 CHAPTER VIII. IN WHICH ENTERS MY LORD CARNAL. I felt a touch upon my shoulder and turned to find Mistress Percy beside me. Her cheeks were white, her eyes aflame, her whole frame tense. The passion that dominated her was so clearly anger at white heat that I stared at her in amazement. Her hand slid from my shoulder to the bend of my arm and rested there. Remember that I am your wife, sir, she said in a low, fierce tone. You're kind and loving wife. You said that your sword was mine. Now bring your wit to the same service. There was not time to question her meaning. The man whose position in the realm had just been announced by the secretary, and of whom we had all heard as one not unlikely to supplant even Buckingham himself, was close at hand. The governor headpiece in hand stepped forward. The other swept off his Spanish hat, both bowed profoundly. I speak to his honor the governor of Virginia, inquired the newcomer. His tone was off hand, his hat already back upon his head. I am George Yearly at my Lord Carnal's service, answered the governor. The favorite raised his eyebrows. I don't need to introduce myself, it seems, he said. You've found that I am not the devil after all, at least not the Spanish apples on. Zooks, a hawk above a poultry yard, couldn't have caused a greater commotion than did my poor little ship and my few poor birding pieces. Does every strange sail so put you through your paces? The governor's color mounted. We are not at home, he answered stiffly. Here we are few and weak and surrounded by many dangers, and have need to be vigilant being planted as it were, in the very grasp of that Spain who holds Europe in awe, and who claims this land as her own, that we are here at all is proof enough of our courage, my lord. The other shrugged his shoulders. I don't doubt your medal, he said negligently. I dare say it matches your armor. His glance had rested for a moment upon the battered headpiece, an ancient rusty breastplate with which Master Jeremy Sparrow was bedied. It is something antique, truly something out of fashion, remarked that worthy, almost as out of fashion as courtesy from guests, or respect for dignities from my face as my fortune minions and lords on carpet considerations. The hush of consternation following this audacious speech was broken by a roar of laughter from the favorite himself. Zounds, he cried. Your courage is worn on your sleeve, good giant. I'll uphold you to face Spaniards, Strapado, Rack, Galleys and all. The bravado with which he spoke, the insolence of his bold glance and curled lip, the arrogance with which he flaunted that king's favor which should be a brand more infamous than the hangman's, his beauty, the pop of his dress, all were alike, hateful. I hated him then, scarce knowing why, as I hated him afterward with the reason. He now pulled from the breast of his doublet a packet which he propered to the governor. From the king's ser, he announced in the half fierce, half mocking tone he had made his own. You may read it at your leisure. He wishes you to further me in a quest upon which I have come. The governor took the packet with reverence. His majesty's will is our law, he said. Anything that lies in our power, sir, though if you come for gold. The favorite laughed again. I've come for a thing, a deal more precious, sir governor, a thing worth more to me than all the treasure of the Indies with Manoa and Eldorado thrown in, to wit the thing upon which I've set my mind. That which I determined to do, I do, sir, and the thing I determined to have, by sooner or later by hook or by crook, fair means or foul, I have it. I am not one to be crossed or defied with impunity. I do not take your meaning, my lord, said the governor puzzled, but courteous. There are none here who would care to thwart, in any honorable enterprise, a nobleman so high in the king's favor. I trust that my lord Carnal will make my poor house his own during his stay in Virginia. What's the matter, my lord? My lord's face was dark red, his black eyes of fire, his moustaches working up and down. His white teeth had closed with a click on the loud oath which had interrupted the governor's speech. Honest, sir George, and his circle stared at this unaccountable guest in amazement not unmixed with dismay. As for myself, I knew before he spoke what had caused the oath and the fierce triumph in that handsome face. Your Jeremy Sparrow had moved a little to one side, thus exposing to view that which his great body had before screened from observation, namely Mistress Jocelyn Percy. In a moment the favorite was before her, hat in hand, bowing to the ground. My quest hath ended where I feared it, but begun he cried, flushed and exalted. I have found my Minoa sooner than I thought for. Have you no welcome for me, lady? He withdrew her arm from mine and curtsy to him profoundly, then stood erect, indignant and defiant, her eyes angry stars, her cheeks carnation, scorn on her smiling lips. I cannot welcome you as you should be welcomed, my lord, she said in a clear voice. I have but my bare hands. Minoa, my lord, lies far to the southward. This land is quite out of your course, and you will find here but your travail for your pains. My lord, permit me to present to you my husband, Captain Ralph Percy. I think that you know his cousin, my lord of Northumberland. The red left the favorite's cheeks, and he moved as though a blow had been dealt him by some invisible hand. Recovering himself he bowed to me and eye to him, which done we looked each other in the eyes long enough for each to see the throne gauntlet. I raise it, I said, and I raise it, he answered. A loud trance, I think, sir, I continued. A loud trance, he asserted. And between us two alone, I suggested. His answering smile was not good to see, nor was the tone in which he spoke to the governor good to hear. It was now some weeks, sir, he said, since there disappeared from court a jewel, a diamond of most inestimable value, it in some sort belonged to the king, and his majesty in the goodness of his heart had promised it to a certain one, nay had sworn by his kingdom that it should be his. Well, sir, that man put forth his hand to claim his own, when, lo, the jewel vanished. Where it went no man could tell. There was, as you may believe, a mighty running up and down and looking into dark corners all for naught. It was clean gone. But the man to whom that bright gem had been promised was not easily hoodwinked or baffled. He swore to trace it, follow it, find it, and wear it. His bold eyes left the governor to rest upon the woman beside me. Had he pointed to her with his hand, he could not have more surely drawn upon her the regard of that motley throng. By degrees the crowd had fallen back, leaving us three, the king's minion, the masquerading lady, and myself, the center of a ring of staring faces. But now she became the sole target at which all eyes were directed. In Virginia at this time the women of our own race were held in high esteem. During the first years of our planning they were a greater rarity than the mockingbirds and flying squirrels, or than that weed the eating of which made fools of men. The man whose white was loving and daring enough, or jealous enough of Indian maids to follow him into the wilderness, counted his friends by the score, and never lacked for company. The first marriage in Virginia was between a laborer and a waiting maid, and yet there was as great a deal of candy stuff as if it had been the nuptials of a lieutenant of the Shire. The brother of my lord Delaware stood up with the groom, the brother of my lord of Northumberland gave away the bride and was the first to kiss her, and the president himself held the cuddle to their lips that night. Since that wedding there had been others, gentle women made the Virginia voyage with husband or father. Women signed as servants and came over to marry in three weeks' time, the husband paying good tobacco for the wife's freedom, in the cargos of children sent for apprentices there were many girls, and last but not least had come Sir Edwin's dubs. Things had changed since that day, at the memory of which men still held their sides, when the damn West, then the only women in the town with youth and beauty, had marched down the street to the pillory, mounted it, called to her the drummer, and ordered him to summon to the square by tuck of drum every man in the place. Which done, and the amazed population at hand, gaping at the spectacle of the wife of their commander, then absent from home, pilloried before them, she gave command through the choir that they should take their fill of gazing, whispering, and nudging then and there, forever and a day, and then should go about their business and give her leave to mind her own. That day was gone, but men still dropped their work to see a woman pass, still cheered when the farthingale appeared over a ship's side, and at church still devoted their eyes to other service than staring at the minister. In our short-foot-crowded history few things had made a greater stir than the coming in of Sir Edwin's maids. They were married now, but they were still the observed of all observers. To be pointed out to strangers, run after by children, gaped at by the vulgar, vowed to with broad smiles by Burgess, counselor, and commander, and openly contempt by those doms who had attained to a husband in somewhat more regular fashion. Of the ninety who had arrived two weeks before, the greater number had found husbands in the town itself or in the neighboring hundreds, so that in the crowd that had gathered to withstand the Spaniard, and had stayed to welcome the king's favorite, there were farthingales not a few, but there were none like the woman whose hand I had kissed in the courting meadow. In the throng that day, in her puritan dress and amid the crowd of meaner beauties, she had passed without over much comment, and since that day none had seen her save Rolf and the minister, my servants, and myself. And when the Spaniard was cried, men thought of other things than the beauty of women, so that until this moment she had escaped any special notice. Now, all that was changed. The governor, following the pointing of those insolent eyes, fixed his own upon her in a stare of sheer amazement. The gold lace quality about him crane next, lifted eyebrows and whispered, and the rabble behind followed their better's example with an emphasis quite their own. Where do you suppose that jewel went, sir governor, said the favorite, that jewel which was overnight to shine at court, which set up its will against the king's, which would have none of that one to whom it had been given? I am a plain man, my lord, replied the governor bluntly, and it pleas you give me plain words. My lord laughed, his eyes traveling round the ring of greedily intent faces. So be it, sir, he ascended. May I ask who is this lady? She came in the Bonavuture, answered the governor. She was one of the treasurer's poor maids, with whom I tried to measure at court not long ago, said the favorite. I had to wait for the honor until the prince had been gratified. The governor's round eyes grew rounder. Young Hamour, a tiptoe behind him, drew a long, low whistle. When so small a community went on, my lord, sure you must all know one another. There can be no mass-worn, no false colors displayed. Everything must be as open as daylight. But we all have a past as well as a present. Now, for instance, I interrupted him. In Virginia, my lord, we live in the present. At present, my lord, I do not like the color of your lordship's cloak. He stared at me with his black brows drawn together. It is not of your choosing, nor for your wearing, sir, he rejoined hodlily. And your sword not is villainously tied, I continued. And I like not such a fire-new, bejeweled scabbard. Mine, you see, is out at heel. I see, he said, dryly. The pinking of your doublet suits me not either, I declared. I could make it more to my liking. And I touched his Genoa three-pile with the point of my rapier. A loud murmur arose from the crowd, and the governor started forward, crying out, Captain Percy, are