Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (302 page)

He leaned his head on his hand and thought how he could show her that he too could do somewhat. Hitherto he had not yet spoken. He felt in his great sleeve and produced a shining white globe of crystal, larger than a large orange. In the light of his lamp it glowed and shone with semi-circular and tenuous streaks of light. He set it on a little black cane that had a flattened top.

“Pooh!” she said, “I will show you three images with a little drop of ink in my palm for one that you will show me in that crystal.”

Nevertheless, because he saw that she looked with a little interest at the globe, he was emboldened to speak at last.

“Madam,” he said, “I know very well that you may do more things than I. But this is yet one thing that you cannot do — to foretell the future for your own self.”

“That is very true,” she answered; “I could have told you that.”

“Now,” he said, “let us make this bargain; I am accustomed to charge a fee of twenty shillings for each one that gazes into this globe. But I will let you gaze uncharged if you will let me see my end in a drop of ink in your palm.”

She said regally, “Why, I am not one to make bargains with poor and little people. I will pay your fee and gaze. And you shall see your end without any fee, for I think from your look that it will be no joyous end. You have a very starveling look.”

He gave a heavy sigh; he had a great curiosity to know his end, for half he believed that he would find the philosopher’s stone, the secret of gold-making, and half he believed that he would die at the hangman’s hands.

He pushed with his foot a little stool from under the black cloth of his table.

“Sit you there,” he said, “and gaze, with your face nine inches from the crystal.”

“Why,” she said, “at the same time you shall gaze at my palm.”

She sat her down at the little stool and stretched her white arm across the table. The back of her hand was on the black cloth, and her white palm had a little hollow in it.

“Pour a little ink from your horn into my palm,” she said, “and hold your eyes close to it.”

They sat there, silent and intent, for a long space of time. The shadows were very quiet all round them, and no draught stirred the flame of the little lamp. His eyes were very intent upon the gleam of ink in her palm; her face, lit up by the red glow, was rapt and vacant and merely curious.

He heaved suddenly a heavy sigh, then he pulled from off his face the long beard of tow and cried out, springing back in his chair. He had the face of a young, weary-eyed, hungry man, and his features were leaden-coloured, blue about the gills with long fasting, and so thin in the upper lip that his teeth showed through. He fastened his hand upon hers and gazed in her palm again.

“It cannot be true!” he said.

She answered, “What?” in an expressionless and passionless voice.

“That I shall lie and die in a gutter, starved to death!” he cried. “I clasp a flint stone to my breast. No, it cannot be!” She continued to gaze at the crystal.

“I think it is most likely,” she answered coldly. “I can see nothing in your glass.”

He fell back in his chair, his hands gripped the arms, his hollow eyes gazed at the darkness above his head. And suddenly Anne Jeal moved her face a shade closer to see better, and uttered a little “Ah” of sound.

The blood hummed in her ears softly and insistently. The colours of the little glass were spinning round. She saw a rim of blue, horizontal and like the sea, and over it featherings of orange and red and purple and carmine, arching like the boughs of a forest in a tremendous beauty of autumn. Edward Colman was beneath these faces
 
and boughs, and shapes like demons leapt from tree to tree in the forest all round him. He ran very fast towards the blue line, and suddenly he threw up his arms and fell on to his side. She saw his lips move, and the demons closed upon him. Then the globe was full of fire; it leaped upwards and glowed and rose impatiently in huge flames. And amidst it stood Edward Colman, and the demons leaped around him....

She leaned back in her chair and saw the conjurer, with his thin face and no beard and the high conical cap, leaning grotesquely forward, and the darkness all around of the black hangings.

Her pride made her say, “Why, I have seen the man I hated struck down and dying.”

But in her heart there was a black misery. She would not again see Edward Colman, and her fingers scratched on the black cloth of the table.

“I have a waxen image of this man,” she said, “and I trow he will die when I stab it through the heart.”

The conjurer remained for a moment in a stupor.

“I see you are a very evil woman,” he said.

