Читать книгу Winds of Fortune - John Jeffery Farnol - Страница 8
ОглавлениеTELLETH HOW AND WHERE I SPENT THIS FIRST SO DREADFUL NIGHT
Evening had fallen to glimmering dusk and we were sitting close together, Deborah and I, two poor souls very woeful and forlorn, though Deborah was still at her supper (by my leave) munching and sipping, sipping and munching, till I could have boxed her ears, to see her thus cowishly resigned.
"If ye would but peck a bit, ma'm," sighed she, viewing me above laden fork, "a morsel now—"
"Woman," said I, shuddering, "a crumb would choke me."
"Nay, come now, my dearie ma'm, a snippet o' the beef, so tender and heartsome—"
"You should know!" I retorted bitterly.
"Ay, I do so, ma'm," she nodded; then, filling her mouth she munched again until I leapt to my feet in such strange frenzy as surprised myself and so startled Deborah that the poor thing dropped her fork and stared up at me with great fearful eyes.
"Lud, ma'm, what—what now?" she faltered.
"You ... me ... everything!" cried I. "How can you eat—how dare you eat, and with death and worse all about us? Yet you so munch and munch and my poor sick heart ready to burst."
"I ... I was so hungry, ma'm. And there be naught to hearten one like good food and Mis' Ursula, dearie, things might be worse; us might be poor corpses, or alive and shameous ravaged and abused—"
"'Tis an evil but deferred, mayhap," said I, and so miserably that up she jumped (the dear one) to clasp and comfort me.
"There, there! my dearie," she murmured, patting me as I had been timorous child. "I know 'tis wild and violent man and you no more than poor tremblesome frighted maid, but—"
"Frighted—I?" cried I fiercely, whisking myself from her clinging arms. "'Tis pure horror sets me a-trembling—loathly horror of a beast, not fear of man; I fear none o' the odious sex and least of all this man ... except he catch me alone.... This vile wretch—oh, damn him!" cried I wildly. "How dare he thus use me—od rot him! Oh, but he shall answer for this yet, tho' I die for it—he shall suffer plague and the devil seize him—"
"Fie, ma'm, fie!" chuckled a voice at the window and, dim seen against the dusk, the Captain's head thrust in at us. "Such tripping facility o' phrase! I protest you can so outcurse and swear poor sailorman that I blush for myself and envy you—"
"Captain Bly," said I, making the most of my inches, "an' you must creep and listen, stretch wide your detestable ears and hear me. That whatsoe'er befalls me and mine at your wicked hands, I swear to God that some day, somehow, for that you shall pay and bitterly suffer—"
"Why, ma'm," says he with grim laugh, "Japhet hath known so much o' suffering,—ay, and such suffering, that he and it shall meet like old messmates."
"Yet look to it, sir," I continued; "dare so much as lay your wicked hands on me, and, so soon as chance serve, I vow to kill you." Something in my passionate utterance must have convinced him, for 'stead of throaty chuckle I heard him draw his breath sharply and, finding him silent, I said in the same even tone:
"You believe me, sir?"
"Faith," he answered. "I believe ye might try."
"Never doubt it!" I nodded. "Give me knife or pistol and I will prove my words."
"Why, so you shall," he answered, nodding back at me; "yet not now, for now we ride; so make you ready."
"How an' I refuse?"
"You shall be bound and gagged and thrown across horse—mighty undignified." With which he turned and jingled away and presently horses were stamping in the yard.
And so, because I needs must, I beckoned Deborah to aid me with my cloak; then espying among the litter of the supper table a knife that showed strong and with a point, I caught it up and hid it 'neath my cloak whiles Deborah was setting on her own. Then in came Mercy, bearing candles, and putting them down stood wringing her hands and looking furtive towards the lattice; wherefore, deeming she yet had a mind to aid me an' she dared, I spoke her, whispering:
"Mrs. Mercy, in my purse be fifteen guineas—take them oh, take them and steal me a pistol—" But at the word she recoiled as I had struck her, then leaning near,
"Ah, no—no!" says she in strange, gasping voice. "'Twere wickedness, for he ... he is not as he seems ... he is noble gentleman ... hath suffered much wrong ... bitter griefs ... ha' no fear, only be you patient a little while—" The pleading voice ended in choking gasp as in upon us strode the Captain himself.
For a moment he scowled from the woman to me and back again then, mutely beckoning us forth, I swept by him and so out into the dim yard, where men muttered together and horses stamped impatiently.
And presently, being mounted, we rode away from this inn of The Jolly Woodman at leisured ambling pace (the horses plodding silent on the velvet turf) through a vague countryside, tho' the sky was spangled with stars and the glamour of a rising moon. They had mounted Deborah also and she, not so used to the saddle as I, moaned plaintively ever and anon. How far we rode thus or how long I know not, but up came the gentle moon at last and very tenderly familiar she seemed.
