A Little Wizard
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The woman replied, almost in a whisper, that he had a black mole on his left shoulder.
"Is it a common mark?"
She shook her head without speaking.
Luke waited for no more. "This is folly!" he cried wildly. "What need have we of signs? We have seen. Bolts and bars will not hold him, nor will water receive him."
"That is to be seen!" Edgington answered quickly. "There is a pool below. Let us make trial of him there, Master Gridley. If the lad sinks, well and good. If he will not sink, well and good also. We shall know what to do with him."
Simon nodded sternly. "Good," he said; "let it be so."
But this the boy had still the sense to understand. A vision of the dark bog pool sullenly lipping the rocks which fringed its shores flashed before his childish eyes. In a second the full horror of the fate which threatened him burst upon him, and those eyes grew large with terror. The color left his face. He tried to rise, he tried to frame the word Gridley, he tried to ask for mercy. He could not. Fear had deprived him of the power of speech, and he could only look. But his look was one to melt the heart of any save a fanatic.
Gridley the butler was no fanatic, and though he was a bad man he was not inhuman. Something in the boy's piteous look went straight to his heart. He alone of those present, though he never doubted the existence of witchcraft, doubted the boy's guilt, for he alone had known him all his life, and could see nothing unfamiliar in him. He remembered him a baby, prattling and crawling, and playing like any other baby; and despite himself-for there was nothing noble or brave in the man-he stepped forward and interposed between Simon and his victim.
"I have known the child all his life," he said hoarsely. "He has been as other children, Simon."
His brother looked at him coldly. "Is he as other children to-day?" he said, and he pointed to the cross on the table.
The butler, thus challenged, made as if he would take up the talisman. But at the last moment, when his hand was near it, his heart failed him. He doubted, he was a coward, and he drew back. "He was always as other children," he muttered again, hopelessly, helplessly. "I have known him from his birth."
"Very well," Simon answered, with pitiless logic. "We shall see presently if he is as other children now. The water will show."
He stepped towards the boy as he spoke, but Jack saw him coming, and reading his fate in the grim, unrelenting looks which everywhere met his eyes, screamed loudly. The child was fast bound, and could not fly, but bound as he was he managed to fling himself on the floor, and lay there screaming. Simon plucked him up roughly, and looked round for something to muffle his cries. "The cloak!" he said hurriedly-the noise discomposed him. "The cloak!"
Luke went to fetch it from the dresser on which it had been laid, but before he could bring it, the boy on a sudden stopped screaming, and stiffened himself in Simon's arms. "I will tell," he cried wildly. "Let me go! Let me go, and I will tell."
The man was astonished, as were they all. But he set the boy back in the chair, and took his hands off him, and stood waiting, with a stern light in his eyes, to hear this devil's tale.
For a moment the boy lay huddled up and panting, with his lips apart, and the sweat on his flushed brow. He had said-with the man's hands, on him and the black water before his eyes-that he would tell. But as he crouched there, getting his breath, and looking from one to another like a frightened animal, thoughts of his brother whom he must betray, thoughts of devotion and love, all childish but all living, surged through his brain. The men and the woman waited, some sternly curious, and some in fear; but the boy remained dumb. He had conquered his terror. He was learning that what men suffer for others is no suffering.
Simon lost patience at last. "Speak!" he cried, "or to the water!"
The boy eyed him trembling, but remained silent. "Give him a little more time," said one of the other men.
"Ay, hurry him not," said Luke.
"He has had time enough," Simon retorted. "He is but playing with us."
Yet he left him a little longer, while all stood round and looked, greedy to hear with their own ears one of those strange confessions of witchcraft, which, whether they had their origin in delusion or in some interested motive, were not uncommon in the England of that day. But the child, though his breath came quick and fast, and his heart throbbed like the heart of a little bird, and he feared unspeakably, remained obstinately silent.
"Enough!" Simon cried at last, his patience utterly exhausted; "he is dumb. We shall get nothing from him here. Let us see what the water will do for him. Luke, the cloak!"
Jack controlled his fears until the man's hands were actually upon him. Then instinct prevailed, and in despair he gave way to shriek upon shriek, so that the house rang with the pitiful outcry. "The cloak!" Simon cried impatiently, looking this way and that for it, while the butler turned pale at the sounds. "That is better; now open the door."
