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

Pitt, you can ask him.”

      “Oh! Master Pitt is a traitor. He admitted it. Is that your witness?”

      “There is also Master Baynes here, who can answer to it.”

      “Good Master Baynes will have to answer for himself. Come, come, sir; are these your only witnesses?”

      “I could bring others from Bridgewater, who saw me set out that morning.”

      The Judge smiled. “It will not be necessary. I do not want to waste more time on you. Answer me only this: When Master Pitt came to ask you for help, did you know that he supported Monmouth?”

      “I did, my lord.”

      “You did! Ha!” Lord Jefrf eys looked at the scared jury and laughed. “Yet you went with him?”

      “To help a wounded man, as was my duty.”

      “Your duty, you say? Your duty is to your King and to God. But let it pass. Did he tell you who needed help?”

      “Lord Gildoy – yes.”

      “And you knew that Lord Gildoy had been wounded in the battle, and on what side he fought?”

      “I knew.”

      “And yet you went to help him?”

      Peter Blood lost patience for a moment. “I cared only for his wounds, not his politics.”

      Voices from the galleries and even from the jury approved him. It made the judge even angrier.

      “Jesus God!” Lord Jeffreys turned, pale, to the jury. “He has said enough to hang him many times. Yet there is more. Answer me this, sir: Why did you lie to Captain Hobart about this other traitor Pitt?”

      “I wanted to save him from being hanged without trial.”

      “Why would you care if and how he was hanged?”

      “I cared for justice. An injustice done in the name of the King hurts the King’s honour.”

      Mr. Blood could see that Lord Jefrf eys did not want him to impress the jury. The judge leaned forward. “Jesus God!” he said. “I see you at the gallows already.” Lord Jefrf eys sat back again. It was as if a curtain fell. All emotion passed again from his pale face. After a moment’s pause, he turned again to the jury and spoke in a soft voice.

      “Gentlemen, if any person is in rebellion against the King, and another person – who was not in rebellion – helps him, such a person is a traitor too.”

      He then said that Baynes and Blood were both guilty of treason for helping a traitor. And then he sat back. For a moment he was still. He touched his lips with his handkerchief again; then he moved uneasily.

      Peter Blood was so amazed that he almost forgot that his own life was in danger.

      The jury found the three prisoners guilty. Peter Blood looked round the court. A voice was asking him what he had to say for himself, why he should not be hanged.

      He laughed. His laughter shocked the Judge.

      “Do you laugh with the rope about your neck?”

      And then Blood took his revenge.

      “I will tell you this. You see me – an innocent man – at the gallows. You speak of what is to happen to me. I, being a doctor, may speak of what is to happen to you. And I tell you that I would not now change places with you. I would rather go to the gallows than have the stone that you carry in your body. My death will be more pleasant than your death.”

      The Lord Chief Justice sat upright, his face pale. While you might have counted to ten there was no sound in that court after Peter Blood had finished speaking. All those who knew Lord Jeffreys thought that he would become furious. But he did not.

      Slowly, the colour came back into that pale face. Lord Jeffreys leaned forward in his blood red robe and began to speak. Everyone in the hall could see that his mind were somewhere else while his lips were speaking. He sentenced the three prisoners to death.

      Peter Blood, Jeremy Pitt, and Andrew Baynes went out one after the other.

      When the trial was finished, Mr. Pollexfen said quietly:

      “He has frightened Lord Jefrf eys. It’s a pity he’ll be hanged. A man who can frighten Jefrf eys should go far.”

      Chapter IV

      BUYING AND SELLING PEOPLE

      Mr. Pollexfen was right and wrong at the same time.

      He was right that a man who could frighten such a lord of terror as Jefrf eys should go far. He was wrong that Peter Blood would be hanged.

      I have said that there were two reasons why Peter Blood could be grateful in this situation: one that he was tried at all; the other that his trial took place on the 19th of September. Until the 18th, the sentences of the court of the Lords Commissioners had been carried out quickly. But on the morning of the 19th a courier from Lord Sunderland, the Secretary of State[16], arrived at Taunton with a letter for Lord Jeffreys. In the letter, it was said that eleven hundred rebels should be sent to some of His Majesty’s southern plantations, Jamaica, Barbados, or any of the Leeward Islands[17].

      He did not do it out of mercy. It was true that the King’s heart was like a stone. The King had realised that he could use the men instead of hanging them. In the plantations, they needed slaves and they would buy a healthy man for at least ten to fifteen pounds. Then, there were many gentlemen who had some interest in His Majesty’s money. Here was an easy way to pay them. Some rebels might be given to those gentlemen, so that they might use them to their own profit.

      Gentlemen of the court should get a thousand prisoners, and the Queen should get a further hundred. These prisoners should be sent at once to His Majesty’s southern plantations. They should spend ten years there before they are free again.

      We know from Lord Jefrf eys’s secretary that the Chief Justice got drunk that night and loudly protested against His Majesty’s decision. We also know that he wrote a letter to the King and asked him to change his decision. But James did not. The King knew that he had saved the rebels from hanging, but turned their lives into living deaths.

      Peter Blood, Jeremy Pitt, and Andrew Baynes were not hanged, but sent to Bristol[18] and then with some fifty others to West India on Captain Gardner’s Jamaica Merchant. On the way there, eleven of the prisoners died from a sickness. Among them was the unfortunate Andrew Baynes. He had been forced to leave his quiet homestead and the orchards, only because he had tried to help a wounded man.

      More than eleven people might have died, but Peter Blood insisted that he should help the sick. Captain Gardner felt that he might get in trouble if he lost more men, so he was glad that he could leave the sick to the skill of Peter Blood. The doctor worked hard and stopped the disease.

      In the middle of December the Jamaica Merchant with the forty-two rebels arrived at Carlisle Bay[19].

      Some of them had imagined that they were coming into some wild country. When they looked at the town from the ship, they saw houses built in European style. They could see a church among the red roofs and the wide facade of Government House on a gentle hill above the town. This hill was green like an English hill in April, and the day was like an April day in England, when heavy rains finally end.

      On the shore they saw the guards, who had come to receive them, and a crowd of people. They looked exactly like the people in England, only there were fewer women and more

16

Лорд Сандерленд, генеральный секретарь – Роберт Спенсер, второй граф Сандерленд (1641–1702) – английский аристократ, дипломат и политик из рода Спенсеров.

17

Ямайка, Барбадос, Ливардские (Подветренные) острова – британские колонии в Карибском море.

18

Бристоль – крупный порт в Юго-Западной Англии в Великобритании, расположенный на реке Эйвон, недалеко от её впадения в Бристольский залив Атлантического океана.

19

Залив Карлайл – залив на юго-востоке Бриджтауна, столицы Барбадоса.