The Great Captain Part 3

When I had deciphered so far the tower seemed suddenly to rock. It was the great clock in the neighboring tower striking of midnight; and I had yet to ford the pa.s.sageway between the graves! Already I might have been missed. I read no more, but thrust the papers within my breast. Then I bent and kissed the hands of the monk, feeling again that rush of softness, and as I kissed the hands I noticed the great string of beads which fell from the girdle, and that too I kissed, and the crucifix dependent from it; and these things I did blindly, having then a hard and ignorant heart, but being compelled I knew not how.

Then I stole from the tower-room and again down the winding staircase; but first I had drawn the cowl over the face and hid the hands and feet in the folds of the habit; and so left him to quietness and the night.

I made the return pa.s.sage without any mishap; and though a fear a.s.sailed me on the way lest I had locked myself within by closing the door, there was no ground for it, for the panel opened simply enough, and was indeed secured by a bolt on the pa.s.sage side; which no doubt had prevented my finding the opening before. For either the monk had left it undone now by design, or being surprised by his last sickness, or else a companion or companions of his had fled the house-way while we slept, leaving the door unbarred. Yet I had seen no sign of any other inmate of the tower save one; that is of visible folk, for I doubt not there were others, ministering and invisible.

So I returned as I had come and went hastily to the banquet-hall. As I entered my lord and the Lord Boyle were returning slowly to their places. I caught a word of their speech. "You will remember the trust,"

said my dear lord; and I knew not it was of me they were talking. "Yea,"

said my Lord Boyle, and showed his yellow teeth; "let it be in my hands, or else when Jamie succeeds some Scot will have it." And then he laughed, rubbing his lean hands together.

Then my lord observed me, and calling me to him he put his hand upon my shoulder and looked at me with surprise.

"Why, Wat," he said, "what spider's nest hath caught you?"

I looked down then at my brave apparel, and was confused to find that it was gray with dust and cobwebs from my journey.

"He hath been ratting," said my Lord Boyle, "and hath pursued the quarry even within their holes."

"It matters less," said my lord, "since it is the hour to put on soberer attire. Be in good time, Wat,"-and so saying he released me. Then I hurried to my chamber in the roof, and was right pleased that I had not been questioned more closely. And when I had laid away my fine apparel and all was ready for our journey, I took my paper to the candle-light that I might decipher it.

It had been written for my hand and none other, and the writer thereof was mine own father's brother. I was indeed of the ill.u.s.trious Desmond house, though of a younger branch; and yet in the havoc that had come upon it I might well now be all that was living of the race. I had, it seemed, my father being slain, been hidden with my mother in the forest by a faithful clansman, who had provided us with what food he might; who being out one day snaring rabbits in the forest had been caught by a party of the enemy and borne away by them strapped to one of their horses. He had escaped them by the mercy of G.o.d, and returned to the place where he had left us, to find his lady dead of starvation and myself gone. Doubtless that sweet mother of mine had starved through giving all she had to her child. The man knew not if I had met an enemy and been hacked or speared to death, or if the wolves had had me, or the fierce eagles that yet infest the forest in search of tender prey. He grieved to death not knowing. But the friar, Brother Ambrose, the last of the White Monks of Youghall, and mine uncle, known to men as Roderick Fitzmaurice, rested not till he had found if I were of this life, and at last discovered me. Having written this history for mine eyes, he wrestled with me further that I should come out from among the enemies of my people. But to what end? I asked, having so much worldly wisdom, since the Desmond clan was gone down in blood, and its inheritance with strangers. Indeed, when I had come to the dead man's prayers, I folded up the paper as one that will not listen and fears to be persuaded. Even then there came from the harbor a ringing of bells and the shouts of the sailors as they drew up the anchor of the Bon Aventure from its bed in the sands. I therefore thrust my fine garments into my sea-chest and shot the bolt; but mine uncle's message to me I put within my doublet.

As the s.h.i.+p swung round, and we headed her for eastward I turned my thoughts away from the quiet sleeper in the church tower, and looked rather to my lord's dark figure as he leant over the vessel's side, gazing not the way she was going, but rather to westward. For though he was the enemy of my race and my country, yet I loved him with such a love that nothing could dissever my heart from him. And for his sake I was not sorry even that I had not sooner discovered that poor kinsman of mine-the very last it well might be-in his hiding-place. For no doubt he had come many times to the room in which he had first found me, but never found me again. And now he was dead and past caring any more.

CHAPTER V.-OF A STRAIT PLACE AND A QUIET TIME.

