Роберт Чамберс - Cardigan

On, on they came, horses at a heavy gallop, chaise swinging and lurching, right into the cross–roads. Then a blinding flash and crash split the gloom, echoed by another, and then a third. I leaped from my cover into a frantic mass of struggling horses which Renard was dragging violently into the road–ditch, while Mount, swinging his rifle, knocked down a man who fired at him and beat him till he lay still.

A shadowy form leaped from the seat in front and ran across my path, doubling and disappearing into the darkness; another slid from his horse, sinking to the ground without a sound, though the crazed animal kicked and trampled him into the mud.

As I sprang to the chaise, I saw the driver lurch towards me, and I aimed a blow at him with my rifle, but he pitched off heavily, landing in a heap at my feet, face downward in the grass. Now the horses swung in front of me, plunging furiously in the smashed harness; crash! went a wheel; the chaise sank forward; a horse fell.

"Look out! Look out!" shouted Mount, behind me, as I ran to the swaying vehicle.

"Silver Heels!" I cried, tearing at the door of the chaise.

For a second I saw her terrified face at the window; her cry rang in my ears; then the door burst open and Wraxall sprang out, burying his knife in my neck.

Down we went together, down, down into a smothering darkness that had no end, yet I remember, after a long, long time, looking up at the stars—or perhaps into her eyes.

Then my body seemed to sink again, silently as a feather, and my soul dropped out, falling like a lost star into an endless night.

I knew afterwards—long, long afterwards—that I had been stabbed repeatedly; how many times is now of little consequence, although I have sometimes counted the white cicatrices on my body, tracing each with wonder that I had not long ago done with this life.

For that matter, I was regarded as already ended when they tore my assailant from my body and shattered him to death with their hatchets and knives, pistoling him again and again while he still quivered in the long grass.

As for me, I appeared to be quite dead, and whether to bury me there or in some kinder spot, none could determine, while the dear maid I loved lay senseless in Black Betty's arms.

As it was afterwards told to me in the saddest days of my life, so I tell what now befell the rescued, the rescuers, and that scarcely palpitating body o' mine, the soul of which floated on the dark borderland of Death. For it came to happen that dawn, lurking behind the eastern hills, set dull signals of fire on every western peak, warning Mount and Renard that day was on their trail to bare it for all who chose to follow.

My senseless sweetheart they bore to the waiting chaise, and, my body still retaining some warmth, they bore that, too, because they dared not bury me before she had seen me dead with her own eyes.

All that day they rode west by north, climbing the vast divide, halting to lie perdu when their keen ears heard movements all unseen, pushing on to tear the path free while their axes rang out among the windfalls. Then, when the western sun sank beyond the Ohio into the sea of trees, the winds of the east filled their nostrils and the long divide had been passed at last.

That night my dear love opened her eyes, and the darkness that enchained her fell, so that she crept to my feet as I lay in a corner of the chaise and laid her head on my knees.

Whether she thought me alive or dead none knew. Betty had bared my body to the waist and washed it. For a corpse they do as much. Later, without hope, Mount brought a pannikinful of blue–balsam gum, pricked from the globules on the trunk, and when Betty had once more washed me, they filled the long gashes with the balsam and closed them decently, strip on strip, with the fine cambric shift which my sweetheart tore from her own body.

Later, when the moon was coming up, they carried me lying in a blanket, my sweetheart walking beside me, and her silken shoon in tatters till her feet bled at every step, but refused to go back to the chaise. That night they thought me surely dead and watched without sleep lest the rigidity of dissolution surprise me ere my limbs had been laid straight. But the morning found me as I was, and the first shadow of night revealed no change, nor was I dead on the next morning, nor on the next, nor yet the next.

A still Sabbath in the forest, passed amid the sad twilight of the trees, gave them hope; for I had opened my eyes, though I saw nothing. But that night Death sat at my right hand, and the next night Death cradled my head; and my dear love lay at my feet and looked Death steadily in the eyes.

The fever which loosened every muscle burned fiercely all night long, and my voice broke out from my body like a demon mocking within me. A few of the Lenape, roaming near, followed and shot at us towards dawn, driving us north into the forest, where the chaise was abandoned, the traces cut, and the horses loaded with corn.

North and south the runways of the Long House pierced the wilderness, and these were the trails they followed, the men on foot, bearing me on their litter of blankets and balsam–boughs, the women crouching on the sack–laden horses.

As for me, I lived on through cold and heat, storm and stress, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, dumb, save when the demon hidden in my body mocked and laughed between my blackened lips. That demon was always watching things which I could not see, peeping out through my eyes into hell. Hours came when there was no water, and the demon knew it and mouthed and cursed between my shrinking lips. Then he would turn on me and tear at my throat and gnaw me and thrust his claws into my brain. Sometimes I heard his low laughter, for though I could neither see nor hear aught in the world, I could hear the demon sometimes, and feel him in my body, setting fire to the blood till it boiled like the water he craved.

At night he often stole my body and carried it where the darkness burnt and charred. There he would take out my bones, one by one, and break them for the marrow to dry hard.

These things no one has told me. I remember them in sleep sometimes, sometimes waking.

What I have heard from others is vague, and to me unreal as a painted scene in a picture where a film has settled under cobwebs. I hear that I breathed through days which I never saw, that I opened my eyes on lands which are strange to me, that my babble broke primeval silences which God himself had sealed. Nay, not I, but the demon mocked through those voiceless voids and lost ravines, through the still twilight of the noonday forest, through midnight summits muffled in the clouds. But only I know that, or dream it sometimes when I ponder on my end and on that fair salvation which my father finds lately in Christ.

Now, my dark soul, to hidden realms addressed, returned to me one night, and, listening, heard the demon scratching at my bones. Then, weary and perplexed, inside my body crept my soul and drew the lids of both eyes down, so that we might sleep together before the busy demon knew.

Yet I, having my soul again, opened my eyes to find a star was watching me; then, content, lay closer to my soul and slept. And thus the demon found us, and so fled back to the sleepless hell from whence he came.

Sleeping, I smelled lavender in the forest, and I thought the wood had windows where a sweet wind blew. Truly, there was a window somewhere near me, for I found my eyes had opened and could see it where the curtains swayed in the sun.

Hours later I looked again; the window was still there, and the moon beyond, low among pines whose shapes I knew.

Hours came and faded into sunshine; days brought bright spots on the curtains; night brought the moon and the tall pines. Sweet–fern, too, I smelled sometimes, and I heard a soothing monotone of familiar sound below me.