The Plowshare and the Sword Part 32

CHAPTER XXVI.

STIGMA.

Thus Geoffrey became a prisoner among his own people, owing to the friendliness of Von Donck, the honest Dutchman having failed to reckon with the intense suspicion of the Puritan mind. When the manner of his guest's arrival had been explained to John Winthrop, that pious governor raised his eyebrows in astonishment, and did not hesitate to give instructions for the new-comer to be held in close confinement, pending an inquiry into the movements of the Dutch. While this investigation was being pursued, justly and in good order as the governor directed, or, in other words, with extreme slowness, many notable events occurred in the disordered country of the north.

The _St. Wenceslas_ had slipped from her moorings and drifted down the St. Lawrence, bearing La Salle towards Acadie, and certain despatches which were destined for the chief minister of France. Unwillingly Roussilac had been compelled to record the services rendered to Church and State by the proud departing priest.

"You have well served yourself, Sir Commandant," La Salle had said, after insisting upon his right to peruse the detailed history of the Iroquois defeat, which contained no word of reference to the a.s.sistance rendered by the Algonquins. "And now, by Heaven, you shall serve me."

And Roussilac, for all his ill will, was not strong enough to dare resist the priest.

There yet remained in that district the Kentish knight, old Penfold, and the Puritan; and when the man of Kent came to learn of La Salle's departure, he left his solitary cave, and buckled on his sword, and returned to action, though the dream of his life had vanished. His younger brother, the fool of the family, who from boyhood had spent his days in idleness, trolling for pike or chasing with his dogs, would continue to occupy the old mansion which the elder had abandoned, and leave it, as he had been empowered to do failing news from the New World, to his son, when the days of fis.h.i.+ng and the chase should be accomplished.

The knight came to his home beside the lost waters, and his wife, who had visited him each day with food in the lonely cave, received him with her proud silence and stood to hear his will. She it was who had told him of the sailing of the s.h.i.+p and the going of La Salle.

"Let us also travel to this land of Acadie," the knight said. "My Richard haunts me with reproaches. I go to make ready our canoe for the long journey. My mind shall find no rest till I have avenged our son."

He went out and built a fire upon the beach, and while the lumps of pitch, prepared from native bitumen mixed with pine resin, were melting, he peeled soft sheets of bark from the snowy birch trees and patched the canoe, caulking every seam with pitch. About the time of the evening shadow his work was done; but as he was returning to his home a voice called, and the Puritan hastened to his side.

"Welcome, friend," said the knight. "How fares it with you and your brave comrade?"

"We suffer who sojourn in Mesech," said Hough. "Old Penfold lies grievously sick of a fever."

"Dwell you far away?" the knight asked.

"Nigh upon two miles by land and water. We have returned to the cave which we occupied before our taking of the Dutch s.h.i.+p."

"My wife shall prepare a medicine. She is well skilled in the arts of healing," said the other. "You shall bring us to your cave with all speed."

"The disease has already taken hold upon his mind," said Hough. "One time he is holding his mother's gown, old man though he be, and wandering in water-meadows to pluck long purples and clovers, muttering as he picks at his blanket. 'Here is trefoil, good for cattle, but noisome to witches.' Another time he reaches for his sword, and swears--the Lord forgive him--at the weakness which holds him down.

'The French are upon us, comrades,' he calls. 'Let me not lie like an old dame with swollen legs.' Then he falls a-crying, and shouts, 'England! England!' Methinks if his mind were healed he would stand up again."

Mary Iden being summoned, and having made her preparations, the three set forth and came to the cave, which the adventurers had hoped to exchange for the Dutch vessel, then lying fathoms deep beneath the cliffs of Tadousac. There they found Penfold stretched along a heap of gra.s.s, babbling incessantly at the cold walls and the shadows. When the figures darkened the entrance, he screamed at them and sprang up, only to fall back upon the rude bed, a fever-held body agitated by stertorous breath.

"Build me here two fires," said the quiet woman, as she pa.s.sed to the sick man's side.

"Witch!" shrieked Penfold. "Flower! Woodfield! Comrades, where are ye? Save me now from sorcery. Hough! Go bring the villagers, and bid them fling this hag into the Thames and pelt her with stones when she rises. To me, comrades! Leave not your old captain to perish by witchcraft."

