Part 17

“I do not know, mother,” said the son, his head hanging, his hands hanging loose between his knees as he sat upon a little stool. He wore his one robe still, but he had tucked the edge into his girdle, for he was not used to robes, and now he put it in more firmly and then he said slowly, “I do not know what else was said, a great deal here and there in the town we heard, because so many are to be killed tomorrow and they make a holiday. What else was said, my cousin?”

Then the cousin’s son scratched his chin and swallowed hard and stared at the faces round about him in the room and he said, “There was a great deal said by those town folk, but I dared not ask much for when I asked more closely what the pother was about the guards at the gaol turned on me and said, ‘Are you one of them, too? What is it then to you if they are killed?’ And I dared not say I was the cousin of one to be killed. But we did find a chief gaoler and we gave him some money and begged for a private place to speak in and he led us to a corner of the gaol behind his own house and we told him we were honest country folk and had a little poor land and rented more, and that there was one among the doomed to die who was a distant relative, and if we could save him then we would for honor’s sake, since none of our name had died under a headsman’s blade before. But only if it did not cost too much since we were poor. The gaoler took the silver then and asked how the lad looked and we told him and he said, ‘I think I know the lad you mean, for he has been very ill at ease in gaol, and I think he would say all he knows, except there is a maid beside him bold as any I have ever seen who keeps him brave. Yes, some are hard and bold and do not care however they may die or when they die. But that lad is afraid. I doubt he knows what he has done or why he dies, for he looks a simple country lad they have used for their bidding and made great promises to him. I believe his crime is that he was found with certain books upon him that he gave among the people freely, and in the books are evil things said of overturning all the state and sharing all the money and the land alike.’”

Then the mother looked at her elder son and broke out in fresh weeping and she moaned, “I knew we ought to let him have some land. We might have rented a little more and given him a share--but no, this elder son of mine and his wife must hold it all and grudge him everything--”

Then the elder son opened his mouth to speak, but the old cousin said quietly, “Do not speak, my son. Let your mother blame you and ease herself. We all know what you are and what your brother was and how ill he hated any labor on the land or any labor anywhere.”

So the son held his peace. At last the cousin’s son said on, “We asked the gaoler then how much silver it would take to set the lad free, and the gaoler shook his head and said that if the lad were high of place and son of some great rich and mighty man then doubtless silver used could set him free. But being a country lad and poor no man would put his life in danger for all that we could give, and so doubtless he must die.”

At this the mother shrieked, “And shall he die because he is my son and I am poor? We have that land we own and we will sell it to free him. Yes, we will sell it this very night,--there are those in this hamlet--”

But the elder son spoke up at this talk of his land and he said, “And how then will we live? We can scarcely live even as it is and if we rent more and at these new and ruinous rates we have now we shall be beggars. All we own is this small parcel of land and I will not sell it, mother. No, the land is mine--I will not sell it.”

And when he said this his wife spoke up, to say the only thing she had said all the time, for she had sat there quietly listening, her pale face grave and showing nothing and she said, “There is the son I have in me to think of now.”

And the man said heavily, “Aye, it is he I think of.”

Then was the old mother silent. Yes, she was silent and she wept a while and thereafter all that night whenever fresh words broke forth there was but this one answer to them all.

* * * * *

When the dim dawn came near, for they had sat the night through, the mother gathered some strange strength she had and said, “I will go myself. Once more I will go into the town and wait to see my little son if he must go out to die.” And they laid their hands upon her arm and begged her not to go, and the son said earnestly, “Mother, I will go and fetch him--afterwards--for if you see the sight you yourself will die.” But she said, “What if I die?”

She washed her face and combed the bit of gray hair left on her head and put a clean coat on herself as ever she was used to do when she went townwards, and she said simply, “Go and fetch my cousin’s ass. You will let me have it, cousin?”

“Oh, aye,” the cousin said helplessly and sadly.

So the son and cousin’s son went and fetched the ass and set the old mother on its back and they walked to the town beside it, a lantern in the son’s hand, for dawn was still too faint to walk by.

