Captain Blood

by SABATINI, RAFAEL

  He answered more than was asked.

  “It’s entirely innocent I am.”

  A small, sharp-faced man at a table before and to the right of him bounced up. It was Mr. Pollexfen, the Judge-Advocate.

  “Are you guilty or not guilty?” snapped this peppery gentleman. “You must take the words.”

  “Words, is it?” said Peter Blood. “Oh—not guilty.” And he went on, addressing himself to the bench. “On this same subject of words, may it please your lordships, I am guilty of nothing to justify any of those words I have heard used to describe me, unless it be of a want of patience at having been closely confined for two months and longer in a fœtid jail with great peril to my health and even life.”

  Being started, he would have added a deal more; but at this point the Lord Chief Justice interposed in a gentle, rather plaintive voice.

  “Look you, sir: because we must observe the common and usual methods of trial, I must interrupt you now. You are no doubt ignorant of the forms of law?”

  “Not only ignorant, my lord, but hitherto most happy in that ignorance. I could gladly have forgone this acquaintance with them.”

  A pale smile momentarily lightened the wistful countenance.

  “I believe you. You shall be fully heard when you come to your defense. But anything you say now is altogether irregular and improper.”

  Enheartened by that apparent sympathy and consideration, Mr. Blood answered thereafter, as was required of him, that he would be tried by God and his country. Whereupon, having prayed to God to send him a good deliverance, the clerk called upon Andrew Baynes to hold up his hand and plead.

  From Baynes, who pleaded not guilty, the clerk passed on to Pitt, who boldly owned his guilt. The Lord Chief Justice stirred at that.

  “Come; that’s better,” quoth he, and his four scarlet brethren nodded. “If all were as obstinate as his two fellow-rebels, there would never be an end.”

  After that ominous interpolation, delivered with an inhuman iciness that sent a shiver through the court, Mr. Pollexfen got to his feet. With great prolixity he stated the general case against the three men, and the particular case against Peter Blood, whose indictment was to be taken first.

  The only witness called for the King was Captain Hobart. He testified briskly to the manner in which he had found and taken the three prisoners, together with Lord Gildoy. Upon the orders of his colonel he would have hanged Pitt out of hand, but was restrained by the lies of the prisoner Blood, who led him to believe that Pitt was a peer of the realm and a person of consideration.

  As the Captain’s evidence concluded, Lord Jeffreys looked across at Peter Blood.

  “Will the prisoner Blood ask the witness any questions?”

  “None, my lord. He has correctly related what occurred.”

  “I am glad to have your admission of that without any of the prevarications that are usual in your kind. And I will say this, that here prevarication would avail you little. For we always have the truth in the end. Be sure of that.”

  Baynes and Pitt similarly admitted the accuracy of the Captain’s evidence, whereupon the scarlet figure of the Lord Chief Justice heaved a sigh of relief.

  “This being so, let us get on, in God’s name; for we have much to do.” There was now no trace of gentleness in his voice. It was brisk and rasping, and the lips through which it passed were curved in scorn. “I take it, Mr. Pollexfen, that the wicked treason of these three rogues being established—indeed, admitted by them—there is no more to be said.”

  Peter Blood’s voice rang out crisply, on a note that almost seemed to contain laughter.

  “May it please your lordship, but there’s a deal more to be said.”

  His lordship looked at him, first in blank amazement at his audacity, then gradually with an expression of dull anger. The scarlet lips fell into unpleasant, cruel lines that transfigured the whole countenance.

  “How now, rogue? Would you waste our time with idle subterfuge?”

  “I would have your lordship and the gentlemen of the jury hear me on my defense, as your lordship promised that I should be heard.”

  “Why, so you shall, villain; so you shall.” His lordship’s voice was harsh as a file. He writhed as he spoke, and for an instant his features were distorted. A delicate dead-white hand, on which the veins showed blue, brought forth a handkerchief with which he dabbed his lips and then his brow. Observing him with his physician’s eye, Peter Blood judged him a prey to the pain of the disease that was destroying him. “So you shall. But after the admission made, what defense remains?”

  “You shall judge, my lord.”

  “That is the purpose for which I sit here.”

  “And so shall you, gentlemen.” Blood looked from judge to jury. The latter shifted uncomfortably under the confident flash of his blue eyes. Lord Jeffrey’s bullying charge had whipped the spirit out of them. Had they, themselves, been prisoners accused of treason, he could not have arraigned them more ferociously.

  Peter Blood stood boldly forward, erect, self-possessed, and saturnine. He was freshly shaven, and his periwig, if out of curl, was at least carefully combed and dressed.

  “Captain Hobart has testified to what he knows—that he found me at Oglethorpe’s Farm on the Monday morning after the battle at Weston. But he has not told you what I did there.”

  Again the Judge broke in. “Why, what should you have been doing there in the company of rebels, two of whom—Lord Gildoy and your fellow there—have already admitted their guilt?”

  “That is what I beg leave to tell your lordship.”

  “I pray you do, and in God’s name be brief, man. For if I am to be troubled with the say of all you traitor dogs, I may sit here until the Spring Assizes.”

