CHAPTER XXIII.
SENTENCED TO DEATH.
I lay within a darkened cell in the prison which formed part of the ramparts of Lugo. Lay there, a man doomed to death; sentenced to be burnt at the stake, as a spy taken in a country at war with my own. To be burnt at the stake on some Sunday morning, because that day was always a day of festival, because all Lugo would be there to witness, because from all the country round the peasants would come in to see the Englishman expire in the flames.
Doomed to death!
Yet not alone. By my side--his right hand nailed to an upright plank! (so the sentence had run) to which our bodies were to be fastened by chains--was to stand that other man, Gramont--the pirate and buccaneer who, as Eaton had testified, had been called the Shark of the Indies.
I had been tried first by the Alcáide of Lugo and the principal Regidór, assisted by the Bishop of the province, an extremely old man--and had been soon disposed of. Evidence was forthcoming--there was plenty of it in Lugo in the shape of French sea-captains and sailors from the Spanish galleons--that I had fought with the English at Vigo; also, that I had slain men betwixt the border and here. And, again, there was the evidence of Eaton that I had travelled from Rotterdam as the undoubted bearer of the news that the galleons were approaching Spain.
Also, not content with all this, I was on my way through the land, gleaning evidence of all that was taking place within it, so as to furnish, as none could otherwise suppose, information to my countrymen when I should reach them.
No need for my trial to be spun out; one alone of all these facts was enough to condemn me, and, after a whispered conference between the Alcáide, the Regidór and the Bishop, the latter delivered the above sentence, his voice almost inaudible because of his great age, yet strong enough for the purpose--powerful enough to reach my ears and those of the small crowd within the court house; that was sufficient.
So I knew my fate, and knew, too, that it was useless to say aught, to utter one word. I had lost the game; the stakes would have to be paid in full.
Then began the unravelling of the history of him who stood beside me--swarthy, contemptuous--his eyes glancing around that court, alighting at one moment on the withered form and cadaverous face of the Bishop, at another on the figure of the Regidór, a moment later on the Alcáide, a younger, well favoured man, whom I guessed a soldier in the past or present.
Gramont's condemnation was assured by the part he had played on that night when he assisted us on the road 'twixt Chantada and Lugo. That alone would have forfeited his life amidst these Spaniards; yet, perhaps from curiosity, perhaps because even they doubted whether so summary an execution, and one so horrible, was merited by that night's work, they decided to hear the denouncement of Eaton, the story of Gramont's past life. They bade the former speak, tell all.
And what a story it was he told!
Sitting in a chair near the Bishop, looking nearly as old as that old man himself, he poured out horror after horror; branded the man by my side as one too steeped in cruelty to be allowed to live another hour, if what he said was, indeed, true.
Told how this man had ravaged all the Spanish main--had besieged Martinique, Nombre de Diós, Campeachy, and scores of other places, shedding blood like water everywhere--had sunk and plundered ships; burnt them and the men in them--burnt them alive; gave instances, too, of cruelty extreme.
"I have known him to tie dead and living together and fling them to the sharks," he said--"dead and living Spaniards! Also hang them to the bowsprit by a cord round their waists, a knife placed in one hand, so that, while freedom was theirs if they chose to sever the rope, a worse death awaited them when they fell into the water--a death from sharks, from alligators! Oh, sir, oh, reverend prelate," he continued, stretching out his hands toward the old, almost blind man, "I have seen worse than this. Once he and his followers besieged a monastery full of holy fathers, governed by a bishop saintly as yourself; and they defended it vigorously, bravely--would have driven this tiger back but for one thing."
"What?" asked the younger of the judges, the Alcáide. And I noticed that now, as all through this testifying of Eaton, that Alcáide seemed less disposed to accept his evidence than the others were. Later on I knew the reason that so urged him.
"What?" he said.
"Some of the priests had already fallen into his hands and the hands of his crew. Then they it was whom he forced to advance first against the monastery--to fire the brass cannon they had brought with them against their brethren; forced them to do so, so that those brethren should not know them, should shoot them down first.
"Also," said the Alcáide, "it might have been to prevent their firing at all. In open war a great commander would, perhaps, have availed himself of such a cunning ruse."
Then I knew for sure this man had been, or was, a soldier.