A few days later the Bon Aventure was lying in the river Thames, and we had no more than cast anchor when my lord put on his richest clothes, and bidding me to attend him, went by water to the steps leading to the Queen's palace of Westminster. I remember that the way took us past Traitor's Gate, the low and threatening portals by which prisoners are brought within the Tower. As we pa.s.sed my lord looked at me with a sad smile. "I shall go that way yet, Wat," he said. And when I burst into a pa.s.sionate protest, he said to me: "Why, Wat, if you could look upon the company which hath pa.s.sed by way of that gate, you would see it to be of the finest. I shall not blush to tread in their footsteps." But I could not believe it, looking upon him in his garb of peach-bloom velvet laced with silver, and the jewels of a king's ransom; and yet alas! he spoke too truly.

I remember when we were come to those stairs of Westminster how the people pressed to look upon him, and shouted for him, and flung their caps in the air. If he was not in favor at the court, certainly he lacked not favor outside it.

Even within the palace the pages and the maids of honor peeped at him, and many courtiers thronged to welcome him, and the scullions and grooms of the chambers looked through windows and down staircases to see him pa.s.s, so that to me it was as though the tapestry wavered with whispers and eyes. As we waited for an audience we saw many great men pa.s.s, but not one fit to stand beside my lord. Then came the Queen, a shrunk, tall, high-boned woman, in a blaze of diamonds, the ruff standing about her spare, pale head like a setting sun, so thick it was with jewels, and her farthingale and petticoat making a prodigious circle about her.

She had green eyes, and they were cold, and coldly she gave her hand to my lord to kiss.

She had called him back because Spain threatened; but now he was come she could not forget her anger. That was for the old affair of Mistress Throckmorton. I heard the pages whispering that day that she had not forgiven him; and one, a pert, bright lad, who won my heart because he was so eager to see and hear of the Great Captain, told me how my Lord Ess.e.x had in likewise nearly forfeited the Queen's favor. For he had admired upon the person of the Lady Mary Howard a farthingale of cloth of gold, sewn with seed-pearls, the which coming to the Queen's ears she had demanded the garment for herself, saying that no subject should go finer than the Queen's Majesty. But having acquired it she discovered herself to be too tall and too broad for it, so that it misbecame her mightily. Whereupon she cast it aside so that none should wear it since she could not.

Of the same palace I grew sick to death. How long were we kept waiting about its corridors till the Queen's favor should veer towards us again.

It suited not with a country lad like myself; and as for my lord, his face grew lined and he seldom smiled: so that often, often, I longed that the old gardening days in Youghall were come again. Nor had he yet seen his wife and son. At last he grew restive, and declared that Devons.h.i.+re air consorted better with his humor than the dank fogs that spread at evening about Westminster. But ere he could be gone he was committed to the Tower on the Queen's warrant. So, sooner than we dreamt were we come to Traitor's Gate.

I went thither with him, and together we pa.s.sed the low arch. There I was permitted to be in attendance on him, and listened often to his cries and groans, for he could not endure the imprisonment while there were so many glorious things in the world to be done. Sometimes he would solace himself with philosophy and poetry. But at times his fury would break forth so that the governor of the Tower feared for him lest he should go mad. He well described his own sufferings.

"I am become like a fish cast on dry land," he wrote, "gasping for breath, with lame legs and lamer lungs."

Indeed there were times when it seemed as if he would die from being so imprisoned and confined. Trust in the Queen's pity he had not.

"There is no chance for me now, Wat," he said once, "unless it be that one of my captains should bring home a treasure-s.h.i.+p to pour into her lap, which might buy my freedom if she conceived that by that means I might find her more. For she loves gold as other women love love, wherefore is her face become yellower than a guinea."

It was for some such saying, doubtless, the Queen had had him cast in the Tower. He was not one to learn guile; and, like his rival, Ess.e.x, he was over-brave in speech as in other things.

However, that happened that one of his captains did bring home a treasure-s.h.i.+p. He had been in the Tower two months, and had worn the stone floors with his pacing of them, more restless than the lion. The folk came to stare at him in the courtyard without. Then word came to us that his s.h.i.+ps were in from the Azores and had brought with them the Spanish plate-s.h.i.+p, the Madre di Dios, which they had captured from the Dons. Half a million, a million, there was no end to the guineas she was worth. She was lined with glowing, woven carpets, sarcenet quilts, and lengths of white silks and cyprus. She carried, in chests of sandalwood and ebony, such stores of rubies and pearls, such porcelain and ivory and crystal, such planks of cinnamon, and such marvellous treasures as had never before been seen. Her hold seemed like a garden of spices, so laden was it with cloves, cinnamon, ambergris, and frankincense.

