The Great Captain Part 1

The Great Captain.

by Katharine Tynan Hinkson.

CHAPTER I.-OF MYSELF, THAT GREAT CAPTAIN SIR WALTER RALEIGH, AND OF HOW I BECAME HIS LEAL MAN.

I never knew my father and mother, having been born into a time like that of the great desolation foretold by the Scriptures. They were the days of what I have heard called the Rebellion of the Desmonds, when that great league was made against the power of Eliza, the English Queen, by the Irish princes, which went down in a red sunset of death and blood. Indeed I myself had starved, like other innocents, on the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of their dead mothers, had it not been for the pity of him I must ever regard as the greatest of Englishmen, albeit no friend, but rather the spoiler, of those of my blood and faith.

It was indeed while the end was not yet quite determined, for although Sir James Desmond, the wisest and most skilled of their generals in the art of war, was dead, there was yet the Seneschal of Imokilly and other Geraldine lords fighting for their inheritance and their country. It was on a day when Sir Walter Raleigh with a handful of troopers was returning from a visit to the Lord Deputy at Dublin that he found me. He had expected no ambush, and rode slowly, being fatigued by his journey, through the great woods to the Ford of the Kine. Now the woods covered many dead and dying, and as the Captain rode at the head of his men I came running from the undergrowth, a l.u.s.ty and fearless lad of three, and held up my hands to the foremost rider. I had as like as not been spitted on a trooper's sword but that the Captain himself, leaning from his horse, swung me to his saddle-bow.

He had perhaps a thought of his own little Wat, by his mother's knee in an English pleasaunce, for, as I have heard since, he talked with me and provoked me to confidence. Nor was I slow to answer all he asked, being a bright and bold child, which perhaps was the saving of me, since I flung an arm round the great Captain's steel-clad neck, and perched by him as bold as any robin that is housed in the frost.

But as we rode along in the summer evening, fearing no danger, though danger there was, for my lord the Seneschal of Imokilly had word of our coming, and as we forded the river was upon us from the further bank with his kerns, three times our number. But the Captain rode at them with his sword drawn, slas.h.i.+ng hither and thither, and sorely I must have hampered him, and much marvel it was that he did not loose me into the stream. But that he held me shows what manner of man he was, that being fierce and violent in battle he yet was of so rare magnanimity.

Little lad as I was then, I remember to this day the cold of his steel and silver breastplate against my cheek.

And when he had hewed his way through them and was on the further bank in safety, he looked back and saw one of his men, Jan Kneebone by name, dismounted in the stream and in peril. Then, setting me down gently, he rode back into deep water to his man's deliverance, and having slain two kerns who had him in jeopardy he flung him upon his saddle-bow and rode with him again up the steep bank. It was a great feat of arms, and might well have cost the English this most splendid soldier; yet I have heard Sir Walter say that the Desmond Lord of Imokilly might have slain him had he willed it. "And think not, little Wat," he said to me years after, speaking upon that day, "that chivalry departed from the world with the glorious pagan, Saladin; for in many places I have found it, nor least in this wild country of thine; and it is an exceeding good thing," he added, "that men will forget their pa.s.sions amid the heat of battle, and will remember only that the enemy they fight against is brave."

Wat, he called me from himself, because he loved me, and after his little son. Indeed, he seemed in time to love me as fondly as any father; and while I was yet a little one and learning from him swordplay and fence, horsemans.h.i.+p, and other manly arts, I began to understand that amid all his splendor he carried sadness beneath it, and was a banished man. He had lost the Queen's favor-not because he had enemies at court, for Eliza was not one to be misled by rumors or cunning, but because he had clasped around the white neck of Mistress Throckmorton, a dame of honor, the milky carcanet of pearls the Queen's vanity desired to adorn her leanness, which in time the Queen might have forgiven, if he had not privily married the same Mistress Throckmorton; for she would have but one moon in the sky, and she liked not the gallantest man of her kingdom to be her dame's satellite. So he was become a soldier of fortune, and since he might not have his lady or his little son with him in these wild times, they abode in his quiet English Manor-house, while his sword slashed a way to fortune for them through the inheritance of the great, unhappy Desmonds.

In later years, when I had become well acquainted with the character of my lord, it hath seemed to me that he was not one for marriage; for danger was his love, and he was homesick away from her smile. And yet no more tender lord than he to the Lady Elizabeth might be found, and he loved his little Walter greatly.

