I knew afterwards--long, long afterwards--that I had been stabbed
repeatedly; how many times is now of little consequence, although I
have sometimes counted the white cicatrices on my body, tracing each
with wonder that I had not long ago done with this life.
For that matter, I was regarded as already ended when they tore my
assailant from my body and shattered him to death with their hatchets
and knives, pistoling him again and again while he still quivered in
the long grass.
As for me, I appeared to be quite dead, and whether to bury me there
or in some kinder spot, none could determine, while the dear maid I
loved lay senseless in Black Betty's arms.
As it was afterwards told to me in the saddest days of my life, so I
tell what now befell the rescued, the rescuers, and that scarcely
palpitating body o' mine, the soul of which floated on the dark
borderland of Death. For it came to happen that dawn, lurking behind
the eastern hills, set dull signals of fire on every western peak,
warning Mount and Renard that day was on their trail to bare it for
all who chose to follow.
My senseless sweetheart they bore to the waiting chaise, and, my body
still retaining some warmth, they bore that, too, because they dared
not bury me before she had seen me dead with her own eyes.
All that day they rode west by north, climbing the vast divide,
halting to lie perdu when their keen ears heard movements all unseen,
pushing on to tear the path free while their axes rang out among the
windfalls. Then, when the western sun sank beyond the Ohio into the
sea of trees, the winds of the east filled their nostrils and the long
divide had been passed at last.
That night my dear love opened her eyes, and the darkness that
enchained her fell, so that she crept to my feet as I lay in a corner
of the chaise and laid her head on my knees.
Whether she thought me alive or dead none knew. Betty had bared my
body to the waist and washed it. For a corpse they do as much. Later,
without hope, Mount brought a pannikinful of blue-balsam gum, pricked
from the globules on the trunk, and when Betty had once more washed
me, they filled the long gashes with the balsam and closed them
decently, strip on strip, with the fine cambric shift which my
sweetheart tore from her own body.
Later, when the moon was coming up, they carried me lying in a
blanket, my sweetheart walking beside me, and her silken shoon in
tatters till her feet bled at every step, but refused to go back to
the chaise. That night they thought me surely dead and watched without
sleep lest the rigidity of dissolution surprise me ere my limbs had
been laid straight. But the morning found me as I was, and the first
shadow of night revealed no change, nor was I dead on the next
morning, nor on the next, nor yet the next.
A still Sabbath in the forest, passed amid the sad twilight of the
trees, gave them hope; for I had opened my eyes, though I saw nothing.
But that night Death sat at my right hand, and the next night Death
cradled my head; and my dear love lay at my feet and looked Death
steadily in the eyes.
The fever which loosened every muscle burned fiercely all night long,
and my voice broke out from my body like a demon mocking within me. A
few of the Lenape, roaming near, followed and shot at us towards dawn,
driving us north into the forest, where the chaise was abandoned, the
traces cut, and the horses loaded with corn.
North and south the runways of the Long House pierced the wilderness,
and these were the trails they followed, the men on foot, bearing me
on their litter of blankets and balsam-boughs, the women crouching on
the sack-laden horses.
As for me, I lived on through cold and heat, storm and stress, seeing
nothing, hearing nothing, dumb, save when the demon hidden in my body
mocked and laughed between my blackened lips. That demon was always
watching things which I could not see, peeping out through my eyes
into hell. Hours came when there was no water, and the demon knew it
and mouthed and cursed between my shrinking lips. Then he would turn
on me and tear at my throat and gnaw me and thrust his claws into my
brain. Sometimes I heard his low laughter, for though I could neither
see nor hear aught in the world, I could hear the demon sometimes, and
feel him in my body, setting fire to the blood till it boiled like the
water he craved.
At night he often stole my body and carried it where the darkness
burnt and charred. There he would take out my bones, one by one, and
break them for the marrow to dry hard.
These things no one has told me. I remember them in sleep sometimes,
sometimes waking.
What I have heard from others is vague, and to me unreal as a painted
scene in a picture where a film has settled under cobwebs. I hear that
I breathed through days which I never saw, that I opened my eyes on
lands which are strange to me, that my babble broke primeval silences
which God himself had sealed. Nay, not I, but the demon mocked through
those voiceless voids and lost ravines, through the still twilight of
the noonday forest, through midnight summits muffled in the clouds.
But only I know that, or dream it sometimes when I ponder on my end
and on that fair salvation which my father finds lately in Christ.
Now, my dark soul, to hidden realms addressed, returned to me one
night, and, listening, heard the demon scratching at my bones. Then,
weary and perplexed, inside my body crept my soul and drew the lids of
both eyes down, so that we might sleep together before the busy demon
knew.
Yet I, having my soul again, opened my eyes to find a star was
watching me; then, content, lay closer to my soul and slept. And thus
the demon found us, and so fled back to the sleepless hell from whence
he came.
Sleeping, I smelled lavender in the forest, and I thought the wood had
windows where a sweet wind blew. Truly, there was a window somewhere
near me, for I found my eyes had opened and could see it where the
curtains swayed in the sun.
Hours later I looked again; the window was still there, and the moon
beyond, low among pines whose shapes I knew.
Hours came and faded into sunshine; days brought bright spots on the
curtains; night brought the moon and the tall pines. Sweet-fern, too,
I smelled sometimes, and I heard a soothing monotone of familiar sound
below me.
One day a cock crew and I fell a-trembling all alone, I knew not why.
That night a new sound woke me, and I felt the presence of another
person. Moonlight silvered the window of a room which I knew; but I
was very quiet and waited for the sun, lest the phantoms I divined
should trick me.
