Chapter 20 The Lion's Skin by Rafael Sabatini
Mr. CARYLL'S IDENTITY
“I must see Lord Ostermore!” had been Mr. Caryll's wild cry, as he strode to the door.
From the other side of it there came a sound of steps and voices. Some one was turning the handle.
Hortensia caught Mr. Caryll by the sleeve. “But the letters!” she cried frantically, and pointed to the incriminating papers which he had left, forgotten, upon the desk.
He stared at her a moment, and memory swept upon him in a flood. He mastered the wild agitation that had been swaying him, thrust the paper that he was carrying into his pocket, and turned to go back for the treasonable letters.
“The taper!” he exclaimed, and pointed to the extinguished candle on the floor. “What can we do?”
A sharp blow fell upon the lock of the door. He stood still, looking over his shoulder.
“Quick! Make haste!” Hortensia admonished him in her excitement. “Get them! Conceal them, at least! Do the best you can since we have not the means to burn them.”
A second blow was struck, succeeded instantly by a third, and something was heard to snap. The door swung open, and Green and Rotherby sprang into the room, a brace of footmen at their heels. They were followed more leisurely by the countess; whilst a little flock of servants brought up the rear, but checked upon the threshold, and hung there to witness events that held out such promise of being unusual.
Mr. Caryll swore through set teeth, and made a dash for the desk. But he was too late to accomplish his object. His hand had scarcely closed upon the letters, when he was, himself, seized. Rotherby and Green, on either side of him, held him in their grasp, each with one hand upon his shoulder and the other at his wrist. Thus stood he, powerless between them, and, after the first shock of it, cool and making no effort to disengage himself. His right hand was tightly clenched upon the letters.
Rotherby called a servant forward. “Take those papers from the thief's hand,” he commanded.
“Stop!” cried Mr. Caryll. “Lord Rotherby, may I speak with you alone before you go further in a matter you will bitterly regret?”
“Take those papers from him,” Rotherby repeated, swearing; and the servant bent to the task. But Mr. Caryll suddenly wrenched the hand away from the fellow and the wrist out of Lord Rotherby's grip.
“A moment, my lord, as you value your honor and your possessions!” he insisted. “Let me speak with Lord Ostermore first. Take me before him.”
“You are before him now,” said Rotherby. “Say on!”
“I demand to see Lord Ostermore.”
“I am Lord Ostermore,” said Rotherby.
“You? Since when?” said Mr. Caryll, not even beginning to understand.
“Since ten minutes ago,” was the callous answer that first gave that household the news of my lord's passing.
There was a movement, a muttering among the servants. Old Humphries broke through the group by the door, his heavy chops white and trembling, and in that moment Hortensia turned, awe-stricken, to ask her ladyship was this true. Her ladyship nodded in silence. Hortensia cried out, and sank to a chair as if beaten down by the news, whilst the old servant, answered, too, withdrew, wringing his hands and making foolish laments; and the tears of those were the only tears that watered the grave of John Caryll, fifth Earl of Ostermore.
As for Mr. Caryll, the shock of that announcement seemed to cast a spell upon him. He stood still, limp and almost numbed. Oh, the never-ceasing irony of things! That his father should have died at such a moment.
“Dead?” quoth he. “Dead? Is my lord dead? They told me he was recovering.”
“They told you false,” answered Rotherby. “So now—those papers!”
Mr. Caryll relinquished them. “Take them,” he said. “Since that is so—take them.”
Rotherby received them himself. “Remove his sword,” he bade a footman.
Mr. Caryll looked sharply round at him. “My sword?” quoth he. “What do you mean by that? What right?”
“We mean to keep you by us, sir,” said Mr. Green on his other side, “until you have explained what you were doing with those papers—what is your interest in them.”
Meanwhile a servant had done his lordship's bidding, and Mr. Caryll stood weaponless amid his enemies. He mastered himself at once. Here it was plain that he must walk with caution, for the ground, he perceived, was of a sudden grown most insecure and treacherous. Rotherby and Green in league! It gave him matter for much thought.
“There's not the need to hold me,” said he quietly. “I am not likely to tire myself by violence. There's scarcely necessity for so much.”
