The Pirate Part 69

It may be remembered that she had required of him, when they met in the Churchyard of Saint Ninian, to attend in the outer isle of the Cathedral of Saint Magnus, at the hour of noon, on the fifth day of the Fair of Saint Olla, there to meet a person by whom the fate of Mordaunt would be explained to him.--"It must be herself," he said; "and that I should see her at this moment is indispensable. How to find her sooner, I know not; and better lose a few hours even in this exigence, than offend her by a premature attempt to force myself on her presence."

Long, therefore, before noon--long before the town of Kirkwall was agitated by the news of the events on the other side of the island, the elder Mertoun was pacing the deserted aisle of the Cathedral, awaiting, with agonizing eagerness, the expected communication from Norna. The bell tolled twelve--no door opened--no one was seen to enter the Cathedral; but the last sounds had not ceased to reverberate through the vaulted roof, when, gliding from one of the interior side-aisles, Norna stood before him. Mertoun, indifferent to the apparent mystery of her sudden approach, (with the secret of which the reader is acquainted,) went up to her at once, with the earnest e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n--"Ulla--Ulla Troil--aid me to save our unhappy boy!"

"To Ulla Troil," said Norna, "I answer not--I gave that name to the winds, on the night that cost me a father!"

"Speak not of that night of horror," said Mertoun; "we have need of our reason--let us not think on recollections which may destroy it; but aid me, if thou canst, to save our unfortunate child!"

"Vaughan," answered Norna, "he is already saved--long since saved; think you a mother's hand--and that of such a mother as I am--would await your crawling, tardy, ineffectual a.s.sistance? No, Vaughan--I make myself known to you, but to show my triumph over you--it is the only revenge which the powerful Norna permits herself to take for the wrongs of Ulla Troil."

"Have you indeed saved him--saved him from the murderous crew?" said Mertoun, or Vaughan--"speak!--and speak truth!--I will believe every thing--all you would require me to a.s.sent to!--prove to me only he is escaped and safe!"

"Escaped and safe, by my means," said Norna--"safe, and in a.s.surance of an honoured and happy alliance. Yes, great unbeliever!--yes, wise and self-opinioned infidel!--these were the works of Norna! I knew you many a year since; but never had I made myself known to you, save with the triumphant consciousness of having controlled the destiny that threatened my son. All combined against him--planets which threatened drowning--combinations which menaced blood--but my skill was superior to all.--I arranged--I combined--I found means--I made them--each disaster has been averted;--and what infidel on earth, or stubborn demon beyond the bounds of earth, shall hereafter deny my power?"

The wild ecstasy with which she spoke, so much resembled triumphant insanity, that Mertoun answered--"Were your pretensions less lofty, and your speech more plain, I should be better a.s.sured of my son's safety."

"Doubt on, vain sceptic!" said Norna--"And yet know, that not only is our son safe, but vengeance is mine, though I sought it not--vengeance on the powerful implement of the darker Influences by whom my schemes were so often thwarted, and even the life of my son endangered.--Yes, take it as a guarantee of the truth of my speech, that Cleveland--the pirate Cleveland--even now enters Kirkwall as a prisoner, and will soon expiate with his life the having shed blood which is of kin to Norna's."

"Who didst thou say was prisoner?" exclaimed Mertoun, with a voice of thunder--"_Who_, woman, didst thou say should expiate his crimes with his life?"

"Cleveland--the pirate Cleveland!" answered Norna; "and by me, whose counsel he scorned, he has been permitted to meet his fate."

"Thou most wretched of women!" said Mertoun, speaking from between his clenched teeth,--"thou hast slain thy son, as well as thy father!"

"My son!--what son?--what mean you?--Mordaunt is your son--your only son!" exclaimed Norna--"is he not?--tell me quickly--is he not?"

"Mordaunt is indeed _my_ son," said Mertoun--"the laws, at least, gave him to me as such--But, O unhappy Ulla! Cleveland is your son as well as mine--blood of our blood, bone of our bone; and if you have given him to death, I will end my wretched life along with him!"

