even saw her. There was but the swoop of wings."
"Why, Renot, my lad," insisted Edelwald, "we could see her white swan
now in this noon of moonlight, if she were abroad. Besides, D'Aulnay has
sentinels stationed around this height. They will check her."
"They will check the wind across Fundy Bay first," said the other man.
"You cannot think Le Rossignol has risen in the air on her swan's back?
That is too absurd," said Edelwald. "No one ever saw her play such
pranks. And you could have winged the heavy bird as he rose."
"I know she is out of Fort St. John at this minute," insisted Renot
Babinet. "And how are you to wing a bird which gets out of sight before
you know what has happened?"
"I say it is no wonder we have trouble in this seigniory," growled the
other man. "Our lady never could see a mongrel baby or a witch dwarf or
a stray black gown anywhere, but she must have it into the fort and make
it free of the best here."
"And God forever bless her," said Edelwald, baring his head.
"Amen," they both responded with force.
The silent cry was mighty behind Edelwald's lips;--the cry which he
intrusted not even to his human breath--
"My love--my love! My royal lady! God, thou who alone knowest my secret,
make me a giant to hold it down!"
XVIII.
THE SONG OF EDELWALD.
At daybreak a signal on the wall where it could be seen from D'Aulnay's
camp brought an officer and his men to receive Madame La Tour's
dispatches. Glaud Burge handed them, down at the end of a ramrod.
"But see yonder," he said to François Bastarack his companion, as they
stood and watched the messengers tramp away. He pointed to Klussman
below the fort--poor Klussman whom the pearly vapors of morning could
not conceal. "I could have done that myself in first heat, but I like
not treating with a man who did it coolly."
Parleying and demurring over the terms of surrender continued until
noon. All that time ax, saw and hammer worked in D'Aulnay's camp as if
he had suddenly taken to ship-building. But the pastimes of a victorious
force are regarded with dull attention by the vanquished. Finally the
papers were handed up bearing D'Aulnay's signature. They guaranteed to
Madame La Tour the safety of her garrison, who were to march out with
their arms and personal belongings, the household goods of her people;
and La Tour's ship with provisions enough to stock it for a voyage. The
money, merchandise, stores, jewels and ordnance fell to D'Aulnay with
the fort.
D'Aulnay marched directly on his conquest. His drums approached, and the
garrison ran to throw into a heap such things as they and their families
were to take away. Spotless weather and a dimpled bay adorned this lost
seigniory. It was better than any dukedom in France to these first
exiled Acadians. Pierre Doucett's widow and another bereaved woman knelt
to cry once more over the trench by the powder-house. Her baby, hid in a
case like a bolster, hung across her shoulder. Lady Dorinda's
belongings, numbered among the goods of the household, were also placed
near the gate. She sat within the hall, wrapped for her journey,
composed and silent. For when the evil day actually overtook Lady
Dorinda, she was too thorough a Briton to cringe. She met her second
repulse from Acadia as she had met her first, when Claude La Tour found
her his only consolation. In this violent uprooting of family life so
long grown to one place, Le Rossignol was scarcely missed. Each one
thought of the person dearest to himself and of that person's comfort.
Marie noted her absence, but the dwarf never came to harm. She was
certain to rejoin the household somewhere, and who could blame her for
avoiding the capitulation if she found it possible? The little
Nightingale could not endure pain. Edelwald drew the garrison up in line
and the gates were opened.
D'Aulnay entered the fort with his small army. He was splendidly
dressed, and such pieces of armor as he wore dazzled the eye. As he
returned the salute of Edelwald and the garrison, he paused and whitened
with chagrin. Klussman had told him something of the weakness of the
place, but he had not expected to find such a pitiful remnant of men.
Twenty-three soldiers and an officer! These were the precious creatures
who had cost him so much, and whom their lady was so anxious to save! He
smiled at the disproportionate preparations made by his hammers and
saws, and glanced back to see if the timbers were being carried in. They
were, at the rear of his force, but behind them intruded Father Vincent
de Paris wrapped in a blanket which one of the soldiers had provided for
him. The scantiness of this good friar's apparel should have restrained
him in camp. But he was such an apostle as stalks naked to duty if need
be, and he felt it his present duty to keep the check of religion upon
the implacable nature of D'Aulnay de Charnisay.