"Canst heal him from this madness?" muttered Hough. "Myself I dared not let his blood, fearing lest I might do that which should hasten his end."

"Our people let no blood," came the answer. "We bring great heat into the body, so that the evil spirit shall come forth to seek water. Then we strengthen the body, so that it may be able to resist his return."

Already Penfold ceased to struggle beneath her soothing hands. The fires blazed fiercely, the smoke and hot vapours being drawn upwards into the natural chimneys. Obeying instructions, the men placed their sick comrade between these fires and covered him closely, while the skilful healer moistened his brow and lips with water in which she had steeped the young pink bark of the bitter willow, thus wringing the fever out of his body like water from a sponge.

"I am saving the old man," she whispered in a confident voice.

At the end of another hour the limp rag of humanity was steeped in sleep. By then the night was strong and the stars little orbs in splendour among the clouds. The breathing which the men heard when Mary Iden rose from her knees might have been that of a little child.

"The evil spirit has been driven forth to find water. Lift the man quickly; for the foul creature travels faster than the moonlight."

Obedient to superior knowledge, the men reconveyed the sleeper to the gra.s.s bed, and there the healer roused him to administer a decoction of bruised herbs: serrated calamintha, the perfoliate eupator, later more popularly known as the fever-wort of North America, and the white-rayed pyrethrum, which lifted its bitter bloom upon the heights. The sick man gasped as he swallowed the powerful tonic, and sank back into untroubled rest.

Presently the knight and his wife departed, and Hough accompanied them upon the first stage of their return journey; and when they reached the lake-side, where the canoe sprawled along the s.h.i.+ngle, the knight acquainted his fellow-countryman with his plan of departure. Hough listened, gazing dimly over the scintillating surface, where a silver ribbon of moonlight led away to the Isle of Dreams.

"Where lies that land whither you go?" he asked at length.

"In the far east where Sebastian Cabot first touched," the Kentishman replied. "There I may sight the great ocean, which we islanders love, and scent the good brine and watch for an English sail."

"Here there is nothing we may do," said Hough, removing his eyes from the dreamy lake. "There surely we may look for the s.h.i.+p which Lord Baltimore shall send when Viner comes down to Virginia. I too would be near the sea and smell liberty."

With that they parted, and Hough returned to his hole among the rocks with visions of the sea. Within that cave, where Penfold slept during his guardian's absence, the fires darted, tincturing with red the silver of the moonbeams against the sable wall of cliff. Between the granite and the forest of pines a stream of moonlight spread like a glacier. A figure stole from the black belt, stepped cautiously into the white road, and waded, as it were, through the rippling beams. It was Onawa, who had watched the two men and her sister making west; she knew that one of the men would return after a little interval; and she understood that the work which she had undertaken must be done quickly.

No croaking bird aroused Penfold from his sleep to warn him of the she-wolf. It was one of those ironies which run through life that one sister should have cast the sick man into healthy slumber in order that the other might stab him as he lay.

A cloud of blood-sucking insects trumpeted around Onawa. Their thin noise seemed to her a tumult, and she stopped and looked back along the cold white stream. A lean wolf was slinking in her direction, his muzzle snuffling the dust. She s.h.i.+vered when she remembered that the murderess was doomed to become a werewolf after death to prowl about the scene of her former sin. The creature howled. The pale girl started and ran into the cave.

Her belief remained constant that she might still win the love of La Salle by destroying his enemies. She knew that he had gained renown by her betrayal to him of the English settlement. Now he had gone in the great s.h.i.+p to Acadie. She was about to follow, having neither home nor people, being indeed hunted for her life; but first she might destroy another of his enemies. Then she could learn to say: "I have killed the old Englishman who stirred up my people to attack yours." And she thought that he might welcome her at last for the sake of her good deeds.

A frightened howl broke upon the night. The wolf, disturbed by some enemy of its species, was hurrying for cover. The crisp snapping of twigs, succeeded by a rattling of small stones, were caused, not by the pads of the black loup-garou, but by a body weightier and less cowardly. These sounds were deadened by the walls of rock, and Onawa did not hear them. Swiftly she drew away the coverings from the white-faced sleeper, and old Penfold smiled innocently at her in his drugged sleep. Onawa drew in her breath, unsheathed her knife, and felt its point; then leaned back, measuring the distance by the faint glow, and her arm went up to strike. That next moment she screamed with terror, turned, struck wildly at the air, and was carried back to the granite floor with Hough's iron fingers driven round her throat.

