Heralds of Empire, Page 2

  PART I

  CHAPTER I

  WHAT ARE KING-KILLERS?

  My father--peace to his soul!--had been of those who thronged Londonstreets with wine tubs to drink the restored king's health on bendedknee; but he, poor gentleman, departed this life before his monarchcould restore a wasted patrimony. For old Tibbie, the nurse, there wasnothing left but to pawn the family plate and take me, a spoiled lad inhis teens, out to Puritan kin of Boston Town.

  On the night my father died he had spoken remorsefully of the past tothe lord bishop at his bedside.

  "Tush, man, have a heart," cries his lordship. "Thou'lt see pasch andyule yet forty year, Stanhope. Tush, man, 'tis thy liver, or a touchof the gout. Take here a smack of port. Sleep sound, man, sleepsound."

  And my father slept so sound he never wakened more.

  So I came to my Uncle Kirke, whose virtues were of the acid sort thatcurdles the milk of human kindness.

  With him, goodness meant gloom. If the sweet joy of living ever sangto him in his youth, he shut his ears to the sound as to sirentemptings, and sternly set himself to the fierce delight of beingmiserable.

  For misery he had reason enough. Having writ a book in which he calledKing Charles "a man of blood and everlasting abomination"--whateverthat might mean--Eli Kirke got himself star-chambered. When, in thelanguage of those times, he was examined "before torture, in torture,between torture, and after torture"--the torture of the rack and thethumbkins and the boot--he added to his former testimony that the queenwas a "Babylonish woman, a Potiphar, a Jezebel, a--"

  There his mouth was gagged, head and heels roped to the rack, and awrench given the pulleys at each end that nigh dismembered his poor,torn body. And what words, think you, came quick on top of his firstsharp outcry?

  "Wisdom is justified of her children! The wicked shall he pull downand the humble shall he exalt!"

  And when you come to think of it, Charles Stuart lost his head on theblock five years from that day.

  When Eli Kirke left jail to take ship for Boston Town both ears hadbeen cropped. On his forehead the letters S L--seditious libeler--werebranded deep, though not so deep as the bitterness burned into his soul.

  There comes before me a picture of my landing, showing as clearly as itwere threescore years ago that soft, summer night, the harbour watersmolten gold in a harvest moon, a waiting group of figures grim abovethe quay. No firing of muskets and drinking of flagons and ringing ofbells to welcome us, for each ship brought out court minions to whipBoston into line with the Restoration--as hungry a lot of rascals asever gathered to pick fresh bones.

  Old Tibbie had pranked me out in brave finery: the close-cut,black-velvet waistcoat that young royalists then wore; a scarletdoublet, flaming enough to set the turkey yard afire; the silken hoseand big shoe-buckles late introduced from France by the king; and abeaver hat with plumes a-nodding like my lady's fan. My curls, I mind,tumbled forward thicker than those foppish French perukes.

  "There is thy Uncle Kirke," whispers Nurse Tibbie. "Pay thy bestdevoirs, Master Ramsay," and she pushes me to the fore of thosecrowding up the docks.

  A thin, pale man with a scarred face silently permitted me to salutefour limp fingers. His eyes swept me with chill disapproval. My hatclapped on a deal faster than it had come off, for you must know weunhatted in those days with a grand, slow bow.

  "Thy Aunt Ruth," says Tibbie, nudging me; for had I stood from that dayto this, I was bound that cold man should speak first.

  To my aunt the beaver came off in its grandest flourish. The pressureof a dutiful kiss touched my forehead, and I minded the passion kissesof a dead mother.

  Those errant curls blew out in the wind.

  "Ramsay Stanhope," begins my uncle sourly, "what do you with uncroppedhair and the foolish trappings of vanity?"

  As I live, those were the first words he uttered to me.

  "I perceive silken garters," says he, clearing his throat and loweringhis glance down my person. "Many a good man hath exchanged silk forhemp, my fine gentleman!"

  "An the hemp hold like silk, 'twere a fair exchange, sir," I returned;though I knew very well he referred to those men who had died for thecause.

  "Ramsay," says he, pointing one lank fore-finger at me, "Ramsay, drawyour neck out of that collar; for the vanities of the wicked are a yokeleading captive the foolish!"

  Now, my collar was _point-de-vice_ of prime quality over black velvet.My uncle's welcome was more than a vain lad could stomach; and whatyouth of his first teens hath not a vanity hidden about him somewhere?

  "Thou shalt not put the horse and the ass under the same yoke, sir,"said I, drawing myself up far as ever high heels would lift.