you mad? I was never saner in my life, sir, I answered. French fashions like me not, that is all, nor Englishmen that wear them, to my thinking such are scarcely true-born. That thrust went home. All the world knew the story of my late lord, Carnal, and the waiting woman in the service of the French ambassador's wife. A gasp of admiration went up from the crowd. My lord's rapier was out, the hand that held it shaking with passion. I had my blade in my hand, but the point was upon the ground. I'll lessen you, you madman, he said thickly. Suddenly without any warning he thrust at me. Had he been less blind with rage, the long score which each was to run up against the other might have ended it where it began. I swerved, and the next instant with my own point sent his rapier whirling. It fell at the governor's feet. Your lordship may pick it up, I remarked. Your grasp is as firm as your honor, my lord. He glared at me, foam upon his lips. Men were between us now, the governor, Francis West, Master Corey, Hamour, Wynn, and a babble of excited voices arose. The diversion I had aimed to make had been made with a vengeance. West had me by the arm. What a mirrain is all this coil about, Ralph Percy! If you hurt hair of his head, you are lost. The favorite broke from the governor's detaining hand and conciliatory speech. You'll fight, sir, he cried hoarsely. You know that I need not now, my lord, I answered. He stamped upon the ground with rage and shame, not true shame for that foul thrust, but shame for the sword upon the grass, for that which could be read in men's eyes. Like to hide it as they might, for the open scorn upon one face. Then during the minute or more in which we faced each other in silence, he exerted to some effect that will of which he had boasted. The scarlet faded from his face, his frame steadied, and he forced a smile. Also he called to his aid a certain soldierly, honest, seeming frankness of speech and manner which he could assume at will. Your Virginian sunshine dazzled with the eyes, sir, he said. Of a verity it made me think you on guard. Forgive me my mistake. I bowed. Your lordship will find me at your service. I lodge at the minister's house where your lordship's messenger will find me. I am going there now with my wife, who hath written the score of Miles this morning, and is weary. We give you good day, my lord. I bowed to him again, and to the governor, then gave my hand to Mistress Percy. The crowd opening before us we passed through it, and crossed the parade by the West Bullard. At the further end was a bit of rising ground. This we mounted. Then before descending the other side into the lane leading to the minister's house, we turned as by one impulse and looked back. Life is like one of those endless Italian corridors, painted picture after picture by a master hand, and man is the traveler through it, taking his eyes from one scene but to rest them upon another. Some remain a blur in his mind, some he remembers not, for some he has to but close his eyes, and he sees them again, line for line, tint for tint, the whole spirit of the peace. I close my eyes, and I see the sunshine hot and bright, the blue of the skies, the sheen of the river. The sails are white again upon boats long lost. The Santa Teresa, sunk in a fight with an Algerian rover two years afterwards, rides at anchor there forever in the James, her crew in the waist and the rigging, her master and his mates on the poop above them, the flag. I see the plane at our feet and the crowd beyond, all staring with upturned faces, and standing up on the crowd of perplexed and wondering dignitaries, a man in black and scarlet. One hand busy at his mouth, the other clenched upon the newly restored and unsheathed sword, and I see standing on the green hillot hand in hand, us too, myself and the woman so near to me, and yet so far away that a common enemy seemed our only tie. We turned and descended to the green lane and the deserted houses. When we were quite hidden from those we had left on the bank below the fort, she dropped my hand and moved to the other side of the lane, and thus with never a word to spare we walked sedately on until we reached the minister's house. CHAPTER IX IN WHICH TWO DRINK OF ONE CUP Waiting for us in the doorway we found Master Jeremy Sparrow, relieved of his battered armor, his face wreathed with hospitable smiles and a posy in his hand. When the Spaniard turned out to be only the king's minion, I slipped away to see that all was in order, he said genially. Here are roses, madam, that you are not to treat as you did those others. She took them with a smile, and we went into the house to find three fair large rooms, something bare of furnishing, but clean and sweet, with here and there a bow-pot of newly gathered flowers, a dish of wardens on the table, and a cool air laden with the fragrance of the pine blowing through the open window. This is your domain, quote the minister. I have worthy Master Buck's own chamber upstairs. Ah, good men, I wish he may quickly recover his strength and come back to his own, and so relieve me of the burden of all this luxury, I whom nature meant for an Aromite have no business in king's chambers such as these. His devout faith in his own distaste for soft living and his longings after a hermit's cell was an edifying spectacle, so was the evident pride which he took in his domain, the complacence with which he pointed out the shady well-stocked garden, and the delight with which he produced and set upon the table a huge pasty and a flaggen of wine. It is a fast day with me, he said. I may neither eat nor drink until the sun goes down. The flesh is a strong giant, very full of pride and lust of living, and the spirit must needs keep watch and ward, seizing every opportunity to mortify and eject its adversary. Good wife, Alan, is still gaping with the crowd at the fort, and your man and maid have not yet come, but I shall be overheard if you need ought. Mistress Percy must want rest after her ride. He was gone, leading us two alone together. She stood opposite me, beside the window, from which she had not moved since entering the room. The color was still in her cheeks, the light in her eyes, and she still held the roses with which Sparrow had heaped her arms. I was moving to the table. Wait, she said, and I turned toward her again. Have you no questions to ask? She demanded. I shook my head. None, madam. I was the king's ward, she cried. I bowed but spoke no word, though she waited for me. If you will listen, she said at last proudly and yet with a pleading sweetness, if you will listen, I will tell you how it was that I, that I came to wrong you so. I am listening, madam, I replied. She stood against the light, the roses pressed to her bosom, her dark eyes upon me, her head held high. My mother died when I was born, my father years ago. I was the king's ward. While the queen lived, she kept me with her. She loved me, I think, and the king, too, was kind, would have me sing to him, and would talk to me about witchcraft and the scriptures and how rebellion to a king is rebellion to God. When I was sixteen and he tendered me marriage with the Scotch Lord, I, who loved the gentleman not, never having seen him, prayed the king to take the value of my marriage and leave me my freedom. He was so good to me, then, that the Scotch Lord was wed elsewhere, and I danced at the wedding with the mind at ease. Time passed and the king was still my very good lord. Then one black day, my lord carnal came to court, and the king looked at him oftener than at his grace of Buckingham. A few months and my lord's wish was the king's will. To do this new favorite pleasure, he forgot his ancient kindness of heart. Yay! And he made the law of no account. I was his kin's woman and under my full age. He would give my hand to whom he chose. He chose to give it to my lord carnal. She broke off and turned her face from me toward the slant sunshine without the window. Thus far she had spoken quietly, with a certain proud patience of voice and bearing, but as she stood there in a silence which I did not break, the memory of her wrongs brought the crimson to her cheeks and the anger to her eyes. Finally she burst forth passionately. The king is the king. What is a subject's will to clash with his? What weighs a woman's heart against his whim? Little cared he that my hand held back grew cold at the touch of that other hand in which he would have put it. What matter if my will was against that marriage? It was but the will of a girl and must be broken. All my world was with the king. I who stood alone was but a woman, young and untaught. Oh, they pressed me sore. They angered me to the very heart. There was not one to fight my battle, to help me in that straight, to show me a better path than that I took. With all my heart, with all my soul, with all my might, I hate that man which that ship brought here today. You know what I did to escape them all? To escape that man? I fled from England in the dress of my waiting-maid and under her name. I came to Virginia in that guise. I let myself be put up, appraised, cried for sale, in that meadow yonder, as if I had been indeed the piece of merchandise I professed myself. The one man who approached me with respect, I gulled and cheated. I let him, a stranger, give me his name. I shelter myself now behind his name. I have hoisted on him my quarrel. I have, oh, despise me, if you will. You cannot despise me more than I despise myself. I stood with my hand upon the table, and my eyes studying the shadow of the vines upon the floor. All that she said was perfectly true, and yet I had a vision of a scarlet and black figure and a dark and beautiful face. I, too, hated my lord carnal. I do not despise you, madam, I said at last. What was done two weeks ago in the meadow yonder is past recall. Let it rest. What is mine is yours. It's little beside my sword and my name. The one is naturally at my wife's service, for the other I have had some pride in keeping it untarnished. It is now in your keeping as well as my own. I do not fear to leave it there, madam. I had spoken with my eyes upon the garden outside the window, but now I looked at her to see that she was trembling in every limb, trembling so that I thought she would fall. I hastened to her. The roses, she said, the roses are too heavy. Oh, I am tired, and the room goes round. I caught her as she fell and laid her gently upon the floor. There was water on the table, and I dashed some in her face and moistened her lips. Then turned to the door to get woman's help and ran against Dickon. I got that bag of bones here at last, sir, he began. If ever I, his eyes traveled past me and he broke off. Don't stand there staring, I ordered. Go bring the first woman you meet. Is she dead, he asked under his breath. Have you killed her? Killed her, fool, I cried. Have you never seen a woman swoon? She looks like death, he muttered. I thought, you thought, I exclaimed. You have too many thoughts. Be gone and call for help. Here is Angela, he said sullenly and without offering to move as light of foot, soft voice, oxide and docile, the black woman entered the room. When I saw her upon her knees beside the motionless figure, the head pillowed on her arm, her hand busy with the fast things about throat and bosom, her dark face as womanly tender as any English mother's bending over her nursing. And when I saw my wife with a little moan creep further into the encircling arms, I was satisfied. Come away, I said, and followed by Deacon, went out and shut the door. My Lord Carnal was never one to let the grass grow beneath his feet. An hour later came his cartel, born by no less a personage than the secretary of the colony. I took it from the point of that worthy's rapier, it ran thus, sir, at what hour tomorrow and at what place do you prefer to die? And with what weapon shall I kill you? Captain Percy will give me credit for the profound reluctance with which I act in this affair against a gentleman and an officer so high in the esteem of the colony, said Master Pory with his hand upon his heart. When I tell him