Chapter 5. The Silent Men

________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER V. THE SILENT MEN

"Seamen, seamen, whence come ye?
Pardonnez moy, je vous en prie."

---Old Song.

A monk he was too. A second and third look over my shoulder left me no doubt of it. He gravely handed us a rope as we overtook the ketch and ran alongside, and as gravely bowed when I leapt upon deck; but he gave us no other welcome.

His russet gown reached almost to his feet, which were bare; and he stood amid the strangest litter of a deck-cargo, consisting mainly-- or so at first glance it seemed to me--of pot-plants and rude agricultural implements: spades, flails, forks, mattocks, picks, hoes, dibbles, rakes, lashed in bundles; sieves, buckets, kegs, bins, milk-pails, seed-hods, troughs, mangers, a wired dovecote, and a score of hen-coops filled with poultry. Forward of the mainmast stood a cart with shafts, upright and lashed to the mast, that the headsails might work clear. The space between the masts was occupied by enormous open hatchways through which came the lowing of oxen, and through these, peering down into the hold, I saw the backs of cattle and horses moving in its gloom, and the bodies of men stretched in the straw at their feet.

So much of the _Gauntlet's_ hugger-mugger I managed to discern before Captain Pomery left the helm and hurried forward to give us welcome on board.

"Mornin', Squire Prosper! Mornin', Billy! You know _me_, sir--Cap'n Jo Pomery--which is short for Job, and 'tis the luckiest chance, sir, you hailed me, for you'm nearabouts the first man I wanted to see. Faith, now, and I wonder how your father (God bless him) will take it?"

"Why, what's the matter?" asked I, with a glance at the monk, who had drawn back a pace and stood, still silent, fingering his rosary.

"The matter? Good Lord! isn't _this_ matter enough?" Captain Jo waved an arm to include all the deck-cargo. "See them pot-plants, there, and what they'm teeled [1] in?"

"Drinking-troughs?" said I. "Or . . . is it coffins?"

"Coffins it is. I'd feel easier in mind if you could tell me what your father (God bless him) will say to it."

"But what has all this to do with my father?" I demanded, and, seeking Billy's eyes, found them as frankly full of amaze as my own.

"Not but what," continued Captain Jo, "they've behaved well, though dog-sick to a man from the time we left port. Look at 'em!"--he caught me by the arm and, drawing me to the hatchway, pointed down to the hold. "A round score and eight, and all well paid for as passengers; but for the return journey I won't answer. It depends on your father, and that"--with a jerk of his thumb towards the tall monk--"I stippilated when I shipped 'em. 'Never you mind,' was the answer I got; 'take 'em to England to Sir John Constantine.' And here they be!"

"But who on earth are they?" I cried, staring down into the gloom, where presently I made out that the men stretched in the straw at the horses' feet were monks all, and habited like the monk on the deck behind me. To him next I turned, to find his eyes, which were dark and quick, searching me curiously; and as I turned he made a step forward, put out a hand as if to touch me on the shirt-sleeve, and anon drew it back, yet still continued to regard me.

"You are a son, signor, of Sir John Constantine?" he asked, in soft Italian.

"I am his only son, sir," I answered him in the same language.

"Ah! You speak my tongue?" A gleam of joy passed over his grave features. "And you are his son? So! I should have guessed it at once, for you bear great likeness to him."

"You know my father, sir?"

"Years ago." His hands, which he used expressively, seemed to grope in a far past. "I come to him also from one who knew him years ago."

"Upon what business, sir!--if I am allowed to ask."

"I bring a message."

"You bring a tolerably full one, then," said I, glancing first at the disorder on deck and from that down to the recumbent figures in the hold.

"I speak for them," he went on, having followed the glance. "It is most necessary that they keep silence; but I speak for all."

"Then, sir, as it seems to me, you have much to say."

"No," he answered slowly; "very little, I think; very little, as you will see."

Here Captain Jo interrupted us. He had stepped back to steady the wheel, but I fancy that the word _silenzio_ must have reached him, and that, small Italian though he knew, with this particular word the voyage had made him bitterly acquainted.

