THE Governor had brought with him from London the year before, a set of boxwood bowls, and had made, between his house and the fort, a noble green. The generality must still use for the game that portion of the street that was not tobacco-planted; but the quality flocked to the Governor's green, and here, one holiday afternoon, a fortnight or more from the day in which I had drunk to the King from my lord's silver goblet, was gathered a very great company. The Governor's match was toward,—ten men to a side, a hogshead of sweet-scented to the victorious ten, and a keg of canary to the man whose bowl should hit the jack.
The season had been one of unusual mildness, and the sunshine was still warm and bright, gilding the velvet of the green, and making the red and yellow leaves swept into the trench to glow like a ribbon of flame. The sky was blue, the water bluer still, the leaves bright-colored, the wind blowing; only the enshrouding forest, wrapped in haze, seemed as dim, unreal, and far away as a last year's dream.
The Governor's gilt armchair had been brought from the church, and put for him upon the bank of turf at the upper end of the green. By his side sat my Lady Temperance, while the gayly dressed dames and the men who were to play and to watch were accommodated with stools and settles or with seats on the green grass. All were dressed in holiday clothes, all tongues spoke, all eyes laughed; you might have thought there was not a heavy heart amongst them. Rolfe was there, gravely courteous, quiet and ready; and by his side, in otterskin mantle, beaded moccasins, and feathered headdress, the Indian chief, his brother-in-law,—the bravest, comeliest, and manliest savage with whom I have ever dealt. There, too, was Master Pory, red and jovial, with an eye to the sack the servants were bringing from the Governor's house; and the commander, with his wife; and Master Jeremy Sparrow, fresh from a most moving sermon on the vanities of this world. Captains, Councilors, and Burgesses aired their gold lace, and their wit or their lack of it; while a swarm of younger adventurers, youths of good blood and bad living, come from home for the weal of England and the woe of Virginia, went here and there through the crowd like gilded summer flies.
Rolfe and I were to play; he sat on the grass at the feet of Mistress Jocelyn Percy, making her now and then some courtly speech, and I stood beside her, my hand on the back of her chair.
The King's ward held court as though she were a king's daughter. In the brightness of her beauty she sat there, as gracious for the nonce as the sunshine, and as much of another world. All knew her story, and to the daring that is in men's hearts her own daring appealed,—and she was young and very beautiful. Some there had not been my friends, and now rejoiced in what seemed my inevitable ruin; some whom I had thought my friends were gone over to the stronger side; many who in secret wished me well still shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders over what they were pleased to call my madness; but for her, I was glad to know, there were only good words. The Governor had left his gilt armchair to welcome her to the green, and had caused a chair to be set for her near his own, and here men came and bowed before her as if she had been a princess indeed.
A stir amongst the crowd, a murmur, and a craning of necks heralded the approach of that other at whom the town gaped with admiration. He came with his retinue of attendants, his pomp of dress, his arrogance of port, his splendid beauty. Men looked from the beauty of the King's ward to the beauty of the King's minion, from her costly silk to his velvet and miniver, from the air of the court that became her well to the towering pride and insolence which to the thoughtless seemed his fortune's proper mantle, and deemed them a pair well suited, and the King's will indeed the will of Heaven.
I was never one to value a man by his outward seeming, but suddenly I saw myself as in a mirror,—a soldier, scarred and bronzed, acquainted with the camp, but not with the court, roughened by a rude life, poor in this world's goods, the first flush of youth gone forever. For a moment my heart was bitter within me. The pang passed, and my hand tightened its grasp upon the chair in which sat the woman I had wed. She was my wife, and I would keep my own.
My lord had paused to speak to the Governor, who had risen to greet him. Now he came toward us, and the crowd pressed and whispered. He bowed low to Mistress Percy, made as if to pass on, then came to a stop before her, his hat in his hand, his handsome head bent, a smile upon his bearded lips.
“When was it that we last sat to see men bowl, lady?” he said. “I remember a gay match when I bowled against my Lord of Buckingham, and fair ladies sat and smiled upon us. The fairest laughed, and tied her colors around my arm.”
The lady whom he addressed sat quietly, with hands folded in her silken lap and an untroubled face. “I did not know you then, my lord,” she answered him, quite softly and sweetly. “Had I done so, be sure I would have cut my hand off ere it gave color of mine to”—“To whom?” he demanded, as she paused.
“To a coward, my lord,” she said clearly.
As if she had been a man, his hand went to his sword hilt. As for her, she leaned back in her chair and looked at him with a smile.
He spoke at last, slowly and with deliberate emphasis. “I won then,” he said. “I shall win again, my lady,—my Lady Jocelyn Leigh.”
I dropped my hand from her chair and stepped forward. “It is my wife to whom you speak, my Lord Carnal,” I said sternly. “I wait to hear you name her rightly.”
Rolfe rose from the grass and stood beside me, and Jeremy Sparrow, shouldering aside with scant ceremony Burgess and Councilor, came also. The Governor leaned forward out of his chair, and the crowd became suddenly very still.
