Chapter 12 The Black Swan by Rafael Sabatini
The Guardian
The infatuation of Tom Leach for the supposed Madame de Bernis--to employ a euphemistic indication of the emotions astir in his wild breast--became apparent to his officers. It was being treated by them with indifference, as merely a subject for lewd jests, until the shrewd-sighted Bundry pointed out the disadvantages that might result from it.
Alarmed by his cold reasoning, they improvised a council of war in the matter one day after dinner when the four of them were assembled with Leach in their hut.
Bundry was their spokesman, chosen because as fearless as he was passionless, he was the only one amongst them who dared to beard on so delicate a matter the violent Captain. The scarring by smallpox of his clay-coloured face had reduced it to a mask-like expressionlessness, which in itself made men apprehensive of him, for save in the twist of his lips or the gleam of his eyes, and this only when he so chose, he gave no indication of what might be passing in his mind. He had a clammy, chill, almost reptilian air, seeming utterly emotionless and as impervious to physical as to spiritual heat. In speech he was deliberate and precise, and he dressed his powerful stocky figure with a sober neatness, retained from the days when he had been a Captain of merchantmen.
In that cold, deliberate voice of his and with that cold, deliberate manner he plainly and succinctly laid before the Captain their disapproval of the course his conduct appeared to be steering.
Leach flung into a hideous passion, roaring and snarling and threatening to rip the bowels out of any man who stood between him and his desires whatever they might be.
Wogan, Halliwell, and Ellis sat cowed under his ranting violence, beginning to regret that they should have brought up the subject.
But Bundry fixed him coldly with an eye as expressionless as a snake's, in the depths of which there dwelt perhaps some of that mesmeric power attributed to the colubrine gaze.
'Breathe your lungs, Captain. Breathe 'em freely. It may let out some o' the heat in ye. When ye're cooler, maybe ye'll listen to reason.'
'Reason? Damn reason!'
'That's what ye're doing,' said Bundry.
'Doing what?'
'Damning reason. And reason, I've noticed, ends by damning him that damns it. That's what'll happen to you, Captain, unless ye shorten sail.'
To Leach this sounded like a threat. If it did not diminish his wrath, at least it abated his noise. He sat down again, and considered the pallid, almost sinister face before him with a malevolent glance.
'I's able enough to mind my own affairs, and I's not letting anyone else mind them for me. Understand that?'
'If it was a matter of your own affairs only,' said the phlegmatic Bundry, 'we'ld let you run aground, and be damned to you, Tom. But it happens also to be the affair of all of us. We're all in this bottom together, and we're not going to let any folly o' yours sink the ship before we've cast anchor in the golden harbour o' that Spanish treasure.'
'So it's by your leaves I move now, is it? It's what you'll let me do I must be minding, eh? By God, I wonder I don't pistol thee where thee sits, just to show who's master here.' He ran his wicked eyes over the others. 'And ye're all o' the same mind, I see,' he jeered at them.
It was Halliwell who nerved himself to answer. He slewed his corpulence forward on his chair, and leaned a massive arm on the table.
'Ye got to listen to reason, Cap'n. D'ye suppose Topgallant Charley don't notice what we're all noticing. And d'ye suppose he's the man to play tricks with? As dangerous a fellow under his pimpish clothes and cuckoldy fine manners as ever sailed the seas, and as ye should know, Tom.'
'Ah, bah! He's smooth enough wi' me. He dursn't be aught else.'
'Och, now, don't be deceiving yourself, Captain, darling,' flung in Wogan. 'Smooth he is, to be sure. But it's the smoothness of steel, not of velvet.'
'Why, ye poor gabies, he has a windpipe, I suppose.'
'What, then?' snapped Bundry, his voice harsh and dry.
'It'll slit as easily as another's. And that's what'll happen to it if Charley gets spry wi' me.'
'That,' said Bundry, 'is just what mustn't happen to it. He comes to us with the chance and secret of a fortune, and that's not to be put in jeopardy by any love-sick humours o' yours, Tom. Ye'd best remember it, and leave that woman of his alone.'
'And that's the fact,' said the fiery-faced Ellis. 'Until the treasure's under our hatches, ye'll have to curb your humours, Captain.'
'After that,' said Wogan to conciliate him, 'sure there's no one'll keep the doxy from you if you want her. It's only a little patience we're after asking of ye, Captain.'
Wogan laughed on that, and Ellis and Halliwell laughed with him, loud and heartily, thus breaking the restraint that had been growing there, and drawing, at last, an answering wicked smile from Leach.