Rotherby looked up sharply. The cool, self-possessed tone had an intimidating note. But Mr. Green laughed maliciously, as he continued to mop his still watering eyes. He was acquainted with Mr. Caryll's methods, and knew that, probably, the more at ease he seemed, the less at ease he was.
Rotherby spread the letters on the desk, and scanned them with a glowing eye, Mr. Green at his elbow reading with him. The countess swept forward that she, too, might inspect this find.
“They'll serve their turn,” said her son, and added to Caryll: “And they'll help to hang you.”
“No doubt you find me mentioned in them,” said Mr. Caryll.
“Ay, sir,” snapped Green, “if not by name, at least as the messenger who is to explain that which the writers—the royal writer and the other—have out of prudence seen fit to exclude.”
Hortensia looked up and across the room at that, a wild fear clutching at her heart. But Mr. Caryll laughed pleasantly, eyebrows raised as if in mild surprise. “The most excellent relations appear to prevail between you,” said he, looking from Rotherby to Green. “Are you, too, my lord, in the secretary's pay.”
His lordship flushed darkly. “You'll clown it to the end,” he sneered.
“And that's none so far off,” snarled Mr. Green, who since the peppering of his eyes, had flung aside his usual cherubic air. “Oh, you may sneer, sir,” he mocked the prisoner. “But we have you fast. This letter was brought hither by you, and this one was to have been carried hence by you.”
“The latter, sir, was a matter for the future, and you can hardly prove what a man will do; so we'll let that pass. As for the former—the letter which you say I brought—you'll remember that you searched me at Maidstone—”
“And I have your admission that the letter was upon you at the time,” roared the spy, interrupting him—“your admission in the presence of that lady, as she can be made to witness.”
Mistress Winthrop rose. “'Tis a lie,” she said firmly. “I can not be made to witness.”
Mr. Caryll smiled, and nodded across to her. “'Tis vastly kind in you, Mistress Winthrop. But the gentleman is mistook.” He turned to Green. “Harkee, sirrah did I admit that I had carried that letter?”
Mr. Green shrugged. “You admitted that you carried a letter. What other letter should it have been but that?”
“Nay,” smiled Mr. Caryll. “'Tis not for you to ask me. Rather is it for you to prove that the letter I admitted having carried and that letter are one and the same. 'Twill take a deal of proving, I dare swear.”
“Ye'll be forsworn, then,” put in her ladyship sourly. “For I can witness to the letter that you bore. Not only did I see it—a letter on that same fine paper—in my husband's hands on the day you came here and during your visit, but I have his lordship's own word for it that he was in the plot and that you were the go-between.”
“Ah!” chuckled Mr. Green. “What now, sir? What now? By what fresh piece of acrobatics will you get out of that?”
“Ye're a fool,” said Mr. Caryll with calm contempt, and fetched out his snuff-box. “D'ye dream that one witness will suffice to establish so grave a charge? Pah!” He opened his snuff-box to find it empty, and viciously snapped down the lid again. “Pah!” he said again, “ye've cost me a whole boxfull of Burgamot.”
“Why did ye throw it in my face?” demanded Mr. Green. “What purpose did ye look to serve but one of treason? Answer me that!”
“I didn't like the way ye looked at me. 'Twas wanting respect, and I bethought me I would lessen the impudence of your expression. Have ye any other foolish questions for me?” And he looked again from Green to Rotherby, including both in his inquiry. “No?” He rose. “In that case, if you'll give me leave, and—”
“You do not leave this house,” Rotherby informed him.
“I think you push hospitality too far. Will you desire your lackey to return me my sword? I have affairs elsewhere.”
“Mr. Caryll, I beg that you will understand,” said his lordship, with a calm that he was at some pains to maintain, “that you do not leave this house save in the care of the messengers from the secretary of state.”
Mr. Caryll looked at him, and yawned in his face. “Ye're prodigiously tiresome,” said he, “did ye but know how I detest disturbances. What shall the secretary of state require of me?”
“He'll require you on a charge of high treason,” said Mr. Green.
“Have you a warrant to take me?”
“I have not, but—”
“Then how do you dare detain me, sir?” demanded Mr. Caryll sharply. “D'ye think I don't know the law?”