that I once fought at Paris in a duel of six on the same side with my late Lord Carnal, and that when I was last at court my Lord Warwick did me the honor to present me to the present Lord, he will see that I could not well refuse when the latter requested my aid. Master Pory's disinterestedness is perfectly well known, I said, without a smile. If he ever chooses the stronger side, sure he has strong reasons for doing so. He will oblige me by telling his principal that I ever thought sunrise a pleasant hour for dying and that there could be no fitter place than the field behind the church convenient as it is to the graveyard. As for weapons, I have heard that he is a good swordsman, but I have some little reputation that way myself. If he prefers pistols or daggers, so be it. I think we may assume the sword, said Master Pory. I vowed, you'll bring a friend, he asked. I do not despair of finding one, I answered, though my second Master Secretary will put himself in some jeopardy. It is combat, outrance, I believe. I understand it so. Then we'd better have Bohun, the survivor may need his services. As you please, I replied, though my man Dickon dresses my scratches well enough, he bit his lip but could not hide the twinkle in his eye. You are cock sure, he said. Curiously enough, so is my lord. There are no further formalities to adjust, I believe. Tomorrow at sunrise behind the church and with repairs, precisely. He slapped his blade back into its sheath, then that's over and done with, for the nonce at least, sufficient onto the day, et cetera, slight. I'm hot and dry, you've sacked cities Ralph Percy, now sack me the minister's closet and bring out sherry's, albeit, charges for the next communion. We sat down upon the doorstep with a tanker to sack between us and master Pory drank and drank and drank again. How's the crop, he asked. Martin reports it poorer in quality than ever, but Sir George will have it that it is very barreness. It's every wit as good as the Spanish, I answered. You may tell my lord Warwick so, when next you write. He laughed. If he was a time server in league with my lord Warwick's faction in the company, he was a jovial sinner, traveler and student, much of a philosopher, more of a wit and boon companion to any beggar with a pot of ale, while the drink lasted. We might look a scant at his dealings, but we liked his company passing well. If he took half a poor rustic's crop for his fee, he was ready enough to toss him six pence for drink money. And if he made the tenants of the lands allotted to his office, leave their tobacco uncared for whilst they rode him on his innumerable roving expeditions up creeks and rivers. He at least lightened their labours with most side-splitting tales and with bottle songs learned in a thousand taverns. After tomorrow, there'll be more interesting news to write, he announced. You're a bold man, Captain Percy. He looked at me out of the corners of his twinkling little eyes. I sat and smoked in silence. The king begins to dot upon him, he said, leans on his arm, plays with his hand, touches his cheek. Buckingham stands by, biting his lip, his brow like a thunder cloud. You'll find in tomorrow's antagonist, Ralph Percy, as potent a conjurer as your cousin Hotspur found in Glendauer. He'll conjure you up on the tower and a hanging drawing and quartering. Who touches the king's favorite had safer touched the king. It's Lee's majesty you contemplate. He lit his pipe and blew out a great cloud of smoke, then burst into a roar of laughter. My Lord High Admiral may see you through. Zooks, there'll be a rary show worth the penny behind the church tomorrow. A Percy striving with all his might and main to serve a Villiers, Eureka, there is something new under the sun, despite the preacher. He blew out another cloud of smoke. By this the tankard was empty and his cheeks were red, his eyes moist and his laughter very ready. Where's the Lady Jocelyn Lay, he asked? May I not have the honor to kiss her hand before I go? I stared at him. I do not understand you, I said coldly. There's none within but Mistress Percy. She is weary and rest after her journey. We came from way a note this morning. He shook with laughter. I brave it out, he cried. It's what every man Jack of Us said you would do. But all's known, man. The governor read the king's letters at full council an hour ago. She's the Lady Jocelyn Lay. She's a ward of the kings. She and her lands are to wed, my lord carnal. She was all that, I replied. Now she's my wife. You'll find that the court of High Commission will not agree with you. My rapier lay across my knees and I ran my hand down its worn scabbard. Here's one that agrees with me, I said. And up there is another and I lifted my hat. He stared. God and my good sword, he cried. Not very nightly dependence, but not to be mentioned nowadays in the same breath with gold in the king's favor. Better been to the storm man. Sing low while it roars past. You can swear that you didn't know her to be a finer weave than Dallas. Oh, they'll call it in some sort of a marriage for the lady's own sake, but they'll find flaws enough to crack a thousand such madmatches. The divorce is the thing. There's a precedent, you know. A fair lady was parted from a brave man out of a thousand years ago because a favorite wanted her. True, Francis Howard wanted the favorite, whilst this beauty of yours, you will please not couple the name of my wife with the name of that adulteress, I interrupted fiercely. He started, then cried out somewhat hurriedly. No offense, no offense. I meant no comparisons. Comparisons are odorous, safe dogberry. All at court know the lady Jocelyn Lay for a very Britomart, a maid as cold as Dion. I rose and began to pace up and down the bit of green before the door. Master Pory, I said at last, coming to a stop before him, if without breach of faith, you can tell me what was said or done at the council today, annant this matter, you will lay me under an obligation that I shall not forget. He studied the lace on his sleeve in silence for a while, then glanced up at me out of those small sly, merry eyes. Why, he answered, the king demands that the lady be sent home forthwith on the ship that gave us such a turn today, in fact, with a couple of women to attend her and under the protection of the only other passenger of quality, to wit Malorde Carnell. His majesty cannot conceive it possible that she has so far forgotten her birth, rank and duty as to have maintained in Virginia this mad masquerade throwing herself into the arms of any petty planner or broken adventurer who has chance to have 120 pounds of filthy tobacco with which to buy him a wife. If she hath been so mad, she is to be sent home, nonetheless, where she will be tenderly dealt with as one surely in this sole matter under the spell of witchcraft. The ship is to bring home also and in irons the man who married her. If he swears to have been ignorant of her quality and places no straws in the way of the king's commissioners, then shall he be sent honorably back to Virginia with enough in his hand to get him another wife. Per contra, if he erred with open eyes and if he remained comataceous, he will have to deal with the king and with the court of high commission to say nothing of the king's favorite. That's the sum and substance, Ralph Percy. Why was Malorde Carnell sent, I ask. Probably because Malorde Carnell would come. He hath a will hath Malorde and the king is more indulgent than Eli to those upon whom he dotes. Doubtless Malorde, high admiral, sped him on his way, gave him the king's best ship, wished him a favorable win, to hell. I was not ignorant that she was other than she seemed and I remained comataceous. Then he said shamelessly, you'll forgive me if in public at least, I forswear your company, your plague-spotted Captain Percy and your friends may wish you well, but they must stay at home and burn juniper before their own doors. I'll forgive you, I said, when you've told me what the governor will do. Why, there's the rub, he answered. Yardley is the most obstinate man of my acquaintance. He who at his first coming beside a great deal of worth in his person, brought only a sword hath grown to be as very a sir oracle among us as ever I saw. It's sir George says this and sir George says that. And so there's an end on it. It's all because of that leave to cut your own throats in your own way that he brought you last year. Sir George and sir Edwin zoops. You had better dub them, St. George and St. Edwin at once and be done with it. Well, on this occasion, sir George stands up and says roundly with a good round oath to boot. The king's commands have always come to us through the company. The company obeys the king. We obeyed the company. His majesty's demand with reverence I speak it is out of all order. Let the company through the treasurer command us to send Captain Percy home in irons to answer for this passing strange offense or to return willy-nilly the lady who is now surely his wife and we will have no choice but to obey. Until the company commands us, we will do nothing. Nay, we can do nothing. And every one of my fellow counselors for myself I was busy with my pens, saith my opinion, sir George. The upshot of it all is that the due return is to sail in two days with our humble representation to his majesty that though we bow to his latest word as the leaf bows to the zephyr, yet we are in this sole matter hand fast, compelled by his majesty's own gracious charter to refer our slightest official doing to that noble company which owes its very being to its rigid adherence to the terms of said charter, wherefore and his majesty will be graciously pleased to command us as usual through the said company and so on. Of course, not a soul in the council or in Jamestown or in Virginia dreams of a duel behind the church at sunrise tomorrow. He knocked the ashes from his pipe and by degrees got his fat body up from the doorstep. So there's a reprieve for you Ralph Percy unless you killed or are killed tomorrow morning. In the latter case, the problem solved. In the former, the best service you can do yourself and maybe the company is to walk out of the world of your own accord and that as quickly as possible. Better across roads and a stake through a dead heart than a hangman's hands upon a live one. One moment I said, death my lord carnal know of this decision of the governor's eye and a fine passion that put him into, stormed and swore and threatened and put the governor's backup finally. It seems that he thought about ship tomorrow, lady and all. He refused to go without the lady and so remain in Virginia until he can have his will. Lord but Buckingham would be a happy man if he were kept here forever and a day. My lord knows what he risks and he's in as black a humor as ever you saw. But I have striven to drop oil on the troubled waters. My lord, I told him, you have but to possess your soul with patience for a few short weeks just until the ship the governor sends can return. Then all must needs be as your lordship wishes. In the meantime, you may find existence in these wilds and away from that good company which is the soul of life, indurable and perhaps pleasant. You may have daily sight of a lady who is to become your wife and that should count for much with so ardent and determined a lover as your lordship hath shown yourself to be. You may have the pleasure of contemplating your rival's grave if you kill him. If he kills you, you will care the less about the date of the Santa Teresa sailing. The land too hath inducements to offer to a philosophical and contemplative mind such as one whom his majesty delighted to honor must needs possess. Beside these crystal rivers and among these odoriferous woods, my lord, one escapes much expense, envy, contempt, vanity, and vexation of mind. The hoary sinner laughed and laughed. When he had gone away, still in huge enjoyment of his own mirth, I who had seen small cause for mirth went slowly indoors, not a yard from the door in the shadow of the vines that draped the window stood the woman who was bringing this fate of honey. I