Prisoners of Hope: A Tale of Colonial Virginia Page 5

  CHAPTER V

  IN THE THREE-MILE FIELD

  In a far corner of the Three-mile Field Landless bent over tobacco plantafter tobacco plant, patiently removing the little green shoots or"suckers" from the parent stem.

  His back and limbs ached from the unaccustomed stooping, the fiercesunshine beat upon his head, the blood pounded behind his temples, histongue clave to the roof of his mouth,--and the noontide rest was stilltwo hours away. As, with a gasp of weariness, he straightened himself,the endless plain of green rose and fell to his dazzled eyes in mistybillows. The most robust rustic required several months of seasoningbefore he and the Virginia climate became friends, and this man wasstill weak from privation and confinement in prison and in the noisomehold of the ship.

  He turned his weary eyes from the vivid gold green of the fields to theshadows of the forest. It lay within a few yards of him, just on theother side of a little stream and a rail fence that zigzagged in graylines hung with creepers. At the moment he defined happiness as a plungeinto the cool, perfumed darkness, a luxurious flinging of a tired bodyupon the carpet of pine needles, a shutting out, forever, of thesunshine.

  Suddenly he felt that eyes were upon him, and his glance traveled fromthe fringe of trees to meet that of an Indian seated upon a log in anangle of the fence.

  He was a man of gigantic stature, dressed in coarse canvas breeches, andwith a handkerchief of gaudy dye twisted about his head. His boldfeatures wore the usual Indian expression of saturnine imperturbability,and he half sat, half reclined upon the log as motionless as a piece ofcarven bronze, staring at Landless with large, inscrutable eyes.

  Landless, staring in return, saw something else. The rank growth ofweeds in which the log was sunk moved ever so slightly. There was aflash as of a swiftly drawn rapier, and something long and mottled hungfor an instant upon the shoulder of the Indian, and then dropped intoits lair again.

  With a sudden lithe twist of his body, the savage flung himself upon it,and holding it down with one hand, with the other beat the life out witha heavy stick. The creature was killed by the first stroke, but hecontinued to rain vindictive blows upon it until it was mashed to apulp. Then, with a serenely impassive mien, he resumed his seat upon thelog.

  Landless sprang across the stream, and went up to him.

  "You are bitten! Is there aught I can do?"

  The Indian shook his head. With one hand he pulled the shoulder forward,trying, as Landless saw, to meet the wound with his lips; but findingthat it could not be done, he desisted and sat silent, and to allappearance, unconcerned.

  Landless cried out impatiently, "It will kill you, man! Do you know noremedy?"

  The Indian grunted. "Snake root grow deep in the forest, a long way off.Besides, an Iroquois does not die for a little thing like a pale faceor a dog of an Algonquin."

  "Why did you try to reach the sting with your mouth?"

  "To suck out the evil."

  "Is that a cure?"

  The Indian nodded. Landless knelt down and examined the shoulder. "Now,"he said, "tell me if I set about it in the right way," and applied hislips to the swollen, blue-black spot.

  The Indian gave a grunt of surprise, and his white teeth flashed in asmile; then he sat silent under the ministrations of the white man whosucked at the wound, spitting the venom upon the ground, until the darkskin was drawn and wrinkled like the hand of a washerwoman.

  "Good!" then said the Indian, and pointed to the stream. Landless wentto it, rinsed his mouth, and brought back water in his cap with which helaved the shoulder of his new acquaintance, ending by binding it up withthe handkerchief from the man's head.

  A guttural sound from the Indian made him look up. At the same instantthe whip of the overseer, descending, cut him sharply across theshoulders. He sprang to his feet, the veins in his forehead swollen, hisframe tense with impotent anger. The overseer, having gained hisattention, thrust the whip back into his belt.

  "If you don't want to get what will hurt as bad as a snake bite," hesaid grimly, "you had best tend to your tobacco and let vagrom Indiansalone. That row is to be suckered before dinner-time or your pork andbeans will go begging. As for you," turning to the Indian, "what are youdoing on this plantation? Where's your pass?"

  The Indian took from his waistband a slip of paper which he handed tothe overseer, who looked at it and gave it back with a grudging--"It'sall right this time, but you'd better be careful. It's my opinion thatMajor Carrington lets his servants run about a deal more than's good forthem. Anyhow, you've no business in this field. Clear out!"

  The Indian arose and went his way. But as he passed Landless, suckeringa plant with angry energy, he touched him, as if by accident, with hissinewy hand.

