Frenchman's Creek

"And so in a flash I understood much that had puzzled me since my arrival here last night. That servant of yours, a spy of course of the Frenchman's. The friendliness between you, that you knew he was a spy. And those walks of yours, those wanderings in the woods, that elusive look in your eye that I had never seen before, yes, indeed, elusive to me, to Harry, to all men but one man, and I have seen that man tonight." His voice was low now, scarcely above a whisper, and all the time he looked at her with hatred.

"Well," he said, "do you deny it?"

"I deny nothing," she answered.

He picked up the knife from his plate, and began tracing lines with it upon the table, as though abstracted.

"You know," he said, "that you could be imprisoned for this, and possibly hanged, should the truth come out?"

Once again she shrugged her shoulders, and did not answer.

"Not a very pleasant ending, for Dona St. Columb," he said. "You have never been inside a jail, have you? You have never smelt the heat and the filth, you have never tasted the black broken bread, or drunk the water, thick with scum. And the feeling of a rope about your neck, as it tightens, and chokes you. How would you like that, Dona?"

"My poor Rockingham," she said slowly, "I can imagine all these things far better than you can describe them. What is your object? Do you wish to frighten me? Because you are not succeeding."

"I thought it only wise," he said, "to remind you of what may happen."

"And all this," she said, "because my lord Rockingham fancies I smiled upon a pirate when he asked me for my jewels. Tell your story to Godolphin, to Rashleigh and to Eustick, to Harry even - they will say that you are mad."

"Possibly," he said, "with your Frenchman on the high seas, and yourself sitting at your ease in Navron House. But supposing your Frenchman was not on the high seas, supposing he was caught, and bound and brought before you, and we played with him a little, as they played with prisoners some hundred years ago, Dona, with you for audience. I rather believe you would give yourself away."

Once again she saw him as she had seen him earlier in the day, a sleek cat crouching in the long grass, a bird between his claws, so padded, so soft, and she realised, her memory streaking back to the past, how she had always suspected in him some quality of deliberate and cruel depravity which, because of the foolhardy lightness of the age in which they lived, was well concealed.

"It pleases you to be dramatic," she said, "but the days of the thumb-screw and the rack are over. We no longer burn our heretics at the stake."

"Not our heretics perhaps," he said, "but our pirates are hanged, and drawn, and quartered, and their accomplices suffer the same fate."

"Very well," she said, "since you believe me an accomplice, do what you wish. Go upstairs, and unbind the guests who supped here tonight. Wake Harry from his drunken slumbers. Call the servants. Fetch horses, fetch soldiers and weapons. And then when you have caught your pirate, you may hang us both side by side from the same tree."

He did not answer. He stared at her across the table, balancing the knife in his hand.

"Yes," he said, "you would suffer that, would you not, and be proud and glad. You would not mind dying now, because you have had, at last, the thing you wanted all your life. Is not that true?"

She looked back at him, and then she laughed.

"Yes," she said, "it is true."

He turned very white, and the gash on his face showed vivid red in contrast, altering the shape of his mouth, like a strange grimace.

"And it might have been me," he said, "it might have been me."

"Never," she said, "that I swear. Never in this world."

"If you had not left London, if you had not come down here to Navron, it would have been me. Yes, though it were from boredom, from idleness, from indifference, even from disgust, it would have been me."

"No, Rockingham… never…"

He got up slowly from his chair, still balancing the knife in his hands, and he kicked the spaniel away from under his feet, and he rolled his sleeves above his elbow.

She rose too, gripping the sides of her chair, and the murky light from the two candles on the wall flickered down upon his face.

"What is it, Rockingham?" she asked.

Then for the first time he smiled, and he pushed back his chair, and laid one hand on the corner of the table.

"I believe," he whispered, "that I am going to kill you."