But presently, the war being ended and the last Desmond Earl slain by a traitor in a cabin in the mountains, my lord sailed away from the harbor of Youghall to London, to the end that he might win permission for another expedition in search of treasure, and so regain the Queen's favor. By this time I was a tall lad, and was fain to go with my lord, but this he would by no manner of means permit. I hated so to live my life without him, even for a time, that I had thought of hiding myself aboard his s.h.i.+p, the Bon Aventure, but the fear which I had of him besides my love held me back. I had never seen him angry with me, and I prayed that I never should, so I heard him in silence when he bade me stay. Taking me aside then, he said to me, lovingly:

"I wrong you not, Wat, because I go without you, for Queen's favor is vain, and it may be I go to Traitor's Gate. You are no meat for the Tower, lad."

Then I cried out that if he went to the Tower I should go with him; at which he seemed pleased, patting my shoulder with great gentleness.

"It may be," he said, "that I return again to this Irish exile I weary of. Or, in the greatest event of all, I shall fit out a fleet for the Spanish Main, and make the Dons stand and deliver. That would be happiest for us, boy, for indeed I make but a bad port-sailor."

"You sail in the Bon Aventure," I said; "it is of good omen."

"It is indeed," he replied, "and I thank you for reminding me of it."

He looked out to sea, where the English leopards flapped at the wind's will on the mast of his s.h.i.+p, and I think I never saw such a longing in a man's eyes: so great was it that my heart bled for him. I had thought perhaps that he longed so much to see the Lady Elizabeth and his boy.

But he spoke, and I knew he was thinking of the free life of the rovers of the sea, not of that lady whom he so tenderly loved.

"If we prosper," he said, "we shall sail for Guiana, and found there, who knows, another Virginia. The spoil of half a dozen fat galleons and a new country. These are things that even Gloriana need not disdain. Yet Ess.e.x hath all her ear, and Ess.e.x is mine enemy."

"If you succeed, my lord-" I began.

"If I succeed I shall send for you. If I am sent to the Tower there are certain matters concerning you to which Master Richard Boyle is privy, and which he will impart to you. But it may be I shall be sent back to rot here; if so, there is nothing more to be said."

So on a certain day of l.u.s.ty summer my lord sailed away in the Bon Aventure, with Master Edmund Spenser, whose company had so greatly lightened his exile. The same carried with him two books of his poem, _The Faery Queen_, which he designed to have printed in London. He was bound to return, whether my lord came or not, for he had left at his Castle of Kilcohnour his lady whom he had married at Cork, and his young son. The same lady he made famous forever by the most beautiful of marriage-songs, which thing I had come to know, young as I was, for my lord would have me a scholar as well as a soldier, and I was become a very excellent scribe, so that the fair copying of Master Spenser's poems came to me.

I remember my last glimpse of them ere the Bon Aventure sunk over the rim of ocean, and evening seemed all at once to settle on the world. My lord was wearing a suit of black velvet over white, very finely embroidered with seed-pearls. The plume of his hat was held in its place by a clasp of diamonds. Beside him Master Spenser, in his black, looked over-grave. But when did Sir Walter-whom I call here "my lord" out of the love and loyalty I bore him-fail to s.h.i.+ne before all the world by the splendor of his apparel as well as by his manly beauty and the greatness of his deeds?

After they had gone, set in the endless dusk of summer evening, I grew tired of wandering about the gardens, so strange and sad without their master. So I went within doors, where some one had set a starveling rushlight in the chamber that was my lord's dining-hall, and there I sat me down with my Latin grammar and the Virgil my lord had given me. At this time I sat daily on the wooden benches of the College School at Youghall, and had my learning of an old clerk Sir Walter had summoned here from Devons.h.i.+re to take the place of the doctors and singing-men who had gone with the Desmonds. But my heart was heavy, and my head, and I had pushed away from me untasted the supper a serving-wench had carried to me.

