Роберт Чамберс - Cardigan

There was no reply.

Then at last I understood that this gray shape brooding there at my bedside was a guard of the death–watch, pledged never to leave me, never to take his eyes from me for an instant until the warden of the prison delivered me into the hands of the sheriff on the morrow for my execution.

Ding–dong! Ding–dong! The prison bell was at last striking the seventh hour. I lay still in my blanket, counting the strokes which rang out in thin, peevish monotony, like the cracked voice of a beldame repeating her petty woes.

At the last jangle, and while the corridor still hummed with the thin reverberations, I rose and began to pace my narrow cell, head bent on my breast, but keeping my eyes steadily on the grating.

The guard of the death–watch observed me sullenly. I drank from my pot of water, bathed my feverish face, and walked to the grating.

The lanthorn above Bishop's doorway burned brightly; the corridor was quiet. No sound came from Mount's cell. I could hear rain drumming on a roof somewhere, that was all.

Bishop was due at seven o'clock to inspect our bolts and bars; he had always arrived punctually. I watched his door. Presently it occurred to me that I had not seen Bishop since six o'clock when he had gone into his room, cursing the ale which his daughter had fetched him. This was unusual; he had never before failed to sit there on his threshold after supper, smoking his long clay pipe, and blinking contentedly at our steel bolts.

Minute after minute passed; behind me I heard my guard beating a slight tattoo with his heavy boots on the stones.

Suddenly, as I stood at my grating, I saw Dulcima Bishop step from the warden's door, close it behind her, and noiselessly lock it on the outside. The light of the lanthorn fell full on her face; it was ghastly. The girl stood a moment, swaying, one hand on the door; then she made a signal towards Mount's cell; and the next instant I saw Jack Mount bound noiselessly into the corridor. He caught sight of me, held up a reddened, dripping knife, pointed to my cell door, and displayed a key.

Instantly I turned around and sauntered away from the grating towards my tumbled bed. As I passed the death–watch, he rose and walked over to the outer window where my pot of water stood to cool.

Eying me cautiously he lifted the jug and drank, then set the pot back and silently resumed his seat, laying his pistol across his knees.

How was I to get at him? If Mount made the slightest noise in the corridor, the guard was certain to go to the grating.

Pretending to be occupied in smoothing out my tumbled bedding, I strove to move so that I might get partly behind him, but the fellow's suspicions seemed to be aroused, for he turned his head as I moved, and watched me steadily.

To spring on him meant to draw his fire, and a shot would be our undoing. But whatever I did must be done now; I understood that.

As I hesitated there, holding the blanket in my hands as though I meant to fling it on the bed again, the lamp in the corridor suddenly went out, plunging my cell in darkness.

The guard sprang to his feet; I fairly flung my body at him, landing on him in a single bound, and hurling him to the stone floor.

Instantly the light of the lanthorn flooded my cell again; I heard my iron door opening; I crouched in fury on the struggling man under me, whose head and arms I held crushed under the thick blanket. Then came a long, silent struggle, but at last I tore the heavy pistol from his clutch, beat him on the head with the steel butt of it until, through the blanket over his face, red, wet stains spread, and his straining chest and limbs relaxed.

Pistol in hand, I rose from the lifeless heap on the floor, and turned to find my cell door swinging wide, and Dulcima Bishop watching me, with dilated eyes.

"Is he dead?" she asked, and broke out in an odd laugh which stretched her lips tight over her teeth. "Best end him now if he still lives," she added, with a sob; "death is afoot this night, and I have done my part, God wot!"

I struck the man again—it sickened me to do it. He did not quiver.

She lifted the lanthorn from the floor and motioned me to follow. At the end of the corridor Mount stood, wiping his reeking knife on the soft soles of his moccasins.

"The trail's clear," he whispered, gayly; "now, lass, where is the scullions' stairway? Blow out that light, Cardigan! Quiet, now—quiet as a fox in the barn! Give me your hand, lass—and t'other to the lad."

The girl caught me by the arm and blew out the light, then she drew me into what seemed to be an impenetrable wall of darkness. Groping forward, I almost fell down a steep flight of stone steps which appeared to lead into the bowels of the earth. Down, down, then through a passage, Mount leading, the girl fairly dragging me off my feet in her excitement, and presently a wooden door creaked open, and a deluge of icy water dashed over me.

It was rain; I was standing outside the prison, ankle–deep in mud, the free wind blowing, the sleet driving full in my eyes.

"Oh, this is good, this is good!" muttered Mount, in ecstasy, spreading out his arms as though to take the world to his sick heart once more. "Smell the air, lad! Do you smell it? God! How sweet is this wind in my throat!"

The girl shivered; her damp, dishevelled hair blew in her face. She laid one shaking hand on Mount's wet sleeve, then the other, and bowed her head on them, sobbing convulsively.

Mount bent and kissed her.

"I swear I will use you kindly, child," he said, soberly. "Come, lass, gay! gay! What care we for a brace o' dead turnkeys? Lord, how the world will laugh at Billy Bishop when they hear I stole his girl, along with the prison keys! Laugh with me, lass! I mean honestly and kindly by you; I'm fit for a rope at the gibbet's top if I use you ill!"

"Would—would you truly wed me?" she stammered, raising her white face to his.

He swore roundly that he would wed her and end his days in serving her on his marrow–bones for gratitude.

And, as he made his vow, a startling change passed over her face; she laughed, turned her bright, feverish eyes on us with a reckless toss of her head, and drew the poison–flask from her bosom.

"You think," she said, "that we no longer need this little friend to sorrow? You are wrong!"

And, ere Mount or I could move, she raised the tiny flask betwixt forefinger and thumb, and dropped the dark scarlet contents between her teeth.

"I drink to your freedom, Jack," she said, blindly, reeling into Mount's arms. "Your—freedom—Jack," she gasped, smiling; "my father drank to it—in ale. He lies dead on the floor of it. All this—for—for your freedom, Jack!"

Mount was kneeling in the mud; she lay in his arms, the sleet pattering on her upturned face.

"For your freedom," she murmured, drowsily—"a maid must burn in hell for that. I burn, I burn! Oh, the fire in me, Jack!"

Her body writhed and twisted; her great bright eyes never left his. Presently she lay still. A moment later the prison bell broke out wildly through the storm, and a gunshot rang from the north guard–house.

We placed the dead child under a tree in the new grass, and covered her face with willow branches, all silky with the young buds of April. Then, bending almost double, we ran south along the prison wall, turning west as the wall turned, and presently came to the wooden fence of King's Chapel.

Mount gained the top of the fence from my shoulders, and drew me up. Then we dropped.

There were lights moving in Governor's Alley and the mews; through the sleet great snow–flakes whirled into the slush of the filthy street. The prison bell rang frantically behind us.

"It's the alarm, Jack!" I whispered.

He gave me a dull look, then shivered in his wet buckskins.