Prisoners of Hope: A Tale of Colonial Virginia Page 11

  CHAPTER XI

  LANDLESS BECOMES A CONSPIRATOR

  As Landless entered the hut Godwyn looked up with a pleased smile fromthe net he was mending. The two men had not seen each other since thenight upon which Landless had been brought to the hut by theMuggletonian. Twice had Landless laid his plans for a second visit, onlyto be circumvented each time by the watchfulness of the overseer.

  The smile died from Godwyn's face as he observed his visitor moreclosely.

  "What is it?" he asked quickly.

  Landless came up to him and held out his hand. "I am with you, RobertGodwyn, heart and soul," he said steadily.

  The mender of nets grasped the hand. "I knew you would come," he said,drawing a long breath. "I have needed you sorely, lad."

  "I could not come before."

  "I know: Porringer told me you were prevented. I--" He still heldLandless' hand in both his own, and as he spoke his slender fingersencircled the young man's wrist.

  "What is the matter with your pulse?" he demanded. "And your eyes! Theyare glazing! Sit down!"

  "It is nothing," said Landless, speaking with effort.

  "I have been a physician, young man," retorted the other. "Sit down, oryou will fall."

  He forced him down upon a settle from which he had himself risen, andstood looking at him, his hand upon his shoulder. Presently his glancefell to the shoulder, and he saw upon the white cloth where his handpressed it against the flesh, a faint red stain grow and spread.

  The face of the mender of nets grew very dark. "So!" he said beneath hisbreath.

  He limped across the hut and drew from some secret receptacle above thefireplace a flask, from which he poured a crimson liquid into an earthencup; then hobbled back to Landless, sitting with closed eyes and headbowed upon the table.

  "Drink, lad," he said with grave tenderness. "'Tis a cordial of mine owninvention, and in the strength it gave me I fled from Cropredy Bridgethough woefully hacked and spent. Drink!"

  He held the cup to the young man's lips. Landless drained it and feltthe blood gush back to his heart and the ringing in his ears to cease.Presently he raised his head. "Thank you," he said. "I am a man again."

  "How is it that you are here?"

  Landless smiled grimly. "I imagine it's because Woodson thinks meeffectually laid by the heels. When he goes the rounds at supper time hewill be surprised to find my pallet empty."

  "You must be in quarters before then. You must not get into furthertrouble."

  "Very well," was the indifferent reply.

  They were silent for a few moments, and then Landless spoke.

  "I am come to tell you, Master Godwyn, that I will join in any plan,however desperate, that may bring me release from an intolerable anddegrading slavery. You may use me as you please. I will work for youwith hands and head, ay, and with my heart also, for you have been kindto me, and I am grateful."

  The mender of nets touched him softly upon the hand. "Lad," he said, "Ionce had a son who was my pride and my hope. In his young manhood hefell at the storming of Tredah. But the other night when I talked withyou, I seemed to see him again, and my heart yearned over him."

  Landless held out his hand. "I have no father," he said simply.

  "Now," at length said Godwyn, "to business! I must not keep you now, butcome to me to-morrow night if you can manage it. You may speak toWin-Grace Porringer, and he will help you. I will then tell you all myarrangements, give you figures and names, possess you, in short, withall that I, and I alone, know of this matter. And my heart is gladwithin me, for though my broken body is tied to my bench here, I shallnow have a lieutenant indeed. I have conceived; you shall execute. Theson of Warham Landless, if he have a tithe of his father's powers, willdo much, very much. For more than a year I have longed for such an one."

  "Tell me but one thing," said Landless, "and I am content. You have soplanned this business that there shall be no wanton bloodshed? Youintend no harm, for instance, to the family yonder?" with a motion ofhis head towards the great house.

