They met the landlord in the passage.
“Welcome, messieurs,”
said he, taking off his cap, with a low bow.
“Come, we are not in Germany,” said Gerard.
In the public room they found the
mistress, a buxom woman of forty. She curtsied
to them, and smiled right cordially “Give yourself
the trouble of sitting ye down, fair sir,” said
she to Gerard, and dusted two chairs with her apron,
not that they needed it.
“Thank you, dame,” said
Gerard. “Well,” thought he, “this
is a polite nation: the trouble of sitting down?
That will I with singular patience; and presently
the labour of eating, also the toil of digestion, and
finally, by Hercules his aid, the strain of going to
bed, and the struggle of sinking fast asleep.
“Why, Denys, what are you doing?
ordering supper for only two?”
“Why not?”
“What, can we sup without waiting for forty
more? Burgundy forever!”
“Aha! Courage, camarade.
Le dia ”
“C’est convenu.”
The salic law seemed not to have penetrated
to French inns. In this one at least wimple and
kirtle reigned supreme; doublets and hose were few
in number, and feeble in act. The landlord himself
wandered objectless, eternally taking off his cap
to folk for want of thought; and the women, as they
passed him in turn, thrust him quietly aside without
looking at him, as we remove a live twig in bustling
through a wood.
A maid brought in supper, and the mistress followed
her, empty handed.
“Fall to, my masters,”
said she cheerily; “y’have but one enemy
here; and he lies under your knife.” (I shrewdly
suspect this of formula.)
They fell to. The mistress drew
her chair a little toward the table; and provided
company as well as meat; gossiped genially with them
like old acquaintances: but this form gone through,
the busy dame was soon off and sent in her daughter,
a beautiful young woman of about twenty, who took
the vacant seat. She was not quite so broad and
genial as the elder, but gentle and cheerful, and
showed a womanly tenderness for Gerard on learning
the distance the poor boy had come, and had to go.
She stayed nearly half-an-hour, and when she left them
Gerard said, “This an inn? Why, it is like
home.”
“Qui fit Francois il
fit courtois,” said Denys, bursting with gratified
pride.
“Courteous? nay, Christian;
to welcome us like home guests and old friends, us
vagrants, here to-day and gone to-morrow. But
indeed who better merits pity and kindness than the
worn traveller far from his folk? Holà!
here’s another.”
The new-comer was the chambermaid,
a woman of about twenty-five, with a cocked nose,
a large laughing mouth, and a sparkling black eye,
and a bare arm very stout but not very shapely.
The moment she came in, one of the
travellers passed a somewhat free jest on her; the
next the whole company were roaring at his expense,
so swiftly had her practised tongue done his business.
Even as, in a passage of arms between a novice and
a master of fence, foils clash novice pinked.
On this another, and then another, must break a lance
with her; but Marion stuck her great arms upon her
haunches, and held the whole room in play. This
country girl possessed in perfection that rude and
ready humour which looks mean and vulgar on paper,
but carries all before it spoken: not wit’s
rapier; its bludgeon. Nature had done much for
her in this way, and daily practice in an inn the rest.
Yet shall she not be photographed
by me, but feebly indicated: for it was just
four hundred years ago, the raillery was coarse, she
returned every stroke in kind, and though a virtuous
woman, said things without winking, which no decent
man of our day would say even among men.
Gerard sat gaping with astonishment.
This was to him almost a new variety of “that
interesting species,” homo. He whispered
“Denys, Now I see why you Frenchmen say ‘a
woman’s tongue is her sword:’” just
then she levelled another assailant; and the chivalrous
Denys, to console and support “the weaker vessel,”
the iron kettle among the clay pots, administered
his consigne, “Courage, ma mie,
lé –” etc.
She turned on him directly. “How
can he be dead as long as there is an archer left
alive?” (General laughter at her ally’s
expense.)
“It is ‘washing day,’
my masters,” said she, with sudden gravity.
“Âpres? We travellers
cannot strip and go bare while you wash our clothes,”
objected a peevish old fellow by the fireside, who
had kept mumchance during the raillery, but crept
out into the sunshine of commonplaces.
