Sir John Constantine by Prosper Paleologus Constantine

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"The blessing of God be upon you, O brother!"

"And upon you, O sister!" He took her kiss and returned it, yet
(as I thought) with less fervour. Across her shoulder his gaze fell
on me, with a kind of peevish wonder, and he drew back a little as if
in the act to question her. But she was beforehand with him for the
moment.

"And how hast thou fared, O Camillo?" she asked, leaning back, with a
hand upon his either shoulder, to look into his eyes.

He disengaged himself sullenly, avoiding her gaze. There could be no
doubt that the two faces thus confronting one another belonged to
brother and sister, yet of the two his was the more effeminate, and
its very beauty (he was an excessively handsome lad, albeit
diminutively built) seemed to oppose itself to hers and caricature
it, being so like yet so infinitely less noble.

"We have fared ill," he answered, turning his head aside, and added
with sudden petulance, "God's curse upon Pasquale Paoli, and all his
house!"

"He would not receive you?"

"On the contrary, he made us welcome and listened to all we had to
say. When I had done, Father Domenico took up the tale."

"But surely, brother, when you had given him the proofs--when he
heard all--"

"The mischief, sister," he interrupted, stabbing at the ground with
his heel and stealing a sidelong glance at the priest, "the mischief
was, he had already heard too much."

She drew back, white in the face. She, too, flung a look at the
priest, but a more honest one, although in flinging it she shrank
away from him. The priest, a sensual, loose-lipped man, whose mere
aspect invited one to kick him, smiled sideways and downwards with a
deprecating air, and spread out his hands as who should say that here
was no place for a domestic discussion.

I could make no guess at what the youth had meant; but the girl's
face told me that the stroke was cruel, and (as often happens with
the weak) his own cruelty worked him into a passion.

"But who is this man with you?" he demanded, the blood rushing to his
face. "And how came you alone with him, and Stephanu, and
Marc'antonio? You don't tell me that the others have deserted!"

"No one has deserted, brother. You will find them all upon the
mountain."

"And the recruits? Is this a recruit?"

"There are no recruits."

"No recruits? By God, sister, this is too bad! Has this cursed
rumour spread, then, all over the countryside that honest men avoid
us like a plague--us, the Colonne!" He checked his tongue as she
drew herself up and turned from him, before the staring soldiery,
with drawn mouth and stony eyes; but stepped a pace after her on a
fresh tack of rage.

"But you have not answered me. Who is this man, I repeat? And eh?--
but what in God's name have we here?" He halted, staring at the
half-digged grave and Nat's body laid beside it.

Marc'antonio stepped forward. "These are two prisoners, O Prince,
of whom, as you see, we are burying one."

"Prisoners? But whence?"

"From England, as they tell us, O Prince."

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE TENDER MERCIES OF PRINCE CAMILLO.

"Tyranny is the wish to have in one way what can only be had in
another."--_Blaise Pascal_.

The young man eyed me insolently for a moment and turned again to his
sister.

"Camilla! will you have the goodness to explain?" he demanded.

But here, while she hesitated, searching her brother's face proudly
yet pitifully, as though unable quite to believe in the continued
brutality of his tone, I struck in.

"Pardon me, Signore," said I, "but an explanation from me may be
shorter."

"Eh? so you are English, and speak Corsican?"

"Or such Tuscan," answered I, modestly, "as may pass or a poor
attempt at it. Yes, I am English, and have come hither--as the
Princess, your sister, will tell you--on a political errand which you
may or may not consider important."

The Princess, who had turned and stood facing her brother again,
threw me a quick look.

"I know nothing of that," she said hurriedly, "save that he came with
five others in a ship from England and encamped at Paomia below;
that, being taken prisoners, they professed to be seeking the Queen
Emilia, to deliver her; and that thereupon of the six I let four go,
keeping this one as hostage, with his friend, who has since died."

"And the crown," put in Stephanu. "The Princess has forgotten to
mention the crown."

"What crown?"

"The crown, sir," said I boldly, seeing the Princess hesitate,
"of the late King Theodore of Corsica, given by him into my keeping."

I saw the priest start as if flicked with a whip, and shoot me a
glance of curiosity from under his loose upper lids. His pupil
stepped up and thrust his face close to mine.

