CHAPTER XXII
HOW MY UNCLE BOTOLPH LOST HIS LUCK
The tide had turned. The river had given up its dead. There was no appeal from this distorted corpse, smirched with yellow so about the throat and breast, where my uncle's painted hands had gripped him. Wedged deep in the dead man's heart (I heard it said) a certain significant shred of blue silk was found that had been drawn in by the swinging blade, and torn from the murderer's sleeve.... After that there needed nothing more, and my uncle's luck, which a moment since had trembled to its apogee, shot downward like a portent star.
My pretence to write calmly of the sequel, to use the ordinary speech of every day, I support not as purposing to deceive, for it would deceive none, but rather as impelled thereto, lest writing as I feel (even yet after so long an interval) I should seem to set down frenzy itself in character, and illegible wild words.
But I may at least report my uncle's apology, as above the clamour I caught the most of it; and here affirm that, lying infamous villain as he was, yet so consummate a dignity did mark his every motion, and as it were attended upon all the situations in which he stood, as enforced respect of those even who knew him altogether base.
His judges had found against him to a man.
"Well, then, you have it," said he in his cold clear voice, "and are content enough this Malpas should have died, so you bring me in his slayer. You little men! I found a scorpion in my path and trampled on him; that's the sum of my offending. Or is it not? Nay, I had forgot the chief; that I would not betray my country, as you petty thieves would have done, and thought I did. What will you get of the Spaniards, prythee? Money, honours or what? Will those creeping Jesuits bestead you? Oh, you have their pledged words! I had as much. More; for I had their secret plans of conquest; their Enterprise of England forsooth! as they sat gnawing their crusts in my hall. There was to be an universal uprising of Papists, they told me; mutinies of the Queen's troops, and such; baubles of a fool!
"I have had my laugh, you scum, and I have lost. Well, then, what you shall hear may hearten you belike, and move you to laughter. If I have not been a traitor all this while, how have I been employed? Not having abetted their designs, why did I entertain these strangers? Let this example stand: there was the envoy Spurrier brought in, Don Florida of Seville, a fine bold gentleman and apt to lead a squadron of such orts as ye. He laid his plans before me openly. So, I took him by the throat and strangled him."
I make no attempt to describe the tumult of their rage who heard him; sufficient, that it passed.
"He was not singular in this business," the prisoner continued, "though he was perhaps the properest man. But what a nasty sort of spies I had in charge! I swear I think no starved lazar of Spain but was judged fit enough to come ambassador among us, and parcel out our land; and all the while you stood by grinning: When we be altogether conquered, ran your thoughts, we shall each get his share! Eh, you jolthead hucksters, was it to be so?
"But I was your leader, and that was where I had my laugh. For no single one of those you gave me into my keeping did I fail to slay save only that poor crazed Courcy whom the soldiers robbed me of, and some that the Council took alive. The residue you may reckon at your leisure; they lie rotting in two fathom of Thames water, 'twixt the Customers Quay and the Galley, ay, rotten as their cause....
"It were a pretty thought now that I should crave a favour at the Queen's hands for stout work done in her cause, though secretly; ay, and I would do it, but for two or three considerations that something hinder me; namely, that my life otherwise hath not been altogether law-worthy. And, moreover, there is these bonds, that, being I confess very workmanlike bound upon me, render my present access to Her Majesty less easy than I could wish; so that I doubt my defence of her realm shall go unrewarded....
"In such a company as this there is sure one clergyman. Let him shrive me, for I am not at all points ready to die.... Well, level your pieces and be done with it. I care not how soon. Foh! but you handle your weapons awkwardly; I should be ashamed, were I still your leader.... How—what is that?"
I had heard it too. "It is the soldiers come," I said to myself, and strained my ears to listen for a renewal of the sound. Within the room all expected in a sudden silence what should ensue. It came again; a dull noise as of men that rammed at the door with a heavy beam.
"I had thought they had gone," said one, in a thick voice.
"'Twas a fetch of theirs."
"The cellar door is strong," said the tapster Jocelin, but without confidence. "It will last."
"Until what time?" asked my uncle, mocking them. "And then, whence will you escape, you rats?"
One had blown out the light at the first alarm, and they conferred in the absolute dark.
"Ha!" cried Jocelin at that taunt of the prisoner's, and with a squealing note of triumph, "there is the new door in the sea-wall to escape by," and scrambling through their midst to the cellar door, he bade his comrades follow him forth. But at the door he stayed, as of necessity he must; for 'twas locked, and I that had locked it was within the room now, in the dark, with the key in my pocket. I had scarce time to slip aside, ere the next man had flung Jocelin by for a bungler, and the third trampled him down. Over his prostrate body the rest passed surging. Knives were out, for all had run distraught at this unlooked-for prevention. Treachery by each suspected was by every hand revenged. I heard the sobbing of stricken men, as I felt my way along the wall to the place where my uncle sat yet pinioned to his chair. And all this while the daunting clangour continued, as of a giant's mallet beating on the door; nay, even upon the stones of the wall, for the whole room shivered and rocked to the hideous repeated sound.
I unloosed my uncle, cutting his thongs with a cutlass I had kicked against and groped after on the floor; a hand still held it, but I got it free.
"Who is that?" asked my uncle composedly.
