Rob of the Bowl Part 3

The public cares of his government left him scant leisure to dwell upon his personal afflictions. The province was surrounded by powerful tribes of Indians who watched the white settlers with an eager hostility, and seized every occasion to molest them by secret inroad, and often by open a.s.sault. A perpetual war of petty reprisals, prevailed upon the frontier, and even sometimes invaded the heart of the province.

A still more vexatious annoyance existed in the party divisions of the inhabitants--divisions unluckily resting on religious distinctions--the most fierce of all dissensions. Ever since the Restoration, the jealousy of the Protestant subjects of the crown against the adherents of the church of Rome had been growing into a sentiment that finally broke forth into the most flagrant persecution. In the province, the Protestants during the last twenty years had greatly increased in number, and at the date of this narrative const.i.tuted already the larger ma.s.s of the population. They murmured against the dominion of the Proprietary as one adverse to the welfare of the English church; and intrigues were set on foot to obtain the establishment of that church in the province through the interest of the ministry in England.

Letters were written by some of the more ambitious clergy of Maryland to the Archbishop of Canterbury to invoke his aid in the enterprise.

The government of Lord Baltimore was traduced in these representations, and every disorder attributed to the ascendancy of the Papists. It was even affirmed that the Proprietary and his uncle the Chancellor, had instigated the Indians to ravage the plantations of the Protestant settlers, and to murder their families. Chiefly, to counteract these intrigues, Lord Baltimore had visited the court at London. Cecilius Calvert, the founder of the province, with a liberality as wise as it was unprecedented, had erected his government upon a basis of perfect religious freedom. He did this at a time when he might have incorporated his own faith with the political character of the colony, and maintained it, by a course of legislation, which would, perhaps, even up to the present day, have rendered Maryland the chosen abode of those who now acknowledge the founder's creed. His views, however, were more expansive. It was his design to furnish in Maryland a refuge not only to the weary and persecuted votaries of his own sect, but an asylum to all who might wish for shelter in a land where opinion should be free and conscience undisturbed. Whilst this plant of toleration was yet young, it grew with a healthful luxuriance; but the popular leaders, who are not always as truly and consistently attached to enlightened freedom as we might be led to believe from their boasting, and who incessantly aim to obtain power and make it felt, had no sooner acquired strength to battle with the Proprietary than they rooted up the beautiful exotic and gave it to the winds.

Amongst the agitators in this cause was a man of some note in the former history of the province--the famous Josias Fendall, the governor in the time of the Protectorate--now in a green old age, whose turbulent temper, and wily propensity to mischief had lost none of their edge with the approach of grey hairs. This individual had stimulated some of the hot spirits of the province into open rebellion against the life of the Proprietary and his uncle. His chief a.s.sociate was John Coode, a coa.r.s.e but shrewd leader of a faction, who, with the worst inclinations against the Proprietary had the wit to avoid the penalties of the law, and to maintain himself in a popular position as a member of the house of Burgesses. Fendall, a few months before this era, had been arrested with several followers, upon strong proofs of conspiracy, and was now a close prisoner in the gaol.

Such is a brief but necessary view of the state of affairs on the date, at which I have presented the Lord Proprietary to my reader. The matter now in hand with the captain of the fort had reference to troubles of inferior note to those which I have just recounted.

When Lord Baltimore descried Captain Dauntrees and the ranger approaching the mansion from the direction of the fort, he advanced beyond the threshold to meet them. In a moment they stood unbonneted before him.

"G.o.d save you, good friends!" was his salutation--"Captain Dauntrees and worthy Arnold, welcome!--Cover,"--he added in a tone of familiar kindness,--"put on your hats; these evening airs sometimes distill an ague upon a bare head."

A rugged smile played upon the features of the old forester as he resumed his s.h.a.ggy cap, and said, "Lord Charles is good; but he does not remember that the head of an old ranger gets his blossoms like the dog-wood,--in the wind and the rain:--the dew sprinkles upon it the same as upon a stone."

"Old friend," replied the Proprietary,--"that grizzly head has taken many a sprinkling in the service of my father and myself: it is worthy of a better bonnet, and thou shalt have one, Arnold--the best thou canst find in the town. Choose for yourself, and Master Verheyden shall look to the cost of it."

The Fleming modestly bowed, as he replied with that peculiar foreign gesture and accent, neither of which may be described,--"Lord Charles is good.--He is the son of his father, Lord Cecil,--Heaven bless his memory!"