“I am waiting, my lord,” I repeated.
In an instant, from what he had been he became the frank and guileless nobleman. “A slip of the tongue, Captain Percy!” he cried, his white teeth showing and his hand raised in a gesture of deprecation. “A natural thing, seeing how often, how very often, I have so addressed this lady in the days when we had not the pleasure of your acquaintance.” He turned to her and bowed, until the feather in his hat swept the ground. “I won then,” he said. “I shall win again—Mistress Percy,” and passed on to the seat that had been reserved for him.
The game began. I was to lead one side, and young Clement the other. At the last moment he came over to me. “I am out of it, Captain Percy,” he announced with a rueful face. “My lord there asks me to give him my place. When we were hunting yesterday, and the stag turned upon me, he came between and thrust his knife into the brute, which else might have put an end to my hunting forever and a day: so you see I can't refuse him. Plague take it all! and Dorothy Gookin sitting there watching!”
My lord and I stood forward, each with a bowl in his hand. We looked toward the Governor. “My lord first, as becometh his rank,” he said. My lord stooped and threw, and his bowl went swiftly over the grass, turned, and rested not a hands'-breadth from the jack. I threw. “One is as near as the other!” cried Master Macocke for the judges. A murmur arose from the crowd, and my lord swore beneath his breath. He and I retreated to our several sides, and Rolfe and West took our places. While they and those that followed bowled, the crowd, attentive though it was, still talked and laughed, and laid wagers upon its favorites; but when my lord and I again stood forth, the noise was hushed, and men and women stared with all their eyes. He delivered, and his bowl touched the jack. He straightened himself, with a smile, and I heard Jeremy Sparrow behind me groan; but my bowl too kissed the jack. The crowd began to laugh with sheer delight, but my lord turned red and his brows drew together. We had but one turn more. While we waited, I marked his black eyes studying every inch of the ground between him and that small white ball, to strike which, at that moment, I verily believe he would have given the King's favor. All men pray, though they pray not to the same god. As he stood there, when his time had come, weighing the bowl in his hand, I knew that he prayed to his daemon, fate, star, whatever thing he raised an altar to and bent before. He threw, and I followed, while the throng held its breath. Master Macocke rose to his feet. “It's a tie, my masters!” he exclaimed.
The excited crowd surged forward, and a babel of voices arose. “Silence, all!” cried the Governor. “Let them play it out!”
My lord threw, and his bowl stopped perilously near the shining mark. As I stepped to my place a low and supplicating “O Lord!” came to my ears from the lips and the heart of the preacher, who had that morning thundered against the toys of this world. I drew back my arm and threw with all my force. A cry arose from the throng, and my lord ground his heel into the earth. The bowl, spurning the jack before it, rushed on, until both buried themselves in the red and yellow leaves that filled the trench.
I turned and bowed to my antagonist. “You bowl well, my lord,” I said. “Had you had the forest training of eye and arm, our fortunes might have been reversed.”
He looked me up and down. “You are kind, sir,” he said thickly. “'To-day to thee, to-morrow to me.' I give you joy of your petty victory.”
He turned squarely from me, and stood with his face downstream. I was speaking to Rolfe and to the few—not even all of that side for which I had won—who pressed around me, when he wheeled.
“Your Honor,” he cried to the Governor, who had paused beside Mistress Percy, “is not the Due Return high-pooped? Doth she not carry a blue pennant, and hath she not a gilt siren for figurehead?”
“Ay,” answered the Governor, lifting his head from the hand he had kissed with ponderous gallantry. “What then, my lord?”
“Then to-morrow has dawned, sir captain,” said my lord to me. “Sure, Dame Venus and her blind son have begged for me favorable winds; for the Due Return has come again.”
The game that had been played was forgotten for that day. The hogshead of sweet scented, lying to one side, wreathed with bright vines, was unclaimed of either party; the servants who brought forward the keg of canary dropped their burden, and stared with the rest. All looked down the river, and all saw the Due Return coming up the broad, ruffled stream, the wind from the sea filling her sails, the tide with her, the gilt mermaid on her prow just rising from the rushing foam. She came as swiftly as a bird to its nest. None had thought to see her for at least ten days.
Upon all there fell a sudden realization that it was the word of the King, feathered by the command of the Company, that was hurrying, arrow-like, toward us. All knew what the Company's orders would be,—must needs be,—and the Tudor sovereigns were not so long in the grave that men had forgot to fear the wrath of kings. The crowd drew back from me as from a man plague-spotted. Only Rolfe, Sparrow, and the Indian stood their ground.
The Governor turned from staring downstream. “The game is played, gentlemen,” he announced abruptly. “The wind grows colder, too, and clouds are gathering. This fair company will pardon me if I dismiss them somewhat sooner than is our wont. The next sunny day we will play again. Give you God den, gentles.”
The crowd stood not upon the order of its going, but streamed away to the river bank, whence it could best watch the oncoming ship. My lord, after a most triumphant bow, swept off with his train in the direction of the guest house. With him went Master Pory. The Governor drew nearer to me. “Captain Percy,” he said, lowering his voice, “I am going now to mine own house. The letters which yonder ship brings will be in my hands in less than an hour. When I have read them, I shall perforce obey their instructions. Before I have them I will see you, if you so wish.”
