Sir John Constantine by Prosper Paleologus Constantine

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On the edge of this green cauldron the Corsicans and my comrades sat
like so many witches, their figures magnified uncannily against the
void; and far beyond, above the rose-coloured crags, deep-set in
miles of transparent blue, shone the snow-covered central peaks of
the island.

As I rounded the corner, Mr. Fett hailed me with a shout and a vocal
imitation of a post-horn.

"Another," he cried, and slapped his thigh triumphantly. "Another
blossom added to the posy! Badcock, my flosculet, you owe me five
shillings. Permit me to explain, sir"--he turned to me--"that Mr.
Badcock has been staking upon an anthology, I upon the full basket
and the whole hog. It is cut and come again with these Corsicans;
and, talking of hogs--"

His chatter tailed off in a pitiful exclamation as the
litter-carriers came around the angle of the ridge with Nat's body
between them.

"Poor lad! Ah, poor lad!" I heard Billy say. Mr. Badcock nervously
disjointed his flute. "I warned him, sir. Believe me, my last words
were that, being in Rome, so to speak, he should do as the Romans
did--"

"There is one more," announced the girl, to her Corsicans, "and I
have sent for him. He will come under conduct; and, meanwhile, I
have to say that any man who offers to harm this prisoner, here, will
be shot."

"But why should we harm him, principessa?" they asked; and, indeed, I
felt inclined to echo their question, seeing that she pointed at me.

"Because he has killed Giuseppe," she answered simply.

"Giuseppe? He has slain Giuseppe?" The simultaneous cry went up in
a wail, and by impulse the hand of each one moved to his knife.

"Your pardon, principessa--" began one black-avised bandit, dropping
the haft of his knife and feeling for the gun at his back.

She waived him aside and turned to me. "I should warn you, sir, that
we are of one clan here, though I may not tell you our name; and
against the slayer of one it is vendetta with us all. But I spare
you until your father arrives."

"I thank you," answered I, feeling blue, but fetching up my best bow.
(Here was a pleasant prospect!) "I only beg to observe that I killed
this man--if I have killed him--in self-defence," I added.

"Do you wish me to repeat that as your plea?" she asked, half in
scorn.

"I do not," said I, with a sudden rush of anger. "Moreover, I dare
say that these savages of yours would see no distinction."

"You are right," she replied carelessly, "they would see no
distinction."

"But excuse me, principessa," persisted the scowling man, "a feud is
a feud, and if he has slain our Giuse--"

"Attend to me, sir," I broke in. "Your Giuseppe came at me like a
hog, and I gave him his deserts. For the rest, if you move your hand
another inch towards that gun I will knock your brains out." I
clubbed my musket ready to strike.

"Gently, sir!" interposed the girl. "This is folly, as you must
see."

I shrugged my shoulders. "You will allow me, Princess. If it come
to vendetta, you have slain my friend."

She gave her back to me and faced the ring. "I tell you," she said,
"that Giuseppe's death rests on the prisoner's word alone.
Marc'antonio and Stephanu have gone down and will bring us the truth
of it. Meanwhile I say that this one is our prisoner, like as the
others. Give him room and let him wait by his friend. Does any one
say 'nay' to that?" she demanded.

The scowling man, with a glance at his comrades' faces, gave way.
I could not have told why, but from the start of the dispute I felt
that this girl held her bandits, or whatever they were, in imperfect
obedience. They obeyed her, yet with reserve. When pressed to the
point between submission and mutiny, they yielded; but they yielded
with a consent which I could not reconcile with submission.
Even whilst answering deferentially they appeared to be looking at
one another and taking a cue.

For the time, however, she had prevailed with them. They stood aside
while Billy and I lifted the litter and bore it to the shade of an
overhanging rock. One even fetched me a panful of water which he had
collected from a trickling spring on the face of the cliffs hard by,
and brought me linen, too, when he saw me preparing to tear up my own
shirt to bind Nat's wound.

We could not trace the course of the bullet, and judged it best to
spare meddling with a hurt we could not help. So, having bathed away
the clotted blood and bandaged him, we strewed a fresh bed of fern,
and watched by him, moistening his lips from time to time with water,
for which he moaned. The sun began to sink on the far side of the
mountain, and the shadow of the summit, falling into the deep gulf at
our feet, to creep across the green tree-tops massed there. While it
crept, and I watched it, Billy related in whispers how he had been
sprung upon and gagged, so swiftly that he had no chance to cry alarm
or to feel for the trigger of his musket. He rubbed his hands
delightedly when in return I told the story of my lucky shot. In his
ignorance of Italian he had caught no inkling of the peril that lucky
shot had brought upon me, nor did I choose to enlighten him.

