
By this we had reached the Secretary's own door. “Fortune favor you with the Paspaheghs!” he said, with another mighty yawn. “As for me, I'll to bed. Do you ever dream, Captain Percy? I don't; mine is too good a conscience. But if I did, I should dream of an Italian doctor.”
The door shut upon his red face and bright eyes. I walked rapidly on down the street to the minister's house. The light was very pale as yet, and house and garden lay beneath a veil of mist. No one was stirring. I went on through the gray wet paths to the stable, and roused Diccon.
“Saddle Black Lamoral quickly,” I ordered. “There's trouble with the Paspaheghs, and I am off with Master Rolfe to settle it.”
“Am I to go with you?” he asked.
I shook my head. “We have a dozen men. There's no need of more.”
I left him busy with the horse, and went to the house. In the hall I found the negress strewing the floor with fresh rushes, and asked her if her mistress yet slept. In her soft half English, half Spanish, she answered in the affirmative. I went to my own room and armed myself; then ran upstairs to the comfortable chamber where abode Master Jeremy Sparrow, surrounded by luxuries which his soul contemned. He was not there. At the foot of the stair I was met by Goodwife Allen. “The minister was called an hour ago, sir,” she announced. “There's a man dying of the fever at Archer's Hope, and they sent a boat for him. He won't be back until afternoon.”
I hurried past her back to the stable. Black Lamoral was saddled, and Diccon held the stirrup for me to mount.
“Good luck with the vermin, sir!” he said. “I wish I were going, too.”
His tone was sullen, yet wistful. I knew that he loved danger as I loved it, and a sudden remembrance of the dangers we had faced together brought us nearer to each other than we had been for many a day.
“I don't take you,” I explained, “because I have need of you here. Master Sparrow has gone to watch beside a dying man, and will not be back for hours. As for myself, there's no telling how long I may be kept. Until I come you are to guard house and garden well. You know what I mean. Your mistress is to be molested by no one.”
“Very well, sir.”
“One thing more. There was some talk yesterday of my taking her across the neck to the forest. When she awakes, tell her from me that I am sorry for her to lose her pleasure, but that now she could not go even were I here to take her.”
“There 's no danger from the Paspaheghs there,” he muttered.
“The Paspaheghs happen not to be my only foes,” I said curtly. “Do as I bid you without remark. Tell her that I have good reasons for desiring her to remain within doors until my return. On no account whatever is she to venture without the garden.”
I gathered up the reins, and he stood back from the horse's head. When I had gone a few paces I drew rein, and, turning in my saddle, spoke to him across the dew-drenched grass. “This is a trust, Diccon,” I said.
The red came into his tanned face. He raised his hand and made our old military salute. “I understand it so, my captain,” he answered, and I rode away satisfied.
AN hour's ride brought us to the block house standing within the forest, midway between the white plantations at Paspahegh and the village of the tribe. We found it well garrisoned, spies out, and the men inclined to make light of the black paint and the seething village.
Amongst them was Chanco the Christian. I called him to me, and we listened to his report with growing perturbation. “Thirty warriors!” I said, when he had finished. “And they are painted yellow as well as black, and have dashed their cheeks with puccoon: it's l'outrance, then! And the war dance is toward! If we are to pacify this hornets' nest, it's high time we set about it. Gentlemen of the block house, we are but twelve, and they may beat us back, in which case those that are left of us will fight it out with you here. Watch for us, therefore, and have a sally party ready. Forward, men!”
“One moment, Captain Percy,” said Rolfe. “Chanco, where's the Emperor?”
“Five suns ago he was with the priests at Uttamussac,” answered the Indian. “Yesterday, at the full sun power, he was in the lodge of the werowance of the Chickahominies. He feasts there still. The Chickahominies and the Powhatans have buried the hatchet.”
“I regret to hear it,” I remarked. “Whilst they took each other's scalps, mine own felt the safer.”
“I advise going direct to Opechancanough,” said Rolfe.
“Since he's only a league away, so do I,” I answered.