More, much more, was told by Eaton--'tis best I set down nothing further--then the end came, The sentence was passed; he, too, was doomed to die, by my side, on the Sunday that should later be appointed.
"Break off," the Bishop said. "Justice will be done." Whereupon he glanced down at his papers--I wondering that he could see them with those purblind eyes--while, pausing in his attempt to rise, he "Yet there was another. The youth"--and here I pricked up my ears, for of Juan I had heard nothing since taken to the prison in the ramparts--"the youth who fought by the side of this man--this spy--this Inglés. How comes it he is not before us?"
For a moment, as it seemed to me, the Alcáide hesitated, then he said:
"He is not well. He was hurt in the mêlée; he cannot be brought before us for some days. Later, if necessary, he can be tried."
Although I had drawn as far away from Gramont as I could since I had learned his true nature and character and the bloodshed of which he had been guilty, I could not prevent myself from letting my eyes fall on him now; and I saw that for the first time there was a look of eagerness in his eyes, that he was watching the younger of those judges, watching as though filled with an intensity of feeling as to what might next be said.
"If necessary, Capitan Morales," the Regidór said, speaking now for almost the first time, "if necessary! By all reports he is as bad as his elder comrades. A wild cat, all say. Why should it not be necessary?"
"He is very young," the Alcáide replied, undoubtedly confused, "very young; also he--he--is not well. I should do wrong to produce him before you in the state he is. As governor I must use my discretion," and he made a feint of being engaged with the papers before him.
Then I felt sure that he, too, knew Juan's secret, as I now did.
And I wondered to what advantage he might put that secret on behalf of Juan. Wondered while I felt glad at the thought which had now risen to my mind--the thought that, at last, Juan might be saved from our doom.
Again the Bishop said at this time--doubtless his worn old frame was fatigued by the morning's work:
"Let us rise. There is no more to be done, since--since--this youth cannot yet be brought before us," and once more he placed his white, shrunken hands upon the desk in front of him to obtain the necessary aid to quitting his seat.
But now the governor, whose name was Morales, made a motion of dissent, accompanying it, however, by soft, respectful words.
"Nay, most reverend father, nay," he said, "not yet, if you will graciously permit that we continue our examination farther," while as he spoke the Bishop sank back again with a wearied look of assent. "I am not satisfied."
"Not satisfied," the old man whispered, while the Regidór also echoed his words, though in far louder tones. "What is it you are not satisfied with, Capitan Morales?"
"With that man's testimony," he exclaimed, pointing his finger over his desk at Eaton. "In no manner of way satisfied," and as he spoke it almost seemed--I should have believed it to be so in any other country but Spain, a land of notorious injustice and love of cruelty for the sake of cruelty--as if the crowd in the court somewhat agreed with him. Also, even as he spoke, a voice shouted from the midst of those forming it:
"Ay! How knows he all this? Ask him that."
Glancing my eyes in the direction whence those words came, they fell upon a man of rude though picturesque appearance, whose voice I thought it was; a fellow bearded and bronzed, with, in his ears, great rings of gold; a man whom, I scarce know why, I instantly deemed a sailor. Perhaps, one of the many who had fled from the galleons or the French ships of war.
"I am about to ask him that!" exclaimed Morales, though he cast an angry glance toward the crowd. "It is his answer to that which I require."
Then all eyes were instantly directed toward Eaton, one pair flaming like burning coals from beneath their bushy brows--the eyes of Gramont.
Looking myself at him, noticing the ashy colour of his face as he heard that unknown voice uprise amidst the people gathered in the court--as also he heard in reply the words of Morales--noticing, too, the quivering of his white lips and the look as of a hunted rat that came into his eyes--I found myself wondering if he had not thought of how his denunciation of the man by my side was his own accusation also.
"I ask you," went on Morales, "how you know all these things. None but an eye-witness, a participator, could have told as much!"
Upon that muttering and gesticulating crowd, upon the shaggy, black-bearded Asturians and Biscayans--some of them rude mountaineers from the Gaviara and some even ruder sailors from the wild and tempest-beaten shores of Galicia--upon the swarthy Spanish women with knives in their girdles and babes at their bare breasts, there fell a hush as all listened for his answer--a hush, broken only by his own halting attempt to find an answer that should be believed--gain credence not only with the judges, but the people.