  "God forbid!" said the other quickly. "I tell you that not one woman orinnocent soul shall suffer. Nor do I wish harm to the master of thisplantation, who is, after the lights of a Malignant, a true and kindlyman, and a gentleman. This is what will happen. Upon an appointed daythe servants, Oliverian, indented and convict, upon all the plantationsseated upon the bay, the creeks, the three rivers, and over in Accomac,will rise. They will overpower their overseers and those of theirfellows who may remain faithful to the masters, will call upon theslaves to follow them, and will march (the force of each plantationunder a captain or captains appointed by me), to an appointed place inthis county. All going well, there should be mustered at that placewithin the space of a day and a night a force of some two thousandmen--such an army as this colony hath never seen, an army composed inlarge measure of honest folk, and officered by four hundred men who,bold and experienced, and strong in righteous wrath, should inthemselves be sufficient to utterly deject the adversary. We will makeof that force, motley as it is, a second New Model, as well disciplinedand as irresistible as the first; and who should be its general but theson of that Warham Landless whom Cromwell loved, and whose old regimentis well represented here? Then will we fight in honest daylight withthose who come against us--and conquer. And we will not stain ourvictory. Your nightmare vision of midnight butchery is naught. Therewill be no such thing."

  Through the quiet of the evening came to them the clear, sweet, anddistant winding of a horn.

  "'Tis the call to quarters," said Godwyn. "You must go, lad."

  Landless rose. "I will come to-morrow night if I can. Till then,farewell,--father." He ended with a smile on his dark, stern face thatturned it into a boy's again.

  "May the Lord bless thee, my son," said the other in his gravely tendervoice. "May he cause His face to shine upon thee, and bring thee out ofall thy troubles."

  As Landless turned to leave the hut the mender of nets had a suddenthought. "Come hither," he said, "and let me show you my treasure house.Should aught happen to me, it were well that you should know of it."

  He took up the precious flask from the table, and followed by Landless,limped across the hut to the fireplace. The logs above it appeared assolid, gnarled and stained by time as any of the others constituting thewalls of the hut, but upon the pressure of Godwyn's finger upon somesecret spring, a section of the wood fell outwards like the lid of abox, disclosing a hollow within.

  From this hollow came the dull gleam of gold, and by the side of thelittle heap of coin lay several folded papers and a pair of handsomelymounted pistols.

  Godwyn touched the papers. "The names or the signs of the Oliverians arehere," he said, "together with those of the leaders of the indentedservants concerned with us. It is our solemn League and Covenant--andour death warrant if discovered. The gold I had with me, hidden upon myperson, when I was brought to Virginia. The pistols were the gift of afriend. Both may be useful some day."

  "Hide them! Quick!" said Landless in a low voice, and wheeled to face aman who stood in the doorway, blinking into the semi-darkness of theroom.

  The lid of the hollow swung to with a click, the log assumed its wontedappearance, and the mender of nets, too, turned upon the intruder.

  It was the convict Roach who had pushed the door open and now stood withhis swollen body and bestial face darkening the glory of the sunsetwithout. There was no added expression of greed or of awakened curiosityupon his sullenly ferocious countenance. He might have seen or he mightnot. They could not tell.

  "What do you want?" asked Landless sternly.

  "Thought as you might not have heard the horn, comrade, and so might getinto more trouble. So I thought I'd come over and warn you." All this ina low, hoarse and dogged voice.

  "Don't call me comrade. Yes: I heard the horn. You had best hasten oryou may get into trouble yourself."

  The man received this intimation with a malevolent grin. "Talking bigeases the smart, don't it?" and
he broke into his yelling laugh.

  "Get out of this," said Landless, a dangerous light in his eyes.

  The man stopped laughing and began to curse. But he went his way, andLandless, too, after waiting to give him a start, left the hut andturned his steps towards the quarters.

  Upon the other side of the creek, sitting beneath a big sweet gum, andwhittling away at a piece of stick weed, he found the boy who, the daybefore, had accused him of feeling as fine as the Lord Mayor of London.He sprang to his feet as Landless approached, and cheerfully remarkingthat their paths were the same, strode on side by side with him.

