The Constable of St. Nicholas, etc

Front matter

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE PRESENT VOLUME. Crown 8iro, cloth extra, with 12 Illustrations by H. St. Paget, 3s. 6d. ; post Svo, illustrated boards, 2s. THE WONDERFUL ADVENTURES OE PHRA THE PHŒNICIAN. " Sir Edwin Arnold declares frankly that he admires ' Phra' enormously, and counsels everybody to read it. Mr. Arnold deserves the recom mendation, for he has worked out his theme with considerable spirit. , . . Love-making and bloodthirstiness divide between them the stage on which Phra enacts his secular melodrama. The reader will certainly not have to complain of any lack of adventure and excitement." — Athenæum. "The author of 'Phra the Phœnician' bears an honoured name, and Sir Edwin Arnold, who contributes an Introduction to the new romance, is to be congratulated upon the promising literary dtsbut of his son.

We pay ' promising,' advisedly ; for while the curious story of the Phœnician trader is in some respects a present performance which leaves little or nothing to be desired, it is still more truly a promise for the future. . . . The book will be read with unflagging interest." — Spectator. " As a simple story of adventure, ' Phra the Phœnician ' is an admirable piece of work." — Academy. "Mr. Arnold has carried out his difficult experiment with skill, and * Phra the Phœnician ' may be confidently recommended. . . . Few who dip into Mr. Arnold's first chapter will put his volume down before they have read the last." — Guardian". " For those who like a stirring tale of romance, graphically told through an abundance of dramatic scenes, we can recommend nothing better than 'Phra the Phœnician.* It is full of life and movement. . . .

There ia a sense of vigour and manhood in the adventures of ( Phra,' combined with a subtle power in word-painting, which sustains the interest to the very close." — Daily Telegraph. "In ' Phra the Phœnician,' Sir. Arnold has found a hero more picturesque than, and quite as marvellous as, the WanderiDg Jew. . . . The power and attraction of the story lie in its striking panorama of historical scenes, brilliantly coloured and vividly alive, to which a certain unity is given by the figure of Phra, and by the consciousness that his first love is hovering near, and in some degree influencing his destiny. . . . Some of the finest passages of the romance are those in which Phra finds himself once more on a spot familiar to him in an earlier stage of being, and all the old associations crowd in his memory. . . .

Prologue

. Just at that time when Edward IV. was waging war on the English border with the disordered forces of James III. of Scotland and threatening the French king in the South with the sinking fires of his imperious spirit ; when in England men's ears were still ringing with the slogans of York and Lancaster, and Europe was torn by twenty forms of ambition and bigotry ; when the ink was still wet upon Caxton's earliest type, and ladies' bonnets were tall as steeples, — about that time there happened, in the easternmost corner of the Mediterranean, amid all the dreadful pageantry of battle and siege, as tragic a story of love and jealousy as any within the records of those restless passions. The beautiful island of Rhodes had then been in the possession of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem for a long period of peace.

Ejected, a hundred and seventy years before, from the strongholds in Palestine which their valour had won at the point of the sword, E they had fallen back at that early point of their history from Nicea and Antioch and Tarsus and Edessa, to find, at the foot of the lovely Grecian archipelago, and still within sight of the coveted land, an island fortress rising ivory-white out of the blue Ægean, and this, in the years that followed, their skill fortified and their generosity embellished to such a degree that to-day engineer and excavator stand delighted and amazed even to look upon those broken ramparts and ruined streets of fallen palaces which once constituted the citadel of the most renowned brotherhood of princely adventurers ever drawn together by a common bond in the history of the world.

