Read Ebook: By order of the company by Johnston Mary

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Ebook has 1166 lines and 82787 words, and 24 pages

My lord's four knaves looked down the arcade of trees, and saw the something white as plainly as if it had been verily there. Each moment the wood grew darker,--a thing in nature, since the sun outside was swiftly sinking to the horizon. But to those to whom that tale had been told it was a darkening unearthly and portentous, bringing with it a colder air and a deepened silence.

"Oh, Sir Thomas Dale, Sir Thomas Dale!"

The voice seemed to come from the distance, and bore in its dismal cadence the melancholy of the damned. For a moment my heart stood still, and the hair of my head commenced to rise; the next, I knew that Diccon had found an ally, not in the dead, but in the living. The minister, standing beside me, opened his mouth again, and again that dismal voice rang through the wood, and again it seemed, by I know not what art, to come from any spot rather than from that particular tree behind whose trunk stood Master Jeremy Sparrow.

"Oh, the bodkin through my tongue! Oh, the bodkin through my tongue!"

Two of the guard sat with hanging lip and lack-lustre eyes, turned to stone; one, at full length upon the ground, bruised his face against the pine-needles and called on the Virgin; the fourth, panic-stricken, leaped to his feet and dashed off into the darkness, to trouble us no more that day.

"Oh, the heavy chains!" cried the unseen spectre. "Oh, the dead man in his grave!"

The man on his face dug his nails into the earth and howled; his fellows were too frightened for sound or motion. Diccon, a hardy rogue, with little fear of God or man, gave no sign of perturbation beyond a desperate tugging at the rope about his wrists. He was ever quick to take suggestion, and he had probably begun to question the nature of the ghost who was doing him such yeoman service.

"D'ye think they've had enough?" said Sparrow in my ear. "My invention flaggeth."

I nodded, too choked with laughter for speech, and drew my sword. The next moment we were upon the men like wolves upon the fold.

They made no resistance. Amazed and shaken as they were, we might have dispatched them with all ease, to join the dead whose lamentations yet rang in their ears; but we contented ourselves with disarming them and bidding them begone for their lives in the direction of the Pamunkey. They went like frightened deer, their one goal in life escape from the wood.

"Did you meet the Italian?"

I turned to find my wife at my side. The King's ward had a kingly spirit; she was not one that the dead or the living could daunt. To her, as to me, danger was a trumpet call to nerve heart and strengthen soul. She had been in peril of that which she most feared, but the light in her eye was not quenched, and the hand with which she touched mine, though cold, was steady.

"I did not kill him," I answered; "but I will if you desire it."

"And his master?" she demanded "What have you done with his master?"

I told her. At the vision my words conjured up her strained nerves gave way, and she broke into laughter as cruel as it was sweet. Peal after peal rang through the haunted wood, and increased the eeriness of the place.

"The knot that I tied he will untie directly," I said. "If we would reach Jamestown first, we had best be going."

"Night is upon us, too," said the minister, "and this place hath the look of the very valley of the shadow of death. If the spirits walk, it is hard upon their time--and I prefer to walk elsewhere."

"Cease your laughter, madam," I said. "Should a boat be coming up this stream, you would betray us."

I went over to Diccon, and in a silence as grim as his own cut the rope which bound his hands, which done we all moved through the deepening gloom to where we had left the horses, Jeremy Sparrow going on ahead to have them in readiness. Presently he came hurrying back. "The Italian is gone!" he cried.

"Gone!" I exclaimed. "I told you to tie him fast to the saddle!"

"Why, so I did," he replied. "I drew the thongs so tight that they cut into his flesh. He could not have endured to pull against them.

"Then how did he get away?"

"Why," he answered, with a rueful countenance, "I did bind him, as I have said; but when I had done so, I bethought me of how the leather must cut, and of how pain is dreadful even to a snake, and of the injunction to do as you would be done by, and so e'en loosened his bonds. But, as I am a christened man, I thought that they would yet hold him fast!"

I began to swear, but ended in vexed laughter. "The milk's spilt. There's no use in crying over it. After all, we must have loosed him before we entered the town."

"Will you not bring the matter before the Governor?" he asked.

I shook my head. "If Yeardley did me right, he would put in jeopardy his office and his person. This is my private quarrel, and I will draw no man into it against his will. Here are the horses, and we had best be gone, for by this time my lord and his physician may have their heads together again."

I mounted Black Lamoral, and lifted Mistress Percy to a seat behind me. The brown mare bore the minister and the negress, and Diccon, doggedly silent, trudged beside us.

