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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 35896
   :PG.Released: 2011-04-17
   :PG.Title: The Great Captain: A Story of the Days of Sir Walter Raleigh
   :PG.Creator: Katharine Tynan Hinkson
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Katherine Ward
   :PG.Producer: the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
   :PG.Credits: This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.
   :DC.Title: The Great Captain: A Story of the Days of Sir Walter Raleigh
   :DC.Creator: Katharine Tynan Hinkson
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1902

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=================
The Great Captain
=================

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   This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
   almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
   re-use it under the terms of the `Project Gutenberg License`_
   included with this eBook or online at
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      Title: The Great Captain: A Story of the Days of Sir Walter Raleigh
      
      Author: Katharine Tynan Hinkson
      
      Release Date: April 17, 2011 [EBook #35896]
      
      Language: English
      
      Character set encoding: UTF-8

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      \*\*\* START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT CAPTAIN: A STORY OF THE DAYS OF SIR WALTER RALEIGH \*\*\*

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.. container::
   :class: titlepage

   .. class:: center x-large

   | *THE GREAT CAPTAIN.*

   .. class:: center

   | *A STORY OF THE DAYS OF SIR WALTER RALEIGH.*

   .. class:: center large

   |
   | BY
   | KATHARINE TYNAN HINKSON,

   .. class:: center small

   | *Author of “The Golden Lily,” “The Queen’s Page,” “Her Father’s Daughter,” etc.*

   .. class:: center small

   | :small-caps:`New York, Cincinnati, Chicago`:
   | BENZIGER BROTHERS,
   | *Publishers of Benziger’s Magazine*
   |
   |
   | Copyright, 1902, by :small-caps:`Benziger Brothers`.
   |
   | Printed in the United States of America


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   :align: center

   “While I stood stammering and staring a lean finger was
   pointed at me.” (See page [pg 24]_.)
..


.. contents:: CONTENTS.
   :depth: 1
   :page-numbers:

[pg!7]

.. toc-entry:: I.—Of Myself, that Great Captain Sir Walter Raleigh, and how I became his Leal Man

CHAPTER I.—OF MYSELF, THAT GREAT CAPTAIN SIR WALTER RALEIGH, AND OF HOW I BECAME HIS LEAL MAN.
==============================================================================================


I never knew my father and mother,
having been born into a time like that of
the great desolation foretold by the Scriptures.
They were the days of what I have
heard called the Rebellion of the Desmonds,
when that great league was made against
the power of Eliza, the English Queen,
by the Irish princes, which went down in a
red sunset of death and blood. Indeed I
myself had starved, like other innocents, on
the breasts of their dead mothers, had it not
been for the pity of him I must ever regard
as the greatest of Englishmen, albeit no
friend, but rather the spoiler, of those of
my blood and faith.

It was indeed while the end was not yet
quite determined, for although Sir James
Desmond, the wisest and most skilled of
their generals in the art of war, was dead,
there was yet the Seneschal of Imokilly and
other Geraldine lords fighting for their inheritance
and their country. It was on a
day when Sir Walter Raleigh with a handful
of troopers was returning from a visit
to the Lord Deputy at Dublin that he
found me. He had expected no ambush,
and rode slowly, being fatigued by his journey,
through the great woods to the Ford
of the Kine. Now the woods covered many
dead and dying, and as the Captain rode at
the head of his men I came running from
the undergrowth, a lusty and fearless lad of
three, and held up my hands to the foremost
rider. I had as like as not been spitted
on a trooper’s sword but that the Captain
himself, leaning from his horse, swung
me to his saddle-bow.

He had perhaps a thought of his own little
Wat, by his mother’s knee in an English
pleasaunce, for, as I have heard since, he
talked with me and provoked me to confidence.
Nor was I slow to answer all he
asked, being a bright and bold child, which
perhaps was the saving of me, since I flung
an arm round the great Captain’s steel-clad
neck, and perched by him as bold as any
robin that is housed in the frost.

But as we rode along in the summer evening,
fearing no danger, though danger there
was, for my lord the Seneschal of Imokilly
had word of our coming, and as we forded
the river was upon us from the further bank
with his kerns, three times our number.
But the Captain rode at them with his sword
drawn, slashing hither and thither, and
sorely I must have hampered him, and much
marvel it was that he did not loose me into
the stream. But that he held me shows
what manner of man he was, that being
fierce and violent in battle he yet was of so
rare magnanimity. Little lad as I was then,
I remember to this day the cold of his steel
and silver breastplate against my cheek.

And when he had hewed his way through
them and was on the further bank in safety,
he looked back and saw one of his men, Jan
Kneebone by name, dismounted in the
stream and in peril. Then, setting me
down gently, he rode back into deep water
to his man’s deliverance, and having slain
two kerns who had him in jeopardy he flung
him upon his saddle-bow and rode with him
again up the steep bank. It was a great
feat of arms, and might well have cost the
English this most splendid soldier; yet I
have heard Sir Walter say that the Desmond
Lord of Imokilly might have slain him had
he willed it. “And think not, little Wat,”
he said to me years after, speaking upon
that day, “that chivalry departed from the
world with the glorious pagan, Saladin;
for in many places I have found it, nor least
in this wild country of thine; and it is an
exceeding good thing,” he added, “that men
will forget their passions amid the heat of
battle, and will remember only that the
enemy they fight against is brave.”

Wat, he called me from himself, because
he loved me, and after his little son. Indeed,
he seemed in time to love me as fondly as
any father; and while I was yet a little one
and learning from him swordplay and fence,
horsemanship, and other manly arts, I began
to understand that amid all his splendor
he carried sadness beneath it, and was a
banished man. He had lost the Queen’s
favor—not because he had enemies at court,
for Eliza was not one to be misled by
rumors or cunning, but because he had
clasped around the white neck of Mistress
Throckmorton, a dame of honor, the milky
carcanet of pearls the Queen’s vanity desired
to adorn her leanness, which in time the
Queen might have forgiven, if he had not
privily married the same Mistress Throckmorton;
for she would have but one moon
in the sky, and she liked not the gallantest
man of her kingdom to be her dame’s satellite.
So he was become a soldier of fortune,
and since he might not have his lady
or his little son with him in these wild
times, they abode in his quiet English
Manor-house, while his sword slashed a way
to fortune for them through the inheritance
of the great, unhappy Desmonds.

In later years, when I had become well
acquainted with the character of my lord,
it hath seemed to me that he was not one
for marriage; for danger was his love, and
he was homesick away from her smile. And
yet no more tender lord than he to the Lady
Elizabeth might be found, and he loved his
little Walter greatly.

But presently, the war being ended and
the last Desmond Earl slain by a traitor in
a cabin in the mountains, my lord sailed
away from the harbor of Youghall to London,
to the end that he might win permission
for another expedition in search of
treasure, and so regain the Queen’s favor.
By this time I was a tall lad, and was fain
to go with my lord, but this he would by no
manner of means permit. I hated so to
live my life without him, even for a time,
that I had thought of hiding myself aboard
his ship, the Bon Aventure, but the fear
which I had of him besides my love held me
back. I had never seen him angry with
me, and I prayed that I never should, so
I heard him in silence when he bade me
stay. Taking me aside then, he said to me,
lovingly:

“I wrong you not, Wat, because I go
without you, for Queen’s favor is vain, and
it may be I go to Traitor’s Gate. You are
no meat for the Tower, lad.”

Then I cried out that if he went to the
Tower I should go with him; at which he
seemed pleased, patting my shoulder with
great gentleness.

“It may be,” he said, “that I return
again to this Irish exile I weary of. Or, in
the greatest event of all, I shall fit out a
fleet for the Spanish Main, and make the
Dons stand and deliver. That would be
happiest for us, boy, for indeed I make but
a bad port-sailor.”

“You sail in the Bon Aventure,” I said; “it is of good omen.”

“It is indeed,” he replied, “and I thank
you for reminding me of it.”

He looked out to sea, where the English
leopards flapped at the wind’s will on the
mast of his ship, and I think I never saw
such a longing in a man’s eyes: so great was
it that my heart bled for him. I had
thought perhaps that he longed so much to
see the Lady Elizabeth and his boy. But he
spoke, and I knew he was thinking of the
free life of the rovers of the sea, not of that
lady whom he so tenderly loved.

“If we prosper,” he said, “we shall sail
for Guiana, and found there, who knows,
another Virginia. The spoil of half a dozen
fat galleons and a new country. These are
things that even Gloriana need not disdain.
Yet Essex hath all her ear, and Essex is
mine enemy.”

“If you succeed, my lord—” I began.

“If I succeed I shall send for you. If I
am sent to the Tower there are certain matters
concerning you to which Master Richard
Boyle is privy, and which he will impart
to you. But it may be I shall be sent back
to rot here; if so, there is nothing more to
be said.”

So on a certain day of lusty summer my
lord sailed away in the Bon Aventure, with
Master Edmund Spenser, whose company
had so greatly lightened his exile. The
same carried with him two books of his
poem, *The Faëry Queen*, which he designed
to have printed in London. He was bound
to return, whether my lord came or not, for
he had left at his Castle of Kilcohnour his
lady whom he had married at Cork, and his
young son. The same lady he made famous
forever by the most beautiful of marriage-songs,
which thing I had come to know,
young as I was, for my lord would have me
a scholar as well as a soldier, and I was become
a very excellent scribe, so that the
fair copying of Master Spenser’s poems
came to me.

I remember my last glimpse of them ere
the Bon Aventure sunk over the rim of
ocean, and evening seemed all at once to
settle on the world. My lord was wearing a
suit of black velvet over white, very finely
embroidered with seed-pearls. The plume
of his hat was held in its place by a clasp of
diamonds. Beside him Master Spenser, in
his black, looked over-grave. But when did
Sir Walter—whom I call here “my lord”
out of the love and loyalty I bore him—fail
to shine before all the world by the splendor
of his apparel as well as by his manly beauty
and the greatness of his deeds?

After they had gone, set in the endless
dusk of summer evening, I grew tired of
wandering about the gardens, so strange and
sad without their master. So I went within
doors, where some one had set a starveling
rushlight in the chamber that was my
lord’s dining-hall, and there I sat me down
with my Latin grammar and the Virgil my
lord had given me. At this time I sat daily
on the wooden benches of the College School
at Youghall, and had my learning of an old
clerk Sir Walter had summoned here from
Devonshire to take the place of the doctors
and singing-men who had gone with the
Desmonds. But my heart was heavy, and
my head, and I had pushed away from me
untasted the supper a serving-wench had
carried to me.