Just when Rhodes was at the zenith of its splendour and its muster-roll included scions of every noble house in Christendom, and the image and superscription of a dozen different kings was upon the stream of broad silver pieces that flowed from numberless manors into its coffers, it was called upon to with stand the severest assault that even its eventful records bear witness to. Sultan Mahomet II. had, a few months before, succeeded to the throne of Bajazet, and those who live on the whispers of princes had heard that swarthy potentate swear to himself a grim oath as he put foot upon the dais and conjured up in his mind new realms of conquest — "Constantinople first, and then Rhodes!" Con stantinople had fallen, the last of the royal Paleologi was no more, the bazaars of the beautiful city on the Bosphorus had run ankle-deep with Christian blood, and white-faced Christian girls had been as cheap for many weeks in the slave-stalls of Scutari as chickens on the eve of Ramadan ; and now the great hosts of Sultan Mahomet were gathered on the yellow plains of Ismid, ready and eager for the assault of that other and easternmost outwork of the rival religion, over which the white-cross pennons of St. John floated, a perpetual affront and menace to the forces of the Crescent.

At this time D'Aubusson, the ablest grand master who had ever thrown the priestly robe of his order over a suit of princely mail, held supreme sway in the island. He had long watched the Moslem hosts gathering, and, perceiving that no common struggle was at hand, had filled his granaries with corn, and cleaned out his wells, stocking his arsenals with arms and ammunitions, and repaired the wide sweep of ramparts enclosing the town in a strong crescent of broad foss and high wall. He had drawn in his flotilla of lateen barks into the inner of the two harbours upon the sea front of the town, and strengthened the strong tower of St. Nicholas on the mole near where the long-before fallen Colossus once stood, apportioning each place upon the walls to the different langues of Auvergne, Provence, Aragon, Italy and Castile, England and France; until, as that stalwart servant of the Cross looked over the blue NICHOLAS. 4 Ægean and the green hills far to the northward that May evening in 1480 which ushered in that strange tragedy this story records, he must have felt that, come what would, the Order was prepared, and he at least had done his duty.

And while her priestly autocrat toiled for her safety, Rhodes herself, gay, bright, and thoughtless, seemed to have scarcely an idea of her peril. Her streets each day were thronged with glittering cavalcades of soldiers in steel and silk ; her quays were piled deck high with freights from every corner of the mid land sea; Florentine and Latin, brown Bisque, and laughing Iberian traders thronged her markets, the coral fishers of Oristano piled their pink ware on the white portico steps of the Knights ; sleek Greeks from Larissa, in embroidered caftans and wide petticoats, strolled through the squares with packs of glittering toys upon their backs. There, straying from the motley crowd, you would see a seedy, out at-elbow, ever-thirsty minstrel, in sad sorrel tights, with mandoline strapped on his back, drinking from a smiling Dorian's wine-sack ; and yonder, again, a black rogue, smelling of blood and piracy, from the lonely bays of Pantellaria, was chaffering a Frankish lady's bracelets and a cavalier's gold spurs with a green Christian squire, who took down as kindly as though it were his mother's milk that cut-throat's tale of how he came by them.

Everywhere the busy hum of life resounded in the streets ; the long strings of slaves with mattocks and baskets on their shoulders came and went to the ramparts ; the steep ways from the harbour were blocked with creaking bullock waggons dragging warlike stores from ship to citadel : but Rhodes cared nothing for all that ! Half the chivalry of Europe was within her walls. Money was as plentiful, thanks to that glittering throng that held her, as olives round Oppido. Every day saw new ship-loads of gay Christian warriors arrive from over seas. The long white Street of the Knights, bright with the banners and bannerets of those who lodged within its marble porticoes, echoed to the laughter and song of a dozen different lands as that fair fortress city stood waiting the shock of the Moslem hosts.

The sober black garb of the Order of St. John, with the white cross borne by each knight upon his shoulder, was merging into the splendid habiliments and princely ostentation of those who had come to its succour. Its canons, once monastic, had been relaxed in long spells of peace. The plain three meals a day, of rye bread, and fish, and water, which had served the brotherhood when the strong cities of Judæa and Samaria tumbled to the dust even at the shaking out of their pennons, had long since grown into luxurious banquets, each knightly bailiff striving to make his auberge table the most lavish and brilliant in the camp. The stern sumptuary simplicity of an earlier time had given way to sumptuous extravagance : the dark cloak of St. John had for many years only half veiled the richest armour that Spanish smiths could forge or Persian jewellers enrich.

