THE GAOL
ADERHOLD looked forth from a narrow grating, so high-placed
that he must stand a-tiptoe like a child to see at all. Summer
without,—summer, summer, and the winds of heaven! Within the gaol was
summer close and stagnant. It was difficult for light and air to make
their way into the space where he was kept. What could come came, but
much was prevented by the walls and the intention with which they had
been built. In that day, in a prison such as this, a noisy medley of
people without freedom might be found in the dark and damp central
passage and larger rooms or in the high-walled and dismal bit of court.
All manner of crime and no-crime, soil, mistake, and innocence huddled
there together, poisoning and being poisoned. Time and space received
of their poison, carried it without these walls with at least as much
ease as air and light came in, and distributed it with a blind face and
an impartial hand.
But certain prisoners, those that people without the prison thought too
poisonous or were willing vengefully to make suffer, were not allowed
the hallway or the court or speech with fellow misery. These were put
into small, twilight chambers or dungeons.
Aderhold paced twelve feet by six—twelve feet by six. He was shackled,
a chain from ankle to ankle, another from wrist to wrist. But they
were not heavy, and there was slack enough, so that one might walk and
to some extent use the hands. Twelve feet by six—twelve feet by six.
What light fell through the loophole window fell in one thin shaft of
gold-dust. The walls were damp to the touch, and scratched over with
names, ribaldry, and prayers. He himself, with a bit of pointed stone
that he had found, was graving in Latin upon an unmarked breadth.
Twelve by six—twelve by six—where the straw pallet was flung, not
more than three feet clear.
He knew well how to avail himself of the escape of the mind and thereby
to defeat the hours. He had no books, but memory and imagination were
to him landscape and library, while the searching thought worked here
as elsewhere. Memory and imagination could become his foes; Aderhold
had known that from of old. Oftenest friends and great genii, but
sometimes foes with mowing faces and stabbing, icy fingers. But
strangely to him, in these days, no hostile side appeared; or if it
came, it came in lessened strength; or if its strength was the same,
then the opposing forces within him had themselves gathered power to
overcome. It seemed to him that of late he had come to a turning; fear,
shrinking, and dismay, that had often met him full course in life,
often lurked for him at corners he must pass, seemed now themselves
somewhat shrunken and sinewless. He had known that there was further
growth within him—oh, further, further!—and that some day he would
turn and look them in the face and see them for the pygmies that
they were. It seemed that the dawn of that day had been nearer than
he knew.... Twelve feet by six—twelve feet by six—with as even and
steady a pace as the irons would allow, and all the time to fancy that
he walked free in Hawthorn Wood. Then, for a change, to draw himself
up and see what might be seen through the slit of window. What might
be seen was the topmost branch of a tree and a gargoyled angle of the
great church tower, and above all a scimitar breadth of blue sky.
From that to turn and grave at a letter upon the wall; then to walk
again; then to rest upon the straw while the subtile body went free,
passed like an emanation through the prison walls and wandered in
foreign lands, and where there was neither land nor water underfoot.
At times he took under consideration his own present predicament and
earthly future. But the sting and terror were gone. That they were
so he thanked his higher self, his widening, deepening, marching
consciousness.
His present case.... There had been the examination immediately after
his arrest and commitment to this gaol, the examination when he had
admitted the apostasy and denied the sorcery. But that had been weeks
ago, and since then naught. Day after day in this dusk place, and only
the turnkey had entered.
This gaoler was a battered, sometime soldier, red-faced and
wry-mouthed. What romance had been in his life appeared to have come to
him with the dykes and green levels and waters of the Low Countries.