Now all was very still in the house, so
that the tap-tapping of a twig by the window-pane
seemed to me a little frightful,
although I was a boy of spirit. Outside was
the black of an early summer night before
the moon has risen, and going to the window
upon the tapping I could see no star
for the myrtle boughs. Yet sure I was that
were I outside the purple would be pierced
by innumerable eyes of light, and I was
greatly tempted to return to the garden.
Indeed, out in the night there would be
companionship, although every bird slept
well within the boughs. It is the houses
men build that breed these phantoms of the
brain, and not the free air. But disregarding
the temptation I went back to my book,
knowing full well the pleasure it would give
my lord to learn that I had been diligent in
his absence. Wonderful it was that he was
hardly less in love with learning than with
adventure. Indeed a man of such parts
was this knight and master of mine that
there seemed to be nothing admirable in
which he did not excel. And if I am blind
to his faults, even to this day when I repent
me of certain share of mine in his adventures,
let that be forgiven me, for surely I
owed him all love and loyalty.

As the night went I heard the scullions
who had been disporting themselves in the
town return one by one, and the bolting and
barring of doors. The songs of the sailors
which came up from the shipping in the bay
fell off and ceased. Silence fell on the
town, a silence as unbroken as that of the
sleepers yon in St. Mary’s yard, and presently
drowsiness overcoming me I too slept.


[pg!21]

.. toc-entry:: II.—The Apparition of the Monk

CHAPTER II.—THE APPARITION OF THE MONK.
=======================================


The room in which I had studied and
now slept was that to the right hand as you
entered the door of the Manor-house. It
was lined stoutly with oak, and it was dark
because, though it had two fair windows,
they were much obscured by the myrtles my
lord had planted, which had thriven exceedingly
in this mild air.

This room, as I have said, my lord used
for a dining-hall. Else when he was within
doors he sat in the oriel of the pleasant
room overhead; and it was there that he and
Master Spenser would sit and smoke or be
silent; and there, which is not to be forgotten,
Sir Walter listened to *The Faëry Queen*.

For some reason or another this dining-hall,
despite its purpose, seemed a place of
little cheer. The Manor-house had belonged
to the warden of the college, and
owed its construction to him; and it was
built after the English manner, which need
not be surprising, since the progenitors of
those church and abbey builders, the Munster
Geraldines, were of English blood and
race. Not only was the dining-hall in itself
low and somewhat forbidding of aspect, but
it smelt of earth and new graves, for all the
generous wine and meats that had been consumed
within it. The cause of the same
my lord had never been able to determine,
and it stayed, although the chimney roared
with logs of ships’ timber, and the brightness,
the good cheer, the wit and gayety that
met there were enough to scare away any
thought of death or the earth that shall receive
us.

I slept, I have said, and while I slept the
moon had arisen. The low light of it filled
the chamber when I awoke with a start,
smelling the graves, and feeling very cold.
On the myrtle tree without an owl hooted.
The rushlight had gone out, but this I
hardly knew, only that an earthy wind,
smelling of damp and mildews, blew about
my face, and I was stiff from lying asleep
upon my book.

But this I noticed vaguely, for as soon as
my eyes were well open a strange appearance
in the room drew my gaze upon it. I
was by this time a stout lad of some sixteen
years, and accustomed to fear nothing, yet
I will confess that the hair of my head stood
up. The figure of a monk was in the further
corner from me. I knew it to be a
monk, because of the effigies, images, and
[pg!24]
portraits in St. Mary’s Church and the
library of the college. Further, I knew the
apparition to be of a white friar. The cowl
was over the face; the head was bent; a fold
of white cloth hid the hands. The stature
of the monk was exceedingly tall, and of a
great leanness, as I could see where the belt
of brown leather clasped the white gown
about the middle.

All this I saw clearly by the light of the
moon, or was it by some unearthly light
of which the figure stood the centre? I
know not, only that I saw everything clear:
and still the odor of graves was in my
nostrils.

While I stood stammering and staring a
lean finger was pointed at me, so lean that
I know not if flesh covered it, or if it were
the fleshless finger of a skeleton. A voice,
hollow and strange, came forth of the cowl.

“Son of the Geraldines,” it said, “why
art thou here among their murderers and
despoilers?”

The voice constrained me to answer.

“Alas,” I said, “I know not what you
mean. I am a nameless boy, a dead leaf
drifted in the forests. Why do you call me
a son of the Geraldines, unless it be that I
come of the humblest of the clan?”

“You are no kern’s son, Walter Fitzmaurice,
but of a noble house. How is it
that you eat the bread and run at the stirrups
of the Sassenach who is the destroyer
of your race?”

I stretched my hands imploringly to the
cowled figure.

“He rescued me from death,” I cried;
“he warmed me with his love. He has
taught me all a noble youth should know.”

“You love him?”

“I love him.”

“Listen, boy. They think they have destroyed
the Desmonds, root and branch, as
a man might tread out under his heel a nest
of vipers. Yet hope is not dead. The line
of the Geraldines is not destroyed. Return
to your own people and leave this evil
knight.”

“Alas, I cannot,” I said, “for I love him.”

“The blood of your kin is red on his
hands.”

“And yet I love him.”

“He and his freebooters have wasted
the country that was the portion of your
fathers. Whom he spared to slay famine
and pestilence have slain.”

“I should have died of the hunger,” said
I, “had he not delivered me.”

“And you will follow him?”

“I will follow him.”

“Wherever he goes?”

“To death.”

“To death and evil. Very well, Walter
Fitzmaurice, of the race of Desmond, then
your kindred’s blood be on your hands, as
they are on those for which you have held
basin and ewer that they might wash.
Water will not wash them clean, nor yours
that share in the stain. He shall die by violence
as he has slain many another—and as
for you, what penance, what fast and prayer
shall suffice to wipe out your sin? You
have chosen, Walter Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald.
Take care that you have not chosen forever.”

The voice rose in a shriek of menace, and
I caught sight of burning eyes under the
cowl. Suddenly through the hooting of the
owl in the myrtles there rang, shrilly as a
trumpet, the crowing of a cock. The wind
from the grave rose in my nostrils and filled
me with a great terror. I turned giddy and
swayed hither and thither, and the room went
up and down under my feet.

The next thing I knew was that the sun
was in the room, and I was lying with my
cheek on the open page of the Virgil.
Nothing was changed in the room since last
night, except only that the rushlight had
dwindled to a pool of cold fat; but how long
it had been out I could not gauge.

Slowly the happenings of the night came
back to me; but now in the warm daylight
who thought on ghosts and goblins, or was
afraid of them if they came? Where the
owl had hooted over night a blackbird was
singing, bold and bright. The lawn of the
Manor-house was under dew. As I looked
a peacock spread his tail in the sun, and his
more sober mate stood to admire him.

Sitting there I rubbed my eyes. Why, I
had awakened just as I had fallen asleep,
worn out with the sorrow of loneliness, and
the trial to fix my discontented thoughts
upon my book. I stood up and caught sight
of myself in a mirror. Then I realized that
it is ill to sleep full-dressed. I was pale, and
my hair strayed in disorder. My doublet
looked as if I had had the habit to sleep in
it, and my cloak was awry. I had been no
sight to please my lord, who loved daintiness,
and observed it himself in the strangest
circumstances.

I would down to the Port-side and bathe
in the morning waters. But ere I did that,
remembering the dream or vision of the
night, I went towards that place where I
had seen the monk and carefully examined
the same. But nothing there was to give
me clue. The room was stoutly panelled
with oak, every panel as like to his brother
as two peas. Yet in that corner of the
room there was one thing that made me linger,
for the smell of earth, it seemed to me,
was there stronger than elsewhere.

I sniffed and smelt like a terrier after a
mouse; but sniff and smell as I might
found nothing. I was no stranger to sliding
panels and the like, at least by hearsay,
but press and push as I might nothing
came of it, so that at last I was fain to
desist.

As I made my way to the water-side in
the glorious morning my thoughts were full
of the night’s encounter. If it had been no
dream but a true happening I did not doubt
now, with the sun risen, that the monk was
no ghost but a living man, albeit a spare
one, for I recalled his lean finger, and the
burning eyes set in the hollow cheeks. His
words had been verily human, not ghostly
at all: and had I been minded to leave my
great lord whom I loved, had he not been
ready to bear me away with him? Either
the thing was a fantasy of a dream, every
part of it exceedingly sensible, and one part
following another as I have not known it
in dreams, or else it were true, and he a
living man who had stood before me last
night.

One thought made my heart leap up with
a sharp throb of pleasure. The monk had
said I was noble—I, who had come from
none knew where, a nameless youth and
treated courteously only because I was
dear to my lord, and myself very sharp in
a quarrel and adroit in the practice of
arms.

After I had bathed and lain to dry in the
sun I returned back hungry as a hawk. In
the blessed sun all was different from last
night. My lord would return, and would
bear me away to court, and presently we
should have letters of marque, and should
go sailing on the Spanish Main in search
of good fighting, salted with doubloons
and pieces of eight; and presently should
make for the Treasure Islands, and find
there, as I imagined, jewels as large as
plums, and gold and silver in great portions.
For I had read Maundeville and other travellers,
and had magnified in my credulity
even the marvels they had told. I knew,
too, that my lord had brought home to the
Queen’s Majesty a necklace of pearls whereof
each stone was larger than a cherry. And
we had heard of Guiana that the very sands
of the seashore sparkled with gold and silver,
and that in the workings the old inhabitants
thereof had made, that they might
build their heathen temples, the walls were
of gold, while the idols were crusted with
jewels so that no man might look on them
without winking.

So much in the sunlight. And yet again
I had a cause for joy and pride because
the monk had declared me noble. How to
prove it I knew not, but resolved that when
my lord was come hither again I would tell
him all, and he would somehow unriddle me
the secret and I should be no longer nameless.

My breakfast I had beneath the shade of
Sir Walter’s myrtles, where he had made
his favorite seat. It was brought thither by
that good Sukey who had nearly drowned
my lord the first time she beheld him
smoking that weed called tobacco, which
he had brought from his settlement in
Virginia. For she conceived him to be
on fire, and half-drowned him that she
might put him out. I had my white manchet
and roast beef and flagon of ale, and
had a fine hunger for it after my morning
swim.