" Brotherhood, poverty, and chastity," those ancient vows, had long sat lightly on the necks of these good soldiers of the Cross ; and now, as triple incentive to luxury and display, were all these jolly comrades new come with dancing colours, and gay trapping, and troops of noisy yeomen, — bringing with them a whiff of outer air to leaven the stagnant atmosphere which, God wot, they said, still hung somewhat heavily about the sweet Seer's cloister walls ; and troops of minstrels, and wallets itching to unload their store of golden coins, and all the newest love-songs of Provence and fair Castile, and all the quaintest fashions of gay Paris and Milano ! No priestly simplicity was proof against the infection of those gallant swordsmen, and gay cavalcades went out to hawk, each morning, amongst the olive-covered hills beyond the city's ramparts, and the silver trappings of the chargers rang all day in the narrow streets, and the broad bay was bright as a bed of flowers as every glittering barge with gonfalons and streamers trailing in the pale blue harbour water disembarked its lordly Christian conscripts.

And at night the fishers of Aloupo said the bronzed sky for many a league gleamed with the thousand twinkling lights of Rhodes— a thousand watch-fires glittered in the dusk upon her roof-tops ; and jest and laugh and song echoed until the morning star was high, amid grey cloisters used only to vesper bell and midnight orisons. Amongst all that noisy throng, the most reckless in the pursuit of pleasure, the most spendthrift amongst a galaxy of nobles who felt the Moslem steel already waving at their throats, and well understood that humanity goes forth from the world as naked and disendowed of gear as it came to it, was the young knight Oswald de Montaigne. Supple and tall in person, a great strength combined with an unusual grace of limb and movement, his figure was one no less noticeable in a peaceful throng than in the thickest dust of a hard-fought melee.

His strong black hair, clipped as short as the stern necessities of his helmet demanded, framed a handsome and masterful face ; while his soldierly carriage did all that still remained to be done to make him in outward show the very perfection of an adventurous soldier of the age, ambitious, headstrong, and gallant. That he had all the highest qualities of his profession half Europe knew. Since Roland first flaunted in steel and gold before the eyes of admiring Christendom, there had been scarcely another captain of like age and station of whose desperate valour in war or many accomplishments in peace more tales were told. His father, old Louis de Montaigne, was a type of the jolly, reckless, fighting baron, who, having pawned his inheritance for a band of hard-hitting hard-drinking mercenaries and the wherewithal to keep them in leathern jerkins and so much sack each man as was necessary to secure their grateful fidelity, had wandered through Europe for forty years, singing, drinking, and fighting with those gallant swashbucklers cantering at his sorrel stallion's tail.

Wherever knocks were hardest and blood ran reddest there might old Louis de Montaigne have been seen waving his tattered pennon in the dusty air and urging on those russet-clad spears of his, with a large appetite for contest and a true love for the jolly clatter of good steel on stout helms which gave small heed to any niceties of cause or quarrel. There was scarcely a burly warden at any castle from Oldenburgh by the shallow northern sea to where at strong Hermanstadt the dim Wallachian pines begin who did not know that keen old fighter's grizzled face; and there was no court in Europe where he was not sure of civility, with meat and wine and shelter for him and his, and fighting on the morrow if it could by any means be compassed. For forty years he drank, and pillaged, and threw his gallant rusty blade into such side of the scales of quarrel as he thought would pay the best ; and at the end of that time, still redoubtable and unsatiated with the strons wine of adventure, dear to him as the breath he breathed, the old soldier found himself penniless, with his fair band shrunk by sword and wassail to a scanty handful.

Thereat, indomitable, he cast about to see how best his fortunes might be mended ; and luck sent in his way an English woman of fair face and, what was not less important to the veteran, noble revenues. What special points in the grim soldier's character or person touched the soft heart of the lady is not upon record, nor is it known whether that fair citadel was carried by sap or escalade, but in a very few months she was married to De Montaigne ; and in a few other short weeks he had converted every available penny that could be raised upon the lady's possessions into habiliments and horses for a new band of free-lances : and with this troop behind, and his hardy wife on a good Flemish steed at his side, he was in mail again, and off into the wilds of Hungary, to espouse the first fantastic feud that gave good chance of pay, pillage, and hard fighting.