D'Aulnay ordered the gates shut. He would have shut out Father Vincent,
but it could not be managed without great discourtesy, and there are
limits to that with a churchman. The household and garrison ready to
depart saw this strange action with dismay, and Marie stepped directly
down from her hall to confront her enemy. D'Aulnay had seen her at Port
Royal when he first came to Acadia. He remembered her motion in the
dance, and approved of it. She was a beautiful woman, though her
Huguenot gown and close cap now gave her a widowed look--becoming to a
woman of exploits. But she was also the woman to whom he owed one defeat
and much humiliation.
He swept his plume at her feet.
"Permit me, Madame La Tour, to make my compliments to an amazon. My own
taste are women who stay in the house at their prayers, but the Sieur de
la Tour and I differ in many things."
"Doubtless, my lord De Charnisay," responded Marie with the dignity
which cannot taunt, though she still believed the outcast child to be
his. "But why have you closed on us the gates which we opened to you?"
"Madame, I have been deceived in the terms of capitulation."
"My lord, the terms of capitulation were set down plainly and I hold
them signed by your hand."
"But a signature is nothing when gross advantage hath been taken of one
of the parties to a treaty."
The mistake she had made in trusting to the military honor of D'Aulnay
de Charnisay swept through Marie. But she controlled her voice to
inquire,--
"What gross advantage can there be, my lord D'Aulnay--unless you are
about to take a gross advantage of us? We leave you here ten thousand
pounds of the money of England, our plate and jewels and furs, and our
stores except a little food for a journey. We go out poor; yet if our
treaty is kept we shall complain of no gross advantage."
"Look at those men," said D'Aulnay, shaking his glove at her soldiers.
"Those weary and faithful men," said Marie: "I see them."
"You will see them hanged as traitors, madame. I have no time to
parley," exclaimed D'Aulnay. "The terms of capitulation are not
satisfactory to me. I do not feel bound by them. You may take your women
and withdraw when you please, but these men I shall hang."
While he spoke he lifted and shook his hand as if giving a signal, and
the garrison was that instant seized, by his soldiers. Her women
screamed. There was such a struggle in the fort as there had been upon
the wall, except that she herself stood blank in mind, and pulseless.
The actual and the unreal shimmered together. But there stood her
garrison, from Edelwald to Jean le Prince, bound like criminals,
regarding their captors with that baffled and half ashamed look of the
surprised and overpowered. Above the mass of D'Aulnay's busy soldiery
timber uprights were reared, and hammers and spikes set to work on the
likeness of a scaffold. The preparations of the morning made the
completion of this task swift and easy. D'Aulnay de Charnisay intended
to hang her garrison when he set his name to the paper securing their
lives. The ringing of hammers sounded far off to Marie.
"I don't understand these things," she articulated. "I don't understand
anything in the world!"
D'Aulnay gave himself up to watching the process, in spite of Father
Vincent de Paris, whose steady remonstrances he answered only by shrugs.
In that age of religious slaughter the Capuchin could scarcely object to
decreasing heretics, but he did object as a man and a priest to such
barbarous treachery toward men with whom a compact had been made. The
refined nurture of France was not recent in D'Aulnay's experience, but
he came of a great and honorable house, and the friar's appeal was made
to inherited instincts.
"Good churchman," spoke out Jean le Prince, the lad, shaking his hair
back from his face, "your capote and sandals lie there by the door of
the tower, where Edelwald took thought to place them for you. But you
who have the soldier's heart should wear the soldier's dress, and hide
D'Aulnay de Charnisay under the cowl."
"You men-at-arms," Glaud Burge exhorted the guards drawn up, on each
side of him and his fellow-prisoners, "will you hang us up like dogs? If
we must die we claim the death of soldiers. You have your pieces in your
hands; shoot us. Do us such grace as we would do you in like extremity."
The guards looked aside at each other and then at their master, shamed
through their peasant blood by the outrage they were obliged to put upon
a courageous garrison. But Edelwald said nothing. His eyes were upon
Marie. He would not increase her anguish of self-reproach by the change
of a muscle in his face. The garrison was trapped and at the mercy of a
merciless enemy. His most passionate desire was to have her taken away
that she might not witness the execution. Why was Sieur Charles La Tour
sitting in the stockade at the head of Fundy Bay while she must endure
the sight of this scaffold?