"Dumb!" he shouted. "Dumb as gutted haddocks!"

"Dumb!" I echoed, while the two seamen forward heard and laughed.

"It is their vow," said the monk, gravely, and seemed on the point to say more.

But at this moment Captain Pomery sang out "Gybe-O!" At the warning we ducked our heads together as the boom swung over and the _Gauntlet_, heeling gently for a moment, rounded the river-bend in view of the great house of Constantine, set high and gazing over the folded woods. A house more magnificently placed, with forest, park, and great stone terraces rising in successive tiers from the water's edge, I do not believe our England in those days could show; and it deserved its site, being amply classical in design, with a facade that, discarding mere ornament, expressed its proportion and symmetry in bold straight lines, prolonged by the terraces on which tall rows of pointed yews stood sentinel. Right English though it was, it bore (as my father used to say of our best English poetry) the stamp of great Italian descent, and I saw the monk give a start as he lifted his eyes to it.

"We have not these river-creeks in Italy," said he, "nor these woods, nor these green lawns; and yet, if those trees, aloft there, were but cypresses--" He broke off. "Our voyage has a good ending," he added, half to himself.

The _Gauntlet_ being in ballast, and the tide high, Captain Pomery found plenty of Water in the winding channel, every curve of which he knew to a hair, and steered for at its due moment, winking cheerfully at Billy and me, who stood ready to correct his pilotage. He had taken in his mainsail, and carried steerage way with mizzen and jib only; and thus, for close upon a mile, we rode up on the tide, scaring the herons and curlews before us, until drawing within sight of a grass-grown quay he let run down his remaining canvas and laid the ketch alongside, so gently that one of the seamen, who had cast a stout fender overside, stepped ashore, and with a slow pull on her main rigging checked and brought her to a standstill.

"_Aut Lacedaemonium Tarentum_," said the monk at my shoulder quietly; and, as I stared at him, "Ah, to be sure, this is your Tarentum, is it not? Yet the words came to me for the sound's sake only and their so gentle close. Our voyage has even such an ending."

"I had best run on," I suggested, "and warn my father of your coming."

"It is not necessary."

"Nevertheless," I urged, "they can be preparing breakfast for you, up at the house, while you and your friends are making ready to come ashore."

"We have broken our fast," he answered; "and we are quite ready, if you will be so good as to guide us."

He stepped to the hatchways and called down, announcing simply that the voyage was ended: and in the dusk there I saw monk after monk upheave himself from the straw and come clambering up the ladder; tall monks and short, old monks and young and middle-aged, lean monks and thickset--but the most of them cadaverous, and all of them yellow with sea-sickness; twenty-eight monks, all barefoot, all tolerably dirty, and all blinking in the fresh sunshine. When they were gathered, at a sign from one of them--by dress not distinguishable from his fellows--all knelt and gave silent thanks for the voyage accomplished.

I could see that Billy Priske was frightened: for, arising, they rolled their eyes about them like wild animals turned loose in an unfamiliar country, and the whites of their eyes were yellow (so to speak) with seafaring, and their pupils glassy with fever and from the sea's glare. But the monk their spokesman touched my arm and motioned me to lead; and, when I obeyed, one by one the whole troop fell into line and followed at his heels.

Thus we went--I leading, with him and the rest in single file after me--up by the footpath through the woods, and forth into sunshine again upon the green dewy bracken of the deer-park. Here my companion spoke for the first time since disembarking.

"Your father, sir," said he, looking about him and seeming to sniff the morning air, "must be a very rich signor."

"On the contrary," I answered, "I have some reason to believe him a poor man."

He stared down for a moment at his bare feet, and the skirts of his gown wet to the knees with the grasses.

"Ah? Well, it will make no difference," he said; and we resumed our way.

As we climbed the last slope under the terraces of the house, I caught sight of my father leaning by a balustrade high above us, at the head of a double flight of broad stone steps, and splicing the top joint of a trout-rod he had broken the day before. He must have caught sight of us almost at the moment when we emerged from the woods.

