A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain (books for 7th graders txt) 📖

We stood there awhile, in the thick darkness and stillness, looking toward the red blur in the distance, and trying to make out the meaning of a far-away murmur that rose and fell fitfully on the night.  Sometimes it swelled up and for a moment seemed less remote; but when we were hopefully expecting it to betray its cause and nature, it dulled and sank again, carrying its mystery with it. We started down the hill in its direction, and the winding road plunged us at once into almost solid darkness—darkness that was packed and crammed in between two tall forest walls.  We groped along down for half a mile, perhaps, that murmur growing more and more distinct all the time.  The coming storm threatening more and more, with now and then a little shiver of wind, a faint show of lightning, and dull grumblings of distant thunder.  I was in the lead.  I ran against something—a soft heavy something which gave, slightly, to the impulse of my weight; at the same moment the lightning glared out, and within a foot of my face was the writhing face of a man who was hanging from the limb of a tree!  That is, it seemed to be writhing, but it was not.  It was a grewsome sight. Straightway there was an ear-splitting explosion of thunder, and the bottom of heaven fell out; the rain poured down in a deluge. No matter, we must try to cut this man down, on the chance that there might be life in him yet, mustn’t we?  The lightning came quick and sharp now, and the place was alternately noonday and midnight.  One moment the man would be hanging before me in an intense light, and the next he was blotted out again in the darkness. I told the king we must cut him down.  The king at once objected.

“If he hanged himself, he was willing to lose his property to his lord; so let him be.  If others hanged him, belike they had the right—let him hang.”

“But—”

“But me no buts, but even leave him as he is.  And for yet another reason.  When the lightning cometh again—there, look abroad.”

Two others hanging, within fifty yards of us!

“It is not weather meet for doing useless courtesies unto dead folk. They are past thanking you.  Come—it is unprofitable to tarry here.”

There was reason in what he said, so we moved on.  Within the next mile we counted six more hanging forms by the blaze of the lightning, and altogether it was a grisly excursion.  That murmur was a murmur no longer, it was a roar; a roar of men’s voices.  A man came flying by now, dimly through the darkness, and other men chasing him. They disappeared.  Presently another case of the kind occurred, and then another and another.  Then a sudden turn of the road brought us in sight of that fire—it was a large manor-house, and little or nothing was left of it—and everywhere men were flying and other men raging after them in pursuit.

I warned the king that this was not a safe place for strangers. We would better get away from the light, until matters should improve.  We stepped back a little, and hid in the edge of the wood.  From this hiding-place we saw both men and women hunted by the mob.  The fearful work went on until nearly dawn.  Then, the fire being out and the storm spent, the voices and flying footsteps presently ceased, and darkness and stillness reigned again.

We ventured out, and hurried cautiously away; and although we were worn out and sleepy, we kept on until we had put this place some miles behind us.  Then we asked hospitality at the hut of a charcoal burner, and got what was to be had.  A woman was up and about, but the man was still asleep, on a straw shake-down, on the clay floor. The woman seemed uneasy until I explained that we were travelers and had lost our way and been wandering in the woods all night. She became talkative, then, and asked if we had heard of the terrible goings-on at the manor-house of Abblasoure.  Yes, we had heard of them, but what we wanted now was rest and sleep.  The king broke in:

“Sell us the house and take yourselves away, for we be perilous company, being late come from people that died of the Spotted Death.”

It was good of him, but unnecessary.  One of the commonest decorations of the nation was the waffle-iron face.  I had early noticed that the woman and her husband were both so decorated.  She made us entirely welcome, and had no fears; and plainly she was immensely impressed by the king’s proposition; for, of course, it was a good deal of an event in her life to run across a person of the king’s humble appearance who was ready to buy a man’s house for the sake of a night’s lodging.  It gave her a large respect for us, and she strained the lean possibilities of her hovel to the utmost to make us comfortable.

We slept till far into the afternoon, and then got up hungry enough to make cotter fare quite palatable to the king, the more particularly as it was scant in quantity.  And also in variety; it consisted solely of onions, salt, and the national black bread made out of horse-feed.  The woman told us about the affair of the evening before.  At ten or eleven at night, when everybody was in bed, the manor-house burst into flames.  The country-side swarmed to the rescue, and the family were saved, with one exception, the master.  He did not appear.  Everybody was frantic over this loss, and two brave yeomen sacrificed their lives in ransacking the burning house seeking that valuable personage.  But after a while he was found—what was left of him—which was his corpse.  It was in a copse three hundred yards away, bound, gagged, stabbed in a dozen places.

Who had done this?  Suspicion fell upon a humble family in the neighborhood who had been lately treated with peculiar harshness by the baron; and from these people the suspicion easily extended itself to their relatives and familiars.  A suspicion was enough; my lord’s liveried retainers proclaimed an instant crusade against these people, and were promptly joined by the community in general. The woman’s husband had been active with the mob, and had not returned home until nearly dawn.  He was gone now to find out what the general result had been.  While we were still talking he came back from his quest.  His report was revolting enough.  Eighteen persons hanged or butchered, and two yeomen and thirteen prisoners lost in the fire.

“And how many prisoners were there altogether in the vaults?”

“Thirteen.”

“Then every one of them was lost?”

“Yes, all.”

“But the people arrived in time to save the family; how is it they could save none of the prisoners?”

The man looked puzzled, and said:

“Would one unlock the vaults at such a time?  Marry, some would have escaped.”

“Then you mean that nobody did unlock them?”

“None went near them, either to lock or unlock.  It standeth to reason that the bolts were fast; wherefore it was only needful to establish a watch, so that if any broke the bonds he might not escape, but be taken. None were taken.”

“Natheless, three did escape,” said the king, “and ye will do well to publish it and set justice upon their track, for these murthered the baron and fired the house.”

I was just expecting he would come out with that.  For a moment the man and his wife showed an eager interest in this news and an impatience to go out and spread it; then a sudden something else betrayed itself in their faces, and they began to ask questions. I answered the questions myself, and narrowly watched the effects produced.  I was soon satisfied that the knowledge of who these three prisoners were had somehow changed the atmosphere; that our hosts’ continued eagerness to go and spread the news was now only pretended and not real.  The king did not notice the change, and I was glad of that.  I worked the conversation around toward other details of the night’s proceedings, and noted that these people were relieved to have it take that direction.

The painful thing observable about all this business was the alacrity with which this oppressed community had turned their cruel hands against their own class in the interest of the common oppressor.  This man and woman seemed to feel that in a quarrel between a person of their own class and his lord, it was the natural and proper and rightful thing for that poor devil’s whole caste to side with the master and fight his battle for him, without ever stopping to inquire into the rights or wrongs of the matter.  This man had been out helping to hang his neighbors, and had done his work with zeal, and yet was aware that there was nothing against them but a mere suspicion, with nothing back of it describable as evidence, still neither he nor his wife seemed to see anything horrible about it.

This was depressing—to a man with the dream of a republic in his head.  It reminded me of a time thirteen centuries away, when the “poor whites” of our South who were always despised and frequently insulted by the slave-lords around them, and who owed their base condition simply to the presence of slavery in their midst, were yet pusillanimously ready to side with the slave-lords in all political moves for the upholding and perpetuating of slavery, and did also finally shoulder their muskets and pour out their lives in an effort to prevent the destruction of that very institution which degraded them.  And there was only one redeeming feature connected with that pitiful piece of history; and that was,