thought that you were in your own room, I said harshly, after a moment of dead silence. I came to the window, she replied. I listened, I heard all. She spoke holdingly through dry lips. Her face was as white as a rough, but a strange light burned in her eyes and there was no trembling. This morning you said that all that you had, your name and your sword, were at my service. You may take them both again, sir. I refuse the aid you offer. Swear that you will. Tell them what you please. Make your peace whilst you may. I will not have your blood upon my soul. There was yet wine upon the table. I filled the cup and brought it to her. Drink, I commanded. I have much of forbearance, much of courtesy to thank you for, she said. I will remember it when, do not think that I shall blame you. I held the cup to her lips. Drink, I repeated. She touched the red wine with her lips. I took it from her and put it to my own. We drink of the same cup, I said, with my eyes upon hers and drained it to the bottom. I am weary of swords and quartz and kings. Let us go into the garden and watch the minister's bees. End of chapter nine, recording by Tom Weiss, chapter 10, in which Master Porey gains time, to some purpose. Rolf, coming down by boat from Verena, had reached the town in the dusk of that day which had seen the arrival of the Santa Teresa, and I had gone to him for a few days. I had gone to the town in the dusk of that day and I had gone to the town in the dusk of that day. I had gone to the town in the dusk of that day and I had gone to the town in the dusk of that day. I had gone to the country at night and I had gone to the country the day before I slept at night. Early morning found us together again in the field behind the church. We had not long to wait in the chill air and dweedrenched grass. When the red rim of the sun showed like a fire between the trunks of the pines came Matlord Carnell and with him Master Porey and Dr. Lawrence Bohan. My lord and I bowed to each other profoundly. to measure the blades. Dr. Bohan, muttering something about the feverishness of the early air, wrapped his cloak about him and huddled in among the roots of a gigantic cedar. I stood with my back to the church and my face to the red water between us and the illimitable forest, my lord opposite me six feet away. He was dressed again splendidly in black and scarlet, colors he much affected, and with the dark beauty of his face and the arrogant grace with which he stood there waiting for his sword, made a picture worth looking upon. Rolf and the secretary came back to us. If you kill him, Ralph, said the former in a low voice as he took my doublet from me, you are to put yourself in my hands and do as you are bid. Which means that you will try to smuggle me north to the Dutch. Thanks, friend, but I'll see the play out here. You were ever obstinate self-willed reckless and the man most to my heart, he continued, have your own way in God's name, but I wish not to see what will come of it. All's ready, Master Secretary. Very slowly that worthy stooped down and examined the ground narrowly and quite at his leisure. I like it not, Master Ralph, he declared at length. Here is a mold hill, and there a fairy ring. I see neither, said Ralph. It looks as smooth as a table, but we can easily shift under the cedars where there is no grass. Here's a projecting roof, announced the secretary when the new ground had been reached. Ralph shrugged his shoulders, but we moved again. The light came jaggedly through the branches, objected my lord second. Better try the open again. Ralph uttered an exclamation of impatience, and my lord stamped his foot on the ground. What is this foolery sir, the latter tried fiercely. The ground's well enough and there's sufficient light to die by. Let the light pass then, said my second resignantly. Gentlemen, are you red? Odds blood. My lord, I had not touched the roses upon your lordship's shoes. They are so large and have such a fall that they may sweep the ground on either side your foot. You might stumble in all that dangling ribbon and lace. Allow me to remove them. He unshifed his knife and, sinking upon his knees, began leisurely to sever the threads that held the roses to the leather. As he worked he looked neither at the roses nor at my lord's angry face, but beneath his own bent arm toward the church and the town beyond. How long he would have sought away at the threads there is no telling, for my lord, amongst whose virtues patience was not one, broke from him, and with an oath stooped and tore away the offending roses with his own hand, then straightened himself and gripped his sword more closely. I've learned one thing in this damned land, he starled, and that is where not to choose a second. You, sir, to relt. Give the word. Master Pori rose from his knees, unruffled and abashed, and still with a curiously absent expression upon his fat face and with his ears cocked in the direction of the church. One moment, gentlemen, he said, I have just bethought me. Ungarn cried ruff and cut him short. The king's favorite was no mean antagonist. Once or twice the thought crossed his mind that here, where I least desired it, I had met my match. The apprehension passed. He fought as he lived with a fierce intensity, a headlong passion, a brute force bearing down and overwhelming most obstacles. But that I could tire him out, I soon knew. The incessant flash and clash of steel, the quick changes in position, the need to bring all powers of body and mind to aid of eye and wrist, the will to win, the shame of loss, the rage and lust of blood. There was no sight or sound outside that trampled circle that could force itself upon our brain or make us glance aside. If there was a sudden commotion amongst the three witnesses, if an expression of immense relief and childlike satisfaction reigned in Master Corey's face, we knew it not. We were both bleeding, eye from a pinprick on the shoulder, he from a touch beneath the arm. He made a desperate thrust which I parried and the blades clashed. A third came down upon them with such force that the sparks flew. In the king's name commanded the governor. We fell apart, panting, white with rage, staring at the unexpected disturbers of our peace. They were the governor, the commander, the cape merchant, and the watch. Lord, now let us thou thy servant depart in peace, exclaimed Master Corey, and retired to the cedar and Dr. Bohun. This ends here, gentlemen, said the governor firmly. You are both bleeding, it is enough. Out of my way, sir, cried my lord, foaming at the mouth. He made a mad thrust over the governor's extended arm at me, who was ready enough to meet him. Half-actly thou bridegroom, he said between his teeth. The governor caught him by the wrist. Put up your sword, my lord, or as I stand here you shall give it into the commander's hands. Helen, furious, ejaculated my lord. Do you know who I am, sir? I replied to governor sturdily. I do know. It is because of that knowledge, my lord carnal, that I interfere in this affair, where you other than you are, you and this gentleman might fight until doomsday, and meet with no hindrance from me. Being what you are, I will prevent any renewal of this duel by fair means if I may, by foul if I must. He left my lord and came over to me. Since when have you been upon my lord warward side, Ralph Percy? He demanded, lowering his voice. I am not so, I said. Then appearances are mightily deceitful, he retorted. I know what you mean, sir George, I answered. I know that if the king's darling should meet death or maiming in this fashion upon virginian soil, the company already so out of favor might find some difficulty in explaining things to his majesty's satisfaction. But I think my lord Southampton and sir Edwin Sandys and sir George yearly equal to the task, especially if they are able to deliver to his majesty the man whom his majesty will doubtless consider the true and only rebel and murderer. Let us fight it out, sir. You can all retire to a distance and remain in profound ignorance of any such affair. If I fall, you have nothing to fear. If he falls, why, I shall not run away, and the due return sails tomorrow. He eyed me closely from under purring brows, and when your wife's a widow, what's then, he asked abruptly. I have not known many better men than this single, straightforward, soldierly governor. The manliness of his character begot trust, invited confidence. Men told him of their hidden troubles almost against their will, and afterward felt neither shame nor fear, knowing the simplicity of his thoughts and the reticence of his speech. I looked him in the eyes and let him read what I have shown to no other, and felt no shame. The lord may raise her up, a helper, I said, at least she won't have to marry him. He turned on his heel and moved back to his former station between us two. My lord carnal, he said, and you, captain Percy, heed what I say, for what I say I will do. You may take your choice. Either you will sheath your swords here in my presence, giving me your word of honor that you will not draw them upon each other before his majesty shall have made known his will in this matter to the company, and the company shall have transmitted it to me in token of which truce between you you shall touch each other's hands, or you will pass the time between this and the return of the ship with the kings and the company's will in strict confinement. You, captain Percy, in jail, and you, my lord carnal, in my own poor house, where I will use my best endeavors to make the days pass as pleasantly as possible for your lordship. I have spoken, gentlemen. There was no protest. For my own part, I knew yearnly too well to attempt any. Moreover, had I been in his place, his course should have been mine. For my lord carnal, what black thoughts visited that fierce and sullen brain I know not, but there was acquiesce in his face, haughty, dark, and vengeful, though it was. Slowly and as with one motion we sheathed our swords, and more slowly still repeated the few words after the governor. His honors countenance shone with relief. Take each other by the hand, gentlemen, and then let's all to breakfast at my own house, where there shall be no feud say with good capon pasty and jolly good ale. In dead silence my lord and I touched each other's fingertips. The world was now a flood of sunshine, the mist on the river banishing, the birds singing, the trees waving in the pleasant morning air. From the town came the roll of the drum summoning all to the weekday service. The bells too began to ring, sounding sweetly through the clear air. The governor took off his hat. Let's all to church, gentlemen, he said gravely. Our cheeks are flushed as with a fever, and our pulses run high this morning. There be some among us, perhaps, that have in their hearts discontent anger and hatred. I know no better place to take such passions provided we bring them not forth again. We went in and sat down. Jeremy Sparrow was in the pulpit. Singly or in groups the town folk entered. Down the aisle strode bearded men, old soldiers, adventurers, sailors, scarred body and soul. Young men followed, younger sons and younger brothers, prodigials whose portion had been spent, whose souls now ate of the husks. To the servants' benches came dull laborers, dimly comprehending, groping in the twilight. Women entered softly and slowly, some with children clinging to their skirts. One came alone and knelt alone, her face shadowed by her mantle. Amongst the servants stood a slave or two, blindly staring, and behind them all one of that felon crew sent us by the king. Through the open windows streamed the summer sunshine, soft and fragrant, impartial and unquestioning, caressing alike the uplifted face of the minister, the head of the convict, and all between. The minister's voice was grave and tender when he read and prayed, but in the hymn it rose above the peoples like the voice of some mighty archangel. That triumphant singing shook the air and still rang in the heart while we said the creed. When the service was over the congregation waited for the governor to pass out