But when it had all vanished I strolled
away to the stable-yard, where Gregory
Dabchick rubbed down one of my lord’s
horses, and hissed between his teeth as is
the manner of ostlers in the doing. He was
a shock-headed fellow, of slow wits, but
honest, and loved my lord.

“It be lonely, Master Wat,” he said,
“since the master be gone.”

“Gregory Dabchick,” said I, “you were
of Sir Walter’s following the day the Seneschal
of Imokilly set upon him at the Ford
of the Kine.”

“Ay,” he said, grinning, “and Jan was
spilt in the water. He got up dripping like
a fish, and when the Captain haled him to
dry land, and he would mount his beast he
overleapt him and a good horse galloped
into the forest and so became the goods of
the Irishry. I wish,” he added, “that Margery
May, at home in pleasant Devon,
might have looked on Jan then.”

“I have nothing to do with your jealousies,”
I said, as haughty as though I were
my lord’s son. “But tell me, Gregory, do
you remember me that day?”

“A brown babby, as fat as ever I see,”
Gregory answered, still rubbing down his
horse. “And as near being spitted by Dan’l
Drewe as ever I wish to see. I never liked
that work myself, killing o’ babes and sucklings,
and fair women, or leaving the babe
to die on its mother’s breast. ’Twere
lucky for you, Master Wat, them that
starved in the forest did not eat you, ere
ever you came the way o’ Dan’l’s mercy.
Eh, what a fat one you were!”

“But a comely, Gregory?” I asked anxiously.
“A noble child? Was I that? And
clad in silk and fine woollen, as became my
condition?”

“Why, no, Master Walter, but a fat,
brown babe; eh, so fat! And nought but
rabbit-skins to cover you. You had been
good eating for them in the forest.”

“You are rude and dull, Gregory,” said
I, leaving him in dudgeon. As I looked
back I saw that he had come to the stable
door and stood watching me with a gaping
mouth. Plainly there was nothing to be
learned from Gregory Dabchick.



[pg!37]

.. toc-entry:: III.—Of My Secret, the Lord Boyle, and Other Matters

CHAPTER III.—OF MY SECRET, THE LORD BOYLE, AND OTHER MATTERS.
=============================================================


In the autumn of that year my lord came
back, and in my joy at seeing him again I
hardly felt that he was sad. The Lord
Essex had prevailed against him with the
Queen and he was returned to exile, although
one of his ships had brought in
a Spanish galleon worth fifty thousand
pounds. It must be remembered of him
that his passion for discovering the unknown
worlds swallowed up all the treasure
he was able to discover; so that the sea was
never without his ships, and one expedition
but led to another.

Had he been differently framed this season
at Youghall had been happy enough.
For now there was no fighting to be done
he led that quiet and pastoral life which
might have won him Master Spenser’s title
for him, *The Shepherd of the Ocean*. He delighted
himself by planting the strange
seeds and roots he had brought from the
ends of the earth and seeing them thrive.
All his garden ventures were fortunate.
The kindly Irish soil suited well with the
tobacco, the myrtle, and the fuchsia. At
Affane, a little way up the Blackwater, he
had his orchards, where already the cherry
grew abundantly. There, also, on sunny
banks, he sowed in long rows a strange fruit
called the potato, whereof the fruit is in the
earth, and the leaves above it, and a very
pleasant fruit to eat when well boiled, being
of a sweet flouriness within.

Another fruit from the Indies which he
planted at Affane was called the tomato—a
great, smooth-skinned, scarlet fruit, over-heavy
for its branches, and of a strange
half-sour flavor, which yet grew on one in
the eating. Another seed brought him by
his captains was that of the clove-gilly-flower,
or wall-flower, a most sweet-smelling
plant; and the cedar also he planted.

He was as much set upon gardens as upon
adventure and the search for new countries.
Those of his captains who had returned had
brought with them charts of the lands in
which they had sailed, together with long
reports concerning the inhabitants, their
manner of living, their food and pursuits,
the beasts and birds, the plants and ore,
and all such matters; over which my lord
would sit and pore in the long winter
evenings, by the fire of driftwood, and
smoking his long pipe. And sometimes
he would talk with Master Spenser concerning
them; but more often their talk
ran on poetry and the arts. Master
Spenser was working at the later books of
*The Faëry Queen*, and had written also a
very pretty pastoral entitled *Colin Clout’s
Come Home Again*. Nor was my lord’s admirable
pen silent. I went to and fro almost
as a son; and I can see my lord now in
some gallant apparel, for he knew not what
it was to be slovenly, leaning back in his
great chair, and reading from the manuscript
in his hand that lament he made for
the death of the stainless knight, Sir Philip
Sidney, slain then at the battle of Zutphen:

   | England does hold thy limbs that bred the same;
   | Flanders thy valour where it last was tried;
   | The camp thy sorrow where thy body died;
   | Thy friends thy want; the world thy virtue’s fame.

Alas, if but Sir Walter had been content to
be poet and gardener; but whereas the one
part of him was content the other tugged at
his heart-strings so that he was not happy.
In gardening he had no rivals except the
Dutch, that great little republic of the
water, since as famous as England herself
for great battles and adventures by sea.

Now, quiet as the time was, and I was
often alone with my lord, it was long before
I found courage to speak to him of my birth.
I know not why I was so wary in approaching
it, but somewhere in my heart I had a
warning that it would be unwelcome matter
to him; so that often the words rose to my
lips and fell silent before I could say them.
It was indeed close upon a year from the
time I had seen the monk that at last I
dared to touch upon the subject. It was
one evening when we had been gardening
together, and tired after that pleasant toil
we sat beneath the myrtle trees. My lord’s
brow for a little while was unfurrowed with
care, and his eagle eyes looked at me softened
through the mists of his smoke.

“My lord—” I began, and then could go
no further.

“What is it, Wat?” he asked kindly.

“My lord, I am troubled about the question
of my birth. To be nameless where
every one hath a name is no light matter to
bear.”

“Hath any one reproached you?” he
asked, and his eyes flashed.

“If any hath I should not have come
even to you for redress,” I said, fingering
my sword.

“Ah,” he said, and he looked well pleased.
“There spoke no nameless boy!”

I breathed hard at the thought of what
his speech meant. I was in act indeed to
ask him if I were truly a Fitzmaurice and of
noble birth when his next words held me,
and, as it proved, the silence between us
was to last to the edge of the grave for one
of us.

“Be content, boy, for a little while,” he
said, and his voice was of great sweetness.
“You are no nameless child; but let it be
my secret for a time. In time I shall reveal
it. If I told you now it might mean that
we should part company.”

“Never that,” I said.

“Never that, I pray,” he rejoined, adding—“because
I love you, Wat.”

Then after a few minutes of silence he
went on:

“Your secret is left to no such blind
chance as may befall such an one as I. If
aught happen to me, Master Boyle holds it
safe, and will reveal it in proper time.”

“You will not tell me?” I broke out.

“To have it known would bring me some
steps nearer the Tower,” he said, “and I
wend that way already.”

“Then keep it silent forever,” I cried
out.

“Nay; that would be hardly fair to you.
Besides, you forget that Master Boyle hath
it.”

“I like not Master Boyle.”

“Nor do I, overmuch, Wat. He is one
of your still, secret men, with the lawyer’s
craft and cunning. What should there be
between us?”

“I hate his peaked face and his yellow
eyes, and the way he hath of watching
you and peering like a cat that sees in the
dark.”

“You are hard on Master Boyle, Wat.
There is too much of the lawyer in him, and
he treads soft as a cat. Yet there is a man
behind his greed and his cunning. He is
better framed for times like these than such
an one as I. I could never walk warily.”

“He has your secret and can use it
against you.”

“He would do me no more harm than
beggar me if he might so enrich himself.
My head would be no use to him, little
Wat.”

“’Tis a poor warranty for holding a secret,”
said I, bitterly.

“I am well-disposed to Master Boyle,”
my lord went on. “He is a man of substance,
Wat, and a useful friend for one like
myself, who can keep nothing. We shall
not pluck the jewels from the gold-trees of
Guiana without money and ships. I am
nearly sucked dry, and the Queen hath lost
faith in me.”

Then I knew that my lord was not so
contented as he had seemed of late, and that
further voyages were afoot. In the joy and
excitement of the prospect I forgot to fret
about my namelessness. Besides, my lord
knew that I was noble; and Master Boyle
knew it, and treated me with a consideration
which should have won my regard if it were
not that I distrusted his dealings with my
lord.

And as the autumn of that year came on
I noticed that my lord ceased to care for his
gardens and orchards and plantations, and
would be forever poring over maps and
charts, and had long conversations with the
master of the Bon Aventure, which good
ship lay yet in Youghall Harbor, and the
master did seem nigh as weary of idleness
as Sir Walter himself. And sometimes he
had Master Boyle privily. Indeed, though
I speak of him as Master Boyle, ’tis from old
habit; for about this time he had been
created my Lord Boyle for his services to
the Queen’s Majesty in the better governance
of Ireland.

At last the word came that we were to
sail; and it was as if the quiet, sleeping town
of Youghall had started awake. Such a
burnishing of arms and armor; such a getting
out of old materials of war; such a polishing
of decks and making of sails and
mounting of guns on the good ship Bon
Aventure as never was known. All day long
the singing of the sailors in the harbor
floated to us through the still air. And my
lord’s swarthy face smiled once again as I
had known it when I was a little lad, before
he was like a led eagle that is chained beyond
hopping a little way.

My Lord Boyle had found us the funds;
so much I knew, but liked him no better.
The evening before we were to sail there
was a great banquet, and many gentlemen
came even from so far off as Dublin to wish
the Great Captain Godspeed. We were to
sail at blink of the morning star, and there
was to be no sleeping for us till we were on
shipboard. Never have I seen my lord but
once so magnificently clad. His doublet
was of white silk, so sewn with diamonds
that the silk was hardly to be seen. His
hose were of white silk, his trunk-hose of
silk with slashings of gold. Over one shoulder
he wore a short cloak of yellow velvet
clasped with diamonds; and the rosettes of
his shoes were a blaze of diamonds. Seeing
his face in the midst of such splendor I
marvelled how the Queen could harden her
heart against him—for never have I seen
him in any assemblage, however honorable,
that he did not make the other gentlemen
seem mean and dull beside him.