Oswald de Montaigne, the only child of this strange pair, if he was not born in the saddle, drew in the hot incense of fight with his earliest sigh. From tent to tent, and camp to camp, he passed while yet in first swaddling clothes, the solace of his mother's arms scarce softening to him the roughness of the wild free life they led. And when he grew a little bigger it was still the same. Now his nursery would be the plundered palace of a king, his baby bed on tumbled heaps of silk and minever, his play things the glittering treasures of ancient princedoms which soldier playmates shot out before him, then the next night his cradle was a whin bush on a lonely hill, with half a soldier's rain-soaked cloak for wrapping, and the dim smouldering camp fires for taper ! When the boy could lisp the first words he said were " Pikes and halberds."

His young unlettered eyes learnt alphabets from charts and plans of towns his father's mercenaries had sacked and burned. The very food he took was tinged with the smell of blood and powder. Battle-fields were playgrounds to him ; and sometimes he would sit in front of his mother, amongst the baggage wagons under the fringe of the green Sclavonian pines, and laugh and shriek with pleasure, and clap his small red hands in glee, to see the fierce bright pageantry of fight go humming down the valley far below — shouting, as though he knew it all already, when the green flags and the red and the white perked and tossed and sank and rose again in the furious stream of battle, and the good white spears, clothing the hillsides with a glistening harvest as thick as rye, bent and rustled, and came rolling down in long, smooth waves, like the same rye when the strong wind blows upon it in September !

It was a rude training, but such as it was it was all old De Montaigne's heir could get. When Oswald was eighteen, and already of unusual strength and high accomplishment in the exercises of war and courts, both his father and mother died. Almost all his mother's fortune had by this time slipped through the open fingers of her warlike lord. Yet there was something still left ; and that the young De Montaigne might know how much or how little this came to, and have at least a chance of that gentler education for which his rough life in the field had given him no leisure, his mother's only brother, Sir John Walsingham, called him to England. Oswald went, and found in his uncle a tough old soldier of the civil wars, who had hung his honourable sword up for ever over the huge fireplace in his ancestral hall, and dedicated the rest of his life to the care of a fair young daughter, motherless like Oswald himself, and to the wide sweep of fertile territory which lay round his castle and paid him tribute.

These two, in their generous, open way, took Oswald to their hearts. His laughing soldier spirit charmed them, his strength and prowess in every game that was set afoot made the stout old baron blush with pleasure in such a kinsman, and it set fair Margaret's maiden heart beating as it had never beat before. Then, at night, by the great fire, Oswald would tell such wondrous tales of brave deeds and hard fights, that old Sir John swore over his burnt sack that they were as good as anything he had ever done himself; and Margaret's fair eyes spoke to Oswald's sweet if dangerous commendation. Thus it came about that, in a month or two, De Montaigne had won his cousin's heart ; in boyish fashion they had plighted a troth under the cedar trees in the chase which one of them was to for get in a few short weeks; and Oswald might have descended into the pleasant ways of peace for good and all, but that just then a murmur came of new fighting over in Europe, and, on a sudden, the old adventurous hunger was hot within him, his blood set running in a new direction, he grew as restless as a chained passage hawk in spring time, the broad comfort of that stately English home was heavier to him than prison bars and bonds— not even the brand new virgin love of that sweet brown-haired girl could keep Oswald de Montaigne when his father's spirit moved within him and he heard the thunder of charging squadrons and smelt the smoke of battle in the ah-.

