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Prisoners of Hope: A Tale of Colonial Virginia, a novel by Mary Johnston |
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Chapter 18. A Capture |
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_ CHAPTER XVIII. A CAPTURE At noon the next day returned the search party, dispatched by the Colonel on receipt of his daughter's information, and headed by Woodson and Sir Charles Carew. In their midst, bound with ropes, and seated behind one of the mounted men, was Roach. His clothing hung from him in tatters, and witnessed, moreover, to the quagmires and mantled pools through which he had struggled; his arm had been injured, and was tied with a bloody rag; blood was caked upon his villainous face, scratched and torn in his breathless bursting through thickets; his red hair fell over his eyes in matted elf-locks; his lips were drawn back in a snarl over discolored fangs; he panted like a dog, his thick red tongue hanging out. He looked hardly human. The man behind whom he rode was Luiz Sebastian. The party dismounted in the small square, in the midst of the quarters. It being the noon rest, the entire servant population was on hand, and leaving its cabins and smoking messes of bacon and succotash, it hastened to a man to the square, where, beneath the dead tree and its sinister appendage, stood the master, listening to Woodson's account of the capture, and to Sir Charles's airy interpolations. Roach, dragged from the horse by a dozen officious hands, staggered with exhaustion. Luiz Sebastian caught him by the arm and so held him during the ensuing interview. When the unusual bustle, the neighing of the horses, and the excited voices of the crowd brought the news of the capture to Landless, sitting, sunk in anxious thought, within his cabin, he rose and began to pace to and fro in the narrow room. Past his door hurried men, women, and children on their way to the square. One or two beckoned him to follow, but he shook his head. "If he betray me," he thought, "my fate will come to me soon enough. I will not go to meet it." In his restless pacing to and fro, he stopped before a shelf where, beside some coarse eating utensils and the heap of tobacco pegs, the cutting of which occupied his spare moments, lay a little worn book. It had been Godwyn's. He opened it at random, and read a few verses. With a heavy sigh he laid his arm along the shelf and rested his burning forehead upon it. "'Let not your heart be troubled,'" he said beneath his breath; and again, "'Let not your heart be troubled.'" He recommenced his pacing up and down the room. "'Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you.'" Going to the doorway, he leaned against it and looked out into a world of sunshine, and up to where the topmost branches of a pine slept against the blue. "There may be peace beyond," he said. "I have not found it here." Down the lane came a murmur of voices; then the overseer's harsh tones; then a light and mocking laugh. Seized by an uncontrollable impulse he left the cabin and directed his steps towards the square. As he passed a cabin some doors from his own, a gaunt figure arose from the doorstep and joined itself to him. "The murderer is here," said the sepulchral voice of Master Win-Grace Porringer. "Verily the blood hath been taken out of his mouth, and his abominations from between his teeth. Cursed be the shedder of innocent blood!" "Amen," said Landless; then, "This capture is like to be our ruin. This wretch will not keep silence." "But he has no proofs. Since you destroyed those lists there exists not a scrap of writing about this affair. And we have covered our tracks as carefully as if we were the cursed heathen of the land upon the warpath. Let him say what he will. The Malignants, besotted fools! will think he lies to save his neck." "A week ago they might have thought so," said Landless. "But not now. Something has gotten abroad. Already Governor and Council think they smell a plot." The Muggletonian caught his breath. "How do you know this?" "No matter how: I know it." Porringer raised his scarred face to heaven. "God," he said, "we are thy people! Save us! Let destruction come upon them unawares; let them go down a dark and slippery way to death; make them to be as blind and deaf adders that see not the foot of the destroyer! Yea, shake thy hand upon these Malignants and make them a spoil to their servants!" He turned his ghastly face and burning eyes upon Landless. "Curse them with me!" he cried. Landless shook his head. "Thou, and I look not alike at things, friend," he said. "Thou art a Laodicean!" cried the other wildly. "Thou hast not an eye single to the Lord's work as had thy father before thee. Thou wouldst not smite the Amalekites hip and thigh, root and branch! One damsel would thou save alive, and for her sake thy heart is soft towards the whole accursed brood! Look to it lest the Lord spew thee out of His mouth! Woe, woe, to him that putteth his hand to the plough and looketh back!" He laughed wildly and tossed out his arms. "I think thou hast eaten of the Jamestown weed!" said Landless fiercely. "Collect thy senses, man! And speak something less loudly, or Roach's betrayal will be superfluous. As to myself, if I curse not, I act; and as for my motives for what you call luke-warmness, and I call common humanity, you will please to let them alone!" The excitement faded from the fanatic's face, and he said more quietly, "You are right, friend. I was mad for a moment, mad to see that freedom which is so near us so imperiled. I meant not to quarrel with you who have shown in the conduct of this work the discernment of a young Daniel, yea, who have so borne yourself, that I have grown to care for you as I never thought to care again for human being. I have prayed much that you should be brought from the twilight of Calvinism into the pure light wherein walk the disciples of the blessed Ludovick." They reached the square and mingled with the motly crowd that lined its sides, leaving the centre occupied only by the murderer, his captors, and the master. Followed by the Muggletonian, Landless made his way to where the yellow locks of young Dick Whittington towered above the crowd. The