  “I was there, my lord, in my quality as a physican, to dress Lord Gildoy’s wounds.”

  “What’s this? Do you tell us that you are a physician?”

  “A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin.”

  “Good God!” cried Lord Jeffreys, his voice suddenly swelling, his eyes upon the jury. “What an impudent rogue is this! You heard the witness say that he had known him in Tangiers some years ago, and that he was then an officer in the French service. You heard the prisoner admit that the witness had spoken the truth?”

  “Why, so he had. Yet what I am telling you is also true, so it is. For some years I was a soldier; but before that I was a physician, and I have been one again since January last, established in Bridgewater, as I can bring a hundred witnesses to prove.”

  “There’s not the need to waste our time with that. I will convict you out of your own rascally mouth. I will ask you only this: How came you, who represent yourself as a physician peacefully following your calling in the town of Bridgewater, to be with the army of the Duke of Monmouth?”

  “I was never with that army. No witness has sworn to that, and I dare swear that no witness will. I never was attracted to the late rebellion. I regarded the adventure as a wicked madness. I take leave to ask your lordship” (his brogue became more marked than ever) “what should I, who was born and bred a papist, be doing in the army of the Protestant Champion?”

  “A papist thou?” The judge gloomed on him a moment. “Art more like a sniveling, canting Jack Presbyter. I tell you, man, I can smell a Presbyterian forty miles.”

  “Then I’ll take leave to marvel that with so keen a nose your lordship can’t smell a papist at four paces.”

  There was a ripple of laughter in the galleries, instantly quelled by the fierce glare of the Judge and the voice of the crier.

  Lord Jeffreys leaned farther forward upon his desk. He raised that delicate white hand, still clutching its handkerchief, and sprouting from a froth of lace.

  “We’ll leave your religion out of account for the moment, friend,” said he. “But mark what I say to you.” With a minatory forefinger he beat the time of his words. “Know, friend, that there is no religion a man can pretend to can give a countenance to lying. Thou hast
a precious immortal soul, and there is nothing in the world equal to it in value. Consider that the great God of Heaven and Earth, before Whose tribunal thou and we and all persons are to stand at the last day, will take vengeance on thee for every falsehood, and justly strike thee into eternal flames, make them drop into the bottomless pit of fire and brimstone, if thou offer to deviate the least from the truth and nothing but the truth. For I tell thee God is not mocked. On that I charge you to answer truthfully. How came you to be taken with these rebels?”

  Peter Blood gaped at him a moment in consternation. The man was incredible, unreal, fantastic, a nightmare judge. Then he collected himself to answer.

  “I was summoned that morning to succor Lord Gildoy, and I conceived it to be the duty imposed upon me by my calling to answer that summons.”

  “Did you so?” The Judge, terrible now of aspect—his face white, his twisted lips red as the blood for which they thirsted—glared upon him in evil mockery. Then he controlled himself as if by an effort. He sighed. He resumed his earlier gentle plaintiveness. “Lord! How you waste our time. But I’ll have patience with you. Who summoned you?”

  “Master Pitt there, as he will testify.”

  “Oh! Master Pitt will testify—he that is himself a traitor self-confessed. Is that your witness?’

  “There is also Master Baynes here, who can answer to it.”

  “Good Master Baynes will have to answer for himself; and I doubt not he’ll be greatly exercised to save his own neck from a halter. Come, come, sir; are these your only witnesses?”

  “I could bring others from Bridgewater, who saw me set out that morning upon the crupper of Master Pitt’s horse.”

  His lordship smiled. “It will not be necessary. For, mark me, I do not intend to waste more time on you. Answer me only this: When Master Pitt, as you pretend, came to summon you, did you know that he had been, as you have heard him confess, of Monmouth’s following?”

  “I did, my lord.”

  “You did! Ha!” His lordship looked at the cringing jury and uttered a short, stabbing laugh. “Yet in spite of that you went with him?”

  “To succor a wounded man, as was my sacred duty.”

  “Thy sacred duty, sayest thou?” Fury blazed out of him again. “Good God! What a generation of vipers do we live in! Thy sacred duty, rogue, is to thy King and to God. But let it pass. Did he tell you whom it was that you were desired to succor?”

  “Lord Gildoy—yes,”

  “And you knew that Lord Gildoy had been wounded in the battle, and on what side he fought?”

  “I knew.”

  “And yet, being, as you would have us believe, a true and loyal subject of our Lord the King, you went to succor him?”

  Peter Blood lost patience for a moment. “My business, my lord, was with his wounds, not with his politics.”

  A murmur from the galleries and even from the jury approved him. It served only to drive his terrible judge into a deeper fury.

  “Jesus God! Was there ever such an impudent villain in the world as thou?” He swung, white-faced, to the jury. “I hope, gentlemen of the jury, you take notice of the horrible carriage of this traitor rogue, and withal you cannot but observe the spirit of this sort of people, what a villainous and devilish one it is. Out of his own mouth he has said enough to hang him a dozen times. Yet is there more. Answer me this, sir: When you cozened Captain Hobart with your lies concerning the station of this other traitor Pitt, what was your business then?”