The shadow of the mountain was stretching more than halfway across
the valley, and in the slanting light the rosy tinge of the crags
appeared to be melting and suffusing the snow-peaks beyond, when my
father walked into the camp unannounced. He carried a gun and a
folding camp-stool, and was followed by Marc'antonio, who fluttered
my white handkerchief from the ramrod of his musket.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen!" said my father, lifting his hat and
looking about him.

I could see at a glance that his stature and bearing impressed the
Corsicans. They drew back for a moment, then pressed around him like
children.

"Mbe! E bellu, il Inglese," I heard one say to his fellow.

After quelling the brief tumult against me, and while I busied myself
with Nat, the girl had disappeared--I could not tell whither.
But now one of the band ran up the slope calling loudly to summon
her. "O principessa, ajo, ajo! Veni qui, ajo!" and, gazing after
him, I saw her at the entrance of a cave some fifty feet above us,
erect, with either hand parting and holding back the creepers that
curtained her bower.

She let the curtains fall-to behind her, and, stepping down the
hillside, welcomed my father with the gravest of curtsies.

"Salutation, O stranger!"

"And to you, O lady, salutation!" my father made answer, with a bow.
"Though English," he went on, slipping easily into the dialect she
used with her followers, "I am Corsican enough to forbear from asking
their names of gentlefolk in the _macchia_; but mine is John
Constantine, and I am very much at your service."

"My men call me the Princess Camilla."

"A good name," said my father, and seemed to muse upon it for a
moment while he eyed her paternally. "A very good name, O Princess,
and beloved of old by Diana--

"'Aeternum telorum et virginitatis amorem
Intemerata--'

"But I come at your bidding and must first of all apologize for some
little delay; the cause being that your messenger found me busy
patching up a bullet-hole in one of your men."

"Giuseppe is not dead?"

"He is not dead, and on the whole I incline to think he is not going
to die, though you will allow me to say that the rogue deserved it.
The other three gentlemen-at-arms despatched by you are at this
moment bringing him up the hill, very carefully, following my
instructions. He will need care. In fact, it will be touch-and-go
with him for many days to come."

While he talked, my father, catching sight of me, had stepped to
Nat's couch. Nodding to me without more ado to lift the patient and
cut away his shirt, he knelt, unrolled his case of instruments, and
with a "Courage, lad!" bent an ear to the faint breathing. In less
than a minute, as it seemed, his hand feeling around the naked back
came to a pause a little behind and under the right arm-pit.

"Courage, lad!" he repeated. "A little pain, and we'll have it, safe
as a wasp in an apple."

The Corsicans under his orders had withdrawn to a little distance and
stood about us in a ring. While he probed and Nat's poor body
writhed feebly in my arms, I lifted my eyes once with a shudder, and
met the Princess Camilla's. She was watching, and without a tremor,
her face grave as a child's.

With a short grunt of triumph, my father caught away his hand, dipped
it swiftly into the pan of water beside him, and held the bullet
aloft between thumb and forefinger. The Corsicans broke into quick
guttural cries, as men hailing a miracle. As Nat's head fell back
limp against my shoulder I saw the Princess turn and walk away alone.
Her followers dispersed by degrees, but not, I should say, until
every man had explained to every other his own theory of the wound
and the operation, and how my father had come to find the bullet so
unerringly, each theorist tapping his own chest and back, or his
interlocutor's, sometimes a couple tapping each other with vigour,
neither listening, both jabbering at full pitch of the voice with
prodigious elisions of consonants and equally prodigious drawlings of
the vowels. For us, the dressing of the wound kept us busy, and we
paid little attention even when a fresh jabbering announced that the
litter-bearers had arrived with Giuseppe.

By-and-by, however, my father rose from his knees and, leaving me to
fasten the last bandages, strolled across the slope to see how his
other patient had borne the journey. Just at that moment I heard
again a voice calling to the Princess Camilla: "Ajo, ajo! O
principessa, veni qui!" and simultaneously the voice of Billy Priske
uplifted in an incongruous British oath.

My father halted with a gesture of annoyance, checked himself, and,
awaiting the Princess, pointed towards an object on the turf--an
object at which Billy Priske, too, was pointing.