  "Monakatocka never forgives an enemy," came in a sibilant whisper toolow to be heard by the watchful overseer. "Monakatocka never forgets afriend. Some day he will repay."

  The red-brown body slipped away through the tall weeds and clumps ofalder, like the larger edition of the thing that had hung upon itsshoulder. The overseer strode off down the field, sending keen glancesto right and left. He was a conscientious man, and earned every pound ofhis wages.

  Landless, left alone, worked steadily on, for he had no mind to lose hismidday meal, uninviting as he knew it would prove to be. Moreover, hewas one who did with his might what his hand found to do. His body wasweary, and his heart sick within him, but the green shoots fell thickand fast.

  "Yon was a kindly thing you did. Pity 'twas in no better cause than thesaving of a worthless natural."

  The speaker, who was at work on the next row of plants, had caught upwith Landless from behind, and now moved his nimble fingers more slowly,so as to keep pace with the less expert new hand.

  Landless, raising his head, stared at a figure of positively terrifyingaspect. Upon a skeleton body of extraordinary height was set a head bareof any hair. Scalp, forehead and cheeks were of one dull, ivory hue likean eastern carving. Upon the smooth, dead surface of the right cheeksprawled a great red R, branded into the flesh, and through each largeprotruding ear went a ragged hole. For the rest, the lips were of iron,and the small, deep-set eyes were so bright and burning that they gavethe impression that they were red like the great letter. It might havebeen the face of a man of sixty years, though it would have been hard totell wherein lay the semblance of age, so smooth was the skin and sobrilliant the eyes.

  "The Indian needed help. Why should I not have given it him?" saidLandless.

  "Because it is written, 'Cursed are the heathen who inhabit the land.'"

  Landless smiled. "So you would not help an Indian in extremity. What ifit had been a negro?"

  "Cursed are the negroes! 'Ye Ethiopians also, ye shall be slain by thesword.'"

  "A Quaker?"

  "Cursed are the Quakers! 'Silly doves that have no heart.'"

  Landless laughed. "You have cursed pretty well all the oppressed of theland. I suppose you reserve your blessings for the powers that be."

  "The powers that be! May the plagues of Egypt light upon them, and theseven vials rain down their contents upon them! Cursed be they all, fromthe young man, Charles Stuart, to that prelatical, tyrannical, noxiousMalignant, William Berkeley! May their names become a hissing and anabomination! Roaring lions are their princes, ravening wolves are theirjudges, their priests have polluted the sanctuary! May their fleshconsume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes consumeaway in their holes, and their tongues consume away in their mouths, andmay there be mourning among them, even as the mourning of Hadadrimmon inthe valley of Megiddon!"

  "You are a Muggletonian?"

  "Yea, verily am I! a follower of the saintly Ludovick Muggleton, and ofthe saintlier John Reeve, of whom Ludovick is but the mouthpiece, evenas Aaron was of Moses. They are the two witnesses of the Apocalypse.They are the two olive trees and the two candlesticks. To them and totheir followers it is given to curse and to spare not, to prophesyagainst the peoples and kindred and nations and tongues whe
reon is setthe seal of the beast. Wherefore I, Win-Grace Porringer, testify againstthe people of this land; against Prelatists and Papists, Presbyteriansand Independents, Baptists, Quakers and heathen; against princes,governors, and men in high places; against them that call themselvesplanters and trample the vineyard of the Lord; against their sons andtheir daughters who are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth neck andwanton eyes, walking and mincing and making a tinkling with their feet.Cursed be they all! Surely they shall be as Sodom and Gomorrah, even thebreeding of salt-pits and a perpetual desolation!"

  "Your curses seem not to have availed, friend," said Landless. "Cursesare apt to come home to roost. I should judge that yours have returnedto you in the shape of branding-irons."

  The man raised a skeleton hand and stroked the red letter.

  "This," he said coolly, "was given me when I ran away the second time.The first time I was merely whipped. The third time I was shaven andthis shackle put upon my leg." He raised his foot and pointed to an ironring encircling the ankle. "The fourth time I was nailed by the ears tothe pillory, whence come these pretty scars."

  Landless burst into grim laughter. "And after your fifth attempt, whatthen?"

  The man gave him a sidelong look. "I have not made my fifth attempt," hesaid quietly.

  They worked in silence for a few minutes. Then said Master Win-GracePorringer:--

  "I was sent to the plantations, because, in defiance of the Act ofUniformity (cursed be it, and the authors thereof), I attended a meetingof the persecuted and broken remnant of the Lord's people. What was youroffense, friend, for I reckon that you come not here of your free will,being neither a rustic nor a fool?"