“I will be with your Honor in five minutes.”
He nodded, and strode off across the green to his garden. I turned to Rolfe. “Will you take her home?” I said briefly. She was so white and sat so still in her chair that I feared to see her swoon. But when I spoke to her she answered clearly and steadily enough, even with a smile, and she would not lean upon Rolfe's arm. “I will walk alone,” she said. “None that see me shall think that I am stricken down.” I watched her move away, Rolfe beside her, and the Indian following with his noiseless step; then I went to the Governor's house. Master Jeremy Sparrow had disappeared some minutes before, I knew not whither.
I found Yeardley in his great room, standing before a fire and staring down into its hollows. “Captain Percy,” he said, as I went up to him, “I am most heartily sorry for you and for the lady whom you so ignorantly married.”
“I shall not plead ignorance,” I told him.
“You married, not the Lady Jocelyn Leigh, but a waiting woman named Patience Worth. The Lady Jocelyn Leigh, a noble lady, and a ward of the King, could not marry without the King's consent. And you, Captain Percy, are but a mere private gentleman, a poor Virginia adventurer; and my Lord Carnal is—my Lord Carnal. The Court of High Commission will make short work of this fantastic marriage.”
“Then they may do it without my aid,” I said. “Come, Sir George, had you wed my Lady Temperance in such fashion, and found this hornets' nest about your ears, what would you have done?”
He gave his short, honest laugh. “It's beside the question, Ralph Percy, but I dare say you can guess what I would have done.”
“I'll fight for my own to the last ditch,” I continued. “I married her knowing her name, if not her quality. Had I known the latter, had I known she was the King's ward, all the same I should have married her, an she would have had me. She is my wife in the sight of God and honest men. Esteeming her honor, which is mine, at stake, Death may silence me, but men shall not bend me.”
“Your best hope is in my Lord of Buckingham,” he said. “They say it is out of sight, out of mind, with the King, and, thanks to this infatuation of my Lord Carnal's, Buckingham hath the field. That he strains every nerve to oust completely this his first rival since he himself distanced Somerset goes without saying. That to thwart my lord in this passion would be honey to him is equally of course. I do not need to tell you that, if the Company so orders, I shall have no choice but to send you and the lady home to England. When you are in London, make your suit to my Lord of Buckingham, and I earnestly hope that you may find in him an ally powerful enough to bring you and the lady, to whose grace, beauty, and courage we all do homage, out of this coil.”
“We give you thanks, sir,” I said.
“As you know,” he went on, “I have written to the Company, humbly petitioning that I be graciously relieved from a most thankless task, to wit, the governorship of Virginia. My health faileth, and I am, moreover, under my Lord Warwick's displeasure. He waxeth ever stronger in the Company, and if I put not myself out, he will do it for me. If I be relieved at once, and one of the Council appointed in my place, I shall go home to look after certain of my interests there. Then shall I be but a private gentleman, and if I can serve you, Ralph Percy, I shall be blithe to do so; but now, you understand”—
“I understand, and thank you, Sir George,” I said. “May I ask one question?”
“What is it?”
“Will you obey to the letter the instructions the Company sends?”
“To the letter,” he answered. “I am its sworn officer.”
“One thing more,” I went on: “the parole I gave you, sir, that morning behind the church, is mine own again when you shall have read those letters and know the King's will. I am free from that bond, at least.”
He looked at me with a frown. “Make not bad worse, Captain Percy,” he said sternly.
I laughed. “It is my aim to make bad better, Sir George. I see through the window that the Due Return hath come to anchor; I will no longer trespass on your Honor's time.” I bowed myself out, leaving him still with the frown upon his face, staring at the fire.
Without, the world was bathed in the glow of a magnificent sunset. Clouds, dark purple and dark crimson, reared themselves in the west to dizzy heights, and hung threateningly over the darkening land beneath. In the east loomed more pallid masses, and from the bastions of the east to the bastions of the west went hurrying, wind-driven cloudless, dark in the east, red in the west. There was a high wind, and the river, where it was not reddened by the sunset, was lividly green. “A storm, too!” I muttered.
As I passed the guest house, there came to me from within a burst of loud and vaunting laughter and a boisterous drinking catch sung by many voices; and I knew that my lord drank, and gave others to drink, to the orders which the Due Return should bring. The minister's house was in darkness. In the great room I struck a light and fired the fresh torches, and found I was not its sole occupant. On the hearth, the ashes of the dead fire touching her skirts, sat Mistress Jocelyn Percy, her arms resting upon a low stool, and her head pillowed upon them. Her face was not hidden: it was cold and pure and still, like carven marble. I stood and gazed at her a moment; then, as she did not offer to move, I brought wood to the fire and made the forlorn room bright again.
“Where is Rolfe?” I asked at last.
