Part 1 (1/2)
Captain Blood
by Rafael Sabatini
CHAPTER I
THE MESSENGER
Peter Blood, bachelor of s besides, seraniums boxed on the sill of hisabove Water Lane in the town of Bridgewater
Sternly disapproving eyes considered hiarded Mr Blood's attention was divided between his task and the stream of humanity in the narrow street below; a stream which poured for the second time that day towards Castle Field, where earlier in the afternoon Ferguson, the Duke's chaplain, had preached a serling, excited groups were hs in their hats and the most ludicrous of weapons in their hands So pieces, and here and there a sas brandished; but more of them were armed with clubs, and most of them trailed the mammoth pikes fashi+oned out of scythes, as formidable to the eye as they were clumsy to the hand There eavers, brewers, carpenters, smiths, masons, bricklayers, cobblers, and representatives of every other of the trades of peace aewater, like Taunton, had yielded so generously of its manhood to the service of the bastard Duke that for any to abstain whose age and strength ad arms was to brand himself a coward or a papist
Yet Peter Blood, as not only able to bear arms, but trained and skilled in their use, as certainly no coward, and a papist only when it suited hieraniu as indifferently as if nothing were afoot One other thing he did He flung after those war-fevered enthusiasts a line of Horace - a poet for whose work he had early conceived an inordinate affection: ”Quo, quo, scelesti, ruitis?”
And now perhaps you guess why the hot, intrepid blood inherited fro sires of his Somersetshi+re mother remained cool amidst all this frenzied fanatical heat of rebellion; why the turbulent spirit which had forced him once from the sedate academical bonds his father would have imposed upon him, should now remain quiet in the very arded theseto the banners of liberty - the banners woven by the virgins of Taunton, the girls frorove, who - as the ballad runs - had ripped open their silk petticoats toMon after them as they clattered down the cobbled street, reveals hisin wicked frenzy upon their ruin
You see, he knew too much about this fellow Monmouth and the pretty brown slut who had borne hith of which this standard of rebellion had been raised He had read the absurd proclaewater - as it had been posted also at Taunton and elsewhere - setting forth that ”upon the decease of our Sovereign Lord Charles the Second, the right of succession to the Crown of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, with the doally descend and devolve upon the h-born Prince Ja Charles the Second”
It had hter, as had the further announcement that ”Ja to be poysoned, and immediately thereupon did usurp and invade the Crown”
He knew not which was the greater lie For Mr Blood had spent a third of his life in the Netherlands, where this same James Scott - who now proclai, et cetera - first saw the light soo, and he was acquainted with the story current there of the fellow's real paternity Far froe between Charles Stuart and Lucy Walter - it was possible that this Monland was not even the illegitin What but ruin and disaster could be the end of this grotesque pretension? How could it be hoped that England would ever s such a Perkin? And it was on his behalf, to uphold his fantastic clais, had been seduced into rebellion!
”Quo, quo, scelesti, ruitis?”
He laughed and sighed in one; but the laugh doh, for Mr Blood was unsympathetic, as are most self-sufficient ht hi his vision and his knowledge, ht have found cause for tears in the conte forth to the sharound on Castle Field by wives and daughters, sweethearts and mothers, sustained by the delusion that they were to take the field in defence of Right, of Liberty, and of Religion For he knew, as all Bridgewater knew and had kno for some hours, that it was Monht The Duke was to lead a surprise attack upon the Royalist aremoor Mr Blood assumed that Lord Feversham would be equally well-infor, at least he was justified of it He was not to suppose the Royalist commander so indifferently skilled in the trade he followed
Mr Blood knocked the ashes from his pipe, and drew back to close hisAs he did so, his glance travelling straight across the street lance of those hostile eyes that watched hied to the Misses Pitt, two aewater in their worshi+p of the handsome Monmouth
Mr Blood smiled and inclined his head, for he was on friendly terms with these ladies, one of whom, indeed, had been for a little while his patient But there was no response to his greeting Instead, the eyes gave hirew a little broader, a little less pleasant He understood the reason of that hostility, which had been daily growing in this past week since Mones The Misses Pitt, he apprehended, conteorous ht now be valuable to the Cause, should stand aloof; that he should placidly s of all evenings, whento the Protestant Cha their blood to place hied
If Mr Blood had condescended to debate thehad his fill of wandering and adventuring, he was now einally intended and for which his studies had equipped him; that he was a man of medicine and not of war; a healer, not a slayer But they would have answered him, he knew, that in such a cause it behoved every man who deemed himself a man to take up arms They would have pointed out that their own nephew Jeremiah, as by trade a sailor, theewater Bay - had quitted the helht But Mr Blood was not of those who argue As I have said, he was a self-sufficient man
He closed the , drew the curtains, and turned to the pleasant, candle-lighted room, and the table on which Mrs Barlow, his housekeeper, was in the very act of spreading supper To her, however, he spoke aloud his thought
”It's out of favour I ains over the way”
He had a pleasant, vibrant voice, whosewas softened and s he had never lost It was a voice that could woo seductively and caressingly, or command in such a way as to compel obedience Indeed, the man's whole nature was in that voice of his For the rest of hiipsy, with eyes that were startlingly blue in that dark face and under those level black brows In their glance those eyes, flanking a high-bridged, intrepid nose, were of singular penetration and of a steady haughtiness that ith his fir, yet it ith an elegance derived from the love of clothes that is peculiar to the adventurer he had been, rather than to the staid medicus he noas His coat was of fine camlet, and it was laced with silver; there were ruffles of Mechlin at his wrists and a Mechlin cravat encased his throat His great black perias as sedulously curled as any at Whitehall