  He looked dazed for a minute. Then he told me that he spake concerningmy spiritual blindness, his compassions being moved to show me theerror of my way.

  At that, old nurse must needs take fire.

  "Lord save a lad from the likes o' sich compassions! Sure, sir, an thegood Lord makes pretty hair grow, 'twere casting pearls before swine toshave his head like a cannon-ball"--this with a look at my uncle'scrown--"or to dress a proper little gentleman like a raggedflibbergibbet."

  "Tibbie, hold your tongue!" I order.

  "Silence were fitter for fools and children," says Eli Kirke loftily.

  There comes a time when every life must choose whether to laugh or weepover trivial pains, and when a cut may be broken on the foil of thatglancing mirth which the good Creator gave mankind to keep our racefrom going mad. It came to me on the night of my arrival on thewharves of Boston Town.

  We lumbered up through the straggling village in one of those clumsycoaches that had late become the terror of foot-passengers in Londoncrowds. My aunt pointed with a pride that was colonial to the finelight which the towns-people had erected on Beacon Hill; and told mepretty legends of Rattlesnake Hill that fired the desire to explorethose inland dangers. I noticed that the rubble-faced houses showedlanterns in iron clamps above most of the doorways. My kinsman's housestood on the verge of the wilds-rough stone below, timbered plasterabove, with a circle of bay windows midway, like an umbrella. Highwindows were safer in case of attack from savages, Aunt Ruth explained;and I mentally set to scaling rope ladders in and out of those windows.

  We drew up before the front garden and entered by a turnstile withflying arms. Many a ride have little Rebecca Stocking, of thecourt-house, and Ben Gillam, the captain's son, and Jack Battle, thesailor lad, had, perched on that turnstile, while I ran pushing andjumping on, as the arms flew creaking round.

  The home-coming was not auspicious. Yet I thought no resentmentagainst my uncle. I realized too well how the bloody revenge of theroyalists was turning the hearts of England to stone. One morning Irecall, when my poor father lay a-bed of the gout and there came a roarthrough London streets as of a burst ocean dike. Before Tibbie couldsay no, I had snatched up a cap and was off.

  God spare me another such sight! In all my wild wanderings have Inever seen savages do worse.

  Through the streets of London before the shoutings of a rabble rout waswhipped an old, white-haired man. In front of him rumbled a cart; inthe cart, the axeman, laving wet hands; at the axeman's feet, the headof a regicide--all to intimidate that old, white-haired man, fearlesslyerect, singing a psalm. When they reached the shambles, know you whatthey did? Go read the old court records and learn what that sentencemeant when a man's body was cast into fire before his living eyes! Allthe while, watching from a window were the princes and their shamelessones.

  Ah, yes! God wot, I understood Eli Kirke's bitterness!

  But the beginning was not auspicious, and my best intentions presagedworse. For instance, one morning my uncle was sounding myconvictions--he was ever sounding other people's convictions--"touchingthe divine right of kings." Thinking to give strength to contempt forthat doctrine, I applied to it one forcible word I had oft heard usedby gentlemen of the cloth. Had I shot a gun across the table, theeffect could no
t have been worse. The serving maid fell all of a heapagainst the pantry door. Old Tibbie yelped out with laughter, and thennigh choked. Aunt Ruth glanced from me to Eli Kirke with a timid lookin her eye; but Eli Kirke gazed stolidly into my soul as he would readwhether I scoffed or no.

  Thereafter he nailed up a little box to receive fines for blasphemy.

  "To be plucked as a brand from the burning," I hear him say, fetching amighty sigh. But sweet, calm Aunt Ruth, stitching at some spotlesskerchief, intercedes.

  "Let us be thankful the lad hath come to us."

  "Bound fast in cords of vanity," deplores Uncle Kirke.

  "But all things are possible," Aunt Ruth softly interposes.

  "All things are possible," concedes Eli Kirke grudgingly, "but thouknowest, Ruth, all things are not probable!"

  And I, knowing my uncle loved an argument as dearly as merry gentlemenlove a glass, slip away leg-bail for the docks, where sits Ben Gillamamong the spars spinning sailor yarns to Jack Battle, of the greatnorth sea, whither his father goes for the fur trade; or of M.Radisson, the half-wild Frenchman, who married an English kinswoman ofEli Kirke's and went where never man went and came back with so manypelts that the Quebec governor wanted to build a fortress of beaverfur; [1] or of the English squadron, rocking to the harbour tide, freshfrom winning the Dutch of Manhattan, and ready to subdue malcontents ofBoston Town. Then Jack Battle, the sailor lad from no one knows where,living no one knows how, digs his bare toes into the sand and asksunder his breath if we have heard about king-killers.