But Bundry did not laugh. He was as rarely moved to laughter as to the display of any other emotion. His countenance remained a mask, his eyes--eyes that looked unnaturally black against the grey pallor of his seared face--riveting the Captain with that snake-like gaze, a queer, cold, compelling menace. This he maintained until with a jeer, representing it as a concession to their weak stomachs, Leach growled a contemptuous acquiescence in the circumspect course they thrust upon him.
The better to keep to his undertaking, the Captain did not that afternoon pay his usual visit to de Bernis' hut. When the next day came and went without his having crossed the brook which supplied a natural boundary to the buccaneer encampment, Priscilla ventured a comment upon it. She hoped that she might congratulate herself upon the Captain's abandonment of a habit which was as unpleasant as any experience that had yet been hers.
They had supped, and they were sitting in the little green bay before the hut, glad to breathe the cooling air of sunset. Neither of the men offered any comment upon Miss Priscilla's thanksgiving. A little spell of silence followed. But it appeared from the question presently asked by the Major that her words had touched off a train of thought in his mind. He turned to de Bernis, who sat on the lady's other side. The tone of this sorely tried man was querulous.
'Will you tell me, sir--it has long been in my mind to ask you--what you intend by us when you sail away on your thieving cruise against this Spanish fleet?'
Miss Priscilla frowned slightly in displeasure at the Major's tone and at the ruffling terms in which he chose to express himself.
As for Monsieur de Bernis, he seemed for once utterly taken aback by the soldier's question. It was a long moment before he commanded himself and smiled his queer, slow smile. Then he spoke, but to evade, rather than to answer.
'Ah, Major! Are you very brave, I wonder; or just very stupid?'
'Sink me, sir!' spluttered the Major. 'I'll trouble you to explain yourself.'
'I mean, that sometimes you baffle me by the fanfaronade behind your foolish words.'
It took the Major a moment to recover his breath. 'Sir,' he said, 'I'll not take that from any man.'
'Indeed? You possess, then, the sole right to be provocative? A dangerous privilege. Especially here.' He rose to his feet, but lazily, half-stretching himself. 'I have already pointed out to you, my dear Bartholomew, that your preservation is the strongest proof you could possess of my good faith. But you should not abuse it.'
'Abuse it, sir?' The Major got up fuming, shaking off the restraining hand that the lady placed upon his arm. 'I asked you a plain question, and one to which both Miss Priscilla and I have the right, or so it seems to me, to an answer.'
'You asked it,' de Bernis answered him composedly, 'in uncivil and aggressive terms.'
'I call things by their proper names. By their proper names, blister me!'
De Bernis looked him over. 'Well, well! Be thankful that I don't return the compliment.'
He bowed in leave-taking to Miss Priscilla, put on his plumed hat, and sauntered off in the direction of the buccaneer encampment.
By the time the Major had recovered, de Bernis was twenty yards away. Even then he might have gone after him but for Miss Priscilla's almost stern command to him to sit down. He obeyed her mechanically, exploding as he did so.
'It's not be borne. Stab me! I'll not endure his insolence.'
'Why do you provoke it?' Miss Priscilla's cool voice asked him. 'Why not practise courtesy with him? Or don't you think that we owe him enough to warrant it?'
Her sarcasm added fuel to his anger. 'You defend the knave! It is all that was wanting. You defend him, and against me. Me! In God's name, ma'am, what is he to you, this swaggering pirate hound?'
But Miss Priscilla remained as cool as if she had taken de Bernis for her model in deportment.
'That is not at all the question. The question is what he may be to you if you spare no pains to offend him. He has already made clear to you what should have been plain: that if he were indeed what you insist upon supposing him, he would already have disposed of your inconvenient and ungracious person.'
'Fan me, ye winds!' cried Major Sands, and stamped off before he should utter in the presence of a lady that which a gentleman might afterwards regret.
He found her utterly exasperating. The question that he had asked de Bernis was one that concerned her very closely. Life and death and even more might be involved in it; and yet, as if she did not understand the gravity of the case, she was attaching importance only to his manner, as if that were of any consequence where the matter was so perilous.
But in this the Major did her a serious injustice. She had certainly attached importance to his manner, and she censured it, because she realized the futility of alienating, perhaps exasperating, Monsieur de Bernis, upon whose good-will they depended so entirely, a good-will in which her belief was something more than instinctive. At the same time she had perceived not only the importance of the question asked by Major Sands, but also Monsieur de Bernis' evasion of it; and she was left wondering whether this evasion were simply the result of an irritation caused by the tactless tone the Major adopted, or whether there might be a deeper reason for it. Anxieties which had grown dormant lately, in this peaceful interlude, reawakened in her. She sought to allay them.
That night whilst de Bernis was sleeping at his post before the curtain of her hut, a hand descended gently upon his shoulder. Light as the touch was, he awakened so instantly that it was plain some part of his senses remained on guard even whilst he slept. In the instantaneous act of sitting up, he flung wide the cloak in which he was wrapped, and the moonlight gleamed lividly upon a naked blade. He slept with his drawn sword beside him.