Marie's women knelt around her crying. Her slow distracted gaze traveled
from Glaud Burge to Jean le Prince, from Renot Babinet to François
Bastarack, from Ambroise Tibedeaux along the line of stanch faces to
Edelwald. His calm uplifted countenance--with the horrible platform of
death growing behind it--looked, as it did when he happily met the sea
wind or went singing through trackless wilderness. She broke from her
trance and the ring of women, and ran before D'Aulnay de Charnisay.
"My lord," said Marie--and she was so beautiful in her ivory pallor, so
wonderful with fire moving from the deep places of her dilated black
eyes that he felt satisfaction in attending to her--"it is useless to
talk to a man like you."
"Quite, madame," said D'Aulnay. "I never discuss affairs with a woman."
"But you may discuss them with the king when he learns that you have
hanged with other soldiers of a ransomed garrison a young officer of the
house of De Born."
D'Aulnay ran his eye along the line. The unrest of Edelwald at Marie's
slightest parley with D'Aulnay reminded the keen governor of the face he
had last night seen under the cowl.
"The king will be obliged to me," he observed, "when one less heretical
De Born cumbers his realm."
"The only plea I make to you, my lord D'Aulnay, is that you hang me
also. For I deserve it. My men had no faith in your military honor, and
I had."
"Madame, you remind me of a fact I desired to overlook. You are indeed a
traitor deserving death. But of my clemency, and not because you are a
woman, for you yourself have forgotten that in meddling with war, I will
only parade you upon the scaffold as a reprieved criminal. Bring hither
a cord," called D'Aulnay, "and noose it over this lady's head." Edelwald
raged in a hopeless tearing at his bonds. The guards seized him, but he
struggled with unconquered strength to reach and protect his lady.
Father Vincent de Paris had taken his capote and sandals at Jean le
Prince's hint, and entered the tower. He clothed himself behind one of
the screens of the hall, and thought his absence short, but during that
time Marie was put upon the finished scaffold. A skulking reluctant
soldier of D'Aulnay's led her by a cord. She walked the long rough
planks erect. Her garrison to a man looked down, as they did at
funerals, and Edelwald sobbed in his fight against the guards, the tears
starting from under his eyelids as he heard her foot-fall pass near him.
Back and forth she trod, and D'Aulnay watched the spectacle. Her
garrison felt her degradation as she must feel their death. The grizzled
lip of Glaud Burge moved first to comfort her.
"My lady, though our hands be tied, we make our military salute to you,"
he said.
"Fret not, my lady," said Renot Babinet.
"Edelwald can turn all these mishaps into a song, my lady," declared
Jean le Prince. Marie had that sensation of lost identity which has
confused us all. In her walk she passed the loops dangling ready for her
men. A bird, poised for one instant on the turret, uttered a sweet long
trill. She could hear the river. It was incredible that all those
unknown faces should be swarming below her; that the garrison was
obliged to stand tied; that Lady Dorinda had braved the rabble of
soldiery and come out to wait weeping at the scaffold end. Marie looked
at the row of downcast faces. The bond between these faithful soldiers
and herself was that instant sublime.
"I crave pardon of you all," said Marie as she came back and the rustle
of her gown again passed them, "for not knowing how to deal with the
crafty of this world. My foolishness has brought you to this scaffold."
"No, my lady," said the men in full chorus.
"We desire nothing better, my lady," said Edelwald, "since your walking
there has blessed it."
Father Vincent's voice from the tower door arrested the spectacle. His
cowl was pushed back to his shoulders, baring the astonishment of his
lean face.
"This is the unworthiest action of your life, my son De Charnisay," he
denounced, shaking his finger and striding down at the governor, who
owned the check by a slight grimace.
"It is enough," said D'Aulnay. "Let the scaffold now be cleared for the
men."
He submitted with impatience to a continued parley with the Capuchin.
Father Vincent de Paris was angry. And constantly as D'Aulnay walked
from him he zealously followed.
