Captain Blood: His Odyssey / Одиссея капитана Блада. Рафаэль Сабатини

that the girls of Taunton had even taken their petticoats and made the banners for King Monmouth’s army[2]. People called those men who did not join the army cowards or papists.

      Peter Blood was not a coward and he was a papist only when he wanted to. And he had been a soldier. However, he watered his flowers and smoked his pipe on that warm July evening. He looked at the people in Water Lane and said a line of Horace[3]:

      “Quo, quo, scelesti, ruitis?”[4]

      And now perhaps you understand why he was quiet and did not join the people in Water Lane. He thought that they were fools with their banners of freedom. That Latin line tells you that. To him they were fools running towards their deaths.

      You see, he knew too much about this Duke of Monmouth and his mother. He had read the proclamation posted at the Cross at Bridgewater – and he knew that it had been posted also at Taunton and in other towns. It said that “the high-born Prince James, Duke of Monmouth, son and heir to King Charles the Second was now King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland.” He had laughed at it and he had laughed at the next proclamation. It said that James, Duke of York, had poisoned the King and did not have the right to the Crown.

      He did not know which was the greater lie.

      Mr. Blood had spent a third of his life in the Netherlands. James Scott – who now called himself James the Second – was born there some six-and-thirty years ago, and Mr. Blood knew his story. James Scott was not an heir to the King of England and it was quite possible that he was not even his son. He would only bring ruin to England. He had ordered the people in Water Lane to go to war!

      “Quo, quo, scelesti, ruitis?”

      He laughed. Mr. Blood was very self-sufficient and unsympathetic. His life had taught him so. He knew – as all Bridgewater knew and had known now for some hours – that Monmouth wanted to fight the Royalist army under Feversham that same night. Mr. Blood thought that Lord Feversham would know it too.

      Peter Blood finished smoking, and went to close his window. He looked across the street and met at last the angry look of the eyes that watched him. They were the eyes of the young Misses Pitt. They admired the handsome Monmouth more than anyone in Bridgewater.

      Mr. Blood smiled and greeted them. He was friends with these ladies; one of them had been his patient. But they did not answer his greeting. They looked at him in a cold and angry way. His smile grew a little wider, a little less pleasant. He understood why they did it. The Misses Pitt did not like that he, as a young man who had been at war, stayed at home, smoked his pipe, and watered his flowers. They wanted him to go to Castle Field and fight to put Monmouth on the throne. So did women of all ages in Bridgewater.

      Mr. Blood might have argued with these ladies. He had travelled a lot and now he just wanted to be a doctor. It was what he had always wanted to do and what he had studied. Peter Blood was a man of medicine and not of war; he wanted to help people, not to kill them. But Misses Pitt and other women in Bridgewater would have answered him, he knew, that he should not stay at home now. Misses Pitt would have said that their nephew Jeremy went to fight for freedom and that Jeremy was a sailor. But Mr. Blood did not want to argue. As I have said, he was a self-suficf ient man.

      He closed the window, and turned to the room. Mrs. Barlow was setting the table for supper. He told her what he was thinking about.

      “Those two vinegary virgins over the way are very unfriendly.”

      Peter Blood had a pleasant voice and an Irish accent. In all his travels he had never lost it. It was a voice that could talk nicely or make orders. The man’s whole nature was in his voice. He was tall and thin, his skin was dark, and his eyes blue under the black eyebrows. By the look of his eyes you could see that he thought high of himself. He was always dressed in black, because he was a doctor, but also because he used to travel a lot and loved elegant clothes.

      Now that you know Mr. Blood a little bit better, you might ask yourself how long such a man would stay in the quiet Bridgewater and work as a doctor. He came to Bridgewater some six months ago and he might have stayed there in peace and settled down completely to the life of a doctor. It is possible, but not probable. However, his life would soon change completely.