"Master Verheyden, bade me attend your lordship," said Dauntrees; "and to bring Arnold de la Grange with me."

"I have matter for your vigilance, Captain," replied the Proprietary.

"Walk with me in the garden--we will talk over our business in the open air."

When they had strolled some distance, Lord Baltimore proceeded--"There are strange tales afloat touching certain mysterious doings in a house at St. Jerome's: the old wives will have it that it is inhabited by goblins and mischievous spirits--and, in truth, wiser people than old women are foolish enough to hold it in dread. Father Pierre tells me he can scarcely check this terror."

"Your Lordship means the fisherman's house on the beach at St.

Jerome's," said the Captain. "The country is full of stories concerning it, and it has long had an ill fame. I know the house: the gossips call it The Wizard's Chapel. It stands hard by the hut of The Cripple. By my faith,--he who wanders there at nightfall had need of a clear shrift."

"You give credence to these idle tales?"

"No idle tales, an please your Lordship. Some of these marvels have I witnessed with my own eyes. There is a curse of blood upon that roof."

"I pray you speak on," said the Proprietary, earnestly; "there is more in this than I dreamed of."

"Paul Kelpy the fisherman," continued Dauntrees,--"it was before my coming into the province--but the story goes----"

"It was in the Lord Cecil's time--I knowed the fisherman," interrupted Arnold.

"He was a man," said the Captain, "who, as your Lordship may have heard, had a name which caused him to be shunned in his time,--and they are alive now who can tell enough of his wickedness to make one's hair rise on end. He dwelt in this house at St. Jerome's in Clayborne's day, and took part with that freebooter;--went with him, as I have heard, to the Island, and was outlawed."

"Ay, and met the death he deserved--I remember the story," said the Proprietary. "He was foiled in his attempt to get out of the province, and barred himself up in his own house."

"And there he fought like a tiger,--or more like a devil as he was,"

added the ranger. "They were more than two days, before they could get into his house."

"When his door was forced at last," continued the Captain; "they found him, his wife and child lying in their own blood upon the hearth stone.

They were all murdered, people say, by his own hand."

"And that was true!" added Arnold; "I remember how he was buried at the cross road, below the Mattapany Fort, with a stake drove through his body."

"Ever since that time," continued Dauntrees, "they say the house has been without lodgers--of flesh and blood, I mean, my Lord,--for it has become a devil's den, and a busy one."

"What hast thou seen, Captain? You speak as a witness."

"It is not yet six months gone by, my Lord, when I was returning with Clayton, the master of the collector's pinnace, from the Isle of Kent; we stood in, after night, towards the headland of St. Jerome's bay;--it was very dark--and the four windows of the Wizard's Chapel, that looked across the beach, were lighted up with such a light as I have never seen from candle or f.a.got. And there were antic figures pa.s.sing the blaze that seemed deep in some h.e.l.lish carouse. We kept our course, until we got almost close aboard,--when suddenly all grew dark. There came, at that moment, a gust of wind such as the master said he never knew to sweep in daylight across the Chesapeake. It struck us in our teeth, and we were glad to get out again upon the broad water. It would seem to infer that the Evil One had service rendered there, which it would be sinful to look upon. In my poor judgment it is matter for the church, rather than for the hand of the law."

"You are not a man, Captain Dauntrees, to be lightly moved by fantasies," said the Proprietary, gravely; "you have good repute for sense and courage. I would have you weigh well what you report."

"Surely, my Lord, Clayton is as stout a man in heart as any in the province: and yet he could scarcely hold his helm for fear."

"Why was I not told of this?"

"Your Lordship's favour," replied Dauntrees, shaking his head; "neither the master, the seamen nor myself would hazard ill will by moving in the matter. There is malice in these spirits, my Lord, which will not brook meddling in their doings: we waited until we might be questioned by those who had right to our answer. The blessed martyrs shield me! I am pledged to fight your Lordship's bodily foes:--the good priests of our holy patron St. Ignatius were better soldiers for this warfare."

The Proprietary remained for some moments silent: at last, turning to the ranger, he inquired--"What dost thou know of this house, Arnold?"

"Well, Lord Charles," replied the veteran, "I was not born to be much afeard of goblins or witches.--In my rangings I have more than once come in the way of these wicked spirits; and then I have found that a clean breast and a stout heart, with the help of an Ave Mary and a Paternoster was more than a match for all their howlings. But the fisherman's house--oh, my good Lord Charles," he added with a portentous shrug, "has dwellers in it that it is best not to trouble.

