CHAPTER XIX
FORGOTTEN?
Pabo was hurried away, along a corridor, down a flight of steps, throughthe courtyard, and was thrust into a dungeon at the base of a tower onthe east side of the castle. He had to descend into it by steps, andthen the heavy oak door was shut and locked.
The floor was of the limestone rock, with some earth on it; the wallsnew, and smelling of mortar. One slit, far up, admitted a ray of light,and beneath the door was a space of as much as two finger-breadthsbetween it and the stone sill. No preparations had been made for hisreception. No straw or fern was littered for a bed, nor was a pitcher ofwater set for him, that he might quench his thirst. Pabo was hungry; hehad partaken of nothing since he left Caio save a crust that had beengiven him at Llanwrda on his way. At Llandeilo the soldiers hadpurposely avoided the town, and they had halted nowhere on the wayexcept at the place Llanwrda, where they had given him a portion oftheir breakfast.
Pabo supposed that he was to remain in confinement as long as suited theconvenience of the bishop. He was far from fathoming the purpose of theprelate in endeavoring to cajole or frighten him into a denial of hisown identity. Had he known the figure Bernard was endeavoring to cut athis expense, he would have laughed aloud and made his dungeon wallsring.
He cast himself in a corner against the wall and waited, in theexpectation of his jailer coming in before long with a truss of straw,some bread and water, and possibly chains for his hands or feet. Buthours passed, and no one came.
From where he sat he could see feet go by his door, and it seemed to himthat towards evening these were the feet of women.
No sentinel paced the court outside his doorway. He heard human voices,occasionally, but could distinguish no words.
The evening closed in, and still none attended to him. Feeling in hispouch he found some dried corn from the hermit's store. When wanderingon the mountains he had been wont to thus provide himself, and happilythere remained still some unconsumed. With this he filled his mouth.
He waited on as darkness settled in, so that he could but justdistinguish his window and the gap below the door, and at length fellinto a troubled sleep.
During the night he woke with the cold, and groped for the blankets hehad been accustomed to draw over him in the cell on Mallaen, but here inthe prison of Careg Cennen none were provided. He felt stiff and chilledin his bones with lying on the bare rock. He turned from side to side,but could find no relief.
Surely it was not the intention of Gerald of Windsor to detain him therewithout the modicum of comforts supplied to the worst of criminals. Hehad not offended the Norman baron. If he were not Pabo, as the bishopinsisted, why was he dealt with so harshly? He had not done anything toshow that he was a fanner of rebellion. Against him not a particle ofevidence could be adduced.
The thought that he carried with him the great secret of the hermit alsotroubled him. It is said that no witch can die till she hascommunicated her hidden knowledge to some sister.
It was to Pabo a thought insupportable that he was unable to impart thesecret deposited with him to some one who could use the knowledge forthe good of his oppressed countrymen.
Hitherto the attempts made by the Welsh to shake off their yoke had beendoomed to failure, largely because of their inability to purchaseweapons and stores that might furnish their levies and maintain them inthe field. It was not that in the Cambrian Mountains there had beendeficiency in resolution and lack of heroism; but it was the poverty ofWales that had stood no chance against the wealth of England.
For himself Pabo cared little, but he was deeply concerned that he hadno means of conveying the secret that had been entrusted to him to thosewho could make good use of it.
He dozed off again in cold and hunger, and fell to dreaming that he hadlit on an ingot of pure gold, so large and so weighty that he could nothimself lift it, and opened his eyes to see a golden bar indeed beforehim, but it was one of sunlight, painted on the wall by the rising orbas it shone through the slit that served as window. He waited now withimpatience, trusting that some one would come to him. Yet time passedand none arrived.
He moved to one of the steps, seated himself thereon, and looked at thelight between the bottom of the door and the sill. Again he saw what heconjectured to be women's feet pass by, and presently, but after a longinterval, return; and this time he knew that the feet belonged to awoman, for she stopped where he could see, set down an earthenwarepitcher, and exchanged some words with a soldier, one of the garrison.He could see the pitcher nearly to the handle, but not the hand that setit down and raised it. Yet he distinguished the skirts of the dress andthe tones of voice as those of a woman.
Presently he again heard a voice, that belonged to a female, and by theintonation was sure that what she spoke was in Welsh. She was callingand strewing crumbs, for some fell near his door. Immediately numerouspigeons arrived and pecked up what was cast for them. He could see theirred legs and bobbing heads, and wished that some of the fragments mighthave been for him.
He had hardly formed the wish before a crust, larger than any given tothe birds, fell against his door, and there was a rush of pigeonstowards it. Pabo put forth two fingers through the opening, and drew thepiece of bread within. He had hardly secured this, before another piecefell in the same place, and once more, in the same manner, he endeavoredto capture it. But unhappily it had rebounded just beyond his reach, andafter vain efforts he would have had to relinquish it wholly to thepigeons had not feet rapidly approached and a hand been lowered thattouched the crust and thrust it hastily under the door, and then pushedin another even larger.
After this the feet went away. But still the pigeons fluttered andpecked till they had consumed the last particle cast to them.
Pabo ate the pieces of bread ravenously.
