Sir John Constantine Part 52

It was here, as we ran out of the loom of the land, that the waning moon lifted her rim over the hills astern; and it was here, as we cleared the point, that her rays, traversing the misty sea between us and Elba, touched the grey-white canvas of a vessel jeeling along (as we say at the fishing in Cornwall) and holding herself to windward for a straight run down upon the island--a vessel which at first glance I recognized for the _Gauntlet_.

Plainly she was standing-by, waiting; plainly then her crew--or those of them engaged for the a.s.sault--were detained yet upon the island; whence (to make matters surer) there sounded, as our boat ran up to it, a few loose dropping shots and a single cry--a cry that travelled across to us down the lane of light directing us to the quay.

The blaze had died down; the upper keep, now overhanging us, stood black and unlit against a sky almost as black; but on a stairway at the base of it torches were moving and the flame of them shone on the slippery steps of a quay to which I guided the boat. There, jamming the helm down with a thrust of the foot, I ran forward and lowered sail.

We carried more way than I had reckoned for, and--the Princess having no science to help me--this brought us crashing in among a press of boats huddled in the black shadow alongside the quay-steps with such force as almost to stave in the upper timbers of a couple and sink them where they lay. No voice challenged us. I wondered at this as I gripped at the dark dew-drenched canvas to haul it inboard, and while I wondered, a strong light shone down upon us from the quay's edge.

A man stood there, holding a torch high over his head and shading his eyes as he peered down at the boat--a tall man in a Trappist habit girt high on his naked legs almost to the knees.

"My father?" I demanded. "Where is my father?"

He made no answer, but signed to us to make our landing, and waited for us, still holding the torch high while I helped the Princess from one boat to another and so to the slippery steps.

"My father?" I demanded again.

He turned and led us along the quay to a stairway cut in the living rock. At the foot of it he lowered his torch for a moment that we might see and step aside. Two bodies lay there--two of his brethren, stretched side by side and disposedly, with arms crossed on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, ready for burial. High on the stairway, where it entered the base of a battlemented wall under an arch of heavy stonework, a solitary monk was drawing water from a well and sluicing the steps.

The water ran past our feet, and in the dawn (now paling about us) I saw its colour. . . .

The burnt building--it had been the Genoese barracks--stood high on the right of the stairway. Its roof had fallen in upon the flames raging through its wooden floors, so that what had been but an hour ago a blazing furnace was now a sh.e.l.l of masonry out of which a cloud of smoke rolled lazily, to hang about the upper walls of the fortress. Through its window-s.p.a.ces, void and fire-smirched, as now and again the reek lifted, I saw the pale upper-sky with half a dozen charred ends of roof-timber sharply defined against it--a black and broken grid; and while yet I stared upward another pair of monks crossed the platform above the archway. They carried a body between them--the body of a man in the Genoese uniform--and were bearing it towards a bastion on the western side, that overhung the sea.

There the battlements hid them from me; but by-and-by I heard a splash. . . .

By this time we were mounting the stairway. We pa.s.sed under the arch--where a door, shattered and wrenched from its upper hinge, lay askew against the wall--and climbed to the platform. From this another flight of steps (but these were of worked granite) led straight as a ladder to a smaller platform at the foot of the keep; and high upon these stood my uncle Gervase directing half a score of monks to right an overturned cannon.

His back was toward me, but he turned as I hailed him by name-- turned, and I saw that he carried one arm in a sling. He came down the steps to welcome me, but slowly and with a very grave face.

"My father--where is he?"

"He is alive, lad." My uncle took my hand and pressed it. "That is to say, I left him alive. But come and see--" He paused--my uncle was ever shy in the presence of women--and with his sound hand lifted his hat to the Princess. "The signorina, if she will forgive a stranger for suggesting it--she may be spared some pain if--"

"She seeks her mother, sir," said I, cutting him short; "and her mother is the Queen Emilia."

"Your servant, signorina." My uncle bowed again and with a rea.s.suring smile. "And I am happy to tell you that, so far at least, our expedition has succeeded. Your mother lives, signorina--or, should I say, Princess? Yes, yes, Princess, to be sure--But come, the both of you, and be prepared for gladness or sorrow, as may betide."

He ran up the steps and we followed him, across the platform to a low doorway in the base of the keep, through this, and up a winding staircase of spirals, so steep and so many that the head swam.

Open lancet windows--one at each complete round of the stair-- admitted the morning breeze, and through them, as I clung to the newel and climbed dizzily, I had glimpses of the sea twinkling far below. I counted these windows up to ten or a dozen, but had lost my reckoning for minutes before we emerged, at my uncle's heels, upon a semi-circular landing, and in face of an iron-studded door, the hasp of which he rattled gently. A voice answered from within bidding him open, and very softly he thrust the door wide.

The room into which we looked was of fair size and circular in shape.

Three windows lit it, and between us and the nearest knelt Dom Basilio, busy with a web of linen which he was tearing into bandages.

His was the voice that had commanded us to enter; and pa.s.sing in, I was aware that the room had two other occupants; for behind the door stood a truckle bed, and along the bed lay my father, pale as death and swathed in bandages; and by the foot of the bed, on a stool, with a spinning-wheel beside her, sat a woman.