But even then the Queen was not minded to deliver him. His chief captain came from the mouth of the Dart, where the s.h.i.+p lay, to bring him his reports; but no message came from the Queen. However, his freeing was taken out of her hands and came not a whit too soon, for he had aged ten years in those two months. It seemed that the usurers and dealers in precious metals in London had flocked to the Dart upon the news of the treasure. And vagrants from all the winds flocked thither. And between those vultures and my lord's own seamen and men of Devon there was soon riot and bloodshed. Then, since all means of restoring the peace seemed to have failed, at last they took my lord from the Tower that he might make peace.

It seemed that half the world was about the treasure-s.h.i.+p, and my lord's s.h.i.+ps. There came to greet us at our journey's end that Lord Cecil of whom I had heard so much. I trusted him not, and I was rejoiced that he should see the pa.s.sion of welcome which awaited my lord from his men of Devon. It was well that it was so, for my Lord Cecil reported upon it to the Queen.

"I a.s.sure you," he wrote, "all his servants and his mariners came to him with such shouts of joy as I never saw a man more troubled to quiet them in all my life. But his heart is broken, and whenever he is saluted with congratulation for liberty he doth answer, 'No, I am still the Queen of England's poor captive.' But I vow to you his credit among the mariners is greater than I could have thought it."

My Lord Cecil was well disposed to my lord, albeit his cunning eyes and old, wise face made my youth feel of a sudden cold. The Queen harkened to him, and we were returned no more to the Tower; yet those two months of impatient fretting had set their mark upon my lord.

After this we sailed up the Dart to that Manor-house where the Lady Raleigh dwelt with her son. And again there was a very sweet interval of peace. I have now but to close my eyes and see again the red-brick ivied house, with its chimney-stack dark against the sky. The swallows are wheeling overhead, shouting and playing with one another. The rooks are coming homeward across the evening sky. On the green and velvety bowling green young Walter and I are playing at bowls. There are roses on the terrace and a peac.o.c.k spreading his tail. Below these is the garden with its box borders, its roses and pinks and pansies; its fountain where the goldfish swim round and round, and its mossy dial. Further yet is the orchard, and beyond it the deer feeding amid the trees, and further still the river, and apple-orchards, with maids and men a-gathering apples for the cider brew. But I look not so far. My eye rests with my heart upon my lord, when he goeth between the box-borders in sweet converse with his lady-wife; and I watch him till young Walter rallies me as a poor comrade and player at the game.

Often my lady would take me apart, and bid me tell her of my lord when he was in Ireland. Of those years she was never tired of hearing; and when my tongue or my thoughts would grow slack she would grow impatient with me. Yet I think my love for her lord pleased her. She was a little lady, and the brightest ever I saw, with cream-pale cheeks and the liveliest of black eyes. I could not wonder that for a time she lulled to sleep my lord's desires for America. Very pitiful she was towards the havoc their long parting and the trouble and the imprisonment had wrought in him, and would stand a-tiptoes to smooth the wrinkles out with her dainty finger.

The Lord Cecil was now my lord's friend at court, and to him she writ beseeching that there might be no more voyages, at least for the time.

"I hope for my sake," she writ, "that you wilt rather draw Walter toward the East than help him forward toward the sunset, if any respect to me or love to him be not forgotten."

So we remained in peace, and young Walter and I flew our hawks and played at the ball, and fished and swam to our hearts' content. And dearly as I loved my lord, I came to love his son hardly less. He was a brave lad of Devon, this Walter Raleigh, tall as his father, and nigh as comely, yet innocent and quiet, with the country innocence and quietude, because by reason of the Queen's displeasure he had abode all his years in those sequestered ways; yet skilled in all such manly and courtly arts as became the son of his father; so that he was as good with a sonnet as at swordplay, and could dance the pavane as prettily as he could loose his goshawk. And for all his innocence was not unfit to face a rough world; and for all his quiet kindliness was as brave and as quick to fight as any gallant ever I saw.

My lord looked on at our comrades.h.i.+p well pleased. I heard him ask my Lady Raleigh one day if we did not make a gallant couple, at which my lady pouted, and said he was loving me in Ireland when she and her Wat were forgotten. "Nay," said he, "that never was, Sweetlips; but he comforted me something in my loneliness without wife and son." Then my lady called me to her, and kissed me like a mother, and vowed that she loved me for what I had been to her lord in those Irish years. She changed quickly in her pretty humors; but there was no change in her constancy and kindness towards me any more than in her lord's love.