Chance leading him one day to the discovery that his prisoner knew
Zutphen, Utrecht, and Amsterdam, he had henceforth, at each visit,
plunged back for one short moment into the good old wars and renewed a
lurid happiness. The reflex, striking upon Aderhold, lightened his lot
as prisoner. The gaoler, after the first few days, exhibited toward
him no personal brutality. Once he made, unexpectedly, the remark
that he had seen good fighting done by all manner of people, and that
the Devil must have some virtue in order to make so good a stand. But
the gaoler’s visits were of the briefest, and he was close-mouthed
as to all things save the wars. If he knew when assizes would be, he
chose not to impart it. One day only he had been communicative enough
to speak of the commission named by the Privy Council. Who were the
commissioners? He named the members from this side of the county—two
or three of the clergy, several considerable country gentlemen. From
the Hawthorn end Squire Carthew and his brother and Master Clement the
minister. It had been at work, the commission, meeting and meeting and
taking people up. The matter was become a big matter, making a noise
through the country. They said the King himself was interested. A
bishop was coming—and the Witch Judge.
“The Witch Judge?”
“Aye, the Witch Judge.”
But the gaoler would say no more—Aderhold was not sure that he knew
much more. He left the cell, and at no other visit would he speak of
anything but the Dutch and the good wars.... What he had said had left
a sharp thorn of anxiety,—not for the prisoner’s self. Aderhold knew
perfectly well how palely hope gleamed upon Gilbert Aderhold. He would
be done to death. But he knew also, from much observation, how they
dragged the net so as to take in unallied forms. He tried to think of
any at Hawthorn or thereabouts who might be endangered. He had been
intimate with no one; none there had been confidant or disciple. How
many that could save he had had occasion to note in France and Italy.
Speech with such an one, acts of mere neighbourliness, the sheerest
accidental crossing of paths—anything served for prosecution and
ruin.... In the lack of all knowledge he was chiefly anxious about old
Dorothy and the boy her nephew, and the youth to whom he had given
books. He never thought of Joan as being in peril.
Counting the days, he gathered that assizes could now be no great
way off. Then would he hear and know, be judged and suffer. After
that—continuance, persistence, being, yet and for ever, though he
knew not the mode nor the manner of experience.... The gold light lay
across the cell like a fairy road. He turned upon his side, eased wrist
and ankle as best he might, and with the chain across his breast fell
half asleep. Ocean waves seemed to bear him up, a strong warm wind
to blow upon him, birds to be flying toward him from some beautiful,
friendly strand....
The grating of the key roused him. It was not the gaoler’s time of day,
but he was here, red-faced and wry-mouthed.
Aderhold rose to his feet. “Are the Judges come?”
The gaoler shook his head. “No, no! They’re trying highway thieves next
county. You’re to be lodged t’other side of gaol.”
They went down a winding stair and through a dark and foul passageway,
then from one general room to another. The place was here dusk and
gloom, here patched with sunny light. It was well peopled with shapes
despairing and complaining, or still and listless, or careless and
noisy. The gaoler and Aderhold crossed a bit of court and came by
a small door into a long and narrow room where again there were
prisoners, men and women.
“Stand here,” said the gaoler, “while I get an order.” He moved away to
a door in the wall.
The place was warm and dusk, save where from high windows there fell
a broken and wavering light. There was a dull murmur as of droning
bees. Sound, too, from the town square without floated in,—summer
sounds. A fugitive memory came to Aderhold. It was years ago, and a
spring morning, and he was riding across the square with Will the
serving-man, Master Hardwick behind in the litter, ahead on his great
roan Harry Carthew. Upon the heels of that retracing came another. It
was last winter again, and he stood on a doorstep not far from here,
and ten feet away Sir Richard from the castle sat his horse and smelled
at his silver box of spices.... He came back to the present hour.
This place was long, like a corridor; it was curiously gold-brown and
red-brown, like a rich painting for light and shadow. He looked across
and, standing alone against the wall, he saw Joan Heron.... All noise
stilled itself, all other shapes passed. It was as though there were
spread around them the loneliest desert or sea-strand in all the world.
Joan stood straight against the wall. Her grey dress was torn, her grey
eyes had shadows beneath them, she had no colour in cheek or lip, and
she stood indomitable.
Aderhold put his hand before his eyes. “Mistress Friendly Soul,” he
said, “why are you here?”
“For somewhat the same reason,” she answered, “that you are here.
Because it is a crazed world.”
“How long—?”
“A long time.... Nearly four weeks.”
“Is it my misery to have brought you here?”
“No,” said Joan, “cruelty and wrong brought me here.”
