Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer, Cyrus Townsend Brady [i read book TXT] 📗

opening! And here is a bit of parchment! Read it, sir."

He handed it to the Viceroy. The old noble, lifting it to the light, scanned the closely-written, faded lines on the tiny scrap of delicate parchment.

"'Tis a certificate of marriage of----" He paused.

"Maria Zerega," said Morgan, triumphantly.

"Nay," answered the old man, and his triumph rung in his voice, "of Isabella Zerega and Francisco de Guzman."

"Hell and fury!" shouted the buccaneer, "'tis a trick!"

"And signed by----"

He stopped again, peering at the faded, almost illegible signature.

"By whom, your Excellency?" interrupted the priest smiling.

"'Tis a bit faded," said the old man, holding it nearer. "Fra--An--tonio! Was it thou?"

"Even so, sir. I married the mother, as I buried her yester eve upon the sand."

"'Tis a fact established," said the Viceroy, satisfied at last. "Don Francisco de Guzman, Alvarado that was, thy birth and legitimacy are clear and undoubted. There by your side stands the woman you have loved. If you wish her now I shall be honored to call you my son."

"My lord," answered Alvarado, "that I am the son of an honorable gentleman were joy enough, but when thou givest me Donna Mercedes----"

He turned, and with a low cry the girl fled to his arms. He drew her close to him and laid his hand upon her head, and then he kissed her before the assembled cavaliers, who broke into enthusiastic shouts and cries of happy approbation.

"There's more evidence yet," cried the priest, thrusting his hand into the bosom of his habit and drawing forth a glittering object. "Sir, I took this from the body of Sister Maria Christina, for upon my advice she entered upon the service of the Holy Church after her bereavement, keeping her secret, for there was naught to be gained by its publication. That Church she served long and well. Many sufferers there be to whom she ministered who will rise up and call her blessed. She killed herself upon the sands rather than give aid and comfort to this man and his men, or submit herself to the evil desires of his band. Sirs, I have lived long and suffered much, and done some little service for Christ, His Church, and His children, but I take more comfort from the absolution that I gave her when she cried for mercy against the sin of self-slaughter than for any other act in my career. Here, young sir," said the priest, opening the locket, "are the pictures of your father and mother. See, cavaliers, some of you knew Don Francisco de Guzman and can recognize him. That is his wife. She was young and had golden hair like thine, my son, in those days. You are the express image of her person as I recall it."

"My father! My mother!" cried Alvarado. "Look, Mercedes, look your Excellency, and gentlemen, all! But her body, worthy father?"

"Even as her soul hath gone out into the new life beyond, her body was drawn out into the great deep at the call of God--but not unblessed, señors, even as she went not unshriven, for I knelt alone by her side, unable by my wounds and weakness to do more service, and said the office of our Holy Church."

"May God bless thee, as I bless thee!" answered Alvarado, to give him the familiar name.

As he spoke he sank on his knees and pressed a long and fervent kiss upon the worn and withered hand of the aged man.

"It is not meet," said the priest, withdrawing his hand and laying it in blessing upon the bowed fair head. "That which was lost is found again. Let us rejoice and praise God for His mercy. Donna Mercedes, gentlemen, my blessing on Señor de Guzman and upon ye all. Benedicite!" he said, making the sign of the cross.


CHAPTER XXIV


IN WHICH SIR HENRY MORGAN APPEALS UNAVAILINGLY ALIKE TO THE PITY OF WOMAN, THE FORGIVENESS OF PRIEST, THE FRIENDSHIP OF COMRADE, AND THE HATRED OF MEN

"And bless me also, my father," cried Mercedes, kneeling by Alvarado's side.

"Most willingly, my fair daughter," answered the old man. "A fit helpmate indeed thou hast shown thyself for so brave a soldier. By your leave, your Excellency. You will indulge an old man's desire to bless the marriage of the son as he did that of the mother? No obstacle, I take it, now exists to prevent this most happy union."

"None," answered the Viceroy, as the young people rose and stood before him, "and glad I am that this happy solution of our difficulties has come to pass."

"And when, sir," questioned the priest further, "may I ask that you design----"

"The sooner the better," said the Viceroy smiling grimly. "By the mass, reverend father, I'll feel easier when he hath her in his charge!"

"I shall prove as obedient to thee as wife, Don Francisco----" said Mercedes with great spirit, turning to him.

"Nay, call me Alvarado, sweet lady," interrupted her lover.

"Alvarado then, if you wish--for it was under that name that I first loved thee--I shall prove as obedient a wife to thee as I was a dutiful daughter to thee, my father."

"'Tis not saying o'er much," commented the Viceroy, but smiling more kindly as he said the words. "Nay, I'll take that back, Mercedes, or modify it. Thou hast, indeed, been to me all that a father could ask, until----"

"'Twas my fault, your Excellency. On me be the punishment," interrupted the lover.