We left the block house and the clearing around it, and plunged into the depths of the forest. In these virgin woods the trees are set well apart, though linked one to the other by the omnipresent grape, and there is little undergrowth, so that we were able to make good speed. Rolfe and I rode well in front of our men. By now the sun was shining through the lower branches of the trees, and the mist was fast vanishing. The forest—around us, above us, and under the hoofs of the horses where the fallen leaves lay thick—was as yellow as gold and as red as blood.
“Rolfe,” I asked, breaking a long silence, “do you credit what the Indians say of Opechancanough?”
“That he was brother to Powhatan only by adoption?”
“That, fleeing for his life, he came to Virginia, years and years ago, from some mysterious land far to the south and west?”
“I do not know,” he replied thoughtfully. “He is like, and yet not like, the people whom he rules. In his eye there is the authority of mind; his features are of a nobler cast “—
“And his heart is of a darker,” I said. “It is a strange and subtle savage.”
“Strange enough and subtle enough, I admit,” he answered, “though I believe not with you that his friendliness toward us is but a mask.”
“Believe it or not, it is so,” I said. “That dark, cold, still face is a mask, and that simple-seeming amazement at horses and armor, guns and blue beads, is a mask. It is in my mind that some fair day the mask will be dropped. Here's the village.”
Until our interview with Chanco the Christian, the village of the Paspaheghs, and not the village of the Chickahominies, had been our destination, and since leaving the block house we had made good speed; but now, within the usual girdle of mulberries, we were met by the werowance and his chief men with the customary savage ceremonies. We had long since come to the conclusion that the birds of the air and the fish of the streams were Mercuries to the Indians.
The werowance received us in due form, with presents of fish and venison, cakes of chinquapin meal and gourds of pohickory, an uncouth dance by twelve of his young men and a deal of hellish noise; then, at our command, led us into the village, and to the lodge which marked its centre. Around it were gathered Opechancanough's own warriors, men from Orapax and Uttamussac and Werowocomoco, chosen for their strength and cunning; while upon the grass beneath a blood-red gum tree sat his wives, painted and tattooed, with great strings of pearl and copper about their necks. Beyond them were the women and children of the Chickahominies, and around us all the red forest.
The mat that hung before the door of the lodge was lifted, and an Indian, emerging, came forward, with a gesture of welcome. It was Nantauquas, the Lady Rebekah's brother, and the one Indian—saving always his dead sister—that was ever to my liking; a savage, indeed, but a savage as brave and chivalrous, as courteous and truthful, as a Christian knight.
Rolfe sprang from his horse, and advancing to meet the young chief embraced him. Nantauquas had been much with his sister during those her happy days at Varina, before she went with Rolfe that ill-fated voyage to England, and Rolfe loved him for her sake and for his own. “I thought you at Orapax, Nantauquas!” he exclaimed.
“I was there, my brother,” said the Indian, and his voice was sweet, deep, and grave, like that of his sister. “But Opechancanough would go to Uttamussac, to the temple and the dead kings. I lead his war parties now, and I came with him. Opechancanough is within the lodge. He asks that my brother and Captain Percy come to him there.”
He lifted the mat for us, and followed us into the lodge. There was the usual winding entrance, with half a dozen mats to be lifted one after the other, but at last we came to the central chamber and to the man we sought.
He sat beside a small fire burning redly in the twilight of the room. The light shone now upon the feathers in his scalp lock, now upon the triple row of pearls around his neck, now upon knife and tomahawk in his silk grass belt, now on the otterskin mantle hanging from his shoulder and drawn across his knees. How old he was no man knew. Men said that he was older than Powhatan, and Powhatan was very old when he died. But he looked a man in the prime of life; his frame was vigorous, his skin unwrinkled, his eyes bright and full. When he rose to welcome us, and Nantauquas stood beside him, there seemed not a score of years between them.
The matter upon which we had come was not one that brooked delay. We waited with what patience we might until his long speech of welcome was finished, when, in as few words as possible, Rolfe laid before him our complaint against the Paspaheghs. The Indian listened; then said, in that voice that always made me think of some cold, still, bottomless pool lying black beneath overhanging rocks: “My brothers may go in peace. The Paspaheghs have washed off the black paint. If my brothers go to the village, they will find the peace pipe ready for their smoking.”
