Sir John Constantine Part 37

But what if no one should come?

I had been dozing--or maybe was wandering in slight delirium--when this question wrote itself across my dreams in letters of fire, so bright that it cleared and lit up my brain in a flash, chasing away all other terrors. . . .

Mercifully, it was soon answered. Far up the glade a horn sounded-- my swine-horn, blown no doubt by Marc'antonio. The hogs were coming.

. . . Well, I must use my hands to keep them at their distance.

I listened with all my ears. Yes, I caught the sound of their grunting; it came nearer and nearer, and--was that a footstep, close at hand, behind the palisade?

Something dropped at my side--dropped in the mire with a soft thud.

I stretched out my hand, felt for it, clutched it.

It was a file.

My heart gave a leap. I had found a friend, then!--but in whom?

Was it Marc'antonio? No: for I heard his voice now, fifty yards away, marshalling and cursing the hogs. His footstep was near the gate. As he opened it and the hogs rushed in, I slipped the file beneath me, under my shoulder blades.

The first of the hogs, as he ran by me, put a hoof into my pannikin and upset it; and while I struck out at him, to fend him aside, another brute gobbled up my last morsel of crust. The clatter of the pannikin brought Marc'antonio to my side. For a while he stood there looking down on me in the dusk; then walked off through the sty to the hut and returned with two hurdles which he rested over me, one against another, tentwise, driving their stakes an inch or two into the soil. Slight as the fence was, it would protect me from the hogs; and I thanked him. He growled ungraciously, and, picking up the pannikin, slouched off upon a second errand. Again when he brought it replenished, and a fresh loaf of bread with it, I thanked him, and again his only answer was a growl.

I heard him latch the gate and walk away toward the hut. Night was falling on the valley. Through my roof of hurdles a star or two shone down palely. Now was my time. I slipped a hand beneath me and recovered my file--my blessed file.

The chain about my neck was not very stout. I had felt its links with my fingers a good score of times in efforts, some deliberate, others frantic, to loosen it even by a little. Loosen it I could not; the Prince had done his work too cleverly: but by my calculation an hour would suffice me to file it through.

But an hour pa.s.sed, and two hours, and still I lay staring up at the stars, listening to the hogs as they rubbed flanks and chose and fought for their lairs: still I lay staring, with teeth clenched and the file idle in my hand.

I had challenged, and I had sworn. "Bethink you now what pains you can put upon me. . . ." These tortures were not of her devising; but I would hold her to them. I was her hostage, and, though it killed me, I would hold her to the last inch of her bond. As a Catholic, she must believe in h.e.l.l. I would carry my wrong even to h.e.l.l then, and meet her there with it and master her.

I was mad. After hours of such a crucifixion a man must needs be mad. . . . "Prosper, lad, your ideas are naught and your ambitions earth: but you have a streak of d.a.m.ned obstinacy which makes me not altogether hopeless of you!" These had been Nat's words, a month ago; and Nat lay in his grave yonder. . . . The cramp in my legs, the fiery pain ringing my neck, met and ran over me in waves of total anguish. At the point where my will failed me to hold out, the power failed me (I thank Heaven) to lift a hand. Yet the will struggled feebly; struggled on to the verge over which all sensation dropped plumb, as into a pit.

I unclosed my eyes upon the grey dawn; but upon what dawn I knew not, whether of earth or purgatory or h.e.l.l itself. They saw it swimming in a vague light: but my ears, from a sound as of rushing waters, awoke to a silence on which a small footfall broke, a few yards away.

Marc'antonio must have unpenned the hogs; for the sty was empty.

And the hogs in their rush must have thrown down the hurdles protecting me; for these lay collapsed, the one at my side, the other across me.

The light footfall drew close and halted. I looked up into the face of the Princess.

She came, picking her way across the mire; and with caution, as if she feared to be overheard. Clearly she had expected to find the sty empty, for even to my dazed senses her dismay was evident as she caught sight of me beneath the hurdle.

"You have not gone! Oh, why have you not gone?"

She was on her knees beside me in the filth. I heard her calling to Marc'antonio, and presently Marc'antonio came, obedient as ever, yet protesting.

"He has not gone!" She moved her hands with a wringing gesture.

I tried to speak, but for answer could only spread my hand, which still grasped the file: and for days after it kept a blue weal bitten across the palm.

I heard Marc'antonio's voice protesting as she took the file and sawed with it frantically across my neck-chain.

"But he must escape and hide, at least."

"He cannot, Princess. The torture has worn him out."

"It were better he died, then. For I must go."

"It were better he died, Princess: but his youth is tough. And that you must go is above all things necessary. The Prince would kill me. . . ."

"A little while, Marc'antonio! The file is working."

"To what end, Princess?--since time is wanting. The bugle will call--it may call now at any moment. And if the Prince should miss you--Indeed it were better that he died--"

Their voices swam on my ear through giddy whirls of mist, I heard him persuade her to go--at the last insist upon her going. Still the file worked.

Suddenly it ceased working. It seemed to me that they both had withdrawn, and my neck still remained in bondage, though my legs were free. I knew that my legs were free though I had not the power to test this by drawing them up. I tried once, and closed my eyes, swooning with pain.

Upon the swoon broke a shattering blow, across my legs and below the knees; a blow that lifted my body to clutch with both hands upon night and fall back again upon black unconsciousness.

CHAPTER XIX.

HOW MARC'ANTONIO NURSED ME AND GAVE ME COUNSEL.

"Yet sometimes famous Princes like thyself, Drawn by report, adventurous by desire, Tell thee, with speechless tongues and semblance pale, That without covering, save yon field of stars, They here stand martyrs, slain in Cupid's wars; And with dead cheeks advise thee to desist For going on Death's net, whom none resist."

_Pericles, Prince of Tyre_.

His honour forbidding him to kill me, the Prince Camillo had given orders to break my legs: and since to abandon me in this plight went against the conscience of his followers (and even, it is possible, against his own), he had left Marc'antonio behind to nurse me--thus gratifying a second spite. The Prince was an ingenious young man.

So much I gathered in faint intervals between anguish while Marc'antonio bound me with rude splints of his own manufacture.

Yet he said little and did his surgery, though not ungently, with a taciturn frown which I set down to moroseness, having learnt somehow that the bandits had broken up their camp on the mountain and marched off, leaving us two alone.

"Did the Princess know of this?" I managed to ask, and I believe this was my first intelligible question.

Marc'antonio paused before answering. "She knew that you were to be hurt, but not the manner of it. It was she that brought you the file, by stealth. Why did you not use it, and escape?"

"She brought me the file?" I knew it already, but found a fierce satisfaction in the words. "And she--and you--tried to use it upon my chain here and deliver me: I forced you to that, my friends!

As for using it myself, you heard what I promised her, yesterday, before her brother came."

"I heard you talk very foolishly; and now you have done worse than foolishly. I do not understand you at all--no, by the Mother of G.o.d, I do not! You had the whole night for filing at your chain: and it would have been better for you, and in the end for her."

"And for you also, Marc'antonio."

He was silent.

"And for you also, Marc'antonio?" I repeated it as a question.

"Your escape would have been put down to me, Englishman. I had provided for that," he answered simply.

"Forgive me," I muttered, thrown back upon sudden contrition.