The Master of Appleby Part 36

"Aye; and G.o.d help Madge! 'Tis no time for reproaches, but amongst us we have signed her death warrant with our bunglings."

"If it were only death!" I groaned.

"'Tis just that, Jack," said he; "no better, mayhap, but no worse. When we were downed by that screeching mob, she was out and on her knees to Falconnet, beseeching him to spare us. He put her off smoothly at first, saying 'twas the Indians' affair--that they would not be balked of their vengeance by any interference of his. But when she only begged the more piteously, he showed his true colors, rapping out that we should have as swift a quittance as we had meant to give him, and that within the hour she should be the mistress of Appleby and free to marry an English gentleman."

"Well?" said I, making sure that now at last he must know all.

"At that she stood before him bravely, and I saw that all the time she had had the Catawba's knife hidden in the folds of her gown. 'You have spoken truth for once, Captain Falconnet; I shall be free,' she said.

'Come and tell me when you have added these to your other murders.'"

"And then?"

"Then she went back to her prison wigwam, walking through the rabble of redcoats and redskins as proudly as the Scottish Mary went to the block."

"She will do it, think you?" I queried, fearful lest she would, but more fearful lest her courage should fail at the pinch.

"Never doubt it. Good Catholic as she is, there is martyr blood in her on the mother's side, and that will help her to die unsullied. And G.o.d nerve her to it, say I."

I said "Amen" to that; and thereupon we both fell silent, watching as condemned men on the gallows the busy preparations for our taking off.

Again, as in the late battle, it was the trivial things that moved me most. Chief among them the grinning row of dead Indians propped against the fallen tree is the constant background for all the memory pictures of that waiting interval, and I can see those stiffening corpses now, some erect, as if defying us; some lopping this way or that, as if their bones had gone to water at the touch of the steel.

I know not why these poor relics of mortality should have held me fascinated as they did. Yet when I would look away, through the vista to where the light of the great fire in the savanna camp played luridly upon the Indian lodges, or, nearer at hand, upon the savages gathering the wood to burn us with, this ghastly file of the dead drew me irresistibly, and I must needs pa.s.s the fearsome figures in review again, marking the staring eyes and unnatural postures, and the circular blood-black patches on the heads of the three peace-men whom Yeates and the Catawba had scalped.

While they were making ready for the burning, our executioners were strangely silent; but when the work was done they formed in a semicircle to front the row of corpses and set up a howling chant that would have put a band of Mohammedan dervishes to the blush.

"'Tis the death song for the slain," said Richard; and while it lasted, this moving tableau of naked figures, keeping time in a weird stamping dance to the rising and falling ululation of the chant, held us spellbound.

But we were not long suffered to be mere curious onlookers. In its dismalest flight the death song ended in a shrill hubbub, and the dancers turned as one man to face us.

I hope it may never be your lot, my dears, to meet and endure such a horrid glare of human ferocity as that these wrought-up avengers of blood bent upon us. 'Twas more unnerving than aught that had gone before; more terrible, I thought, than aught that could come after. Yet, as to this, you shall judge for yourselves.

The pause was brief, and when a lad ran up to cut the thongs that bound us from the middle up, the torture-play began in deadly earnest. Whilst the Indian youth was slashing at the deerskin, Richard gave me my cue.

"'Tis the knife and hatchet play; they are loosing us to give us freedom to shrink and dodge. Look straight before you and never flinch a hair, as you would keep the life in you from one minute to the next!"

"Trust me," said I. "We must eke it out as long as we can, if only to give our dear lady time for another prayer or two. Mayhap she will name us in them; G.o.d knows, our need is sore enough."

The lad ran back, and a warrior stood out, juggling his tomahawk in air.

He made a feint to cast it at Richard, but instead sent it whizzing at me.

That first missile was harder to face unflinching than were all the others. I saw it leave the thrower's hand; saw it coming straight, as I would think, to split my skull. The prompting to dodge was well-nigh masterful enough to override the strongest will. Yet I did make shift to hold fast, and in mid flight the twirling ax veered aside to miss me by a hair's-breadth, gashing the tree at my ear when it struck.

"Bravo! well met!" cried Richard; and then, betwixt his teeth: "Here comes mine."

As he spoke, a second tomahawk was sped. I heard it strike with a dull crash that might have been on flesh and bone, or on oak-bark--I could not tell. I dared not look aside till Richard's taunting laugh gave me leave to breathe again.

The Indians answered the laugh with a yell; and now the marksmen stood out quickly one after another and for a little s.p.a.ce the air was full of hurtling missiles. You will read in the romances of the wondrous skill of these savages in such diversions as these; how they will pin the victim to a tree and never miss of sticking knife or hatchet within the thickness of the blade where they will. But you must take these tales with a dash of allowance for the romancers' fancy. Truly, these Indians of ours threw well and skilfully; 'tis a part of the only trade they know--the trade of war--to send a weapon true to the mark. None the less, some of the missiles flew wide; and now and then one would nip the cloth of sleeve or body covering--and the flesh beneath it, as well.

d.i.c.k had more of the nippings than I; and though he kept up a running fire of taunts and gibing flings at the marksmen, I could hear the gritting oaths aside when they pinked him.

