Home > Authors Index > Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch > Sir John Constantine > This page
Sir John Constantine, a novel by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
||
Chapter 26. The Flame And The Altar |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER XXVI. THE FLAME AND THE ALTAR "And when he saw the statly towre "'Says, Row the boat, my mariners, ---Rough Royal.
"And whilst our souls negotiate there, ---DONNE, The Ecstasie.
"It is not spirit you lack, but sleep," said I; and she confessed that it was so. An hour's rest would recover her, she said, and obediently lay down where I found a couch for her on a bank of sweet-smelling heath above the road. I too wanted rest, and settled myself down with my back against a citron tree, some twenty paces distant. Chaucer says somewhere (and it is true), that women take less sleep and take it more lightly than men. It seemed to me that I had scarcely closed my eyes before I opened them again at a touch on my shoulder. The night was yet dark around us, save for the glow to the northward, and at first I would hardly believe when the Princess told me that I had been sleeping near upon three hours. Then it occurred to me that for a long while the sky overhead had been shaking and repeating the boom of cannon. "There is firing to the south of us," she said; "and heavier firing than where the light is. It comes from Nonza or thereabouts." "Then it is no affair of ours, even if we could reach it. But the flame yonder will lead us to my father." So we took the white glimmering high-road again and stepped out briskly, refreshed by sleep and the cool night air that went with us, blowing softly across the ridges on our right. We found a track that skirted the village of Pino, leading us wide among orchards of citron and olive, and had scarcely regained the road before the guns to the south ceased firing. Also the red glow, though it still suffused the north, began to fade as we neared it and climbed the last of steep hills that run out to the extremity of the cape. There, upon the summit, we came to a stand and caught our breath. The sea lay at our feet, and down across its black floor to the base of the cliff on which we stood there ran a broad ribbon of light. It shone from a rock less than half a league distant: and on that rock stood a castle which was a furnace--its walls black as the bars of a grate, its windows aglow with contained fire. For the moment it seemed that this fire filled the whole pile of masonry: but presently, while we stood and stared, a sudden flame, shooting high from the walls, lit up the front of a tall tower above them, with a line of battlements at its base and on the battlements a range of roofs yet intact. As though a slide had been opened and as rapidly shut again, this vision of tower, roofs, battlements, gleamed for a second and vanished as the flame sank and a cloud of smoke and sparks rolled up in its place and drifted heavily to leeward. With a light touch on the Princess's arm I bade her follow me, and we raced together down the slope. At the foot of it we plunged into a grove of olives and through it, as through a screen, into the street of a little _marina_--two dozen fisher-huts, huddled close above the foreshore, and tenantless; for their inhabitants were gathered all on the beach and staring at the blaze. I have said that the folk at Cape Corso are a race apart: and surely there never was a stranger crowd than that in which, two minutes later, we found ourselves mingling unchallenged. They accepted us, may be, as a minor miracle of the night. They gazed at us curiously there in the light of the conflagration, and from us away to the burning island, and talked together in whispers, in a patois of which I caught but one word in three. They asked us no questions. Their voices filled the beach with a kind of subdued murmuring, all alike gentle and patiently explanatory. "It is the island of Giraglia," said one to me. "Yes, yes; this will be the work of the patriots--a brave feat too, there's no denying." I pointed to a line of fishing-boats moored in the shoal water a short furlong off the shore. "If you own one," said I, "give me leave to hire her from you, and name your price." "_Perche, perche?_" "I wish to sail her to the island." "_O galant'uomo_, but why should any one desire to sail to the island to-night of all nights, seeing that to-night they have set it on fire?" I stared at his simplicity. "You are not patriots, it seems, at this end of the Cape?" He shook his head gravely. "The Genoese on the island are our customers, and buy our fish. Why should men quarrel?" "If it come to commerce, then, will you sell me your boat? The price of her should be worth many a day's barter of fish." He shook his head again, but called his neighbours to him, men and women, and they began to discuss my offer, all muttering together, their voices mingling confusedly as in a dream. By-and-by the man turned to me. "The price is thirty-five livres, signore, on deposit, for which you may choose any boat you will. We are peaceable folk and care not to meddle; but the half shall be refunded if you bring her back safe and sound." "Fetch me a shore-boat, then," said I, while they counted my money, having fetched a