He showed no surprise at all. Only as I led my guests up the steps he set down his work and, raising a hand, bent to them in a very courteous welcome.

"Good morning, lad! And good morning to those you bring, whencesoever they come."

"They come, sir," I answered "in Jo Pomery's ketch _Gauntlet_, I believe from Italy; and with a message for you."

"My father turned his gaze from me to the spokesman at my elbow. His eyebrows lifted with surprise and sudden pleasure.

"Hey?" he exclaimed. "Is it my old friend--"

But the other, before his name could be uttered, lifted a hand.

"My name is the Brother Basilio now, Sir John: no other am I permitted to remember. The peace of God be with you, and upon your house!"

"And with you, Brother Basilio, since you will have it so: and with all your company! You bear a message for me? But first you must break your fast." He turned to lead the way to the house.

"We have eaten already, Sir John. As soon as your leisure serves, we would deliver our message."

My father called to Billy Priske--who hung in the rear of the monks-- bidding him fetch my uncle Gervase in from the stables to the State Room, and so, without another word, motioned to his visitors to follow. To this day I can hear the shuffle of their bare feet on the steps and slabs of the terrace as they hurried after him to keep up with his long strides.

In the great entrance-hall he paused to lift a bunch of rusty keys off their hook, and, choosing the largest, unlocked the door of the State Room. The lock had been kept well oiled, for Billy Priske entered it twice daily; in the morning, to open a window or two, and at sunset, to close them. But it is a fact that I had not crossed its threshold a score of times in my life, though I ran by it, maybe, as many times a day; nor (as I believe) had my father entered it for years. Yet it was the noblest room in the house, in length seventy-five feet, panelled high in dark oak and cedar and adorned around each panel with carvings of Grinling Gibbons--festoons and crowns and cherub-faces and intricate baskets of flowers. Each panel held a portrait, and over every panel, in faded gilt against the morning sun, shone an imperial crown. The windows were draped with hangings of rotten velvet. At the far end on a dais stood a porphyry table, and behind it, facing down the room, a single chair, or throne, also of porphyry and rudely carved. For the rest the room held nothing but dust--dust so thick that our visitors' naked feet left imprints upon it as they huddled after their leader to the dais, where my father took his seat, after beckoning me forward to stand on his right.

But of all bewildered faces there was never a blanker, I believe, since the world began than my uncle Gervase's; who now appeared in the doorway, a bucket in his hand, straight from the stables where he had been giving my father's roan horse a drench. Billy's summons must have hurried him, for he had not even waited to turn down his shirt-sleeves: but as plainly it had given him no sort of notion why he was wanted and in the State Room. I guessed indeed that on his way he had caught up the bucket supposing that the house was afire. At sight of the monks he set it down slowly, gently, staring at them the while, and seemed in act of inverting it to sit upon, when my father addressed him from the dais over the shaven heads of the audience.

"Brother, I am sorry to have disturbed you: but here is a business in which I may need your counsel. Will it please you to step this way? These guests of ours, I should first explain, have arrived from over seas."

My uncle came forward, still like a man in a dream, mounted the dais on my father's left, and, turning, surveyed the visitors in front.

"Eh? To be sure, to be sure," he murmured. "Broomsticks!"

"Their spokesman here, who gives his name as the Brother Basilio, bears a message for me; and since he presents it in form with a whole legation at his back, I think it due to treat him with equal ceremony. Do you agree?"

"If you ask me," my uncle answered, after a pause full of thought, "they would prefer to start, maybe, with a wash and a breakfast. By good luck, Billy tells me, the trammel has made a good haul. As for basins, brother, our stock will not serve all these gentlemen; but if the rest will take the will for the deed and use the pump, I'll go round meanwhile and see how the hens have been laying."

"You are the most practical of men, brother: but my offer of breakfast has already been declined. Shall we hear what Dom Basilio has to say?"