One of the Edgingtons went towards it, but when he was close to it, stopped on a sudden and held up his hand. The gesture was one of warning, but it came too late; for before those behind could profit by it, or do more than surmise what it meant, the door shook under a heavy knock, and a hand outside lifted the latch. The neighing of horses and the sound of hoofs trampling the stones of the fold gave the party some idea what they had to expect; but late also, for ere Simon could lay down the child, or Edgington move from his position, the door was thrown wide open. Half a dozen figures appeared on the threshold, and one detatching itself from the crowd strode in with an air of sturdy authority.
The person who thus put himself forward was a middle-aged man of good height, strongly and squarely made. His reddish face and broad, massive features were shaded by a wide-leaved hat, in the band of which a little roll of papers was stuck. He wore a buff coat and breastplate, and a heavy sword, and had, besides, a pistol and a leather glove thrust through his girdle. For a second after his entrance, he looked from one face to another with quick, searching glances which nothing escaped. Then he spoke.
"Tut-tut-tut-tut!" he said. "What is this? Have we honest, God-fearing soldiers here, halting by the way, whether such halting is in the way or not, or in the morning orders? Or have we ramping, roystering, babe-killing free-companions? – eh, man? Speak!" he continued rapidly, his utterance somewhat thick. "What have you here? Unfasten this cloak, some one!"
Thunderstruck, and taken completely by surprise-for the doorway was filled with faces-the party in the room fell back a step. Simon mechanically laid the boy down, but still maintained his position by him. Nor did the Puritan, though he found himself thus abruptly challenged by one who seemed to be able to make good his words, lose a jot of his grim aspect. He was aware of no wrong he had done. His conscience was clear.
"They are not soldiers, your excellency," one of the persons in the doorway said briskly. "Four of them live here, and the other two are honest men from Bradford."
"That man has worn the bandoliers," the first speaker retorted, in a voice which brooked no denial. "Sirrah, find your tongue," he continued sternly, bending a brow which was never of the lightest. "Have you not served?"
"I was in the forlorn of horse at Naseby," Simon answered sullenly.
"In what troop?"
"Captain Rawlins's."
"Is it so?" his excellency answered, dropping his voice at once to a more genial note. "Well, friend, you had for commander a good man and serviceable. You could no better. And who are these with you?"
"Two are his brothers," the voice in the doorway explained. "They were very forward against Langdale's horse in the skirmish at Settle three days ago, your excellency."
"Good, good, all this is good," Cromwell answered briskly; for that redoubtable man, Lieutenant-General at this time of the armies of the Parliament, it was. "Then why were you backward to answer my questions, friend, being questions it lay in me to put, I being at the head of this poor army and in authority? But there, you were modest. Here, Pownall," he continued, "lay the maps on the table. We can examine them here in shelter. 'Twas a happy thought of yours. And let the prisoners be brought here also. Yet, stay," he added, feeing round once more, his brow dark. "Methinks there comes a strange whimpering from that cloak! Is't a dog? To it, Pownall, and see what it is."
The officer he addressed sprang zealously forward, and whipping up the cloak disclosed the child lying bound on the floor. Terror and the exertion of screaming had reduced the boy to the last stage of consciousness. He lay motionless, his face pale, and his eyes half closed; his little bound hands appealing powerfully to the feelings of the spectators. Even the presence of so many strangers failed to rouse him, or move him to a last appeal. He appeared to be unconscious of their entrance, or of any change in his surroundings.
The sight was one to awaken indignation in a man, and Cromwell was a man. "What!" he exclaimed roundly, and with something like an oath; "what is this? Why have you bound him? Who is he? Is he your son?"
"No," Simon answered, scowling.
"Who is he?"
"His name is Patten."
"Patten, Patten, Patten? Where have I heard the name?" Cromwell answered. "Ho, I remember! There is a young malignant of that name on the black list, is there not? For this county, too!"
An officer replied that there was; adding that the young man was supposed to be in Duke Hamilton's army.
"Very well! We will deal with him when we catch him," Cromwell answered sharply. "But, in the name of sense, what has that to do with this boy? Why, 'tis a child! His mother's milk is hardly dry on his lips! Why have you bound him, man?"