“I think you'll know a deal more of it shortly,” countered Mr. Green.
“Meanwhile, sirs, I depart. Offer me violence at your peril.” He moved a step, and then, at a sign from Rotherby, the lackey's hands fell on him again, and forced him back and down into his chair.
“Away with you for the warrant,” said Rotherby to Green. “We'll keep him here till you return.”
Mr. Green grinned at the prisoner, and was gone in great haste.
Mr. Caryll lounged back in his chair, and threw one leg over the other. “I have always endeavored,” said he, “to suffer fools as gladly as a Christian should. So since you insist, I'll be patient until I have the ear of my Lord Carteret—who, I take it, is a man of sense. But if I were you, my lord, and you, my lady, I should not insist. Believe me, you'll cut poor figures. As for you, my lord, ye're in none such good odor, as it is.”
“Let that be,” snarled his lordship.
“If I mention it at all, I but do so in your lordship's own interests. It will be remembered that ye attempted to murder me once, and that will not be of any great help to such accusations as you may bring against me. Besides which, there is the unfortunate circumstance that it's widely known ye're not a man to be believed.”
“Will you be silent?” roared his lordship, in a towering passion.
“If I trouble myself to speak at all, it is out of concern for your lordship,” Mr. Caryll insisted sweetly. “And in your own interest, and your ladyship's, too, I'd counsel you to hear me a moment without witnesses.”
His tone was calculatedly grave. Lord Rotherby looked at him, sneering; not so her ladyship. Less acquainted with his ways, the absolute confidence and unconcern of his demeanor was causing her uneasiness. A man who was perilously entrammelled would not bear himself so easily, she opined. She rose, and crossed to her son's side.
“What have you to say?” she asked Mr. Caryll.
“Nay, madam,” he replied, “not before these.” And he indicated the servants.
“'Tis but a pretext to have them out of the room,” said Rotherby.
Mr. Caryll laughed the notion to scorn. “If you think that—I give you my word of honor to attempt no violence, nor to depart until you shall give me leave,” said he.
Rotherby, judging Mr. Caryll by his knowledge of himself, still hesitated. But her ladyship realized, in spite of her detestation of the man, that he was not of the temper of those whose word is to be doubted. She signed to the footmen.
“Go,” she bade them. “Wait within call.”
They departed, and Mr. Caryll remained seated for all that her ladyship was standing; it was as if by that he wished to show how little he was minded to move.
Her ladyship's eye fell upon Hortensia. “Do you go, too, child,” she bade her.
Instead, Hortensia came forward. “I wish to remain, madam,” she said.
“Did I ask you what you wished?” demanded the countess.
“My place is here,” Hortensia explained. “Unless Mr. Caryll should, himself, desire me to depart.”
“Nay, nay,” he cried, and smiled upon her fondly—so fondly that the countess's eyes grew wider. “With all my heart, I desire you to remain. It is most fitting you should hear that which I have to say.”
“What does it mean?” demanded Rotherby, thrusting himself forward, and scowling from one to the other of them. “What d'ye mean, Hortensia?”
“I am Mr. Caryll's betrothed wife,” she answered quietly.
Rotherby's mouth fell open, but he made no sound. Not so her ladyship. A peal of shrill laughter broke from her. “La! What did I tell you, Charles?” Then to Hortensia: “I'm sorry for you, ma'am,” said she. “I think ye've been a thought too long in making up your mind.” And she laughed again.
“Lord Ostermore lies above stairs,” Hortensia reminded her, and her ladyship went white at the reminder, the indecency of her laughter borne in upon her.
“Would ye lesson me, girl?” she cried, as much to cover her confusion as to vent her anger at the cause of it. “Ye've an odd daring, by God! Ye'll be well matched with his impudence, there.”
Rotherby, singularly self-contained, recalled her to the occasion.
“Mr. Caryll is waiting,” said he, a sneer in his voice.
“Ah, yes,” she said, and flashing a last malignant glance upon Hortensia, she sank to a chair beside her, but not too near her.
Mr. Caryll sat back, his legs crossed, his elbows on his chair-arms, his finger-tips together. “The thing I have to tell you is of some gravity,” he announced by way of preface.
