Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (301 page)

“The steersman,” he said to Hudson, “does not know whither we are bound.”

Hudson gathered himself together for his dramatic effect. First he looked upon Joseph Cats.

“Master Mariner,” he said, “it is fitting that I give you a rendezvous in the case that our ships lose sight the one of the other.”

He addressed himself next to his captain and his crew.

“Masters all,” he said, “it was deemed fitting whilst we were yet in Amsterdam that our true destination should be concealed from all the world by a false report of whither we are bound. It is true that we are bound to the Indies, for is not this ship of the Company of the East Indiamen? But we are not bound thither by way of the North-West Passage — for I am not yet such a fool as to think that I shall find a passage westward when all Greenland lies to our westward. No, my masters, I am not yet such a madman.”

A certain unrest showed itself amongst all these black figures of seamen; they questioned each other with their looks; and it was here that Hudson paused that Edward Colman might translate his words. Then Hudson spoke again — to Joseph Cats this time.

“To you,” he said, “I appoint as a rendezvous the northern end of Novaia Zemlia Land, in the place that I have named Hudson’s Touches.”

A sudden, stilled motion was observable in all those faces before him; the Captain Vanderdonk even turned his face from the observation of the horizon and looked at Hudson. Hudson stroked his beard.

“My masters,” he said, “whither we are bound is the East Indies — but we go there over the North Pole.”

There was no need of Colman to translate those words; the crew caught that one ominous sound, and there went up from them a deep sigh, like a grunt of rage. One voice cried out —

“We did not ship for this madness!”

And Hudson still stood stroking his beard. When he had heard Edward Colman’s translation of that cry he said — and he strove to put reasonableness into his tone —

“My masters and shipmates, ye did not ship for any destination, but as your bond and agreement is with your Company, to sail for six or for nine months. That was how your indenture ran. Ye cannot deny it.”

“It was said in Amsterdam,” Captain Vanderdonk uttered at last, “that we were bound for the North-West Passage.”

“Aye,” Hudson said to him, “it was so said in Amsterdam by the cookmaids and tavern wenches; you heard no such word from me or from any of the council.”

“That is true,” Captain Vanderdonk answered, “it was a very sly trick. We are well caught. For assuredly none of us would have enlisted for this mad enterprise.”

“I may well believe you,” Hudson said, “but these are the orders under which I sail, as I will show you if you come to my cabin to read mine orders.”

He reflected for a moment; then he added —

“I will sail this ship heartily and with loyal eagerness to find the passage that is spoken of, over the North Pole where Thorne reported there were open sea-ways; I will do this with the last endeavour of my life. I would will to sail with ye all as good companions. But this I promise you; I was never a man for hanging; I do not like it — but he who first says,
 
Turn back this ship of the
Half Moon,’
he shall go back to Holland in chains and there he shall not easily escape his hanging. God prosper our voyage.”

He stayed to note very keenly how the crew should receive the translation of this message, then he said —

“Captain, I order and advise you to put the ship about. For we draw very near that field of ice. It is a very large one, and since I have been often in these seas I can tell that suddenly the wind will change and blow towards it.”

And he betook himself to his cabin.

CHAPTER III
.

ANNE JEAL was walking in the shaded court of the Tower, where the block is set up to behead traitors upon. Her two guards followed her about, going where she would, but never leaving her from their sight; they were leaning against the balustrade of the steps up into the White Tower where the King lodged. One had his arms folded across his chest and his head forward as if he were asleep, the other was throwing little grains of pebbles at a young sparrow that had fallen from a nest in the gutter above.

Anne Jeal was very disconsolate and low in spirits; she dared not sweat her waxen image for fear it should slay her lover, she could not otherwise come into touch with him, though it was sweeter to hear his sighs and groans than not to hear him speak at all. She had all London town to go about if she would, but she got no pleasure there. Once she had been to a conjurer and necromancer in the Crooked Friars, but she thought him a very fool, and though she had made a promise to him to visit him again she had little heart to do so. She had tried to speak with the King, but she had found no way to come to him; the Earl Dalgarno was gone she knew not where.

She desired very heartily at times to be at home, for she had heard from a knave, whom her father had sent to London with boxes of clothes and gear six days before, that Magdalena Koop was come into Edward Colman’s house. And at times this filled her so with fury that she was mad to run to Rye and tear the eyes from the fair girl’s head. But always the thought came to her, when she had these fits of raging, that Edward Colman was coming from Amsterdam to be examined before the council and to be confronted with her.

And her heart became sick with hope at the thought of being there with him in London, for she could not believe that Magdalena Koop could inspire a very lasting attachment, she was too like an ox. But if he was coming there to London, if she was to see him again; it might be very soon, it might be in the next seven days. And the seven days from the 23rd to the 29th of March of that year were, as her tables showed, the most fitting to set out upon a love adventure of all the days of the year....