"Eh? So you were seeking _me?_" he demanded. "You are mistaken, sir,"
said I, "whatever your reason for such a guess. My companions--one
of them my father, an Englishman and by name Sir John Constantine--
are seeking the Queen Emilia, whom they understand to be held
prisoner by the Genoese. Meanwhile your sister detains me as
hostage, and the crown in pawn."

I had kept an eye on the priest as I pronounced my father's name: and
again (or I was mistaken) the pendulous lids flickered slightly.

"You do not answer my main question," the young man persisted.
"What are you doing here, in Corsica, with the crown of King
Theodore?"

"I am the less likely to answer that question, sir, since you can
have no right to ask it."

"No right to ask it?" he echoed, stepping back with a slow laugh.
"No right to ask it--I! King Theodore's son?"

I shrugged my shoulders. I had a mind to laugh back at his
impudence, and indeed nothing but the mercy of Heaven restrained me
and so saved my life. As it was, I heard an ominous growl and
glanced around to find the whole company of bandits regarding me with
lively disfavour, whereas up to this point I had seemed to detect in
their eyes some hints of leniency, even of good will. By their looks
they had disapproved of their master's abuseful words to his sister,
albeit with some reserve which I set down to their training.
But even more evidently they believed to a man in this claim of his.

My gesture, slight as it was, gave his anger its opportunity.
He drew back a pace, his handsome mouth curving into a snarl.

"You doubt my word, Englishman?"

"I have no evidence, sir, for doubting King Theodore's," I answered
as carelessly as I could, hoping the while that none of them heard
the beating of my heart, loud in my own ears as the throb-throb of a
pump. "If you be indeed King Theodore's son, then your father--"

"Say on, sir."

"Why, then, your father, sir, practised some economy in telling me
the truth. But my father and I will be content with the Queen
Emilia's simple word."

As I began this answer I saw the Princess turn away, dropping her
hands. At its conclusion she turned again, but yet irresolutely.

"We will find something less than the Queen Emilia's word to content
you, my friend," her brother promised, eyeing me and breathing hard.
"Where is the crown, Stephanu?"

"In safe keeping, O Prince. I beg leave to say, too, that it was I
who found it in the Englishmen's camp and brought it to the
Princess."

"You shall have your reward, my good Stephanu. You shall put the
bearer, too, into safe keeping. Stand back, take your gun, and shoot
me this dog, here beside his grave."

The Princess stepped forward. "Stephanu," she said quietly,
"you will put down that gun."

Her brother rounded on her with a curse. For the moment she did not
heed, but kept her eyes on Stephanu, who had stepped back with musket
half lifted and finger already moving toward the trigger-guard.

"Stephanu," she repeated, "on my faith as a Corsican, if you raise
that gun an inch--even a little inch--higher, I will never speak to
you again." Then lifting a hand she swung round upon her brother,
whose rage (I thank Heaven) for the moment choked him. "Is it meet,
think you, O brother, for a King of Corsica to kill his hostage?"

"Is it meet, O sister," he snarled, "for you, of all women, to
champion a man--and a foreigner--before my soldiers? Shoot him,
Stephanu!"

Her head went up proudly. "Stephanu will not shoot. And you, my
brother, that are so careful--I sometimes think, so over-careful--of
my honour, for once bethink you that your own deserves attention.
This Englishman placed himself in my hands freely as a hostage.
From the first, since you force me to say it, I had no liking for
him. Afterwards, when I knew his errand, I hated him for your sake:
I hated him so that in my rage I strained all duty towards a hostage
that I might insult him. Marc'antonio will bear me witness."

"The Princess is speaking the truth before God," said Marc'antonio,
gravely. "She made the man a keeper of swine yonder." He waved a
hand toward the sty. "And he is, as I understand, a cavalier in his
own country."

"I did more than that," the Princess went on. "Having strained the
compact, I tempted him to break it--to shoot me or to shoot
Marc'antonio, so that one or other of us might be free to kill him."

She paused, again with her eyes on Marc'antonio, who nodded.

"And that also is the truth," he said. "She put a gun into his
hands, that he might kill me for having killed his friend.
I did not understand at the time."

"A pretty coward!" The young man flung this taunt out at me
viciously; but I had enough to do to hold myself steady, there by the
grave's edge, and did not heed him.

"I do not think he is a coward," said she. (O, but those words were
sweet! and for the first time I blessed her.) "But coward or no
coward, he is our hostage, and you must not kill him."

He turned to the priest, who all this while had stood with head on
one side, eyes aslant, and the air and attitude of a stranger who
having stumbled on a family squabble politely awaits its termination.

