Kitabı oku: «A Little Wizard», sayfa 6

When the tumbrils had passed the sun went in, and three regiments of musketeers came up, marching on one another's heels, with the rain and storm gathering about them, and the men grumbling at the weather. The boy notched them off, and watching for the great guns (of which none had passed), walked from end to end of his little platform, scanning the road. More than one of the men who plashed along beneath him noticed the strange figure of the boy moving against the sky.

For the fog, through which he loomed larger than life, distorted his gestures. He seemed at times to be cursing the men below him, and at times to be raising his hands to heaven in their behalf. The troopers who remarked his strange figure perched above them, looked on indifferently, neither heeding nor understanding. Not so all who had their eyes at that moment upon him. The watcher was also the watched; and presently, when the rain had set in steadily once more, and the mist had grown so thick that he despaired of finishing his count where he was, and thought of descending into the road, a sudden end was put to his calculations. Something rose up behind him and dashed him violently to the ground. Stunned and terrified, the child clung, even in his fall, to the precious cross; in a moment it was wrenched from him. He cried out wildly for help, but instantly a cloak was flung over his head, and blind, and breathless, he felt himself raised from the ground. Some one tied his hands at the wrists and his feet at the ankles; then he felt himself carried hastily off. He could scarcely breathe, he could not struggle, he could not see. He could not even guess what had happened to him.

CHAPTER VIII.
A STRANGE TRIAL

For some distance he felt himself carried across a man's shoulder. Then another man took him up and carried him on more briskly. His head hung down, the cloak covered his face tightly; he felt himself at times far on the way to suffocation. But, gagged and bound as he was, he could neither cry out nor help himself.

The shortest journey taken under such circumstances must needs seem endless, and so this one seemed to the child. He long remembered it; but at last it did come to an end, with all its misery and terror-things not to be described in words. His bearer stopped. He heard voices, and the hollow sound of steps on a stone floor. He was set on his feet, and the cloak roughly removed from his head. He looked about him dazed. To his intense surprise and astonishment he found himself standing in the middle of the kitchen at the farmhouse. There was the settle; there was the table at which he had eaten his morning porridge!

For a moment the sight filled him with excess of joy. In the instant of recognition the familiar surroundings, the things and faces to which, meagre and harsh as they were, he had grown accustomed, brought blessed relief to the child's mind. He uttered Gridley's name with a sob of joy, and tried to move towards him. But his hands and feet were still bound, and he lost his balance and fell forward on the floor.

Simon Gridley, amid perfect silence, advanced and took him up and set him in a chair. The other five, four men and a woman, stood round the table looking at him. Each held a bible.

Between fright and perplexity, and the hurt of his fall, the boy began to cry. Still, no one spoke to him. He stopped crying.

Then at last the strange way they looked at him, the strange silence they kept, went to the boy's heart. He cried no longer, but he looked from one to the other, terrified by the fierce glare in their eyes. "Gridley," he said faintly; "Gridley, what is it, please?"

The butler, at the sound of his voice, sank down pale and trembling on the meal chest. The woman shrank before his eye. But the four men met his look with stern, pitiless faces and set lips. It was Simon who spoke. "We have taken him in the act," he said, in a low, impassive voice. "What shall we do with him?"

"Ye shall make him to cease!" Luke answered, in the monotonous tone of one repeating a form. "He comes of an accursed brood, and he is in league with the father of curses, whose child he is! He would have bewitched the Lord General and his army with his enchantments. We have seen it with our eyes. What need have we of further evidence?"

But Simon Gridley thought otherwise. "Stand forward, woman," he said, disregarding his brother's last remark. "Say what you saw yesterday."

The woman, amid that strange silence, began to speak in a low voice. The rain was still falling, and the eaves dripped outside. The cold light which found its way into the room showed her white to the lips. But she told without faltering her tale of the storm which had fallen on the moor when the child rubbed the cross; and no one doubted it, any more than, to do her justice, she doubted it herself. For was she not confirmed by the presence of the cross itself, which lay in the middle of the table for all to see! They looked at it with horror, never doubting that the knots were devil's knots, that the wood of which it was formed came from no earthly tree.

Meantime the child, terrified by the stern, harsh faces and the glances of unintelligible abhorrence which met him wherever he looked, had no wit to understand the charge made against him. He knew only that the cross had something to do with it-that it was the cross at which they all looked; and he supposed from this that his brother was in danger. For his simple soul this was enough. He seemed to be in a dreadful dream. He cried and trembled, sobbing, while they spoke, like the child he was. But his mind was made up. He would be cut to pieces, but he would never let Frank's name pass his lips.