“I aimed not your way, ancient
man,” replied Marion superciliously. “But
since you ask me” (here she scanned him slowly
from head to foot), “I trow you might take a
turn in the tub, clothes and all, and no harm done”
(laughter). “But what I spoke for, I thought
this young sire might like his beard starched.”
Poor Gerard’s turn had come;
his chin crop was thin and silky.
The loudest of all the laughers this
time was the traitor Denys, whose beard was of a good
length, and singularly stiff and bristly; so that
Shakespeare, though he never saw him, hit him in the
bull’s eye.
“Full of strange
oaths, and bearded like the pard.”
As You Like
It.
Gerard bore the Amazonian satire mighty
calmly. He had little personal vanity. “Nay,
‘chambrière,’” said he, with
a smile, “mine is all unworthy your pains; take
you this fair growth in hand!” and he pointed
to Denys’s vegetable.
“Oh, time for that, when I starch the besoms.”
Whilst they were all shouting over
this palpable hit, the mistress returned, and in no
more time than it took her to cross the threshold,
did our Amazon turn to a seeming Madonna meek and mild.
Mistresses are wonderful subjugators.
Their like I think breathes not on the globe.
Housemaids, decide! It was a waste of histrionic
ability though; for the landlady had heard, and did
not at heart disapprove, the peals of laughter.
“Ah, Marion, lass,” said
she good-humouredly, “if you laid me an egg
every time you cackle, ‘L’es Trois
Poissons’ would never lack an omelet.”
“Now, dame,” said Gerard, “what
is to pay?”
“What for?”
“Our supper.”
“Where is the hurry? cannot
you be content to pay when you go? lose the guest,
find the money, is the rule of ‘The Three Fish.’”
“But, dame, outside ‘The
Three Fish’ it is thus written ’Ici-on
ne loge ”
“Bah! Let that flea stick
on the wall! Look hither,” and she pointed
to the smoky ceiling, which was covered with hieroglyphics.
These were accounts, vulgo scores; intelligible
to this dame and her daughter, who wrote them at need
by simply mounting a low stool, and scratching with
a knife so as to show lines of ceiling through the
deposit of smoke. The dame explained that the
writing on the wall was put there to frighten moneyless
folk from the inn altogether, or to be acted on at
odd times when a non-paying face should come in and
insist on being served. “We can’t
refuse them plump, you know. The law forbids us.”
“And how know you mine is not such a face?”
“Out fie! it is the best face
that has entered ‘The Three Fish’ this
autumn.”
“And mine, dame?” said Denys; “dost
see no knavery here?”
She eyed him calmly. “Not
such a good one as the lad’s; nor ever will
be. But it is the face of a true man. For
all that,” added she drily, “an I were
ten years younger, I’d as lieve not meet that
face on a dark night too far from home.”
Gerard stared. Denys laughed.
“Why, dame, I would but sip the night dew off
the flower; and you needn’t take ten years off,
nor ten days, to be worth risking a scratched face
for.”
“There, our mistress,”
said Marion, who had just come in, “said I not
t’other day you could make a fool of them still,
an if you were properly minded?”
“I dare say ye did; it sounds
like some daft wench’s speech.”
“Dame,” said Gerard, “this is wonderful.”
“What? Oh! no, no, that
is no wonder at all. Why, I have been here all
my life; and reading faces is the first thing a girl
picks up in an inn.”
Marion. “And frying eggs
the second; no, telling lies; frying eggs is the third,
though.”
The Mistress. “And holding
her tongue the last, and modesty the day after never
at all.”
Marion. “Alack! Talk
of my tongue. But I say no more. She under
whose wing I live now deals the blow. I’m
sped ’tis but a chambermaid gone.
Catch what’s left on’t!” and she
staggered and sank backwards on to the handsomest
fellow in the room, which happened to be Gerard.
“Tic! tic!” cried he peevishly;
“there, don’t be stupid! that is too heavy
a jest for me. See you not I am talking to the
mistress?”