"Hist!" I whispered. "I am your nephew, Denis Cleeve."
"You add to my obligations, Mr. Denis," he replied, and stretched himself. "But how does my good brother the magistrate?"
"Enough of that," I said curtly; "how be we to get forth?"
"Why, I supposed you had provided for that," he said in some surprise, "else I were as well bound as free."
I asked whether he could lay hand on his sword, but he answered, scoffing, that his enemies had saved him the trouble of using it; and indeed that bloody unseen strife about the door saved us both for that while. Presently he drew me a little apart into a corner where, he said, we might discourse together reasonably and without molestation. He cleared his voice once or twice ere he made known his mind to me thus—
"When the soldiers shall break in, as nothing can long withstand such engines as they have brought to bear, slip you forth, Mr. Denis, and ascend immediately to a small retired chamber above the stair where my ward lies, Mistress Avenon. Lay your modesty aside for this once, and enter. If she wake not, so much the better; as 'tis better she should know nothing. But I am a fool! for who may sleep on such a night of hell? Anywise enter, and I will answer for it, she will not repulse you as she did yon Malpas, the brave lass!
"She hath in keeping a certain jar of mine, Denis, a toy, that nevertheless I set some value on; this I would have you privily convey to the house where the Chinese inhabited—I make no question but you know where it stands. Do this, my dear nephew, and I shall confess myself every way bound to serve you when I shall come to be enfranchised of this place; for I myself may not undertake the bearing off of this jar (it stands in a little cupboard by the bed, Denis, now I think on't), my dress being not such, as wearing it, I might hope to escape challenge of the guard, but with you, Denis, 'twill be a mere frolick adventure." He laid his mouth close to my ear. "Besides, there is the lass Idonia..."
What more he might have added, I know not, for his beastly greed in so safeguarding his wealth, and that at my risk, who had delivered him, sickened me in such sort as I could no longer abide to hear it, but left him, and going straightway forward into the screaming press about the door, struck out a path for myself through the midst of them. At the same moment the hammering without in one peal ended; the half of a wall fell in, and through the breach thus made came a wavering and intermittent light.
Unspeakably astonished, I gazed about me, upon the dead and writhing bodies that lay at my feet thus uncertainly illumined, and upon my uncle, huddled up in his torn silken robe. But when I had averted my eyes with a shudder to the breach in the wall, I saw a sight I may neither forget nor endure the remembrance of; for it seemed to me that there entered in by that way a figure—inhuman tall, black visaged, and of a most cruel aspect. Perhaps for the space of a man's counting ten, he leaned forward through the aperture, regarding us all in that ghostly dimness, and then, with an equal suddenness, was gone, and the light with him....
No one word passed our trembling lips, for all felt the horror of impending destruction. Only the dying yet moved a little, stirring in their blood, but even they soon lay still. Meanwhile, through the great rent in the wall, the wind blew exceeding strong, so that although at the first we had postponed all thoughts to that one vision of the giant presence, we now perceived by the direction of the wind and the saltness of it that it was the river-wall was down, and not (as in our confusion we had supposed) the inner wall, by which the soldiers must necessarily have assaulted us.
I am not altogether sure who it was by this means solved the mystery, but I think it was Captain Spurrier; howbeit we had not endured that sweeping gale above an half-minute, before some one cried out that the apparition was nothing else than the carven prow of the Saracen's Head, that dragging at her moorings by the wharf had run against the Inn wall and destroyed it; which was presently confirmed by the ship's again battering us, but broadside, and not head-on as before. For as I have (I think) already said, the Inn was jutted out to the extreme edge of the Fair Haven wharf, so that at the high tide there was a deepness of water sufficient for any ordinary ship to lie alongside and discharge her cargo upon the quay; the tide mark running a little below the vault where we were, that else would have been suddenly flooded by the inflow of water through the broken wall. Beyond measure relieved that we were besieged by neither soldier nor devil, we could not restrain our joy, and so by a common impulse moved to be gone, the whole company of us that yet remained alive and able, ran forward to the breach, and to the ship's side, having her starboard light to further us that had formerly so stricken us into dismay. And thus by this way and that, grasping at whatever projection of blocks and shrouds lay to our hands, some helping and other hindering our escape, we had at length all clambered up into the ship, save only that traitor Cutts, who, upon a sudden lurch of the ship, was crushed betwixt the bulwark and the wall, and so died.
I looked about for my uncle, and soon found him, leaning over the rail.
"Ha, Denis," said he coolly, "so thou art escaped. I had a notion 'twas thou wert crushed against the wall."
"You mistook then," said I, and might have said more, had not Captain Spurrier laid a hand upon my collar, the whiles he clapped his pistol to my uncle's ear, and called out—
"Lay me these men in irons, Attwood. I am master on my own good ship, if not in that fiends' compter."
We were seized upon instantly and hurried down to the hold, where, heavily shackled, we were thrown among such stuff as there lay stored. The vessel rolled horribly, and often drove against the impediments upon the bank with a dreadful grinding noise, but about morning, as I supposed, they got her about, and into the stream, where, the tempest somewhat abating, she rode pretty free, though what course she kept I could not be certain in, and indeed soon gave over the attempt to follow their purposes that had us so utterly in their power.