Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley (christmas read aloud .txt) 📕

“An Englishwoman?” cried all three, springing forward.

“Bring her in!” said Amyas, turning very pale; and as he spoke, Yeo and another led into the cabin a figure scarcely human.

An elderly woman, dressed in the yellow “San Benito” of the Inquisition, with ragged gray locks hanging about a countenance distorted by suffering and shrunk by famine. Painfully, as one unaccustomed to the light, she peered and blinked round her. Her fallen lip gave her a half-idiotic expression; and yet there was an uneasy twinkle in the eye, as of boundless terror and suspicion. She lifted up her fettered wrist to shade her face; and as she did so, disclosed a line of fearful scars upon her skinny arm.

“Look there, sirs!” said Yeo, pointing to them with a stern smile. “Here’s some of these Popish gentry’s handiwork. I know well enough how those marks came;” and he pointed to the similar scars on his own wrist.

The commandant, as well as the Englishmen, recoiled with horror.

“Holy Virgin! what wretch is this on board my ship? Bishop, is this the prisoner whom you sent on board?”

The bishop, who had been slowly recovering his senses, looked at her a moment; and then thrusting his chair back, crossed himself, and almost screamed, “Malefica! Malefica! Who brought her here? Turn her away, gentlemen; turn her eye away; she will bewitch, fascinate”—and he began muttering prayers.

Amyas seized him by the shoulder, and shook him on to his legs.

“Swine! who is this? Wake up, coward, and tell me, or I will cut you piecemeal!”

But ere the bishop could answer, the woman uttered a wild shriek, and pointing to the taller of the two monks, cowered behind Yeo.

“He here?” cried she, in broken Spanish. “Take me away! I will tell you no more. I have told you all, and lies enough beside. Oh! why is he come again? Did they not say that I should have no more torments?”

The monk turned pale: but like a wild beast at bay, glared firmly round on the whole company; and then, fixing his dark eyes full on the woman, he bade her be silent so sternly, that she shrank down like a beaten hound.

“Silence, dog!” said Will Cary, whose blood was up, and followed his words with a blow on the monk’s mouth, which silenced him effectually.

“Don’t be afraid, good woman, but speak English. We are all English here, and Protestants too. Tell us what they have done for you.”

“Another trap! another trap!” cried she, in a strong Devonshire accent. “You be no English! You want to make me lie again, and then torment me. Oh! wretched, wretched that I am!” cried she, bursting into tears. “Whom should I trust? Not myself: no, nor God; for I have denied Him! O Lord! O Lord!”

Amyas stood silent with fear and horror; some instinct told him that he was on the point of hearing news for which he feared to ask. But Jack spoke—

“My dear soul! my dear soul! don’t you be afraid; and the Lord will stand by you, if you will but tell the truth. We are all Englishmen, and men of Devon, as you seem to be by your speech; and this ship is ours; and the pope himself sha’n’t touch you.”

“Devon?” she said doubtingly; “Devon! Whence, then?”

“Bideford men. This is Mr. Will Cary, to Clovelly. If you are a Devon woman, you’ve heard tell of the Carys, to be sure.”

The woman made a rush forward, and threw her fettered arms round Will’s neck,—

“Oh, Mr. Cary, my dear life! Mr. Cary! and so you be! Oh, dear soul alive! but you’re burnt so brown, and I be ‘most blind with misery. Oh, who ever sent you here, my dear Mr. Will, then, to save a poor wretch from the pit?”

“Who on earth are you?”

“Lucy Passmore, the white witch to Welcombe. Don’t you mind Lucy Passmore, as charmed your warts for you when you was a boy?”

“Lucy Passmore!” almost shrieked all three friends. “She that went off with—”

“Yes! she that sold her own soul, and persuaded that dear saint to sell hers; she that did the devil’s work, and has taken the devil’s wages;—after this fashion!” and she held up her scarred wrists wildly.

“Where is Dona de—Rose Salterne?” shouted Will and Jack.

“Where is my brother Frank?” shouted Amyas.

“Dead, dead, dead!”

“I knew it,” said Amyas, sitting down again calmly.

“How did she die?”

“The Inquisition—he!” pointing to the monk. “Ask him—he betrayed her to her death. And ask him!” pointing to the bishop; “he sat by her and saw her die.”

“Woman, you rave!” said the bishop, getting up with a terrified air, and moving as far as possible from Amyas.

“How did my brother die, Lucy?” asked Amyas, still calmly.

“Who be you, sir?”

A gleam of hope flashed across Amyas—she had not answered his question.

“I am Amyas Leigh of Burrough. Do you know aught of my brother Frank, who was lost at La Guayra?”

“Mr. Amyas! Heaven forgive me that I did not know the bigness of you. Your brother, sir, died like a gentleman as he was.”

“But how?” gasped Amyas.

“Burned with her, sir!”

“Is this true, sir?” said Amyas, turning to the bishop, with a very quiet voice.

“I, sir?” stammered he, in panting haste. “I had nothing to do—I was compelled in my office of bishop to be an unwilling spectator— the secular arm, sir; I could not interfere with that—any more than I can with the Holy Office. I do not belong to it—ask that gentleman—sir! Saints and angels, sir! what are you going to do?” shrieked he, as Amyas laid a heavy hand upon his shoulder, and began to lead him towards the door.

