Across the Salt Seas: A Romance of the War of Succession

by John Bloundelle-Burton

From my ghastly, silent warder I had tried more than once to obtain some hint, or information, as to when I might expect my sentence to be carried out--if I could have learnt that, I should have known also that Gramont was gone--was free--that, my God! Juana was dead, or near to her death. But as well might I have asked the walls of this cell in which I was, for a word or sign. I wrote on those walls with the nail a question--the question: "When am I to die?" and he stared as stolidly at it as though he were no more able to see than to speak or hear. Thinking, perhaps, that he could not read, I made sighs upon my fingers to him, at all of which he shook his head, though what he meant to convey I know not. Yet, had my mind not been so distraught, I should have remembered that, perhaps, if he could not understand the one neither could he the other. Reflecting later on, however, I felt sure that he was able to do both--it was the only way in which one so afflicted as he was could have been made to understand his orders; and, still later, I knew that such was the case. And now, on that Sunday, as the horrid gloom of the winter night enveloped all the country around, while up from the pastures and fields there rose a vapour or fog, I took a terrible resolve, driven thereto by the misery of my reflections.

I determined that, if my death by the hands of the executioner came not to-morrow, I would take my own life. I could endure no longer, could think no more upon Juana as a dead woman, as one slain by her own hand.

"Oh! Juana, Juana," I wailed more than once, "my lost Juana." Then added, with fierceness, "Yet--no matter. We meet to-morrow at the latest."

Though they had taken my weapons from me ere they brought me here, there was enough of opportunity to my hand for accomplishing my purpose. There was the nail I had found--my sash, or belt--my cravat--either would serve for my purpose if I was brave enough to accomplish it.

"Brave enough--brave enough!" I found myself repeating. "Brave enough! Or," I whispered, "cowardly enough? Which is it? Which?"

And, as still the long hours of the night went on, and I lay on my pallet staring up into the darkness, listening to the hours told over and over again by the bells, until my soul sickened at their sound, watching a glint of the moon's rays on the metal roof of the cathedral, I answered my own question, reasoned with myself that self-destruction was the coward's, not the brave man's, act, and resolved at last to cast that awful resolution behind me, to endure and meet my fate like a man, as a gallant soldier should.

And so, eased--I scarce knew why--by my determination, I fell at last into a tranquil sleep, and dreamt that I was back in England, walking in my father's old flower garden in the Weald, with my love, Juana, by my side.

Some unaccustomed noise awoke me from that fair dream--something to which I was not used in the long silence of the nights--some sound which, as I raised myself on my elbow and peered around the cell, I could not understand; for in that cell there was no other presence, as for a moment I had imagined when I sprang up, half asleep and half awake; the moon, which had now overtopped the cathedral towers, showed that plain enough. Deep scurrying clouds were passing beneath her face swiftly--obscuring sometimes her brilliancy for some moments, 'tis true; yet, as she emerged now and again from them, her flood poured in and lit up the whole chamber. There was no one in it but myself!

What, therefore, was the sound I had heard? Stealthy footsteps outside?--those of my doomsmen, perhaps!--or was it some silent executioner about to steal in on me in the night, thereby to prevent the publicity of a death in the market place--a death which might by chance be reported to my own countrymen afar off, and like enough, if the war rolled down this way, be bitterly avenged? Was that it?

Again beneath the moon there passed heavy clouds, extinguishing her light so that for a moment my prison was once more steeped in darkness--I found myself thinking that there would be snow ere morning; that, if that morning brought my death, 'twould be a bleak and wintry scene which the flames of the braséro would illuminate!--then through a break in those clouds a ray stole forth, a ray that glinted in through the iron bars of the window grate, across the stone-flagged floor, and onward to the heavily clamped door, then was arrested there--one spot shining out amidst those beams with the brightness and the dazzle of a diamond.