CHAPTER XV
In which we Find the Haunted Wood
On the outskirts of the haunted wood we dismounted, fastening the horsesto two pines. The Italian we gagged and bound across the brown mare'ssaddle. Then, as noiselessly as Indians, we entered the wood.
Once within it, it was as though the sun had suddenly sunk from theheavens. The pines, of magnificent height and girth, were so closely setthat far overhead, where the branches began, was a heavy roof offoliage, impervious to the sunshine, brooding, dark and sullen as athundercloud, over the cavernous world beneath. There was noundergrowth, no clinging vines, no bloom, no colour; only the dark,innumerable tree trunks and the purplish-brown, scented, and slipperyearth. The air was heavy, cold, and still, like cave air; the silence asblank and awful as the silence beneath the earth.
The minister and I stole through the dusk, and for a long time heardnothing but our own breathing and the beating of our hearts. But comingto a sluggish stream, as quiet as the wood through which it crept, andfollowing its slow windings, we at last heard a voice, and in thedistance made out dark forms sitting on the earth beside that sombrewater. We went on with caution, gliding from tree to tree and making nonoise. In the cheerless silence of that place any sound would haveshattered the stillness like a pistol shot.
Presently we came to a halt, and, ourselves hidden by a giant trunk,looked out on stealers and stolen. They were gathered on the bank of thestream, waiting for the boat from the _Santa Teresa_. The lady whom wesought lay like a fallen flower on the dark ground beneath a pine. Shedid not move, and her eyes were shut. At her head crouched the negress,her white garments showing ghostlike through the gloom. Beneath the nexttree sat Diccon, his hands tied behind him, and around him my LordCarnal's four knaves. It was Diccon's voice that we had heard. He wasstill speaking, and now we could distinguish the words.
"So Sir Thomas chains him there," he said,--"right there to that treeunder which you are sitting, Jacky Bonhomme." Jacques incontinentlyshifted his position. "He chains him there, with one chain around hisneck, one around his waist, and one around his ankles. Then he sticks mea bodkin through his tongue." A groan of admiration from his audience."Then they dig, before his very eyes, a grave--shallow enough they makeit, too,--and they put into it, uncoffined, with only a long whiteshroud upon him, the man he murdered. Then they cover the grave. You'resitting on it now, you other Jacky."
"Godam!" cried the rascal addressed, and removed with expedition to aless storied piece of ground.
"Then they go away," continued Diccon in graveyard tones. "They all goaway together,--Sir Thomas and Captain Argall, Captain West, LieutenantGeorge Percy and his cousin, my master, and Sir Thomas's men; they goout of the wood as though it were accursed, though indeed it was nothalf so gloomy then as it is now. The sun shone into it then, sometimes,and the birds sang. You wouldn't think it from the looks of things now,would you? As the dead man rotted in his grave, and the living man diedby inches above him, they say the wood grew darker, and darker, anddarker. How dark it's getting now, and cold,--cold as the dead!"
His auditors drew closer together, and shivered. Sparrow and I were sonear that we could see the hands of the ingenious story-teller, boundbehind his back, working as he talked. Now they strained this way, andnow that, at the piece of rope that bound them.
"That was ten years ago," he said, his voice becoming more and moreimpressive. "Since that day nothing comes into this wood,--nothing_human_ that is. Neither white man nor Indian comes, that's certain.Then why aren't there chains around that tree, and why are there nobones beneath it, on the ground there? Because, Jackies all, the manthat did that murder _walks_! It is not always deadly still here;sometimes there's a clanking of chains! And a bodkin through the tonguecan't keep the dead from wailing! And the murdered man walks, too; inhis shroud he follows the other---- Isn't that something white in thedistance yonder?"
My lord's four knaves looked down the arcade of trees, and saw thesomething white as plainly as if it had been verily there. Each momentthe wood grew darker,--a thing in nature, since the sun outside wasswiftly sinking to the horizon. But to those to whom that tale had beentold it was a darkening unearthly and portentous, bringing with it acolder air and a deepened silence.
