In which we Seek a Lost Lady
Beside the minister and myself, nothing human moved in the crimson
woods. Blue haze was there, and the steady drift of coloured leaves, and
the sunshine freely falling through bared limbs, but no man or woman.
The fallen leaves rustled as the deer passed, the squirrels chattered
and the foxes barked, but we heard no sweet laughter or ringing song.
We found a bank of moss, and lying upon it a chaplet of red-brown oak
leaves; further on, the mint beside a crystal streamlet had been trodden
underfoot; then, flung down upon the brown earth beneath some pines, we
came upon a long trailer of scarlet vine. Beyond was a fairy hollow, a
cuplike depression, curtained from the world by the red vines that hung
from the trees upon its brim, and carpeted with the gold of a great
maple; and here Fear became a giant with whom it was vain to wrestle.
There had been a struggle in the hollow. The curtain of vines was torn,
the boughs of a sumach bent and broken, the fallen leaves ground
underfoot. In one place there was blood upon the leaves.
The forest seemed suddenly very quiet,--quite soundless save for the
beating of our hearts. On every side opened red and yellow ways, sunny
glades, labyrinthine paths, long aisles, all dim with the blue haze like
the cloudy incense in stone cathedrals, but nothing moved in them save
the creatures of the forest. Without the hollow there was no sign. The
leaves looked undisturbed, or others, drifting down, had hidden any
marks there might have been; no footprints, no broken branches, no token
of those who had left the hollow. Down which of the painted ways had
they gone, and where were they now?
Sparrow and I sat our horses, and stared now down this alley, now down
that, into the blue that closed each vista.
"The _Santa Teresa_ is just off the big spring," he said at last. "She
must have dropped down there in order to take in water quietly."
"The man that came upon her is still in town,--or was an hour agone," I
replied.
"Then she hasn't sailed yet," he said.
In the distance something grew out of the blue mist. I had not lived
thirteen years in the woodland to be dim of sight or dull of hearing.
"Some one is coming," I announced. "Back your horse into this clump of
sumach."
The sumach grew thick, and was draped, moreover, with some broad-leafed
vine. Within its covert we could see with small danger of being seen,
unless the approaching figure should prove to be that of an Indian. It
was not an Indian; it was my Lord Carnal. He came on slowly, glancing
from side to side, and pausing now and then as if to listen. He was so
little of a woods-man that he never looked underfoot.
Sparrow touched my arm and pointed down a glade at right angles with the
path my lord was pursuing. Up this glade there was coming toward us
another figure,--a small black figure that moved swiftly, looking
neither to the right nor to the left.
Black Lamoral stood like a stone; the brown mare, too, had learned what
meant a certain touch upon her shoulder. Sparrow and I, with small shame
for our eavesdropping, bent to our saddle-bows and looked sideways
through tiny gaps in the crimson foliage.
My lord descended one side of the hollow, his heavy foot bringing down
the dead leaves and loose earth; the Italian glided down the opposite
side, disturbing the economy of the forest as little as a snake would
have done.
"I thought I should never meet you," growled my lord. "I thought I had
lost you and her and myself. This d--d red forest and this blue haze are
enough to----" He broke off with an oath.
"I came as fast as I could," said the other. His voice was strange, thin
and dreamy, matching his filmy eyes and his eternal, very faint smile.
"Your poor physician congratulates your lordship upon the success that
still attends you. Yours is a fortunate star, my lord."
"Then you have her safe?" cried my lord.
"Three miles from here, on the river bank, is a ring of pines, in which
the trees grow so thick that it is always twilight. Ten years ago a man
was murdered there, and Sir Thomas Dale chained the murderer to the tree
beneath which his victim was buried, and left him to perish of hunger
and thirst. That is the tale they tell at Jamestown. The wood is said to
be haunted by murdered and murderer, and no one enters it or comes
nearer to it than he can avoid: which makes it an excellent resort for
those whom the dead cannot scare. The lady is there, my lord, with your
four knaves to guard her. They do not know that the gloom and quiet of
the place are due to more than nature."
My lord began to laugh. Either he had been drinking, or the success of
his villainy had served for wine. "You are a man in a thousand, Nicolo!"
he said. "How far above or below the ship is this fortunate wood?"
"Just opposite, my lord."
"Can a boat land easily?"
"A creek runs through the wood to the river. There needs but the
appointed signal from the bank, and a boat from the _Santa Teresa_ can
be rowed up the stream to the very tree beneath which the lady sits."
My lord's laughter rang out again. "You're a man in ten thousand,
Nicolo! Nicolo, the bridegroom's in town."