“He would have stayed,” she answered, “but I made him go. I wished to be alone.” She rose, and going to the window leaned her forehead against the bars, and looked out upon the wild sky and the hurrying river. “I would I were alone,” she said in a low voice and with a catch of her breath. As she stood there in the twilight by the window, I knew that she was weeping, though her pride strove to keep that knowledge from me. My heart ached for her, and I knew not how to comfort her. At last she turned. A pasty and stoup of wine were upon the table.
“You are tired and shaken,” I said, “and you may need all your strength. Come, eat and drink.”
“For to-morrow we die,” she added, and broke into tremulous laughter. Her lashes were still wet, but her pride and daring had returned. She drank the wine I poured for her, and we spoke of indifferent things,—of the game that afternoon, of the Indian Nantauquas, of the wild night that clouds and wind portended. Supper over, I called Angela to bear her company, and I myself went out into the night, and down the street toward the guest house.
THE guest house was aflame with lights. As I neared it, there was borne to my ears a burst of drunken shouts accompanied by a volley of musketry. My lord was pursuing with a vengeance our senseless fashion of wasting in drinking bouts powder that would have been better spent against the Indians. The noise increased. The door was flung open, and there issued a tide of drawers and servants headed by mine host himself, and followed by a hail of such minor breakables as the house contained and by Olympian laughter.
I made my way past the indignant host and his staff, and standing upon the threshold looked at the riot within. The long room was thick with the smoke of tobacco and the smoke of powder, through which the many torches burned yellow. Upon the great table wine had been spilt, and dripped to swell a red pool upon the floor. Underneath the table, still grasping his empty tankard, lay the first of my lord's guests to fall, an up-river Burgess with white hair. The rest of the company were fast reeling to a like fate. Young Hamor had a fiddle, and, one foot upon a settle, the other upon the table, drew across it a fast and furious bow. Master Pory, arrived at the maudlin stage, alternately sang a slow and melancholy ditty and wiped the tears from his eyes with elaborate care. Master Edward Sharpless, now in a high voice, now in an undistinguishable murmur, argued some imaginary case. Peaceable Sherwood was drunk, and Giles Allen, and Pettiplace Clause. Captain John Martin, sitting with outstretched legs, called now for a fresh tankard, which he emptied at a gulp; now for his pistols, which, as fast as my lord's servants brought them to him new primed, he discharged at the ceiling. The loud wind rattled doors and windows, and made the flame of the torches stream sideways. The music grew madder and madder, the shots more frequent, the drunken voices thicker and louder.
The master of the feast carried his wine better than did his guests, or had drunk less, but his spirit too was quite without bounds. A color burned in his cheeks, a wicked light in his eyes; he laughed to himself. In the gray smoke cloud he saw me not, or saw me only as one of the many who thronged the doorway and stared at the revel within. He raised his silver cup with a slow and wavering hand. “Drink, you dogs!” he chanted. “Drink to the Santa Teresa! Drink to to-morrow night! Drink to a proud lady within my arms and an enemy in my power!”
The wine that had made him mad had maddened those others, also. In that hour they were dead to honor. With shameless laughter and as little spilling as might be, they raised their tankards as my lord raised his. A stone thrown by some one behind me struck the cup from my lord's hand, sending it clattering to the floor and dashing him with the red wine. Master Pory roared with drunken laughter. “Cup and lip missed that time!” he cried.
The man who had thrown the stone was Jeremy Sparrow. For one instant I saw his great figure, and the wrathful face beneath his shock of grizzled hair; the next he had made his way through the crowd of gaping menials and was gone.
My lord stared foolishly at the stains upon his hands, at the fallen goblet and the stone beside it. “Cogged dice,” he said thickly, “or I had not lost that throw! I'll drink that toast by myself to-morrow night, when the ship does n't rock like this d—d floor, and the sea has no stones to throw. More wine, Giles! To my Lord High Admiral, gentlemen! To his Grace of Buckingham! May he shortly howl in hell, and looking back to Whitehall see me upon the King's bosom! The King 's a good king, gentlemen! He gave me this ruby. D' ye know what I had of him last year? I”—
I turned and left the door and the house. I could not thrust a fight upon a drunken man.
Ten yards away, suddenly and without any warning of his approach, I found beside me the Indian Nantauquas. “I have been to the woods to hunt,” he said, in the slow musical English Rolfe had taught him. “I knew where a panther lodged, and to-day I laid a snare, and took him in it. I brought him to my brother's house, and caged him there. When I have tamed him, I shall give him to the beautiful lady.”
He expected no answer, and I gave him none. There are times when an Indian is the best company in the world.
Just before we reached the market place we had to pass the mouth of a narrow lane leading down to the river. The night was very dark, though the stars still shone through rifts in the ever moving clouds. The Indian and I walked rapidly on,—my footfalls sounding clear and sharp on the frosty ground, he as noiseless as a shadow. We had reached the further side of the lane, when he put forth an arm and plucked from the blackness a small black figure.