  "What are king-killers?" demands young Gillam.

  I discreetly hold my tongue; for a gentleman who supped late with myuncle one night has strangely disappeared, and the rats in the attichave grown boldly loud.

  "What are king-killers?" asks Gillam.

  "Them as sent Charles I to his death," explains Jack. "They do say,"he whispers fearfully, "one o' them is hid hereabouts now! The king'scommission hath ordered to have hounds and Indians run him down."

  "Pah!" says Gillam, making little of what he had not known, "hounds areonly for run-aways," this with a sneering look at odd marks roundJack's wrists.

  "I am no slave!" vows Jack in crestfallen tones.

  "Who said 'slave'?" laughs Gillam triumphantly. "My father saith he isa runaway rat from the Barbadoes," adds Ben to me.

  With the fear of a hunted animal under his shaggy brows, little Jacktries to read how much is guess.

  "I am no slave, Ben Gillam," he flings back at hazard; but his voice isthin from fright.

  "My father saith some planter hath lost ten pound on thee, littleslavie," continues Ben.

  "Pah! Ten pound for such a scrub! He's not worth six! Look at themarks on his arms, Ramsay"--catching the sailor roughly by the wrist."He can say what he likes. He knows chains."

  Little Jack jerked free and ran along the sands as hard as his barefeet could carry him. Then I turned to Ben, who had always bullied usboth. Dropping the solemn "thou's" which our elders still used, I lethim have plain "you's."

  "You--you--mean coward! I've a mind to knock you into the sea!"

  "Grow bigger first, little billycock," taunts Ben.

  By the next day I was big enough.

  Mistress Hortense Hillary was down on the beach with M. Picot'sblackamoor, who dogged her heels wherever she went; and presently comesRebecca Stocking to shovel sand too. Then Ben must show what a bigfellow he is by kicking over the little maid's cart-load.

  "Stop that!" commands Jack Battle, springing of a sudden from the beach.

  For an instant, Ben was taken aback.

  Then the insolence that provokes its own punishment broke forth.

  "Go play with your equals, jack-pudding! Jailbirds who ape theirbetters are strangled up in Quebec," and he kicked down Rebecca's piletoo.

  Rebecca's doll-blue eyes spilled over with tears, but Mistress Hortensewas the high-mettled, high-stepping little dame. She fairly stampedher wrath, and to Jack's amaze took him by the hand and marched offwith the hauteur of an empress.

  Then Ben must call out something about M. Picot, the French doctor, notbeing what he ought, and little Hortense having no mother.

  "Ben," said I quietly, "come out on the pier." The pier ran to deepwater. At the far end I spoke.

  "Not another word against Hortense and Jack! Promise me!"

  His back was to the water, mine to the shore. He would have promisedreadily enough, I think, if the other monkeys had not followed--Rebeccawith big tear-drops on both cheeks, Hortense quivering with wrath, Jackflushed, half shy and half shamed to be championed by a girl.

  "Come, Ben; 'fore I count three, promise----"

  But he lugged at me. I dodged. With a splash that doused us four, Benwent headlong into the sea. The uplift of the waves caught him. Hethrew back his arms with a cry. Then he sank like lead.

  The sailor son of the famous captain could not swim. Rebecca's eyesnigh jumped from her head with fright. Hortense grew white to the lipsand shouted for that lout of a blackamoor sound asleep on the sand.

  Before I could get my doublet off to dive, Jack Battle was cleaving airlike a leaping fish, and the waters closed over his heels.

  Bethink you, who are not withered into forgetfulness of your own merryyouth, whether our hearts stopped beating then!

  But up comes that water-dog of a Jack gripping Ben by the scruff of theneck; and when by our united strength we had hauled them both on thepier, little Mistress Hortense was the one to roll Gillam on hisstomach and bid us "Quick! Stand him on his head and pour the waterout!"

  From that day Hortense was Jack's slave, Jack was mine, and Ben was apampered hero because he never told and took the punishment like a man.But there was never a word more slurring Hortense's unknown origin andJack's strange wrist marks.

  [1] Young Stanhope's informant had evidently mixed tradition with fact.Radisson was fined for going overland to Hudson Bay without thegovernor's permission, the fine to build a fort at Three Rivers. EliKirke's kinswoman was a daughter of Sir John Kirke, of the Hudson's BayFur Company.--_Author_.