"Back so soon?" said the Italian. "Then we must change your lordship's
plan. With him on the ground you can no longer wait until nightfall to
row downstream to the lady and the _Santa Teresa_. He'll come to look
for her."
"Ay, he'll come to look for her, curse him!" echoed my lord.
"Do you think the dead will scare him?" continued the Italian.
"No, I don't!" answered my lord, with an oath. "I would he were among
them! An I could have killed him before I went----"
"I had devised a way to do it long ago, had not your lordship's
conscience been so tender. And yet, before now, our enemies--yours and
mine, my lord--have met with sudden and mysterious death. Men stared,
but they ended by calling it a dispensation of Providence." He broke off
to laugh with silent, hateful laughter, as mirthful as the grin of a
death's-head.
"I know, I know!" said my lord impatiently. "We are not overnice,
Nicolo. But between me and those who then stood in my way there had
passed no challenge. This is my mortal foe, through whose heart I would
drive my sword. I would give my ruby to know whether he's in the town or
in the forest."
"He's in the forest," I said.
Black Lamoral and the brown mare were beside them before either moved
hand or foot, or did aught but stare and stare, as though men and horses
had risen from the dead. All the colour was gone from my lord's
face,--it looked white, drawn, and pinched; as for his companion, his
countenance did not change--never changed, I believe--but the trembling
of the feather in his hat was not caused by the wind.
Jeremy Sparrow bent down from his saddle, seized the Italian under the
armpits, and swung him clean from the ground up to the brown mare's
neck. "Divinity and medicine," he said genially, "soul healer and body
poisoner, we'll ride double for a time," and proceeded to bind the
doctor's hands with his own scarf. The creature of venom before him
writhed and struggled, but the minister's strength was as the strength
of ten, and the minister's hand held him down. By this I was off Black
Lamoral and facing my lord. The colour had come back to his lip and
cheek, and the flash to his eye. His hand went to his sword hilt.
"I shall not draw mine, my lord," I told him. "I keep troth."
He stared at me with a frown that suddenly changed into a laugh, forced
and unnatural enough. "Then go thy ways and let me go mine!" he cried.
"Be complaisant, worthy captain of trainbands and Burgess from a dozen
huts! The King and I will make it worth your while."
"I will not draw my sword upon you," I replied, "but I will try a fall
with you," and I seized him by the wrist.
He was a good wrestler as he was a good swordsman, but, with bitter
anger in my heart and a vision of the haunted wood before my eyes, I
think I could have wrestled with Hercules and won. Presently I threw
him, and, pinning him down with my knee upon his breast, cried to
Sparrow to cut the bridle reins from Black Lamoral and throw them to me.
Though he had the Italian upon his hands, he managed to obey. With my
free hand and my teeth I drew a thong about my lord's arms and bound
them to his sides; then took my knee from his chest and my hand from his
throat, and rose to my feet. He rose too with one spring. He was very
white, and there was foam on his lips.
"What next, captain?" he demanded thickly. "Your score is mounting up
rather rapidly. What next?"
"This," I replied, and with the other thong fastened him, despite his
struggles, to the young maple beneath which we had wrestled. When the
task was done, I first drew his sword from its jewelled scabbard and
laid it on the ground at his feet, and then cut the leather which
restrained his arms, leaving him only tied to the tree. "I am not Sir
Thomas Dale," I said, "and therefore I shall not gag you and leave you
bound for an indefinite length of time, to contemplate a grave that you
thought to dig. One haunted wood is enough for one county. Your lordship
will observe that I have knotted your bonds in easy reach of your hands,
the use of which I have just restored to you. The knot is a peculiar
one; an Indian taught it to me. If you set to work at once, you will get
it untied before nightfall. That you may not think it the Gordian knot
and treat it as such, I have put your sword where you can get it only
when you have worked for it. Your familiar, my lord, may prove of use to
us; therefore we will take him with us to the haunted wood. I have the
honour to wish your lordship a very good day."
I bowed low, swung myself into my saddle, and turned my back upon his
glaring eyes and bared teeth. Sparrow, his prize flung across his
saddlebow, turned with me. A minute more saw us out of the hollow, and
entered upon the glade up which had come the Italian. When we had gone a
short distance, I turned in my saddle and looked back. The tiny hollow
had vanished; all the forest looked level, dreamy and still, barren of
humanity, given over to its own shy children, nothing moving save the
slow-falling leaves. But from beyond a great clump of sumach, set like a
torch in the vaporous blue, came a steady stream of words, happily
rendered indistinguishable by distance, and I knew that the King's
minion was cursing the Italian, the Governor, the _Santa Teresa_, the
_Due Return_, the minister, the forest, the haunted wood, his sword, the
knot that I had tied, and myself.
I admit that the sound was music in mine ears.