Step by step the grim Puritan dragged the girl back to the mouth of the cave, and there pinned her to the rock with one arm, while reaching with the other to the corner, where he had piled a rope taken from the deck of the privateer. He bound her hand and foot; and thus helpless she stared up, and read her death upon his face.

For over an hour Hough paced the floor of the cave, listening to his captain's gentle breathing, and recalling the violent death of Athaliah, slain by order of Jehoiada, and the fate of Jezebel, cast from an upper window at the command of Jehu; for such a man as the Puritan regulated all the actions of his life by the light revealed to him from the Bible. There was, he reasoned, the highest authority to justify the act which he contemplated; only the manhood in him recoiled from the slaying of a woman. At length his mind became fixed. He bent and drew together the scarlet embers of the fire.

Onawa made no sign of terror, and no appeal for mercy; but her eyes followed every movement of her stern captor, as she sought to learn her sentence without betraying her fear.

"The witch is fair," the Puritan muttered, standing over and regarding her fawn-coloured skin, her even features, and large dark eyes. "A woman takes pride in her beauty. May the Lord punish me if I act now unjustly and for vengeance alone."

He pushed a stick into the fire and watched it grow red, then turned sharply upon his victim. The girl's eyes flashed defiance when they met his.

"Behold!" he exclaimed, drawing a thin hand across his terrible face, upon which the Court of Star Chamber had written its unjust judgment.

The girl saw the slit nostrils, the cropped ears, the branded cheeks, and the scarred forehead. Her tongue became loosened at that sight, and she prayed for instant death, because she knew it was vain to plead for mercy.

Outside the cave the long black wolf, which if native testimony were accepted, contained the soul of some sorcerer, or of some vile man who had slain his friend, crept back to search for sc.r.a.ps of food. As a cloud drifted over the moon the brute dropped a bone which it had s.n.a.t.c.hed, and scurried away like a human thief into the shadows, terrified by a wild scream from within the granite cave.

CHAPTER XXVII.

REVELATION.

Had Madame Labroquerie continued firm in her resolve never to approach the fortress while her nephew ruled, all might have been well; but unfortunately for her daughter, and, as it was to prove, for herself, the bitter little woman permitted her longing to enter again into the affairs of the world to prevail over her hatred for the commandant, and so suffered herself to be brought to the citadel, railing savagely throughout the journey. Before a week had pa.s.sed she revealed herself fully as an unnatural mother and an implacable foe. Yet, to do justice to even a worker of evil, it must be admitted that Madeleine, with all her sweetness, was a sore trial to a fanatical Catholic and bigoted patriot, for she refused to be ashamed of her heresy, and was never weary of singing the praise of her English lover.

Left to themselves, neither Laroche, now the head of the Church in that district, nor Roussilac would have taken action against the lovely sinner; but Madame, in one of her fits of ungovernable anger, publicly preferred two charges against her daughter, accusing her of heresy and treason, and calling upon the Church to punish her for the one offence and the State to exact a penalty for the other.

These were grave indictments, but both priest and layman closed their ears, the former not wis.h.i.+ng to be troubled by unpleasant duties, the latter hanging back, not on account of the tie of relations.h.i.+p, but because of Madeleine's beauty. But when Madame, in another fit of fury, openly denounced the commandant before D'Archand, who for the second time had arrived at that coast, as a Lutheran at heart, and a protector of the enemies of the Church, he was driven to act for the sake of his ambition. So Madeleine was arrested and confined in a small stone hut high upon the cliff, and before her door a sentry paced both by day and night, while Laroche, with many deep grumblings, was compelled to undertake the uncongenial task of saving the fair girl's soul.

To the credit of the priest, be it said that he was charitable. He believed Madeleine had been perverted from the right way by some spell of witchcraft, and this belief was strengthened by the fact that, when he adjured the girl by the tears of the Saviour to weep, she merely laughed at him. It was notorious that a guilty witch was unable to shed tears. Accordingly Laroche attended himself to the obvious duty of exorcising the evil spirit which had taken up its abode in her; but, in spite of all his efforts, the girl remained as wickedly obstinate as before.