Now all was very still in the house, so that the tap-tapping of a twig by the window-pane seemed to me a little frightful, although I was a boy of spirit. Outside was the black of an early summer night before the moon has risen, and going to the window upon the tapping I could see no star for the myrtle boughs. Yet sure I was that were I outside the purple would be pierced by innumerable eyes of light, and I was greatly tempted to return to the garden. Indeed, out in the night there would be companions.h.i.+p, although every bird slept well within the boughs. It is the houses men build that breed these phantoms of the brain, and not the free air. But disregarding the temptation I went back to my book, knowing full well the pleasure it would give my lord to learn that I had been diligent in his absence. Wonderful it was that he was hardly less in love with learning than with adventure. Indeed a man of such parts was this knight and master of mine that there seemed to be nothing admirable in which he did not excel. And if I am blind to his faults, even to this day when I repent me of certain share of mine in his adventures, let that be forgiven me, for surely I owed him all love and loyalty.

As the night went I heard the scullions who had been disporting themselves in the town return one by one, and the bolting and barring of doors. The songs of the sailors which came up from the s.h.i.+pping in the bay fell off and ceased. Silence fell on the town, a silence as unbroken as that of the sleepers yon in St. Mary's yard, and presently drowsiness overcoming me I too slept.

CHAPTER II.-THE APPARITION OF THE MONK.

The room in which I had studied and now slept was that to the right hand as you entered the door of the Manor-house. It was lined stoutly with oak, and it was dark because, though it had two fair windows, they were much obscured by the myrtles my lord had planted, which had thriven exceedingly in this mild air.

This room, as I have said, my lord used for a dining-hall. Else when he was within doors he sat in the oriel of the pleasant room overhead; and it was there that he and Master Spenser would sit and smoke or be silent; and there, which is not to be forgotten, Sir Walter listened to _The Faery Queen_.

For some reason or another this dining-hall, despite its purpose, seemed a place of little cheer. The Manor-house had belonged to the warden of the college, and owed its construction to him; and it was built after the English manner, which need not be surprising, since the progenitors of those church and abbey builders, the Munster Geraldines, were of English blood and race. Not only was the dining-hall in itself low and somewhat forbidding of aspect, but it smelt of earth and new graves, for all the generous wine and meats that had been consumed within it. The cause of the same my lord had never been able to determine, and it stayed, although the chimney roared with logs of s.h.i.+ps' timber, and the brightness, the good cheer, the wit and gayety that met there were enough to scare away any thought of death or the earth that shall receive us.

I slept, I have said, and while I slept the moon had arisen. The low light of it filled the chamber when I awoke with a start, smelling the graves, and feeling very cold. On the myrtle tree without an owl hooted.

The rushlight had gone out, but this I hardly knew, only that an earthy wind, smelling of damp and mildews, blew about my face, and I was stiff from lying asleep upon my book.

But this I noticed vaguely, for as soon as my eyes were well open a strange appearance in the room drew my gaze upon it. I was by this time a stout lad of some sixteen years, and accustomed to fear nothing, yet I will confess that the hair of my head stood up. The figure of a monk was in the further corner from me. I knew it to be a monk, because of the effigies, images, and portraits in St. Mary's Church and the library of the college. Further, I knew the apparition to be of a white friar. The cowl was over the face; the head was bent; a fold of white cloth hid the hands. The stature of the monk was exceedingly tall, and of a great leanness, as I could see where the belt of brown leather clasped the white gown about the middle.

All this I saw clearly by the light of the moon, or was it by some unearthly light of which the figure stood the centre? I know not, only that I saw everything clear: and still the odor of graves was in my nostrils.

While I stood stammering and staring a lean finger was pointed at me, so lean that I know not if flesh covered it, or if it were the fleshless finger of a skeleton. A voice, hollow and strange, came forth of the cowl.

"Son of the Geraldines," it said, "why art thou here among their murderers and despoilers?"

The voice constrained me to answer.

"Alas," I said, "I know not what you mean. I am a nameless boy, a dead leaf drifted in the forests. Why do you call me a son of the Geraldines, unless it be that I come of the humblest of the clan?"

"You are no kern's son, Walter Fitzmaurice, but of a n.o.ble house. How is it that you eat the bread and run at the stirrups of the Sa.s.senach who is the destroyer of your race?"

I stretched my hands imploringly to the cowled figure.

"He rescued me from death," I cried; "he warmed me with his love. He has taught me all a n.o.ble youth should know."

"You love him?"

"I love him."

"Listen, boy. They think they have destroyed the Desmonds, root and branch, as a man might tread out under his heel a nest of vipers. Yet hope is not dead. The line of the Geraldines is not destroyed. Return to your own people and leave this evil knight."

"Alas, I cannot," I said, "for I love him."

"The blood of your kin is red on his hands."

"And yet I love him."