Margaret Tudor Part 16

"She is worn out with tramping through the woods all night. It is no wonder! But 'twas her own doing, for she would come; now she must keep up or be left behind. We must reach shelter before the storm breaks in earnest, for it will be no light one."

A heavier gust pa.s.sed while he was speaking; there was a louder moan in the tree-tops, and a broken branch crashed down at our very feet.

"Have we much farther to go?" I asked. He shook his head.

"About a league, perhaps?"

"Not more," was his reply.

"Then put the poor dame in the litter, and I will walk."

He looked intently at me. "Can you do it?"

"Better than she. I feel faint here," I added, laying my hand upon my bosom, "but my limbs are young and strong and unwearied."

"You want food," was his brief comment; and, turning to the litter, he drew out from a concealed pouch that was slung beneath it, a bottle of water, and a loaf of bread, and gave me to drink and to eat. I took it gladly, and Barbara did likewise. I thought, then, he would have taken some himself; but he put by the remainder, saying he had no need of it, and signed to the old woman to take her place in the litter, which was then raised by two of his followers. The third went in advance to clear away obstacles from the path, and we followed behind, I clinging to the padre's arm.

He said no more to me, but the touch of his hand was not ungentle. I marked how he led me over the smoothest ground, choosing the briars himself, though his feet were bare, and shielding me with his arm from the sharp blades of the dwarf palmettos that hedged the way.

As I walked beside him I could but marvel at the strange turns of Fate; for now it seemed that I would owe my deliverance, in part, to one of the very cla.s.s I most hated as being the first cause of our captivity.

From time to time I glanced up at his dark, stern face, and wondered whether, if I had not chanced to be his charge and under his sworn protection, he could have found it in his heart to burn me for a heretic!

CHAPTER XX.

The light grew ever stronger behind the hurrying clouds, but the deep places in the forest held their shadows still. Tall cypress-trees reared their heads amid the hollows and spread their branches like a wide canopy over our heads; huge live-oaks crowned the hummocks; and here and there great laurels lifted their pyramids of glossy, dark-green foliage.

Our pa.s.sage was frequently obstructed by fallen logs, mossed over with the growth of years; and tangles of vine, tough-stemmed and supple, flung themselves from tree to tree across our path, resisting our advance. All through the forest's higher corridors howled the riotous wind; but along the tunneled ways we traveled it was scarce perceptible at times.

In spite of my fatigue I felt a greater strength rising within me. We had come so far without pursuit! I began to hope as I had never done before; for was not my dear love free, and my face also set toward friends?

As I mused thus we reached a higher level, and, through a rent in the stormy sky a shaft of morning sunlight glanced across my shoulder and plunged forward into the woods beyond. I looked back, startled, and for a brief moment saw the sun's golden disc; then a black cloud effaced it from the sky.

"Padre!" I cried, "we are travelling westward!"

"Yes," he said calmly.

"Westward!" I exclaimed again. "Westward--and inland! when the English settlement lies to the north of us, upon the coast!"

He bowed again in silent acquiescence. Then my indignation broke forth, and without stopping for further question I accused him bitterly of breach of trust.

"Did you not promise Dona Orosia to deliver me to my friends?" I cried.

"What cause have you to doubt my good faith?" he asked, turning his sombre eyes toward me, but still speaking in the same calm tones. "Had I a ship at San Augustin in which we could set sail? Or could such a ship have left the harbour unperceived? Not even a canoe could have been obtained there without danger of discovery. We have a long journey before us,--could we set out upon it unprovisioned?"

I hung my head, ashamed, of my doubts. Once it was not my nature to be suspicious; but so much of trouble had come to me of late that I began to fear I would never again feel the same confidence in my fellow creatures, the same implicit trust in Heaven that I had held two years ago. I had never been a stranger to trouble; but, as a child, I knew it only as a formless cloud that cast its shadow sometimes on my path, dimming the sunlight for a moment and hushing the song upon my lips.

Even when my mother died I was too young for more than a child's grief--an April shower of tears; and although my earliest maidenhood was often lonely, I had made me my own happiness with bright imaginings, and prayed G.o.d to bring them to pa.s.s. So I awaited my future always with a smile and never doubted that it would be fair. All that had gone by.

Trouble had shown its face to me, and I knew it for something terrible and strong, ready to leap at my throat and crush life out of me. What wonder, then, that I walked fearfully from hour to hour?

Padre Felipe spoke again after a time. "The woods are thinning," he said. "A few more steps and we shall come out on the sh.o.r.es of the San Juan, near to a small village of the Yema.s.sees, in which there are many whose eyes have been opened to the truth. There we shall find shelter from the storm, and means to pursue our journey when the clouds are past. Let us hasten; the bearers with the litter are far ahead."

He gave me his arm once more, and ere many minutes were past, we came in sight of the bold stream of the San Juan and the crowded huts of an Indian village.