"I have nothing to say, Sir John," put in Brother Basilio, advancing, "but to give you this letter and await your answer."

He drew a folded paper from his tunic and handed it to my father, who rose to receive it, turned it over, and glanced at the superscription. I saw a red flush creep slowly up to his temples and fade, leaving his face extraordinarily pale. A moment later, in face of his audience, he lifted the paper to his lips, kissed it reverently, and broke the seal.

Again I saw the flush mount to his temples as he read the letter through slowly and in silence. Then after a long pause he handed it to me; and I took it wondering, for his eyes were dim and yet bright with a noble joy.

The letter (turned into English) ran thus--

"To Sir John Constantine, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Star, at his house of Constantine in Cornwall, England.

"MY FRIEND,

"The bearer of this and his company have been driven by the Genoese from their monastery of San Giorgio on my estate of Casalabriva above the Taravo valley, the same where you will remember our treading the vintage together to the freedom of Corsica. But the Genoese have cut down my vines long since, and now they have fired the roof over these my tenants and driven them into the _macchia_, whence they send message to me to deliver them. Indeed, friend, I have much ado to protect myself in these days: but by good fortune I have heard of an English vessel homeward bound which will serve them if they can reach the coast, whence numbers of the faithful will send them off with good provision. Afterwards, what will happen? To England the ship is bound, and in England I know you only. Remembering your great heart, I call on it for what help you can render to these holy men. _Addio_, friend. You are remembered in my constant prayers to Christ, the Virgin, and all the Saints.

"EMILIA."

At a sign from my father--who had sunk back in his chair and sat gripping its arms--I passed on this epistle to my uncle Gervase, who read it and ran his hand through his hair.

"Dear me!" said he, running his eye over the attentive monks, "this lady, whoever she may be--"

"She is a crowned queen, brother Gervase," my father interrupted; "and moreover she is the noblest woman in the world."

"As to that, brother," returned my uncle, "I am saying nothing. But speaking of what I know, I say she can be but poorly conversant with your worldly affairs."

My father half-lifted himself from his seat. "And is that how you take it?" he demanded sharply. "Is that all you read in the letter? Brother, I tell you again, this lady is a queen. What should a queen know of my degree of poverty?"

"Nevertheless--" began my uncle.

But my father cut him short again. "I had hoped," said he, reproachfully, "you would have been prompt to recognize her noble confidence. Mark you how, no question put, she honours me. 'Do this, for my sake'--Who but the greatest in the world can appeal thus simply?"

"None, maybe," my uncle replied; "as none but the well-to-do can answer with a like ease."

"You come near to anger me, brother; but I remember that you never knew her. Is not this house large? Are not four-fifths of my rooms lying at this moment un-tenanted? Very well; for so long as it pleases them, since she claims it, these holy men shall be our guests. No more of this," my father commanded peremptorily, and added, with all the gravity in the world, "You should thank her consideration rather, that she sends us visitors so frugal, since poverty degrades us to these economies. But there is one thing puzzles me." He took the letter again from my uncle and fastened his gaze on the Brother Basilio. "She says she has much ado to protect herself."

"Indeed, Sir John," answered Brother Basilio, "I fear the queen, our late liege-lady, speaks somewhat less than the truth. She wrote to you from a poor lodging hard by Bastia, having ventured back to Corsica out of Tuscany on business of her own; and on the eve of sailing we heard that she had been taken prisoner by the Genoese."

"What!" My father rose, clutching the arms of his chair. Of stone they were, like the chair itself, and well mortised: but his great grip wrenched them out of their mortises and they crashed on the dais. "What! You left her a prisoner of the Genoese!" He gazed around them in a wrath that slowly grew cold, freezing into contempt. "Go, sirs; since she commands it, room shall be found for you all. My house for the while is yours. But go from me now."

[1] Tilled, planted. _

Read next: Chapter 6. How My Father Out Of Nothing Built An Army...

Read previous: Chapter 4. Long Vacation

Table of content of Sir John Constantine


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book