In the middle of the square was kept burning a great brazier filled with pitched wood. It was the duty of the watch to keep it flaming from darkness to dawn. We found it freshly heaped with pine, and its red glare lit a goodly circle. The Indian, pinioning the wrists of his captive with his own hand of steel, dragged him with us into this circle of light.
“Looking for simples once more, learned doctor?” I demanded.
He mowed and jabbered, twisting this way and that in the grasp of the Indian.
“Loose him,” I said to the latter, “but let him not come too near you. Why, worthy doctor, in so wild and threatening a night, when fire is burning and wine flowing at the guest house, do you choose to crouch here in the cold and darkness?”
He looked at me with his filmy eyes, and that faint smile that had more of menace in it than a panther's snarl. “I laid in wait for you, it is true, noble sir,” he said in his thin, dreamy voice, “but it was for your good. I would give you warning, sir.”
He stood with his mean figure bent cringingly forward, and with his hat in his hand. “A warning, sir,” he went ramblingly on. “Maybe a certain one has made me his enemy. Maybe I cut myself loose from his service. Maybe I would do him an ill turn. I can tell you a secret, sir.” He lowered his voice and looked around, as if in fear of eavesdroppers.
“In your ear, sir,” he said.
I recoiled. “Stand back,” I cried, “or you will cull no more simples this side of hell!”
“Hell!” he answered. “There's no such place. I will not tell my secret aloud.”
“Nicolo the Italian! Nicolo the Poisoner! Nicolo the Black Death! I am coming for the soul you sold me. There is a hell!”
The thundering voice came from underneath our feet. With a sound that was not a groan and not a screech, the Italian reeled back against the heated iron of the brazier. Starting from that fiery contact with an unearthly shriek, he threw up his arms and dashed away into the darkness. The sound of his madly hurrying footsteps came back to us until the guest house had swallowed him and his guilty terrors.
“Can the preacher play the devil too?” I asked, as Sparrow came up to us from the other side of the fire. “I could have sworn that that voice came from the bowels of the earth. 'T is the strangest gift!”
“A mere trick,” he said, with his great laugh, “but it has served me well on more occasions than one. It is not known in Virginia, sir, but before ever the word of the Lord came to me to save poor silly souls I was a player. Once I played the King's ghost in Will Shakespeare's 'Hamlet,' and then, I warrant you, I spoke from the cellarage indeed. I so frighted players and playgoers that they swore it was witchcraft, and Burbage's knees did knock together in dead earnest. But to the matter in hand. When I had thrown yonder stone, I walked quietly down to the Governor's house and looked through the window. The Governor hath the Company's letters, and he and the Council—all save the reprobate Pory—sit there staring at them and drumming with their fingers on the table.”
“Is Rolfe of the Council?” I asked.
“Ay; he was speaking,—for you, I suppose, though I heard not the words. They all listened, but they all shook their heads.”
“We shall know in the morning,” I said. “The night grows wilder, and honest folks should be abed. Nantauquas, good-night. When will you have tamed your panther?”
“It is now the moon of cohonks,” answered the Indian. “When the moon of blossoms is here, the panther shall roll at the beautiful lady's feet.”
“The moon of blossoms!” I said. “The moon of blossoms is a long way off. I have panthers myself to tame before it comes. This wild night gives one wild thoughts, Master Sparrow. The loud wind, and the sound of the water, and the hurrying clouds—who knows if we shall ever see the moon of blossoms?” I broke off with a laugh for my own weakness. “It's not often that a soldier thinks of death,” I said. “Come to bed, reverend sir. Nantauquas, again, good-night, and may you tame your panther!”
In the great room of the minister's house I paced up and down; now pausing at the window, to look out upon the fast darkening houses of the town, the ever thickening clouds, and the bending trees; now speaking to my wife, who sat in the chair I had drawn for her before the fire, her hands idle in her lap, her head thrown back against the wood, her face white and still, with wide dark eyes. We waited for we knew not what, but the light still burned in the Governor's house, and we could not sleep and leave it there.
It grew later and later. The wind howled down the chimney, and I heaped more wood upon the fire. The town lay in darkness now; only in the distance burned like an angry star the light in the Governor's house. In the lull between the blasts of wind it was so very still that the sound of my footfalls upon the floor, the dropping of the charred wood upon the hearth, the tapping of the withered vines without the window, jarred like thunder.
Suddenly madam leaned forward in her chair. “There is some one at the door,” she said.
As she spoke, the latch rose and some one pushed heavily against the door. I had drawn the bars across. “Who is it?” I demanded, going to it.
“It is Diccon, sir,” replied a guarded voice outside. “I beg of you, for the lady's sake, to let me speak to you.”
I opened the door, and he crossed the threshold. I had not seen him since the night he would have played the assassin. I had heard of him as being in Martin's Hundred, with which plantation and its turbulent commander the debtor and the outlaw often found sanctuary.
“What is it, sirrah?” I inquired sternly.
He stood with his eyes upon the floor, twirling his cap in his hands. He had looked once at madam when he entered, but not at me. When he spoke there was the old bravado in his voice, and he threw up his head with the old reckless gesture. “Though I am no longer your man, sir,” he said, “yet I hope that one Christian may warn another. The marshal, with a dozen men at his heels, will be here anon.”