He was not thirsty. The coolness and moisture of the prison preventedhim from becoming parched. What he had received was not, indeed, much,but it was sufficient to take off the gnawing pain that had consumed hisvitals.
Now for the first time he realized the force of the prelate's words whenhe had bidden Gerald of Windsor to cast him--Pabo--into a dungeon,there to be _forgotten_. Forgotten he was to be, ignored as a humanbeing immured in this subterranean den. He was to be left there, totallyunattended and unprovided for. Of this he was now convinced, bothbecause of the neglect he had undergone, and also because of the attemptmade by some Welshwoman, unknown to him, surreptitiously to supply himwith food. This she would not have done had she not been aware of thefate intended for him. He was to be left to die of cold and hunger andthirst, and was not to leave the prison save as a dwindled, emaciatedwreck, with the life driven out of him by privation of all that isnecessary for the support of life. He was now well assured of what waspurposed, and also, and equally assured, that he had in the castle somefriend who would employ all her feminine craft to deliver him from sucha fate.
Slowly, tediously the day passed. Still, occasionally voices wereaudible, but no feet approached the dungeon doorway. Overhead there werechambers, but the prison was vaulted with stone, and even were anypersons occupying an upper story, they were not likely to be heard byone below.
It was, perhaps, fortunate that for some time on the mountain Pabo hadled a very frugal life and had contented himself with parched grain, orgirdle-cakes of his own grinding and making. Yet to these had been addedthe milk of a goat, and for this he now craved. He thought of his poorNanny bleating, distressed with her milk; he thought of how she hadwelcomed him when he returned to the cell. Poor Nanny! What would he notnow give for a draught of her sweet sustaining milk!
Another night passed, and again in the morning there ensued the feedingof the pigeons, and therewith a fall of crusts within his reach by thedoor.
During the day he heard a clatter of hoofs in the courtyard, and byseating himself on the lowest step in his vault, leaning one elbow onanother, and bringing first eye and then ear near to the gap below thedoor, he saw and heard sufficient to lead him to suppose that t
he bishopwas leaving Careg Cennen, to return to his own castle of Llawhaden.
He could even distinguish his strident voice, and catch a few wordsuttered by him, as he turned his face towards the dungeon-door, andsaid: "My good friend Gerald--is, humph! the impostor forgotten?"
"Forgotten, as though he had never been," was the response, in the roughtones of the Norman Baron.
Then both laughed.
Pabo clenched his hands and teeth.
Presently, a clatter; and through the gateway passed the cavalcade.There was no drawbridge at Careg Cennen for there was no moat, no water;but there was a portcullis, and there were stout oak-barred doors.
After the departure of the prelate, the castle fell back again intolistlessness. No sounds reached the ear of Pabo, save the occasionalfootfall of one passing across the court with the leisurely pace of aperson to whom time was of no value.
On this day the prisoner began to be distressed for water. The walls ofhis cell, being of pervious limestone, absorbed all moisture from theair, so that none condensed on it. In the morning he had swallowed thedry crusts with difficulty. He now felt that his lips were burning, andhis tongue becoming dry. If food were brought him on the morrow, hedoubted whether he would then be able to swallow it.
But relief came to him in a manner he had not expected. During the nightrain fell, and he found that by crouching on the steps and putting hisfingers beneath the door, he could catch the raindrops as they trickleddown the oak plank, and convey the scanty supply by this means to hismouth. But with the first glimpse of dawn he saw a means of furnishingwater that was more satisfactory. With his fingers he scraped a channelbeneath the door to receive the falling drops, and then, by heaping thesoil beyond this, forced the water as it ran down the door and dripped,to decant itself in a small stream over the sill. By this means he wasable to catch sufficient to assuage the great agony of thirst.
He was thus engaged when suddenly a foot destroyed his contrivance, andnext moment he heard a key turned in the lock.
He started from the steps on which he was lying, the door was thrownopen, and before him stood a muffled female figure, against the grayearly morning light, diffused through thick rain that filled the castleyard.
Without a word the woman signed to Pabo to follow. She made the gesturewith impatience, and he obeyed without hesitation.
"Follow me!" she whispered in Welsh, and strode rapidly before him, andpassed through a small doorway, a very few steps from the tower, yet inthe south face of the castle. She beckoned imperiously to him to enter,then closed the door on him, went back and relocked that of the dungeon.Next moment she was back through the small door. Pabo found himself in anarrow passage that, as far as he could judge, descended by steps.
The woman bolted the door behind.
The place was dark, but she led on.
The way descended by steps, then led along a narrow passage, with rockon one side and wall on the other, till she reached a great naturalvault--a cave opening into the heart of the crag on which the castle wasbuilt. And here the passage terminated in a wooden stair that descendedinto darkness, only illumined by one point of red light.
Still she descended, and Pabo followed.
Presently she was at the bottom, and now he saw in a hollow of the rockon one side a little lamp burning with a lurid flame.
She struck off the glowing snuff, and it sent up a bright spire oflight.
"Forgotten," said she, turning to Pabo, and throwing back her hood."Forgotten! Nay, Nest will never forget one of her own people--never."
Pabo, the Priest: A Novel Page 19