When the gayety was at its highest and
he feared not to be missed, I saw him slip
from the table with my Lord Boyle, and retire
with him into the oriel. The banquet
had been set in the oriel-chamber because it
was lighter and more spacious.

When my lord had left the table I too
went away. Looking at the horologe my
lord had given me, I saw that it lacked yet
two hours of the time when we should be
aboard.

I went down stairs to the lower chamber,
which was dark and silent. Once more I
thought I should endeavor to find the secret
way through which the death-damp came,
and my midnight visitor of more than a
year ago. If he had sought me since he had
not found me, for I had avoided being alone
there since that night.

There was neither moonlight nor rushlight
in the room, so that I could only grope
with my fingers for the secret the panel
must contain. For some time I groped in
vain. Then my nails seemed to have found
a crack in the wood, a mere notch in which
they fitted. It gave me no promise, for the
oak had warped here and there, and had left
a few furrows. I was sure I had been over
all the place before, yet now as I drew a
little way the whole panel began to move.
I did not know then, nor could I see, the
cunning by which that door was devised so
that none should discover it. I have said
that the chamber was quite dark.

Feeling now before me with my hands, I
found a vacant square wide enough for one
to creep through. Through it the wind
blew strongly, and it was a cold, earthy, evil-smelling
wind, such as I knew full well.
Where might it lead? There was a report
amongst us that the house had secret ways
to the harbor; but it was no honest sea-wind,
however confined and far from its
source, that blew my way, but something
far more villanous.

I know not how it was that I seemed to
forget that in less than two hours we must
embark. The present adventure held me to
the exclusion of all else. I stepped within
the narrow passageway—crept within it, for
I had to go on hands and knees. I had no
light nor aught else to guide me; but if I
thought at all it was that if the monk could
come this way in safety, I could go as he
had come. But to leave a gaping panel was
not in my thoughts. Having entered I
drew the panel to. Then feeling with my
hands I came upon a lock. Had I moved
it by my touch, or had it been left unlocked
of design? There was no time for answering
of riddles, and having pushed the panel
to I turned to pursue the adventure.



[pg!52]

.. toc-entry:: IV.—The Dead Hand

CHAPTER IV.—THE DEAD HAND.
==========================


After a little I found that I could stand
upright in the passage. Stretching up my
hands I could feel a solid roof above my
head. The walls on either side of me were
of earth, held back by stout balks of timber.
If one were to give way the passage had
been a grave indeed; but so far as I could
feel with my feet the clay had not fallen at
all. Else indeed there could not have been
so much air in the passage as to give me
breath; and I breathed freely enough, albeit
with a certain oppression, and a loathing of
the dank smells.

For a time the passage went down into
the bowels of the earth as it seemed to me.
I guessed by the direction it took from the
dining-hall that it must grope under the
graveyard—and thinking on this I realized
how that indeed the wind that blew from it
was a wind of death. And at that time I
was too ignorant and too vain to rebuke myself
by the thought that this was a burying-place
of saints.

Presently my foot stumbled against a
step, and much relieved I was to find on
ascending it that there was another step and
yet another; for I liked not this burrowing
among graves like the mole; and the steps
seemed to promise a speedy end to my journey.
Taking them in the dark there
seemed to me a prodigious number of them;
yet I was not gone very far when I perceived
agreeably a lightening and sweetening
of the air. I could have taken but a
little while in coming, for I had met with
no obstacles; yet it seemed long since the
time I had plunged into that pit of blackness
ere I came up against a stout door, with
a grating in it, designed no doubt to give
air to the passage.

To my great joy it was held only by a
latch, and even before I had made this
happy discovery I felt the sweet air of
heaven blow into my face; and I think I
never before knew how sweet it tasted.

Undoing the latch and drawing the door
to me I stepped within a stone tower. The
moon had arisen on the eastward side of
the tower, and looking through the crumbling
lancet window I saw below me, serene
and beautiful, the quiet, terraced graveyard
of St. Mary’s.

I could have laughed aloud to think that
the journey had seemed to me so long. In
truth it had occupied some five minutes, as
I discovered, holding my horologe to the
moon, and had not occupied so long if it
were not for my groping and pausing.

But the floor was solid under my feet. I
had to think a minute before I knew where
I was. I was in that blind tower of St.
Mary’s to the eastward corner, in the basement
whereof were deposited the brooms
and pails for cleaning of the church.

Playing hide and seek therein with a
boy’s irreverence I had marvelled why, since
the tower was blind—nothing but a roof of
stone above the chamber—that they should
have troubled to pierce it with lancets like
any honest belfry. The upper portion of
the tower was in ruins, as you could see
from the graveyard without. Ah, and so
the blind tower had its uses; as a hiding-place
it might be for some one who had
lived in the Manor-house in old wild days.
For, as to any manner of egress from the
tower, that I could not see at all.

The chamber where I stood was full of
the drifted leaves and the nests of birds.
Except for the shaft of light from the
lancet it was in blackness, and I began to
wonder if the tower went no further.

I groped about the walls, however, till I
came upon a staircase, which went up, not
in the middle, as is usual in towers, but at
one corner, so that each story formed a
room.

’Twas three stories’ climb to the upper
room. Here it was that the ruin had befallen
the tower; for where the lancet had
been there was a great gap, and somewhat
of the roof had fallen away.

I was now clear of the low trees, and the
half-veiled moon looked within the chamber.
Then I saw to my amazement that at
the side of it, yet roofed over, there was a
bed, a chair, a table, all of the rudest. But
little of this I saw till afterwards, for on the
bed lay the figure of that monk who had
spoken with me, now nearly fifteen months
ago.

His face was in shadow, yet I never
thought for a moment that he slept. One
lean hand dangled from his great sleeve
over the side of the bed; it hung helplessly;
and young as I was I had looked on death
often enough to know that this was the
hand of the dead. The habit was composed
decently about the figure. Either the monk
had so composed himself for death or he
had had some companion who had fled away
leaving him to the eye of heaven.

Standing there, a great awe and compassion
fell upon me. Something of yearning
and tenderness afflicted me as though the
dead man had been of my blood: the tears
rushed from my eyes, and I trembled so that
I was forced to my knees; yea, as though
invisible hands had bent me. I knew little
of praying, but something of wordless petition
to the Great Father of us all stirred in
my dull and proud spirit. In that moment
I had indeed the heart of a child.

When I had arisen from my knees I went
to the side of the pallet and looked upon the
sleeper’s face. In the shadow it gleamed
like polished ivory, and as I looked the
moon, climbing higher, touched the still
mouth with a sweet and sanctified light,
making it as though it smiled. I touched
the hand that swung by the side of the pallet.
It was scarcely cold. I knew not how
I thought of such a thing, except that I was
familiar with the knights and ladies who
sleep in stone in St. Mary’s Church, but I
composed the sleeper’s hands in the manner
of Christ’s cross upon his breast; and afterwards
turned away from the patient, smiling
mouth like one who hath sinned and
been forgiven.

Then I did what I believed he would have
me do: I made a search for any letters and
papers he might have left; for I could not
think he had left me ignorant of what he
would have me know. I searched busily;
and there were not many places wherein to
look. There was nothing anywhere. But
my search was not yet over till I had examined
the monk’s person. I went back to his
side, and with a prayer to him for forgiveness,
I groped gently in his habit for anything
in the nature of papers, and doing so
I felt his body to be by wasting scarcely
greater than a child’s. Yet ’twas not starvation,
I knew, for a loaf of bread and a
pitcher of water stood on the table.

I had not far to seek. The papers were
within the folds of his habit, where they met
upon his breast, and were confined with the
claspings of his leathern belt.

I drew them forth and went to the full
flood of the moonlight. By it I read the superscription:

   “*To Walter Devereux Fitz-Hugo Fitz-Theobald
   Fitz-Maurice*”—

As I read it my heart leaped up. What a
proud name it was, and telling of a glorious
ancestry!

   “—commonly known as Walter Munster,
   the ward and page of Sir Walter Raleigh.”

When I had deciphered so far the tower
seemed suddenly to rock. It was the great
clock in the neighboring tower striking of
midnight; and I had yet to ford the passageway
between the graves! Already I might
have been missed. I read no more, but
thrust the papers within my breast. Then
I bent and kissed the hands of the monk,
feeling again that rush of softness, and as
I kissed the hands I noticed the great string
of beads which fell from the girdle, and that
too I kissed, and the crucifix dependent
from it; and these things I did blindly, having
then a hard and ignorant heart, but
being compelled I knew not how.

Then I stole from the tower-room and
again down the winding staircase; but first
I had drawn the cowl over the face and hid
the hands and feet in the folds of the habit;
and so left him to quietness and the night.

I made the return passage without any
mishap; and though a fear assailed me on
the way lest I had locked myself within by
closing the door, there was no ground for it,
for the panel opened simply enough, and
was indeed secured by a bolt on the passage
side; which no doubt had prevented my finding
the opening before. For either the
monk had left it undone now by design, or
being surprised by his last sickness, or else
a companion or companions of his had fled
the house-way while we slept, leaving the
door unbarred. Yet I had seen no sign of
any other inmate of the tower save one;
that is of visible folk, for I doubt not there
were others, ministering and invisible.

So I returned as I had come and went
hastily to the banquet-hall. As I entered
my lord and the Lord Boyle were returning
slowly to their places. I caught a word of
their speech. “You will remember the
trust,” said my dear lord; and I knew not
it was of me they were talking. “Yea,”
said my Lord Boyle, and showed his yellow
teeth; “let it be in my hands, or else when
Jamie succeeds some Scot will have it.”
And then he laughed, rubbing his lean hands
together.

Then my lord observed me, and calling
me to him he put his hand upon my shoulder
and looked at me with surprise.

“Why, Wat,” he said, “what spider’s nest
hath caught you?”

I looked down then at my brave apparel,
and was confused to find that it was gray
with dust and cobwebs from my journey.

“He hath been ratting,” said my Lord
Boyle, “and hath pursued the quarry even
within their holes.”

“It matters less,” said my lord, “since
it is the hour to put on soberer attire. Be
in good time, Wat,”—and so saying he released
me. Then I hurried to my chamber
in the roof, and was right pleased that I
had not been questioned more closely. And
when I had laid away my fine apparel and
all was ready for our journey, I took my
paper to the candle-light that I might decipher
it.