For a moment the idea crossed his brain that if he could persuade her by entreaties to stay with him as his familiar or empress he might escape starvation by the riches she would bring him. But it fell away before the thought that he dreaded her, and that if she stayed with him she might in truth beggar him and steal what small secrets he had, and cast him to die in the streets of starvation with a flint clasped to his breast in lieu of the philosopher’s stone that she would rob him of. He made an effort to regain his pride.

“Mayoress of Rye,” he said, “for by my spells I have divined you to be her—”

“Oh, fool,” she said bitterly, “I know ye sent a little boy to follow me when last I went away from you. And at the Tower of this city you have learnt all that gossip could tell you of me.”

He shivered still more into his robes, and then there came to him the thought that if he could not propitiate this devil she would for ever ensorcel him.

“Be it as you will,” he said; “but I know certain things of you and might aid you.”

She had still a belief that he might have secrets to learn, for he was reputed to be a pupil of the great Doctor Faustus, and she had a great longing to be aided.

“Why, speak, doctor,” she said.

“I know,” he said earnestly, and he leaned forward in his chair to seem the more persuasive, and his tired eyes perused her face with beseeching glances, “that you hate a certain man through love, and have tried to set in motion the powers of the King against him.”

She said, “Oh, aye!” and he spoke again. “Now,” he said, “take this advice of me, for assuredly I am not learned in the way of commanding djinns and efrits with great wings, yet I am very cunning in the tricks of men, having studied them since I was a tiny boy.”

“There is some sense in that,” she said, and she listened to him.

“Therefore,” he said, and the blood began to come back to his heart, “consider this that I speak now; you have very lamentably failed when you have intrigued with men. Therefore, cease for ever from meddling with the affairs of men and giving witness. At that you are a woman and powerless; you have muddled and miscarried in all that you have dealt with. And so it will always be with you.”

“There’s some sense in that,” she said.

“I was for two years in the service of a Jesuit in Flanders,” he said; “it did much to sharpen my wits in affairs of men and intrigues. I know you will never be good at such things.”

“What would you rede me to do?” she asked. He grew more learned in his air as he gained confidence.

“Thus I advise and counsel you,” he said. “Your lover is now upon the seas.”

“You have very good intelligencers,” she said. “I only knew that this afternoon.”

“I have many spies in many places,” he said, and he grew more authoritative in his air. “Your lover is now upon the sea. If you can raise winds, raise winds about him that his ship may be driven here and there till he be wearied and astonished. And pray that your efrits raise mutinies amongst his fellows, and let him be affrighted and beaten and oppressed. Let him be cowed and wearied, so that he shall come back, and let him have no rest, and let him hunger and thirst.” He stayed to look at her. “So,” he said, “when at last he shall come back to you, you shall tell him that he shall have no rest, for you will reveal to him what you have done — no rest till he give in to your will, and love you, and follow you as a beaten spaniel loves and follows its mistress.”

“Why, you are a wise man, after all,” she said. “I am minded to follow your advice.”

He leaned over and touched her hand.

“This much more I will advise you; use not your knife, neither upon his image nor against his wife. For I think that your will is to enjoy him and his love, not to kill him or, if you kill his wife, to be hanged yourself. This I will tell you — I know it, for I have many about the Court that come to visit me — there are some that will be hit against this man and his house, for, like the King, they believe that he’s a rebel and a Puritan. Evil things are preparing against the Puritans of this realm, and these shall not be stayed. It may well be that, if you will leave these things, yet shall this man be so ruined and undone that he will leave his wife and come to you for succour, and housing, and comfort, and love. Yet, there are in the Court they that are powerful and would protect this man and his wife, for they have been well bribed and think you have acted ill.”

“My lord Attorney was bribed?” Anne Jeal asked breathlessly.

“I say not so,” he answered; “but Edward Colman sent
£500
to England for the protection of his house and wife and to get his pardon.”

Anne Jeal laughed with scorn and delight. “Why, I would have sworn my lord Attorney was bribed. This is virtue!”