"Stay--hold--stop, Vaughan!" said Norna; "I am not yet overcome--prove but to me the truth of what you say, I would find help, if I should evoke h.e.l.l!--But prove your words, else believe them I cannot."

"_Thou_ help! wretched, overweening woman!--in what have thy combinations and thy stratagems--the legerdemain of lunacy--the mere quackery of insanity--in what have these involved thee?--and yet I will speak to thee as reasonable--nay, I will admit thee as powerful--Hear, then, Ulla, the proofs which you demand, and find a remedy, if thou canst:--

"When I fled from Orkney," he continued, after a pause--"it is now five-and-twenty years since--I bore with me the unhappy offspring to whom you had given light. It was sent to me by one of your kinswomen, with an account of your illness, which was soon followed by a generally received belief of your death. It avails not to tell in what misery I left Europe. I found refuge in Hispaniola, wherein a fair young Spaniard undertook the task of comforter. I married her--she became mother of the youth called Mordaunt Mertoun."

"You married her!" said Norna, in a tone of deep reproach.

"I did, Ulla," answered Mertoun; "but you were avenged. She proved faithless, and her infidelity left me in doubts whether the child she bore had a right to call me father--But I also was avenged."

"You murdered her!" said Norna, with a dreadful shriek.

"I did that," said Mertoun, without a more direct reply, "which made an instant flight from Hispaniola necessary. Your son I carried with me to Tortuga, where we had a small settlement. Mordaunt Vaughan, my son by marriage, about three or four years younger, was residing in Port-Royal, for the advantages of an English education. I resolved never to see him again, but I continued to support him. Our settlement was plundered by the Spaniards, when Clement was but fifteen--Want came to aid despair and a troubled conscience. I became a corsair, and involved Clement in the same desperate trade. His skill and bravery, though then a mere boy, gained him a separate command; and after a lapse of two or three years, while we were on different cruises, my crew rose on me, and left me for dead on the beach of one of the Bermudas. I recovered, however, and my first enquiries, after a tedious illness, were after Clement. He, I heard, had been also marooned by a rebellious crew, and put ash.o.r.e on a desert islet, to perish with want--I believed he had so perished."

"And what a.s.sures you that he did not?" said Ulla; "or how comes this Cleveland to be identified with Vaughan?"

"To change a name is common with such adventurers," answered Mertoun, "and Clement had apparently found that of Vaughan had become too notorious--and this change, in his case, prevented me from hearing any tidings of him. It was then that remorse seized me, and that, detesting all nature, but especially the s.e.x to which Louisa belonged, I resolved to do penance in the wild islands of Zetland for the rest of my life. To subject myself to fasts and to the scourge, was the advice of the holy Catholic priests, whom I consulted. But I devised a n.o.bler penance--I determined to bring with me the unhappy boy Mordaunt, and to keep always before me the living memorial of my misery and my guilt. I have done so, and I have thought over both, till reason has often trembled on her throne. And now, to drive me to utter madness, my Clement--my own, my undoubted son, revives from the dead to be consigned to an infamous death, by the machinations of his own mother!"

"Away, away!" said Norna, with a laugh, when she had heard the story to an end, "this is a legend framed by the old corsair, to interest my aid in favour of a guilty comrade. How could I mistake Mordaunt for my son, their ages being so different?"

"The dark complexion and manly stature may have done much," said Basil Mertoun; "strong imagination must have done the rest."

"But, give me proofs--give me proofs that this Cleveland is my son, and, believe me, this sun shall sooner sink in the east, than they shall have power to harm a hair of his head."

"These papers, these journals," said Mertoun, offering the pocket-book.

"I cannot read them," she said, after an effort, "my brain is dizzy."

"Clement has also tokens which you may remember, but they must have become the booty of his captors. He had a silver box with a Runic inscription, with which in far other days you presented me--a golden chaplet."

"A box!" said Norna, hastily; "Cleveland gave me one but a day since--I have never looked at it till now."

Eagerly she pulled it out--eagerly examined the legend around the lid, and as eagerly exclaimed--"They may now indeed call me Reimkennar, for by this rhyme I know myself murderess of my son, as well as of my father!"