"Oh, Sir Thomas Dale, Sir Thomas Dale!"
The voice seemed to come from the distance, and bore in its dismalcadence the melancholy of the damned. For a moment my heart stood still,and the hair of my head commenced to rise; the next, I knew that Dicconhad found an ally, not in the dead, but in the living. The minister,standing beside me, opened his mouth again, and again that dismal voicerang through the wood, and again it seemed, by I know not what art, tocome from any spot rather than from that particular tree behind whosetrunk stood Master Jeremy Sparrow.
"Oh, the bodkin through my tongue! Oh, the bodkin through my tongue!"
Two of the guard sat with hanging lip and lack-lustre eyes, turned tostone; one, at full length upon the ground, bruised his face against thepine-needles and called on the Virgin; the fourth, panic-stricken,leaped to his feet and dashed off into the darkness, to trouble us nomore that day.
"Oh, the heavy chains!" cried the unseen spectre. "Oh, the dead man inhis grave!"
The man on his face dug his nails into the earth and howled; hisfellows were too frightened for sound or motion. Diccon, a hardy rogue,with little fear of God or man, gave no sign of perturbation beyond adesperate tugging at the rope about his wrists. He was ever quick totake suggestion, and he had probably begun to question the nature of theghost who was doing him such yeoman service.
"D'ye think they've had enough?" said Sparrow in my ear. "My inventionflaggeth."
I nodded, too choked with laughter for speech, and drew my sword. Thenext moment we were upon the men like wolves upon the fold.
They made no resistance. Amazed and shaken as they were, we might havedispatched them with all ease, to join the dead whose lamentations yetrang in their ears; but we contented ourselves with disarming them andbidding them begone for their lives in the direction of the Pamunkey.They went like frightened deer, their one goal in life escape from thewood.
"Did you meet the Italian?"
I turned to find my wife at my side. The King's ward had a kinglyspirit; she was not one that the dead or the living could daunt. To her,as to me, danger was a trumpet call to nerve heart and strengthen soul.She had been in peril of that which she most feared, but the light inher eye was not quenched, and the hand with which she touched mine,though cold, was steady.
"Is he dead?" she asked. "At court they called him the Black Death. Theysaid----"
"I did not kill him," I answered; "but I will if you desire it."
"And his master?" she demanded "What have you done with his master?"
I told her. At the vision my words conjured up her strained nerves gaveway, and she broke into laughter as cruel as it was sweet. Peal afterpeal rang through the haunted wood, and increased the eeriness of theplace.
"The knot that I tied he will untie directly," I said. "If we wouldreach Jamestown first, we had best be going."
"Night is upon us, too," said the minister, "and this place hath thelook of the very valley of the shadow of death. If the spirits walk, itis hard upon their time--and I prefer to walk elsewhere."
"Cease your laughter, madam," I said. "Should a boat be coming up thisstream, you would betray us."
I went over to Diccon, and in a silence as grim as his own cut the ropewhich bound his hands, which done we all moved through the deepeninggloom to where we had left the horses, Jeremy Sparrow going on ahead tohave them in readiness. Presently he came hurrying back. "The Italian isgone!" he cried.
"Gone!" I exclaimed. "I told you to tie him fast to the saddle!"
"Why, so I did," he replied. "I drew the thongs so tight that they cutinto his flesh. He could not have endured to pull against them.
"Then how did he get away?"
"Why," he answered, with a rueful countenance, "I did bind h
im, as Ihave said; but when I had done so, I bethought me of how the leathermust cut, and of how pain is dreadful even to a snake, and of theinjunction to do as you would be done by, and so e'en loosened hisbonds. But, as I am a christened man, I thought that they would yet holdhim fast!"
I began to swear, but ended in vexed laughter. "The milk's spilt.There's no use in crying over it. After all, we must have loosed himbefore we entered the town."
"Will you not bring the matter before the Governor?" he asked.
I shook my head. "If Yeardley did me right, he would put in jeopardy hisoffice and his person. This is my private quarrel, and I will draw noman into it against his will. Here are the horses, and we had best begone, for by this time my lord and his physician may have their headstogether again."