Marion resumed her elasticity with
a grimace, made two little bounds into the middle
of the floor, and there turned a pirouette. “There,
mistress,” said she, “I give in; ’tis
you that reigns supreme with the men, leastways with
male children.”
“Young man,” said the
mistress, “this girl is not so stupid as her
deportment; in reading of faces, and frying of omelets,
there we are great. ’Twould be hard if
we failed at these arts, since they are about all
we do know.”
“You do not quite take me, dame,”
said Gerard. “That honesty in a face should
shine forth to your experienced eye, that seems reasonable:
but how by looking on Denys here could you learn his
one little foible, his insanity, his miserable mulierosity?”
Poor Gerard got angrier the more he thought of it.
“His mule his what?”
(crossing herself with superstitious awe at the polysyllable).
“Nay, ’tis but the word I was fain to
invent for him.”
“Invent? What, can a child
like you make other words than grow in Burgundy by
nature? Take heed what ye do! why, we are overrun
with them already, especially bad ones. Lord,
these be times. I look to hear of a new thistle
invented next.”
“Well then, dame, mulierose that
means wrapped up, body and soul, in women. So
prithee tell me; how did you ever detect the noodle’s
mulierosity?”
“Alas! good youth, you make
a mountain of a molehill. We that are women be
notice-takers; and out of the tail of our eye see more
than most men can, glaring through a prospect glass.
Whiles I move to and fro doing this and that, my glance
is still on my guests, and I did notice that this
soldier’s eyes were never off the womenfolk:
my daughter, or Marion, or even an old woman like
me, all was gold to him: and there a sat glowering;
oh, you foolish, foolish man! Now you still turned
to the speaker, her or him, and that is common sense.”
Denys burst into a hoarse laugh.
“You never were more out. Why, this silky,
smooth-faced companion is a very Turk all
but his beard. He is what d’ye call ’em
oser than ere an archer in the Duke’s body-guard.
He is more wrapped up in one single Dutch lass called
Margaret, than I am in the whole bundle of ye, brown
and fair.”
“Man alive, that is just the
contrary,” said the hostess. “Yourn
is the bane, and hisn the cure. Cling you still
to Margaret, my dear. I hope she is an honest
girl.”
“Dame, she is an angel.”
“Ay, ay, they are all that till
better acquainted. I’d as lieve have her
no more than honest, and then she will serve to keep
you out of worse company. As for you, soldier,
there is trouble in store for you. Your eyes
were never made for the good of your soul.”
“Nor of his pouch either,”
said Marion, striking in, “and his lips, they
will sip the dew, as he calls it, off many a bramble
bush.”
“Overmuch clack! Marion overmuch clack.”
“Ods bodikins, mistress; ye
didn’t hire me to be one o’ your three
fishes, did ye?” and Marion sulked thirty seconds.
“Is that the way to speak to
our mistress?” remonstrated the landlord, who
had slipped in.
“Hold your whisht,” said
his wife sharply; “it is not your business to
check the girl; she is a good servant to you.”
“What, is the cock never to
crow, and the hens at it all day?”
“You can crow as loud as you
like, my man out o’ doors. But the hen
means to rule the roost.”
“I know a byword to that tune.” said Gerard.
“Do ye, now? out wi’t then.”
“Femme veut en
toute saison,
Estre dame en
sa mason.”
“I never heard it afore; but
’tis as sooth as gospel. Ay, they that
set these bywords a rolling had eyes and tongues, and
tongues and eyes. Before all the world give me
an old saw.”
“And me a young husband,”
said Marion. “Now there was a chance for
you all, and nobody spoke. Oh! it is too late
now, I’ve changed my mind.”
“All the better for some poor fellow,”
suggested Denys.
And now the arrival of the young mistress,
or, as she was called, the little mistress, was the
signal for them all to draw round the fire, like one
happy family, travellers, host, hostess, and even servants
in the outer ring, and tell stories till bedtime.
And Gerard in his turn told a tremendous one out of
his repertory, a Ms. collection of “acts
of the saints,” and made them all shudder deliciously;
but soon after began to nod, exhausted by the effort,
I should say. The young mistress saw, and gave
Marion a look. She instantly lighted a rush, and
laying her hand on Gerard’s shoulder, invited
him to follow her. She showed him a room where
were two nice white beds, and bade him choose.