  “To save him from being hanged without trial, as was threatened.”

  “What concern was it of yours whether or how the wretch was hanged?”

  “Justice is the concern of every loyal subject, for an injustice commited by one who holds the King’s commission is in some sense a dishonor to the King’s majesty.”

  It was a shrewd, sharp thrust aimed at the jury, and it reveals, I think, the alertness of the man’s mind, his self-possession ever steadiest in moments of dire peril. With any other jury it must have made the impression that he hoped to make. It may even have made its impression upon these poor pusillanimous sheep. But the dread judge was there to efface it.

  He gasped aloud, then flung himself violently forward.

  “Lord of Heaven!” he stormed. “Was there ever such a canting, impudent rascal? But I have done with you. I see thee, villain, I see thee already with a halter round thy neck.”

  Having spoken so, gloatingly, evilly, he sank back again, and composed himself. It was as if a curtain fell. All emotion passed again from his pale face. Back to invest it again came that gentle melancholy. Speaking after a moment’s pause, his voice was soft, almost tender, yet every word of it carried sharply through that hushed court.

  “If I know my own heart it is not in my nature to desire the hurt of anybody, much less to delight in his eternal perdition. It is out of compassion for you that I have used all these words—because I would have you have some regard for your immortal soul, and not ensure its damnation by obdurately persisting in falsehood and prevarication. But I see that all the pains in the world, and all compassion and charity are lost upon you, and therefore I will say no more to you.” He turned again to the jury that countenance of wistful beauty. “Gentlemen, I must tell you for law, of which we are the judges, and not you, that if any person be in actual rebellion against the King, and another person—who really and actually was not in rebellion—does knowingly receive, harbor, comfort, or succor him, such a person is as much a traitor as he who indeed bore arms. We are bound by our oaths and consciences to declare to you what is law; and you are bound by your oaths and your consciences to deliver and to declare to us by your verdict the truth of the facts.”

  Upon that he proceeded to his summing-up, showing how Baynes and Blood were both guilty of treason, the first for having harbored a traitor, the second for having succored that traitor by dressing his wounds. He interlarded his address by sycophantic allusions to his natural lord and lawful sovereign, the King, whom God had set over them, and with vituperations of Nonconformity and of Monmouth, of whom—in his own words—he dared boldly affirm that the meanest subject within the kingdom that was of legitimate birth had a better title to the crown.

  “Jesus God! That ever we should have such a generation of vipers among us,” he burst out in rhetorical frenzy. And then he sank back as if exhausted by the violence he had used. A moment he was still, dabbing his lips again; then he moved uneasily; once more his features were twisted by pain, and in a few snarling, almost incoherent words he dismissed the jury to consider the verdict.

  Peter Blood had listened to the intemperate, the blasphemous, and almost obscene invective of that tirade with a detachment that afterwards, in retrospect, surprised him. He was so amazed by the man, by the reactions taking place in him between mind and body, and by his methods of bullying and coercing the jury into bloodshed, that he almost forgot that his own life was at stake.

  The absence of that dazed jury was a brief one. The verdict found the three prisoners guilty. Peter Blood looked round the scarlet-hung court. For an instant that foam of white faces seemed to heave before him. Then he was himself again, and a voice was asking him what he had to say for himself, why sentence of death should not be passed upon him, being convicted of high treason.

  He laughed, and his laughed jarred uncannily upon the deathly stillness of the court. It was all so grotesque, such a mockery of justice administered by that wistful-eyed jack-pudding in scarlet, who was himself a mockery—the venal instrument of a brutally spiteful and vindictive king. His laughter shocked the austerity of that same jack-pudding.

  “Do you laugh, sirrah, with the rope about your neck, upon the very threshold of that eternity you are so suddenly to enter into?”

  And then Blood took his revenge.

  “Faith, it’s in better case I am for mirth than your lordship. For I have this to say before you deliver judgment. Your lordship sees me—an innocent man whose only offense is that I practiced charity
—with a halter round my neck. Your lordship, being the justiciar, speaks with knowledge of what is to come to me. I, being a physician, may speak with knowledge of what is to come to your lordship. And I tell you that I would not now change places with you—that I would not exchange this halter that you fling about my neck for the stone that you carry in your body. The death to which you may doom me is a light pleasantry by contrast with the death to which your lordship has been doomed by that Great Judge with whose name your lordship makes so free.”

  The Lord Chief Justice sat stiffly upright, his face ashen, his lips twitching, and whilst you might have counted ten there was no sound in that paralyzed court after Peter Blood had finished speaking. All those who knew Lord Jeffreys regarded this as the lull before the storm, and braced themselves for the explosion. But none came. Slowly, faintly, the color crept back into that ashen face. The scarlet figure lost its rigidity, and bent forward. His lordship began to speak. In a muted voice and briefly—much more briefly than his wont on such occasions and in a manner entirely mechanical, the manner of a man whose thoughts are elsewhere while his lips are speaking—he delivered sentence of death in the prescribed form, and without the least allusion to what Peter Blood had said. Having delivered it, he sank back exhausted, his eyes half-closed, his brow agleam with sweat.

  The prisoners filed out.