Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  He reeled against the table in his amazement and in the horror which the situation brought him.

  “Gad!” he groaned aloud.

  At another time the discovery might have filled him with horror of another kind. His soul might have been swept by angry scorn to find Nancy Sylvester, whom he had placed as high and inaccessible as the very stars, whose memory had acted as a beacon to him, casting its pure white light to guide him through many a vile temptation, reduced to this state of evil splendour. But just now the consciousness of his own infamy blotted out all else.

  He staggered forward and fell on his knees before her.

  “Nan! Nan!” he cried, in a strangled voice. “I did not know — I did not dream—”

  “You did not know!” Her voice was a very sword of sharpness. “It is as I thought, then. You are so fallen that you play the hired bully. You have done this at the hiring of another — and I can guess that other, the master-villain who employs such jackals. And you did not know that it was I — that it was one who loved you once when you were clean and honest, as deeply as she loathes and execrates you now for the foul thing you are become. You did not know that it was I you were to carry off. And you dare to urge that ignorance as your excuse? I hope you are punished in the knowledge; I hope that, if any lingering sense of shame abides in you, it will now scorch you to the soul. Get up, man!” she bade him, regally contemptuous, splendidly tragic. “Shall grovelling there mend any of your vileness?”

  He came instantly to his feet, yet not so much in obedience to her command as to the thought that flashed upon his mind.

  “What I have done I can undo,” he said. “Shall we stand talking here instead of acting? Come, Nan! As I carried you hither, so will I carry you hence again at once, while there is time. You shall have your fill of upbraiding me when you are safe bestowed.”

  “You will carry me hence?” she sneered. “Whither will you carry me?”

  “Out of this,” he answered frenziedly. “Come away, I say! There is no time to lose!”

  “And should I trust myself to you?”

  “You must! Can you doubt me — can you doubt how I should act by you? Come!”

  He caught her by the wrist, and drew her after him across the room. She went, after a glance at his livid, distorted face, reflecting the torture of his soul.

  “Quickly — quickly, then!” she had breathed; and she panted now in her eagerness, in her suddenly revived anxiety to be gone from this house.

  But as they reached the door it was thrust open from without, and on the threshold, all in white satin, like a bridegroom, with jewels in the lace at his throat, and a baldrick of garter blue across his breast, stood his Grace of Buckingham, eager expectancy upon his handsome face.

  “Out of the way, my lord!” roared Holles. “Out of the way! Let us pass.”

  Taken aback by that harsh address, Buckingham recoiled a pace.

  “What now?” he demanded, scowling. “What now, Bobadil, my roaring captain? What antics are these?”

  “This lady is in haste to be gone,” said Holles shortly. “So give way.”

  “Save us now! Have you lost your wits? Get you gone yourself, fool! You are no longer needed here.”

  “Ye’re mistook,” Holles answered him. “I was never needed more.” And he whipped out his sword. “Out of my way, you lovelorn ninnyhammer, before I do you a mischief.”

  Now, Buckingham was unarmed, but not unattended. Behind him in the passage waited his two French lackeys and another. He stepped aside, summoning them.

  “À moi, François, Antoine!” he summoned them; and on the instant three men sprang forward to make a barrier within the doorway.

  Nancy was taken with sudden fear, and cried out. But Holles laughed softly, almost glad of being afforded the means of proving to her that he could be something more than a mere hired abductor of women.

  “Must I carve a way out for us?” he asked. “Be their blood on your own silly head, my lord.”

  And he advanced boldly, keeping the lady close and slightly behind him.

  “Keep to your clubs, lads,” the duke admonished his followers. “We’ll have no shedding of blood if we can help it.”

  They rushed to meet him with the staves they carried, and pressed him so hard that he was forced to give back, for there is no parrying the blows of clubs with a slender rapier. He retreated, seeking an opening in their defences through which he could thrust home and rid himself one by one of his antagonists. Behind them followed the duke, watching and scornful, confident of the issue.