Hence, when one of the Edgingtons, who had met Master Matthew Hopkins, the great witch-finder, and would fain have probed the matter further with such skill as he fancied he had acquired, adjured him solemnly to speak and say where he got the cross, the child was silent; so obstinately silent that it was plain he could have told something if he would.

"He is mute of malice," Simon said.

"He is mute of the devil!" Luke answered fiercely. "What need of talk when we saw him with our own eyes rule the storm? And it rains still. It rains, and will 'rain,' until his power is broken."

This monstrous idea seemed to his hearers in no way incredible. The belief in witchcraft and in demoniacal possession of every kind had reached its height in England about this time, when men's minds, released from the wholesome leading-strings of custom and the church, evinced a natural proneness to run into all manner of extremes. Had the child been a woman, his fate had been sealed on the spot, the popular fancy attributing the black art to that sex in particular. But the fact that he was a boy was so far abnormal, that it stuck in the throat of the Edgington who had spoken before. "Has he any mark upon him?" he asked.

The woman replied, almost in a whisper, that he had a black mole on his left shoulder.

"Is it a common mark?"

She shook her head without speaking.

Luke waited for no more. "This is folly!" he cried wildly. "What need have we of signs? We have seen. Bolts and bars will not hold him, nor will water receive him."

"That is to be seen!" Edgington answered quickly. "There is a pool below. Let us make trial of him there, Master Gridley. If the lad sinks, well and good. If he will not sink, well and good also. We shall know what to do with him."

Simon nodded sternly. "Good," he said; "let it be so."

But this the boy had still the sense to understand. A vision of the dark bog pool sullenly lipping the rocks which fringed its shores flashed before his childish eyes. In a second the full horror of the fate which threatened him burst upon him, and those eyes grew large with terror. The color left his face. He tried to rise, he tried to frame the word Gridley, he tried to ask for mercy. He could not. Fear had deprived him of the power of speech, and he could only look. But his look was one to melt the heart of any save a fanatic.

Gridley the butler was no fanatic, and though he was a bad man he was not inhuman. Something in the boy's piteous look went straight to his heart. He alone of those present, though he never doubted the existence of witchcraft, doubted the boy's guilt, for he alone had known him all his life, and could see nothing unfamiliar in him. He remembered him a baby, prattling and crawling, and playing like any other baby; and despite himself-for there was nothing noble or brave in the man-he stepped forward and interposed between Simon and his victim.

"I have known the child all his life," he said hoarsely. "He has been as other children, Simon."

His brother looked at him coldly. "Is he as other children to-day?" he said, and he pointed to the cross on the table.

The butler, thus challenged, made as if he would take up the talisman. But at the last moment, when his hand was near it, his heart failed him. He doubted, he was a coward, and he drew back. "He was always as other children," he muttered again, hopelessly, helplessly. "I have known him from his birth."

"Very well," Simon answered, with pitiless logic. "We shall see presently if he is as other children now. The water will show."

He stepped towards the boy as he spoke, but Jack saw him coming, and reading his fate in the grim, unrelenting looks which everywhere met his eyes, screamed loudly. The child was fast bound, and could not fly, but bound as he was he managed to fling himself on the floor, and lay there screaming. Simon plucked him up roughly, and looked round for something to muffle his cries. "The cloak!" he said hurriedly-the noise discomposed him. "The cloak!"

Luke went to fetch it from the dresser on which it had been laid, but before he could bring it, the boy on a sudden stopped screaming, and stiffened himself in Simon's arms. "I will tell," he cried wildly. "Let me go! Let me go, and I will tell."

The man was astonished, as were they all. But he set the boy back in the chair, and took his hands off him, and stood waiting, with a stern light in his eyes, to hear this devil's tale.

For a moment the boy lay huddled up and panting, with his lips apart, and the sweat on his flushed brow. He had said-with the man's hands, on him and the black water before his eyes-that he would tell. But as he crouched there, getting his breath, and looking from one to another like a frightened animal, thoughts of his brother whom he must betray, thoughts of devotion and love, all childish but all living, surged through his brain. The men and the woman waited, some sternly curious, and some in fear; but the boy remained dumb. He had conquered his terror. He was learning that what men suffer for others is no suffering.

Simon lost patience at last. "Speak!" he cried, "or to the water!"

The boy eyed him trembling, but remained silent. "Give him a little more time," said one of the other men.

"Ay, hurry him not," said Luke.

"He has had time enough," Simon retorted. "He is but playing with us."