first. At the door he pressed me to go with him and his party to his own house, and I gave him thanks, but made excuse to stay away. When he and the nobleman who was his guest had left the churchyard and the townspeople too were gone, I and my wife and the minister walked home together through the Dewey Meadow with the splendor of the morning about us, and the birds caroling from every tree and thicket. Chapter 11 In Which I Meet an Italian Doctor The summer slipped away and autumn came with the purple of the grape and the yellowing corn, the nuts within the forest, and the return of the countless wild fowl to the marshes and reedy riverbanks, and still I stayed in Jamestown and my wife with me, and still the Santa Teresa rode at anchor in the river, below the fort. If the man whom she brought knew that by tarrying in Virginia he risked his ruin with the king, yet with the courage worthy of a better cause, he tarried. Now and then ships came in, but they were small, belated craft. The most had left England before the sailing of the Santa Teresa. The rest, private ventures, trading for clapboard and sassafras, knew nothing of court affairs. Only the sea flower, sailing from London a fortnight after the Santa Teresa, and much delayed by adverse winds, brought a letter from the deputy treasurer to Yardley and the council. From Rolf I learned its contents. It spoke of the stir that was made by the departure from the realm of the king's favorite. None know where he had gone. The king looks dour, to his hint at that the privy council are as much at sea as the rest of the world. My lord of Buckingham saith nothing but his following, which, of late hath somewhat decayed, is so increased that his anti-chambers cannot hold the throngs that come to wait upon him. Some will have it that my lord carnal hath fled the kingdom to escape the tower. Others that the king hath sent him on a mission to the king of Spain about this detested Spanish match. Others that the gadfly hath stung him and he has gone to America to search for Rolly's gold mine, maybe. This last most probable. But if Tiz so, and he should touch at Virginia, receive him with all honor. If indeed he is not out of favor, the company may find in him a powerful friend. Of powerful enemies God knows there is no lack. Thus the worthy Mastiff Arar, and at the bottom of the letter, among other news of city and court, mention was made of the disappearance of a ward of the king's, the lady Jocelyn Lay. Strict search had been made, but the unfortunate lady had not been found. Tiz whispered that she hath killed herself. Also that his majesty had meant to give her in marriage to my lord carnal. But that all true love and virtue and constancy have gone from the age, one might conceive that the said lord had but fled the court for a while, to indulge his grief in some solitude of hill and stream and shaley veil. The lost lady, being right worthy of such dole. In sooth she was, but my lord was not given to such fashion a morning. The summer passed and I did nothing. What was there I could do? I had written by the due return to Sir Edwin, and to my cousin the Earl of Northumberland. The king hated Sir Edwin as he hated tobacco and witchcraft. Choose the devil, but not Sir Edwin Sandys, had been his passionate words to the company the year before. A certain fifth of November had despoiled my lord of Northumberland of wealth, fame and influence. Small hope there was in those two. That the governor and council, remembering old dangers shared wished me well I did not doubt. But that was all. Yearly had done all he could do, more than most men would have dared to do in procuring this delay. There was no further help in him, nor would I have asked for it. Already out of favor with the warwick faction, he had risked enough for me and mine. I could not flee with my wife to the Indians, exposing her perhaps to a death by fierce tortures. Moreover, Opec Oncano had of late strangely taken to returning to the settlements, those runaway servants, and fugitives from justice which before we had demanded from him in vain. If even it had been possible to run the gauntlet of the Indian villages, war parties, and hunting bans, what would have been before us but endless forest and a winter which for us would have had no spring. I could not see her die of hunger and cold, or by the teeth of the wolves. I could not do what I should have liked to do, take single-handed that king ship with its dirty crew, and sail with her south and ever southwards before us nothing more formidable than Spanish ships, and beyond them blue waters, spice winds, new lands, strange islands of the blessed. There seemed not that I could do, not that she could do. Our fate had us by the hands and held us fast. We stood still, and the days came and went like dreams. While the assembly was in session, I had my part to act as Burgess from my hundredth. Each day I sat with my fellows in the church, facing the governor in his great velvet chair, the council on either hand, and listened to the droning of old twine, the clerk, like the droning of the bees without the window, to the chant of the sergeant at arms, to long and windy discourses from men who planted better than they spoke, to remarks by the secretary, witty, crammed with Latin, and traveled talk, to the governor's slow, weighty words. At way an oak we had had trouble with the Indians. I was one who loved them not, and had fought them well, for which reason the hundredth chose me, its representative. In the assembly it was my part to urge a greater severity towards those our natural enemies, a greater watchfulness on our part, the need for palisades and sentinels, the danger that lay in their acquisition of firearms which, in defiance of the law, men gave them in exchange for worthless Indian commodities. This Indian business was the chief matter before the assembly. I spoke when I thought speech was needed, and spoke strongly, for my heart foreboded that which was to come upon us too soon and too surely. The governor listened gravely, nodding his head, master poor he too, the cape merchant, and west were of my mind. But the reminder was besotted by their own conceit, esteeming the very name of English, sentinel, and palisade enough, or trusting in the smooth words and vows of brotherhood poured forth so plentifully by that red apollyon, Opec Ankhana. When the day's work was done, and we streamed out of the church, the governor and council first, the rest of us in order, it was defined as often as not a red and black figure waiting for us among the graves. Sometimes it joined itself to the governor, sometimes to master poor he, sometimes the whole party, save one, went off with it to the guesthouse, dare to eat, drink, and make merry. If Virginia and all that it contained save only that jewel of which it had robbed the court, were out of favor with the king's minion, he showed it not. Perhaps he accepted the inevitable with a good grace, perhaps it was but his moe dividing his time, but he had shifted into that soldierly frankness of speech and manner that genial hail fellow well-met air behind which most safely hides a villain's mind. Two days after that morning behind the church, he had removed himself, his French valets, and his Italian physician from the governor's house to the newly finished guesthouse. Here he lived, cock of the walk, taking his ease in his inn, elbowing out all guests, save those of his own inviting. If, what with his open face and his open hand, his dinners and bear-baitings and hunting parties, his tales of the court and the wars, his half hints as to the good he might do Virginia with the king, extending even to the lightning of the tax upon our tobacco, and the prohibition of the Spanish import, his known riches and power and the unknown height to which they might attain if his star at court were indeed in the ascended, if with these things he slowly but surely, one to his following all, save a very few of those I had thought my fast friends, it was not a thing marvelous or without precedent. Upon his side was good that might be seen and handled. On mine was only a dubious rite, and a not at all dubious danger. I do not think it played me much. The going of those who had it in their heart to wish to go left me content, and for those who fond upon him from the first, or for the rabble multitude who flung up their caps and ran at his heels, I cared not adoyed. There were still Ralph and West and the governor, Jeremy Sparrow and Dickon. My lord and I met per force in the street at the governor's house in church on the river in the saddle. If we went in the presence of others, we spoke the necessary formal words of greeting or leave-taking, and he kept his countenance. If none were by, off went the mass. The man himself and I looked each other in the eyes and passed on. Once we encountered on a late evening among the greys, and I was not alone. Mistress Percy had been restless and had gone despite the minister's protest to sit upon the riverbank. When I returned from the assembly and found her gone, I went to fetch her. A storm was rolling slowly up. Returning the long way through the church yard, we came upon him sitting beside a sunken grave, his knees drawn up to meet his chin, his eyes gloomily regarded full of the dark, broad river, the unseen ocean, and the ship that could not return for weeks to come. We passed him in silence. I with a slight bow, she with a slighter curtsy. An hour later, going down the street in the dust of the storm, I ran against Dr. Lawrence Bohun. Don't stop me, he panned it. The Italian doctor is away in the woods, gathering symbols, and they found my lord carnal in a fit among the greys, half an hour gone. My lord was bled, and the next morning went hunting. The lady whom I had married abode with me in the minister's house, held her head high, and looked the world in the face. She seldom went from home, but when she did take the air it was with pomp and circumstance. When that slender figure, an exquisite face, set off my as rich apparel as could be bought from a store of finery brought in by the Southampton, and attended by a turban negrous and a serving man who had been to the wars, and had escaped the wheel by the skin of his teeth, appeared in the street, small wonder if a greater commotion arose than had been since the days of the Princess Pocahontas and her train of dusty beauties. To this fairer, more imperial dom gold lace dothed its hat, and made its cordliest bow, and young planters bent to their saddle bows, while the common folk nudged and stared and had their say. The beauty, the grace, the pride that deigned small response to well-meant words, all that would have been intolerable in plain Mistress Percy, once awaiting maid, then a piece of merchandise to be sold for one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco, then the wife of a poor gentleman, was pardoned readily enough to the lady Jocelyn Lay, the ward of the king, the bride to be, so soon as the king's court of high commission should have snapped in twain an inconvenient and ill-welded fetter of the king's minion. So she passed like a splendid vision through the street perhaps once a week. On Sundays, she went with me to church, and the people looked at her instead of at the minister, who rebuked them not because his eyes were upon the same errand. The early autumn passed and the leaves began to turn, and still all things were as they had been, save that the assembly sat no longer. My fellow burgesses went back to their hundreds, but my house at Weyanoke knew me no more. In a tone that was apologetic but firm, the governor had told me that he wished my company at Jamestown. I was pleased enough to stay, I assured him, as indeed I was. At Weyanoke the thunderbolt would fall without warning. At Jamestown, at least I could see, coming up the river, the sails of the due return or what other ship the company might send. The colors of the leaves deepened, and there came a season of a beauty singular and sad, like a smile left upon the face of the dead summer. Over all things, near and far, the forest where it met the