It appeared that while his comrades had been attending on Giuseppe,
the third Corsican (whom they called Ste, or Stephanu) had filled up
his time by rifling our camp; and of all our possessions he had
chosen to select our half-dozen spare muskets and a burst coffer,
from which he now extracted and (for his comrade's admiration) held
aloft our chiefest treasure--the Iron Crown of Corsica.

"Princess," said my father, coldly, "your men have broken faith.
I came to you under no compulsion, obeying your flag of truce.
It was no part of the bargain that our camp should be pillaged."

For a while she did not seem to hear; but stood at gaze, her eyes
round with wonder.

"Stephanu, bring it here," she commanded.

The man brought it. "O principessa," said he, with a wondering grin,
"who are these that travel with royal crowns? If we were true folk
of the _macchia_, now, we could hold them at a fine ransom."

She took the crown, examined it for a moment, and turning to my
father, spoke to him swiftly in French.

"How came you by this, O Englishman?"

"That," answered my father, stiffly, "I decline to tell you.
It has come to your hands, Princess, through violation of your flag
of truce, and in honour you should restore it to me without
question."

She waved a hand impatiently. "This is the crown of King Theodore,
O Englishman. See the rim of mingled oak and laurel, made in
imitation of that hasty chaplet wherewith the Corsicans first crowned
him in the Convent of Alesani. Answer me, and in French, for all
your lives depend on it; yet briefly, for the sound of that tongue
angers my men. For your life, then, how did you come by this?"

"You must find some better argument, Princess," said my father,
stiffly.

"For your son's life then."

I saw my father lift his eyes and scan her beautiful face.

"My son is not a coward, Princess; the less so that--" Here my
father hesitated.

"Quickly, quickly!" she urged him.

He threw up his head. "Yes, quickly, Princess; and in no fear, nor
upon any condition. You are islanders; therefore you are patriots.
You are patriots; therefore you hate the Genoese and love the Queen
Emilia, whose servant I am. As I was saying, then, my son has the
less excuse to be a coward in that he hopes, one day, with the Queen
Emilia's blessing, to wear this crown bequeathed to him by the late
King Theodore."

"_He?_" The girl swung upon me, scornfully incredulous.

"Even he, Princess. In proof I can show you King Theodore's deed of
gift, signed with his own hand and attested."

For the first time, then, I saw her smile; but the smile held no
correspondence with the tone of slow, quiet contempt in which she
next spoke.

"You are trustful, O sciu Johann Constantine. I have heard that all
Englishmen tell the truth, and expect it, and are otherwise mad."

"I trust to nothing, Princess, until I have the Queen Emilia's word.
That I would trust to my life's end."

She nodded darkly. "You shall go to her--if you can find her."

"Tell me where to seek her."

"She lies at Nonza in Capo Corse; or peradventure the Genoese, who
hold her prisoner, have by this time carried her across to the
Continent."

"Though she were in Genoa itself, I would deliver her or die."

"You will probably die, O Englishman, before you receive her answer;
and that will be a pity--yes, a great pity. But you are free to go,
you and your company--all but your son here, this King of Corsica
that is to be, whom I keep as hostage, with his crown. Eh? Is this
not a good bargain I offer you?"

"Be it good or bad, Princess," my father answered, "to make a bargain
takes two."

"That is true," said I, stepping forward with a laugh, and thrusting
myself between the Corsicans, who had begun to press around with
decided menace in their looks. "And therefore the Princess will
accept me as the other party to the bargain, and as her hostage."

Again at the sound of my laugh she shrunk a little; but presently
frowned.

"Have you considered, cavalier," she asked coldly, "that Giuseppe is
not certain of recovery?"

"Still less certain is my friend," answered I, and with a shrug of
the shoulders walked away to Nat's sick-couch. There, twenty minutes
later, my father took leave of me, after giving some last
instructions for the care of the invalid. In one hand he carried his
musket, in the other his camp-stool.

"Say the word even now, lad," he offered, "and we will abide till he
recovers."

But I shook my head.

Billy Priske carried an enormous wine-skin slung across his
shoulders; Mr. Fett a sack of provender. Mr. Badcock had begged or
borrowed or purchased an enormous gridiron.

"But what is that for? I asked him, as we shook hands.

"For cooking the wild goose," he answered solemnly, "which in these
parts, as I am given to understand, is an animal they call the
_mufflone_. He partakes in some degree of the nature of a sheep.
He will find me his match, sir."

One by one, a little before the sun sank, they bade me farewell and
passed--free men--down the path that dipped into the pine forest.
On the edge of the dip each man turned and waved a hand to me.
The princess, with Marc'antonio beside her, stood and watched them as
they passed out of sight.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE FOREST HUT.