The settlement did not appear to be near so large as that at Santa Catalina, nor did the buildings seem of as great size and commodiousness. The most imposing edifice I took to be the mission chapel, for before it was the great cross mounted aloft. It was circular in shape, with mud walls, and a thatched roof rising to an apex. There was a door in the side, of heavy planks battened strongly together; but I could perceive no windows, only a few very small square apertures, close under the eaves, for light and air.

The clouds were beginning to spill great drops upon our heads, so we quickened our steps into a run. The litter and its bearers had paused beside the door of the chapel, and from the neighbouring huts several Indians emerged and advanced to meet us. A young woman with a little copper-coloured babe strapped to her back, its tiny head just visible over her shoulder, peered at us from the low doorway of her mud-walled dwelling, but meeting my eyes, drew back hastily out of sight.

I was very weary, and Barbara, who had dismounted from the litter, seemed unable to stand. The padre was holding converse with those of his dark-skinned flock who had approached; so we two women crouched down under the chapel eaves and gazed around us at the wind-tossed, rain-blurred scene.

Before us was a thick grove of trees; to the left we could catch glimpses of the river, gray and angry like the sky, and all along its banks the huddled dwellings of the poor barbarians, whose ideals of architecture were no whit better than those of the wasp,--not near so complex as those of the ant and the bee.

Suddenly, while we waited there forlorn, my thoughts flew back to an English home, with its ivied walls, its turreted roof, its long facade of warm red brick. I saw green slopes, broad terraces, a generous portal, and a s.p.a.cious hall; I thought of a room with an ample chimney set round with painted tiles, and I pictured myself kneeling upon the bearskin rug before a blazing fire, with my head upon my mother's knee and her fingers toying with my hair. For that moment I forgot even my dear love, and I would have given all the world just to be a little child at home.

The padre turned to us at last and motioned us to follow him. He led us to the rear of the chapel, where, plastered against the wall, was a semicircular excrescence,--a tiny cell, with a narrow door hewn from a single plank and fastened with a heavy padlock. Drawing forth a key from his belt he unlocked this and bade us enter. We did so, and he closed the door behind us.

Within, the hard earth floor was slightly raised and covered with mats of woven palmetto-leaves. A narrow c.h.i.n.k in the wall admitted a faint ray of light, enabling us to perceive dimly the few objects which the room contained. Apparently it was Padre Felipe's sleeping apartment and the chapel vestry combined in one. There was a curtained doorway that gave access to the chapel itself; pushing aside the hangings, we could see the dim interior, empty except for the high altar set with tall candles, and a carven crucifix upon the wall.

As I caught sight of these emblems of a Christian faith I bethought me of the b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices that had been offered to a pitiful G.o.d in the name of orthodoxy, and I wondered whether heretics like us would not be safer out in the wild woods and the driving storm--aye, even at the mercy of infidel barbarians; but suddenly I remembered the solid silver service which was to be the gift of Dona Orosia to this little new mission, and I took courage.

The rain was now pouring in torrents from the thatched roof, and the wind, which blew from the northeast, dashed it back against the mud walls of our refuge. I turned to Barbara and gave voice to an anxiety that for some time, had been growing within me.

"Dear dame," I said, "think you this storm is worse at sea?"

"Aye, my lamb,'tis from an ugly quarter; but the _Carolina_ has weathered harder blows, and haply she has found good anchorage in some safe harbour."

I tried to think the same; nevertheless, in the long hours that we sat there, listening to the heavy gusts and beating rain, my heart went faint at the possibility of this new danger to my beloved.

It must have been past noon when the padre came to us again. He brought food with him freshly cooked,--meat and fish, and broth of parched corn-flour, not unpleasant to the taste.

"The wind is abating," he declared, "and the clouds are breaking away.

When the rain ceases we may venture to pursue our journey."

I begged to know how he purposed to convey us, for neither Barbara nor I could go afoot much longer.

Then he laid his plans before us. This wide river, the San Juan, flowing by the settlement, continues northward for many miles and then curves eastward and empties itself into the sea. We were to start in two swift canoes--piraguas, he styled them--and, keeping at first under the lee of the sh.o.r.e, follow the river to its mouth, then proceed up the coast along the safe pa.s.sage afforded by an outlying chain of islands. It would be a journey of about ten days to the Indian settlement at Santa Helena; the Indians there, he explained, were allies of our English friends and would doubtless aid us to rejoin them.

I asked if we must pa.s.s by Santa Catalina; and he said 'twas on our way, but no one there would hinder us while we were under his protection.

"Unless," he added, "the Governor of San Augustin sends out a ship to intercept us there, or anywhere upon the way; in which case there will be naught for me to do but give you up to him."

Upon that I was in a fever to be gone; for I felt that the day could not pa.s.s by without Melinza's discovering my flight, and I would endure any hardship rather than risk his intercepting us.

CHAPTER XXI.