THE TENDER MERCIES OF PRINCE CAMILLO.
"Tyranny is the wish to have in one way what can only be had in
another."--_Blaise Pascal_.
The young man eyed me insolently for a moment and turned again to his
sister.
"Camilla! will you have the goodness to explain?" he demanded.
But here, while she hesitated, searching her brother's face proudly
yet pitifully, as though unable quite to believe in the continued
brutality of his tone, I struck in.
"Pardon me, Signore," said I, "but an explanation from me may be
shorter."
"Eh? so you are English, and speak Corsican?"
"Or such Tuscan," answered I, modestly, "as may pass or a poor
attempt at it. Yes, I am English, and have come hither--as the
Princess, your sister, will tell you--on a political errand which you
may or may not consider important."
The Princess, who had turned and stood facing her brother again,
threw me a quick look.
"I know nothing of that," she said hurriedly, "save that he came with
five others in a ship from England and encamped at Paomia below;
that, being taken prisoners, they professed to be seeking the Queen
Emilia, to deliver her; and that thereupon of the six I let four go,
keeping this one as hostage, with his friend, who has since died."
"And the crown," put in Stephanu. "The Princess has forgotten to
mention the crown."
"What crown?"
"The crown, sir," said I boldly, seeing the Princess hesitate,
"of the late King Theodore of Corsica, given by him into my keeping."
I saw the priest start as if flicked with a whip, and shoot me a
glance of curiosity from under his loose upper lids. His pupil
stepped up and thrust his face close to mine.
"Eh? So you were seeking _me?_" he demanded. "You are mistaken, sir,"
said I, "whatever your reason for such a guess. My companions--one
of them my father, an Englishman and by name Sir John Constantine--
are seeking the Queen Emilia, whom they understand to be held
prisoner by the Genoese. Meanwhile your sister detains me as
hostage, and the crown in pawn."
I had kept an eye on the priest as I pronounced my father's name: and
again (or I was mistaken) the pendulous lids flickered slightly.
"You do not answer my main question," the young man persisted.
"What are you doing here, in Corsica, with the crown of King
Theodore?"
"I am the less likely to answer that question, sir, since you can
have no right to ask it."
"No right to ask it?" he echoed, stepping back with a slow laugh.
"No right to ask it--I! King Theodore's son?"
I shrugged my shoulders. I had a mind to laugh back at his
impudence, and indeed nothing but the mercy of Heaven restrained me
and so saved my life. As it was, I heard an ominous growl and
glanced around to find the whole company of bandits regarding me with
lively disfavour, whereas up to this point I had seemed to detect in
their eyes some hints of leniency, even of good will. By their looks
they had disapproved of their master's abuseful words to his sister,
albeit with some reserve which I set down to their training.
But even more evidently they believed to a man in this claim of his.
My gesture, slight as it was, gave his anger its opportunity.
He drew back a pace, his handsome mouth curving into a snarl.
"You doubt my word, Englishman?"
"I have no evidence, sir, for doubting King Theodore's," I answered
as carelessly as I could, hoping the while that none of them heard
the beating of my heart, loud in my own ears as the throb-throb of a
pump. "If you be indeed King Theodore's son, then your father--"
"Say on, sir."
"Why, then, your father, sir, practised some economy in telling me
the truth. But my father and I will be content with the Queen
Emilia's simple word."
As I began this answer I saw the Princess turn away, dropping her
hands. At its conclusion she turned again, but yet irresolutely.
"We will find something less than the Queen Emilia's word to content
you, my friend," her brother promised, eyeing me and breathing hard.
"Where is the crown, Stephanu?"
"In safe keeping, O Prince. I beg leave to say, too, that it was I
who found it in the Englishmen's camp and brought it to the
Princess."
"You shall have your reward, my good Stephanu. You shall put the
bearer, too, into safe keeping. Stand back, take your gun, and shoot
me this dog, here beside his grave."
The Princess stepped forward. "Stephanu," she said quietly,
"you will put down that gun."
Her brother rounded on her with a curse. For the moment she did not
heed, but kept her eyes on Stephanu, who had stepped back with musket
half lifted and finger already moving toward the trigger-guard.
"Stephanu," she repeated, "on my faith as a Corsican, if you raise
that gun an inch--even a little inch--higher, I will never speak to
you again." Then lifting a hand she swung round upon her brother,
whose rage (I thank Heaven) for the moment choked him. "Is it meet,
think you, O brother, for a King of Corsica to kill his hostage?"
"Is it meet, O sister," he snarled, "for you, of all women, to
champion a man--and a foreigner--before my soldiers? Shoot him,
Stephanu!"
Her head went up proudly. "Stephanu will not shoot. And you, my
brother, that are so careful--I sometimes think, so over-careful--of
my honour, for once bethink you that your own deserves attention.