  "I came from Newgate," said Landless, after a pause. "I am a convict."

  The man's hand stopped in the act of pulling off a shoot. He gave a slowupward look at the figure beside him, let his eyes rest upon the face,and looked slowly down again with a shake of the head.

  "Humph!" he said. "The society in Newgate must be improved since mytime."

  They worked without speaking until they had nearly reached the end ofthe long double row, when said the Muggletonian:--

  "You are too young, I take it, to have seen service in the wars?"

  "I fought at Worcester."

  "Upon which side?"

  "The Commonwealth's."

  "I thought as much. Humph! You were all, Parliament and Presbytery,Puritan and Independent, Hampden and Vane and Oliver, in the gall ofbitterness and the bond of iniquity, very far from the pure light inwhich walk the followers of the blessed Ludovick. At the last the twowitnesses will speak against you also. But in the mean time it wereeasier for the children of light to walk under the rule of the Puritanthan under that of the lascivious house of Jeroboam which now afflictsEngland for her sins. But the Lord hath a controversy with them! An eastwind shall come up, the wind of the Lord shall come up from thewilderness! They shall be moved from their places! They shall lick thedust like serpents, they shall move out of their holes like worms of theearth, and be utterly destroyed! Think you not as I do, friend?" heasked, turning suddenly upon Landless.

  "I think," said Landless, "that you are talking that which, ifoverheard, might give you a deeper scar than any you bear."

  "But who is to hear? the tobacco, the Lord in heaven, and you. Thesenseless plant will keep counsel, the Lord is not like to betray hisservant, and as for you, friend,--" he looked long and searchingly atLandless. "Despite the place you come from, I do not think you one tobring a man into trouble for being bold enough to say what you dare onlythink."

  Landless returned the look. "No," he said quietly. "You need have nofear of me."

  "I fear no one," said the other proudly.

  Presently he craned his long body across the plant between them untilhis lips almost touched the ear of the younger man.

  "Shall you try to escape?" he whispered.

  A smile curled Landless's lip. "Very probably I shall," he said dryly.He looked down the long lines of broad green leaves at the toilingfigures, black and white, dull peasants at best, scoundrels at worst;and beyond to the huddled cabins of the quarter, and to the great house,rising fair and white from orchard and garden; seeing, as in a dream, aman, young in years but old in sorrow, disgraced, outcast, friendless,alone, creeping down a vista of weary years, day after day ofsoul-deadening toil, of association with the mean and the vile, ofshameful submission to whip and finger. Escape! The word had beatenthrough brain and heart so long and so persistently, that at times hefeared lest he should cry it aloud.

  Win-Grace Porringer shook his head.

  "It's not an easy thing to escape from a Virginia plantation. With dogsand with horses they hunt you down, yea, with torches and boats. Theyband themselves together against the fleeing sparrow. They call in theheathen to their aid. And it is a fearful land, for great rivers baryour way, and forests push you back, and deep quagmires clutch you andhold you until the men of blood come up. And when you are taken theycruelly maltreat you, and your term of service is doubled."

  "And yet men have gotten away," said Landless.

  "Yes, but not many. And those that get away are seldom heard of more.The forest swallows them up, and after a while their skulls roll aboutthe hills, playthings for wolves, or the deep waters flow over theirbones, or they lie in a little heap of ashes at the foot of some Indiantorture stake."

  "Why did you try to escape?" asked Landless.

  The man gave him another sidelong look.

  "I tried because I was a fool. I am no longer a fool. I know a betterway."

  "A better way!"

  "Hush!" The man looked over his shoulder and then whispered, "Will yougo with me to-night?"

  "Go with you! Where?"

  "To a man I know--a man who gives good advice."

  "Many can do that, friend."

  "Ay, but not show the way to profit by it as doth this man."

  "Who is he?"

  "A servant even as we are servants,--a learned and godly man, albeit nota follower of the blessed Ludovick. Listen! About the rising of the moonto-night, slip from your cabin and come to the blasted pine on the shoreof the inlet. There will be a boat there and I will be in it. We will goto the cabin of the man of whom I speak. He is a cripple, and knowingthat he cannot run away, the godless and roistering Malignant who callshimself our master hath given him a hut among the marshes, where hemendeth nets. Come! I may not say more than that it will be worth yourwhile."

  "If we are caught--"

  "Our skins pay for us. But the Lord will shut the eyes of the overseersthat they see not, and their ears that they hear not, and we will besafely back before the dawn. You will come?"

  "Yes," said Landless. "I will come."