“How do you know?”
“Why, I was in the shadow by the Governor's window when the parson played eavesdropper. When he was gone I drew myself up to the ledge, and with my knife made a hole in the shutter that fitted my ear well enough. The Governor and the Council sat there, with the Company's letters spread upon the table. I heard the letters read. Sir George Yeardley's petition to be released from the governorship of Virginia is granted, but he will remain in office until the new Governor, Sir Francis Wyatt, can arrive in Virginia. The Company is out of favor. The King hath sent Sir Edwyn Sandys to the Tower. My Lord Warwick waxeth greater every day. The very life of the Company dependeth upon the pleasure of the King, and it may not defy him. You are to be taken into custody within six hours of the reading of the letter, to be kept straitly until the sailing of the Santa Teresa, and to be sent home aboard of her in irons. The lady is to go also, with all honor, and with women to attend her. Upon reaching London, you are to be sent to the Tower, the lady to Whitehall. The Court of High Commission will take the matter under consideration at once. My Lord of Southampton writes that, because of the urgent entreaty of Sir George Yeardley, he will do for you all that lieth in his power, but that if you prove not yourself conformable, there will be little that any can do.”
“When will the marshal be here?” I demanded.
“Directly. The Governor was sending for him when I left the window. Master Rolfe spoke vehemently for you, and would have left the Council to come to you; but the Governor, swearing that the Company should not be betrayed by its officers, constrained him to remain. I'm not the Company's officer, so I may tell its orders if I please. A masterless man may speak without fear or favor. I have told you all I know.” Before I could speak he was gone, closing the door heavily behind him.
I turned to the King's ward. She had risen from the chair, and now stood in the centre of the room, one hand at her bosom, the other clenched at her side, her head thrown up. She looked as she had looked at Weyanoke, that first night.
“Madam,” I said under my breath.
She turned her face upon me. “Did you think,” she asked in a low, even voice,—“did you think that I would ever set my foot upon that ship,—that ship on the river there? One ship brought me here upon a shameful errand; another shall not take me upon one more shameful still.”
She took her hand from her bosom; in it gleamed in the firelight the small dagger I had given her that night. She laid it on the table, but kept her hand upon it. “You will choose for me, sir,” she declared.
I went to the door and looked out. “It is a wild night,” I said. “I can suit it with as wild an enterprise. Make a bundle of your warmest clothing, madam, and wrap your mantle about you. Will you take Angela?”
“No,” she answered. “I will not have her peril too upon me.”
As she stood there, her hand no longer upon the dagger, the large tears welled into her eyes and fell slowly over her white cheeks. “It is for mine honor, sir,” she said. “I know that I ask your death.”
I could not bear to see her weep, and so I spoke roughly. “I have told you before,” I said, “that your honor is my honor. Do you think I would sleep to-morrow night, in the hold of the Santa Teresa, knowing that my wife supped with my Lord Carnal?”
I crossed the room to take my pistols from the rack. As I passed her she caught my hand in hers, and bending pressed her lips upon it. “You have been very good to me,” she murmured. “Do not think me an ingrate.”
Five minutes later she came from her own room, hooded and mantled, and with a packet of clothing in her hand. I extinguished the torches, then opened the door. As we crossed the threshold, we paused as by one impulse and looked back into the firelit warmth of the room; then I closed the door softly behind us, and we went out into the night.
THE wind, which had heretofore come in fierce blasts, was now steadying to a gale. What with the flying of the heaped clouds, the slanting, groaning pines, and the rushing of the river, the whole earth seemed a fugitive, fleeing breathless to the sea. From across the neck of land came the long-drawn howl of wolves, and in the wood beyond the church a catamount screamed and screamed. The town before us lay as dark and as still as the grave; from the garden where we were we could not see the Governor's house.
“I will carry madam's bundle,” said a voice behind us.
It was the minister who had spoken, and he now stood beside us. There was a moment's silence, then I said, with a laugh: “We are not going upon a summer jaunt, friend Sparrow. There is a warm fire in the great room, to which your reverence had best betake yourself out of this windy night.”
As he made no movement to depart, but instead possessed himself of Mistress Percy's bundle, I spoke again, with some impatience: “We are no longer of your fold, reverend sir, but are bound for another parish. We give you hearty thanks for your hospitality, and wish you a very good night.”
As I spoke I would have taken the bundle from him, but he tucked it under his arm, and, passing us, opened the garden gate. “Did I forget to tell you,” he said, “that worthy Master Bucke is well of the fever, and returns to his own to-morrow? His house and church are no longer mine. I have no charge anywhere. I am free and footloose. May I not go with you, madam? There may be dragons to slay, and two can guard a distressed princess better than one. Will you take me for your squire, Captain Percy?”
He held out his great hand, and after a moment I put my own in it.
We left the garden and struck into a lane. “The river, then, instead of the forest?” he asked in a low voice.
“Ay,” I answered. “Of the two evils it seems the lesser.”