He found Miss Priscilla leaning over him, vaguely visible, a finger to her lips. He looked round swiftly in quest of what might have alarmed her. But all was still; the soft thud and rustle of the tide upon the beach and the resonant snores from the Major's tent were the only sounds upon the stillness of the night. 'What is it?' he softly asked, one leg already drawn under him to bring him to his feet.
A sibilant 'Hush!' reassured him. His muscles, gathered for the spring, relaxed. 'I want to talk to you, Monsieur de Bernis.'
'At your service,' said he.
He changed his position, so as to come to sit with his back to the hut, and she sat down beside him. It was a moment or two before she found opening words.
'Bart asked you a question today. You did not answer it. The terms he chose may be to blame. Naturally they offended you.'
'Ah, no,' he answered softly, subduing his voice to the pitch of her own. 'If a man is an oaf he offends himself, not me.'
She began to explain the Major, to make excuses for him, to account for his peremptoriness on the ground partly of the ways of life he had trodden, partly of the anxieties which were racking him on her behalf.
'This is not necessary, Miss Priscilla,' he presently interrupted her. 'I am not seriously perturbed; in fact, I am not perturbed at all. "Prevail by patience," is the motto of my house, and I have taken it for the guiding maxim of my life. I am not a man of senseless rages and swift fury, I do assure you.'
'There is not the need to assure me,' said she. 'I had observed it.'
She observed also now the oddness of this situation in which she found herself, and the oddness of hearing a man who had lived by lawlessness and who even now was a self-confessed pirate planning a raid upon a Spanish fleet, speaking demurely of his house and its lofty motto. The oddness lay in that whilst glaringly incongruous it seemed to hold no incongruity.
She did not, however, dwell upon the thought. She had sought him here for a definite purpose, and this purpose she now pursued.
'You did not answer Bart's question,' she said again. 'It concerned, you'll remember, your intentions for us when you depart with these men upon this raid. Will you give me the answer now?'
That answer came after a thoughtful pause.
'I wait upon events.'
'Yet you must have some plan in mind, some project,' she pressed him. And after another pause in which he did not reply, she added softly: 'Hitherto I have completely trusted you. It is in this that I have found such peace as is possible in these conditions.'
'And now you trust me no longer.'
'Oh, not that. I should be in despair if that were so. But you'll understand my anxieties even if I have spared you the display of them.'
'You have been very brave in that. Oh, but singularly brave.' There was admiration approaching reverence in his tone. 'Your courage has helped me more than you suppose. Continue by it to help me, you will be helping me to help you.'
'Yet you will tell me nothing of your intentions? The knowledge would be a strength to me.'
'I have said that I wait upon events. But this I'll add: I firmly and honestly believe that you have no cause for any apprehension. It is my belief that I shall bring you safely through. I swear to do so if I live.'
'If you live!'
In the gloom he heard the catch in her breath, the sudden tremulousness of her tone. He made haste to reassure her. 'I should not have added that. It is idle to introduce a fresh doubt of your fate among all the anxieties troubling you.' And with a firm confidence he added: 'I shall live. Don't doubt it.'
'A fresh doubt of my fate!' she echoed. A half-laugh escaped her. 'How meanly you think of me!'
'Meanly?' he cried, his accent a protest. He did not understand. Nor did she enlighten him, although her next question was concerned with his preservation.
'Can you trust these men to keep faith with you? When the Spanish fleet is taken?'
He laughed softly. 'I am sure that I cannot. Once there was honour among buccaneers. But today...And this beast Leach! He knows as much of honour as of mercy or of decency. Oh, no. They have no intention to keep faith with me.'
Alarm and bewilderment robbed her of breath. 'But then? If that is so, what hope have you?'
'The hope of prevailing by my wits. A very confident hope. Opportunity will present itself. It always does; but we do not always recognize it unless we are watching for it. And I am watching. Dismiss your alarms, madam. Only an extraordinary malignity of Fortune could thwart me. And Fortune surely could never be malign to you.'
'You will tell me nothing more?'
'At present there is nothing more to tell. But again I bid you to have faith in me, and to be confident that I shall bring you through unharmed.'
She was silent awhile. Then she sighed. 'Very well,' she breathed. 'Good night, Monsieur de Bernis.'
Long after she had gone, he still sat there, thoughtful, where she had left him. His mind was busy with a problem, seeking the explanation of her outcry: 'How meanly you think of me!' Unless she meant that he thought meanly of her in thinking that her concern for his life was grounded solely in concern for her own, what else could she mean? And how could she possibly mean that?