Simon Gridley strove to give back look for look, and to make the outward countenance answer to the inward innocence. But the General's sharp questions, and the astonished and indignant faces which filled the room, made this difficult. A sudden doubt springing up in his own mind, thus untimely, lent additional gloom to his manner, as he answered: "He is no child. He is a witch!"
"A witch!" Cromwell cried, his voice drowning a dozen exclamations of astonishment. "Why, mercy on us, a witch is a woman! And 'tis a boy!"
"Ay, but 'tis a witch too," Simon answered stubbornly.
CHAPTER IX.
HIS EXCELLENCY'S JUDGMENT
If Duke Hamilton had suddenly appeared in the room and surrendered himself without terms-a thing beyond doubt unlikely to happen as long as that gallant gentleman had thirty thousand men at his back-those present could scarcely have looked more astonished. Not that they, or the majority of them at all events, doubted the existence of witchcraft. On the contrary; but anything less like the common idea of a witch than this helpless child it would have been difficult to conceive. Respect for their chief did indeed silence the laughter which the man's answer would otherwise have caused, but it could not still the murmur of amazement and ridicule, or the hum of indignation which rose to their lips.
"The man is mad!" cried one by the door, a person privileged.
"Silence!" Cromwell answered sharply. "And do you, sirrah," he continued to Simon, "explain yourself at once, or I will find means to lash sense into you. What has the boy done?"
Before Simon could answer Luke interposed. The enthusiast could restrain himself no longer.
"What has he done?" he cried. "He has sold himself to do evil and stint not. Why do our horses fail and the wheels of our chariots drive heavily, so that the work is not done, nor the task accomplished? Because of the learning of the Egyptians which he has learned, and because of the witchcraft of Jezebel which he has practised, that the people may remain in bondage and our leader fall and rise not. Be warned, O Joshua, and hear reason, O deliverer! It rains, and will rain in the land until-"
"Tie up the knave's mouth, some one!" thundered Cromwell. "And do you," he continued, addressing Simon, "who seem to have some wit in your madness, answer me briefly, what has the child done?"
But Simon's answer was destined to be again interrupted; this time by the arrival of the officer in charge of the prisoners, who came in to learn whether the General would examine them in the house. Cromwell gave the order, and the men, two in number, were accordingly brought in and made to stand by the door. This caused a momentary delay and commotion; but, so great was the interest taken in the child, who had been by this time raised from the floor and relieved of his bonds, that scarcely any one turned to notice them. The moment the stir ceased, the General nodded to Simon.
"The boy has a spell," Gridley answered, getting speech at last. "He has a charm, and when he rubs it, it rains. He brought the rain yesterday, and brought it again to-day."
"Tush, man!" Cromwell said contemptuously. "You play with me."
"You do not believe me?"
"No, in faith I do not," the General answered darkly.
"Then here is the proof!" the fanatic cried, in a voice of triumph. And he pointed to the wooden cross which lay on the table. "There is the charm! There, look at it, touch it, handle it; tell me what it is, if you can!"
"A child's toy," Cromwell answered scornfully, as he stepped forward and without hesitation took up the implement. "Well, man, I see it," he continued, turning it over in his hand. "What of it? Be brief with your madness, for I have larger fish to fry to-day. Be brief, I say."
"I will," the Puritan answered, undaunted. And therewith, beginning with the story of the strange evasion from the closet, he told the tale, so far as he knew it, of Jack's mysterious proceedings and powers. For a while, Cromwell listened or appeared to listen with half an ear only, his attention divided between the speaker and a map which the obsequious Pownall had placed on the table. But when Simon came to the boy's singular proceedings on the hillock above the road, and described, with some advantages which his imagination lent the narrative, the manner of the boy's behavior while the army passed below him, Cromwell's attitude underwent a sudden change. He closed the map with a quick gesture, and for a moment gazed full at the man from under his bushy eyebrows.
"Umph! And so you think that caused the storm, Master Numskull?" he rapped out, when Simon had come to an end. "Where is this cross?"
It had been passed from hand to hand, but was at once brought back to him. "Here, Hodgson," he said sharply; "what do you make of it?"
