The Mother: A Novel (26 page)

At last when the sun was nearly set the mother saw them coming. She rose and leaned upon her staff and shaded her eyes against the golden evening sun and she cried, “It is they!” and hobbled down the street. So loud had been her cry, so fast her footsteps, that everyone came out of his house, for in the hamlet they all knew the tale but did not dare to come openly to the mother’s house, for fear there might be some judgment come on it because of this younger son and they all be caught in it. All day then they had gone about their business, eaten through with curiosity, but fearful too, as country people are when gaols and governors are talked of. Now they came forth and hung about, but at a distance, and watched what might befall. The cousin rose too and went behind the mother, and even the cousin’s wife would fain have come except now she did not walk unless she must and she thought to herself that she would hear it but a little later and she was one who believed the best must happen after all and so she spared herself and sat upon her bench and waited.

But the mother ran and laid hold on her son’s arm and cried out, “What of my little son?”

But even as she asked the question, even as her old eyes searched the faces of the two men, she knew that ill was written there. The two men looked at each other and at last the son said soberly, “He is in gaol, mother.” The two men looked at each other again and the cousin’s son scratched his head for a while and looked away and seemed foolish and as though he did not know what to say, and so the son spoke again, “Mother, I doubt he can be saved. He and twenty more are set for death and in the morning.”

“Death?” the mother shrieked, and again she shrieked, “Death!”

And she would have fallen if they had not caught her.

Then the two men led her in to the nearest house and put a seat beneath her and eased her down and she began to weep and cry as a child does, her old mouth quivering and her tears running down and she beat her dried breasts with her clenched hands and cried out, accusing her son, “Then you did not offer them enough money—I told you I had that little store—not so little either, forty pieces of silver and the two little pieces he gave me last—and there they are waiting!” And when she saw her son stand with hanging head and the sweat bursting out on his lip and brow she spat at him in her anger and she said, “You shall not have a penny of it either! If he dies it will not be for you. No, I will go and throw it in the river first.”

Then the cousin’s son spoke up in defense and for the sake of peace and he said, his face wrinkling in such a distressful hour and cause, “No, aunt, do not blame him. He offered more than twice your store. He offered a hundred pieces for his brother, and to high and low in that gaol, as high as he could get he offered bribes. To this one and to that he showed silver, but they would not even let him see your little son.”

“Then he did not offer enough,” the mother shouted. “Whoever heard of guards in a gaol who are not to be bribed? But I will go and fetch that money this moment. Yes, I will dig it up and take it, old as I am, and find my little son and bring him home and he shall never leave me more, whatever they may say.”

Again the two men looked at each other and the son’s face begged his cousin to speak again for him and so the cousin’s son said again, “Good aunt, they will not even let you see him. They would not let us in at all, I say; no, although we showed silver, because they said the governor was hot now against such crime as his. It is some new crime nowadays, and very heinous.”

“My son has never done a crime,” the mother cried proudly, and she lifted up her staff and shook it at the man. “There is an enemy somewhere here who pays more than we have to keep him in the gaol.” And she looked around about the crowd that stood there gaping now and drinking down the news they heard, their eyes staring and their jaws agape, and she cried at them, “Saw any of you any crime my little son ever did?”

This one looked at that and each looked everywhere and said no word and the mother saw their dubious looks and somehow her heart broke. She fell into her weeping again and cried at them, “Oh, you hated him because he was so fair to look upon—better than your black sons, who are only hinds—aye, you hate anyone who is better than yourselves—” and she rose and staggered forth and went home weeping most bitterly.

But when she was come home again and they were alone and none near except the cousin and the cousin’s wife and their children, the mother wiped her eyes and said to her elder son more quietly yet in a fever, too, “But this is letting good time pass. Tell me all, for we may save him yet. We have the night. What was his true crime? We will take all we have and save him yet.”

There passed between the son and son’s wife a look at this, not evil, but as though forbearance were very near its end in them, and then the son began, “I do not know what the crime is rightly, but they call him what I told you, a communist. A new word—I have heard it often, and when I asked what it was it seemed to be a sort of robber band. I asked the guard there at the gaol, who stands with a gun across his arm, and he answered, ‘What is he? Why, one who would even take your land from you, goodman, for himself, and one who contrives against the state and so must die with all his fellows.’ Aye, that is his crime.”

The mother listened hard to this, the candle’s light falling on her face that glistened with dried tears, and she said astounded, her voice trembling while she strove to make it firm, “But I do not think it can be so. I never heard him say a word like this. I never heard of such a crime. To kill a man, to rob a house, to let a parent starve, these be crimes. But how can land be robbed? Can he roll it up like cloth and take it away with him and hide it somewhere?”

“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 bother 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.