Then came a morning--perhaps the next, but I am not sure--when I knew
I was in a bed and very tired, too tired to see aught but the sheets
and the sunlit curtains beyond. That night, however, I heard rain
falling on a roof and fell asleep, watching the window for the hidden
moon.
When I first recognized the room, my memory served me a trick, and I
thought of the school-room below where the others were imprisoned
--Silver Heels, Peter, and Esk. Slyly content to doze abed here in Sir
William's room, I understood that I must have been lying sick a long,
long time, but could not remember when I had fallen ill. One thing
sure: I did not mean they should know that I was better; I closed my
eyes when I felt a presence near, lying still as a mouse until alone
again.
Sometimes my thoughts wandered to the others in the school-room with
Mr. Yost, for I did not remember he had been scalped by the Lenape,
and I pitied Silver Heels and Esk and fat Peter a-thumbing their
copy-books and breathing chalk-dust. Faith, I was well off in the
great white bed, here in Sir William's room.
I could see his fish-rods on the wall, looped with silk lines and
scarlet feather-flies; his hunting-horn, too, and his whip and spurs
hanging from hooks beneath a fox's-mask and brush. There hung his
fowling-pieces above the mantel, pouch and horn dangling from crossed
ramrods; there rose his book-case with the eared-owl atop and the
Chinese jar full o' pipes, long as my arm and twice as strong--a
conceit which sent a weak wave of mirth through my body I could not
move.
Soft! They are coming to watch me now. So I slyly close my eyes till
they go away or give me the drinks they brew to make me sleep. I know
them; were I minded I might gather strength to spit out their
sense-stealing stuffs. But I swallow and dream and wake to a new sun
or to mark the waxing moon, now near its full.
Our Doctor Pierson was here to-day and caught me watching him. They'll
soon have me in the school-room now, though I do still play possum all
I can, eating my gruel, which a strange servant brings, and pretending
not to see her. Yet I am wondering why the maid is so silent and that
her gown is so dark and stiff.
Later that day I saw Colonel Guy Johnson come into the room and look
at me, but I did not mean he should think me awake, and so closed my
eyes and lay quiet. When Sir William should come, however, I would
open my eyes, for I had been desiring to see him since I saw his rods
and guns. It fretted me at times that he neglected me, knowing my love
for him.
Once, as I lay dozing, Peter crept into the room and stared at me. He
had grown tall and gross and heavy-eyed, so that I scarce knew him,
nor had he a trace of Sir William in his slinking carriage, which was
all Mohawk, and the worst Mohawk at that. I was glad when he ceased
thumbing the bedposts and left me.
The next day I saw Doctor Pierson beside me and asked for Sir William.
He said that Sir William was away and that I was doing well. We often
spoke after that, and he was ever busy with my head, which no longer
ached save when he fingered it.
Then one night I awoke with a cry of terror and found myself sitting
upright, bathed in chilly sweat, shouting that the Cayugas were abroad
and that I must hold them back by the throat till Sir William could
arrive and restrain them.
Lights soon moved into the room; I saw Doctor Pierson and Guy Johnson,
but the dammed-up floods of memory had broken loose like an old wound,
and the past came crowding upon me till I fell back on the pillows,
convulsed and gasping, while the strong hands of the doctor began
their silent work, tapping head and body, till somebody gave me a
draught and I drowsed perdu.
Day broke--the bitterest day of life I was to know. I felt it,
listening to the rain; I felt it, in the footsteps that passed my
door--footsteps I did not know. Why was the house so silent? Why did
all go about so quietly, dressed in black? Was there some one dead in
the house below? Where was Silver Heels? Why had she never come to me?
How came I here? Where was Jack Mount and Cade Renard? And Sir
William, where was he that he came not near me--me who had lain sick
unto death in his service and for his sake?
Dread numbed me; I strove to call, but my dumb lips froze; I strove to
rise, and found my body wrecked in bed without power, without sense, a
helpless, inert thing between two sheets.
Why was I here? Why was I alive if aught had harmed Silver Heels? God!
And I safe here in bed? Where was she? _Where was she?_ Dead? Why do
they not tell me? Why do they not kill me as I lie here if I have
returned without her?
I must have cried aloud in my agony, for the doctor came running and
leaned over me.
"Tell me! Tell me!" I stammered. "Why don't you tell me?" and strove
to strike him, but could not use my arms.
"Quiet, quiet," he said, watching me; "I will tell you what you wish
to know. What is it then, my poor boy?"
"I--want--Felicity," I blurted out.
"Felicity?" he repeated, blankly. "Oh--Miss--ahem!--Miss Warren?"
I glared at him.
"Miss Warren has gone with Sir John Johnson to Boston," he said,
dryly.
My eyes never left him.
"Is that why you cried out?" he asked, curiously. "Miss Warren left us
a week ago. Had you only known her she would have been happy, for she
has slept for weeks on the couch yonder."
"Why--why did she go?"
"I cannot tell you the reasons," he said, gravely.
"When will she return?"
"I do not know."
With a strength that came from God knows where, I dragged myself
upright and caught him by the hand.
"She is dead!" I whispered. "She is dead, and all in this house know
it save I who love her!"
A strange light passed over the doctor's face; he took both my hands
and looked at me carefully. Then he smiled and gently forced me back
to the pillows.
"She is alive and well," he said. "On my honour as a man, lad, I set
your heart at rest. She is in Boston, and I do know why, but I may not
meddle with what concerns this family, save in sickness--or death."
I watched his lips. They were solemn as the solemn word he uttered. I
knew death had been in the house; I had felt that for days. I waited,
watching him.
"Poor lad," he said, holding my hands.
My eyes never left his.
"Ay," he said, softly, "his last word was your name. He loved you
dearly, lad."
And so I knew that Sir William was dead.