  "I say," he said presently with ingenuous frankness, "I asks your pardonfor what I said to you yesterday. I dessay you make a very goodSec'tary, and Losh! the Lord Mayor himself mightn't have dared to strikethat d--d fine Court spark. They say he has fought twenty duels."

  "You have my full forgiveness," said Landless, smiling.

  "That's right!" cried the other, relieved. "I hates for a man to bearmalice."

  "I have seen you before yesterday. I forget how they call you."

  "Dick Whittington."

  "Dick Whittington!"

  "Ay. Leastways the parish over yonder," a jerk of his thumb towardsEngland, "called me Dick, and I names myself Whittington. And why?Because like that other Dick I runs away to make my fortune. Becauselike him I've little besides empty pockets and a hopeful heart. Andbecause I means to go back some fine day, jingling money, and wearinggold lace, and become the mayor of Banbury. Or maybe I'll stop inVirginia, and become a trader and Burgess. I could send for JoyceWhitbread, and marry her here as well as in Banbury."

  Landless laughed. "So you ran away?"

  "Yes; some four years ago, just after I came to man's estate." (He wasabout nineteen.) "Stowed myself away on board the Mary Hart at Plymouth.Made the Virginny voyage for my health, and on landing was sold by thecaptain for my passage money. Time's out in three years, but I may beginto make my fortune before then, for--" He stopped speaking to giveLandless a sidelong glance from out his blue eyes, and then went on.

  "A voice speaks through the land, from the Potomac to the James, andfrom the falls of the Far West to the great bay. What says the voice?"

  Landless answered, "The voice saith, 'Comfort ye, my people, for thehour of deliverance is at hand.'"

  "It's all right!" cried the boy gleefully. "I thought you was one of us.We are all in the fun together!"

  "We are in for a desperate enterprise that may hang every man of us,"said Landless sternly. "I do not see the 'fun,' and I think you talksomething loudly for a conspirator."

  The boy was nothing abashed. "There's none to hear us," he said. "I canbe as mum as t' other Dick's cat when there are ears around. As for fun,Losh! what better fun than fighting!"

  "You seem to have a pretty good time as it is."

  "Lord, yes! Life's jolly enough, but you see there's mighty littlevariety in it."

  "I have found variety enough," said Landless.

  "Oh, you've been here only a few weeks. Wait until you've spent years,and have gone through your experience of to-day half a dozen times, andyou will find it tame enough."

  "I shall not wait to see."

  "Then a man gets tired of working for another man, and hankers for thetime when he can set up for himself, especially if there's a pretty girlwaiting for him." A tremendous sigh. "And then there's the fun of therising. Losh! a man must break loose now and then!"

  "For all of which good reasons you have become a conspirator?"

  "Ay, it doesn't pay to run away. You are hunted to death in the firstplace, and well nigh whipped to death if you are caught, as you alwaysare. And then they double your time. This promises better."

  "If it succeeds."

  "Oh, it will succeed! Why shouldn't it with old Godwyn, who is morecunning than a red fox or a Nansemond medicine-man, at its head?Besides, if it fails, hanging is the worst that can happen, and we willhave had the fun of the rising."

  "You are a philosopher."

  "What's that?"

  "A wise man. Tell me: If this plot remains undiscovered, and the risingactually takes place, there will be upon each plantation before we canget away an interval of confusion and perhaps violence. 'Tis then thatthe greatest danger will threaten the planters and their families. Youyourself have no ill feeling towards your master or his family? Youwould do them no unprovoked mischief?"

  The boy opened his big blue eyes, and shook his head in a vehementnegative.

  "Lord bless your soul, no!" he cried. "I wouldn't hurt a hair ofMistress Patricia's pretty head, nor of Mistress Lettice's wig, neither.As for the master, if he lets us go peaceably, we'll go with threecheers for him! Bless you! they're safe enough!"

  The sanguine youth next announced that he smelt bacon frying, and thathis stomach cried "Trencher!" and started off in a lope for thequarters, now only a few yards distant. Landless followed more sedately,and reached his cabin without being observed by the overseer.