sky, the nearer woods, the great river, and the streams that empty into it, there hung a blue haze soft and dreamlike. The forest became a painted forest with an ever-thinning canopy and an ever-thickening carpet of crimson and gold. Everywhere there was a low rustling underfoot and a slow rain of color. It was neither cold nor hot, but very quiet, and the birds went by like shadows, a listless and forgetful weather, in which we began to look every hour of every day for the sail which we knew we should not see for weeks to come. Good Master Buck tarried with Master Thorpe at Henrycus, recruiting his strength, and Jeremy Sparrow preached in his pulpit, slept in his chamber, and worked in his garden. This garden ran down to the green bank of the river, and here, sitting idly by the stream, her chin in her hand and her dark eyes watching the strong, free seabirds as they came and went, I found my wife one evening as I came from the fort where had been some martial exercise. Thirty feet away, Master Jeremy Sparrow worked among the dying flowers and hummed. There was a garden in her face where roses and white lilies grow. He and I had agreed that when I must needs be absent, he should be within call of her, for I believe my Lord Carnal very capable of intruding himself into her presence. That house and garden, her movements and mine were spied upon by his foreign hirelings I knew perfectly well. As I sat down upon the bank at her feet, she turned to me with a sudden passion. I am weary of it all, she cried. I am tired of being pent up in this house and garden, and of the watch you keep upon me, and if I go abroad it is worse. I hate all those shameless faces that stare at me as if I were in the pillory. I am pillory before you all, and I find the experience sufficiently bitter, and when I think that the man whom I hate, hate, hate, raise the air that I breathe, it stifles me. If I could fly away like those birds, if I could only be gone from this place for even a day, I would beg leave to take you home to Weyanoke, I said after a pause, but I cannot go and leave the field to him. And I cannot go, she answered, I must watch for that ship and that king's command that my Lord Carnal thinks potent enough to make me his wife. King's commands are strong, but a woman's will is stronger. At the last I shall know what to do, but now why may I not take Angela and cross the strip of sand and go into the woods on the other side. They are so fair and strange, all red and yellow, and they look very still and peaceful. I could walk in them or lie down under the trees and forget a while, and they are not at all far away. She looked at me eagerly. You could not go alone, I told her. There would be danger in that. But tomorrow if you choose, I and Master Sparrow and Dickon will take you there. A day in the woods is pleasant enough, and will do none of us harm. Then you may wonder, as you please, fill your arms with colored leaves and forget the world. We will watch that no harm comes not you, but otherwise you shall not be disturbed. She broke into delighted laughter. Of all women, the most steadfast of soul, her outward moods were as variable as a child. Agreed, she cried, you and the minister and Dickon demon shall lay your muskets across your knees, and Angela shall witch you into stone with her old mad heathen charms. And then, and then I will gather more gold than had King Midas. I will dance with the hamadryads. I will find out Oberon and make Tatania jealous. I do not doubt that you could do so, I said, as she sprang to her feet childishly eager and radiantly beautiful. I rose to go in with her for it was supper time, but in a moment changed my mind and resumed my seat on the bank of turf. Do you go in, I said, there's a snake nearby in those bushes below the bank. I'll kill the creature and then I'll come to supper. When she was gone I walked to wear ten feet away the bank dipped to a clump of reeds and willows planted in the mud on the brink of the river. Dropping on my knees I leaned over and grasping a man by the collar lifted him from the slime where he belonged to the bank beside me. It was my Lord Carnal's Italian doctor that I had so fished up. I had seen him before and had found in his very small mean figure clad all in black and his narrow face with malignant eyes and thin white lips drawn tightly over gleaming teeth something infinitely repulsive, sickening to the sight as are certain reptiles to the touch. There are no symbols or herbs of grace to be found amongst reeds and half-drowned willows, I said. What did so learn it a doctor looked for in so unlikely a place? He shrugged his shoulders and made play with his claw-like hands as if he understood me not. It was a lie for I knew that he and the English tongue were sufficiently acquainted. I told him as much and he shot at me a most venomous glance, but continued to shrug, gesticulate, and jabber in Italian. At last I saw nothing better to do than to take him, stiff by the collar, to the edge of the garden next the churchyard and with the toe of my boot to send him tumbling among the graves. I watched him pick himself up, set his attire to rights, and go away in the gathering dust winding in and out among the graves, and then I went into supper and told Mistress Percy that the snake was dead. End of CHAPTER XI. CHAPTER XII. IN WHICH I RECEIVE A WARNING AND REPOSE A TRUST? Shortly before daybreak I was wakened by a voice beneath my window. Captain Percy it cried, the governor wishes you at his house, and was gone. I dressed and left the house disturbing no one. Hurrying through the chilled dawn I reached the square not much behind the rapid footsteps of the watch who had awakened me. About the governor's door were horses saddled and bridled with brooms at their heads, men and beasts gray and indistinct wrapped in the fog. I went up the steps and into the hall and knocked at the door of the governor's great room. It opened and I entered to find Sir George with Master Pory, Rolf, West, and others of the council gathered about the great center table and talking eagerly. The governor was but half dressed. West and Rolf were in jackboots and coats of mail. A man, breathless with hard writing, spattered with swamp mud and torn by briars, stood cap and hand, staring from one to the other. In good time, Captain Percy, cried the governor, yesterday you called the profound peace with the Indians, of which some of us boast it the lull before the storm. Faith, it looks today as though you were in the right after all. What's the matter, sir? I asked, advancing to the table. Matter enough, he answered. This man has come post-haste from the plantations above Pospahedge. Three days ago, Morgan the traitor was decoyed into the woods by that Pospahedge fool and bully, Nemeta now, whom they call Jack of the Feather, and their murdered. Yesterday, out of sheer bravado, the Indian turned up at Morgan's house, and Morgan's men shot him down. They buried the dog and thought no more of it. Three hours ago, Chaco, the Christian, went to the commander and warned him that the Pospahedges were in a ferment and that the warriors were painting themselves black. The commander sent off at once to me, and I see not better to do than to dispatch you with a dozen men to bring them to their senses. But there's to be no harrying nor battle. A show of force is all that's needed. I'll stake my head upon it. Let them see that we are not to be taken unawares, but give them fair words, that they may be the sooner placated I send with you, master Rolf. They'll listen to him. See that the black paint is covered with red. Give them some beads and a knife or two. Then come home. If you like not the look of things, find out where Opeca can now is, and I'll send him an embassy. He loves us well, and we'll put down any disaffection. There's no doubt that he loves us, I said dryly. He loves us as a cat loves the mouse that it plays with. If we are to start it once, sir, I'll go get my horse. Then meet us at the neck of the land, said Rolf. I nodded and left the room. As I descended the steps into the growing light outside, I found Master Porri at my side. I kept late hours last night, he remarked with a portentous yawn. Now that this business is settled, I'll go back to bed. I walked on in silence. I am in your black books, he continued, with his sly, merry, sidelong glance. You think that I was over-careful of the ground that morning behind the church, and so, unfortunately, delayed matters until the governor happened by and brought things to another guest inclusion. I think that you warned the governor, I said bluntly. He shook with laughter, warned him. Of course I warned him. Youth would never have seen that molehill and fairy ring in projecting root, but wisdom cometh with gray hairs, my son. Do ye not think I'll have the king's thanks? Doubtless, I answered, and the price contents you. I do not know why I should quarrel with it. By this we were halfway down the street, and we now came upon the guest house. A window above us was unshuttered and in the room within a light still burned. Suddenly it was extinguished. A man's face looked down upon us for a moment, then drew back. A skeleton hand was put out softly and slowly, and the shutter drawn too. Hand and face belonged to the man I had sent tumbling among the grays the evening before. The Italian doctor, said Nasterpory, there was something peculiar in his tone. I glanced at him, but his broad red face and twinkling eyes told me nothing. The Italian doctor, he repeated, if I had a friend in Captain Percy's predicament, I should bid him beware of the Italian doctor. Your friend would be obliged for the warning, I replied. We walked a little further, and I think, he said, that I should inform this purely hypothetical friend of mine that the Italian and his patron had their heads mighty close together last night. Last night? Aye, last night. I went to drink with my lord, and so broke up their teate. My lord was boisterous in his cups and not over-secret. He dropped some hints. He broke off to indulge in one of his endless silent laughs. I don't know why I tell you this, Captain Percy. I am on the other side, you know, quite on the other side. But now I bethink me. I am only telling you what I should tell you were I upon your side. There's no harm in that, I hope. No disloyalty to my lord Carnal's interests which happened to be my interests. I made no answer. I gave him credit both for his ignorance of the very horn book of honor and for his large share of the milk of human kindness. My lord grows restive, he said, when we had gone a little further. The Francis and John coming in yesterday brought court news, out of sight, out of mind. Buckingham is making hay while the sun shines. Useth angel water for his complexion, sleepeth in a medicated mess, such as the Veloye use, and is grown handsomer than ever. Changes the fashion of his clothes thrice a week, which mightily pleatheth his majesty. Whoops on the Spanish match, too, and wonderful past all whooping from the prince's detestation hath become his bosom friend. Small wonder if my lord Carnal thinks it's time he was back at Whitehall. Let him go then, I said. There's his ship that brought him here. I, there's his ship, rejoined master Tory. A few weeks more and the due return will be here with the company's commands. Do ye think, captain Percy, that there's the slightest doubt as to their tenor? No. Then my lord has but to possess his soul with patience and wait for the due return. No doubt he'll do so, I echoed. By this we had reached the secretary's own door. Fortune favor you with the pasta hedges, he said, with another mighty yawn. As for me, I'll to bed. Do you ever dream, captain Percy? I don't. Mine is too good a conscience. But if I did, I should dream of an Italian doctor. The door shut upon his red face and bright eyes. I walked rapidly on down the street to the minister's house. The light was very pale as yet, and house and garden lay beneath a veil of mist. No one was stirring. I went on through the gray wet past to the stable and roused dick on. Saddle, lacklumoral, quickly, I