The officer to whom he appealed turned the thing over and over in his hands, but could make nothing of it. Cromwell watched him with a sparkle in his eye, and at length snatched it from him. "Chut!" he said-but although he scolded, it was evident he was well pleased-"you are as big a fool as Master Numskull there! Didst never see a tally, man?"
"A tally, your excellency?"
"Ay, a tally, a tally, a tally!" replied his excellency, impatiently. "A thing, I tell thee, that was known in this England of ours, and in the exchequer, when rogues were fewer and thy ancestors were hung without benefit of clergy! This is a tally if ever I saw one. To take an honest tally for a witch's broomstick? But softly! Said I an honest tally?" he continued, looking suddenly about him, while his voice grew hard and stern. "Pownall! count those notches."
The officer obeyed. "There are twenty-three, your excellency," he said, when he had accomplished the task.
"And how many troops of horse have gone by to-day?"
"Twenty-three, your excellency," was the answer, given with military brevity.
A murmur of intelligence passed round the circle of officers. The clue once found by Cromwell's sharp eye and strong common sense, the secret became an open one, patent to the dullest intellect. When further examination showed that the number of notches on the other arm of the cross corresponded with the number of foot regiments which had passed that morning, even Simon Gridley began to understand that here was no question of the supernatural, but of some human agency equally hostile to the good cause. Only Luke Gridley remained unconvinced. "Bolts and bars could not hold him," he murmured, "nor-"
"We will come to that by-and-by," Cromwell answered. "Let the boy stand forward. Where is he?"
Some one thrust Jack forward into the middle of the room, where he stood exposed to the full brunt of Cromwell's formidable gaze. The shock through which the child had passed had left him dazed and weak; his color came and went, his legs faltered under him, and he trembled perceptibly. But his heart was stout, and his breeding stood him in good stead at this crisis. Barely understanding what had passed, or the steps by which his plan had been discovered, on one point he was still clear, steadfast, and resolute: and that was, that come what might, he would not betray his brother!
But for the moment Cromwell said nothing about that. The question he put to him took all present by surprise. "Who let you out of the closet, my lad?" he said, in a tone of rough good-nature.
"A man," the boy muttered, with dry lips.
"Was it one of the men in the house? No? Then how did the man get into the house? Tell us that."
Jack looked about him like a trapped animal. He did not know which questions he ought to answer and which he ought to refuse to answer. Confused and terrified by the gaze of so many men and the possession of a secret, aware only that he must keep back his brother's name and hiding-place, the instinct of a drowning man led him to give up all else. After a moment's hesitation he muttered: "His wife," pointing to Simon, "went out in the middle of the night. She left the door open, and the man came in."
"Very good," Cromwell answered. "That is clear and explicit. And now, my man," he continued, turning suddenly upon Simon, who stood silent and confounded, "what do you say? More seems to go on in your house than you wot of. Let the woman stand out."
Gridley the butler, sitting doubled up on the meal chest, where his brothers figure sheltered him, almost fell forward with terror. He saw his crime on the point of being discovered, and all his craven soul was in alarm. Were attention once drawn to him, were he once challenged and bade to stand forth, he knew that no power could save him. In the absence of evidence he would infallibly betray himself. The dreadful tremors, the sickening apprehension, which he had felt during the first part of his flight from Pattenhall, when he had the damning evidences of his crime upon him, returned upon him now, and bitterly, most bitterly, did he regret that he had ever given way to temptation.
He came near to swooning when he heard the woman called out, for he thought it a hundred chances to one that she would falter, and in a moment weave a rope for his neck. The sweat ran down his face as he strained his ears to catch-he dared not look-the first syllable of accusation.
But Mistress Gridley, though she had had scant notice of the occasion, was of a harder kind. Relieved of ghostly fears, her mind quickly regained its balance, and instinctively took refuge in the falseness which had become second nature. Her shrewdish face wore a flush as she came forward, and there was a flicker of secret fear in her eye. But the tone in which she denied that she had ever left her house on the night in question was even and composed, and "As for a man," she added scornfully, "what man is there within three miles of us?"
"The man who taught this lad to spy!" Cromwell retorted, swiftly and severely. "That man, woman! Do you know him?"