lantern for the purpose. But it appeared that shore-boat there was none. I learned later that my father and Captain Pomery, acting on his behalf, had hired all the shore-boats at these _marinas_ (of which there are three hard by the extremity of the Cape) for use in the night attack upon the island. "Hold you my gun, then, Princess," said I, "while I swim out to the nearest:" and wading out till the dark water reached to my breast, I chose out my boat, swam to her--it was but a few strokes--clambered on board, caught up a sweep, and worked her back to the beach. The Princess, holding our two guns high, waded out to me, and I lifted her on board. We heard the voices of the villagers murmuring behind us while I hoisted the little sail and drew the sheet home. The night-breeze, fluking among the gullies, filled the sail at once, fell light again and left it flapping, then drew a steady breath aft, and the voices were lost in the hiss of water under the boat's stern. But not until we had passed the extreme point of land did we find the true breeze, which there headed us lightly, blowing (as nearly as I can guess) from N.N.E., yet allowed us a fair course, so that by hauling the sheet close I could point well to windward of the fiery reflection on the water and fetch the island on a single tack. It was here, as we ran out of the loom of the land, that the waning moon lifted her rim over the hills astern; and it was here, as we cleared the point, that her rays, traversing the misty sea between us and Elba, touched the grey-white canvas of a vessel jeeling along (as we say at the fishing in Cornwall) and holding herself to windward for a straight run down upon the island--a vessel which at first glance I recognized for the _Gauntlet_. Plainly she was standing-by, waiting; plainly then her crew--or those of them engaged for the assault--were detained yet upon the island; whence (to make matters surer) there sounded, as our boat ran up to it, a few loose dropping shots and a single cry--a cry that travelled across to us down the lane of light directing us to the quay. The blaze had died down; the upper keep, now overhanging us, stood black and unlit against a sky almost as black; but on a stairway at the base of it torches were moving and the flame of them shone on the slippery steps of a quay to which I guided the boat. There, jamming the helm down with a thrust of the foot, I ran forward and lowered sail. We carried more way than I had reckoned for, and--the Princess having no science to help me--this brought us crashing in among a press of boats huddled in the black shadow alongside the quay-steps with such force as almost to stave in the upper timbers of a couple and sink them where they lay. No voice challenged us. I wondered at this as I gripped at the dark dew-drenched canvas to haul it inboard, and while I wondered, a strong light shone down upon us from the quay's edge. A man stood there, holding a torch high over his head and shading his eyes as he peered down at the boat--a tall man in a Trappist habit girt high on his naked legs almost to the knees. "My father?" I demanded. "Where is my father?" He made no answer, but signed to us to make our landing, and waited for us, still holding the torch high while I helped the Princess from one boat to another and so to the slippery steps. "My father?" I demanded again. He turned and led us along the quay to a stairway cut in the living rock. At the foot of it he lowered his torch for a moment that we might see and step aside. Two bodies lay there--two of his brethren, stretched side by side and disposedly, with arms crossed on their breasts, ready for burial. High on the stairway, where it entered the base of a battlemented wall under an arch of heavy stonework, a solitary monk was drawing water from a well and sluicing the steps. The water ran past our feet, and in the dawn (now paling about us) I saw its colour. . . . The burnt building--it had been the Genoese barracks--stood high on the right of the stairway. Its roof had fallen in upon the flames raging through its wooden floors, so that what had been but an hour ago a blazing furnace was now a shell of masonry out of which a cloud of smoke rolled lazily, to hang about the upper walls of the fortress. Through its window-spaces, void and fire-smirched, as now and again the reek lifted, I saw the pale upper-sky with half a dozen charred ends of roof-timber sharply defined against it--a black and broken grid; and while yet I stared upward another pair of monks crossed the platform above the archway. They carried a body between them--the body of a man in the Genoese uniform--and were bearing it towards a bastion on the western side, that overhung the sea. There the battlements hid them from me; but by-and-by I heard a splash. . . . By this time we were mounting the stairway. We passed under the arch--where a door, shattered and wrenched from its upper hinge, lay askew against the wall--and climbed to the platform. From this another flight of steps (but these were of worked granite) led straight as a ladder to a smaller platform at the foot of the keep; and high upon these stood my uncle Gervase directing half a score of monks to right an overturned cannon. His back was toward me, but he turned as I hailed him by