It had been written for my hand and none
other, and the writer thereof was mine own
father’s brother. I was indeed of the illustrious
Desmond house, though of a younger
branch; and yet in the havoc that had come
upon it I might well now be all that was
living of the race. I had, it seemed, my
father being slain, been hidden with my
mother in the forest by a faithful clansman,
who had provided us with what food he
might; who being out one day snaring
rabbits in the forest had been caught by a
party of the enemy and borne away by them
strapped to one of their horses. He had
escaped them by the mercy of God, and returned
to the place where he had left us, to
find his lady dead of starvation and myself
gone. Doubtless that sweet mother of
mine had starved through giving all she had
to her child. The man knew not if I had
met an enemy and been hacked or speared
to death, or if the wolves had had me, or
the fierce eagles that yet infest the forest
in search of tender prey. He grieved to
death not knowing. But the friar, Brother
Ambrose, the last of the White Monks of
Youghall, and mine uncle, known to men as
Roderick Fitzmaurice, rested not till he had
found if I were of this life, and at last discovered
me. Having written this history
for mine eyes, he wrestled with me further
that I should come out from among the
enemies of my people. But to what end? I
asked, having so much worldly wisdom,
since the Desmond clan was gone down in
blood, and its inheritance with strangers.
Indeed, when I had come to the dead man’s
prayers, I folded up the paper as one that
will not listen and fears to be persuaded.
Even then there came from the harbor a
ringing of bells and the shouts of the sailors
as they drew up the anchor of the Bon
Aventure from its bed in the sands. I
therefore thrust my fine garments into my
sea-chest and shot the bolt; but mine uncle’s
message to me I put within my doublet.
As the ship swung round, and we headed
her for eastward I turned my thoughts away
from the quiet sleeper in the church tower,
and looked rather to my lord’s dark figure
as he leant over the vessel’s side, gazing not
the way she was going, but rather to westward.
For though he was the enemy of my
race and my country, yet I loved him with
such a love that nothing could dissever my
heart from him. And for his sake I was
not sorry even that I had not sooner discovered
that poor kinsman of mine—the
very last it well might be—in his hiding-place.
For no doubt he had come many
times to the room in which he had first
found me, but never found me again. And
now he was dead and past caring any more.



[pg!67]

.. toc-entry:: V.—Of a Strait Place and a Quiet Time

CHAPTER V.—OF A STRAIT PLACE AND A QUIET TIME.
==============================================


A few days later the Bon Aventure was
lying in the river Thames, and we had no
more than cast anchor when my lord put on
his richest clothes, and bidding me to attend
him, went by water to the steps leading
to the Queen’s palace of Westminster. I
remember that the way took us past Traitor’s
Gate, the low and threatening portals
by which prisoners are brought within the
Tower. As we passed my lord looked at
me with a sad smile. “I shall go that way
yet, Wat,” he said. And when I burst into
a passionate protest, he said to me: “Why,
Wat, if you could look upon the company
which hath passed by way of that gate, you
would see it to be of the finest. I shall not
blush to tread in their footsteps.” But I
could not believe it, looking upon him in his
garb of peach-bloom velvet laced with silver,
and the jewels of a king’s ransom; and
yet alas! he spoke too truly.

I remember when we were come to those
stairs of Westminster how the people
pressed to look upon him, and shouted
for him, and flung their caps in the air. If
he was not in favor at the court, certainly
he lacked not favor outside it.

Even within the palace the pages and the
maids of honor peeped at him, and many
courtiers thronged to welcome him, and the
scullions and grooms of the chambers looked
through windows and down staircases to see
him pass, so that to me it was as though the
tapestry wavered with whispers and eyes.
As we waited for an audience we saw many
great men pass, but not one fit to stand beside
my lord. Then came the Queen, a
shrunk, tall, high-boned woman, in a blaze
of diamonds, the ruff standing about her
spare, pale head like a setting sun, so thick
it was with jewels, and her farthingale
and petticoat making a prodigious circle
about her. She had green eyes, and they
were cold, and coldly she gave her hand to
my lord to kiss.

She had called him back because Spain
threatened; but now he was come she could
not forget her anger. That was for the old
affair of Mistress Throckmorton. I heard
the pages whispering that day that she had
not forgiven him; and one, a pert, bright
lad, who won my heart because he was so
eager to see and hear of the Great Captain,
told me how my Lord Essex had in likewise
nearly forfeited the Queen’s favor. For he
had admired upon the person of the Lady
Mary Howard a farthingale of cloth of gold,
sewn with seed-pearls, the which coming to
the Queen’s ears she had demanded the garment
for herself, saying that no subject
should go finer than the Queen’s Majesty.
But having acquired it she discovered herself
to be too tall and too broad for it, so
that it misbecame her mightily. Whereupon
she cast it aside so that none should
wear it since she could not.

Of the same palace I grew sick to death.
How long were we kept waiting about its
corridors till the Queen’s favor should veer
towards us again. It suited not with a
country lad like myself; and as for my lord,
his face grew lined and he seldom smiled:
so that often, often, I longed that the old
gardening days in Youghall were come
again. Nor had he yet seen his wife and
son. At last he grew restive, and declared
that Devonshire air consorted better with
his humor than the dank fogs that spread
at evening about Westminster. But ere he
could be gone he was committed to the
Tower on the Queen’s warrant. So, sooner
than we dreamt were we come to Traitor’s
Gate.

I went thither with him, and together we
passed the low arch. There I was permitted
to be in attendance on him, and listened
often to his cries and groans, for he could
not endure the imprisonment while there
were so many glorious things in the world
to be done. Sometimes he would solace
himself with philosophy and poetry. But
at times his fury would break forth so that
the governor of the Tower feared for him
lest he should go mad. He well described
his own sufferings.

“I am become like a fish cast on dry
land,” he wrote, “gasping for breath, with
lame legs and lamer lungs.”

Indeed there were times when it seemed
as if he would die from being so imprisoned
and confined. Trust in the Queen’s pity he
had not.

“There is no chance for me now, Wat,”
he said once, “unless it be that one of my
captains should bring home a treasure-ship
to pour into her lap, which might buy my
freedom if she conceived that by that means
I might find her more. For she loves gold
as other women love love, wherefore is her
face become yellower than a guinea.”

It was for some such saying, doubtless,
the Queen had had him cast in the Tower.
He was not one to learn guile; and, like his
rival, Essex, he was over-brave in speech as
in other things.

However, that happened that one of his
captains did bring home a treasure-ship. He
had been in the Tower two months, and had
worn the stone floors with his pacing of
them, more restless than the lion. The
folk came to stare at him in the courtyard
without. Then word came to us that his
ships were in from the Azores and had
brought with them the Spanish plate-ship,
the Madre di Dios, which they had captured
from the Dons. Half a million, a million,
there was no end to the guineas she was
worth. She was lined with glowing, woven
carpets, sarcenet quilts, and lengths of white
silks and cyprus. She carried, in chests of
sandalwood and ebony, such stores of rubies
and pearls, such porcelain and ivory and
crystal, such planks of cinnamon, and such
marvellous treasures as had never before
been seen. Her hold seemed like a garden
of spices, so laden was it with cloves, cinnamon,
ambergris, and frankincense.

But even then the Queen was not minded
to deliver him. His chief captain came
from the mouth of the Dart, where the ship
lay, to bring him his reports; but no message
came from the Queen. However, his
freeing was taken out of her hands and
came not a whit too soon, for he had aged
ten years in those two months. It seemed
that the usurers and dealers in precious
metals in London had flocked to the Dart
upon the news of the treasure. And vagrants
from all the winds flocked thither.
And between those vultures and my lord’s
own seamen and men of Devon there was
soon riot and bloodshed. Then, since all
means of restoring the peace seemed to
have failed, at last they took my lord from
the Tower that he might make peace.

It seemed that half the world was about
the treasure-ship, and my lord’s ships.
There came to greet us at our journey’s
end that Lord Cecil of whom I had heard
so much. I trusted him not, and I was rejoiced
that he should see the passion of welcome
which awaited my lord from his men
of Devon. It was well that it was so, for
my Lord Cecil reported upon it to the
Queen.

“I assure you,” he wrote, “all his servants
and his mariners came to him with
such shouts of joy as I never saw a man
more troubled to quiet them in all my life.
But his heart is broken, and whenever he is
saluted with congratulation for liberty he
doth answer, ‘No, I am still the Queen of
England’s poor captive.’ But I vow to you
his credit among the mariners is greater
than I could have thought it.”

My Lord Cecil was well disposed to my
lord, albeit his cunning eyes and old, wise
face made my youth feel of a sudden cold.
The Queen harkened to him, and we were
returned no more to the Tower; yet those
two months of impatient fretting had set
their mark upon my lord.

After this we sailed up the Dart to that
Manor-house where the Lady Raleigh dwelt
with her son. And again there was a very
sweet interval of peace. I have now but to
close my eyes and see again the red-brick
ivied house, with its chimney-stack dark
against the sky. The swallows are wheeling
overhead, shouting and playing with one
another. The rooks are coming homeward
across the evening sky. On the green and
velvety bowling green young Walter and I
are playing at bowls. There are roses on
the terrace and a peacock spreading his tail.
Below these is the garden with its box borders,
its roses and pinks and pansies; its
fountain where the goldfish swim round and
round, and its mossy dial. Further yet is
the orchard, and beyond it the deer feeding
amid the trees, and further still the river,
and apple-orchards, with maids and men
a-gathering apples for the cider brew. But
I look not so far. My eye rests with my
heart upon my lord, when he goeth between
the box-borders in sweet converse with his
lady-wife; and I watch him till young Walter
rallies me as a poor comrade and player
at the game.

Often my lady would take me apart, and
bid me tell her of my lord when he was in
Ireland. Of those years she was never tired
of hearing; and when my tongue or my
thoughts would grow slack she would grow
impatient with me. Yet I think my love
for her lord pleased her. She was a little
lady, and the brightest ever I saw, with
cream-pale cheeks and the liveliest of
black eyes. I could not wonder that
for a time she lulled to sleep my lord’s
desires for America. Very pitiful she
was towards the havoc their long parting
and the trouble and the imprisonment had
wrought in him, and would stand a-tiptoes
to smooth the wrinkles out with her dainty
finger.

The Lord Cecil was now my lord’s friend
at court, and to him she writ beseeching
that there might be no more voyages, at
least for the time.