Now was the mother weak and quiet and washed by her tears, and she went almost not knowing what she did, but clinging to the ass’s back. Her head hung down and she did not look once to see the dawn. She stared down into the pale dusty road that scarcely showed yet through the darkness. The men were silent, too, at that grave hour, and so they went winding with the road to the south and entered in toward the southern gate that was not opened yet as they came because the day was still so early.

But there were many waiting there, for it had been noised about the countryside that there would be this great beheading and many came to see it for a show and brought their children. As soon as the gates were opened they all pressed in, the mother on her ass, and the two men, and they all turned to that piece of ground near the city wall within a certain open space. There in the early morning light a great crowd stood already, thick and pressed and silent with the thought of this vast spectacle of death. Little children clung hard to their parents in nameless fear of what they did not know, and babes cried out and were hushed and the crowd was silent, waiting hungrily, relishing in some strange way and hating, too, the horror that they craved to see.

But the mother and the two men did not stay in the crowd. No, the mother whispered, “Let us go to the door of the gaol and stand there,” for in her poor heart she still held the hope that somehow when she saw her son some miracle must happen, some way must come whereby she could save him.

So the man turned the ass’s head toward the gaol and there it was, and beside its gate set in the high wall spiked with glass along the top they waited. There a guard stretched himself and by him a lantern burned low, the candle spilling out a heap of melted tallow red as blood, until a chill wind blew up suddenly with the dawn and blew the guttering light out. There the three waited in the dusty street, and the mother came down from the ass and waited, and soon they heard the sound of footsteps stirring, and then the sound of many footsteps made on stone and marching and then there was a shout, “Open the gates!”

The guards sprang up then and stood beside the gates erect, their weapons stiff and hard across their shoulders, and so the gates swung open.

Then did the mother strain her eyes to see her son. There came forth many persons, youth tied to youth and two by two, their hands bound with hempen thongs, and each two tied to the two ahead. At first they seemed all young men, and yet here and there were maids, but hard to tell as maids, because their long hair was shorn and they wore the garments that the men did, and there was nothing to show what they were until one looked close and saw their little breasts and narrow waists, for their faces were as wild and bold as any young man’s.

The mother looked at every face, at this one and at that, and suddenly she saw her own lad. Yes, there he walked, his head down, and he was tied to a maid, and his hands fast to hers.

Then the mother rushed forward and fell at his feet and clasped them and gave one loud cry, “My son!”

She looked up into his face, the palest face, his lips white and earthen and the eyes dull. When he saw his mother he turned paler still and would have fallen had he not been bound to the maid. For this maid pulled at him and would not let him fall, nor would she let him stay, and when she saw the old white-haired woman at his feet she laughed aloud, the boldest, mirthless laugh and she cried out high and shrill, “Comrade, remember now you have no mother and no father, nor any dear to you except our common cause!” And she pulled him on his way.

Then a guard ran out and picked the mother up and threw her to one side upon the road and there she lay in the dust. Then the crowd marched on and out of sight and to that southern gate, and suddenly a wild song burst from them and they went singing to their death.

At last the two men came and would have lifted up the mother, but she would not let them. She lay there in the dust a while, moaning and listening in a daze to that strange song, yet knowing nothing, only moaning on.

And yet she could not moan long either, for a guard came from the gaol gate and prodded her most rudely with his gun and roared at her, “Off with you, old hag--” and the two men grew afraid and forced the mother to her feet and set her on the ass again and turned homeward slowly. But before they reached the southern gate they paused a while beside a wall and waited.

They waited until they heard a great roar go up, and then the two men looked at each other and at the old mother. But if she heard it or knew what it was, she made no sign. She sat drooping on the beast, and staring into the dust beneath its feet.

Then they went on, having heard the cry, and they met the crowd scattering and shouting this and that. The men said nothing nor did the old mother seem to hear, but some cried out, “A very merry death they died, too, and full of courage! Did you see that young bold maid and how she was singing to the end and when her head rolled off I swear she sang on a second, did she not?”

And some said, “Saw you that lad whose red blood spurted out so far it poured upon the headsman’s foot and made him curse?”

And some were laughing and their faces red and some were pale, and as the two men and the mother passed into the city gate, there was a young man there whose face was white as clay and he turned aside and leaned against the wall and vomited.