After that we went eastward for a season to the village of Bath, to drink at its springs, which had been discovered to be sovereign remedy for many ills. It was my Lady Raleigh's will to make her lord well again. "As though, Bess," he said, "you could turn backward the years we have been parted."

And I left the Manor-house with grief and pain, for never again, I feared, should we have a season of such peace. My lord was not one to abide long in peace; and certainly the Bath waters as they restored his strength restored also his pa.s.sion for adventure and turmoil, so that my Lady Raleigh in healing him but defeated her desire of keeping him with her. For after a time he seemed no longer quiet and well-content. And he had yet not only his share of the treasure-s.h.i.+p, though I doubt not the greater part was poured in the Queen's lap, but he had also my Lord Boyle's purse to draw upon.

Then as he was becoming restive, yea, straining as a hound strains at the leash, and declaring that he would sail before the mast if he might none other way, one of his captains, Popham by name, and a stout old sea-dog from the harbor town of Plymouth, brought him letters writ by a Spanish captain to the King of Spain, and captured by the English s.h.i.+p.

Reading them my lord seemed as he would choke with fury. I knew how my lord's heart turned to Guiana, the golden country. And these letters reported that the Governor of Trinidad had annexed this same wondrous land in the name of King Philip. Then, even my Lady Raleigh saw that it was no use seeking to hold her lord any longer; and she bade him go, with so sweet a grace and so high a spirit that she proved herself even a worthy mate for the Great Captain.

CHAPTER VI.-THE TREASURE-s.h.i.+P.

We left my Lady Raleigh alone in the spring of the year. It was February the sixth, and the snowdrop and crocus were up in the garden-beds of the Manor-house, and the blackbirds and thrushes singing nigh as sweet as they sing in Ireland, when we put out from Plymouth with five s.h.i.+ps and a motley company. It was a stolen expedition in a manner of speaking; for we hoisted our flag for Virginia, yet I think the meanest scullion aboard knew that Guiana was our port. For it was not politic to flout too openly Philip of Spain; though we might fly the Jolly Roger and overhaul his treasure-s.h.i.+ps on the high seas. For the Queen of England, as she grew older grew craftier; and would have any cat's-paw to draw her chestnuts out of the fire, and bear the brunt of it as well, while she went free.

We two Wats sailed with Sir Walter. 'Twas time, he said, his son should see the world; and indeed it would have gone hard with us to be left behind.

It is wonderful to me now to recall how I had learnt-yea, as though I had been English-born-to hate the Spaniard, as though he had been a rat or some such thing, and no evil but merit in the slaying and despoiling of him. And therein was shown the folly and vanity of my youth; for not only was the Spaniard a grave and majestic foe, but he was of the faith my fathers had died to defend. Yet of this I thought not at all at the time, being indeed little better than a heathen; for my lord, albeit he was religious at heart, yet showed little of it in his life, and troubled not at all about it in others. Indeed, it is a strange thing to me now to reflect that all who led that wild life had yet some measure of religion; for then the days of the cold-heart and the mocker had not yet begun.

I remember as we made the voyage how Wat and I used to gather at night about the mast to hear the sailors tell stories and sing songs. There was one, Jonas t.i.ttlebat, of Devizes, who was our favorite story-teller of them all, and I doubt not our favorite stories were of the slaying of Spaniards and sacking of their s.h.i.+ps. It was as though one should inure a tender child to the shambles. For we grew to love the talk of blood, and to desire to see and smell and taste it; and I remember how at the end of the recitals Wat and I used to sit and pant, facing each other like a pair of tiger-cats, with the l.u.s.t of blood in our hearts. For though we had been brought up simply and innocently the evil was there, only awaiting the breath that should fan it to a flame, and the fostering hands that would not let it go out.

Many weeks, even months, were we sailing till we came in sight of land, and for some days before this the southwesterly wind had brought us many an earnest of the beautiful country, brilliant and strange leaves, and plumes, and sh.e.l.ls, and flowers, drifting to us over the phosph.o.r.escent water which at night made the sea a dance of silver.

Of my lord we saw little during the voyage. He was ever busy with his maps and charts in the cabin, observing the motion of his compa.s.ses, and studying the stars by night. Or else he was writing; and often it made me wonder to see how he, so greatly in love with action and energy, could yet content himself so many hours with the pen.

As we sailed up the river the beauty of it struck us dumb. I saw my lord stand in the bows of the vessel and drink in hungrily the beauty of that land. Exceedingly fertile it seemed, nor can I describe it better than in his own words.