I mounted Black Lamoral, and lifted Mistress Percy to a seat behind me.The brown mare bore the minister and the negress, and Diccon, doggedlysilent, trudged beside us.
We passed through the haunted wood and the painted forest beyond withoutadventure. We rode in silence: the lady behind me too weary for speech,the minister revolving in his mind the escape of the Italian, and I withmy own thoughts to occupy me. It was dusk when we crossed the neck ofland, and as we rode down the street torches were being lit in thehouses. The upper room in the guest house was brightly illumined, andthe window was open. Black Lamoral and the brown mare made a tramplingwith their hoofs, and I began to whistle a gay old tune I had learnt inthe wars. A figure in scarlet and black came to the window, and stoodthere looking down upon us. The lady riding with me straightened herselfand raised her weary head. "The next time we go to the forest, Ralph,"she said in a clear, high voice, "thou'lt show me a certain tree," andshe broke into silvery laughter. She laughed until we had left behindthe guest house and the figure in the upper window, and then thelaughter changed to something like a sob. If there were pain and angerin her heart, pain and anger were in mine also. She had never called meby my name before. She had only used it now as a dagger with which tostab at that fierce heart above us.
At last we reached the minister's house, and dismounted before the door.Diccon led the horses away, and I handed my wife into the great room.The minister tarried but for a few words anent some precautions that Imeant to take, and then betook himself to his own chamber. As he wentout of the door Diccon entered the room.
"Oh, I am weary!" sighed Mistress Jocelyn Percy. "What was the mightybusiness, Captain Percy, that made you break tryst with a lady? Youshould go to court, sir, to be taught gallantry."
"Where should a wife go to be taught obedience?" I demanded. "You knowwhere I went and why I could not keep tryst. Why did you not obey myorders?"
She opened wide her eyes. "Your orders? I never received any,--not thatI should have obeyed them if I had. Know where you went? I know neitherwhy nor where you went!"
I leaned my hand upon the table, and looked from her to Diccon.
"I was sent by the Governor to quell a disturbance amongst the nearestIndians. The woods to-day have been full of danger. Moreover, the planthat we made yesterday was overheard by the Italian. When I had to gothis morning without seeing you, I left you word where I had gone andwhy, and also my commands that you should not stir outside the garden.Were you not told this, madam?"
"No!" she cried.
I looked at Diccon. "I told madam that you were called away onbusiness," he said sullenly. "I told her that you were sorry you couldnot go with her to the woods."
"You told her nothing more?"
"No."
"May I ask why?"
He threw back his head. "I did not believe the Paspaheghs would troubleher," he answered, with hardihood, "and you hadn't seen fit, sir, totell me of the other danger. Madam wanted to go, and I thought it a pitythat she should lose her pleasure for nothing."
I had been hunting the day before, and my whip yet lay upon the table."I have known you for a hardy rogue," I said, with my hand upon it; "nowI know you for a faithless one as well. If I gave you credit for all thevices of the soldier, I gave you credit also for his virtues. I was themore deceived. The disobedient servant I might pardon, but the soldierwho is faithless to his trust----"
I raised the whip and brought it down again and again across hisshoulders. He stood without a word, his face dark red and his handsclenched at his sides. For a minute or more there was no sound in theroom save the sound of the blows; then my wife suddenly cried out: "Itis enough! You have beaten him enough! Let him go, sir!"
I threw down the whip. "Begone, sirrah!" I ordered. "And keep out of mysight to-morrow!"
With his face still dark red and with a pulse beating fiercely in hischeek, he moved slowly toward the door, turned when he had reached itand saluted, then went out and closed it after him.
"Now he too will be your enemy," said Mistress Percy, "and all throughme. I have brought you many enemies, have I not? Perhaps you count meamongst them? I should not wonder if you did. Do you not wish me gonefrom Virginia?"
"So I were with you, madam," I said bluntly, and went to call theminister down to supper.