“I hope for my sake,” she writ, “that you
wilt rather draw Walter toward the East
than help him forward toward the sunset,
if any respect to me or love to him be not
forgotten.”

So we remained in peace, and young Walter
and I flew our hawks and played at the
ball, and fished and swam to our hearts’
content. And dearly as I loved my lord, I
came to love his son hardly less. He was a
brave lad of Devon, this Walter Raleigh, tall
as his father, and nigh as comely, yet innocent
and quiet, with the country innocence
and quietude, because by reason of the
Queen’s displeasure he had abode all his
years in those sequestered ways; yet skilled
in all such manly and courtly arts as became
the son of his father; so that he
was as good with a sonnet as at swordplay,
and could dance the pavane as prettily as he
could loose his goshawk. And for all his
innocence was not unfit to face a rough
world; and for all his quiet kindliness was
as brave and as quick to fight as any gallant
ever I saw.

My lord looked on at our comradeship
well pleased. I heard him ask my Lady
Raleigh one day if we did not make a gallant
couple, at which my lady pouted, and
said he was loving me in Ireland when she
and her Wat were forgotten. “Nay,” said
he, “that never was, Sweetlips; but he comforted
me something in my loneliness without
wife and son.” Then my lady called me
to her, and kissed me like a mother, and
vowed that she loved me for what I had
been to her lord in those Irish years. She
changed quickly in her pretty humors; but
there was no change in her constancy and
kindness towards me any more than in her
lord’s love.

After that we went eastward for a season
to the village of Bath, to drink at its
springs, which had been discovered to be
sovereign remedy for many ills. It was my
Lady Raleigh’s will to make her lord well
again. “As though, Bess,” he said, “you
could turn backward the years we have been
parted.”

And I left the Manor-house with grief
and pain, for never again, I feared, should
we have a season of such peace. My lord
was not one to abide long in peace; and certainly
the Bath waters as they restored his
strength restored also his passion for adventure
and turmoil, so that my Lady
Raleigh in healing him but defeated her
desire of keeping him with her. For after
a time he seemed no longer quiet and well-content.
And he had yet not only his share
of the treasure-ship, though I doubt not the
greater part was poured in the Queen’s lap,
but he had also my Lord Boyle’s purse to
draw upon.

Then as he was becoming restive, yea,
straining as a hound strains at the leash,
and declaring that he would sail before the
mast if he might none other way, one of his
captains, Popham by name, and a stout old
sea-dog from the harbor town of Plymouth,
brought him letters writ by a Spanish captain
to the King of Spain, and captured by
the English ship. Reading them my lord
seemed as he would choke with fury. I
knew how my lord’s heart turned to Guiana,
the golden country. And these letters reported
that the Governor of Trinidad had
annexed this same wondrous land in the
name of King Philip. Then, even my Lady
Raleigh saw that it was no use seeking to
hold her lord any longer; and she bade him
go, with so sweet a grace and so high a spirit
that she proved herself even a worthy mate
for the Great Captain.


[pg!83]


.. toc-entry:: VI.—The Treasure-ship

CHAPTER VI.—THE TREASURE-SHIP.
==============================


We left my Lady Raleigh alone in the
spring of the year. It was February the
sixth, and the snowdrop and crocus were up
in the garden-beds of the Manor-house, and
the blackbirds and thrushes singing nigh as
sweet as they sing in Ireland, when we put
out from Plymouth with five ships and a
motley company. It was a stolen expedition
in a manner of speaking; for we hoisted
our flag for Virginia, yet I think the meanest
scullion aboard knew that Guiana was
our port. For it was not politic to flout too
openly Philip of Spain; though we might fly
the Jolly Roger and overhaul his treasure-ships
on the high seas. For the Queen of
England, as she grew older grew craftier;
and would have any cat’s-paw to draw her
chestnuts out of the fire, and bear the brunt
of it as well, while she went free.

We two Wats sailed with Sir Walter.
’Twas time, he said, his son should see the
world; and indeed it would have gone hard
with us to be left behind.

It is wonderful to me now to recall how I
had learnt—yea, as though I had been English-born—to
hate the Spaniard, as though
he had been a rat or some such thing, and
no evil but merit in the slaying and despoiling
of him. And therein was shown the
folly and vanity of my youth; for not only
was the Spaniard a grave and majestic foe,
but he was of the faith my fathers had died
to defend. Yet of this I thought not at all
at the time, being indeed little better than
a heathen; for my lord, albeit he was religious
at heart, yet showed little of it in his
life, and troubled not at all about it in
others. Indeed, it is a strange thing to me
now to reflect that all who led that wild life
had yet some measure of religion; for then
the days of the cold-heart and the mocker
had not yet begun.

I remember as we made the voyage how
Wat and I used to gather at night about the
mast to hear the sailors tell stories and sing
songs. There was one, Jonas Tittlebat, of
Devizes, who was our favorite story-teller of
them all, and I doubt not our favorite stories
were of the slaying of Spaniards and
sacking of their ships. It was as though
one should inure a tender child to the
shambles. For we grew to love the talk of
blood, and to desire to see and smell and
taste it; and I remember how at the end of
the recitals Wat and I used to sit and pant,
facing each other like a pair of tiger-cats,
with the lust of blood in our hearts. For
though we had been brought up simply and
innocently the evil was there, only awaiting
the breath that should fan it to a flame, and
the fostering hands that would not let it
go out.

Many weeks, even months, were we sailing
till we came in sight of land, and for some
days before this the southwesterly wind
had brought us many an earnest of the
beautiful country, brilliant and strange
leaves, and plumes, and shells, and flowers,
drifting to us over the phosphorescent
water which at night made the sea a dance
of silver.

Of my lord we saw little during the voyage.
He was ever busy with his maps and
charts in the cabin, observing the motion
of his compasses, and studying the stars by
night. Or else he was writing; and often
it made me wonder to see how he, so greatly
in love with action and energy, could
yet content himself so many hours with
the pen.

As we sailed up the river the beauty of it
struck us dumb. I saw my lord stand in
the bows of the vessel and drink in hungrily
the beauty of that land. Exceedingly fertile
it seemed, nor can I describe it better
than in his own words.

“I never imagined a more beautiful country
nor more lively prospects,” he wrote;
“hills so raised here and there over the valleys;
the river winding into divers branches;
the plains adjoining without bush or stubble,
but all fair, green grass; the deer crossing
in every path; the birds towards the
evening singing on every tree with a thousand
several tunes, cranes and herons of
white, crimson, and carnation, perching on
the river’s side; the air fresh with a gentle
easterly wind, and every stone that we
stooped to take up promised either gold or
silver by his complexion.”

We sailed even into the golden city of
Manoa, and there saw the houses with their
strange carvings, and their cups and drinking-vessels
of precious metal; and the marvellous
temple with its hundred images
of beaten gold, the eyes of diamonds, and
with necklets of rubies large as pigeon’s
eggs, and garments sewn with pearls and
emeralds.

The poor Indians who possessed these
treasures were a mild and gentle race, ignorant
of how greatly men’s passions were inflamed
by gold and gems, which to them
were common matters. They were no savages,
but a nation with a certain knowledge
of the arts and a civilization after their own
manner; and it was touching to see how
kindly and sweetly they welcomed the white
man among them, although indeed in the
ships were to be found some of the worst
rascals that ever sailed out of Plymouth.
However, fear of my lord kept this rascaldom
in check; for he loved the Indians, and
made it a matter with the Queen that in
any expedition to the Guianas there should
be no ill-treatment of the gentle race. Indeed
he believed honestly that he were better
their master than Spain, and so had less
compunction in seeking their treasures.

But now a larger expedition was needed,
and one that would have the Queen’s sanction;
and so having feasted our eyes on the
delights of this enchanting country we
turned our ships for home, bearing with us
gifts of gems and gold with which the Indians
had loaded us, and also great stores of
roots and plants and many strange matters.

We were not bent on any adventure, for
my lord thought only of gaining the Queen’s
ear, displaying to her the earnest he brought
of the treasures of Guiana, and returning
thither as fast as might be after fitting out
a large fleet of ships; and then of taking
possession in the Queen’s name. For
greater even than his passion for adventure
were his love of England and hatred
of Spain; and the new policy of pleasing
King Philip he loathed with all his heart.

The homeward voyage therefore he spent
in writing for the Queen’s eye an account of
Guiana, which afterwards he magnified into
his book “*On the Discovery of the large,
rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana, with
a relation of the great and Golden City of
Manoa, which the Spaniards call El Dorado,
and the Provinces of Emeria, Arromaia,
Amapaia, and other Countries, with their
Rivers adjoining*.”

So we were left again to the story-telling
about the mast; and this grew more violent
and rank with blood, as though the sight of
so much treasure as we had left behind us
had inflamed the minds of the tellers. Yea,
we ate and drank blood, it seems to me,
now looking back on those recitals; and were
thus prepared for what followed.

For lo, one evening we saw far off upon
the waters the shape of a great ship. Her
poop was high out of the water, and apart
from her size she was easy to be seen, for
as the night gathered she blazed with candles
so that she was like a fiery thing upon
the waters.

Then there was such a confusion and excitement
on the ships as never have I seen
surpassed. My lord had left his books, and
standing by the prow of the Bon Aventure
gazed through his telescope upon that far-away
vision that hung like a great golden
bird against the purple of the after-sunset.
There was no doubt in any mind that she
was a Spanish galleon by her high poop and
her great decks above the water. She was
indeed none other than the famous treasure-ship,
Nuestra Señora del Pilar, and she was
riding without any escort.

We extinguished every light we had
aboard the ships, and in cover of the darkness
we crept upon her. She was big as a
little town, it seemed to me; and for all she
was so gayly lit she slept well, for we crept
up under her stern, and there was no cry
from her lookout. At last we were so near
that I could see the image of the Holy Virgin
at her masthead, and the lamp burning
before it. But the image said nothing to
me then.

The great ship was almost motionless on
the dark water. Indeed I wondered if she
had cast anchor, so still she was; yet how
cast anchor in so many fathoms of water?

With much care and muffling of our oars
we now took to the boats, and as fast as the
boats filled they rowed towards the ship.
The boat in which I was came up by the
poop. I looked above me in wonder at all
the rows of carven saints and angels, as it
were the hierarchy of heaven. Over the
side a rope swung noiselessly, as though it
had been left there for our purpose. We
clambered up it one after another and stood
on deck, where was not a living soul, and
this puzzled us not a little. But the bulwarks
were set round with carven images in
little niches, and each had its lamp, and the
like on every deck; and that was how the
illumination had come.