ordered. There's trouble with the pasta hedges, and I am off with master Ralph to settle it. Am I to go with you? he asked. I shook my head. We have a dozen men. There's no need of more. I left him busy with the horse and went to the house. In the hall I found the negroes strewing the floor with fresh rushes, and asked her if her mistress yet slept. In her soft half-English half-Spanish, she answered in the affirmative. I went to my own room and armed myself, then ran upstairs to the comfortable chamber whereavowed master Jeremy Sparrow, surrounded by luxuries which his soul contemed. He was not there. At the foot of the stair I was met by good-wife Alan. The minister was called an hour ago, sir, she announced. There's a man dying of fever at Archer's Hope, and they sent a boat for him. He won't be back until afternoon. I hurried past her back to the stable. Black lameral was saddled, and dickon held the stirrup for me to mount. Good luck with the vermin, sir, he said. I wish I were going too. His tone was sullen, yet wisple. I knew that he loved danger as I loved it, and a sudden remembrance of the dangers we had faced together brought us nearer to each other than we had been for many a day. I don't take you, I explained, because I have need of you here. Master Sparrow has gone to watch beside a dying man and will not be back for hours. As for myself, there's no telling how long I may be kept. Until I come, you are to guard house and garden well. You know what I mean. Your mistress is to be molested by no one. Very well, sir. One more thing. There was some talk yesterday of my taking her across the neck to the forest. When she awakes, tell her from me that I am sorry for her to lose her pleasure, but that now she could not go even were I here to take her. There's no danger from the pospa hedges there, he muttered. The pospa hedges happened not to be my only foes, I said curtly. Do as I bid you without remark. Tell her that I have good reasons for desiring her to remain within doors until my return. On no account whatever is she to venture without the garden. I gathered up the reins and he stood back from the horse's head. When I had gone a few paces I drew rain and turning in my saddle spoke to him across the dew-drenched grass. This is a trust, Dickon, I said. The red came into his tan face. He raised his hand and made our old military salute. I understand it so, my captain, he answered, and I rode away satisfied. This leverbox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Tom Weiss. Chapter 13 In Which The Santa Teresa Drops Downstream An hour's ride brought us to the blockhouse standing within the forest midway between the white plantations at pospa hedge and the village of the tribe. We found it well garrisoned, spies out, and the men inclined to make light of the black paint and the seething village. Among them was Chanko the Christian. I called him to me and we listened to his report with growing perturbation. Thirty warriors, I said when he had finished, and they are painted yellow as well as black and have dashed their cheeks with cocoon? It's loud rants, then, and the war dance is toured. If we are to pacify this hornet's nest, it's high time we set about it. Gentlemen of the blockhouse, we are but twelve, and they may be suspect, in which case those that are left of us will fight it out with you here. Watch for us, therefore, and have a sally party ready. Forward men! One moment, Captain Percy said rawl. Chanko, where's the emperor? Five sons ago he was with the priest at Atamossack, answered the Indian. Yesterday, at the full sun power, he was in the lodge of the wherewanans, of the Chikahomenes. He feasts there still. The Chikahomenes and the Powhatans have buried the hatchet. I regret to hear it, I remarked. Whilst they took each other's scalps, mine own felt the safer. I advise going direct to Opakikano, said rawl. Since he's only a league away, so do I, I answered. We left the blockhouse and the clearing around it, and plunged into the depths of the forest. In these virgin woods the trees are set well apart, though linked one to the other by the omnipresent grape, and there is little undergrowth, so that we were able to make good speed. Rawlf and I rode well in front of our men. By now the sun was shining through the lower branches of the trees, and the mist was fast vanishing. The forest, around us above us and under the hooves of the horses, where the pollen leaves lay thick, was as yellow as gold and as red as blood. Rawlf, I asked, breaking along silence. Do you credit what the Indians say of Opakikano? That he was brother to Pahatin only by adoption? That fleeing for his life he came to Virginia years and years ago, from some mysterious land far to the south and west. I do not know, he replied thoughtfully. He is like and yet not like the people whom he rules. In his eye there is the authority of mine. His features are of a nobler caste, and his heart is of a darker, I said. It is a strange and subtle savage. Strange enough and subtle enough, I admit, he answered. Though I believe not with you that his friendliness towards us is but a mask. Believe it or not, it is so, I said. That dark, cold, still face is a mask, and that simple seeming amazement at horses and armor, guns and blue beads is a mask. It is in my mind that some fair day the mask will be dropped. Here's the village. Upon our interview with Chanko the Christian, the village of the Pasphahedges and not the village of the Chickahomenes had been our destination, and since leaving the blockhouse we had made good speed. But now, within the usual girdle of mulberries, we were met by the werewants and his chief men with the customary savage ceremonies. We had long since come to the conclusion that the birds of the air and the fish of the stream were mercuries to the Indians. The werewants received us in due form, with presence of fish and venison, cakes of chinkathon meal and gourds of pohickory, an uncouthed dance by twelve of his young men, and a deal of hellish noise. Then at our command led us into the village and to the lodge which marked its center. Around it were gathered Opecacana's own warriors and Udomasak and Wero Kamoko, chosen for their strength and cunning. While upon the grass beneath a blood-red gum-tree sat his wives, painted and tattooed with great strings of pearl and copper about their necks. Beyond them were the women and children of the Chickahomenes and around us all the red forest. The mat that hung before the door of the lodge was lifted and an Indian emerging came forward with a gesture of welcome. It was Nantakwas, the Lady Rebekah's brother, and the one Indian saving always his dead sister, that was ever to my liking, a savage indeed, but a savage as brave and chivalrous, as courteous and truthful, as a Christian knight. Rolf sprang from his horse and advancing to meet the young chief embraced him. Nantakwas had been much with his sister during those happy days at Burina, before she went with Rolf that ill-fated voyage to England, and Rolf loved her for her sake and for his own. I thought you at Oropax, Nantakwas, he exclaimed. I was there, my brother, said the Indian, and his voice was sweet, deep and grave, like that of a sister. But Opecacano would go to Urmasak, to the temple and the dead kings. I lead his war parties now, and I came with him. Opecano is within the lodge. He asked that my brother and Captain Percy come to him there. He lifted the mat for us and followed us into the lodge. There was a usual winding entrance with half a dozen mats to be lifted, one after the other. But at last we came to the central chamber and to the man we sought. He sat beside a small fire burning readily in the twilight of the room. The light shone now upon the feathers in his scalp-lock, now upon the triple row of pearls around his neck, now upon knife and tomahawk in his silk grass-belt, now on the otterskin mantle hanging from his shoulder and drawn across his knees. How old he was, no man knew. Men said that he was older than Powhatan, and Powhatan was very old when he died. But he looked a man in the prime of life. His frame was vigorous, his skin unrickled, his eyes bright and full. When he rose to welcome us and Nantakwas stood beside him, there seemed not a score of years between them. The matter upon which we had come was not one that broke delay. We waited with what patience we might until his long speech of welcome was finished when, in as few words as possible, Ralph laid before him our complaint against the pospa hedges. The Indian listened, then said in that voice that always made me think of some cold, still, bottomless pool lying black beneath overhanging rocks. My brothers may go in peace. The pospa hedges have washed off the black paint. If my brothers go to the village, they will find the peace pipe ready for their smoking. Ralph and I stared at each other. I have sent messengers, continued the emperor. I have told the pospa hedges of my love for the white man, and of the good will the white man bears the Indian. I have told them that Nemita now was a murderer and that his death was just. They are satisfied. Their village is as still as this beast at my feet. He pointed down toward a tame panther crouched against his moccasins. I thought it an ominous comparison. In voluntarily we looked at Nantakwas. It is true, he said. I am but come from the village of the pospa hedges. I took them the word of Opec Ancano. Then since the matter is settled we may go home, I remarked, rising as I spoke. We could, of course, have put down the pospa hedges with one hand, giving them besides a lesson which they would not soon forget. But in the kindness of our hearts towards them and to save ourselves trouble we came to Opec Ancano. For his aid in this trifling business the governor gives him thanks. A smile just lit the features of the Indian. It was gone in a moment. Does not Opec Ancano love the white men? He said. Someday he will do more than this for them. We left the lodge and the dark emperor within it got to horse and quitted the village with its painted people, yellowing mulberries and blood-red gum-trees. Nantakwas went with us, keeping pace with Rolf's horse, and giving us now and then in his deep musical voice this or that bit of woodland news. At the blockhouse we found confirmation of the emperor's statement. An embassy from the pospa hedges had come with presence and the peace-pipe had been smoked. The spies too brought news that all war-like preparations had ceased in the village. It had sunk once more into a quietude befitting the sleeping, dreamy, hazy weather. Rolf and I held a short consultation. All appeared safe, but there was the possibility of a ruse. At the last it seemed best that he, who by virtue of his peculiar relations with the Indians was ever our negotiator, should remain with half our troop at the blockhouse while I reported to the governor. So I left him and Nantakwas with him and rode back to Jamestown, reaching the town some hours sooner than I was expected. It was afternooning when I passed through the gates of the palace side, and an hour later when I finished my report to the governor. When he at last dismissed me I rode quickly down the street toward the minister's house. As I passed the guesthouse I glanced up at the window from which at daybreak the Italian had looked down upon me. No one looked out now. The window was closely shuttered, and at the door beneath my lord's French rascals were conspicuously absent. A few yards further on I met my lord face to face as he emerged from a lane that led down to the river. At the sight of me he started violently, and his hand went to his mouth. I slightly bent my head and rode on past him. At the gate of the church yard a stone's throw from home I met master Jeremy Sparrow. Well met, he explained. Are the Indians quiet? For the nonce, how is your sick man? Very well, he answered gravely. I closed his eyes two hours ago. He's dead then, I said. Well, he's out of his troubles and have that advantage over the living. Have you another call that you travel from home so fast? Why, to tell the truth, he replied, I