“Either is paradise,”
said he. “I’ll take this one.
Do you know, I have not lain in a naked bed once since
I left my home in Holland.”
“Alack! poor soul!” said
she; “well, then, the sooner my flax and your
down (he! he!) come together, the better; so allons!”
and she held out her cheek as business-like as if
it had been her hand for a fee.
“Allons? what does that mean?”
“It means ‘good-night.’
Ahem! What, don’t they salute the chambermaid
in your part?”
“Not all in a moment.”
“What, do they make a business on’t?”
“Nay, perverter of words, I mean we make not
so free with strange women.
“They must be strange women
if they do not think you strange fools, then.
Here is a coil. Why, all the old greasy greybeards
that lie at our inn do kiss us chambermaids; faugh!
and what have we poor wretches to set on t’other
side the compt but now and then a nice young ?
Alack! time flies, chambermaids can’t be spared
long in the nursery, so how is’t to be?”
“An’t please you arrange
with my comrade for both. He is mulierose; I am
not.”
“Nay, ’tis the curb he
will want, not the spur. Well! well! you shall
to bed without paying the usual toll; and oh, but ’tis
sweet to fall in with a young man who can withstand
these ancient ill customs, and gainsay brazen hussies.
Shalt have thy reward.”
“Thank you! But what are you doing with
my bed?”
“Me? oh, only taking off these
sheets, and going to put on the pair the drunken miller
slept in last night.”
“Oh, no! no! You cruel,
black-hearted thing! There! there!”
“A la bonne heure!
What will not perseverance effect? But note now
the frowardness of a mad wench! I cared not for’t
a button. I am dead sick of that sport this five
years. But you denied me; so then forthwith I
behoved to have it; belike had gone through fire and
water for’t. Alas, young sir, we women
are kittle cattle; poor perverse toads: excuse
us: and keep us in our place, savoir, at arm’s
length; and so good-night!”
At the door she turned and said, with
a complete change of tone and manner: “The
Virgin guard thy head, and the holy Evangelists watch
the bed where lies a poor young wanderer far from
home! Amen!”
And the next moment he heard her run
tearing down the stairs, and soon a peal of laughter
from the salle betrayed her whereabouts.
“Now that is a character,”
said Gerard profoundly, and yawned over the discovery.
In a very few minutes he was in a
dry bath of cold, clean linen, inexpressibly refreshing
to him after so long disuse: then came a delicious
glow; and then Sevenbergen.
In the morning Gerard awoke infinitely
refreshed, and was for rising, but found himself a
close prisoner. His linen had vanished. Now
this was paralysis; for the nightgown is a recent
institution. In Gerard’s century, and indeed
long after, men did not play fast and loose with clean
sheets (when they could get them), but crept into them
clothed with their innocence, like Adam: out
of bed they seem to have taken most after his eldest
son.
Gerard bewailed his captivity to Denys;
but that instant the door opened, and in sailed Marion
with their linen, newly washed and ironed, on her
two arms, and set it down on the table.
“Oh you good girl,” cried Gerard.
“Alack, have you found me out at last?”
“Yes, indeed. Is this another custom?”
“Nay, not to take them unbidden:
but at night we aye question travellers, are they
for linen washed. So I came into you, but you
were both sound. Then said I to the little mistress,
’La! where is the sense of waking wearied men,
t’ask them is Charles the Great dead, and would
they liever carry foul linen or clean, especially this
one with a skin like cream? ‘And so he
has, I declare,’ said the young mistress.”
“That was me,” remarked Denys, with the
air of a commentator.
“Guess once more, and you’ll hit the mark.”
“Notice him not, Marion, he
is an impudent fellow; and I am sure we cannot be
grateful enough for your goodness, and I am sorry I
ever refused you anything you fancied you
should like.”
“Oh, are ye there,” said
l’espiegle. “I take that to mean you
would fain brush the morning dew off, as your bashful
companion calls it; well then, excuse me, ’tis
customary, but not prudent. I decline. Quits
with you, lad.”