  Holles thrust high, at the throat of the foremost of his assailants. But the lad was quick to the parry, and dashed the blade aside so violently that he shivered it against the club of his neighbour, leaving Holles disarmed save for a hilt and a stump of sword. Yet even then the colonel did not yield him. He thrust out his left arm to catch a descending blow, and crashed his hilt full into the face of the lackey who had disarmed him, so that the fellow dropped as if fulminated. But the next moment Holles himself went down under a blow that took him squarely across the head and laid him unconscious at Sylvia’s feet, his limbs twitching faintly.

  The duke stepped forward.

  “Out,” he bade them, “and carry Antoine with you. Then return for Bobadil, and make him fast. I’ll deal with him later.”

  As they were obeying him he advanced towards Sylvia, who recoiled at his approach, watching him with eyes of terror, realising that she was utterly and hopelessly in his power.

  He bowed very low and gracefully.

  “Ah, my Sylvia, you shall forgive me the shifts to which my love has driven me, and this last shift of all with that roaring fool’s heroics and what they have led to. Blame not me; blame that cos amoris, your own incomparable loveliness and grace, the very whetstone of love.”

  “Love!” she answered him, with scorn unutterable of lip and eye, for she was none of your swooning madams, but a woman of a high spirit. “You call this violence love!” She stabbed him with a short, sharp laugh. “Sir, if you do not instantly suffer me to pass and go hence, I swear that you shall hang, though you be duke of twenty Buckinghams.”

  “Lady, you mistake me. You do as little justice to my wits as you have ever done to my poor person. No charge against me could be heeded in the circumstances. You were forcibly brought hither to his own house by a ruffian named Holles, whom Parliament shall attaint for other crimes. I came to rescue, and I have stayed to comfort you in your natural distress. The facts will prove my story. What shall prove yours?”

  She shrugged contemptuously.

  “You are a very master of the art of lying. But I promise you it shall not avail you. Let me pass, or it shall be the worse for you. Let me pass, I say!”

  Majestically, like the queen of tragedy she was, she flung out an arm in a gesture of command. It loosed the silken scarf that had been wound about her throat, so that this fell away and trailed from her shoulder, revealing the delicate whiteness of her skin.

  Buckingham looked at her, craned forward a moment, and then, quite suddenly, she saw his expression change. Into his staring eyes there crept something of incredulity and horror; his jaw fell loose, and the colour perished in his cheeks, leaving them white and haggard. Thus he stood for a long moment, and in that moment Holles stirred where he lay, groaned, thrust back his tumbled hair matted with blood from his cracked head, and, looking up, saw the duke point with a hand that shook at Sylvia’s throat.

  “Gad!” came the duke’s voice, no louder than a whisper. “The tokens!” And he repeated it more loudly with an increasing horror. “The tokens!”

  He reeled back in gasping dread as his servants were returning, and faced about.

  “Back!” he bade them, in a voice rendered shrill by terror. “Back! Away! She is infected! She has the plague!”

  They stood at gaze an instant, their faces blenching; they beheld, as he had done, the tokens stamped upon the white loveliness of her skin; then they turned and fled
incontinently, himself following them.

  The actress, scarcely realising what had happened, stood there and heard the clatter of their footsteps in the passage and the slamming of the door. Then she looked at herself, and saw the brand of the pestilence upon her. Whether it was the sight of it, or whether from the workings of the fell disease which excitement had hitherto suppressed, she was instantly taken with nausea; the room rocked about her; the ground seemed to heave under her feet. She would have fallen, but that suddenly she felt herself supported. Looking up she beheld the blood-smeared face of Colonel Holles, who had risen to spring to her assistance.

  “Do not touch me,” she cried. “Did you not hear? I have the plague.”

  “So I heard,” he answered.

  “You will take the infection,” she warned him.

  “’Tis what I most desire,” said he; and lifting her as he had lifted her once before that night, he bore her to the settle and laid her there.