Now, looking up at these wondrous lights twinkling from the floor of heaven, I breathed a wordless prayer to that Great Creator of it all, yea, of all that ever was or is or is yet to be, calling on Him now in my extremity like woeful child to loving Father, since He that is so mighty to shape this infinite universe is so tender to mark the fall of a sparrow. Then I (that had been wont to pray but by rote all heedlessly hitherto) now prayed with all my soul for strength and courage and patience; that God would keep me alive and undefiled or teach me how worthily to die. And presently my heart swelled with a new courage, my dreadful apprehensions were all smoothed away, so that I now went with a serene mind and my eyes uplift to heaven in very ecstasy of gratitude, for it seemed God had verily heard my prayer.
Slowly the moon rose, very large and ever brighter, until she swam in majesty like the pale queen that she is; and looking on her so familiar gentle face she seemed, as it were, some kind friend watching over me, though her tender radiance made our captors show the more villainous than ever,—six of them I counted riding three and three before us and behind; and they talked but rarely and then in hoarse mutterings, going thus with little noise and by desolate ways like the furtive wretches and gallow birds they were. From the evil menace of them I lifted my gaze again up to the moon's placid beauty and had gone thus some while when the three who rode immediately before me began to talk and I saw they were Ezekiel Penryn, Barnabas Rokeby and the Captain.
"So," says Rokeby, "thy cake's dough, eh, Japhet; art cheated o' thy dear vengeance, lad!"
"Hosanna!" exclaimed Penryn. "'Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord!'"
"Ay, but Zeke, herein I hold myself the Lord's anointed," says Captain Bly (and very blasphemous, methought). "'An eye for an eye,' reverend sir."
"Why, there's reason in that, look you!" quoth Penryn unctuously. "'A tooth for a tooth'; 'tis gospel. Then you'll after your man, eh, Japhet?"
"Across the world, Zeke."
"And 'tis mighty well!" said Rokeby. "Here's no place, no rest for such outcast dogs as we; 'tis rope or worse an' we be recognized—"
"Recognized, Barnabas?" quoth Penryn, with cackle of mirthless laughter. "You—wi' that grim figurehead and greying hair! There be nary one shall recognize such bloody cut-throat for what you was when you rode out wi' us for the holy Protestant cause, God prosper it! Would your own mother know ye? Curse me—no!"
"She's dead!" growled Barnabas. "I was able to learn thus much."
"And as for me," continued Penryn, his sweet voice very clear above the creak of saddle leather, "would any o' the multitudes that thronged to hear me preach, and stood whiles I lifted their souls to the very footstool o' God, know me in this ruin that I now am? Damme, not one!"
"Twelve years!" said the Captain, turning to stare up at the moon now high risen upon our left. "Twelve years!"
"Call 'em twenty!" growled Barnabas. "Didst try to find thy wife and family, Zeke?"
"No, messmate, no! The children will be grown by now ... well, let 'em think me dead ... as I should be, but for you and Japhet, with a curse!"
"Hast a wife too, Barnabas, I think?" questioned the Captain.
"I had, comrade, but she's wed again."
"Art sure, man?" says the Captain, laying hand on the speaker's broad shoulder.
"Beyond doubt, comrade ... well, why not? We ha' come back out of hell to find we are dead and forgot—eh, Japhet?"
"Ay," he nodded; "we be dead men all."
"Which, being dead, yet speak," quoth Penryn, with another cackle of laughter. "Ay, and with hands, praise Jehovah, that yet can fight! Alleluia! So give me bloody battle—eh, Barnaby?"
"Ay, Zeke.... And what says you, Japhet man?"
"That having lost my all, I'll take all that I may."
"Ay, and what o' this lady, ha? You, Japhet, that's had no truck wi' women since that Spanish donna we took at Margarita. Come, what o' this lass? She'll prove a handful, by her looks, I'll warrant—"
"And women aboardship mean strife," quoth Penryn, "bloodshed, Japhet, and all the sins in the calendar; so, comrade, what's your mind?"
But now when I hearkened, my every sense on the alert, the Captain's answer was lost in sound of clattering hoofs as, leaving the grassy track, we came out upon a hard road. Now went I something dismayed at their mention of a ship and greatly mystified by this talk of dead men. But my anxious speculations were suddenly dispelled as, rounding a shoulder of the Down we had been traversing, I saw below us what seemed a farmhouse with barns and ricks and beyond, the sea, upon whose restless, gleaming waters rode a great black ship, her lofty masts soaring high against the moon 'mid an infinity of ropes and rigging.
Now this sight instantly renewed all my terrors and knowing in my poor heart that this same ship was to be my prison and perchance the shameful end of me,—this filled me with such wild despair that, resolved to die in my dear England if needs must, I kicked foot from stirrup and thus, with some desperate hope of escape one way or other, leapt from the saddle.... I heard Deborah scream, had a vision of rearing horses, then all breath and life itself seemed smitten out of me.