“Well,” the necromancer answered her, “remember I rede you not to use your knife, for this Attorney is strong enow to make you die on the gallows if you do murder, and this is sure. And it is right too. For if you call in the unseen powers to aid you they will be jealous if you seek to aid yourself with gross and material tools and human intrigues.”

Anne Jeal was very pensive as she rose to leave him.

“I think,” she said, “that this is very good advice. And if it work well I will tell you the secret of how to make lamb’s blood in a crucible. It is a sovereign cure for the shingles, and will bring you much gold.”

His eyes shone at the thought that she went away from him favourably and would not make spells against him.

“Remember,” he said, “above all, use no earthly means in this supernal encounter. It were better far that you made friends with this man’s wife, to gloat over her or to learn her secret uglinesses, than that you anger the djinns and efrits. And you are a very clumsy plotter; it shall not profit you.”

She laid seven gold coins on the table.

“Sir,” she said, “though you ask me no fee, I leave you this; for you are very thin, and it is costly to keep so many spies.”

She was very pensive as she went with the maid and the two soldiers through the dark and plashing streets, for there was a heavy rain, and water was falling from all the gutters.

PART IV. THE ‘HALF MOON’
.

CHAPTER I
.

THE weary seas weltered unceasingly around them; it was always grey thus early in the year. The south wind drove them incessantly inwards; a week before they had passed through a great barrier of ice, that stretched out of view from the castle at the high-mast to the utmost verge of the horizon, where the skies were whitened by the reflection of infinite miles of ice out of all ken beyond. And at the sight of that dim glow that grew lower and lower on the horizon behind them — a half-inch of ghostliness vanishing as they sailed onwards — the hearts of the
Half Moon’s
men grew more and more weary.

They saw strange lights in the sky, and great puce-fishes gloomed in the waters near them. They sailed at times through little groups of icebergs, like toothed rocks, and at night they cast their sails a-back and rode in bottomless seas, and heard the ceaseless sound of water beating on the terrible crags. At times they were in very open seas, with no glimpse of land or of ice. They saw schools and companies of seals and of sea-dogs rising up out of the uneasy waters to their shoulders to gaze at them, and they saw the great white bears descending the slopes of ice slowly and furtively.

And some men said that they had seen the shapes of men-fish amongst these portents; and they told tales of how these men-fish bored little holes in ships’ bottoms; and they came to the regions where it is said night is eternal.

There came a great storm from the westward, and drove them for three days in the darkness towards the north of Novaia Zemlia; there came a great storm from the eastward, and drove them back again for three days more. On that sixth day the sun looked over the edge of the sea for a half-hour, and they saw to the northward before them a new barrier of ice and a new ice-blink. They were, as it were, in a prison in a great pall of grey sea a hundred miles across between two endless barriers. And incessantly the navigator drove them to eastward and westward along this northern floe, beating along, very near the ice always, and entering into the deep fields and bays, that might at any moment close in upon them, in search of a passage that might pierce this barrier.

At the third week, which was nearly May, he beat finally to the eastward to find the
Good Hope
that they had lost a month before. They found her sheltering behind a headland, her spars bare and her sails furled like grey fillets along them. It was a very black cleft in granite rocks; it was always half dark there, though the sun once more had caught them up, coming towards the solstice, but the bay was as deep and as narrow as a cleft in the cliffs of Devon, so that the water was always very black and still.

Hudson took a boat and went aboard the
Good
Hope;
but he bade the
Half Moon
lie a mile away and come no nearer; neither did he let the one man that rowed him go aboard the
Good Hope.
When he came back his face had no expression or meaning in it; it looked from out the hole in his grey woollen headpiece, and showed only an oval of his eyes, his nose, and his upper lip — for it was then very cold, and the crew wore cloaks of grey above their cloaks of black, and most men had ear-caps of otter-skin, so that they were all very ghostly in the half-light.