This Englishman placed himself in my hands freely as a hostage.
From the first, since you force me to say it, I had no liking for
him. Afterwards, when I knew his errand, I hated him for your sake:
I hated him so that in my rage I strained all duty towards a hostage
that I might insult him. Marc'antonio will bear me witness."
"The Princess is speaking the truth before God," said Marc'antonio,
gravely. "She made the man a keeper of swine yonder." He waved a
hand toward the sty. "And he is, as I understand, a cavalier in his
own country."
"I did more than that," the Princess went on. "Having strained the
compact, I tempted him to break it--to shoot me or to shoot
Marc'antonio, so that one or other of us might be free to kill him."
She paused, again with her eyes on Marc'antonio, who nodded.
"And that also is the truth," he said. "She put a gun into his
hands, that he might kill me for having killed his friend.
I did not understand at the time."
"A pretty coward!" The young man flung this taunt out at me
viciously; but I had enough to do to hold myself steady, there by the
grave's edge, and did not heed him.
"I do not think he is a coward," said she. (O, but those words were
sweet! and for the first time I blessed her.) "But coward or no
coward, he is our hostage, and you must not kill him."
He turned to the priest, who all this while had stood with head on
one side, eyes aslant, and the air and attitude of a stranger who
having stumbled on a family squabble politely awaits its termination.
"Father Domenico, is my sister right? And may I not kill this man?"
"She is right," answered the reverend father, with something like a
sigh. "You cannot kill him consistently with honour, though I admit
the provocation to be great. The Princess appears to have committed
herself to something like a pledge." He paused here, and with his
tongue moistened his loose lips. "Moreover," he continued, "to kill
him, on our present information, would be inadvisable. I know--at
least I have heard--something of this Sir John Constantine whom the
young man asserts to be his father; and, by what has reached me, he
is capable of much."
"Do you mean," asked the Prince, bridling angrily, "that I am to fear
him?"
"Not at all," the priest answered quickly, still with his eyes
aslant. "But, from what I have heard, he was fortunate, long ago, to
earn the esteem of the good lady your mother, and"--he paused and
felt for his snuff-box--"it would appear that the trick runs in the
family."
"By God, then, if I may not kill him, I may at least improve on my
sister's treatment," swore the young man. "Made him her
swine-keeper, did she? I will promote him a step. Here, you!
Take and truss him by the heels!--and fetch me a chain, one of you,
from the forage-shed. . . ."
In the short time it took him to devise my punishment the Prince
displayed a devilishly ingenious turn of mind. Within ten minutes
under his careful directions they had me down flat on my back in the
filth of the sty, with my neck securely chained to a post of the
palisade, my legs outstretched, and either ankle strapped to a peg.
My hands they left free, to supply me (as the Prince explained) with
food and drink: that is to say, to reach for the loaf and the
pannikin of water which Marc'antonio, under orders, fetched from the
hut and laid beside me. Marc'antonio's punishment (for bearing
witness to the truth) was to be my gaoler and sty-keeper in my room.
He was promised, moreover, the job of hanging me as soon as my
comrades returned.
In this pleasant posture they left me, whether under surveillance or
not I could not tell, being unable to turn my head, and scarce able
even to move it an inch either way.
So I lay and stared up at the sky, until the blazing sun outstared
me. I will dwell on none of my torments but this, which toward
midday became intolerable. Certainly I had either died or gone mad
under it, but that my hands were free to shield me; and these I
turned in the blistering glare as a cook turns a steak on the
gridiron. Now and again I dabbled them in the pannikin beside me,
very carefully, ekeing out the short supply of water.
I had neither resisted nor protested. I hugged this thought and
meant, if die I must, to die hugging it. I had challenged the girl,
promising her to be patient. To be sure protest or resistance would
have been idle. But I had kept my word. I don't doubt that from
time to time a moan escaped me. . . . I could not believe that
Marc'antonio was near me, watching. I heard no sound at all, no
distant voice or bugle-call from the camp on the mountain. The woods
were silent . . . silent as Nat, yonder, in his grave. Surely none
but a fiend could sit and watch me without a word. . . .
Toward evening I broke off a crust of bread and ate it. The water I
husbanded. I might need it worse by-and-by, if Marc'antonio delayed
to come.
But what if no one should come?
I had been dozing--or maybe was wandering in slight delirium--when
this question wrote itself across my dreams in letters of fire, so
bright that it cleared and lit up my brain in a flash, chasing away
all other terrors. . . .
Mercifully, it was soon answered. Far up the glade a horn sounded--
my swine-horn, blown no doubt by Marc'antonio. The hogs were coming.
. . . Well, I must use my hands to keep them at their distance.
I listened with all my ears. Yes, I caught the sound of their
grunting; it came nearer and nearer, and--was that a footstep, close
at hand, behind the palisade?
Something dropped at my side--dropped in the mire with a soft thud.