  He stood above her, his mind half numbed by anguish at seeing her thus, and for a spell she lay there realising her condition and staring up at him wide-eyed.

  “Why do you tarry here?” she asked him at length in a dull voice. “You had best depart, and leave me to die. I think I shall die the easier for being rid of your company.”

  He made as if to answer her, then bowing his head, he passed out of the room in silence. She sat straining her ears, listening to his footsteps in the passage, and finally heard the slamming door announcing to her his departure. Knowing herself alone, a great fear then overtook her. For all the brave words she had used, the thought of dying alone in this empty house filled her with terror, so that it seemed to her that even the company of that dastard would have been better than this horror of loneliness.

  She flung herself down upon her face and sobbed aloud until the searing pain in her breast conquered even her self-pity and stretched her writhing in agony as if upon a rack. At last a merciful unconsciousness supervened. From this it would seem that she passed into a sleep, for she was aroused by a sound of steps and voices. The door of her room opened, and through a mist that had gathered before her eyes she saw the tall figure of Colonel Holles enter, followed by two strangers. One of these was a little bird-like man of middle age, the other was young and of a broad frame and a full countenance.

  Both were dressed in black and each carried a red wand — as enjoined by the law upon all whose duties took them into infected houses, so that those whom they passed in the streets should be warned thereby to give them a wide berth.

  The younger man remained standing by the door, a handkerchief smelling pungently of vinegar held to his nostrils, and his jaws working the while, for he was chewing a stick of snake-root as a further measure of precaution. Meanwhile, his companion — who was evidently a physician — approached the patient, and made a swift and silent examination of her case.

  She suffered it in silence, a lethargy overwhelming her too profoundly to admit of much care as to what might betide. He held her wrist for an instant in his bony fingers, the middle one upon her pulse; then he examined the blotches upon her throat, and finally raised one of her arms, and bade the colonel hold a candle whilst he scrutinised the arm-pit.

  A grunt escaped him at what he beheld. With his forefinger he tested the consistency of the swelling he discovered there, sending thence sharp, fiery streams of pain through all her body, as it seemed to her.

  “It is well,” he said, as he straightened himself. “Recovery is possible if suppuration can be induced, and since the swelling has already manifested itself there is a chance. But great care will be necessary.”

  He spoke to Holles as if to her husband, conceiving him so indeed from the circumstances.

  “Nurses are scarce and difficult to find,” he continued. “I will send you one as soon as possible. But, meanwhile, all will depend upon yourself.”

  “I am ready,” said Holles dully.

  “In any case, the law does not allow you now to leave this house until you can receive a certificate of health — which cannot be for at least a month. Those are Sir John Lawrence’s wise provisions for checking the spread of the infection.”

  “I am aware of them,” he answered.

  “So much the better then. As I have said, I will send a nurse-keeper as soon as possible. But it is of the first importance that no time should be lost in applying remedies and inducing perspiration. So that, if her life is to be saved, you will get to work at once. I came prepared, and I can leave you all that you will require. You will rub the swelling well with a stimulating ointment which I shall give you, and then apply to it a poultice of mallows, linseed, and palm oil. You will administer a dose of mithridate as an alexipharmic, and some two hours later a posset drink of Canary and spirits of sulphur. Make a fire and heap all available blankets upon her. For to-night, if you do that, you will have done all that can be done. To-morrow I shall return early in the morning, and we shall then consider further measures.” He turned to the man standing by the door, who was one of the official examiners. “You have heard, sir?” he asked. The man nodded.

  “I have already bidden the constable send a watchman. He should be here by now, and we will see the house locked up when we go forth.”

  “Very well,” said the doctor, and again he addressed the colonel. “I will see her put to bed, then take my leave of you till to-morrow.”

  That, however, was a service the lady was still able to do herself. When Holles, scorning the doctor’s aid, had, single-handed, carried her to the room above, she recovered sufficiently to demand that she should be left to herself; and, despite her obvious weakness, the doctor concurred that she should have her way in the matter.