Yet he left him a little longer, while all stood round and looked, greedy to hear with their own ears one of those strange confessions of witchcraft, which, whether they had their origin in delusion or in some interested motive, were not uncommon in the England of that day. But the child, though his breath came quick and fast, and his heart throbbed like the heart of a little bird, and he feared unspeakably, remained obstinately silent.

"Enough!" Simon cried at last, his patience utterly exhausted; "he is dumb. We shall get nothing from him here. Let us see what the water will do for him. Luke, the cloak!"

Jack controlled his fears until the man's hands were actually upon him. Then instinct prevailed, and in despair he gave way to shriek upon shriek, so that the house rang with the pitiful outcry. "The cloak!" Simon cried impatiently, looking this way and that for it, while the butler turned pale at the sounds. "That is better; now open the door."

One of the Edgingtons went towards it, but when he was close to it, stopped on a sudden and held up his hand. The gesture was one of warning, but it came too late; for before those behind could profit by it, or do more than surmise what it meant, the door shook under a heavy knock, and a hand outside lifted the latch. The neighing of horses and the sound of hoofs trampling the stones of the fold gave the party some idea what they had to expect; but late also, for ere Simon could lay down the child, or Edgington move from his position, the door was thrown wide open. Half a dozen figures appeared on the threshold, and one detatching itself from the crowd strode in with an air of sturdy authority.

The person who thus put himself forward was a middle-aged man of good height, strongly and squarely made. His reddish face and broad, massive features were shaded by a wide-leaved hat, in the band of which a little roll of papers was stuck. He wore a buff coat and breastplate, and a heavy sword, and had, besides, a pistol and a leather glove thrust through his girdle. For a second after his entrance, he looked from one face to another with quick, searching glances which nothing escaped. Then he spoke.

"Tut-tut-tut-tut!" he said. "What is this? Have we honest, God-fearing soldiers here, halting by the way, whether such halting is in the way or not, or in the morning orders? Or have we ramping, roystering, babe-killing free-companions? – eh, man? Speak!" he continued rapidly, his utterance somewhat thick. "What have you here? Unfasten this cloak, some one!"

Thunderstruck, and taken completely by surprise-for the doorway was filled with faces-the party in the room fell back a step. Simon mechanically laid the boy down, but still maintained his position by him. Nor did the Puritan, though he found himself thus abruptly challenged by one who seemed to be able to make good his words, lose a jot of his grim aspect. He was aware of no wrong he had done. His conscience was clear.

"They are not soldiers, your excellency," one of the persons in the doorway said briskly. "Four of them live here, and the other two are honest men from Bradford."

"That man has worn the bandoliers," the first speaker retorted, in a voice which brooked no denial. "Sirrah, find your tongue," he continued sternly, bending a brow which was never of the lightest. "Have you not served?"

"I was in the forlorn of horse at Naseby," Simon answered sullenly.

"In what troop?"

"Captain Rawlins's."

"Is it so?" his excellency answered, dropping his voice at once to a more genial note. "Well, friend, you had for commander a good man and serviceable. You could no better. And who are these with you?"

"Two are his brothers," the voice in the doorway explained. "They were very forward against Langdale's horse in the skirmish at Settle three days ago, your excellency."

"Good, good, all this is good," Cromwell answered briskly; for that redoubtable man, Lieutenant-General at this time of the armies of the Parliament, it was. "Then why were you backward to answer my questions, friend, being questions it lay in me to put, I being at the head of this poor army and in authority? But there, you were modest. Here, Pownall," he continued, "lay the maps on the table. We can examine them here in shelter. 'Twas a happy thought of yours. And let the prisoners be brought here also. Yet, stay," he added, feeing round once more, his brow dark. "Methinks there comes a strange whimpering from that cloak! Is't a dog? To it, Pownall, and see what it is."

The officer he addressed sprang zealously forward, and whipping up the cloak disclosed the child lying bound on the floor. Terror and the exertion of screaming had reduced the boy to the last stage of consciousness. He lay motionless, his face pale, and his eyes half closed; his little bound hands appealing powerfully to the feelings of the spectators. Even the presence of so many strangers failed to rouse him, or move him to a last appeal. He appeared to be unconscious of their entrance, or of any change in his surroundings.

The sight was one to awaken indignation in a man, and Cromwell was a man. "What!" he exclaimed roundly, and with something like an oath; "what is this? Why have you bound him? Who is he? Is he your son?"

"No," Simon answered, scowling.

"Who is he?"

"His name is Patten."

"Patten, Patten, Patten? Where have I heard the name?" Cromwell answered. "Ho, I remember! There is a young malignant of that name on the black list, is there not? For this county, too!"