The afternoon sunlight sloped into the walls, leaving a bank of shadow
behind the timbered framework, which extended an etching of itself
toward the esplanade. The lengthened figures of soldiers passed also in
cloudy images along the broken ground, for a subaltern's first duty had
been to set guards upon the walls. The new master of Fort St. John was
now master of all southern and western Acadia; but he had heard nothing
which secured him against La Tour's return with fresh troops.
"My friends," said D'Aulnay, speaking to the garrison, "this good friar
persuades in me more softness than becomes a faithful servant of the
king. One of your number I will reprieve."
"Then let it be Jean le Prince," said Edelwald, speaking for the first
time to D'Aulnay de Charnisay. "The down has not yet grown on the lad's
lip."
"But I pardon him," continued the governor, "on condition that he hangs
the rest of you."
"Hang thyself!" cried the boy. "Thou art the only man on earth I would
choke with a rope."
"Will no one be reprieved?"
D'Aulnay's eye, traveled from scorn to scorn along the row.
"It is but the pushing aside of a slab. They are all stubborn heretics,
Father Vincent. We waste time. I should be inspecting the contents of
this fort."
The women and children were flattening themselves like terrified
swallows against the gate; for through the hum of stirring soldiery
penetrated to them from outside a hint of voices not unknown. The
sentinels had watched a party approaching; but it was so small, and
hampered, moreover, by a woman and some object like a tiny gilded sedan
chair, that they did not notify the governor. One of the party was a
Jesuit priest by his cassock, and another his donné. These never came
from La Tour. Another was a tall Hollandais; and two servants lightly
carried the sedan up the slope. A few more people seemed to wait behind
for the purpose of making a camp, and there were scarce a dozen of the
entire company.
Marie had borne without visible exhaustion the labors of this siege, the
anguish of treachery and disappointment, her enemy's breach of faith and
cruel parade of her. The garrison were ranged ready upon the plank; but
she held herself in tense control, and waited beside Lady Dorinda, with
her back toward the gate, while her friends outside parleyed with her
enemy. D'Aulnay refused to admit any one until he had dealt with the
garrison. The Jesuit was reported to him as Father Isaac Jogues, and the
name had its effect, as it then had everywhere among people of the Roman
faith. No soldier would be surprised at meeting a Jesuit priest anywhere
in the New World. But D'Aulnay begged Father Jogues to excuse him while
he finished a moment's duty, and he would then come out and escort his
guest into the fortress.
The urgent demand, however, of a missionary to whom even the king had
shown favor, was not to be denied. D'Aulnay had the gates set ajar; and
pushing through their aperture came in Father Jogues with his donné and
two companions.
The governor advanced in displeasure. He would have put out all but the
priest, but the gates were slammed to prevent others from entering, and
slammed against the chair in which the sentinels could see a red-headed
dwarf. The weird melody of her screaming threats kept them dubious while
they grinned. The gates being shut, Marie fled through ranks of
men-at-arms to Antonia, clung to her and gave Father Jogues and Van
Corlaer no time to stand aghast at the spectacle they saw. Crying and
trembling, she put back the sternness of D'Aulnay de Charnisay, and the
pity of Father Vincent de Paris, and pleaded with Father Jogues and the
Hollandais for the lives of her garrison as if they had come with
heavenly authority.
"You see them with ropes around their necks, Monsieur Corlaer and
Monsieur Jogues, when here is the paper the governor signed,
guaranteeing to me their safety. Edelwald is scarce half a year from
France. Speak to the governor of Acadia; for you, Monsieur Corlaer, are
a man of affairs, and this good missionary is a saint--you can move
D'Aulnay de Charnisay to see it is not the custom, even in warfare with
women, to trap and hang a garrison who has made honorable surrender."
A man may resolve that he will not meddle with his neighbor's feuds, or
involve a community dependent on him with any one's formidable enemy.
Yet he will turn back from his course the moment an appeal is made for
his help, and face that enemy as Van Corlaer faced the governor of
Acadia, full of the fury roused by outrage. But what could he and Father
Jogues and the persevering Capuchin say to the parchment which the
governor now deigned to pass from hand to hand among them in reply?--the
permission of Louis XIII. to his beloved D'Aulnay de Charnisay (whom God
hold in His keeping) to take the Fort of St. John and deal with its
rebellious garrison as seemed to him fit, for which destruction of
rebels his sovereign would have him in loving remembrance.