"Father Domenico, is my sister right? And may I not kill this man?"

"She is right," answered the reverend father, with something like a
sigh. "You cannot kill him consistently with honour, though I admit
the provocation to be great. The Princess appears to have committed
herself to something like a pledge." He paused here, and with his
tongue moistened his loose lips. "Moreover," he continued, "to kill
him, on our present information, would be inadvisable. I know--at
least I have heard--something of this Sir John Constantine whom the
young man asserts to be his father; and, by what has reached me, he
is capable of much."

"Do you mean," asked the Prince, bridling angrily, "that I am to fear
him?"

"Not at all," the priest answered quickly, still with his eyes
aslant. "But, from what I have heard, he was fortunate, long ago, to
earn the esteem of the good lady your mother, and"--he paused and
felt for his snuff-box--"it would appear that the trick runs in the
family."

"By God, then, if I may not kill him, I may at least improve on my
sister's treatment," swore the young man. "Made him her
swine-keeper, did she? I will promote him a step. Here, you!
Take and truss him by the heels!--and fetch me a chain, one of you,
from the forage-shed. . . ."

In the short time it took him to devise my punishment the Prince
displayed a devilishly ingenious turn of mind. Within ten minutes
under his careful directions they had me down flat on my back in the
filth of the sty, with my neck securely chained to a post of the
palisade, my legs outstretched, and either ankle strapped to a peg.
My hands they left free, to supply me (as the Prince explained) with
food and drink: that is to say, to reach for the loaf and the
pannikin of water which Marc'antonio, under orders, fetched from the
hut and laid beside me. Marc'antonio's punishment (for bearing
witness to the truth) was to be my gaoler and sty-keeper in my room.
He was promised, moreover, the job of hanging me as soon as my
comrades returned.

In this pleasant posture they left me, whether under surveillance or
not I could not tell, being unable to turn my head, and scarce able
even to move it an inch either way.

So I lay and stared up at the sky, until the blazing sun outstared
me. I will dwell on none of my torments but this, which toward
midday became intolerable. Certainly I had either died or gone mad
under it, but that my hands were free to shield me; and these I
turned in the blistering glare as a cook turns a steak on the
gridiron. Now and again I dabbled them in the pannikin beside me,
very carefully, ekeing out the short supply of water.

I had neither resisted nor protested. I hugged this thought and
meant, if die I must, to die hugging it. I had challenged the girl,
promising her to be patient. To be sure protest or resistance would
have been idle. But I had kept my word. I don't doubt that from
time to time a moan escaped me. . . . I could not believe that
Marc'antonio was near me, watching. I heard no sound at all, no
distant voice or bugle-call from the camp on the mountain. The woods
were silent . . . silent as Nat, yonder, in his grave. Surely none
but a fiend could sit and watch me without a word. . . .

Toward evening I broke off a crust of bread and ate it. The water I
husbanded. I might need it worse by-and-by, if Marc'antonio delayed
to come.

But what if no one should come?

I had been dozing--or maybe was wandering in slight delirium--when
this question wrote itself across my dreams in letters of fire, so
bright that it cleared and lit up my brain in a flash, chasing away
all other terrors. . . .

Mercifully, it was soon answered. Far up the glade a horn sounded--
my swine-horn, blown no doubt by Marc'antonio. The hogs were coming.
. . . Well, I must use my hands to keep them at their distance.

I listened with all my ears. Yes, I caught the sound of their
grunting; it came nearer and nearer, and--was that a footstep, close
at hand, behind the palisade?

Something dropped at my side--dropped in the mire with a soft thud.
I stretched out my hand, felt for it, clutched it.

It was a file.

My heart gave a leap. I had found a friend, then!--but in whom?
Was it Marc'antonio? No: for I heard his voice now, fifty yards
away, marshalling and cursing the hogs. His footstep was near the
gate. As he opened it and the hogs rushed in, I slipped the file
beneath me, under my shoulder blades.

The first of the hogs, as he ran by me, put a hoof into my pannikin
and upset it; and while I struck out at him, to fend him aside,
another brute gobbled up my last morsel of crust. The clatter of the
pannikin brought Marc'antonio to my side. For a while he stood there
looking down on me in the dusk; then walked off through the sty to
the hut and returned with two hurdles which he rested over me, one
against another, tentwise, driving their stakes an inch or two into
the soil. Slight as the fence was, it would protect me from the
hogs; and I thanked him. He growled ungraciously, and, picking up
the pannikin, slouched off upon a second errand. Again when he
brought it replenished, and a fresh loaf of bread with it, I thanked
him, and again his only answer was a growl.