Rotherby took a seat by the desk, his hand upon the treasonable letters. “Proceed, sir,” he said, importantly. Mr. Caryll nodded, as in acknowledgment of the invitation.
“I will admit, before going further, that in spite of the cheerful countenance I maintained before your lordship's friend, the bumbailiff, and your lackeys, I recognize that you have me in a very dangerous position.”
“Ah!” from his lordship in a breath of satisfaction, and
“Ah!” from Hortensia in a gasp of apprehension.
Her ladyship retained a stony countenance, and a silence that sorted excellently with it.
“There is,” Mr. Caryll proceeded, marking off the points on his fingers, “the incident at Maidstone; there is your ladyship's evidence that I was the bearer of just such a letter on the day that first I came here; there is the dangerous circumstance—of which Mr. Green, I am sure, will not fail to make a deal—of my intimacy with Sir Richard Everard, and my constant visits to his lodging, where I was, in fact, on the occasion when he met his death; there is the fact that I committed upon Mr. Green an assault with my snuff box for motives that, after all, admit of but one acceptable explanation; and, lastly, there is the circumstance that, apparently, if interrogated, I can show no good reason why I should be in England at all, where no apparent interest has called me or keeps me.
“Now, these matters are so trivial that taken separately they have no value whatever; taken conjointly, their value is not great; they do not contain evidence enough to justify the hanging of a dog. And yet, I realize that disturbed as the times are, fearful of sedition as the government finds itself in consequence of the mischief done to public credit by the South Sea disaster, and ready as the ministry is to see plots everywhere and to make examples, pour discourager les autres, if the accusation you intend is laid against me, backed by such evidence as this, it is not impossible—indeed, it is not improbable—that it may—ah—tend to shorten my life.”
“Sir,” sneered Rotherby, “I declare you should have been a lawyer. We haven't a pleader of such parts and such lucidity at the whole bar.”
Mr. Caryll nodded his thanks. “Your praise is very flattering, my lord,” said he, with a wry smile, and then proceeded: “It is because I see my case to be so very nearly desperate, that I venture to hope you will not persevere in the course you are proposing to adopt.”
Lord Rotherby laughed noiselessly. “Can you urge me any reasons why we should not?”
“If you could urge me any reasons why you should,” said Mr. Caryll, “no doubt I should be able to show you under what misapprehensions you are laboring.” He shot a keen glance at his lordship, whose face had suddenly gone blank. Mr. Caryll smiled quietly. “There is in this something that I do not understand,” he resumed. “It does not satisfy me to suppose, as at first might seem, that you are acting out of sheer malice against me. You have scarcely cause to do that, my lord; and you, my lady, have none. That fool Green—patience—he conceives that he has suffered at my hands. But without your assistance Mr. Green would be powerless to hurt me. What, then, is it that is moving you?”
He paused, looking from one to the other of his declared enemies. They exchanged glances—Hortensia watching them, breathless, her own mind working, too, upon this question that Mr. Caryll had set, yet nowhere finding an answer.
“I had thought,” said her ladyship at last, “that you promised to tell us something that it was in our interest to hear. Instead, you appear to be asking questions.”
Mr. Caryll shifted in his chair. One glance he gave the countess, then smiled. “I have sought at your hands the reasons why you should desire my death,” said he slowly. “You withhold them. Be it so. I take it that you are ashamed of them; and so, their nature is not difficult to conjecture.”
“Sir—” began Rotherby, hotly, half-starting from his seat.
“Nay, let him trundle on, Charles,” said his mother. “He'll be the sooner done.”
“Instead,” proceeded Mr. Caryll, as if there had been no interruption, “I will now urge you my reasons why you should not so proceed.”
“Ha!” snapped Rotherby. “They will need to be valid.”
Mr. Caryll twisted farther round, to face his lordship more fully. “They are as valid,” said he very impressively—so impressively and sternly that his hearers felt themselves turning cold under his words, filled with some mysterious apprehension. “They are as valid as were my reasons for holding my hand in the field out yonder, when I had you at the mercy of my sword, my lord. Neither more nor less. From that, you may judge them to be very valid.”
