"I shall not help you to do that."
"Then I shall go by myself."
Harry was a straightforward youth, who disliked what he could not
understand. There was something disgraceful as well as dreadful in a
Moorish captivity. If the lost girl was a Mahometan slave, the less
they knew of her the better; and as for the witch in the forest, in
plain English he was very much afraid of her.
"I will not hear of such a thing, Nella," he said. "It is very wicked
to consult a witch who has sold her soul to the Evil One. Besides, how
do you know what she might do to you! Now, do you think Father Anselm,
or the Lady Abbess, or your aunt, or Sir Walter would consent to it?"
"No," said Nella, "of course not. But I am sure that it is right to go.
And I shall tell my beads all the way and wear my cross round my neck.
She cannot harm my soul or my body while I have that. I will let her
cut my hair off and give her my string of pearls if she wants them. And
if you are afraid, I will go by myself."
"Afraid! I am not afraid of the forest! But you ought not to deceive
Dame Agnes and go in secret."
"Very well," said Nella. "And ought you to have got out at the little
postern, and gone to Dunford Fair, when Sir Walter forbade you? Or away
down on the rocks to get the sea-gull's eggs, when he sent you to the
Master Armourer at Newton? If you may play truant for pleasure, surely
I may for a good purpose."
Master Harry Hartsed, like many another, found his principles impeded by
his practice, and, dropping the question of obedience, observed--
"You are a girl, which alters the question."
"Ask Father Anselm if a boy has any more right to be disobedient than a
girl," retorted Nella.
"I shall not let you run into danger," said Harry, firmly.
"Then," said the girl, bursting into tears, "I shall be very unhappy,
and I thought you loved me better. I'll never forgive you--never. And,
oh dear, dear Harry, _do_ help me--_do_! I don't want Walter Coplestone
and Adela to know about it; but if you are so cruel, I--I think I must
ask Walter. He would--"
Perhaps the fact that Nella was a girl _did_ alter the question. Harry
yielded, as he usually did, to her strong will and ready tongue, and
said--
"Well, what do you want me to do?"
"To wait outside the postern to-morrow at the full of the moon. I can
get out, but I can't get across the moat; so I want you to have your
little boat ready, dear Harry. Then, I am not afraid of the forest; but
I don't know the way to the blasted oak, and you do. So you must come,
and wait there while I go and see the witch. You will, dear Harry!"
Harry was perfectly aware that Nella was going to do a thing that was
both wrong and dangerous; but, alas for his good nature! he hated saying
no, and more than one scrape that lay heavy on a tender conscience and
truthful spirit had been caused by this weakness. Young as Nella was,
she was so much of a woman for her years that he, whose thoughts had
hardly yet strayed beyond his boyish round of duties and amusements,
could not withstand either her coaxing or her contempt. He admired her
more, though he hardly knew if he liked her so well as kind little
Adela; but Nella was queen of Northberry Manor, and turned all the young
people there round her finger.
Besides, he could not make her give up her plan save by betraying her
secret, and he could not let her carry it out alone. In the depths of
that untrodden forest, strange things were sometimes seen, and much
stranger were imagined. Many a frightened woodman or swineherd had seen
a werewolf dash aside into the impenetrable undergrowth, or in a sudden
clearance had beheld a gnome or a demon grinning at him from between the
trees, had heard the rush of the wild huntsman over his head in the
autumn storms, and fled in terror from the haunted spot. No doubt it
needed little to suggest these and the like phantoms; but it takes a
long time for any race of animals to become extinct, and chance
specimens of the wolf and the wild boar may have lingered in forest
glades long after they were supposed to be exterminated. And wild men
of the woods may have had a real existence in a state of society when
maniacs were regarded with superstitious horror, and when these vast
forests afforded a refuge for criminals and outlaws of every
description.
To the boy and girl who by the light of the May moon penetrated the
forest glades, they seemed to be peopled with fearful forms and more
fearful possibilities. Moonlight and towering tree-trunks, thick
undergrowths of hazel and elder, made strange combinations; and as at
the sound of their footsteps great owls and woodpeckers started from
their roosting-places and screeched and whirred round their heads, hares
and foxes rushed through the grass and brambles, and the wind stirred
and echoed through the tree-tops, they shuddered, and Nella felt that
she had hardly counted the cost of the undertaking. The path was
tolerably plain to them; it was a horse track, and led through the
forest down to the shore, and they pursued it for about a mile, in
almost entire silence, and then turned aside to the right into a
narrower one, which shortly led them, to what was always called the
blasted oak. This was a great withered tree, which stood alone in the
centre of a clearing, without a leaf or a twig to break the forlorn
aspect of its wide-stretching arms now glimmering white in the
moonlight.
"Now," said Nella, "we must sound a hunting horn, and some one will show
us the way to the witch."
Harry took hold of the horn that was slung round his neck; to sound it
required a considerable effort; but he was ashamed to hesitate in
Nella's presence, and putting it to his lips, blew a blast much fainter
than that with which he was accustomed to summon the dogs on a hunting
morning. It seemed to them as if the whole forest rang with the sound,
as if it echoed away through glade and thicket till it must rouse
Northberry Manor itself, nay, as if it might call the whole country to
arms.
Nella shrank up to Harry and they both stood trembling and terrified.
No one answered their summons.
"The witch will not come, Nella," said Harry in, it must be confessed, a
tone of relief.
"Then we must blow again," said Nella; but, as she spoke, they saw
running in the grass in front of them a little white rabbit. Instead of
starting from them it ran up to Nella's feet, and then away from her for
a short distance, then back again. "Is that the witch?" she whispered.