The conviction of the strong delusion under which she had laboured, was so overwhelming, that she sunk down at the foot of one of the pillars--Mertoun shouted for help, though in despair of receiving any; the s.e.xton, however, entered, and, hopeless of all a.s.sistance from Norna, the distracted father rushed out, to learn, if possible, the fate of his son.

CHAPTER XXII.

Go, some of you cry a reprieve!

_Beggar's Opera._

Captain Weatherport had, before this time, reached Kirkwall in person, and was received with great joy and thankfulness by the Magistrates, who had a.s.sembled in council for the purpose. The Provost, in particular, expressed himself delighted with the providential arrival of the Halcyon, at the very conjuncture when the Pirate could not escape her.

The Captain looked a little surprised, and said--"For that, sir, you may thank the information you yourself supplied."

"That I supplied?" said the Provost, somewhat astonished.

"Yes, sir," answered Captain Weatherport, "I understand you to be George Torfe, Chief Magistrate of Kirkwall, who subscribes this letter."

The astonished Provost took the letter addressed to Captain Weatherport of the Halcyon, stating the arrival, force, &c., of the pirates' vessel; but adding, that they had heard of the Halcyon being on the coast, and that they were on their guard and ready to baffle her, by going among the shoals, and through the islands, and holms, where the frigate could not easily follow; and at the worst, they were desperate enough to propose running the sloop ash.o.r.e and blowing her up, by which much booty and treasure would be lost to the captors. The letter, therefore, suggested, that the Halcyon should cruise betwixt Duncansbay Head and Cape Wrath, for two or three days, to relieve the pirates of the alarm her neighbourhood occasioned, and lull them into security, the more especially as the letter-writer knew it to be their intention, if the frigate left the coast, to go into Stromness Bay, and there put their guns ash.o.r.e for some necessary repairs, or even for careening their vessel, if they could find means. The letter concluded by a.s.suring Captain Weatherport, that, if he could bring his frigate into Stromness Bay on the morning of the 24th of August, he would have a good bargain of the pirates--if sooner, he was not unlikely to miss them.

"This letter is not of my writing or subscribing, Captain Weatherport,"

said the Provost; "nor would I have ventured to advise any delay in your coming hither."

The Captain was surprised in his turn. "All I know is, that it reached me when I was in the bay of Thurso, and that I gave the boat's crew that brought it five dollars for crossing the Pentland Frith in very rough weather. They had a dumb dwarf as c.o.c.kswain, the ugliest urchin my eyes ever opened upon. I give you much credit for the accuracy of your intelligence, Mr. Provost."

"It is lucky as it is," said the Provost; "yet I question whether the writer of this letter would not rather that you had found the nest cold and the bird flown."

So saying, he handed the letter to Magnus Troil, who returned it with a smile, but without any observation, aware, doubtless, with the sagacious reader, that Norna had her own reasons for calculating with accuracy on the date of the Halcyon's arrival.

Without puzzling himself farther concerning a circ.u.mstance which seemed inexplicable, the Captain requested that the examinations might proceed; and Cleveland and Altamont, as he chose to be called, were brought up the first of the pirate crew, on the charge of having acted as Captain and Lieutenant. They had just commenced the examination, when, after some expostulation with the officers who kept the door, Basil Mertoun burst into the apartment and exclaimed, "Take the old victim for the young one!--I am Basil Vaughan, too well known on the windward station--take my life, and spare my son's!"

All were astonished, and none more than Magnus Troil, who hastily explained to the Magistrates and Captain Weatherport, that this gentleman had been living peaceably and honestly on the Mainland of Zetland for many years.

"In that case," said the Captain, "I wash my hands of the poor man, for he is safe, under two proclamations of mercy; and, by my soul, when I see them, the father and his offspring, hanging on each other's neck, I wish I could say as much for the son."

"But how is it--how can it be?" said the Provost; "we always called the old man Mertoun, and the young, Cleveland, and now it seems they are both named Vaughan."