I looked round on the shipmen in the
light of the many shrines. Some had the
brown and wholesome faces of seamen,
and though they looked fierce and blood-thirsty
enough, were yet no worse than
any fighting man. But others were no better
than Algerine pirates, and carried a
knife in their teeth and their pistols at full
cock, and were as ready to slay and murder
as any evil beast. For my lord had sailed
with but a handful of his own men amid the
scum of Plymouth rascaldom.

Yet even these did the silence of the
great ship somewhat appal. And for myself,
though I was as ready for murder and
rapine as any, yet was I given pause; and
hearing my lord’s whisper at my elbow, I
turned and looked at him. “What do you
make of it, Wat?” he asked. “Do you
think it is a trap?”

But ere I could answer him a figure came
up the stairway from the cabin. It was an
old man, very tall, and in the garb of a
white friar, just such another as I had left
sleeping in St. Mary’s Tower. The likeness
sent a thrill of terror through me. The old
man saw us not. He carried a taper in his
hand; he was going round doubtless to replenish
the lamps if they had gone out. The
light from the taper showed a face of much
benignancy—an old, kind face. The cowl
had fallen back, and the silver tonsure
gleamed in the light.

Suddenly some one stirred in our midst,
and all at once he knew that we were there.
He opened his lips as though to speak.
Then some of those pirates were upon him.
I saw him lift the great crucifix that hung
by his side between them and him. Then
he was down, and the knives were hewing
him. I thought no more on it, though it
turned me sick an instant.

The ship now swarmed with our men
rushing hither and thither in search of
treasure. Some were seizing the silver
lamps before the shrines, others were tearing
down the images. A rush of men swept
me from my feet and down the cabin stairs,
and I grasped my sword tighter. But here
was no enemy. Only rich garments flung
hither and thither in the silk-hung rooms,
and many signs of the ship having been deserted
in haste.

I would have gone further, leaving the
place to those who were tearing it to pieces,
dragging down the hangings, kicking open
the cedar-wood lockers, and pouring the
precious wine they found there down their
throats; I would have gone further had not
my lord prevented me.

“Come up on deck, Wat,” he said; “there
is a scent of death here that sickens me. I
am glad I left my boy on the Bon Aventure.”

He dragged me with him. We were
hardly up in the pure air before there was
a scream from the mad herd below that
turned one cold to hear; and as though the
devil pursued them they came clambering
up the hatches and staircases white as
death, and sobered, and began flinging
themselves off the sides of the vessel into
their boats.

“They would leave us here, Wat, to the
terror, whatever it may be,” said my lord,
“if I had not had with me by good fortune
a handful of mine own shipmates. Ah,
Gregory Dabchick”—seizing one—“what
white devil hast thou seen below-stairs?”

“If you please, none, Captain,” cried
Dabchick, his breath sobbing; “but a worse
thing. There are half a dozen corpses below
there, dead of the smallpox. ’Tis a
floating pest-house, my lord, and the place
reeks with death.”

“Ah,” said Sir Walter, as we stood waiting
for the mob to get off the ship, “the
monk would have told us so if those dogs
had not murdered him. Doubtless he remained
behind when the others fled away,
to nurse the living and bury the dead, and
solaced himself, poor soul, by setting candles
to his saints.”

Ere we were put into Plymouth town
again there were eighty of our hundred dead
of the smallpox; and I was carried ashore
more dead than alive, to be nursed back to
health by the Lady Raleigh’s ministering
hands.


[pg!99]


.. toc-entry:: VII.—Our Last Years Together

CHAPTER VII.—OUR LAST YEARS TOGETHER.
=====================================


I came out of that illness no longer the
youth I had been; for God used the things
that had happened me to make a change
in my heart. I went very near to death,
and I came back to life very grievously disfigured,
yea, as though I had been slashed
criss-cross with swords, and the sight of one
of mine eyes gone. Nevermore should I
ruffle it with gallants; and indeed it seemed
a bitter and cruel thing to the boy, this ruin
of comeliness, so that for long the bitterness
was greater than death, yet since then
the man has learned to thank the Hand that
wielded that most merciful rod.

I was yet but a moping thing, creeping up
heavily from death to life, when my lord
sailed on that expedition to Cadiz with the
Lord Admiral Thomas Howard and his old-time
enemy the Lord Essex, which brought
such glory to the English name. I think
there was but one part of my old self remained
alive in me, and that was my love
for Sir Walter, which is wrought so inextricably
within the chords of my being that
nothing shall disentangle it.

I had been sick to death during that time
when Sir Walter had wrestled vainly with
the Queen for an expedition to Guiana, and
been discomfited. For truly her will was
brass and iron; nothing for man, however
great, to prevail against, and for long her
face had been turned away from him, and
seemed like to remain so.

I was getting well, with no heart to
recover, when the reports came of the
Cadiz expedition. It was glorious summer
weather, and my Lady Raleigh, whose patience
was more than human with me, would
have me carried to the lawn under shade of
trees; and there laid on my pillows I would
listen to her proud recitals of her lord’s
heroic deeds.

It was on the 21st of June that the fleet
entered Cadiz Harbor. My lord was on
board the Water Sprite; and he had no
sooner entered than he received the fire of
seventeen great galleons. But as though
she had been indeed spirit and not body, the
Sprite went unharmed. Raleigh blew his
trumpets upon them in a great blare of defiance.
Near at hand lay the St. Philip and
the St. Andrew, the two ships foremost in
that attack on the Revenge in which the
brave Sir Richard Greville had fallen.
“These,” wrote he, “were the marks I shot
at, being resolved to be revenged for the
Revenge, or to second her with my own
life.... Having no hope of my fly-boats
to board, and the Earl and my Lord Thomas
having both promised to second me, I laid
out a way by the side of the Philip to
shake hands with her, for with the wind we
could not get aboard; which when she and
the rest perceived they all let slip and ran
aground, tumbling into the sea heaps of soldiers
as thick as if coals had been poured
out of a sack in many parts at once, some
drowned and some sticking in the mud. The
Philip burned itself, the St. Andrew and the
St. Matthew were recovered by our boats ere
they could get out to fire them. The
spectacle was very lamentable, for many
drowned themselves; many, half-burned,
leaped into the water; very many hanging
by the rope’s end by the ship’s side, under
the water even to the lips; many swimming
with grievous wounds, and withal so huge a
fire and so great a tearing of ordnance in
the great Philip and the rest, when the fire
came to them, as if a man had a desire to
see Hell itself it was there most lively figured.
Ourselves spared the lives of all after
the victory, but the Flemings, who did little
or nothing in the fight, used merciless
slaughter, till they were by myself, and
afterwards by the Lord Admiral, beaten
off.”

“The poor Spaniards!” cried my Lady
Raleigh with tears, even while she was
proudest; but as for me, I had no heart to
rejoice or to be sorry, being so marred myself,
and scarce anything alive in me except
my love for her lord, and even that pulsed
faintly.

He came home to be hailed with such
cheers and shouts by the common people as
pleased the Queen but little, for she liked
not to be eclipsed by a subject. Besides, the
victory gave her little treasure; and she
grew more and more miserly. Though my
lord was glorious with wounds, she even refused
to look upon him, which led me to
say, as I have said often since, that the
greatness of those Tudors lay chiefly in
their hard usage of those who made them
great. However, there was to gauge a
deeper depth when the Stuart came to England’s
throne.

I had feared my lord’s face when he came
to look on me in my disfigurement, for he
loved beauty, so that I scarcely dared to lift
my one sound eye to his. Yet when I had
found courage to do so I found nothing but
love in his regard, and he embraced me as a
father might, kissing my seamed cheek and
calling me his dear lad. And young Walter
likewise; for in the years that followed, during
which we continued the tender friendship
that had sprung up between us at the
first, I have never once seen in his manner
that pity which I could not have borne.

But the end of our misfortunes was not
yet. Elizabeth died, and the son of Mary
of Scotland succeeded; and now my lord anticipated
no more ill than came, for the
Stuart truckled to King Philip as never a
Tudor had done, and ’twas like the Spaniard’s
first demand would be that the most
glorious of his enemies should be laid away
beyond power of annoying him more. So it
was that presently my lord was accused of
being joined with the Lord Cobham in a
plot to bring the Lady Arabella Stuart to
the throne, and was cast into the Tower.

Then began that long martyrdom which
is the everlasting disgrace of the meanest of
Kings. He had made friends with his
mother’s slayer. What was to be looked for
from him? But to shut an eagle in a cage,
to clip a sea-bird’s wings, to confine in a little
space the noblest, freest spirit that lived,
and the loyalist to England! This remained
for Mary Stuart’s son to do.

There was no end to that imprisonment.
Again I went with him to the Tower; while
my lady had a lodging without the walls.
Young Walter still fought, as his father had
before him, the battles of England by land
and sea. And I was my lord’s squire in the
Tower, and had as much glory and love in
it as though ’twere the Field of Cloth of
Gold.

For now I was to witness the greatness of
his spirit. When it had been borne in upon
him that this imprisonment was like to have
no end, he fretted not as he did in those two
months long ago, but solaced his heart by
the writing of that great *History of the
World* which remains his monument. Also
religion came sweetly to his aid, for that
which had been out of sight in his wild,
seafaring days now leaped up like a flame.
Indeed never have I seen a greater tranquillity.
He also occupied himself with the distilling
of sweet waters and medicinal herbs;
and the Governor of the Tower, who loved
him, permitted that his still should be set
up in the Governor’s garden, where also he
took up again his old gardening ways. Indeed
he kept his pain as being a captive out
of sight after the first, and contented himself
heroically; although his lady, poor soul,
deafened the court with her prayers for her
brave Wat, as though it were not the Spaniard
who had turned the key upon him.

Nor yet was he forgotten by his old lovers,
the common people. They waited in
crowds to see him walk upon the terrace.
The sailors shouted for him as the ships
came up the river. As the years passed, and
his feats became a legend, ladies and cavaliers
came praying from the lieutenant of
the Tower a word with the lion-heart. Still
he wore his velvets and silks and damasks;
still he blazed with jewels: no dusty prisoner,
but a splendid knight, pacing the terrace
while summers and winters went.