I stretched out my hand, felt for it, clutched it.
It was a file.
My heart gave a leap. I had found a friend, then!--but in whom?
Was it Marc'antonio? No: for I heard his voice now, fifty yards
away, marshalling and cursing the hogs. His footstep was near the
gate. As he opened it and the hogs rushed in, I slipped the file
beneath me, under my shoulder blades.
The first of the hogs, as he ran by me, put a hoof into my pannikin
and upset it; and while I struck out at him, to fend him aside,
another brute gobbled up my last morsel of crust. The clatter of the
pannikin brought Marc'antonio to my side. For a while he stood there
looking down on me in the dusk; then walked off through the sty to
the hut and returned with two hurdles which he rested over me, one
against another, tentwise, driving their stakes an inch or two into
the soil. Slight as the fence was, it would protect me from the
hogs; and I thanked him. He growled ungraciously, and, picking up
the pannikin, slouched off upon a second errand. Again when he
brought it replenished, and a fresh loaf of bread with it, I thanked
him, and again his only answer was a growl.
I heard him latch the gate and walk away toward the hut. Night was
falling on the valley. Through my roof of hurdles a star or two
shone down palely. Now was my time. I slipped a hand beneath me and
recovered my file--my blessed file.
The chain about my neck was not very stout. I had felt its links
with my fingers a good score of times in efforts, some deliberate,
others frantic, to loosen it even by a little. Loosen it I could
not; the Prince had done his work too cleverly: but by my calculation
an hour would suffice me to file it through.
But an hour passed, and two hours, and still I lay staring up at the
stars, listening to the hogs as they rubbed flanks and chose and
fought for their lairs: still I lay staring, with teeth clenched and
the file idle in my hand.
I had challenged, and I had sworn. "Bethink you now what pains you
can put upon me. . . ." These tortures were not of her devising; but
I would hold her to them. I was her hostage, and, though it killed
me, I would hold her to the last inch of her bond. As a Catholic,
she must believe in hell. I would carry my wrong even to hell then,
and meet her there with it and master her.
I was mad. After hours of such a crucifixion a man must needs be
mad. . . . "Prosper, lad, your ideas are naught and your ambitions
earth: but you have a streak of damned obstinacy which makes me not
altogether hopeless of you!" These had been Nat's words, a month
ago; and Nat lay in his grave yonder. . . . The cramp in my legs, the
fiery pain ringing my neck, met and ran over me in waves of total
anguish. At the point where my will failed me to hold out, the power
failed me (I thank Heaven) to lift a hand. Yet the will struggled
feebly; struggled on to the verge over which all sensation dropped
plumb, as into a pit.
I unclosed my eyes upon the grey dawn; but upon what dawn I knew not,
whether of earth or purgatory or hell itself. They saw it swimming
in a vague light: but my ears, from a sound as of rushing waters,
awoke to a silence on which a small footfall broke, a few yards away.
Marc'antonio must have unpenned the hogs; for the sty was empty.
And the hogs in their rush must have thrown down the hurdles
protecting me; for these lay collapsed, the one at my side, the other
across me.
The light footfall drew close and halted. I looked up into the face
of the Princess.
She came, picking her way across the mire; and with caution, as if
she feared to be overheard. Clearly she had expected to find the sty
empty, for even to my dazed senses her dismay was evident as she
caught sight of me beneath the hurdle.
"You have not gone! Oh, why have you not gone?"
She was on her knees beside me in the filth. I heard her calling to
Marc'antonio, and presently Marc'antonio came, obedient as ever, yet
protesting.
"He has not gone!" She moved her hands with a wringing gesture.
I tried to speak, but for answer could only spread my hand, which
still grasped the file: and for days after it kept a blue weal bitten
across the palm.
I heard Marc'antonio's voice protesting as she took the file and
sawed with it frantically across my neck-chain.
"But he must escape and hide, at least."
"He cannot, Princess. The torture has worn him out."
"It were better he died, then. For I must go."
"It were better he died, Princess: but his youth is tough. And that
you must go is above all things necessary. The Prince would kill
me. . . ."
"A little while, Marc'antonio! The file is working."
"To what end, Princess?--since time is wanting. The bugle will
call--it may call now at any moment. And if the Prince should miss
you--Indeed it were better that he died--"
Their voices swam on my ear through giddy whirls of mist, I heard him
persuade her to go--at the last insist upon her going. Still the
file worked.
Suddenly it ceased working. It seemed to me that they both had
withdrawn, and my neck still remained in bondage, though my legs were
free. I knew that my legs were free though I had not the power to
test this by drawing them up. I tried once, and closed my eyes,
swooning with pain.
Upon the swoon broke a shattering blow, across my legs and below the
knees; a blow that lifted my body to clutch with both hands upon
night and fall back again upon black unconsciousness.