"Then hooly, hooly rase she up,
And hooly she came nigh him,
And when she drew the curtain by--
'Young man, I think you're dyin'.'"
_Barbara Allan's Cruelty_.

Evening fell, of a sudden filling the great hollow with purple
shadows. As the stars came out the Corsicans on the slope to my left
lit a fire of brushwood and busied themselves around it, cooking
their supper. They were no ordinary bandits, then; or at least had
no fear to betray their whereabouts, since on the landward side on so
clear a night the glow would be visible for many miles.

I watched them at their preparations. Their dark figures moved
between me and the flames as they set up a tall tripod of pine poles
and hung their cauldron from the centre of it, upon a brandice.
The princess had withdrawn to her cave and did not reappear until
Stephanu, who seemed to be head-cook, announced that supper was
ready, whereupon she came and took her seat with the rest in a ring
around the fire. Marc'antonio brought me my share of seethed kid's
flesh with a capful of chestnuts roasted in the embers; a flask of
wine too, and a small pail of goat's milk with a pannikin, for Nat.
The fare might not be palatable, but plainly they did not intend us
to starve.

Marc'antonio made no answer when I thanked him, but returned to his
seat in the ring, where from the beginning of the meal--as at a
signal--his companions had engaged in a furious and general dispute.
So at least it sounded, and so shrill at times were their contending
voices, and so fierce their gesticulations, that for some minutes I
fully expected to see them turn to other business the knives with
which they attacked their meal.

The Princess sat listening, speaking very seldom. Once only in a
general hush the firelight showed me that her lips were moving, and I
caught the low tone of her voice, but not the words. Not once did
she look in my direction, and yet I guessed that she was speaking of
me: for the words "ostagiu," "Inglese," and the name "Giuseppe" or
"Griuse"--of the man I had shot--had recurred over and over in their
jabber, and recurred when she ceased and it broke forth again.

It had lasted maybe for half an hour when at a signal from
Marc'antonio (whom I took to be the Princess's lieutenant or
spokesman in these matters, and to whom she turned oftener than to
any of the others, except perhaps Stephanu) two or three picked up
their muskets, looked to their priming, and walked off into the
darkness. By-and-by came in the sentinels they had relieved, and
these in turn were helped by Stephanu to supper from the cauldron.
I watched, half-expecting the dispute to start afresh, but the others
appeared to have taken their fill of it with their food; and soon,
each man, drawing his blanket over his head, lay back and stretched
themselves to sleep. The newcomers, having satisfied their hunger,
did likewise. Stephanu gave the great pot a stir, unhitched it from
the brandice, and bore it away, leaving the Princess and Marc'antonio
the only two wakeful ones beside the fire.

They sat so long without speaking, the Princess with knees drawn up,
hands clasping them, and eyes bent on the embers into which (for the
Corsican nights are chilly) Marc'antonio now and again cast a fresh
brand--that in time my own eyes began to grow heavy. They were
smarting, too, from the smoke of the burnt wood. Nat had fallen into
a troubled sleep, in which now and again he moaned: and always at the
sound I roused myself to ease his posture or give him to drink from
the pannikin; but, for the rest, I dozed, and must have dozed for
hours.

I started up wide awake at the sound of a footstep beside me, and sat
erect, blinking against the rays of a lantern held close to my eyes.
The Princess held it, and at Nat's head and feet stood Marc'antonio
and Stephanu, in the act of lifting his litter. She motioned that I
should stand up and follow. Marc'antonio and Stephanu fell into file
behind us. Each carried a gun in a sling.

"I will hold the light where the path is difficult," she said
quietly; "but keep a watch upon your feet. In an hour's time we
shall have plenty of light."

I looked and saw the sickle of the waning moon suspended over the
gulf. It shot but the feeblest glimmer along the edges of the
granite pinnacles, none upon the black masses of the pine-tops.
But around it the darkness held a faint violet glow, and I knew that
day must be climbing close on its heels.

There was no promise of day, however, along the track into which we
plunged--the track by which my comrades had descended to cross the
valley. It dived down the mountain-side through a tunnel of pines,
and in places the winter streams, now dry, had channelled it and
broken it up with land-slides.

"You do not ask where I am leading you," she said, holding her
lantern for me at one of these awkward places.

"I am your hostage, Princess," I answered, without looking at her, my
eyes being busy just then in discovering good foothold. "You must do
with me what you will."