"Thou shalt have it with Mercedes," answered the Viceroy, laughing broadly now. "What say ye, gentlemen?"

"My lord," said Agramonte, from his age and rank assuming to speak for the rest, "there is not one of us who would not give all he possessed to stand in the young Lord de Guzman's place."

"Well, well," continued the old man, "when we have restored order in the town we shall have a wedding ceremony--say to-morrow."

"Ay, ay, to-morrow, to-morrow!" cried the cavaliers.

"Your Excellency, there is one more thing yet to be done," said Alvarado as soon as he could be heard.

"Art ever making objections, Captain Alvarado--Don Francisco, that is. We might think you had reluctance to the bridal," exclaimed the Viceroy in some little surprise. "What is it now?"

"The punishment of this man."

"I gave him into your hands."

"By God!" shouted old Hornigold, "I wondered if in all this fathering and mothering and sweethearting and giving in marriage he had forgot----"

"Not so. The postponement but makes it deeper," answered Alvarado gravely. "Rest satisfied."

"And I shall have my revenge in full measure?"

"In full, in overflowing measure, señor."

"Do you propose to shoot me?" asked the buccaneer chieftain coolly. "Or behead me?"

"That were a death for an honorable soldier taken in arms and forced to bide the consequences of his defeat. It is not meet for you," answered Alvarado.

"What then? You'll not hang me? Me! A knight of England! Sometime Governor of Jamaica!"

"These titles are nothing to me. And hanging is the death we visit upon the common criminal, a man who murders or steals, or blasphemes. Your following may expect that. For you there is----"

"You don't mean to burn me alive, do you?"

"Were you simply a heretic that might be meet, but you are worse----"

"What do you mean?" cried the buccaneer, carried away by the cold-blooded menace in Alvarado's words. "Neither lead, nor steel, nor rope, nor fire!"

"Neither one nor the other, sir."

"Is it the wheel? The rack? The thumbscrew? Sink me, ye shall see how an Englishman can die! Even from these I flinch not."

"Nor need you, from these, for none of them shall be used," continued the young soldier, with such calculating ferocity in his voice that in spite of his dauntless courage and intrepidity the blood of Morgan froze within his veins.

"Death and destruction!" he shouted. "What is there left?"

"You shall die, señor, not so much by the hand of man as by the act of God."

"God! I believe in none. There is no God!"

"That you shall see."

"Your Excellency, my lords! I appeal to you to save me from this man, not my son but my nephew----"

"S'death, sirrah!" shouted the Viceroy, enraged beyond measure by the allusion to any relationship, "not a drop of your base blood pollutes his veins. I have given you over to him. He will attend to you."

"What means he to do then?"

"You shall see."

"When?"

"To-morrow."

The sombre, sinister, although unknown purpose of the Spaniards had new terrors lent to it by the utter inability of the buccaneer to foresee what was to be his punishment. He was a man of the highest courage, the stoutest heart, yet in that hour he was astonied. His knees smote together; he clenched his teeth in a vain effort to prevent their chattering. All his devilry, his assurance, his fortitude, his strength, seemed to leave him. He stood before them suddenly an old, a broken man, facing a doom portentous and terrible, without a spark of strength or resolution left to meet it, whatever it might be. And for the first time in his life he played the craven, the coward. He moistened his dry lips and looked eagerly from one face to another in the dark and gloomy ring that encircled him.

"Lady," he said at last, turning to Mercedes as the most likely of his enemies to befriend him, "you are a woman. You should be tender hearted. You don't want to see an old man, old enough to be your father, suffer some unknown, awful torture? Plead for me! Ask your lover. He will refuse you nothing now."

There was a dead silence in the room. Mercedes stared at the miserable wretch making his despairing appeal as if she were fascinated.

"Answer him," said her stern old father, "as a Spanish gentlewoman should."

It was a grim and terrible age. The gospel under which all lived in those days was not that of the present. It was a gospel writ in blood, and fire, and steel.

"An eye for an eye," said the girl slowly, "a tooth for a tooth, life for life, shame for shame," her voice rising until it rang through the room. "In the name of my ruined sisters, whose wails come to us this instant from without, borne hither on the night wind, I refuse to intercede for you, monster. For myself, the insults you have put upon me, I might forgive, but not the rest. The taking of one life like yours can not repay."

"You hear?" cried Alvarado. "Take him away."

"One moment," cried Morgan. "Holy Father--your religion--it teaches to forgive they say. Intercede for me!"

His eyes turned with faint hope toward the aged priest.

"Not for such as thou," answered the old man looking from him. "I could forgive this," he touched his battered tonsure, "and all thou hast done against me and mine. That is not little, for when I was a lad, a youth, before I took the priestly yoke upon me, I loved Maria Zerega--but that is nothing. What suffering comes upon me I can bear, but thou hast filled the cup of iniquity and must drain it to the dregs. Hark ye--the weeping of the desolated town! I can not interfere! They that take the sword shall perish by it. It is so decreed.