“You are charged with—”
“Yes. With witchcraft.”
The gaoler, returning, began furiously to grumble that he would have no
speaking together, and urged Aderhold away. There was naught to do but
to obey; he went, but at the door looked back. She was standing with
her grey eyes and her sorrowful face set in scorn of this place and of
the world. The door closed between them.
“No!” said the gaoler. “No questions, for I’ll not answer them. Say
naught and pay naught!—Down this stair. You won’t be so well lodged.”
It mattered not greatly to Gilbert Aderhold how he was lodged. When the
gaoler was gone and the grating key removed, and solitude with him in
this dim place, he lay down upon the stone that made its flooring and
hid his face. After a time, rising, he walked the dungeon where he was
immured. He struck his shackled hands against the wall, pressed his
forehead against the stone....
The hours passed, the day passed, another night passed; another dawn
came, strengthening outside into burning day. The gaoler appeared for
a moment morning and evening, then darkness and silence.... He thought
that he must be yet nearer the great church than he had been in his
first cell. He could hear the bells, and they clanged more loudly here.
Aderhold, pacing the space not much longer or wider than a grave, heard
in their ringing church bells far and near and deep in time. He heard
them ringing over Europe and from century to century. He heard the
bells of a countryside that had rung when he was a child and had loved
them well. He thought of the hosts who had loved the church bells, who
loved them yet; of the sweetness and peace and musical memory they
were to many—to very many; of the thousand associations, hovering
like overtones, thoughts of old faces, old scenes, old gladnesses. He
saw old, peaceful faces of men and women who had made their religion
a religion of love and had loved the church bells. Waves of fragrant
memories came to Aderhold himself—days of a serious, quiet childhood
when he had pondered over Bible stories; when in some leafy garden
corner, or on his bed at night, he had gone in imagination step by step
through that drama of Judea, figuring himself as a boy who followed,
as, maybe, a younger brother of the beloved John. It came back to
him—as, indeed, it had never left him—the soft and bright and good,
the pristine part, the Jesus part, the natural part. _Do unto others
as thou wouldst have others do unto you_—_Love thy neighbour as
thyself_—_I say unto you until seventy times seven times_—
The church bells! The church bells! But they had swung him here into
this narrow place and dark, and they would swing him into a darker and
a narrower. They had swung Joan Heron there where she stood against the
wall.... The many and the many and the many they had rung and swung to
torture, infamy, and death! The church bells! They rang in the name of
a gentle heart, but they rang also for the savage and poor guesses,
the ferocities, the nomad imagination of an ancient, early people.
They rang for Oriental ideas of despot and slave, thrones and princes,
glittering reward of eternal, happy indolence, fearful punishment of
eternal physical torment and ignominy! They rang head beneath the foot,
and he that raiseth voice against this Order, not his body only, but
his soul and his memory shall be flayed!... Palestine or England, what
did it matter? Caiaphas or the Christian Church?... The searching,
questing spirit that, age by age, lifted from the lower past toward the
light of further knowledge, larger scope—and the past that, age by
age, hurled its bolts and let its arrows fly and rang its iron bells
against that spirit.... The bells rang and rang. He heard them sweet
and softened across the years and knew that many loved them and held
them holy; he heard them ring, jubilantly, above many a martyr’s stake,
massacre, war, and torture chamber, ring the knell of just questioning,
ring the burial, for yet longer and yet longer, of the truth of things;
and knew that many, and those not the least worthy, must abhor them. He
had loved them, too, but to-day he loved them not. They clanged with
a hoarse old sound of savage gong and drum and tube calling to the
sacrifice....
Between morning and midday the door opened and his red-faced,
wry-mouthed friend of the Dutch wars appeared. “Two of the
commissioners would talk with you.” They climbed the stairs leading
from the darkness, and passed again through that long and narrow room.
But though there were prisoners here, Joan Heron was not among them.
The gaoler turned to the left and, opening a door, signed to him to
enter a fair-sized, well-lighted room where were chairs and a table.
The light dazzled him, coming from the almost night underfoot. When his
vision cleared he saw that the two who awaited him were the minister of
Hawthorn and Master Harry Carthew.