第50章

I recoiled. "Stand back," I cried, "or you will cull no more simples this side of hell!"

"Hell! " he answered. "There's no such place. I will not tell my secret aloud."

"Nicolo the Italian! Nicolo the Poisoner! Nicolo the Black Death! I am coming for the soul you sold me. There is a hell!"

The thundering voice came from underneath our feet. With a sound that was not a groan and not a screech, the Italian reeled back against the heated iron of the brazier. Starting from that fiery contact with an unearthly shriek, he threw up his arms and dashed away into the darkness. The sound of his madly hurrying footsteps came back to us until the guest house had swallowed him and his guilty terrors.

"Can the preacher play the devil too?" I asked, as Sparrow came up to us from the other side of the fire. "I could have sworn that that voice came from the bowels of the earth. 'T is the strangest gift!"

"A mere trick," he said, with his great laugh, "but it has served me well on more occasions than one. It is not known in Virginia, sir, but before ever the word of the Lord came to me to save poor silly souls I was a player. Once I played the King's ghost in Will Shakespeare's 'Hamlet,' and then, I warrant you, I spoke from the cellarage indeed. I so frighted players and playgoers that they swore it was witchcraft, and Burbage's knees did knock together in dead earnest. But to the matter in hand. When I had thrown yonder stone, I walked quietly down to the Governor's house and looked through the window. The Governor hath the Company's letters, and he and the Council - all save the reprobate Pory - sit there staring at them and drumming with their fingers on the table."

"Is Rolfe of the Council?" I asked.

"Ay; he was speaking, - for you, I suppose, though I heard not the words. They all listened, but they all shook their heads."

"We shall know in the morning," I said. "The night grows wilder, and honest folks should be abed. Nantauquas, good-night. When will you have tamed your panther?"

"It is now the moon of cohonks," answered the Indian. "When the moon of blossoms is here, the panther shall roll at the beautiful lady's feet."

"The moon of blossoms!" I said. "The moon of blossoms is a long way off. I have panthers myself to tame before it comes. This wild night gives one wild thoughts, Master Sparrow. The loud wind, and the sound of the water, and the hurrying clouds - who knows if we shall ever see the moon of blossoms?" I broke off with a laugh for my own weakness. "It's not often that a soldier thinks of death,"

I said. "Come to bed, reverend sir. Nantauquas, again, good-night, and may you tame your panther!"

In the great room of the minister's house I paced up and down; now pausing at the window, to look out upon the fast darkening houses of the town, the ever thickening clouds, and the bending trees; now speaking to my wife, who sat in the chair I had drawn for her before the fire, her hands idle in her lap, her head thrown back against the wood, her face white and still, with wide dark eyes. We waited for we knew not what, but the light still burned in the Governor's house, and we could not sleep and leave it there.

It grew later and later. The wind howled down the chimney, and I heaped more wood upon the fire. The town lay in darkness now; only in the distance burned like an angry star the light in the Governor's house. In the lull between the blasts of wind it was so very still that the sound of my footfalls upon the floor, the dropping of the charred wood upon the hearth, the tapping of the withered vines without the window, jarred like thunder.

Suddenly madam leaned forward in her chair. "There is some one at the door," she said.

As she spoke, the latch rose and some one pushed heavily against the door. I had drawn the bars across. "Who is it?" I demanded, going to it.

"It is Diccon, sir," replied a guarded voice outside. "I beg of you, for the lady's sake, to let me speak to you."

I opened the door, and he crossed the threshold. I had not seen him since the night he would have played the assassin. I had heard of him as being in Martin's Hundred, with which plantation and its turbulent commander the debtor and the outlaw often found sanctuary.

"What is it, sirrah?" I inquired sternly.