When Sergeant Travers and myself were ranging across by St. Jerome's, at that time when Tiqua.s.sino's men were thought to be a thieving,--last Hallowma.s.s, if I remember,--we shot a doe towards night, and set down in the woods, waiting to dress our meat for a supper, which kept us late, before we mounted our horses again. But we had some aqua vitae, and didn't much care for hours. So it was midnight, with no light but the stars to show us our way. It happened that we rode not far from the Wizard's Chapel, which put us to telling stories to each other about Paul Kelpy and the ghosts that people said haunted his house."

"The aqua vitae made you talkative as well as valiant, Arnold,"

interrupted the Proprietary.

"I will not say that," replied the ranger; "but something put it into our heads to go down the bank and ride round the chapel. At first all was as quiet as if it had been our church here of St. Mary's--except that our horses snorted and reared with fright at something we could not see. The wind was blowing, and the waves were beating on the sh.o.r.e,--and suddenly we began to grow cold; and then, all at once, there came a rumbling noise inside of the house like the rolling of a hogshead full of pebbles, and afterwards little flashes of light through the windows, and the sergeant said he heard clanking chains and groans:--it isn't worth while to hide it from your lordship, but the sergeant ran away like a coward, and I followed him like another, Lord Charles.--Since that night I have not been near the Black house.--We have an old saying in my country--'een gebrande kat vreest het koude water'--the scalded cat keeps clear of cold water--ha, I mind the proverb."

"It is not long ago," said Dauntrees, "perhaps not above two years,--when, they say, the old sun-dried timber of the building turned suddenly black. It was the work of a single night--your Lordship shall find it so now."

"I can witness the truth of it," said Arnold--"the house was never black until that night, and now it looks as if it was scorched with lightning from roof to ground sill. And yet, lightning could never leave it so black without burning it to the ground."

"There is some trickery in this," said the Proprietary. "It may scarce be accounted for on any pretence of witchcraft, or sorcery, although I know there are malignant influences at work in the province which find motive enough to do all the harm they can. Has Fendall, or any of his confederates had commerce with this house, Captain Dauntrees? Can you suspect such intercourse?"

"a.s.suredly not, my Lord," replied the Captain, "for Marshall, who is the most insolent of that faction, hath, to my personal knowledge, the greatest dread of the chapel of all other men I have seen. Besides, these terrors have flourished in the winter-night tales of the neighbourhood, ever since the death of Kelpy, and long before the Fendalls grew so pestilent in the province."

"It is the blood of the fisherman, my good Lord, and of his wife and children that stains the floor," said Arnold; "it is that blood which brings the evil spirits together about the old hearth. Twice every day the blood-spots upon the floor freshen and grow strong, as the tide comes to flood;--at the ebb they may be hardly seen."

"You have witnessed this yourself, Arnold?"

"At the ebb, Lord Charles. I did not stay for the change of tide. When I saw the spots it was as much as we could do to make them out.--But at the flood every body says they are plain."

"It is a weighty matter, a very weighty matter, an it like your Lordship's honour," muttered forth the slim voice of Garret Weasel, who had insinuated himself, by slow approach, into the rear of the company, near enough to hear a part of this conversation, and who now fancied that his interest in the subject would ensure him an unrebuked access to the Proprietary--"and your Lordship hath a worthy care for the fears of the poor people touching the abominations of the Wizard's Chapel."

"What brought thee here, Garret Weasel?" inquired the Proprietary, as he turned suddenly upon the publican and looked him steadfastly in the face--"What wonder hast thou to tell to excuse thy lurking at our heels?"

"Much and manifold, our most n.o.ble Lord, touching the rumours," replied the confused innkeeper, with a thick utterance. "And it is the most notable thing about it that Robert Swale--Rob o' the Trencher, as he is commonly called--your Lordship apprehends I mean the Cripple--that Rob lives so near the Wizard's Chapel. There's matter of consideration in that--if your Lordship will weigh it."

"Fie, Master Garret Weasel! Fie on thee! Thou art in thy cups. I grieve to see thee making a beast of thyself. You had a name for sobriety.

Look that you lose it not again. Captain Dauntrees if the publican has been your guest this evening, you are scarce free of blame for this."

"He has a shallow head, my Lord, and it is more easily sounded than I guessed. Arnold," said Dauntrees apart--"persuade the innkeeper home."