Sir John Constantine Part 41

"_Pianu, pianu_; we will grow strong, and get our hand in by little and little. At first there will be the blackbirds and the foxes--"

"You shoot foxes in Corsica?" I asked.

Marc'antonio stared at me. "And why not, cavalier? You would not have us run after them and despatch them with the stiletto!"

I endeavoured to explain to him the craft and mystery of fox-hunting as practised in England. He shook his head over it, greatly bewildered.

"It seems a long ceremony for one little fox," was his criticism.

"But if we did it with less ritual the foxes would disappear out of the country," I answered him.

"And why not?"

This naturally led me into a discourse on preserving game and on our English game laws, which, I regret to say, gravelled him utterly.

"A peace of G.o.d for foxes and partridges! Why, what do you allow, then, for a _man?_"

I explained that we did not shoot men in England. His jaw dropped.

"Mbe! In the name of the Virgin, whatever do you do with them?"

"We hang them sometimes, and sometimes we fight duels with them."

I expounded in brief the distinction between these processes and their formalities, whereat he remained for a long while in a brown study.

"Well," he admitted, "by all accounts you English have achieved liberty; but, _per Baccu_, you do strange things with it!"

"Blackbirds, to begin with," he resumed, "and foxes, and a hare, maybe. Then in the next valley there are boars--small, and wild, and fierce, but our great half-tame ones have driven them off this mountain. After them we will extend ourselves and stalk for deer."

He described the deer to me and its habits. It was, as I made out, an animal not unlike our red deer, but smaller, and of a duller coat; shy, too, and scarce. He gave me reasons for this. In summer the Corsican shepherds, each armed with a gun, pasture their sheep on the mountains, in winter along the plains and valleys; in either season driving off the poor stag, which in summer is left to range the parched lowlands and in winter the upper snows. Of late years, however, owing to the unsettled state of politics, the shepherds pastured not half the numbers of sheep that Marc'antonio remembered in his youth, and by consequence the deer had multiplied and grown bolder. He could promise me a stag. Nay, he even hoped that owing to these same causes the _mufri_ were pushing down by degrees to the seaboard from the inland mountains, which they mostly haunted.

Ah, that was sport for kings! If fortune, one of these fine days, would send us a full-grown _mufrone_ now!

But we began upon the blackbirds. I remember yet my first, and how, while I stood trembling a little with that excitement which only a sick man can know who takes up his gun again, Marc'antonio held up the bird and ripped open its crop, filled to bursting with myrtle berries; and the exquisite violet scent they exhaled.

Already I had flung my crutches away, and three weeks later we were after the deer in good earnest. I had lost all account of time; but winter was upon us, with a wealth of laurestinus flower upon the _macchia_ and a sense of stillness in the air such as we feel at home on windless sunny mornings in December after a night of frost.

We had started before dawn, and crossed the valley by the track leading past our deserted hut and up between the granite pinnacles on which, when the sunset touched them, I had so often gazed.

We had followed it up beyond the pines and over a pa.s.s leading out among a range of undulating foot-hills, which seemed to waver and lose heart a dozen times before making up their minds to unite and climb, and be a snowcapped mountain. But they mounted to the snows at length, and the snows had driven down the stag which, under Marc'antonio's guidance, I stalked for two hours, and shot before noon-day. We left him in the track, to be recovered as we returned, and very cautiously made our way to the crest of the next ridge.

I chose a granite boulder for my shelter, gained it, crawled under its lee, and, peering over, had whipped my gun to my shoulder and very nearly pulled the trigger--was, in fact, looking along the sight--when I found that I was aiming at a man; and not only that, but at Billy Priske!

I believe, on my faith that thenceforward he owed his life to the shape of his legs--so unlike a deer's.

He was picking his way across the dry bed of a torrent in the dip not fifty yards below us, leaping from slab to slab of outcropping granite as a man crosses a brook by stepping-stones; and upon a slab midway he halted, drew off his hat, extracted a handkerchief, and stood polishing his bald head while he took stock of the climb before him.

"Billy! Billy Priske!"

He tilted his head still higher, towards the ridge and the rock on which I stood against his skyline, frantically waving.

"HOO-ROAR!"

"And to think, lad," he panted, ten minutes later, as he stretched himself on the heath beside me--"to think of your mistaking me for a deer!"

"Did I say so, Billy? Then I lied. It was for a _mufro_ I took you.

Marc'antonio here had as good as promised me one."

His beaming smile changed on the instant to a look of extreme gravity.

"See you, lad," he said, "have you ever come across one of these here wild sheep?"

"Not yet."

"I thought not. Well, I have; and I advise you not to talk irreligious about 'em."

"I will talk about nothing," said I, "until you tell me how my father is, and of all your adventures."

"He's well, lad--hearty, and well, and thriving. And he sends you his love, and a paper for your friend here. 'Tis from the Princess; and the upshot is, you're released from your word and free to come back with me."

Marc'antonio, proud of an opportunity to display his scholarship, broke the seal and read the letter with a magisterial frown, which changed, however, to a pleasant, friendly smile as he handed it across to me.

"Your captivity is at an end, cavalier. You said well, after all, that your patience would win the day."

"_My_ patience, Marc'antonio? What, then, of yours?"

The tears sprang suddenly to his eyes, good fellow that he was, and now my good friend. I stretched out a hand, and he grasped and held it for a moment between his twain. We used no more words.

"So my father is with the Princess?" I asked, turning on Billy, who stared--and excusably--at this evidence of our emotion.

"No, he bain't," said Billy; "leastways, he was with her when I left him, at a place called Olmeta, or something of the sort. But by this time he've a-gone north again."

"And why goes he north?"

"Because that's where the Genoese have shut up the lady."

"Meaning the Queen Emilia?"

Billy nodded.

"And you have travelled the length of Corsica alone to tell me this and take me back with you?"

"No, I didn't. Leastways--" Billy opened his bag of provender, selected a crust, and began to munch it very deliberately.

"There's a saying," he went on between mouthfuls, "about somebody or other axin' more questions in one breath than a wise man can answer in a week; and likewise, there's another saying that even a bagpipe won't speak till his belly be full. Well, now, as for coming alone, in the first place and in round numbers I didn't; and as for coming to tell you this, partly it was and partly it wasn't; and as for your going back with me, that's for you to choose."

"Well, then," said I, humouring him, "we will take you point by point, in order. To begin with, you did not come alone--_ergo_, you had company. What company?"

"Very poor company, lad, and by name Stephanu. That hatchet-faced Prince Camillo chose him out for a guide to me--" Billy paused, with his mouth open for a bite. "Why, whatever is the matter?" he asked; for I had turned to translate this to Marc'antonio, and Marc'antonio had started up with a growl and an oath.

"Did Stephanu come willingly?" I asked.

"As I was tellin', the Prince chose him for guide to me, and he couldn't have chosen a worse one. If you'll believe me, there wasn't an ounce of comfort in the man from the start; and this morning, having put me in the road so that I couldn't miss it, he turned back and left me--in a sweatin' hurry, too."

I glanced at Marc'antonio, who had risen and was striding to and fro upon the ridge with his fists clenched. There was mischief here for a certainty, and Stephanu's behaviour confirmed it. For a moment, however, I forbore to translate further, and resumed my catechising of Billy.