We passed through the haunted wood and the painted forest beyond without adventure. We rode in silence: the lady behind me too weary for speech, the minister revolving in his mind the escape of the Italian, and I with my own thoughts to occupy me. It was dusk when we crossed the neck of land, and as we rode down the street torches were being lit in the houses. The upper room in the guest house was brightly illumined, and the window was open. Black Lamoral and the brown mare made a trampling with their hoofs, and I began to whistle a gay old tune I had learnt in the wars. A figure in scarlet and black came to the window, and stood there looking down upon us. The lady riding with me straightened herself and raised her weary head. "The next time we go to the forest, Ralph," she said in a clear, high voice, "thou'lt show me a certain tree," and she broke into silvery laughter. She laughed until we had left behind the guest house and the figure in the upper window, and then the laughter changed to something like a sob. If there were pain and anger in her heart, pain and anger were in mine also. She had never called me by my name before. She had only used it now as a dagger with which to stab at that fierce heart above us.

At last we reached the minister's house, and dismounted before the door. Diccon led the horses away, and I handed my wife into the great room. The minister tarried but for a few words anent some precautions that I meant to take, and then betook himself to his own chamber. As he went out of the door Diccon entered the room.

"Oh, I am weary!" sighed Mistress Jocelyn Percy. "What was the mighty business, Captain Percy, that made you break tryst with a lady? You should go to court, sir, to be taught gallantry."

"Where should a wife go to be taught obedience?" I demanded. "You know where I went and why I could not keep tryst. Why did you not obey my orders?"

She opened wide her eyes. "Your orders? I never received any,--not that I should have obeyed them if I had. Know where you went? I know neither why nor where you went!"

I leaned my hand upon the table, and looked from her to Diccon.

"I was sent by the Governor to quell a disturbance amongst the nearest Indians. The woods to-day have been full of danger. Moreover, the plan that we made yesterday was overheard by the Italian. When I had to go this morning without seeing you, I left you word where I had gone and why, and also my commands that you should not stir outside the garden. Were you not told this, madam?"

"No!" she cried.

I looked at Diccon. "I told madam that you were called away on business," he said sullenly. "I told her that you were sorry you could not go with her to the woods."

"You told her nothing more?"

"No."

"May I ask why?"

He threw back his head. "I did not believe the Paspaheghs would trouble her," he answered, with hardihood, "and you hadn't seen fit, sir, to tell me of the other danger. Madam wanted to go, and I thought it a pity that she should lose her pleasure for nothing."

I raised the whip and brought it down again and again across his shoulders. He stood without a word, his face dark red and his hands clenched at his sides. For a minute or more there was no sound in the room save the sound of the blows; then my wife suddenly cried out: "It is enough! You have beaten him enough! Let him go, sir!"

I threw down the whip. "Begone, sirrah!" I ordered. "And keep out of my sight to-morrow!"

With his face still dark red and with a pulse beating fiercely in his cheek, he moved slowly toward the door, turned when he had reached it and saluted, then went out and closed it after him.

"Now he too will be your enemy," said Mistress Percy, "and all through me. I have brought you many enemies, have I not? Perhaps you count me amongst them? I should not wonder if you did. Do you not wish me gone from Virginia?"

"So I were with you, madam," I said bluntly, and went to call the minister down to supper.

In which I am Rid of an Unprofitable Servant

The next day, Governor and Councillors sat to receive presents from the Paspaheghs and to listen to long and affectionate messages from Opechancanough, who, like the player queen, did protest too much. The Council met at Yeardley's house, and I was called before it to make my report of the expedition of the day before. It was late afternoon when the Governor dismissed us, and I found myself leaving the house in company with Master Pory.

"I am bound for my lord's," said that worthy, as we neared the guest house. "My lord hath Xeres wine that is the very original nectar of the gods, and he drinks it from goblets worth a king's ransom. We have heard a deal to-day about burying hatchets: bury thine for the nonce, Ralph Percy, and come drink with us."

"Not I," I said. "I would sooner drink with--some one else."

He laughed. "Here's my lord himself shall persuade you."

My lord, dressed with his usual magnificence and darkly handsome as ever, was indeed standing within the guest-house door. Pory drew up beside him. I was passing on with a slight bow, when the Secretary caught me by the sleeve. At the Governor's house wine had been set forth to revive the jaded Council, and he was already half seas over. "Tarry with us, captain!" he cried. "Good wine's good wine, no matter who pours it! 'S bud! in my young days men called a truce and forgot they were foes when the bottle went round!"

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