An officer replied that there was; adding that the young man was supposed to be in Duke Hamilton's army.

"Very well! We will deal with him when we catch him," Cromwell answered sharply. "But, in the name of sense, what has that to do with this boy? Why, 'tis a child! His mother's milk is hardly dry on his lips! Why have you bound him, man?"

Simon Gridley strove to give back look for look, and to make the outward countenance answer to the inward innocence. But the General's sharp questions, and the astonished and indignant faces which filled the room, made this difficult. A sudden doubt springing up in his own mind, thus untimely, lent additional gloom to his manner, as he answered: "He is no child. He is a witch!"

"A witch!" Cromwell cried, his voice drowning a dozen exclamations of astonishment. "Why, mercy on us, a witch is a woman! And 'tis a boy!"

"Ay, but 'tis a witch too," Simon answered stubbornly.

CHAPTER IX.
HIS EXCELLENCY'S JUDGMENT

If Duke Hamilton had suddenly appeared in the room and surrendered himself without terms-a thing beyond doubt unlikely to happen as long as that gallant gentleman had thirty thousand men at his back-those present could scarcely have looked more astonished. Not that they, or the majority of them at all events, doubted the existence of witchcraft. On the contrary; but anything less like the common idea of a witch than this helpless child it would have been difficult to conceive. Respect for their chief did indeed silence the laughter which the man's answer would otherwise have caused, but it could not still the murmur of amazement and ridicule, or the hum of indignation which rose to their lips.

"The man is mad!" cried one by the door, a person privileged.

"Silence!" Cromwell answered sharply. "And do you, sirrah," he continued to Simon, "explain yourself at once, or I will find means to lash sense into you. What has the boy done?"

Before Simon could answer Luke interposed. The enthusiast could restrain himself no longer.

"What has he done?" he cried. "He has sold himself to do evil and stint not. Why do our horses fail and the wheels of our chariots drive heavily, so that the work is not done, nor the task accomplished? Because of the learning of the Egyptians which he has learned, and because of the witchcraft of Jezebel which he has practised, that the people may remain in bondage and our leader fall and rise not. Be warned, O Joshua, and hear reason, O deliverer! It rains, and will rain in the land until-"

"Tie up the knave's mouth, some one!" thundered Cromwell. "And do you," he continued, addressing Simon, "who seem to have some wit in your madness, answer me briefly, what has the child done?"

But Simon's answer was destined to be again interrupted; this time by the arrival of the officer in charge of the prisoners, who came in to learn whether the General would examine them in the house. Cromwell gave the order, and the men, two in number, were accordingly brought in and made to stand by the door. This caused a momentary delay and commotion; but, so great was the interest taken in the child, who had been by this time raised from the floor and relieved of his bonds, that scarcely any one turned to notice them. The moment the stir ceased, the General nodded to Simon.

"The boy has a spell," Gridley answered, getting speech at last. "He has a charm, and when he rubs it, it rains. He brought the rain yesterday, and brought it again to-day."

"Tush, man!" Cromwell said contemptuously. "You play with me."

"You do not believe me?"

"No, in faith I do not," the General answered darkly.

"Then here is the proof!" the fanatic cried, in a voice of triumph. And he pointed to the wooden cross which lay on the table. "There is the charm! There, look at it, touch it, handle it; tell me what it is, if you can!"

"A child's toy," Cromwell answered scornfully, as he stepped forward and without hesitation took up the implement. "Well, man, I see it," he continued, turning it over in his hand. "What of it? Be brief with your madness, for I have larger fish to fry to-day. Be brief, I say."

"I will," the Puritan answered, undaunted. And therewith, beginning with the story of the strange evasion from the closet, he told the tale, so far as he knew it, of Jack's mysterious proceedings and powers. For a while, Cromwell listened or appeared to listen with half an ear only, his attention divided between the speaker and a map which the obsequious Pownall had placed on the table. But when Simon came to the boy's singular proceedings on the hillock above the road, and described, with some advantages which his imagination lent the narrative, the manner of the boy's behavior while the army passed below him, Cromwell's attitude underwent a sudden change. He closed the map with a quick gesture, and for a moment gazed full at the man from under his bushy eyebrows.

"Umph! And so you think that caused the storm, Master Numskull?" he rapped out, when Simon had come to an end. "Where is this cross?"

It had been passed from hand to hand, but was at once brought back to him. "Here, Hodgson," he said sharply; "what do you make of it?"

The officer to whom he appealed turned the thing over and over in his hands, but could make nothing of it. Cromwell watched him with a sparkle in his eye, and at length snatched it from him. "Chut!" he said-but although he scolded, it was evident he was well pleased-"you are as big a fool as Master Numskull there! Didst never see a tally, man?"

