CHAPTER IV.—THE DEAD HAND.
After a little I found that I could stand upright in the passage. Stretching up my hands I could feel a solid roof above my head. The walls on either side of me were of earth, held back by stout balks of timber. If one were to give way the passage had been a grave indeed; but so far as I could feel with my feet the clay had not fallen at all. Else indeed there could not have been so much air in the passage as to give me breath; and I breathed freely enough, albeit with a certain oppression, and a loathing of the dank smells.
For a time the passage went down into the bowels of the earth as it seemed to me. I guessed by the direction it took from the dining-hall that it must grope under the graveyard—and thinking on this I realized how that indeed the wind that blew from it was a wind of death. And at that time I was too ignorant and too vain to rebuke myself by the thought that this was a burying-place of saints.
Presently my foot stumbled against a step, and much relieved I was to find on ascending it that there was another step and yet another; for I liked not this burrowing among graves like the mole; and the steps seemed to promise a speedy end to my journey. Taking them in the dark there seemed to me a prodigious number of them; yet I was not gone very far when I perceived agreeably a lightening and sweetening of the air. I could have taken but a little while in coming, for I had met with no obstacles; yet it seemed long since the time I had plunged into that pit of blackness ere I came up against a stout door, with a grating in it, designed no doubt to give air to the passage.
To my great joy it was held only by a latch, and even before I had made this happy discovery I felt the sweet air of heaven blow into my face; and I think I never before knew how sweet it tasted.
Undoing the latch and drawing the door to me I stepped within a stone tower. The moon had arisen on the eastward side of the tower, and looking through the crumbling lancet window I saw below me, serene and beautiful, the quiet, terraced graveyard of St. Mary’s.
I could have laughed aloud to think that the journey had seemed to me so long. In truth it had occupied some five minutes, as I discovered, holding my horologe to the moon, and had not occupied so long if it were not for my groping and pausing.
But the floor was solid under my feet. I had to think a minute before I knew where I was. I was in that blind tower of St. Mary’s to the eastward corner, in the basement whereof were deposited the brooms and pails for cleaning of the church.
Playing hide and seek therein with a boy’s irreverence I had marvelled why, since the tower was blind—nothing but a roof of stone above the chamber—that they should have troubled to pierce it with lancets like any honest belfry. The upper portion of the tower was in ruins, as you could see from the graveyard without. Ah, and so the blind tower had its uses; as a hiding-place it might be for some one who had lived in the Manor-house in old wild days. For, as to any manner of egress from the tower, that I could not see at all.
The chamber where I stood was full of the drifted leaves and the nests of birds. Except for the shaft of light from the lancet it was in blackness, and I began to wonder if the tower went no further.
I groped about the walls, however, till I came upon a staircase, which went up, not in the middle, as is usual in towers, but at one corner, so that each story formed a room.
’Twas three stories’ climb to the upper room. Here it was that the ruin had befallen the tower; for where the lancet had been there was a great gap, and somewhat of the roof had fallen away.
I was now clear of the low trees, and the half-veiled moon looked within the chamber. Then I saw to my amazement that at the side of it, yet roofed over, there was a bed, a chair, a table, all of the rudest. But little of this I saw till afterwards, for on the bed lay the figure of that monk who had spoken with me, now nearly fifteen months ago.
His face was in shadow, yet I never thought for a moment that he slept. One lean hand dangled from his great sleeve over the side of the bed; it hung helplessly; and young as I was I had looked on death often enough to know that this was the hand of the dead. The habit was composed decently about the figure. Either the monk had so composed himself for death or he had had some companion who had fled away leaving him to the eye of heaven.
Standing there, a great awe and compassion fell upon me. Something of yearning and tenderness afflicted me as though the dead man had been of my blood: the tears rushed from my eyes, and I trembled so that I was forced to my knees; yea, as though invisible hands had bent me. I knew little of praying, but something of wordless petition to the Great Father of us all stirred in my dull and proud spirit. In that moment I had indeed the heart of a child.
When I had arisen from my knees I went to the side of the pallet and looked upon the sleeper’s face. In the shadow it gleamed like polished ivory, and as I looked the moon, climbing higher, touched the still mouth with a sweet and sanctified light, making it as though it smiled. I touched the hand that swung by the side of the pallet. It was scarcely cold. I knew not how I thought of such a thing, except that I was familiar with the knights and ladies who sleep in stone in St. Mary’s Church, but I composed the sleeper’s hands in the manner of Christ’s cross upon his breast; and afterwards turned away from the patient, smiling mouth like one who hath sinned and been forgiven.
Then I did what I believed he would have me do: I made a search for any letters and papers he might have left; for I could not think he had left me ignorant of what he would have me know. I searched busily; and there were not many places wherein to look. There was nothing anywhere. But my search was not yet over till I had examined the monk’s person. I went back to his side, and with a prayer to him for forgiveness, I groped gently in his habit for anything in the nature of papers, and doing so I felt his body to be by wasting scarcely greater than a child’s. Yet ’twas not starvation, I knew, for a loaf of bread and a pitcher of water stood on the table.