Seeing hi his real nature, which was plain upon hi such a man would be content to lie by in this little backwater of the world into which chance had swept hi he would continue to pursue the trade for which he had qualified hih it may be when you know his history, previous and subsequent, yet it is possible that but for the trick that Fate was about to play hi down completely to the life of a doctor in this Somersetshi+re haven It is possible, but not probable
He was the son of an Irish medicus, by a Somersetshi+re lady in whose veins ran the rover blood of the Frobishers, which may account for a certain wildness that had early manifested itself in his disposition This wildness had profoundly alarularly peace-loving nature He had early resolved that the boy should follow his own honourable profession, and Peter Blood, being quick to learn and oddly greedy of knowledge, had satisfied his parent by receiving at the age of twenty the degree of baccalaureus e, Dublin His father survived that satisfaction by three months only His mother had then been dead some years already Thus Peter Blood came into an inheritance of some few hundred pounds, hich he had set out to see the world and give for a season a free rein to that restless spirit by which he was imbued A set of curious chances led him to take service with the Dutch, then at ith France; and a predilection for the sea made him elect that this service should be upon that elee of a coht in the Mediterranean engagereat Dutch aduen his movements are obscure But we know that he spent two years in a Spanish prison, though we do not kno he contrived to get there It may be due to this that upon his release he took his sword to France, and saw service with the French in their warring upon the Spanish Netherlands Having reached, at last, the age of thirty-two, his appetite for adventure surfeited, his health having grown indifferent as the result of a neglected wound, he was suddenly overwhelmed by homesickness He took shi+p fro driven by stress of weather into Bridgewater Bay, and Blood's health having groorse during the voyage, he decided to go ashore there, additionally urged to it by the fact that it was his mother's native soil
Thus in January of that year 1685 he had coewater, possessor of a fortune that was approxiinally set out froo
Because he liked the place, in which his health was rapidly restored to hih adventures enough for a man's lifetime, he determined to settle there, and take up at last the profession of medicine from which he had, with so little profit, broken away
That is all his story, or so ht, six ht
Dee action no affair of his, as indeed it was not, and indifferent to the activity hich Bridgewater was that night agog, Mr Blood closed his ears to the sounds of it, and went early to bed He was peacefully asleep long before eleven o'clock, at which hour, as you know, Mon the Bristol Road, circuitously to avoid the marshland that lay directly between himself and the Royal Are - possibly counter-balanced by the greater steadiness of the regular troops on the other side - and the advantages he derived fro by surprise upon an army that wasand bad leadershi+p before ever he was at grips with Fevershahbourhood of two o'clock in the h the distant boo to dispel the last wisps of mist over that stricken field of battle, did he awaken from his tranquil slumbers
He sat up in bed, rubbed the sleep fro upon the door of his house, and a voice was calling incoherently This was the noise that had aroused hient obstetrical case, he reached for bedgown and slippers, to go below On the landing he alhtly, in a state of panic He quieted her cluckings with a word of reassurance, and went hiht of the new-risen sun stood a breathless, wild-eyed rime, his clothes in disarray, the left sleeve of his doublet hanging in rags, this youngmonized hi shi+pmaster, Jeremiah Pitt, the nephew of the eneral enthusias, awakened by the sailor's noisy advent; doors were opening, and lattices were being unlatched for the protrusion of anxious, inquisitive heads
”Take your time, now,” said Mr Blood ”I never knew speed made by overhaste”
But the wild-eyed lad paid no heed to the ad, breathless
”It is Lord Gildoy,” he panted ”He is sore woundedat Oglethorpe's Farm by the river I bore him thitherandand he sent me for you Come away! Come away!”
He would have clutched the doctor, and haled hiown and slippers as he was But the doctor eluded that too eager hand
”To be sure, I'll come,” said he He was distressed Gildoy had been a very friendly, generous patron to hier enough to do what he now could to discharge the debt, grieved that the occasion should have arisen, and in such anobleent of the Duke's ”To be sure, I'll coet sos that I may need”
”There's no tiain, ye'll go quickest by going leisurely Come intake a chair” He threw open the door of a parlour
Young Pitt waved aside the invitation
”I'll wait here Make haste, in God's name” Mr Blood went off to dress and to fetch a case of instru the precise nature of Lord Gildoy's hurt could wait until they were on their way Whilst he pulled on his boots, he gave Mrs Barlow instructions for the day, which included the matter of a dinner he was not destined to eat
When at last he went forth again, Mrs Barlow clucking after hi Pitt smothered in a crowd of scared, half-dressed townsfolk -for news of how the battle had sped The news he gave them was to be read in the la air
At sight of the doctor, dressed and booted, the case of instrued himself from those who pressed about, shook off his weariness and the two tearful aunts that clungthe bridle of his horse, he cli, sir,” he cried ”Mount behindwords, did as he was bidden Pitt touched the horse with his spur The little crowd gave way, and thus, upon the crupper of that doubly-laden horse, clinging to the belt of his companion, Peter Blood set out upon his Odyssey For this Pitt, in whoentleer of Fate
CHAPTER TWO
KIRKE'S DRAGOONS