During all this delay Edelwald stood with his beautiful head erect above
the noose, and his self-repressed gaze still following Marie. The wives
of other soldiers were wailing for their husbands. But he must die
without wife, without love. He saw Antonia holding her and weeping with
her. His blameless passion filled him like a great prayer. That changing
phantasm which we call the world might pass from before his men and him
at the next breath; yet the brief last song of the last troubadour burst
from his lips to comfort the lady of Fort St. John.
There was in this jubilant cry a gush and grandeur of power outmastering
force of numbers and brute cunning. It reached and compelled every
spirit in the fortress. The men in line with him stood erect and lifted
their firm jaws, and gazed forward with shining eyes. Those who had
faded in the slightest degree from their natural flush of blood felt the
strong throbs which paint a man's best on his face. They could not sing
the glory of death in duty, the goodness of God who gave love and valor
to man; but they could die with Edelwald.
The new master of Fort St. John was jealous of such dying as the song
ceased and he lifted his hand to signal his executioners. Father Jogues
turned away praying with tremulous lips. The Capuchin strode toward the
hall. But Van Corlaer and Lady Dorinda and Antonia held with the
strength of all three that broken-hearted woman who struggled like a
giantess with her arms stretched toward the scaffold.
"I _will_ save them--I _will_ save them! My brave Edelwald--all my brave
soldiers shall not die!--Where are my soldiers, Antonia? It is dark. I
cannot see them any more!"
POSTLUDE.
A TIDE-CREEK.
When ordinary days had settled flake on flake over this tragedy in
Acadia until memory looked back at it as at the soft outlines of a
snow-obliterated grave, Madame Van Corlaer stood one evening beside the
Hudson River, and for half an hour breathed again the salt breath of
Fundy Bay. Usually she was abed at that hour. But Mynheer had been
expected all day on a sailing vessel from New Amsterdam, and she could
not resist coming down once more through her garden to the wharf.
Van Corlaer's house, the best stone mansion in Rensselaerswyck--that
overflow of settlement around the stockade of Fort Orange--stood up the
slope, and had its farm appended. That delight of Dutchmen, an ample
garden, extended its central path almost like an avenue to the river.
Antonia need scarcely step off her own domain to meet her husband at the
wharf. She had lingered down the garden descent; for sweet herbs were
giving their souls to the summer night there; and not a cloud of a sail
yet appeared on the river. Some fishing-boats lay at the wharf, but no
men were idling around under the full moon. It was pleasanter to visit
and smoke from door to door in the streets above.
Antonia was not afraid of any savage ambush. Her husband kept the
Iroquois on friendly terms with the settlement. The years through which
she had borne her dignity of being Madame Van Corlaer constantly
increased her respect for that colonial statesman. The savages in the
Mohawk valley used the name Corlaer when they meant governor. Antonia
felt sure that the Jesuit missionary, Father Isaac Jogues, need not have
died a martyr's death if Van Corlaer had heard in time of his return to
the Mohawks.
At the bottom of her garden she rested her hands upon a gate in the low
stone wall. The mansion behind her was well ordered and prosperous. No
drop of milk was spilled in Antonia's domain without her knowledge. She
had noted, as she came down the path, how the cabbages were rounding
their delicately green spheres. Antonia was a housewife for whom maids
labored with zeal. She could manipulate so deftly the comfort-making
things of life. Neither sunset nor moonrise quite banished the dreamy
blue light on these rolling lands around the head-waters of the Hudson.
Across her tranquil commonplace happiness blew suddenly that ocean
breath from Fundy Bay; for the dwarf of Fort St. John, leading a white
waddling bird, whose feathers even in that uncertain light showed soil,
appeared from the screening masonry of the wall.
She stood still and looked at Antonia; and Antonia inside the gate
looked at her. That instant was a bubble full of revolving dyes. It
brought a thousand pictures to Antonia's sight. Thus silently had that
same dwarf with her swan appeared to a camp in the Acadian woods,
announcing trouble at Fort St. John.