I had not far to seek. The papers were within the folds of his habit, where they met upon his breast, and were confined with the claspings of his leathern belt.
I drew them forth and went to the full flood of the moonlight. By it I read the superscription:
“To Walter Devereux Fitz-Hugo Fitz-Theobald Fitz-Maurice”—
As I read it my heart leaped up. What a proud name it was, and telling of a glorious ancestry!
“—commonly known as Walter Munster, the ward and page of Sir Walter Raleigh.”
When I had deciphered so far the tower seemed suddenly to rock. It was the great clock in the neighboring tower striking of midnight; and I had yet to ford the passageway between the graves! Already I might have been missed. I read no more, but thrust the papers within my breast. Then I bent and kissed the hands of the monk, feeling again that rush of softness, and as I kissed the hands I noticed the great string of beads which fell from the girdle, and that too I kissed, and the crucifix dependent from it; and these things I did blindly, having then a hard and ignorant heart, but being compelled I knew not how.
Then I stole from the tower-room and again down the winding staircase; but first I had drawn the cowl over the face and hid the hands and feet in the folds of the habit; and so left him to quietness and the night.
I made the return passage without any mishap; and though a fear assailed me on the way lest I had locked myself within by closing the door, there was no ground for it, for the panel opened simply enough, and was indeed secured by a bolt on the passage side; which no doubt had prevented my finding the opening before. For either the monk had left it undone now by design, or being surprised by his last sickness, or else a companion or companions of his had fled the house-way while we slept, leaving the door unbarred. Yet I had seen no sign of any other inmate of the tower save one; that is of visible folk, for I doubt not there were others, ministering and invisible.
So I returned as I had come and went hastily to the banquet-hall. As I entered my lord and the Lord Boyle were returning slowly to their places. I caught a word of their speech. “You will remember the trust,” said my dear lord; and I knew not it was of me they were talking. “Yea,” said my Lord Boyle, and showed his yellow teeth; “let it be in my hands, or else when Jamie succeeds some Scot will have it.” And then he laughed, rubbing his lean hands together.
Then my lord observed me, and calling me to him he put his hand upon my shoulder and looked at me with surprise.
“Why, Wat,” he said, “what spider’s nest hath caught you?”
I looked down then at my brave apparel, and was confused to find that it was gray with dust and cobwebs from my journey.
“He hath been ratting,” said my Lord Boyle, “and hath pursued the quarry even within their holes.”
“It matters less,” said my lord, “since it is the hour to put on soberer attire. Be in good time, Wat,”—and so saying he released me. Then I hurried to my chamber in the roof, and was right pleased that I had not been questioned more closely. And when I had laid away my fine apparel and all was ready for our journey, I took my paper to the candle-light that I might decipher it.
It had been written for my hand and none other, and the writer thereof was mine own father’s brother. I was indeed of the illustrious Desmond house, though of a younger branch; and yet in the havoc that had come upon it I might well now be all that was living of the race. I had, it seemed, my father being slain, been hidden with my mother in the forest by a faithful clansman, who had provided us with what food he might; who being out one day snaring rabbits in the forest had been caught by a party of the enemy and borne away by them strapped to one of their horses. He had escaped them by the mercy of God, and returned to the place where he had left us, to find his lady dead of starvation and myself gone. Doubtless that sweet mother of mine had starved through giving all she had to her child. The man knew not if I had met an enemy and been hacked or speared to death, or if the wolves had had me, or the fierce eagles that yet infest the forest in search of tender prey. He grieved to death not knowing. But the friar, Brother Ambrose, the last of the White Monks of Youghall, and mine uncle, known to men as Roderick Fitzmaurice, rested not till he had found if I were of this life, and at last discovered me. Having written this history for mine eyes, he wrestled with me further that I should come out from among the enemies of my people. But to what end? I asked, having so much worldly wisdom, since the Desmond clan was gone down in blood, and its inheritance with strangers. Indeed, when I had come to the dead man’s prayers, I folded up the paper as one that will not listen and fears to be persuaded. Even then there came from the harbor a ringing of bells and the shouts of the sailors as they drew up the anchor of the Bon Aventure from its bed in the sands. I therefore thrust my fine garments into my sea-chest and shot the bolt; but mine uncle’s message to me I put within my doublet. As the ship swung round, and we headed her for eastward I turned my thoughts away from the quiet sleeper in the church tower, and looked rather to my lord’s dark figure as he leant over the vessel’s side, gazing not the way she was going, but rather to westward. For though he was the enemy of my race and my country, yet I loved him with such a love that nothing could dissever my heart from him. And for his sake I was not sorry even that I had not sooner discovered that poor kinsman of mine—the very last it well might be—in his hiding-place. For no doubt he had come many times to the room in which he had first found me, but never found me again. And now he was dead and past caring any more.
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