      Mr. Blood was the son of an Irish doctor and a Somersetshire lady. He got his wild character from his mother, which made his father worry about him. His father had always been unusually peace-loving for an Irishman. He had early decided that the boy should also become a doctor. Peter Blood was quick to learn and greedy of knowledge and received at the age of twenty the degree of baccalaureus medicinae[5] at Trinity College, Dublin[6]. His father died three months after that. By then, his mother had been dead some years already. Thus, Peter Blood inherited some few hundred pounds and decided to travel to see the world. He took service with the Dutch, and then he joined the war with France at sea. He had fought under the famous de Ruyter[7] in the Mediterranean, where that great Dutch admiral lost his life.

      We do not know for sure where he had been after the Peace of Nimeguen[8]. But we know that he spent two years in a Spanish prison. After he had been set free again, he travelled to France, and took service with the French in the war with the Spanish Netherlands.

      When he was thirty-two and had travelled enough, he suddenly became homesick. He took a ship from Nantes to Ireland. But the weather was not good and the ship anchored at Bridgewater Bay. Blood’s health had grown worse, and he decided to stay there for a while. After all, his mother was born there.

      Thus in January 1685 he came to Bridgewater. He had some few hundred pounds with which he had left Dublin eleven years ago.

      He liked the place, and his health grew better there. Besides, he thought that he had had enough adventures for a man’s lifetime, so he decided to settle there, and work as a doctor again.

      Those are the most important parts of his story up to that night, six months later, when the battle of Sedgemoor[9] was fought.

      Mr. Blood did not show any interest in what was happening in Bridgewater and went to bed early. He was asleep long before eleven o’clock. At this hour, as you know, Monmouth rode along the Bristol Road. You also know that he had lost all his advantages because of bad leadership before ever he met Lord Feversham.

      The armies met around two o’clock in the morning. Mr. Blood did not wake up to the sound of cannon and slept peacefully till four o’clock.

      At sunrise, he sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes. Someone was knocking at the door of his house, and a voice was calling him. This was the noise that had woken him up. He thought that someone needed urgent help and took his bedgown and slippers, to go downstairs and see who it was. On the stairs he met Mrs. Barlow who was in panic. He quieted her and went himself to open.

      There in golden light of the morning sun stood a man and his horse. Mr. Blood could see that the young man had ridden as fast as he could. His face was dirty and so were his clothes. The young man opened his mouth to speak, but did not say anything for a long moment.

      In that moment Mr. Blood saw that it was Jeremy Pitt, the young nephew of the ladies opposite, one who had joined the rebellion because of his enthusiasm.

      Jeremy had woken up the neighbours; they were opening their doors and looking out into the street.

      “Take your time, now,” said Mr. Blood.

      But the young man started speaking right away.

      “It is Lord Gildoy. He is wounded… at the farm by the river. I took him there… and… and he sent me for you. Come away! Come away!”

      Jeremy wanted Mr. Blood to go with him right away in bedgown

2

Джеймс Скотт, 1-й герцог Монмут (1649–1685) – внебрачный сын короля Англии Карла II. После смерти отца попытался использовать недовольство английских протестантов новым королём, католиком Яковом II, чтобы захватить престол. Потерпел поражение, попал в плен и был обезглавлен.

3

Гораций (Квинт Гораций Флакк) – 65 г. до н. э. – 27 г. до н. э. – древнеримский поэт-лирик золотого века античной литературы.

4

«Куда, куда стремитесь вы, безумцы?» (лат. цитата из седьмого эпода Горация)

5

(лат.) бакалавр медицины

6

Тринити-колледж (Дублин) – одно из старейших и самых престижных высших учебных заведений Ирландии.

7

Микель Адриансон де Рюйтер (1607–1676) – нидерландский адмирал. Был смертельно ранен в сражении у берегов Сицилии во время войны с Францией.

8

Нимвегенский мир был подписан в 1678–1679 гг. для завершения Голландской войны 1672–1678 гг.

9

Битва при Седжмуре – последнее и решающее сражение восстания Монмута. Произошло 6 июля 1685 г. возле Бриджуотера в графстве Сомерсет, Англия.