boy saw him coming, and edging past a knot of blacks, met him in a little open space, whose only occupants were two or three women, and an Indian squatting upon the ground. Leaning against a pine, and fixing his gaze and, to all appearance, his attention upon the central group where the overseer was just finishing a circumstantial account of the chase, Landless said quietly:-- "You were of the party that took him?" "That I was!" answered the boy gleefully. "Losh! but it was fun!" His blue eyes danced with impish delight; a noiseless laugh showed all his strong white teeth. "We went straight to the spot where you and Mistress Patricia saw him by the lightning. There the dogs struck his trail and the fun commenced. Over streams and fallen trees, and chinquepin ridges; through bogs and myrtle thickets and miles of grape vines--swounds! but it was hot work! Just look at the scratches on my face and hands! Joyce Whitbread wouldn't know me! The Court spark, he wore a mask and saved his beauty. He's a well-plucked one, though, took the lead and kept it, and when it was over, treated us to usquebaugh at Luckey Doughty's store. Well, we run the fox to earth in a Chickahominy village. Lord! I'm sorry for the half king of the Chickahominies! He'll have to answer to Governor and Council for letting red fox burrow in his village. Found him squatted in a sassafras patch. Snarled and fought and tried to bite like the beast he is. Woodson and the Court spark took him." "Do you know what will be done with him now?" "He'll be taken on to the gaol at the court-house." "That is five miles from here," said Landless. "Yes, near to the village where we took him. He'll be kept there until they can try him. And they'll make short work of him. He'll be food for crows directly." The throng pressed upon them, forcing them nearer to the group beneath the dead tree. The overseer had finished his account, and the master was clearing his throat to speak. Landless found himself upon the inner verge of the mass of spectators, directly opposite the murderer, and confronted by him with a look so dark, wild and malignant, that he could not doubt the intention that lay behind those scowling eyes. Luiz Sebastian, still with the murderer's arm in his grasp, gave him a peculiar look which he could not translate. In the background he saw Trail's sinister face peering over the shoulder of an Indian. "You dog!" said the planter, addressing himself directly to Roach. "What have you to say for yourself?" The murderer made an uncertain sound with his dry lips, and his bloodshot eyes roamed around the circle from one staring face to another, until they returned to rest upon the watchful, amber-hued countenance beside him. "Speak!" said his master sternly. "I'll say nothing," was the dogged reply, "until I stands my trial. I demands a fair trial." "Remember that this is your last chance to speak to me, to speak to any one in authority before you are tried. Of course you will hang for this. Have you anything to say? Do you wish to speak to me in private?" The murderer raised his head, and shaking the tangled hair from about his face, cast at Landless, standing ten paces beyond the planter, such a look of deadly and blasting hatred, that for a moment the blood ran cold in the young man's veins. He set his teeth and braced himself to meet the blow at plans and hopes and life that should follow such a look. To his astonishment the blow did not fall. Roach changed the basilisk gaze with which he had regarded him to a vacant stare. "I've naught to say," he whined, "except that I hopes your honor will see that I has a fair trial--no d--d Tyburn or Newgate hocus-pocussing." The master beckoned to the overseer. "Take him away," he said. "Take two or three men and carry him on to the gaol." He turned on his heel and walked to where Sir Charles Carew leaned against a tree, idly flicking the mud from his boots with his riding cane. Landless standing near and listening with strained ears heard the master say in answer to the other's lifted brows:-- "Nothing to be learnt in that quarter. If there's rebellion brewing, he knows nothing of it." Fresh horses were brought from the stables. "You, Luiz Sebastian, Taylor, and Mathew," said the overseer, swinging himself into the saddle. The men designated mounted, and Roach, bound and scowling, was hoisted to his former seat behind Luiz Sebastian. The cavalcade started. As the horse that bore the double load passed Landless, the murderer twisted himself about in his seat, and, with a venomous look, spat at him. Luiz Sebastian smiled evilly. The shaven head and fleshless face of Win-Grace Porringer protruded themselves over Landless's shoulder. "What does it mean?" he muttered. "God knows," answered the other. "Come to the trysting place to-night. We must act, and act quickly." That night ten men met in the deserted hut on the marsh, having stolen with the caution of Indians from their respective plantations. Five were men who had fought at Edgehill and Naseby and Worcester, or had followed Cromwell through the breach at Drogheda. Four were victims of the Act of Uniformity; darker, sterner, more determined if possible, than the veterans of the New Model. The tenth man was Landless. When, late at night, he and Porringer crept stealthily back to the quarters, it was with the conviction that this was the last time they should so steal through the darkness. The date of the rising had been fixed for the thirteenth of September; this night, by Landless's advice, it was brought forward to the tenth--and it was now the sixth. Groping his way past the slumbering forms of the three other occupants of his cabin, Landless threw himself down upon his pallet with a heavy sigh. "Liberty!" he said beneath his breath. "Goddess, whom I and mine have sought through long years, whom once we thought we held, and waked to find thee gone,--once I thought thee fairer than aught beside; thought no price too great to pay for thee. But now!" He hid his face in his hands with a stifled groan. When at length he fell into a troubled sleep, it was to see again a storm-tossed boat, and a woman's face, set like a star against the blackness of the night. _ |
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