“But ye don't name them,” said her ladyship, attempting to conquer her uneasiness.
“I shall do so,” said he, and turned again to his lordship. “I had no cause to love you that morning, nor at any time, my lord; I had no cause to think—as even you in your heart must realize, if so be that you have a heart, and the intelligence to examine it—I had no cause to think, my lord, that I should be doing other than a good deed by letting drive my blade. That such an opinion was well founded was proven by the thing you did when I turned my back upon you after sparing your useless life.”
Rotherby broke in tempestuously, smiting the desk before him. “If you think to move us to mercy by such—”
“Oh, not to mercy would I move you,” said Mr. Caryll, his hand raised to stay the other, “not to mercy, but to horror of the thing you contemplate.” And then, in an oddly impressive manner, he launched his thunderbolt. “Know, then, that if that morning I would not spill your blood, it was because I should have been spilling the same blood that flows in my own veins; it was because you are my brother; because your father was my father. No less than that was the reason that withheld my hand.”
He had announced his aim of moving them to horror; and it was plain that he had not missed it, for in frozen horror sat they all, their eyes upon him, their cheeks ashen, their mouths agape—even Hortensia, who from what already Mr. Caryll had told her, understood now more than any of them.
After a spell Rotherby spoke. “You are my brother?” he said, his voice colorless. “My brother? What are you saying?”
And then her ladyship found her voice. “Who was your mother?” she inquired, and her very tone was an insult, not to the man who sat there so much as to the memory of poor Antoinette de Maligny. He flushed to the temples, then paled again.
“I'll not name her to your ladyship,” said he at, last, in a cold, imperious voice.
“I'm glad ye've so much decency,” she countered.
“You mistake, I think,” said he. “'Tis respect for my mother that inspires me.” And his green eyes flashed upon the painted hag. She rose up a very fury.
“What are you saying?” she shrilled. “D'ye hear the filthy fellow, Rotherby? He'll not name the wanton in my presence out of respect for her.”
“For shame, madam! You are speaking of his mother,” cried Hortensia, hot with indignation.
“Pshaw! 'Tis all an impudent lie—a pack of lies!” cried Rotherby. “He's crafty as all the imps of hell.”
Mr. Caryll rose. “Here in the sight of God and by all that I hold most sacred, I swear that what I have said is true. I swear that Lord Ostermore—your father—was my father. I was born in France, in the year 1690, as I have papers upon me that will prove, which you may see, Rotherby.”
His lordship rose. “Produce them,” said he shortly.
Mr. Caryll drew from an inner pocket of his coat the small leather case that Sir Richard Everard had given him. From this he took a paper which he unfolded. It was a certificate of baptism, copied from the register of the Church of St. Antoine in Paris.
Rotherby held out his hand for it. But Mr. Caryll shook his head. “Stand here beside me, and read it,” said he.
Obeying him, Rotherby went and read that authenticated copy, wherein it was declared that Sir Richard Everard had brought to the Church of St. Antoine for baptism a male child, which he had declared to be the son of John Caryll, Viscount Rotherby, and Antoinette de Maligny, and which had received in baptism the name of Justin.
Rotherby drew away again, his head sunk on his breast. Her ladyship was seated, her eyes upon her son, her fingers drumming absently at the arms of her chair. Then Rotherby swung round again.
“How do I know that you are the person designated there—this Justin Caryll?”
“You do not; but you may. Cast your mind back to that night at White's when you picked your quarrel with me, my lord. Do you remember how Stapleton and Collis spoke up for me, declared that they had known me from boyhood at Oxford, and had visited me at my chateau in France? What was the name of that chateau, my lord—do you remember?”
Rotherby looked at him, searching his memory. But he did not need to search far. At first glance the name of Maligny had seemed familiar to him. “It was Maligny,” he replied, “and yet—”
“If more is needed to convince you, I can bring a hundred witnesses from France, who have known me from infancy. You may take it that I can establish my identity beyond all doubt.”
“And what if you do?” demanded her ladyship suddenly. “What if you do establish your identity as my lord's bastard? What claim shall that be upon us?”
“That, ma'am,” answered Mr. Caryll very gravely, “I wait to learn from my brother here.”