He mortgaged in haste to his secretly sympathizing uncle all that was left of his mother's share in a great inheritance, and, pressing the white and tearful Margaret once again in his arms, Oswald was away, back into the strife and the glitter and the hardship, with the recollection of the pleasant English life behind him growing daily fainter and more faint in his mind. When that plunge was taken Oswald was a raw youth, of big frame, without name or reputation, — when he emerged, ten years afterwards, he emerged with the accolade of knighthood on his shoulders, a reputation for courage and prowess second to none of his years ; and if, along with the rapidly swelling chorus of his fame, there came some dark whispers from the obscurity of those intermediate years — some half-heard rumours that young Oswald de Montaigne had proved as reckless and extravagant in intervals of peace as he had shown more than once cruel and unscrupulous in war — the rumours were but half articulate, and made but small way against the strong tide of his rising fame.

Adventures are to the adventurous. Everything Oswald attempted prospered. One brilliant deed followed another in rapid succession ; campaign succeeded campaign, until presently there came a lull upon European politics, and it seemed that the young Count's sword was to be sheathed for an in definite time just when it was beginning to reap the rich harvest of renown its owner coveted so dearly. Even then it did not occur to him to return to England and his kinsmen. He still cherished a vague affection for his beautiful cousin — he had sent her costly furs and gems now and again, — and once or twice, when his resources had been at the lowest, Oswald de Montaigne had wondered whether it were not better to throw down his sword and share a dull, happy, eventless English state with that sweet heiress who in his wildest mood he never doubted would be his whensoever it might please him to ask.

But this fancy never lasted more than an hour or two, and when that lull fell upon the princedoms of Europe he turned his eyes to where trouble was brewing most quickly, and the knights of the famous Order of St. John of Jerusalem were preparing to make a desperate stand at the easternmost bulwark of THE COaVSTABLE OF ST. NLCHOLAS. 14 Christendom against the Moslem. He saw that in the bonds of an Order which included in its chivalry members of all the noblest families in Europe, and was itself by gift and charter of princely rank, honour was to be gained and adventure had by one such as himself. Nor was the astute Peter D'Aubusson, the popular grand master of the Order, at all loth to secure the services, at a critical period of their history, of a captain whose strong arm was already a terror in the front of battle, and whose ready wit had saved many a desperate enterprise from ruin.

In brief, Oswald joined the Order, not yet as a brother bound by its strict vows — these would come in time, — but as a stout ally and comrade of the great guild of priestly soldiers. And thus he had waited. For one reason or another the crisis that over hung Rhodes delayed its coming month by month, and during this time of idleness, with all the luxurious resources of that fair fortress city at command, those black rumours that had gathered round the young soldier's name came to a focus. There was not a canon of the Order he had not flouted in secret, the preceptors whispered; the once modest poverty of the brotherhood, they said, had been hastened on its downward road to sumptuous wickedness since Oswald cast in his lot with theirs ; the chalices of those Christian knights which once were filled with water twice a day from the valley springs now flowed over with strange strong draughts ; the frightened villagers of Marmaras upon the mainland had begun to vow Christian soldiers were growing worse neighbours than Pantellarian pirates ; strange echoes of riot and revelry unheard before sounded in the city's quiet streets, strange streams of barbarous money flowed into the markets of the town, strange silks and soft stuffs that did not suit with the black livery of the brotherhood passed into that citadel of holy poverty, strange sandal-bells tinkled on those austere pave ments, strange gleams of the white robes the light Cimmerian women wear glinted at times between the moonlit pillars, — all this, and much more, was whispered in the town. And so things stood on the eve of that strange story of love, and hate, and jealousy which now begins.

Chapter I

Led on by a crafty Greek of low origin, Isaac Saluzzio, the young Count de Montaigne .had at last pledged his name and credit so deeply that the only escape seemed to be temporary retirement and the prompt acceptance of that golden hand which he believed his cousin still held out to him. He was beset on every side by impatient creditors and sinister looks, when, at the very crisis of his fate, a thrill of expectation ran through Rhodes to know that the Moslem was coming — and coming upon her this time in earnest, — with an army which, the frightened watchers said, covered the Syrian hills like locusts in corn time, and a white winged fleet that rode as numerous along the edge of the sea as white waves in a December storm. Oswald at this moment held the post of Constable of the tower of St. Nicholas, at the entrance of the harbour of Rhodes.