  The effort so exhausted her, and awoke such torturing pains, that when finally she got to bed she lay panting in a state of half unconsciousness.

  Placing upon a table all that Holles would require, and repeating his injunctions, the doctor took his leave at last. The colonel accompanied him to the door of the house, which was standing open, whilst, by the light of a lantern held by the watchman, the examiner was completing the inscription “Lord have mercy upon us,” under the ominous red cross which he had daubed upon the panels.

  Doctor and examiner departed together, leaving the watchman on guard before the door to prevent any unauthorised person from passing in or out. Holles heard the key being turned on the outside, and knew himself a prisoner in that infected house for weeks to come, unless death should set him free meanwhile.

  He smiled grimly when he remembered how an hour ago he had shouted that she had the plague to those who would have rescued her from him. How far had he been from conceiving that he spoke the truth! It was almost as if a poetic justice had overtaken him. It was odds that neither she nor he would ever leave that house alive again, and, all things considered, this seemed to him the best possible consummation.

  Upon that thought he went to prepare the ingredients the doctor had left him wherewith to combat the disease. Armed with these, he returned presently to her chamber. Lying there in that deep lethargy which, whilst leaving her a full consciousness of all that had occurred about her, seemed to have deprived her of all power of speech or movement, she watched him with her wide, fevered eyes. Anon, under the pain which him ministrations caused her, she sank into unconsciousness, and thence into a raving delirium, which for days thereafter was to alternate with periods of lethargic, exhausted slumber.

  Chapter V.

  For five days she lay as one suspended between this world and the next. The merest straw of chance would suffice to tip the balance, the slightest lack of care and watchfulness to snap the slender thread by which life was still tethered to her wasting, fever-consumed frame.

  Had the ordinary nurse-keeper fetched on the morrow by the doctor been alone in charge of her, it is long odds that she would never have survived, for no hired attendant could ever have ministered to her with the self-sacrificing devotion of the broken adventurer who had once loved her. Not
for a moment did he suffer himself to relax his vigilance.

  Not content merely to take his turn in watching her whilst the nurse rested, he never slept, and was never long absent from her chamber in all the hours of those five days and their attendant nights. To the remonstrances of Mrs. Bates, the nurse — a capable, motherly woman of forty — he was insensible, until once he snarled at her for her solicitude concerning him, whereafter she troubled him with no more of it.

  Yet there was more than self-sacrifice in his behaviour. He deliberately sought death. He hoped — indeed, he would have prayed, but that he had long since lost the trick of it — for the infection. Morning and night he would bare his breast and finger his arm-pits in expectancy, eager to find upon himself the tokens that the hand of death had touched and claimed him.

  Yet the irony that ever pursued him thwarted now his desire for death, as it had thwarted his every other desire in life. Living and moving in that house of pestilence, breathing its mephitic atmosphere, he yet remained as immune as if he had been a “safe-man,” and this notwithstanding that he neglected every precaution prescribed him by the doctor, scorned the use of electuaries, and would arm himself with neither vinegar nor balsam of sulphur against infection.

  It is true that he smoked a deal, sitting by the window of her chamber, which was kept open day and night to the suffocating heat of that terrible July. And it is true that the great fire maintained, notwithstanding this, by the doctor’s commands, did much to cleanse and purify the air. And these things may have helped to keep him safe despite himself, unconsciously disinfected.

  And, meanwhile, as if incubated by that terrific heat, the plague was spreading now through London at a rate that seemed to threaten the city with the utter extermination that the preachers of doom had promised. From the doctor he learned of that sudden pestilential conflagration, of the alarming bill of mortality, and of the fact that the number of victims within the walls amounted in that week to some seven hundred. And he had abundant evidences of it even in his confinement there. From that window by which he spent long hours he beheld Knight Ryder Street — that once busy thoroughfare — become day by day more utterly deserted.