could not but feel uneasy when I learned just now of this commotion amongst the heathen. You must know best, but I should not have thought it a day for madam to walk in the woods, so I even thought I would cross the neck and bring her home. For madam to walk in the woods, I said slowly, so she walks there with whom? With Dickon and Angela, he answered, they went before the sun was an hour high, so good wife Allen says. I thought that you— No, I told him. On the contrary, I left command that she should not venture outside the garden. There are more than Indians abroad. I was white with anger, but besides anger there was fear in my heart. I will go at once and bring her home, I said. As I spoke I happened to glance toward the fort and the shipping in the river beyond. Something seemed wrong with the prospect. I looked again and saw what hated and familiar object was missing. Where is the Santa Teresa? I demanded the fear at my heart tugging harder. She dropped downstream this morning. I passed her as I came up from Archer's Hope a while ago. She's anchored in midstream off the big spring. Why did she go? We looked each other in the eyes and each read the thought that neither cared to put into words. You could take the brown mare, I said, speaking lightly because my heart was as heavy as lead and will ride to the forest. It is all right, I daresay. Doubtless will find her garlanding herself with the grape or playing with the squirrels or asleep on the red leaves with her head in Angela's lap. Doubtless, he said. Don't lose time. I'll saddle the male and overtake you in two minutes. End of Chapter 13. Recording by Tom Weiss. Tom's audiobooks.com. Chapter 14 of To Have Him To Hold by Mary Johnston. This labor box recording is in the public domain. Recording by Tom Weiss. Chapter 14. In Which We Seek A Lost Lady Beside the minister and myself, nothing moved in the crimson woods. Blue haze was there and the steady drift of colored leaves and the sunshine freely falling through the bared limbs, but no man or woman. The fallen leaves rustled as the deer passed. The squirrels chattered and the foxes barked. But we heard no sweet laughter or ringing sound. We found a bank of moss and lying upon it a chaplet of red-brown oak leaves. Further on the mint beside a crystal stream lid had been trodden underfoot. Then flung down upon the brown earth beneath some pines, we came upon a long trailer of scarlet vine. Beyond was a fairy hollow, a cup-like depression curtain from the world by the red vines that hung from the trees upon its brim and carpeted it with the gold of a great maple, and here fear became a giant with whom it was vain to wrestle. There had been a struggle in the hollow. The curtain of vines was torn, the bows of a sumac bent and broken, the fallen leaves ground underfoot. In one place there was blood upon the leaves. The forest seemed suddenly very quiet, quite soundless saved for the beating of our hearts. On every side opened red and yellow ways, sunny glades, labyrinthine paths, long aisles, all dim with the blue haze like the cloudy incense in stone cathedrals. But nothing moved in them saved the creatures of the forest. Without the hollow there was no sign. The leaves looked undisturbed, or others drifting down had hidden any marks there might have been. No footprints, no broken branches, no token of those who had left the hollow, down which of the painted ways had they gone, and where were they now? Sparrow and I sat our horses and stared now down this alley, now down that, into the blue that closed each vista. The Santa Teresa is just off the big spring, he said at last. She must have dropped down there in order to take in water quietly. The man that came upon her is still in town, or was an hour gone, I replied. Then she has not sailed yet, he said. In the distance something grew out of the blue mist. I had not lived thirteen years in the woodland to be dim of sight nor dull of hearing. Someone is coming, I announced. Back your horse into this clump of sumac. The sumac grew thick and was draped moreover with some broadleafed vine. Within its covert we could see with one small danger of being seen unless the approaching figure should prove to be that of an Indian. It was not an Indian, it was my lord carnal. He came on slowly, glancing from side to side, and pausing now and then as if to listen. He was so little of a woodsman that he never looked underfoot. Sparrow touched my arm and pointed down a glade at right angles with the path my lord was pursuing. Up this glade there was coming toward us another figure, a small black figure that moves swiftly looking neither to the right nor to the left. Black lameral stood like a stone. The brown mare too had learned what meant a certain touch upon her shoulder. Sparrow and I was small shame for our eavesdropping, bent to our saddle bows, and looked sideways through tiny gaps in the crimson foliage. My lord descended one side of the hollow, his heavy foot bringing down the dead leaves and loose earth. The Italian glided down the opposite side, disturbing the economy of the forest as little as a snake would have done. I thought I should never meet you, growled my lord. I thought I had lost you and her and myself. This damn red forest and this blue haze are enough to he broke off with an oath. I came as fast as I could, said the other. His voice was strange, thin and dreamy, matching his filmy eyes and his eternal very faint smile. Your poor physician congratulates your lordship upon the success that still attends you. Yours is a fortunate star, my lord. Then you have her safe, cried my lord. Three miles from here on the riverbank is a ring of pines in which the trees grow so thick that it is always twilight. Ten years ago a man was murdered there, and Sir Thomas Dale chained the murderer to the tree beneath which his victim was buried and left him to perish of hunger and thirst. That is the tale they tell at Jamestown. The wood is said to be haunted by murder and murderer, and no one enters it or comes nearer to it than he can avoid, which makes it an excellent resort for those whom the dead cannot scare. The lady is there, my lord, with your four knaves to guard her. They do not know that the gloom and quiet of the place are due to more than nature. My lord began to laugh. Either he had been drinking or the success of his villainy had served for wine. You are a man in a thousand, Nicolo, he said. How far above or below the ship is this fortunate wood. Just opposite, my lord. Can a boat easily land? A creek runs through the wood to the river. There needs but the appointed signal from the bank and a boat from the Santa Teresa can be rowed up the stream to the very tree beneath which the lady sits. My lord's laughter rang out again. You're a man in ten thousand, Nicolo. Nicolo, the bridegroom's in town. That so soon, said the Italian, then we must change your lordship's plan. With him on the ground you can no longer wait until nightfall to row downstream to the lady and the Santa Teresa. He'll come to look for her. I, he'll come to look for her, curse him, echoed my lord. Do you think the dead will scare him? continued the Italian. No, I don't, answered my lord with an oath. I would, he were among them, and I could have killed him before I went. I had devised a way to do it long ago, had not your lordship's conscience been so tender. And yet before now our enemies, yours and mine, my lord, have met with sudden and mysterious death. Men stared, but they ended by calling it a dispensation of providence. He broke off to laugh with silent, hateful laughter, as mirthful as the grin of a death's head. I know, I know, said my lord impatiently. We are not overnice, Nicolo. But between me and those who then stood in my way there had passed no challenge. This is my mortal foe, through whose heart I would drive my sword. I would give my ruby to know whether he's in the town or in the forest. He's in the forest, I said. Black lameral and the brown mare were beside them before either moved hand or foot, and did ought but stare and stare, as though men and horses had risen from the dead. All the color was gone from a lord's face. It looked white, drawn, and pinched. As for his companion, his countenance did not change, never changed, I believe, but the trembling of the feather in his hat was not caused by the wind. Jeremy Sparrow bent down from his saddle, seized the Italian under the armpits, and swung him clean from the ground up to the brown mare's neck. Divinity and medicine, he said genially, soul-healer and body-poisoner, will ride double for a time, and proceeded to bind the doctor's hands with his own scarf. The creature of venom before him writhed and struggled, but the minister's strength was as the strength of ten, and the minister's hand held him down. By this I was off black lameral and facing my lord. The color had come back to his lip and cheek, and the flash to his eye. His hand went to his sword hilt. I shall not draw mine, my lord, I told him. I keep troth. He stared at me with a frown that suddenly changed into a laugh, forced and unnatural enough. Then go thy ways, and let me go mine, he cried. The complacent worthy captain of train-vans and burges from a dozen huts, the king and I will make it worth your while. I will not draw my sword upon you, I replied. But I will try a fall with you, and I seized him by the wrist. He was a good wrestler as he was a good swordsman, but with bitter anger in my heart and a vision of the haunted wood before my eyes, I think I could have wrestled with Hercules in one. Presently I threw him, and pinning him down with my knee upon his breast, cried to sparrow to cut the bridal reins from black lameral and throw them to me. Though he had the Italian upon his hands, he managed to obey. With my free hand and my teeth I drew a thong about my lord's arms and bound them to his sides. Then took my knee from his chest and my hand from his throat, and rose to my feet. He rose, too, with one spring. He was very white, and there was foam on his lips. What next, captain? He demanded thickly. Your score is mounting up rather rapidly. What next? This, I replied, and with the other thong fastened him despite his struggles to the young maple beneath which we had wrestled. When the task was done, I first drew his sword from its jewel-scabbard and laid it on the ground at his feet. Then cut the leather which restrained his arms, leaving him only tied to the tree. I am not, Sir Thomas Dale, I said, and therefore I shall not gag you and leave you bound for an indefinite length of time to contemplate a grave that you thought to dig. One haunted wood is enough for one country. Your lordship will observe that I have not at your bonds an easy reach of your hands, the use of which I have just restored to you. The knot is a peculiar one, an Indian taught it to me. If you set to work at once, you will get it untied before nightfall, that you may not think at the Gordian knot and treat it as such. I have put your sword where you can get it only when you have worked for it. Your familiar, my lord, may prove of use to us. Therefore we will take him with us to the haunted wood. I have the honor to wish your lordship a very good day. I bowed low, swung myself into my saddle, and turned my back upon his glaring eyes and beard teeth. Sparrow, his prize, flung across his saddlebow, turned with me. A moment more saw us out of the hollow and entered upon the glade up which had come the Italian. When we had gone a short distance, I turned in my saddle and looked back. The tiny hollow had vanished. All the forest looked level, dreamy and still, barren of humanity, given over to its own shy children, nothing moving save the slow-falling leaves. But from beyond a great clump of sumap, set like a torch in the vaporous blue, came a steady stream of words, happily rendered indistinguishable by distance, and I knew that the king's minion was cursing the Italian, the governor, the Santa Teresa, the due return, the minister, the forest, the haunted wood, his sword, the knot that I had tied, and myself. I admit that the sound was music in my nears.