He had not taken with him Edward Colman, for there was aboard the
Good Hope
a man that had the English tongue; but when he came back he bade Edward Colman call together the crew and tell them that he would make it death if any man of the
Half Moon
went to the
Good Hope.
There arose then a sudden murmur amongst all these grey and haggard men. And Edward Colman, who thought he knew these Dutchmen’s mind better than the navigator, made bold to say to him —

“Master, is this a wise order?”

Hudson pulled down the grey wool from before his mouth and gazed at Edward Colman.

“For,” Colman continued, “these men are very weary, and have need of relaxing. And they have some of them brothers and some of them good friends that it would be a great pleasure for them to see and speak with.”

Hudson stepped one pace back.

“Master,” Edward Colman pleaded, “I have mixed much with these men, and know their minds.”

Suddenly Hudson swung out his hand, with his fist clenched.

“Aye!” he cried out, with a scornful fury; “you have mixed much with these men. I have heard a story of you on the
Good Hope
.”

A blank amazement made Edward Colman open his mouth; but it gave way so suddenly, to the thought that this was to be expected of a man like the navigator, that he uttered no word. Hudson called out many and hateful words against Edward Colman, and the crew listened attentively. He called out —

“
Sckehn!
” and
Malet’ huis!”
and “D
upf!
” and “
Kwlenhigt!”
— for he had such Dutch words that were evil and opprobrious. And he called out —

“Aye I If you were not an Englishman I would hang you I You are a damnable traitor. I have heard tales of you. You shall no more eat with me; get you forward. I will no longer soil the sound of my voice by sending it to your hateful ears!”

“Why, I am patient,” Edward Colman said, “but this is more than patience can bear.”

At the sound of his voice Hudson strode upon him; he caught him by the collar of his hood and shook him backwards and forwards, and when Edward Colman struck at him he threw him loose and drew his grey sword from his scabbard.

“Before God!” he said, “if you go not forward or come again upon this my deck I will spit you like a lark.”

Edward Colman raised his hand to the Sky.

“Master Hudson,” he cried out, “you are very drunk I But it is in the bond between us that I eat and sleep in your cabin. I may not war upon you; but, before God, in England you shall fight me!”

“Devil,” Hudson cried out, and he raised his sword on high, “I have heard that you have raised sorceries against this voyage. Get you gone.”

But suddenly he cried out to the captain, in such gasping Dutch as he had —

“Ho! seize him; throw him down; iron him to the deck!”

There was, in the forward part of the ship, on the deck a staple to which, with great chains, was affixed what they called the nightingale’s nest. It was a girdle of a great iron hoop, that could be locked around a man’s waist and hold him sitting or lying on to the deck. It was called the “nightingale’s nest” because it was the custom to chain down in it such men as were drunk, until they were sober enough to sing the XlXth Psalm in Dutch. And into this caging they locked Edward Colman, so that he was held down to the hard deck in the bitter cold. The black cliffs raised themselves all round; the ship was quite at rest, and in a broken Dutch, in the stillness, Hudson’s voice went up shouting to the assembled crew imprecations against Edward Colman.

Beside the Englishman, as he lay on the deck, the Master Outreweltius, that had been deposed from being a seaman, walked up and down in silence. He had not any leave to go on to the after-deck or the poop, but must remain there, solitary and inactive. The dark dwarf, Hieronymus, squatted at the door of the castle in the bows, and scraped an iron crock with a scrap of old iron.

The Master Outreweltius approached Edward Colman.

“What are these evil things that I hear?” he said. “I had not believed it of you.” His yellow and lugubrious features were more yellow, his lank locks fell further down upon his shoulder; but he was very impervious to the cold, so that he wore still his cloak of black broadcloth.

“Why,” Edward Colman said, “this madman is tempestuously drunk.”

“Englishman,” Outreweltius answered, “it is very plain that he is not drunk, for he talks clearly and stands steady.”

“Then,” Edward Colman answered, “before God, he is mad. For never when he is sober has he done anything but rail against witchcraft, and now he has a tale that I am a sorcerer and have bewitched this voyage.”