“How about a boat?”
“My own is fastened to the piles of the old deserted wharf.”
“You have with you neither food nor water.”
“Both are in the boat. I have kept her victualed for a week or more.”
He laughed in the darkness, and I heard my wife beside me utter a stifled exclamation.
The lane that we were now in ran parallel to the street to within fifty yards of the guest house, when it bent sharply down to the river. We moved silently and with caution, for some night bird might accost us or the watch come upon us. In the guest house all was darkness save one room,—the upper room,—from which came a very pale light. When we had turned with the lane there were no houses to pass; only gaunt pines and copses of sumach. I took my wife by the hand and hurried her on. A hundred yards before us ran the river, dark and turbulent, and between us and it rose an old, unsafe, and abandoned landing. Sparrow laid his hand upon my arm. “Footsteps behind us,” he whispered.
Without slackening pace I turned my head and looked. The clouds, high around the horizon, were thinning overhead, and the moon, herself invisible, yet lightened the darkness below. The sandy lane stretched behind us like a ribbon of twilight,—nothing to be seen but it and the ebony mass of bush and tree lining it on either side. We hastened on. A minute later and we heard behind us a sound like the winding of a small horn, clear, shrill, and sweet. Sparrow and I wheeled—and saw nothing. The trees ran down to the very edge of the wharf, upon whose rotten, loosened, and noisy boards we now trod. Suddenly the clouds above us broke, and the moon shone forth, whitening the mountainous clouds, the ridged and angry river, and the low, tree-fringed shore. Below us, fastened to the piles and rocking with the waves, was the open boat in which we were to embark. A few broken steps led from the boards above to the water below. Descending these I sprang into the boat and held out my arms for Mistress Percy. Sparrow gave her to me, and I lifted her down beside me; then turned to give what aid I might to the minister, who was halfway down the steps—and faced my Lord Carnal.
What devil had led him forth on such a night; why he, whom with my own eyes, three hours agone, I had seen drunken, should have chosen, after his carouse, cold air and his own company rather than sleep; when and where he first spied us, how long he had followed us, I have never known. Perhaps he could not sleep for triumph, had heard of my impending arrest, had come forth to add to the bitterness of my cup by his presence, and so had happened upon us. He could only have guessed at those he followed, until he reached the edge of the wharf and looked down upon us in the moonlight. For a moment he stood without moving; then he raised his hand to his lips, and the shrill call that had before startled us rang out again. At the far end of the lane lights appeared. Men were coming down the lane at a run; whether they were the watch, or my lord's own rogues, we tarried not to see. There was not time to loosen the rope from the piles, so I drew my knife to cut it. My lord saw the movement, and sprang down the steps, at the same time shouting to the men behind to hasten. Sparrow, grappling with him, locked him in a giant's embrace, lifted him bodily from the steps, and flung him into the boat. His head struck against a thwart, and he lay, huddled beneath it, quiet enough. The minister sprang after him, and I cut the rope. By now the wharf shook with running feet, and the backward-streaming flame of the torches reddened its boards and the black water beneath; but each instant the water widened between us and our pursuers. Wind and current swept us out, and at that wharf there were no boats to follow us.
Those whom my lord's whistle had brought were now upon the very edge of the wharf. The marshal's voice called upon us in the name of the King to return. Finding that we vouchsafed no answer, he pulled out a pistol and fired, the ball going through my hat; then whipped out its fellow and fired again. Mistress Percy, whose behavior had been that of an angel, stirred in her seat. I did not know until the day broke that the ball had grazed her arm, drenching her sleeve with blood.
“It is time we were away,” I said, with a laugh. “If your reverence will keep your hand upon the tiller and your eye upon the gentleman whom you have made our traveling companion, I'll put up the sail.”
I was on my way to the foremast, when the boom lying prone before me rose. Slowly and majestically the sail ascended, tapering upward, silvered by the moon,—the great white pinion which should bear us we knew not whither. I stopped short in my tracks, Mistress Percy drew a sobbing breath, and the minister gasped with admiration. We all three stared as though the white cloth had veritably been a monster wing endowed with life.
“Sails don't rise of themselves!” I exclaimed, and was at the mast before the words were out of my lips. Crouched behind it was a man. I should have known him even without the aid of the moon. Often enough, God knows, I had seen him crouched like this beside me, ourselves in ambush awaiting some unwary foe, brute or human; or ourselves in hiding, holding our breath lest it should betray us. The minister who had been a player, the rival who would have poisoned me, the servant who would have stabbed me, the wife who was wife in name only,—mine were strange shipmates.
He rose to his feet and stood there against the mast, in the old half-submissive, half-defiant attitude, with his head thrown back in the old way.
“If you order me, sir, I will swim ashore,” he said, half sullenly, half—I know not how.
“You would never reach the shore,” I replied. “And you know that I will never order you again. Stay here if you please, or come aft if you please.”