The trees above the courtyard were showing leaves of green, the sunlight slanted down between the towers, in the gutter the parent sparrows were calling angrily at the man who threw little stones on to their child where it fluttered.

There came down the steps the lord that, at the council, had put to her such few and sharp questions and had made all the other lords do his will. He came swiftly down the steps; he wore a cloak of damson-coloured velvet and a little hat with white plumes in the side of it, and he had several papers in his dark and narrow fingers. Her two guards sprang up as he came down, they pulled their blue flat caps to their proper angles on their shaven heads, they crossed their hands before them and bent each one knee. He hardly glanced at them at all, but hurried by. Anne Jeal had many times thus seen him; almost every day he had hastened once or twice past her out of some passage. But he had never spoken to her, and she had never wished to speak with him. She had heard his name — it was Hog or Ham, or she had forgotten it because she hated him.

Whilst he was hastening like that, engrossed and fast, he checked suddenly and turned upon his heel. His eye had just lit on her, and he spoke to her guards; they stood very respectfully, their caps inclined to listen, then they went slowly over the great cobble stones towards the door of the guard-house. The courtier came very swiftly to her; he was very magnificent that day; there were great rings upon his thin fingers, his white ruff had little gold wire-work at its edge, and there was a band of blue silk with a jewel round his hat.

“Mayoress of Rye,” he said, and he had the hardest voice she had ever heard speaking to her, “I think you are a very hardened liar.”

The hot blood flew into her cheeks. She began to say, “My lord,” with a great rage.

“Call me not ‘lord,’” he said; “I am the King’s Attorney, and that is a much more fell thing than any lord.” His eyes were heavy and keen, his little black moustachios and his tiny black beard were very fierce and pointed.

“Mr. Attorney,” she said, “ye forget the mother that bore you when you call a woman a liar. I have been shamefully mishandled.”

He looked at her with a sort of rat-like dislike. “Wench,” he said, “keep your tongue between your teeth. What have you done with the forty pounds the King sent you?”

The blood went back from her cheeks.

“I have it still,” she muttered.

He answered, “You lie! Or why have you importuned the King to pay for your lodgings so bitterly?”

“It was fitting,” she cried out, “that the King should pay for his witness’s lodging!”

“You have not been his witness this fourteen days,” the Attorney answered. “You have been a suspected prisoner. You paid twenty-five of that forty pounds to two bullies to murder Edward Colman in Amsterdam.”

“Before God—” She was about to say this was not true, but he caught her up gravely.

“Why, take not the sacred name as witness to false things!”

She clenched her fist impotently.

“Sir,” she said, “it is impossible to speak if you think me so great a liar.”

“I have no wish that you should speak,” he said: “but I have to speak in your reproof, for this is a very naughty thing that you have done, for you have much hindered our desires.”

“Sir—” she began again, but he stopped her with putting out his hand.

“You have bribed two men to do a murder.” She made a motion to stop him, but he held on. “But that that murder was to be done out of this country you would now end your days by the headsman’s axe, for that is high treason. But one of these men was slain by the man you would have murdered. And his death you have upon your soul to answer for before the most High Judge of us all.’ She put her hand to her throat, and cried out,” Sir, was Edward Colman hurt?”

He said dryly, “That we do not know. But it is difficult to withstand the assaults of two assassins. Only we know that he is fled further beyond the seas to the New World.”

She gave a great cry, for she had been thinking that she would see Edward Colman next week, which was the propitious week of the year. The boughs of the tree with its little fillets of green leaves waved above their heads in the wind; the sun had gone in, and the square towers all around them reached towards the heavens in a dull grey. His voice became filled with a dark cold anger.

“In this you have done a very naughty thing. For the King’s council was minded to discover how much of truth there was in this wild-goose story that was brought to us by a mad girl and my Lord Dalgarno.” He uttered no comment at this Scot’s peer’s name, but his face expressed a colder disdain. “Now,” he said, “this Edward Colman is fled beyond the seas. God in His mercy alone knows when he will return.”

“Sir!” she cried out, and she stretched out her hands, “as Jesus is my Saviour I swear that I bribed these men to bring him back here, not to slay him.”

“How came you to desperadoes?” he asked. “Sir,” she said, “it was through the cornet of horse. He brought me them to win my favour, for he had an affection for me.”

The Attorney said, “You are a very foolish wench thus to meddle. How could you guide desperadoes? It is a folly.” Suddenly he let forth the question, “Wherefore would you have had this man brought here if you sought not his life?”

She wavered a little, and then she said, “Sir, it was to show him that I had a power over him.”

He looked at her with gloomy eyes of an unutterable scorn.