She could say No to that with a good conscience, and she did so.
Cromwell signed to her stand back. "Very well," he said, "then the boy shall tell us." He turned to Jack, and after glaring at him for a moment, cried in a loud voice: "Hark ye, sirrah! who gave you this cross? What is his name, and where is he?"
That voice, at which so many men had trembled and were to tremble, made the very marrow in Jack's bones quiver. That fierce red face with its fiery eyes seemed to grow before Jack's gaze until the child saw nothing else save that and a dancing haze which framed it. "Hark ye, sirrah!" He heard the words repeated again and again, and his soul melted within him for fear. But he remained dumb.
"Come!" Cromwell said grimly when he had thrice bidden him to speak in vain. "This is what I expected. But I will find a means to open your lips. Pownall, bid one of the guard bring a rope!"
A movement in the room seemed to indicate that the order caused emotion of some kind, and Captain Hodgson, a bluff North-countryman, high in the General's favor, stepped forward as if to interpose. But apparently he thought better of it, and in a moment a rope was brought. "Now," Cromwell thundered, "will you speak?"
But Jack, whose white face and straining eyes, as he stood alone in the middle of the kitchen, a child among men, were pitiful to behold, remained silent. Only one idea, and that was rather an instinct than a conscious determination, remained with him-to shelter Frank.
"Tie him up!" said Cromwell, in a hard voice. "Sergeant," he continued, "take two files and the boy outside, and if he does not speak in five minutes, string him up." No one spoke or interposed, and the child, half led and half carried by the burly sergeant, had almost reached the threshold, when a voice close by exclaimed suddenly: "Enough, you cowards! Shame on you! Let the child go!"
"Who spoke?" Cromwell cried, wheeling round from the map he was scanning.
"The man you want!" was the reckless answer. "Take him, and let the child go!"
There was a brief commotion at the door, which ended in one of the prisoners being thrust forward until he stood face to face with the General. "So, so!" said Cromwell, eyeing him with a frown. "Who are you?"
"I have told you!" the man answered flippantly, though the perspiration stood in beads on his brow, and behind that brave face which he showed the crowd was a human soul sick with fear of that which all men fear. "I am the man you want. The boy is my brother, and I told him what to do. He is a mere baby."
For the speaker was Frank Patten. There was a stir among the officers round the door, but Cromwell remained unmoved. "Where was this fellow taken?" he asked, looking him over critically.
"Between here and Settle, your excellency," Hodgson answered. "The scoutmaster found him loitering on the road and seized him on suspicion."
"He is a zealous man," Cromwell answered. "Let a note of it be made, Pownall. For you, fellow," he continued, addressing the prisoner, "say what you have to say. Your time is short."
"I have only one thing to say," the young man answered coldly-and few among the many who admired his self-control marked the tiny pulse beating madly in his cheek. "There is some gold plate hidden hard by. My brother knows where it is. It was stolen by that craven hound yonder, and buried by night by that lying shrew there. Perhaps the man who recovers it will have a care of the child until something fall out for him. That is all."
"Wait!" said Cromwell. "Let that man stand out. Is this the man?"
But Gridley the butler saved Frank the trouble of answering. With a moan of terror he flung himself on his knees on the floor, and with tears flowing down his pale, fat face, uttered such abject entreaties for mercy as shamed the very men who heard them. Punishment had indeed fallen on the wretched creature, for while he lay there, now excusing himself and now accusing the woman-who stood by, dark and unrepentant, her face full of impotent spite-he tasted the bitterness of death a dozen times over.
"Faugh!" Cromwell exclaimed at last, spurning him from him with his booted foot; "take him away. Let him run the gauntlet of whatever regiment is first in quarters to-night! And see they lay on roundly, Hodgson. For this lying woman, your wife, man-"
"She is no longer wife of mine!" the Puritan answered, so grimly that more than one shuddered. "She shall cross my threshold once, and never again. She has sinned; let her starve."
General Cromwell shrugged his shoulders and stood a moment in thought. Then he turned to Patten. "For you," he said harshly, "you are a soldier, and know your sentence. You can have an hour's grace. Sergeant Joyce, retain four files, and see the sentence carried out. Or stay, I will reduce it to writing. The boy may be with him."