I heard him latch the gate and walk away toward the hut. Night was
falling on the valley. Through my roof of hurdles a star or two
shone down palely. Now was my time. I slipped a hand beneath me and
recovered my file--my blessed file.

The chain about my neck was not very stout. I had felt its links
with my fingers a good score of times in efforts, some deliberate,
others frantic, to loosen it even by a little. Loosen it I could
not; the Prince had done his work too cleverly: but by my calculation
an hour would suffice me to file it through.

But an hour passed, and two hours, and still I lay staring up at the
stars, listening to the hogs as they rubbed flanks and chose and
fought for their lairs: still I lay staring, with teeth clenched and
the file idle in my hand.

I had challenged, and I had sworn. "Bethink you now what pains you
can put upon me. . . ." These tortures were not of her devising; but
I would hold her to them. I was her hostage, and, though it killed
me, I would hold her to the last inch of her bond. As a Catholic,
she must believe in hell. I would carry my wrong even to hell then,
and meet her there with it and master her.

I was mad. After hours of such a crucifixion a man must needs be
mad. . . . "Prosper, lad, your ideas are naught and your ambitions
earth: but you have a streak of damned obstinacy which makes me not
altogether hopeless of you!" These had been Nat's words, a month
ago; and Nat lay in his grave yonder. . . . The cramp in my legs, the
fiery pain ringing my neck, met and ran over me in waves of total
anguish. At the point where my will failed me to hold out, the power
failed me (I thank Heaven) to lift a hand. Yet the will struggled
feebly; struggled on to the verge over which all sensation dropped
plumb, as into a pit.

I unclosed my eyes upon the grey dawn; but upon what dawn I knew not,
whether of earth or purgatory or hell itself. They saw it swimming
in a vague light: but my ears, from a sound as of rushing waters,
awoke to a silence on which a small footfall broke, a few yards away.
Marc'antonio must have unpenned the hogs; for the sty was empty.
And the hogs in their rush must have thrown down the hurdles
protecting me; for these lay collapsed, the one at my side, the other
across me.

The light footfall drew close and halted. I looked up into the face
of the Princess.

She came, picking her way across the mire; and with caution, as if
she feared to be overheard. Clearly she had expected to find the sty
empty, for even to my dazed senses her dismay was evident as she
caught sight of me beneath the hurdle.

"You have not gone! Oh, why have you not gone?"

She was on her knees beside me in the filth. I heard her calling to
Marc'antonio, and presently Marc'antonio came, obedient as ever, yet
protesting.

"He has not gone!" She moved her hands with a wringing gesture.

I tried to speak, but for answer could only spread my hand, which
still grasped the file: and for days after it kept a blue weal bitten
across the palm.

I heard Marc'antonio's voice protesting as she took the file and
sawed with it frantically across my neck-chain.

"But he must escape and hide, at least."

"He cannot, Princess. The torture has worn him out."

"It were better he died, then. For I must go."

"It were better he died, Princess: but his youth is tough. And that
you must go is above all things necessary. The Prince would kill
me. . . ."

"A little while, Marc'antonio! The file is working."

"To what end, Princess?--since time is wanting. The bugle will
call--it may call now at any moment. And if the Prince should miss
you--Indeed it were better that he died--"

Their voices swam on my ear through giddy whirls of mist, I heard him
persuade her to go--at the last insist upon her going. Still the
file worked.

Suddenly it ceased working. It seemed to me that they both had
withdrawn, and my neck still remained in bondage, though my legs were
free. I knew that my legs were free though I had not the power to
test this by drawing them up. I tried once, and closed my eyes,
swooning with pain.

Upon the swoon broke a shattering blow, across my legs and below the
knees; a blow that lifted my body to clutch with both hands upon
night and fall back again upon black unconsciousness.

CHAPTER XIX.

HOW MARC'ANTONIO NURSED ME AND GAVE ME COUNSEL.

"Yet sometimes famous Princes like thyself,
Drawn by report, adventurous by desire,
Tell thee, with speechless tongues and semblance pale,
That without covering, save yon field of stars,
They here stand martyrs, slain in Cupid's wars;
And with dead cheeks advise thee to desist
For going on Death's net, whom none resist."
_Pericles, Prince of Tyre_.