"A tally, your excellency?"

"Ay, a tally, a tally, a tally!" replied his excellency, impatiently. "A thing, I tell thee, that was known in this England of ours, and in the exchequer, when rogues were fewer and thy ancestors were hung without benefit of clergy! This is a tally if ever I saw one. To take an honest tally for a witch's broomstick? But softly! Said I an honest tally?" he continued, looking suddenly about him, while his voice grew hard and stern. "Pownall! count those notches."

The officer obeyed. "There are twenty-three, your excellency," he said, when he had accomplished the task.

"And how many troops of horse have gone by to-day?"

"Twenty-three, your excellency," was the answer, given with military brevity.

A murmur of intelligence passed round the circle of officers. The clue once found by Cromwell's sharp eye and strong common sense, the secret became an open one, patent to the dullest intellect. When further examination showed that the number of notches on the other arm of the cross corresponded with the number of foot regiments which had passed that morning, even Simon Gridley began to understand that here was no question of the supernatural, but of some human agency equally hostile to the good cause. Only Luke Gridley remained unconvinced. "Bolts and bars could not hold him," he murmured, "nor-"

"We will come to that by-and-by," Cromwell answered. "Let the boy stand forward. Where is he?"

Some one thrust Jack forward into the middle of the room, where he stood exposed to the full brunt of Cromwell's formidable gaze. The shock through which the child had passed had left him dazed and weak; his color came and went, his legs faltered under him, and he trembled perceptibly. But his heart was stout, and his breeding stood him in good stead at this crisis. Barely understanding what had passed, or the steps by which his plan had been discovered, on one point he was still clear, steadfast, and resolute: and that was, that come what might, he would not betray his brother!

But for the moment Cromwell said nothing about that. The question he put to him took all present by surprise. "Who let you out of the closet, my lad?" he said, in a tone of rough good-nature.

"A man," the boy muttered, with dry lips.

"Was it one of the men in the house? No? Then how did the man get into the house? Tell us that."

Jack looked about him like a trapped animal. He did not know which questions he ought to answer and which he ought to refuse to answer. Confused and terrified by the gaze of so many men and the possession of a secret, aware only that he must keep back his brother's name and hiding-place, the instinct of a drowning man led him to give up all else. After a moment's hesitation he muttered: "His wife," pointing to Simon, "went out in the middle of the night. She left the door open, and the man came in."

"Very good," Cromwell answered. "That is clear and explicit. And now, my man," he continued, turning suddenly upon Simon, who stood silent and confounded, "what do you say? More seems to go on in your house than you wot of. Let the woman stand out."

Gridley the butler, sitting doubled up on the meal chest, where his brothers figure sheltered him, almost fell forward with terror. He saw his crime on the point of being discovered, and all his craven soul was in alarm. Were attention once drawn to him, were he once challenged and bade to stand forth, he knew that no power could save him. In the absence of evidence he would infallibly betray himself. The dreadful tremors, the sickening apprehension, which he had felt during the first part of his flight from Pattenhall, when he had the damning evidences of his crime upon him, returned upon him now, and bitterly, most bitterly, did he regret that he had ever given way to temptation.

He came near to swooning when he heard the woman called out, for he thought it a hundred chances to one that she would falter, and in a moment weave a rope for his neck. The sweat ran down his face as he strained his ears to catch-he dared not look-the first syllable of accusation.

But Mistress Gridley, though she had had scant notice of the occasion, was of a harder kind. Relieved of ghostly fears, her mind quickly regained its balance, and instinctively took refuge in the falseness which had become second nature. Her shrewdish face wore a flush as she came forward, and there was a flicker of secret fear in her eye. But the tone in which she denied that she had ever left her house on the night in question was even and composed, and "As for a man," she added scornfully, "what man is there within three miles of us?"

"The man who taught this lad to spy!" Cromwell retorted, swiftly and severely. "That man, woman! Do you know him?"

She could say No to that with a good conscience, and she did so.

Cromwell signed to her stand back. "Very well," he said, "then the boy shall tell us." He turned to Jack, and after glaring at him for a moment, cried in a loud voice: "Hark ye, sirrah! who gave you this cross? What is his name, and where is he?"

That voice, at which so many men had trembled and were to tremble, made the very marrow in Jack's bones quiver. That fierce red face with its fiery eyes seemed to grow before Jack's gaze until the child saw nothing else save that and a dancing haze which framed it. "Hark ye, sirrah!" He heard the words repeated again and again, and his soul melted within him for fear. But he remained dumb.