Outreweltius drew a full step back; his eyes were filled with alarm, his nostrils enlarged.

“A sorcerer!” he said. “God defend us all!”

“Why, you are mad,” Edward Colman answered him, for he was a very angry man.

The old man with the pentagon upon his breast came to them; he had covered himself with cloths dipped in oil to keep out the cold, and he had his head in a bladder cut for his face into an oval hole.

“What is this?” he muttered. “Oh, ill-omened voyage!” and his eyes were full of sadness, for he had a great love for Edward Colman.

“Jan,” Outreweltius said, “this man is said to be a sorcerer. And I well believe it. For never have I observed such gallant sailing as this of the navigator’s so frustrated, if it were not by sorcery. I have sailed these seas before, but never have I seen ice so far to the south and so late in the year.”

“Sorcerer!” Edward Colman said. “This is a tale to hang more of a violent man. It was upon a pretext of sorcery that Francis Drake hung Mr. Doughty. It is an old contrivance, and this is a very evil man.” The smile at last had gone from his face, and where his cheek was drawn by the illness he had had in Amsterdam it twitched so that he seemed to grin. “The man is a good navigator,” he said, “but a devil beyond his workings and calculations.”

Hieronymus, the dwarf, with his crook beneath his arm, had crept nearer to listen.

“Master Outreweltius,” the old Jan said, and his head, with the grey bladder over it, looked like the head of a very old walrus, “I do not believe that this Englishman is a sorcerer. But that you are right when you say sorcery is abroad in the air I very well believe. There are spells cast all around us. My thumbs prick. Who saw ever such waves — or who saw ever a man driven so mad as the navigator, save by witchcraft?”

Most of the crew came around them now, for Hudson had finished his speaking and was gone below. And Edward Colman, when his rage was a little abated, had leisure to observe that ten of the men went with Outreweltius, and cast evil looks upon him. And the other three of the crew went
 
to Hieronymus and talked together, looking at him often. Old Jan showed him kindnesses — putting a sea-cloak beneath him on the deck, inserting strips of linen between his wrists and the irons that held them, and fetching a great blanket to cast all over him, sewing it with a bit of thin cordage over his chest, so that it made a cloak like a priest’s chasuble. He also brought him a cordial of Dutch waters and a sheepskin folded to sit upon — for, since he was given to liquor, he had spent several days of his long life in the nightingale’s nest, and knew what things in it most galled the skin and the joints. And he squatted on his own hams beside Edward Colman, and, grey-headed and lugubrious, talked of witches and sorcery.

“You shall not die here,” he said, “for I have foretold, with strands of rope yarn, that you and I will die by demons later in this voyage.”

“Why, there are no demons,” Edward Colman said. “If there were any they vanished with the last age and the Papists and darkness.”

Old Jan talked of witches that ensorcel a ship from far away inland and of witches that lived in the seas, floating past and singing, and of the spirits that have no corporeal shapes, but one compounded of the air and the waves, making currents to drive ships upon rocks in the lonely seas of the south.

“Why,” Edward Colman answered him at last, “there is mischief enough made by the evil beasts of men. At times it is a very evil world, this of ours.” And his tongue was loosened, so that he told the old man all his life, and the old man advised him to put a knife into Anne Jeal if ever he came near her again. But, with a dry circumspection, he avoided speaking of the navigator.

There came instead, when the night had long fallen, the dark form of Master Outreweltius, bearing a lanthorn. He sat down upon the deck that he might the better see Edward Colman’s face.

“Englishman,” he said, “I come to you with this petition from the crew” — and he recited their names—’’that from henceforth you do not hinder this voyage with rough winds and high seas.”

“Oh, get you gone!” Edward Colman cried out. “Are you not all a-weary of this voyage?”

“Nay,” the Dutchman answered, and, in the lanthorn light, his long locks were shadowy and his lugubrious eyes gleamed; “this voyage might have prospered had you, instead of raising adverse winds, stilled the seas and the gales.”