name-- turned, and I saw that he carried one arm in a sling. He came down the steps to welcome me, but slowly and with a very grave face. "My father--where is he?" "He is alive, lad." My uncle took my hand and pressed it. "That is to say, I left him alive. But come and see--" He paused--my uncle was ever shy in the presence of women--and with his sound hand lifted his hat to the Princess. "The signorina, if she will forgive a stranger for suggesting it--she may be spared some pain if--" "She seeks her mother, sir," said I, cutting him short; "and her mother is the Queen Emilia." "Your servant, signorina." My uncle bowed again and with a reassuring smile. "And I am happy to tell you that, so far at least, our expedition has succeeded. Your mother lives, signorina--or, should I say, Princess? Yes, yes, Princess, to be sure--But come, the both of you, and be prepared for gladness or sorrow, as may betide." He ran up the steps and we followed him, across the platform to a low doorway in the base of the keep, through this, and up a winding staircase of spirals, so steep and so many that the head swam. Open lancet windows--one at each complete round of the stair-- admitted the morning breeze, and through them, as I clung to the newel and climbed dizzily, I had glimpses of the sea twinkling far below. I counted these windows up to ten or a dozen, but had lost my reckoning for minutes before we emerged, at my uncle's heels, upon a semi-circular landing, and in face of an iron-studded door, the hasp of which he rattled gently. A voice answered from within bidding him open, and very softly he thrust the door wide. The room into which we looked was of fair size and circular in shape. Three windows lit it, and between us and the nearest knelt Dom Basilio, busy with a web of linen which he was tearing into bandages. His was the voice that had commanded us to enter; and passing in, I was aware that the room had two other occupants; for behind the door stood a truckle bed, and along the bed lay my father, pale as death and swathed in bandages; and by the foot of the bed, on a stool, with a spinning-wheel beside her, sat a woman. It needed no second look to tell me her name. Mean cell though it was that held her, and mean her seat, the worn face could belong to no one meaner than a Queen. A spool of thread had rolled from her hand, across the floor; yet her hands upon her lap were shaped as though they still held it. As she sat now, rigid, with her eyes on the bed, she must have been sitting for minutes. So, while Dom Basilio snipped and rent at his bandages, she gazed at my father on the bed, and my father gazed back into her eyes, drinking the love in them; and the faces of both seemed to shine with a solemn awe. I think we must have been standing there on the threshold, we three, for close upon a minute before my father turned his eyes towards me-- so far beyond this life was he travelling, and so far had the sound of our entrance to follow and overtake his dying senses. "Prosper! . . ." "My father!" He lifted a hand weakly toward the bandages wrapping his breast. "These--these are of her spinning, lad. This is her bed they have laid me on. . . . Who is it stands there behind your shoulder?" "It is the Princess, father. You remember the Princess Camilla? Yes, madam"--I turned to the Queen--"it is your daughter I bring-- your daughter, and, with your blessing, my wife." The Queen, though her daughter knelt, did not offer to embrace her, but lifted two feeble hands over the bowed head as though to bless, while over her hands her gaze still rested on my father. "We have had brave work, lad," he panted. "I am sorry you come late for it--but you were bound on your own business, eh?" He turned with a ghost of his old smile. "Nay, child, and you did right; I am not blaming you--The young to the young, and let the dead bury the dead! Kiss me, lad, if you can find room between these plaguey bandages. Your pardon, Dom Basilio: you have done your best, and, if I seem ungrateful, let me make amends and thank you for giving me this last, best hour. . . . Indeed, Dom Basilio, I am a dead man, but your bandages are tying my soul here for a while, where it would stay. Gervase"--he reached out a hand to my uncle, who was past hiding his tears--"Gervase--brother--there needs no talk, no thanks, between you and me. . . ." I drew back and, touching Dom Basilio by the shoulder, led him to the window. "He has no single wound that in itself would be fatal," the Trappist whispered; "but a twenty that together have bled him to death. He hacked his way up this stair through half a score of Genoese; at the door here, there was none left to hinder him, and we, having found and followed with the keys, climbed over bodies to find him stretched before it." "Emilia!" It was my father's voice lifted in triumph; and the Queen rose at the sound of it, trembling, and stood by the bed. "Emilia! Ah, love--ah, Queen, bend lower!--the love we loved--there, over the Taravo--it was not lost. . . . It meets in our children--and we--and we--" The Queen bent. "O great one--and we in Heaven!" I raised the Princess and led her to the window fronting the dawn. We looked not toward the pillow where their lips met; but into the dawn, and from the dawn into each other's eyes. _ |
||