His honour forbidding him to kill me, the Prince Camillo had given
orders to break my legs: and since to abandon me in this plight went
against the conscience of his followers (and even, it is possible,
against his own), he had left Marc'antonio behind to nurse me--thus
gratifying a second spite. The Prince was an ingenious young man.

So much I gathered in faint intervals between anguish while
Marc'antonio bound me with rude splints of his own manufacture.
Yet he said little and did his surgery, though not ungently, with a
taciturn frown which I set down to moroseness, having learnt somehow
that the bandits had broken up their camp on the mountain and marched
off, leaving us two alone.

"Did the Princess know of this?" I managed to ask, and I believe this
was my first intelligible question.

Marc'antonio paused before answering. "She knew that you were to be
hurt, but not the manner of it. It was she that brought you the
file, by stealth. Why did you not use it, and escape?"

"She brought me the file?" I knew it already, but found a fierce
satisfaction in the words. "And she--and you--tried to use it upon
my chain here and deliver me: I forced you to that, my friends!
As for using it myself, you heard what I promised her, yesterday,
before her brother came."

"I heard you talk very foolishly; and now you have done worse than
foolishly. I do not understand you at all--no, by the Mother of God,
I do not! You had the whole night for filing at your chain: and it
would have been better for you, and in the end for her."

"And for you also, Marc'antonio."

He was silent.

"And for you also, Marc'antonio?" I repeated it as a question.

"Your escape would have been put down to me, Englishman. I had
provided for that," he answered simply.

"Forgive me," I muttered, thrown back upon sudden contrition.
"I was thinking only that you must feel it a punishment to be left
alone with me. I had forgot--"

"It is hard," he interrupted, "to bear everything in mind when one is
young." His tone was quiet, decisive, as of one stating a fact of
common knowledge; but the reproof cut me like a knife.

"The Princess has gone too?" I asked.

"She has gone. They are all gone. That is why it would have been
better for her too that you had escaped."

I pondered this for a minute. "You mean," said I, "that--always
supposing the Prince had not killed you in his rage--you would now be
at her side?"

He nodded. "Still, she has Stephanu. Stephanu will do his best," I
suggested.

"Against what, eh?" He put his poser to me, turning with angry eyes,
but ended on a short laugh of contempt. "Do not try make-believe
with me, O Englishman."

"There is one thing I know," said I, doggedly, "that the Princess is
in trouble or danger. And a second thing I know, that you and
Stephanu are her champions. But a third thing, which I do not know,
is why you and Stephanu hate one another."

"And yet that should have been the easiest guess of the three," said
he, rising abruptly and taking first a dozen paces toward the hut,
then a dozen back to the shadow of the chestnut tree against the bole
of which my head rested as he had laid me, having borne me thither
from the sty.

"_Campioni?_ That is a good word, and I thank you for it,
Englishman. Yet you wonder why I hate Stephanu? Listen. Were you
ever in Florence, in the Boboli gardens?"

"Never. But why?"

"Mbe! I have travelled, for my part." Marc'antonio now and always
mentioned his travels with an innocent boastfulness. "Well, in the
gardens there you will find a fountain, and on either side of it a
statue--the statues of two old kings. They sit there, those two,
carved in stone, face to face across the fountain; and with faces so
full of hate that I declare it gives you a shiver down the spine--all
the worse, if you will understand, because their eyes have no sight
in them. Now the story goes that these two kings in life were
friends of a princess of Tuscany far younger than themselves, and
championed her, and established her house while she was weak and her
enemies were strong; and that afterwards in gratitude she caused
these statues to be set up beside the fountain. Another story (to me
it sounds like a child's tale) says that at first there was no
fountain, and that the princess knew nothing of the hatred between
these old men; but the sculptor knew. Having left the order with
him, she married a husband of her own age and lived for years at a
foreign court. At length she returned to Florence and led her
husband one day out through the garden to show him the statues, when
for the first time she saw what the sculptor had done and knew for
the first time that these dead men had hated one another for her
sake; whereupon she let fall one tear which became the source of the
fountain. To me all this part of the story is foolishness: but that
I and Stephanu hate one another not otherwise than those two old
kings, and for no very different cause, is God's truth, cavalier."

"You are devoted to her, you two?" I asked, tempting him to continue.

He gazed down on me for a moment with immeasurable contempt.

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