"_If I could! Ah, if I could!_"

She said it hard and low, with clenched teeth, almost hissing the
words. I stared at her, amazed. No sign of anger had she shown
until this moment. What cause indeed had she to be angered? In what
way had my words offended? Yet angry she was, trembling with such a
gust of wrath that the lantern shook in her hand.

Before I could master my surprise, she had mastered herself: and,
turning, resumed her way. For the next twenty minutes we descended
in silence, while the dawn, breaking above the roofed pines, filtered
down to us and filled the spaces between their trunks with a brownish
haze. By-and-by, when the slope grew easier and flattened itself out
to form the bottom of the basin, these pines gave place to a chestnut
wood, and the carpet of slippery needles to a tangled undergrowth
taller than a very tall man: and here, in a clearing beside the
track, we came on a small hut with a ruinous palisade beside it,
fencing off a pen or courtyard of good size--some forty feet square,
maybe.

The Princess halted, and I halted a few paces from her, studying the
hut. It was built of pine-logs sawn lengthwise in half and set
together with their untrimmed bark turned outwards: but the most of
their bark had peeled away with age. It had two square holes for
windows, and a doorway, but no door. Its shingle roof had buckled
this way and that with the rains, and had taken on a tinge of grey
which the dawn touched to softest silver. Lines of more brilliant
silver criss-crossed it, and these were the tracks of snails.

"O King of Corsica"--she turned to me--"behold your palace!"

Her eyes were watching me, but in what expectation I could not tell.
I stepped carelessly to the doorway and took a glance around the
interior.

"It might be worse; and I thank you, Princess."

"Ajo, Marc'antonio! Since the stranger approves of it so far, go
carry his friend within."

"Your pardon, Princess," I interposed; "the place is something too
dirty to house a sick man, and until it be cleaned my friend will do
better in the fresh air."

She shrugged her shoulders. "Your subjects, O King, have left it in
this mess, and they will help you very little to improve it."

I walked over to the palisade and looked across it upon an unsightly
area foul with dried dung and the trampling of pigs. For weeks, if
not months, it must have lain uninhabited, but it smelt potently even
yet.

"My subjects, Princess?"

"With Giuse lying sick, the hogs roam without a keeper: and my people
have chosen you in his room." She paused, and I felt, rather than
saw, that both the men were eyeing me intently. I guessed then that
she was putting on me a meditated insult; to the Corsican mind,
doubtless a deep one.

"So I am to keep your hogs, Princess?" said I, with a deliberate air.
"Well, I am your hostage."

"I am breaking no faith, Englishman."

"As to that, please observe that I am not accusing you. I but note
that, having the power, you use it. But two things puzzle me: of
which the first is, where shall I find my charges?"

"Marc'antonio shall fetch them down to you from the other side of the
mountain."

"And next, how shall I learn to tend them?" I asked, still keeping my
matter-of-fact tone.

"They will give you no trouble. You have but to pen them at night
and number them, and again at daybreak turn them loose. They know
this forest and prefer it to the other side: you will not find that
they wander. At night you have only to blow a horn which
Marc'antonio will bring you, and the sound of it will fetch them
home."

"A light job," said Stephanu, with a grin, "when a man can bring his
stomach to it."

"Not so light as you suppose, my friend," I answered. "The sty,
here, will need some cleansing; since if these are to be my subjects,
I must do my best for them. It may not amount to much, but at least
my hogs shall keep themselves cleaner than some Corsicans, even than
some Corsican cooks."

"Stephanu," said Marc'antonio, gravely, "the Englishman meant that
for you: and I tell you what I have told you before, that yours are
no fitly kept hands for a cook. I have travelled abroad and seen the
ways of other nations."

"The sty will need mending too, Princess," said I: "but before
nightfall I will try to have it ready."

"You will find tools in the hut," she answered, with a glance at
Marc'antonio, who nodded. "For food, you shall be kept supplied.
Stephanu has brought, in his suck yonder, flesh, cheese, and wine
sufficient for three days, with milk for your friend: and day by day
fresh milk shall be sent down to you."

Her words were commonplace, yet her cheeks wore an angry flush
beneath their sun-burn; and I knew why. Her insult had miscarried.
In accepting this humiliation I had somehow mastered her: even the
tone she used, level and matter-of-fact, she used perforce, in place
of the high scorn with which she had started to sentence me.
My spirits rose. If I could not understand this girl, neither could
she understand me. She only felt defeat, and it puzzled and angered
her.

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