"I have--heard--it said--heard it told," he whispered, in quavering tones. "'Twas common talk in all the Indies--his name hated--dreaded. Used as a means to fright the timid--to----"
He paused. For, like a storm that howls across the seas, sweeping all before it in its course, another voice, a deeper, fuller, more sonorous one, swept through that court and drowned his; the voice of the lost man by my side.
"Hear me, you judges," he cried, confronting all--standing there with his manacled hands in front of him, yet his form erect, his glance contemptuous, his eyes fire. "Hear me. Let me tell all. I have the right--the last on earth granted to one such as I--for one who sees and reads his doom in all your faces. Give me your leave to speak."
"Speak!" the Bishop murmured, his tones almost inaudible. "Speak--yet hope nothing."
"Hope!" Gramont said. "Hope! What should I hope? Nothing! in truth. No more than I fear aught. I am the man this one charges me with being--am Gramont. That is enough. Gramont, the filibuster--one of a hundred of your countrymen, of Frenchmen, of Englishmen. But," and he glanced proudly around the court, "the leader of them all, of almost all. Yet, if I am guilty, who is there in the Indies that is innocent? Was Morgan, the English bulldog?--yet his king made him deputy-governor of his fairest isle. Was Basco, Lolonois--is Pointis? Answer me that. And, you of Spain, you, one of her bishops, you, one of her soldiers," and he glanced at each of them, "how often has one of you blessed the ships that sailed from your shores laden with men of my calling--how often have men of your trade," again he glanced at Morales, "belonged to mine? Yet now I, a Frenchman, a comrade in arms of you Spanish, am judged by the words of such as that"--and this time his eyes fell on Eaton.
Also all in the court looked at him again.
"Now," went on Gramont, "hear who and what he is--hear, too, how he knows all that I have done. He was my servant--my ship's steward once--then rose through lust of cruelty to be my mate and second in command. And he it was who first whispered that the captured monks and priests, as he terms them, should be sent against the monastery at Essequibo. Only--he has forgotten, his memory fails--they were not monks and priests--but nuns."
"No, no, no!" shrieked Eaton, as a tumult indescribable arose within the court, while now the mountaineers and seamen howled, "burn him and let the other go," and the fierce dark-eyed women clutched their babes closer to their breasts, fingering the hilts of the knives in their girdles at the same time.
"Nuns! Holy nuns!" the Bishop gasped. "Great God!"
"Ay! Holy nuns. And hear one more word from me; it is the truth, though it avails me nothing. I was not at Essequibo then, was far away, was, in truth, at Cape Blanco. And he--he--James Eaton, was the man."
There rose more tumult and more uproar--it seemed as though all the men in the court would force the barrier that separated them from the judges and from Eaton and us, the prisoners--would slay that villain, that monstrous wretch, upon the spot. But at a look from the Alcáide some of the alguazils and men-at-arms by that barrier, thrust and pushed them back, and made a line between them and the body of the court.
"Again listen," Gramont went on, when some silence had at last been obtained. "It is my last word. I was not there--was gone--the band was broken up, dispersed. From Spain had come an order from your king that those who desisted were to be pardoned; from Louis of France came the same news by Pointis. And I was one who so desisted, took service under Louis, was made his lieutenant. Also I was on my way to France when I was cast away. Cast away, after leaving my child, my wealth, in that man's hands for safe keeping. He drove the one from him with curses and cruelty, he stole the other. And--hear more--those galleons coming to Cadiz were bringing that stolen wealth to him--because I knew that it was so I came in them to Spain, hoping by my disguise to meet him, to wrench it back from him, to call him to account for his treatment of my girl."
On the court there had come a hush--as the calm comes after the storm; hardly any spoke now--yet all, from Bishop downward, regarded Eaton, trembling, shivering there.
And once more in that hush, Gramont's voice uprose again.
"For myself I care not. Do with me what you will. But, remember, I denounce him, that man there, as pirate and buccaneer ten times more bloodthirsty and cruel than any other who ever ravaged the Indies; I denounce him, the denouncer, as thief, filibuster and spy. Do with me what you will--only take heed. Spare him not. And if you seek corroboration of my word, demand it of him who is my fellow-prisoner, demand the truth from Juan Belmonte."