“Abominable woman,” he said, “that for a petty tale of love hast overwhelmed a whole community of simple and good people! What is this that I must hear to make me hate my kind? You have so perjured yourself with tales of plots before the King’s Majesty that the King is hot to avenge himself upon this poor, simple people of Dutch folk.”

She gave a little cry, he could not tell if it were not of joy.

“Oh, woman,” he said, “get you to your home and to your prayers. For a little whim of love and malice you have done a great wrong that God will not easily pardon in you.”

“Shall I go back to Rye?” she cried out. “Wench,” he said, “have you no more shame?”

“Sir, shall I go back to Rye?” she repeated. “You have merited a great punishment,” he said, “for you have made disorder and unpeacefulness in a quiet state. But, because you are such a little and an impotent thing, we will not war upon you. Get you gone to your home, and hold yourself ready always to come here and answer for your crimes when this Edward Colman shall be found. And fast, and pray, and search diligently in your soul for the secret room in which the source of shame is hidden in you. And so set loose a stream of penitence as you will be overwhelmed therewith.”

She was not heeding very much what he said, she gazed instead at the stones beside his feet.

“Why, if I may go back to Rye...” she said.

He looked at her with gloomy inquiry, then it came to him that she was mad, and he had a little compassion before he dismissed her for good from his mind.

“Do not meddle any more in such things,” he said. “You are a very bad politician.”

He was going away when he turned and met the full gaze of hatred that she threw at his back.

“Till to-morrow at this time you are free to go where you will,” he said; “then you shall take water upon a King’s ship that goes to Rye for guns.”

She embraced in a renewed look of hatred the red velvet of his cloak, his high and stiff ruff and his little hat, and he disappeared under the little gate that goes towards the water-way on Thames side.

She talked that night with the conjurer in Crooked Friars. She had no other place that attracted her desires in all London, and the constable’s wife of the tower would not very willingly sit with her any more, but gave her maid to be her companion, and they went masked and with two soldiers to guard them to the end of the dark alleyway at their end of the street.

The conjurer sat in a little, dark and very lofty room, hung all over with black cloth, and with a red light in it. He wore a great conical hat and a big beard of tow and black, long-sleeved robes, and he talked in a squeaking voice. Because the room was so very lofty all above his head was shadowy, but she could see the form of a crocodile with extended claws, as if it were puddling water above his head, and from time to time there was the flitting, leathern sound of a bat’s wings that threaded the thick shadows, and that this Doctor Eusebius called his Familiar. It squeaked shrilly each time that he said “Hem!” He had before him a table with a very black cloth, and on it there was painted in blue and glimmering flames a great death’s head and crossed bones. It was so very dark that only his face above the red lamp was at all plainly to be seen, and there was a close and earthy smell in the place, and all the walls were hung with black cloth.

The anger in which she had been left by the Attorney’s words to her and by his contempt, as if she had been a bundle of hay, still remained to her; she shuddered with rage each time that she thought of him, and, in consequence, she spoke to the conjurer with a bitter contempt.

“I am not to be frightened by these semblances of horror,” she said.

The sorcerer cried, “Hem! hem! hem!” and “Buzz! buzz! buzz!” the bat, which had sunk to rest, squeaked shrilly three times, and again resumed its tireless flittings, like a shadow blown by mad winds. The sound of a Chinese gong filled the air; a white skeleton with a white cat crouching on its shoulder danced across the further end of the room to vanish in an unseen closet; the image of an owl darted beams of light down upon her from the back of the crocodile.

“Why,” Anne Jeal said, “this would frighten city madams, and your ante-chamber is full of them. But my mother had the secrets of Adonai and Pharpar. I am not one to be moved by such things. My old grandmother could call up the devils called efrits. She was a Morisco. What is all this searching for the philosopher’s stone that you London sorcerers prate of? We have old witches can raise a storm of wind that would blow all London about your ears.”

The sorcerer leaned his head on his hand. He was a man half charlatan, but half he believed that there were great secrets. Only he had always been poor and had little chance to study, for he had only been door-boy to the famous Doctor Medices of Edmonton, who, in turn, was said to have been a pupil of Doctor Faustus. To get the means to live poorly and study his mysteries he did tricks for city wives to be frightened at, and taught druggists and silk mercers how to orient their shops, what signs to Set over their doors, and how to adulterate tobacco. But in Anne Jeal he had met a practitioner of magic that came of an older and more cunning tradition than his. There were, he knew, some such witches in country places. They still held the secrets that knights of the Temple, who were all black necromancers and worshipped Satan and spat on the emblem of redemption at their masses, had brought back from the Crusades with women captives from the Saracens and paynims, who were mighty necromancers and could raise fiends and demons with great wings overshadowing the sky. His furthest effort might teach him the secret of making gold; but these old women who had instructed Anne Jeal, as she claimed, had the power of shaking the earth, of causing tempests and swaying the minds of kings and the powers of darkness.