"When the judge put on his black cap, the owner of the stolen linen rose trembling up, his lip quivering, his face as gray as ashes; and when the awful words came, he cried out, "Oh, poor child, poor child, I did not know it was death!" and fell as a tree falls. When they lifted him up his reason was gone; before the sun was set, he had taken his own life. A kindly man; a man whose heart was right, at bottom; add his murder to this that is to be now done here; and charge them both where they belong --to the rulers and the bitter laws of Britain. The time is come, my child; let me pray over thee--not _for_ thee, dear abused poor heart and innocent, but for them that be guilty of thy ruin and death, who need it more."
After his prayer they put the noose around the young girl"s neck, and they had great trouble to adjust the knot under her ear, because she was devouring the baby all the time, wildly kissing it, and s.n.a.t.c.hing it to her face and her breast, and drenching it with tears, and half moaning, half shrieking all the while, and the baby crowing, and laughing, and kicking its feet with delight over what it took for romp and play. Even the hangman couldn"t stand it, but turned away. When all was ready the priest gently pulled and tugged and forced the child out of the mother"s arms, and stepped quickly out of her reach; but she clasped her hands, and made a wild spring toward him, with a shriek; but the rope--and the under-sheriff--held her short. Then she went on her knees and stretched out her hands and cried:
"One more kiss--oh, my G.o.d, one more, one more,--it is the dying that begs it!"
She got it; she almost smothered the little thing. And when they got it away again, she cried out:
"Oh, my child, my darling, it will die! It has no home, it has no father, no friend, no mother--"
"It has them all!" said that good priest. "All these will I be to it till I die."
You should have seen her face then! Grat.i.tude? Lord, what do you want with words to express that? Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself. She gave that look, and carried it away to the treasury of heaven, where all things that are divine belong.
CHAPTER x.x.xVI
AN ENCOUNTER IN THE DARK
London--to a slave--was a sufficiently interesting place. It was merely a great big village; and mainly mud and thatch. The streets were muddy, crooked, unpaved. The populace was an ever flocking and drifting swarm of rags, and splendors, of nodding plumes and shining armor. The king had a palace there; he saw the outside of it. It made him sigh; yes, and swear a little, in a poor juvenile sixth century way. We saw knights and grandees whom we knew, but they didn"t know us in our rags and dirt and raw welts and bruises, and wouldn"t have recognized us if we had hailed them, nor stopped to answer, either, it being unlawful to speak with slaves on a chain. Sandy pa.s.sed within ten yards of me on a mule--hunting for me, I imagined. But the thing which clean broke my heart was something which happened in front of our old barrack in a square, while we were enduring the spectacle of a man being boiled to death in oil for counterfeiting pennies. It was the sight of a newsboy--and I couldn"t get at him! Still, I had one comfort--here was proof that Clarence was still alive and banging away. I meant to be with him before long; the thought was full of cheer.
I had one little glimpse of another thing, one day, which gave me a great uplift. It was a wire stretching from housetop to housetop.
Telegraph or telephone, sure. I did very much wish I had a little piece of it. It was just what I needed, in order to carry out my project of escape. My idea was to get loose some night, along with the king, then gag and bind our master, change clothes with him, batter him into the aspect of a stranger, hitch him to the slave-chain, a.s.sume possession of the property, march to Camelot, and--
But you get my idea; you see what a stunning dramatic surprise I would wind up with at the palace. It was all feasible, if I could only get hold of a slender piece of iron which I could shape into a lock-pick. I could then undo the lumbering padlocks with which our chains were fastened, whenever I might choose.
But I never had any luck; no such thing ever happened to fall in my way. However, my chance came at last. A gentleman who had come twice before to d.i.c.ker for me, without result, or indeed any approach to a result, came again. I was far from expecting ever to belong to him, for the price asked for me from the time I was first enslaved was exorbitant, and always provoked either anger or derision, yet my master stuck stubbornly to it--twenty-two dollars. He wouldn"t bate a cent. The king was greatly admired, because of his grand physique, but his kingly style was against him, and he wasn"t salable; n.o.body wanted that kind of a slave.
I considered myself safe from parting from him because of my extravagant price. No, I was not expecting to ever belong to this gentleman whom I have spoken of, but he had something which I expected would belong to me eventually, if he would but visit us often enough. It was a steel thing with a long pin to it, with which his long cloth outside garment was fastened together in front. There were three of them. He had disappointed me twice, because he did not come quite close enough to me to make my project entirely safe; but this time I succeeded; I captured the lower clasp of the three, and when he missed it he thought he had lost it on the way.
I had a chance to be glad about a minute, then straightway a chance to be sad again. For when the purchase was about to fail, as usual, the master suddenly spoke up and said what would be worded thus --in modern English:
"I"ll tell you what I"ll do. I"m tired supporting these two for no good. Give me twenty-two dollars for this one, and I"ll throw the other one in."
The king couldn"t get his breath, he was in such a fury. He began to choke and gag, and meantime the master and the gentleman moved away discussing.
"An ye will keep the offer open--"
""Tis open till the morrow at this hour."
"Then I will answer you at that time," said the gentleman, and disappeared, the master following him.
I had a time of it to cool the king down, but I managed it.
I whispered in his ear, to this effect:
"Your grace _will_ go for nothing, but after another fashion. And so shall I. To-night we shall both be free."
"Ah! How is that?"
