To Have and to Hold Part 21

"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 s.h.i.+p,--that s.h.i.+p on the river there? One s.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed 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.

CHAPTER XIX IN WHICH WE HAVE UNEXPECTED COMPANY

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 rus.h.i.+ng 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, pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.s; 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 ma.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 p.r.o.ne 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, G.o.d 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 s.h.i.+pmates.

He rose to his feet and stood there against the mast, in the old half-submissive, half-defiant att.i.tude, with his head thrown back in the old way.

"If you order me, sir, I will swim ash.o.r.e," he said, half sullenly, half--I know not how.

"You would never reach the sh.o.r.e," 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 s.h.i.+pping about the lower wharf. Before us loomed the Santa Teresa; we pa.s.sed 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 lords.h.i.+p 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."