Even the Queen came thither with her
young son begging his “strawberry water”
to cure her of an ailment; and if the mother
returned not it was not so with the son.
The young Prince Henry came again and
again, and being a youth of high and generous
spirit, loved my lord in time near as
well as we did, who had seen his glories.
“None save my father,” he quoth bitterly,
“would have kept such a bird in a cage.”

His relation with my lord came in time to
be as that of master and pupil, for he would
pace with him for hours while my lord discoursed
on the arts of peace and war and
the duties of a prince to his subjects. So
great grew the tenderness between them
that I doubt not if the young Prince had
lived my lord would have stood at his right
hand. But that was not to be: he died untimely,
and the last prayer on his lips was
for the freeing of his friend.

The dead Prince’s prayer was forgotten;
but presently when the King wanted money
he remembered the treasures of Guiana and
those gifts my lord had brought to Queen
Elizabeth. ’Twas as mean a bargain as ever
was made. My lord was to have his liberty.
He was to find the money for the ships and
the men; but whatever treasure the gold
mines in the Orinoco yielded was to fall to
the King. On these conditions, and that
he was not to meddle with the Spaniards,
my lord set out. I went with him; and
young Walter also sailed. He who had
been a noble and gallant youth was now
become a noble and gallant man, and my
lord had great hopes of him; but, alas,
Death mows down the fairest and the most
promising.

From the first the thing was ill-fated.
We were not so far sailed when fever broke
out and ravaged the ships. Now there is
nothing like a pestilence for breaking the
heart and reducing the spirit in men; and
ere ever we reached Guiana shores there
was grumbling a-shipboard and mutiny in
the air. And when we were come there it
was to find the Spaniards, with forces of
ships and men guarding the mouth of the
river; for all our secrets had been betrayed
to them.

Nor would it matter what force the Spaniards
had, nor would any murmur have
arisen if but the Captain had been at our
head. But he, alas, was laid low by the
sickness; and his men without him as a
shepherdless flock that is driven hither and
thither and blown upon by winds of confusion.
For when they found the Spanish
defences they cried out that they had been
betrayed, and would go no further.

Then young Walter, that inheritor of all
braveries, leaped to the front and offered
to creep ashore, past the line of the Spaniards,
and reach the mines if so he might,
and return with reports upon them. Also
Captain Keymis, one of the bravest of
Raleigh’s seamen, would go with him. With
tender embracings and partings did father
and son say farewell, that never were to
look on each other in this life again. For
a party of Spaniards did set upon our dear
Wat and his brave companion, together with
the little force that went with them; and
shouting to his men to come on, Wat fell,
hacked to pieces by Spanish swords.

Captain Keymis escaped to bring back
the tale of disaster and a report that there
was no gold to be had at the mines now,
whatever had been. So the men murmured
more; though my lord, sick as he was, would
himself go in search of the mines and in
pursuit of the Spaniards that had slain his
son. But none would follow him.

Then, broken-hearted, the lion of England
at last turned his back on his promised
land and set sail for England to meet his
death at last. He had better have died
fighting the Spaniards, yet that his men
would not permit; and I think none of them
guessed that they brought him home to his
death.


[pg!113]


.. toc-entry:: VIII.—An Unravelled Thread

CHAPTER VIII.—AN UNRAVELLED THREAD.
===================================


Once again we were in the dolorous
Tower, and this time there was no returning.
They arrested him at Plymouth on
the moment of his landing. As though they
could never slay him fast enough, he was
put on his trial and found guilty of abusing
the King’s confidence and injuring the subjects
of Spain, and condemned to death on
the old sentence.

Perhaps they thought if they were not
speedy that the people would not suffer it.
To kill a Raleigh was better sport than
witch-burning, yet they hardly paused from
their torture of innocent crones and helpless
girls to see the lion die. One grace they
gave him—that his body was to be spared
the last indignities and to be handed over
to his wife for burial where she would. “It
is well, Bess,” he said to her, rallying her,
“thou mayst dispose of that dead which
thou hadst not always the disposal of when
living.”

The last night he lived he spoke with me
of my birth. I then told him that I had
held the secret all those years. “Yet you
stayed, Wat,” he said gently, “though I
was the enemy of your people.”

“But ever my most dear and admired
lord,” I made answer.

Then he told me how he had always intended
that I should have his portion of the
Desmond inheritance, together with certain
jewels and plate which he had hidden in a
secret place in the garden at Youghall; but
he had been obliged by sore necessity to
give six thousand acres to the Lord Boyle,
who was now Earl of Cork. Another six
thousand the Lord Boyle was to hold in
trust for me. “The deeds are safe,” he
said, “and he is bound fast. If he will not
disgorge, you must even make him.”

“Alas, to what end?” I asked, “seeing
that by my name I am an outlawed man.”

“You might be the King’s Fitzmaurice,”
he said, hesitatingly.

“My dear lord,” I made answer, “tomorrow
morn I am done with earthly hopes.
Am I one to go to court, or to present myself
to my people, if people I yet possess?”

“Why, Wat,” he said gently, “I think
others might love that seamed face of yours
since I do so greatly. What will you do?
Will you comfort my lady?”

“If she needs me,” I made answer.

“I think she will go to her own folk,”
he said.

“Then I shall be free to do what I will.”

“And that, Wat?”

“Seek out a hermitage far from the
world.”

“It is truest wisdom,” he said. “I was
not born to be quiet or else I might wish
that I had found wisdom in my time.”

But he asked me nothing more of what I
meant to do, although he placed the deeds
in my hands to carry to the Lord Boyle. I
think he had so done with this world that
but for his lady’s sake he had been glad his
doom was at hand. Think on it! He had
been twelve years in that Tower, who could
never abide the least shackle, however
gentle.

While yet I was with him he writ this
verse and gave it me with a smile:

   | Even such is He that takes in trust
   |   Our youth, our joys, our all we have
   | And pays us but with earth and dust;
   |   Who in the dark and silent grave,
   | When we have wandered all our ways
   | Shuts up the story of our days;
   | But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
   | My God shall raise me up, I trust.

The next morning I helped to caparison
him as for his wedding. Such gay trappings
for death were never seen, such rose-pink
silk, bediamonded, such white velvet, such
white leathern shoes with rosettes of rubies.
Then once again I saw my lord young and
glad, and so full of jests that it grieved the
good Dean of Westminster to hear him, for
he thought it a light spirit in which to
meet death.

Throngs of people crowded the palace-yard
of Westminster to see him for the last
time. He smiled upon them happily while
he spoke his farewells to them.

“I thank God,” he said, “that He hath
brought me into the light to die, and hath
not suffered me to die in the dark prison of
the Tower, where I have known a great deal
of misery and sickness. And I thank God
that my fever hath not taken me at this
time, as I prayed Him it might not, that I
might clear myself of some accusations laid
to my charge unjustly, and leave behind me
the testimony of a true heart both to my
King and country.” Then he held the
crowd spellbound while he spoke in his defence,
and when he had finished, none
moved, but they all pressed closer to him as
though they could not bear to leave him.

At last he sent them away himself. “I
have a long journey to go,” he said, “therefore
must I take my leave of you.”

Afterwards he tried the temper of the
axe, passing his finger along the edge.
“’Tis a sharp medicine,” he said; “but one
that will cure me of all my diseases.”

The sheriff asked him which way he
would lay himself upon the block. “So as
the heart be right,” he said, “it matters
not which way the head lies.” Then he laid
himself down; and since the headsman
feared to strike, and well he might fear, my
lord himself hurried him. “Strike, man,
strike!” he cried; and in an instant the
noblest head in England rolled upon the
ground.

So ended the glorious Sir Walter Raleigh;
and musing on that end and on the wrongs
he suffered at the hands of Queen Elizabeth,
I am often led to wonder that men should
raise kings and queens over them to work
such ill. For it seems to me that the great
days of England were not made by Elizabeth
Tudor or Harry, her sire, but by the
great men who stood around them, and
whom so often they sent to their death.
Raleigh followed Essex by a space of less
than a score years, both suffering execution;
and I pray that in another world these two
are friends who jostled each other in this,
but came alike to the headsman’s block.
The Tudors were too fond of beheading; but
they, at least, sent their friends to the block
and took the shame. I notice in these
Stuarts something more treacherous—that
they permit the slaying, and then will rend
their garments.

However, what have I to do with bitterness?
No sooner was my lord laid in the
grave than I set out to visit my Lord Boyle;
and being a great man now, his name carried
me safely where I had not gone without. He
received me with great honor as a friend
of Sir Walter Raleigh, and entertained me
well; but never a word he spoke concerning
that trust. However, I will not wrong him,
for I left him after all without saying farewell.
I was little minded to dispute with
him the possession of those acres; but I
paid a visit by stealth to the garden of the
Manor-house, and there dug up the treasure
of which Sir Walter had warned me, and
conveyed it privily on board my vessel.

It had to be done piecemeal, for I trusted
none but myself; but when my sea-chests
held all those chalices and monstrances and
golden candlesticks, we weighed anchor one
night of storm, and sailed from Youghall
without so much as farewell to my Lord
Boyle. However, it comforted him doubtless
that I never spoke of the trust, but
disappeared from his world that stormy
night as though I had gone on a witch’s
broomstick.

I had fain given mine uncle’s bones
burial, but that might not be; so I left him
in the consecrated place where he had lain
so many years—to the birds of heaven and
the angels.

But for myself, I and my sea-chests were
put ashore at a little French town, from
whence in due time I made my way to
Douai, and restored the treasure to Her
from whom it had been taken. And since
Tyburn Tree had so greatly added to the
glorious throng of the martyrs, and the
ranks were thinned of those who would follow
in their footsteps, I asked the Fathers
of the English College to accept me among
them, which of their graciousness they did;
for I was grown sick of the world. And who
cares that Father Walter is pock-pitted and
hath one blind eye?

Once I had cared only to be of the flower
of knighthood. Now all my dream is that I
might some day earn that greeting of St.
Philip to my forerunners in these gray
halls—*Salvete, flos martyrum*!

.. class:: center

   | PRINTED BY BENZIGER BROTHERS, NEW YORK.

|
|
|
|
|

.. _pg_end_line:

\*\*\* END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT CAPTAIN: A STORY OF THE DAYS OF SIR WALTER RALEIGH \*\*\*

.. backmatter::

.. toc-entry::
   :depth: 0

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