Up in the extreme summit of that fortress-keep he had furnished himself a sleeping-apartment, and, luxurious as he was no less than inflexible in danger and hardship, he had softened the grim plainness of that great grey vaulted chamber with tapestries and silks and hangings, and put a mighty bed, deep heaped with downy coverlets such as an emperor might have envied, upon one side ; and piled silk cushions by the window, and Damascus carpets on the turret balcony outside wherefrom you could see all over Rhodes and half the neighbouring islands. To this room, grim and grey outside, and inside soft and quaint and dainty, he came, dusty and tired with a long day's work on the eve of the great siege, and, tossing off his heavy armour, threw himself wearily upon the couch by the embrasure. But the rest he asked was the last thing the Fates had in store for that strong young soldier.

Before he had had time to even glance over the wonderful panorama of sea and city spread beneath, a footstep sounded upon the stairs, and, in obedience to his permission, a serving brother of the Order entered, who, making his respectful obeisance on the threshold, came forward, tendering as he did so a folded letter to the knight. " What ! more writing, Morrogh, — more petitions, more drafts?" he cried fretfully, as his eye fell upon it. " I tell you, Morrogh, I am sick of the very sight of all such things, and hate their musty smell. Put it on the table, and, good fellow, instead, bring me up a jug of that Cyprus wine. I would not open another scroll to-day though it were to save the necks and money-bags of all the traders from c here to Cadiz." And contemptuously turning his back upon the missive and the bearer, Oswald threw him self back upon the cushions once more, and ran his fingers through his black hair.

"But, sir," said the brother, hesitatingly, "this message is marked urgent." " And I tell you, Morrogh, that nothing is urgent but that drink I crave for." "It was sent ashore by a ship's captain." " That doubly damns it, then ; for when did sailor ever pen anything that a Christian landsman could read or understand ? " "I was to give the letter into your own hands and none other, and with it to say the captain brings a rich freight of Eastern stuffs, by sample sent whereof he hopes to gain and does beseech your valour's countenance and indulgence in the matter of harbour dues " " To deepest Hades with him and them ! " " And by way of passengers, I was to add, that the captain brings to Rhodes an English lady and a knight who are flying from the mainland, where, but a few days back, the Turks have slain the others of their company in that pilgrimage to the Holy City which they were making. 'Tis said, Count de Montaigne, by the sailor who landed with this letter, which itself coming from the lady, that she is of kin to you."

And the duteous Morrogh, shooting this last shaft with bent head and humble eyes, waited with the stealthy curiosity of a servant who scents a mystery in his master's affairs to see how Oswald took it. If he hoped the shaft would tell he could scarcely have been disappointed. De Montaigne had heard some time before that Margaret Walsingham and her father had set out for the Holy City, on one of those fantastic pilgrimages which it was the fashion with gentle and simple alike to make. In the hurry and glitter of his life even the very fact had slipped from his memory, and here was a woman come to his door, a fugitive from the shrine to which, it now flashed upon him, Margaret had set out but a little time before — and claiming kinship ! He had no other kin. Was it possible that, at the very instant when life turned upon his cousin's will, and nothing could save him from the ruin he had courted but that rescue which she alone could make, that the kind Fates had sent her straight into his arms ?

A right royal chance indeed — a splendid freak of fortune, that would mend in an hour the disaster that had been closing on him for months ! And Oswald, forgetting fatigue and weariness, forgetting even the presence of the watchful servitor, was on his feet in a minute, and, striding across the room, eager, exultant, and flushed with expectant pleasure, stretched out his hand for the letter. " Here, give it to me! " cried the soldier, and took the packet with quick and nervous fingers, in his hurry waiting not to untie the silk threads that bound it, but— an evil omen — ran his Milan dagger point across them, then, as they fell off, checked himself, and, ashamed that strange eyes should witness his changing colour, pointed the servitor to the door. That humble disciple of St. John bowed low, and without a word left the room.