“Hang you!” said Amyas. “If I had been a Spaniard and a priest like yourself, I should have burnt you alive.”

“Hang me?” shrieked the wretched old Balaam; and burst into abject howls for mercy.

“Take the dark monk, Yeo, and hang him too. Lucy Passmore, do you know that fellow also?”

“No, sir,” said Lucy.

“Lucky for you, Fray Gerundio,” said Will Cary; while the good friar hid his face in his hands, and burst into tears. Lucky it was for him, indeed; for he had been a pitying spectator of the tragedy. “Ah!” thought he, “if life in this mad and sinful world be a reward, perhaps this escape is vouchsafed to me for having pleaded the cause of the poor Indian!”

But the bishop shrieked on.

“Oh! not yet. An hour, only an hour! I am not fit to die.”

“That is no concern of mine,” said Amyas. “I only know that you are not fit to live.”

“Let us at least make our peace with God,” said the dark monk.

“Hound! if your saints can really smuggle you up the backstairs to heaven, they will do it without five minutes’ more coaxing and flattering.”

Fray Gerundio and the condemned man alike stopped their ears at the blasphemy.

“Oh, Fray Gerundio!” screamed the bishop, “pray for me. I have treated you like a beast. Oh, Fray, Fray!”

“Oh, my lord! my lord!” said the good man, as with tears streaming down his face he followed his shrieking and struggling diocesan up the stairs, “who am I? Ask no pardon of me. Ask pardon of God for all your sins against the poor innocent savages, when you saw your harmless sheep butchered year after year, and yet never lifted up your voice to save the flock which God had committed to you. Oh, confess that, my lord! confess it ere it be too late!”

“I will confess all about the Indians, and the gold, and Tita too, Fray; peccavi, peccavi—only five minutes, senors, five little minutes’ grace, while I confess to the good Fray!”—and he grovelled on the deck.

“I will have no such mummery where I command,” said Amyas, sternly. “I will be no accomplice in cheating Satan of his due.”

“If you will confess,” said Brimblecombe, whose heart was melting fast, “confess to the Lord, and He will forgive you. Even at the last moment mercy is open. Is it not, Fray Gerundio?”

“It is, senor; it is, my lord,” said Gerundio; but the bishop only clasped his hands over his head.

“Then I am undone! All my money is stolen! Not a farthing left to buy masses for my poor soul! And no absolution, no viaticum, nor anything! I die like a dog and am damned!”

“Clear away that running rigging!” said Amyas, while the dark Dominican stood perfectly collected, with something of a smile of pity at the miserable bishop. A man accustomed to cruelty, and firm in his fanaticism, he was as ready to endure suffering as to inflict it; repeating to himself the necessary prayers, he called Fray Gerundio to witness that he died, however unworthy, a martyr, in charity with all men, and in the communion of the Holy Catholic Church; and then, as he fitted the cord to his own neck, gave Fray Gerundio various petty commissions about his sister and her children, and a little vineyard far away upon the sunny slopes of Castile; and so died, with a “Domine, in manus tuas,” like a valiant man of Spain.

Amyas stood long in solemn silence, watching the two corpses dangling above his head. At last he drew a long breath, as if a load was taken off his heart.

Suddenly he looked round to his men, who were watching eagerly to know what he would have done next.

“Hearken to me, my masters all, and may God hearken too, and do so to me, and more also, if, as long as I have eyes to see a Spaniard, and hands to hew him down, I do any other thing than hunt down that accursed nation day and night, and avenge all the innocent blood which has been shed by them since the day in which King Ferdinand drove out the Moors!”

“Amen!” said Salvation Yeo. “I need not to swear that oath, for I have sworn it long ago, and kept it. Will your honor have us kill the rest of the idolaters?”

“God forbid!” said Cary. “You would not do that, Amyas?”

“No; we will spare them. God has shown us a great mercy this day, and we must be merciful in it. We will land them at Cabo Velo. But henceforth till I die no quarter to a Spaniard.”

“Amen!” said Yeo.

Amyas’s whole countenance had changed in the last half-hour. He seemed to have grown years older. His brow was wrinkled, his lip compressed, his eyes full of a terrible stony calm, as of one who had formed a great and dreadful purpose, and yet for that very reason could afford to be quiet under the burden of it, even cheerful; and when he returned to the cabin he bowed courteously to the commandant, begged pardon of him for having played the host so ill, and entreated him to finish his breakfast.

“But, senor—is it possible? Is his holiness dead?”

“He is hanged and dead, senor. I would have hanged, could I have caught them, every living thing which was present at my brother’s death, even to the very flies upon the wall. No more words, senor; your conscience tells you that I am just.”

“Senor,” said the commandant—“one word—I trust there are no listeners—none of my crew, I mean; but I must exculpate myself in your eyes.”

“Walk out, then, into the gallery with me.”

“To tell you the truth, senor—I trust in Heaven no one overhears.— You are just. This Inquisition is the