I went back and took the tiller from Sparrow. We were now in mid-river, and the swollen stream and the strong wind bore us on with them like a leaf before the gale. We left behind the lights and the clamor, the dark town and the silent fort, the weary Due Return and the shipping about the lower wharf. Before us loomed the Santa Teresa; we passed so close beneath her huge black sides that we heard the wind whistling through her rigging. When she, too, was gone, the river lay bare before us; silver when the moon shone, of an inky blackness when it was obscured by one of the many flying clouds.
My wife wrapped her mantle closer about her, and, leaning back in her seat in the stern beside me, raised her face to the wild and solemn heavens. Diccon sat apart in the bow and held his tongue. The minister bent over, and, lifting the man that lay in the bottom of the boat, laid him at full length upon the thwart before us. The moonlight streamed down upon the prostrate figure. I think it could never have shone upon a more handsome or a more wicked man. He lay there in his splendid dress and dark beauty, Endymion-like, beneath the moon. The King's ward turned her eyes upon him, kept them there a moment, then glanced away, and looked at him no more.
“There's a parlous lump upon his forehead where it struck the thwart,” said the minister, “but the life's yet in him. He'll shame honest men for many a day to come. Your Platonists, who from a goodly outside argue as fair a soul, could never have been acquainted with this gentleman.”
The subject of his discourse moaned and stirred. The minister raised one of the hanging hands and felt for the pulse. “Faint enough,” he went on. “A little more and the King might have waited for his minion forever and a day. It would have been the better for us, who have now, indeed, a strange fish upon our hands, but I am glad I killed him not.”
I tossed him a flask. “It's good aqua vitae, and the flask is honest. Give him to drink of it.”
He forced the liquor between my lord's teeth, then dashed water in his face. Another minute and the King's favorite sat up and looked around him. Dazed as yet, he stared, with no comprehension in his eyes, at the clouds, the sail, the rushing water, the dark figures about him. “Nicolo!” he cried sharply.
“He's not here, my lord,” I said.
At the sound of my voice he sprang to his feet.
“I should advise your lordship to sit still,” I said. “The wind is very boisterous, and we are not under bare poles. If you exert yourself, you may capsize the boat.”
He sat down mechanically, and put his hand to his forehead. I watched him curiously. It was the strangest trick that fortune had played him.
His hand dropped at last, and he straightened himself, with a long breath. “Who threw me into the boat?” he demanded.
“The honor was mine,” declared the minister.
The King's minion lacked not the courage of the body, nor, when passionate action had brought him naught, a certain reserve force of philosophy. He now did the best thing he could have done,—burst into a roar of laughter. “Zooks!” he cried. “It's as good a comedy as ever I saw! How's the play to end, captain? Are we to go off laughing, or is the end to be bloody after all? For instance, is there murder to be done?” He looked at me boldly, one hand on his hip, the other twirling his mustaches.
“We are not all murderers, my lord,” I told him. “For the present you are in no danger other than that which is common to us all.”
He looked at the clouds piling behind us, thicker and thicker, higher and higher, at the bending mast, at the black water swirling now and again over the gunwales. “It's enough,” he muttered.
I beckoned to Diccon, and putting the tiller into his hands went forward to reef the sail. When it was done and I was back in my place, my lord spoke again.
“Where are we going, captain?”
“I don't know.”
“If you leave that sail up much longer, you will land us at the bottom of the river.”
“There are worse places,” I replied.
He left his seat, and moved, though with caution, to one nearer Mistress Percy. “Are cold and storm and peril sweeter to you, lady, than warmth and safety, and a love that would guard you from, not run you into, danger?” he said in a whisper. “Do you not wish this boat the Santa Teresa, these rude boards the velvet cushions of her state cabin, this darkness her many lights, this cold her warmth, with the night shut out and love shut in?”
His audacity, if it angered me, yet made me laugh. Not so with the King's ward. She shrank from him until she pressed against the tiller. Our flight, the pursuing feet, the struggle at the wharf, her wounded arm of which she had not told, the terror of the white sail rising as if by magic, the vision of the man she hated lying as one dead before her in the moonlight, the cold, the hurry of the night,—small wonder if her spirit failed her for some time. I felt her hand touch mine where it rested upon the tiller. “Captain Percy,” she murmured, with a little sobbing breath.
I leaned across the tiller and addressed the favorite. “My lord,” I said, “courtesy to prisoners is one thing, and freedom from restraint and license of tongue is another. Here at the stern the boat is somewhat heavily freighted. Your lordship will oblige me if you will go forward where there is room enough and to spare.”
His black brows drew together. “And what if I refuse, sir?” he demanded haughtily.
“I have rope here,” I answered, “and to aid me the gentleman who once before to-night, and in despite of your struggles, lifted you in his arms like an infant. We will tie you hand and foot, and lay you in the bottom of the boat. If you make too much trouble, there is always the river. My lord, you are not now at Whitehall. You are with desperate men, outlaws who have no king, and so fear no king's minions. Will you go free, or will you go bound? Go you shall, one way or the other.”
He looked at me with rage and hatred in his face. Then, with a laugh that was not good to hear and a shrug of the shoulders, he went forward to bear Diccon company in the bow.