Notwithstanding, the worst of these miscasts fell to my lot. A hatchet, sped by the clumsiest hand of all, missed its curving, turned, and the helve of it struck me fair in the stomach. Not all the parting pangs of death, as I fondly believe, will lay a heavier toll on fort.i.tude than did this griping-stroke which I must endure standing erect. 'Tis no figure of speech to say that I would have given the reversion of a kingdom, and a crown to boot, for leave to double over and groan out the agony of it.

Happily for us, there were no women with the band, so we were spared the crueler refinements of these ante-burning torments; the flaying alive by inch-bits, and the sticking of blazing splints of pitchwood in the flesh to make death a thing to be prayed for. There was naught of this; and tiring finally of the marksman play, the Indians made ready to burn us. Some ran to recover the spent weapons; others made haste to heap the wood in a broad circle about our trees; and the chief, with three or four to help, renewed the deer-thong lashings.

'Twas in the rebinding that this headman, a right kingly-looking savage as these barbarians go, thrust a bit of paper into my hand, and gave me time to glance its message out by the light of the fire. 'Twas a line from Margery; and this is what she said:

_Dear Heart:

Though you must needs believe my love is pledged to your good friend and mine, 'tis yours, and yours alone, my lion-hearted one. I am praying the good G.o.d to give you dying grace, and me the courage to follow you quickly. Margery.

This by the hand of Tallachama._

For one brief instant a wave of joy caught and flung me upon its highest crest, and all these savage tormentors could do to me became as naught.

Then the true meaning of this her brave _Ave atque vale_ smote me like a s.p.a.ce-flung meteor, and the joy-wave became an ocean of despair to engulf me in its blackest depths. The letter was never meant for me; 'twas for Richard Jennifer, who, as she would think, must know the story of her marriage to his friend and must believe her love went with the giving of her hand. And she named him Lion-Heart because he was brave, and true, and strong, like that first English Richard of the kingly line.

I thrust the message back upon the bearer of it, begging him in dumb show to give it quickly to my companion. I knew not at the time if he did it, being so crushed and blinded by this fresh misery. But when the Indians drew off to ring us in a chanting circle for the final act, I would not let the lad see my face for fear he might fathom the heart-break in me and know the cause of it.

'Twas at this crisis, when all was ready and one had run to fetch the fire, that I heard a smothered oath from d.i.c.k and saw the Indian who was coming up to fire the wood heaps drop his brand and tread upon it.

"Ecod!" said a voice, courtier-like and smoothly modulated. "'Tis most devilish lucky I came, Captain Ireton. Another moment and they would have grilled you in the king's uniform--a rank treason, to say naught of poor Jack Warden left without a clout to cover him."

It needed not the glance aside to name mine enemy. But I would not pleasure him with an answer. Neither would Richard Jennifer. He stood silent for a little s.p.a.ce, smiling and nursing his chin in one hand, as his habit was. Then he spoke again.

"I came to bid you G.o.d-speed, gentlemen. You tumbled bravely into my little trap. I made no doubt you'd follow where the lady led, and so you did. But you'll turn back from this, I do a.s.sure you, if there be any virtue in an Indian barbecue."

At this Richard could hold in no longer.

"Curse you!" he gritted. "Do you mean that you kidnapped Mistress Stair to draw us out of hiding?"

"Truly," said this arch-fiend, smiling again. "Most unluckily for you, you both stood in my way,--you see I am speaking of it now as a thing past,--and I chanced upon this thought of killing two birds with the one stone; nay, three, I should say, if you count the lady in."

"Have done!" choked Richard, in a voice thick with impotent rage. "Give place, you hound, and let your savages to their work!"

"At your pleasure, Mr. Jennifer. I have no fancy for funeral baked meats, hot or cold, though they be made, as now, to furnish forth a marriage supper. I bid you good night, gentlemen. I'll go and make that call upon the lady which you were so rude as to interrupt a little while ago." And with that he turned his back upon us and strode away, forgetting to tell his redskinned myrmidons to strip me of that king's uniform he was so loath to have me burned in.

The Cherokees waited till the master-executioner was out of sight among the trees. Then they set up their infernal howling again, and the fire-lighter ran to fetch a fresh brand.

"Courage, lad! 'twill soon be over now," said I, hearing a groan from my poor d.i.c.k.

His reply was a chattering curse, not upon Falconnet or the Indians, but upon his malady, the tertian fever.

"Now, by all the fiends! I'm chilling again, Jack!" he gasped. "If these cursed wood-wolves mark it, they'll set it down to woman cowardice and that will break my heart!"

Again I bade him be of good courage, a.s.suring him, not derisively, as it looks when 'tis written out, that the fire would presently medicine the chilling. In the middle of the saying the lighted brand was fetched and thrust among our f.a.gotings, and the upward-curling smoke wreaths made me gasp and strangle at the finish.

For a little time after the sucking in of that first smoke-breath--nature's anodyne for any of her poor creatures doomed to die by fire--I saw and heard less clearly and suffered only by antic.i.p.ation. But to this day the smell of burning pine-wood is like a sleeping potion to me; and the sleep it brings is full of dreams vaguely troubled.

So, while the Indians danced and leaped about us, brandishing their weapons and chanting the captives' death song, and while the blue and yellow tongues of flame mounted from twig to twig, climbing stealthily to flick at us like little vanishing demon whips, I saw and heard and felt as one remote from all the torture turmoil of the moment. Through the dimming haze of sleeping sensibility the dancing savages became as marionettes in some cunning puppet show; and the blood stained figures stiffening against their log took shapes less horrifying.