"Must I follow that? I will cross myself first." As the rabbit
retained its form and showed no alarm at the holy sign, Nella, summoning
all her courage, quitted Harry's hand--as no two people could, it was
supposed, approach the witch together--and followed the little creature,
which now turned and ran back into the wood. Nella, child as she was,
was of the stuff that makes heroes. She conquered her terrors, and
clasping her cross tight, she followed the mysterious summons. It did
not occur to her that the animal was pulled by a string attached to its
neck. It did not lead her very far, for she soon found herself in front
of a low hut, under the door of which the rabbit disappeared. Nella
tapped timidly, the door was flung back, and she stepped into a tiny
room, very full of smoke, since the chimney consisted only of a hole in
the roof. Neither in that respect nor in any other did it differ from
the huts of the peasantry round, except that a torch was stuck into a
wooden stand of peculiar shape in the centre. The roof was so low that
the tall Nella could have touched it with her hand, and on the floor
under the torch sat a very little woman, with black eyes, sharp
features, and a red cloak over her head. She rose as Nella entered, and
stood upright, even then hardly reaching to the girl's shoulder, and
said a few words in a language which Nella recognised, though she did
not quite understand. "I cannot speak Cornish," she said.
Perhaps the witch was not accustomed to visitors with their wits so much
about them, though the old Cornish language still crossed the border
into Devon, and was not unknown there among the peasantry. Still, it
added to the mystery of the witch's proceedings in the eyes of some of
her visitors, and increased the confidence of those to whom it was
familiar.
"And what do you want of me then, maiden?" she said in English.
"I am Eleanor Northberry; I want to know where my sister is who was
stolen away by the Moors, and I will give you these pearls if you will
tell me," said Nella, who had rehearsed her little speech. She looked
at the witch as she spoke, in full confidence of receiving an answer,
and with less fear than she had expected. Somehow, there was something
very commonplace about the witch now that she had found her.
"You have asked a hard question, my lady," said the witch in a much more
respectful tone. She knew her position too well to frighten the young
lady of the Manor to death, aware that, though feared and tolerated, a
little too much licence would bring the laws against witchcraft in full
operation upon her. She turned her back on Nella, and mumbled and
muttered a little to herself, and then facing round, said in a wheedling
tone, "Sure, it's the face of the lovely young lady herself, I read in
the stars. Wouldn't you like to hear what suitors you will have, my
pretty lady--about the great lord across the sea?"
"No," said Nella, though a little reluctantly. "I want to hear about
Catalina. For," she thought, "I shall not be able to pay her to tell me
_too_ much, and besides,"--Nella's thoughts here became hazy even to
herself; but they were to the effect that she would not use this sinful
means of information more than she could help.
"I see," said the witch, after a moment, "a maiden like this one before
me!"
"Yes," said Nella, "we were both of an age, and alike exactly."
"Her eyes are blue, and her face is fair," looking at her visitor's.
"Those around are--dark--dark."
"Yes--for the Moors are black," eagerly said Nella. "Oh, is she alive
and happy?"
"The prisoners of the Moors live far away," said the witch. "One day
shall there be a great ransom--and a great deliverance. Friends shall
meet across the sea--a talisman will save the lost."
"Why, I come from across the sea," said Nella. "A talisman! would it be
the cross that Prince Fernando gave us?"
"Ay, the fate of a prince is in the balance," said the witch,
mysteriously.
"But shall I ever see my sister again?" urged Nella.
"Across the sea--across the sea," repeated the witch. "I can tell no
more, my lady--no more."
"Then I think I had better go home," said Nella, hardly knowing whether
she were impressed or disappointed, but a good deal less frightened than
when she came in.
"Give me the pearls, and keep the secret of your visit, else will the
talisman work for ill. But now go home, Mistress Nella, go home with
Master Harry, and don't you be coming into the forest at night; 'tisn't
fitting for young ladies like you, and will anger his honour, Sir
Walter, sure enough."
The different tone in which these last words were spoken startled Nella,
for the witch dropped all her mysterious solemnity, and spoke, with
half-coaxing command, in a voice that sounded strangely familiar.
Perhaps she was afraid of losing the doles of bread that Dame Agnes
Northberry dispensed in the courtyard of the Manor, and which old Bess,
as she was called, came to claim without any one guessing at her
identity with the witch of the forest, who was visited in darkness and
mystery. The young lady of Northberry was a client with whom she was
afraid to deal.
On the whole, Harry, standing without in the darkness, listening to the
strange cries of bird and beast, and watching the awful shadows change
and sway in the rising wind, had the hardest time of it. He had
followed Nella almost to the door of the hut, and was unspeakably
thankful when she ran out alive and unhurt and ready to hurry home as
fast as possible.
She hardly spoke, till they were safe out of the forest shades and in
the familiar home fields, and then Harry said, in a subdued tone, "Was
it very terrible, Nell?"
"No--no," said Nella, with hesitation. "She said Catalina was across
the sea, and had a talisman--the cross, you know--and that if I saw her
it would be across the sea. But I was not much frightened,--and I don't
think there was anything--wicked. There were no--demons." Nella sunk
her voice a little, and spoke in a tone of slight disappointment mingled
with relief.
"Well," said Harry, breaking the spell with a laugh, "for all she told
you, you might as well have stayed at home, Nell."
"No, not when I had said I would go."
But they both thought it rather remarkable that the next morning Harry
Hartsed received a letter from his relations at Lisbon, duly favoured by
a ship bearing despatches to the court, inviting him to come to Portugal
and try his fortunes "across the sea."