Rolfe and I stared at each other. “I have sent messengers,” continued the Emperor. “I have told the Paspaheghs of my love for the white man, and of the goodwill the white man bears the Indian. I have told them that Nemattanow was a murderer, and that his death was just. They are satisfied. Their village is as still as this beast at my feet.” He pointed downward to a tame panther crouched against his moccasins. I thought it an ominous comparison.
Involuntarily we looked at Nantauquas. “It is true,” he said. “I am but come from the village of the Paspaheghs. I took them the word of Opechancanough.”
“Then, since the matter is settled, we may go home,” I remarked, rising as I spoke. “We could, of course, have put down the Paspaheghs with one hand, giving them besides a lesson which they would not soon forget, but in the kindness of our hearts toward them and to save ourselves trouble we came to Opechancanough. For his aid in this trifling business the Governor gives him thanks.”
A smile just lit the features of the Indian. It was gone in a moment. “Does not Opechancanough love the white men?” he said. “Some day he will do more than this for them.”
We left the lodge and the dark Emperor within it, got to horse, and quitted the village, with its painted people, yellowing mulberries, and blood-red gum trees. Nantauquas went with us, keeping pace with Rolfe's horse, and giving us now and then, in his deep musical voice, this or that bit of woodland news. At the block house we found confirmation of the Emperor's statement. An embassy from the Paspaheghs had come with presents, and the peace pipe had been smoked. The spies, too, brought news that all war-like preparations had ceased in the village. It had sunk once more into a quietude befitting the sleepy, dreamy, hazy weather.
Rolfe and I held a short consultation. All appeared safe, but there was the possibility of a ruse. At the last it seemed best that he, who by virtue of his peculiar relations with the Indians was ever our negotiator, should remain with half our troop at the block house, while I reported to the Governor. So I left him, and Nantauquas with him, and rode back to Jamestown, reaching the town some hours sooner than I was expected.
It was after nooning when I passed through the gates of the palisade, and an hour later when I finished my report to the Governor. When he at last dismissed me, I rode quickly down the street toward the minister's house. As I passed the guest house, I glanced up at the window from which, at daybreak, the Italian had looked down upon me. No one looked out now; the window was closely shuttered, and at the door beneath my lord's French rascals were conspicuously absent. A few yards further on I met my lord face to face, as he emerged from a lane that led down to the river. At sight of me he started violently, and his hand went to his mouth. I slightly bent my head, and rode on past him. At the gate of the churchyard, a stone's throw from home, I met Master Jeremy Sparrow.
“Well met!” he exclaimed. “Are the Indians quiet?”
“For the nonce. How is your sick man?”
“Very well,” he answered gravely. “I closed his eyes two hours ago.”
“He's dead, then,” I said. “Well, he 's out of his troubles, and hath that advantage over the living. Have you another call, that you travel from home so fast?”
“Why, to tell the truth,” he replied, “I could not but feel uneasy when I learned just now of this commotion amongst the heathen. You must know best, but I should not have thought it a day for madam to walk in the woods; so I e'en thought I would cross the neck and bring her home.”
“For madam to walk in the woods?” I said slowly. “So she walks there? With whom?”
“With Diccon and Angela,” he answered. “They went before the sun was an hour high, so Goodwife Allen says. I thought that you—” “No,” I told him. “On the contrary, I left command that she should not venture outside the garden. There are more than Indians abroad.”
I was white with anger; but besides anger there was fear in my heart.
“I will go at once and bring her home,” I said. As I spoke, I happened to glance toward the fort and the shipping in the river beyond. Something seemed wrong with the prospect. I looked again, and saw what hated and familiar object was missing.
“Where is the Santa Teresa?” I demanded, the fear at my heart tugging harder.
“She dropped downstream this morning. I passed her as I came up from Archer's Hope, awhile ago. She's anchored in midstream off the big spring. Why did she go?”
We looked each other in the eyes, and each read the thought that neither cared to put into words.
“You can take the brown mare,” I said, speaking lightly because my heart was as heavy as lead, “and we'll ride to the forest. It is all right, I dare say. Doubtless we'll find her garlanding herself with the grape, or playing with the squirrels, or asleep on the red leaves, with her head in Angela's lap.”
“Doubtless,” he said. “Don't lose time. I'll saddle the mare and overtake you in two minutes.”