"With this thing which I have stolen, I will unlock these locks and cast off these chains to-night. When he comes about nine-thirty to inspect us for the night, we will seize him, gag him, batter him, and early in the morning we will march out of this town, proprietors of this caravan of slaves."
That was as far as I went, but the king was charmed and satisfied.
That evening we waited patiently for our fellow-slaves to get to sleep and signify it by the usual sign, for you must not take many chances on those poor fellows if you can avoid it. It is best to keep your own secrets. No doubt they fidgeted only about as usual, but it didn"t seem so to me. It seemed to me that they were going to be forever getting down to their regular snoring.
As the time dragged on I got nervously afraid we shouldn"t have enough of it left for our needs; so I made several premature attempts, and merely delayed things by it; for I couldn"t seem to touch a padlock, there in the dark, without starting a rattle out of it which interrupted somebody"s sleep and made him turn over and wake some more of the gang.
But finally I did get my last iron off, and was a free man once more. I took a good breath of relief, and reached for the king"s irons. Too late! in comes the master, with a light in one hand and his heavy walking-staff in the other. I snuggled close among the wallow of snorers, to conceal as nearly as possible that I was naked of irons; and I kept a sharp lookout and prepared to spring for my man the moment he should bend over me.
But he didn"t approach. He stopped, gazed absently toward our dusky ma.s.s a minute, evidently thinking about something else; then set down his light, moved musingly toward the door, and before a body could imagine what he was going to do, he was out of the door and had closed it behind him.
"Quick!" said the king. "Fetch him back!"
Of course, it was the thing to do, and I was up and out in a moment. But, dear me, there were no lamps in those days, and it was a dark night. But I glimpsed a dim figure a few steps away. I darted for it, threw myself upon it, and then there was a state of things and lively! We fought and scuffled and struggled, and drew a crowd in no time. They took an immense interest in the fight and encouraged us all they could, and, in fact, couldn"t have been pleasanter or more cordial if it had been their own fight. Then a tremendous row broke out behind us, and as much as half of our audience left us, with a rush, to invest some sympathy in that. Lanterns began to swing in all directions; it was the watch gathering from far and near. Presently a halberd fell across my back, as a reminder, and I knew what it meant.
I was in custody. So was my adversary. We were marched off toward prison, one on each side of the watchman. Here was disaster, here was a fine scheme gone to sudden destruction! I tried to imagine what would happen when the master should discover that it was I who had been fighting him; and what would happen if they jailed us together in the general apartment for brawlers and petty law-breakers, as was the custom; and what might--
Just then my antagonist turned his face around in my direction, the freckled light from the watchman"s tin lantern fell on it, and, by George, he was the wrong man!
CHAPTER x.x.xVII
AN AWFUL PREDICAMENT
Sleep? It was impossible. It would naturally have been impossible in that noisome cavern of a jail, with its mangy crowd of drunken, quarrelsome, and song-singing rapscallions. But the thing that made sleep all the more a thing not to be dreamed of, was my racking impatience to get out of this place and find out the whole size of what might have happened yonder in the slave-quarters in consequence of that intolerable miscarriage of mine.
It was a long night, but the morning got around at last. I made a full and frank explanation to the court. I said I was a slave, the property of the great Earl Grip, who had arrived just after dark at the Tabard inn in the village on the other side of the water, and had stopped there over night, by compulsion, he being taken deadly sick with a strange and sudden disorder. I had been ordered to cross to the city in all haste and bring the best physician; I was doing my best; naturally I was running with all my might; the night was dark, I ran against this common person here, who seized me by the throat and began to pummel me, although I told him my errand, and implored him, for the sake of the great earl my master"s mortal peril--
The common person interrupted and said it was a lie; and was going to explain how I rushed upon him and attacked him without a word--
"Silence, sirrah!" from the court. "Take him hence and give him a few stripes whereby to teach him how to treat the servant of a n.o.bleman after a different fashion another time. Go!"
Then the court begged my pardon, and hoped I would not fail to tell his lordship it was in no wise the court"s fault that this high-handed thing had happened. I said I would make it all right, and so took my leave. Took it just in time, too; he was starting to ask me why I didn"t fetch out these facts the moment I was arrested. I said I would if I had thought of it--which was true --but that I was so battered by that man that all my wit was knocked out of me--and so forth and so on, and got myself away, still mumbling. I didn"t wait for breakfast. No gra.s.s grew under my feet. I was soon at the slave quarters. Empty--everybody gone!
That is, everybody except one body--the slave-master"s. It lay there all battered to pulp; and all about were the evidences of a terrific fight. There was a rude board coffin on a cart at the door, and workmen, a.s.sisted by the police, were thinning a road through the gaping crowd in order that they might bring it in.
I picked out a man humble enough in life to condescend to talk with one so shabby as I, and got his account of the matter.
"There were sixteen slaves here. They rose against their master in the night, and thou seest how it ended."
"Yes. How did it begin?"
"There was no witness but the slaves. They said the slave that was most valuable got free of his bonds and escaped in some strange way--by magic arts "twas thought, by reason that he had no key, and the locks were neither broke nor in any wise injured. When the master discovered his loss, he was mad with despair, and threw himself upon his people with his heavy stick, who resisted and brake his back and in other and divers ways did give him hurts that brought him swiftly to his end."
"This is dreadful. It will go hard with the slaves, no doubt, upon the trial."
"Marry, the trial is over."
"Over!"
"Would they be a week, think you--and the matter so simple? They were not the half of a quarter of an hour at it."
"Why, I don"t see how they could determine which were the guilty ones in so short a time."