It needed no second look to tell me her name. Mean cell though it was that held her, and mean her seat, the worn face could belong to no one meaner than a Queen. A spool of thread had rolled from her hand, across the floor; yet her hands upon her lap were shaped as though they still held it. As she sat now, rigid, with her eyes on the bed, she must have been sitting for minutes. So, while Dom Basilio snipped and rent at his bandages, she gazed at my father on the bed, and my father gazed back into her eyes, drinking the love in them; and the faces of both seemed to shine with a solemn awe.

I think we must have been standing there on the threshold, we three, for close upon a minute before my father turned his eyes towards me-- so far beyond this life was he travelling, and so far had the sound of our entrance to follow and overtake his dying senses.

"Prosper! . . ."

"My father!"

He lifted a hand weakly toward the bandages wrapping his breast.

"These--these are of her spinning, lad. This is her bed they have laid me on. . . . Who is it stands there behind your shoulder?"

"It is the Princess, father. You remember the Princess Camilla?

Yes, madam"--I turned to the Queen--"it is your daughter I bring-- your daughter, and, with your blessing, my wife."

The Queen, though her daughter knelt, did not offer to embrace her, but lifted two feeble hands over the bowed head as though to bless, while over her hands her gaze still rested on my father.

"We have had brave work, lad," he panted. "I am sorry you come late for it--but you were bound on your own business, eh?" He turned with a ghost of his old smile. "Nay, child, and you did right; I am not blaming you--The young to the young, and let the dead bury the dead!

Kiss me, lad, if you can find room between these plaguey bandages.

Your pardon, Dom Basilio: you have done your best, and, if I seem ungrateful, let me make amends and thank you for giving me this last, best hour. . . . Indeed, Dom Basilio, I am a dead man, but your bandages are tying my soul here for a while, where it would stay.

Gervase"--he reached out a hand to my uncle, who was past hiding his tears--"Gervase--brother--there needs no talk, no thanks, between you and me. . . ."

I drew back and, touching Dom Basilio by the shoulder, led him to the window. "He has no single wound that in itself would be fatal," the Trappist whispered; "but a twenty that together have bled him to death. He hacked his way up this stair through half a score of Genoese; at the door here, there was none left to hinder him, and we, having found and followed with the keys, climbed over bodies to find him stretched before it."

"Emilia!" It was my father's voice lifted in triumph; and the Queen rose at the sound of it, trembling, and stood by the bed. "Emilia!

Ah, love--ah, Queen, bend lower!--the love we loved--there, over the Taravo--it was not lost. . . . It meets in our children--and we--and we--"

The Queen bent.

"O great one--and we in Heaven!" I raised the Princess and led her to the window fronting the dawn. We looked not toward the pillow where their lips met; but into the dawn, and from the dawn into each other's eyes.

CHAPTER XXVII.

MY MISTRESS RE-ENLISTS ME.

"If all the world were this enchanted isle, I might forget that every man was vile, And look on thee, and even love, awhile."

_The Voyage of Sir Scudamor_.

We had turned from the bed, that no eyes but the Queen's might witness my father's pa.s.sing. Her arm had slipped beneath his head, to support it, and I listened dreading to hear her announce the end.

But yet his great spirit struggled against release, unwilling to exchange its bliss even for bliss celestial; and presently I heard his voice speaking my name.

"Prosper," he said; but his eyes looked upward into the Queen's, and his voice, as it grew firmer, seemed to interpret a vision not of earth. "Learn of me that love, though it delight in youth, yet forsakes not the old; nay, though through life its servant follow and never overtake. Even such service I have paid it, yet behold I have my reward!

"To you, dear lad, it shall be kinder; yet only on condition that you trust it.

"You will need to trust it, for it will change. Lose no faith in the beam when, breaking from your lady's eyes, it fires you not as before. It widens, lad; it is not slackening; it is pa.s.sing, enlarging into a diviner light.

"By that light you shall see all men, women, children--yes, and all living things--akin with you and deserving your help. It is the light of G.o.d upon earth, and its warmth is G.o.d's charity, though He kindle it first as a selfish spark between a youth and a maid.

"Trust it, then, most of all when it frightens you, its first pa.s.sion fading. For then, sickening of what is transient, it dies to put on permanence; as the creature dies--as I am dying, Prosper--into the greatness of the Creator.

"Take comfort and courage, then. For though the narrow beam falls no longer from heaven, you and she will remember the spot where it surprised you, unsealing your eyes. Let the place, the hour, be sacred, and you the witnesses sacred one to another. So He that made you ministers shall keep your garlands from fading.

"O Lord of Love, high and heavenly King! who, making the hands of boy and girl to tremble, dost of their thoughtless impulse build up states, establish societies, and people the world, accept these children!

"O Master, who payest not by time, take the thanks of thy servant!

O Captain, receive my sword! O hands!"--my father raised his stiffly towards the crucifix which Dom Basilio uplifted, standing a little behind the Queen. "O wounded hands--nay, they are shaped like thine, Emilia--reach and resume my soul! _In ma.n.u.s tuas, Domine--in ma.n.u.s-- in ma.n.u.s tuas. . . ."