But if she saw or heard these things the mother said no word. No, she knew the lad was dead now; dead, and no use silver or anything; no use reproach, even if she could reprove. She longed but for one place and it was to get to her home and search out that old grave and weep there. It came across her heart most bitterly that not even had she any grave of her own dead to weep upon as other women had, and she must go and weep on some old unknown grave to ease her heart. But even this pang passed and she only longed to weep and ease herself.

* * * * *

When she was before their door again she came down from the ass and she said pleading to her elder son, “Take me out behind the hamlet--I must weep a while.”

The cousin’s wife was there and heard it and she said kindly, shaking her old head and wiping her eyes on her sleeves, “Aye, let the poor soul weep a while--it is the kindest thing--”

And so in silence the son led his mother to the grave and made a smooth place in the grass for her to sit upon and pulled some other grass and made it soft for her. She sat down then and leaned her head upon the grave and looked at him haggardly and said, “Go away and leave me for a while and let me weep.” And when he hesitated she said again most passionately, “Leave me, for if I do not weep then I must die!”

So he went away saying, “I will come soon to fetch you, mother,” for he was loath to leave her there alone.

Then did the mother sit and watch the idle day grow bright. She watched the sun come fresh and golden over all the land as though no one had died that day. The fields were ripe with late harvest and the grain was full and yellow in the leaf and the yellow sun poured over all the fields. And all the time the mother sat and waited for her sorrow to rise to tears in her and ease her broken heart. She thought of all her life and all her dead and how little there had been of any good to lay hold on in her years, and so her sorrow rose. She let it rise, not angry any more, nor struggling, but letting sorrow come now as it would and she took her measure full of it. She let herself be crushed to the very earth and felt her sorrow fill her, accepting it. And turning her face to the sky she cried in agony, “Is this atonement now? Am I not punished well?”

And then her tears came gushing and she laid her old head upon the grave and bent her face into the weeds and so she wept.

On and on she wept through that bright morning. She remembered every little sorrow and every great one and how her man had quarreled and gone and how there was no little maid to come and call her home from weeping now and how her lad looked tied to that wild maid and so she wept for all her life that day.

* * * * *

But even as she wept her son came running. Yes, he came running over the sun-strewn land and as he ran he beckoned with his arm and shouted something to her but she could not hear it quickly out of all her maze of sorrow. She lifted up her face to hear and then she heard him say, “Mother--mother--” and then she heard him cry, “My son is come--your grandson, mother!”

Yes, she heard that cry of his as clear as any call she ever heard her whole life long. Her tears ceased without her knowing it. She rose and staggered and then went to meet him, crying, “When--when--”

“But now,” he shouted laughing. “This very moment born--a son--I never saw a bigger babe and roaring like a lad born a year or two, I swear!”

She laid her hand upon his arm and began to laugh a little, half weeping, too. And leaning on him she hurried her old feet and forgot herself.

Thus the two went to the house and into that room where the new mother lay upon her bed. The room was full of women from the hamlet who had come to hear the news and even that old gossip, the oldest woman of them all now, and very deaf and bent nigh double with her years, she must come too and when she saw the old mother she cackled out, “A lucky woman you are, goodwife--I thought the end of your luck was come, but here it is born again, son’s son, I swear, and here be I with nothing but my old carcass for my pains--”

But the old mother said not one word and she saw no one. She went into the room and to the bed and looked down. There the child lay, a boy, and roaring as his father said he did, his mouth wide open, as fair and stout a babe as any she had ever seen. She bent and seized him in her arms and held him and felt him hot and strong against her with new life.

She looked at him from head to foot and laughed and looked again, and at last she searched about the room for the cousin’s wife and there the woman was, a little grandchild or two clinging to her, who had come to see the sight. Then when she found the face she sought the old mother held the child for the other one to see and forgetting all the roomful she cried aloud, laughing as she cried, her eyes all swelled with her past weeping, “See, cousin! I doubt I was so full of sin as once I thought I was, cousin--you see my grandson!”

THE JOHN DAY COMPANY INC.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

The cover image for this eBook was created by the transcriber and is entered into the public domain.