“Stop! stop!” cried Denys,
as she was making off victorious, “I am curious
to know how many, of ye were here last night a-feasting
your eyes on us twain.
“’Twas so satisfactory
a feast as we weren’t half a minute over’t.
Who? why the big mistress, the little mistress, Janet,
and me, and the whole posse comitatus, on
tiptoe. We mostly make our rounds the last thing,
not to get burned down; and in prodigious numbers.
Somehow that maketh us bolder, especially where archers
lie scattered about.”
“Why did not you tell me? I’d have
lain awake.”
“Beau sire, the saying goes
that the good and the ill are all one while their
lids are closed. So we said, ’Here is one
who will serve God best asleep, Break not his rest!’”
“She is funny,” said Gerard dictatorially.
“I must be either that or knavish.”
“How so?”
“Because ‘The Three Fish’
pay me to be funny. You will eat before you part?
Good! then I’ll go see the meat be fit for such
worshipful teeth.”
“Denys!”
“What is your will?”
“I wish that was a great boy,
and going along with us, to keep us cheery.”
“So do not I. But I wish it was going along
with us as it is.”
“Now Heaven forefend! A fine fool you would
make of yourself.”
They broke their fast, settled their
score, and said farewell. Then it was they found
that Marion had not exaggerated the “custom of
the country.” The three principal women
took and kissed them right heartily, and they kissed
the three principal women. The landlord took and
kissed them, and they kissed the landlord; and the
cry was, “Come back, the sooner the better!”
“Never pass ‘The Three
Fish’; should your purses be void, bring yourselves:
‘lé sieur credit’ is not
dead for you.”
And they took the road again.
They came to a little town, and Denys
went to buy shoes. The shopkeeper was in the
doorway, but wide awake. He received Denys with
a bow down to the ground. The customer was soon
fitted, and followed to the street, and dismissed
with graceful salutes from the doorstep.
The friends agreed it was Elysium
to deal with such a shoemaker as this. “Not
but what my German shoes have lasted well enough,”
said Gerard the just.
Outside the town was a pebbled walk.
“This is to keep the burghers’s
feet dry, a-walking o’ Sundays with their wives
and daughters,” said Denys.
Those simple words of Denys, one stroke
of a careless tongue, painted “home” in
Gerard’s heart. “Oh, how sweet!”
said he.
“Mercy! what is this? A
gibbet! and ugh, two skeletons thereon! Oh, Denys,
what a sorry sight to woo by!”
“Nay,” said Denys, “a
comfortable sight; for every rogue i’ the air
there is one the less a-foot.”
A little farther on they came to two
pillars, and between these was a huge wheel closely
studded with iron prongs; and entangled in these were
bones and fragments of cloth miserably dispersed over
the wheel.
Gerard hid his face in his hands.
“Oh, to think those patches and bones are all
that is left of a man! of one who was what we are now.”
“Excusez! a thing that went
on two legs and stole; are we no more than that?”
“How know ye he stole?
Have true men never suffered death and torture too?”
“None of my kith ever found
their way to the gibbet, I know.”
“The better their luck. Prithee, how died
the saints?”
“Hard. But not in Burgundy.”
“Ye massacred them wholesale
at Lyons, and that is on Burgundy’s threshold.
To you the gibbet proves the crime, because you read
not story. Alas! had you stood on Calvary that
bloody day we sigh for to this hour, I tremble to
think you had perhaps shouted for joy at the gibbet
builded there; for the cross was but the Roman gallows,
Father Martin says.”
“The blaspheming old hound!”
“Oh, fie! fie! a holy and a
book-learned man. Ay, Denys, y’had read
them, that suffered there, by the bare light of the
gibbet. ’Drive in the nails!’ y’had
cried: ‘drive in the spear!’ Here
be three malefactors. Three ‘roues.’
Yet of those little three one was the first Christian
saint, and another was the Saviour of the world which
gibbeted him.”
Denys assured him on his honour they
managed things better in Burgundy. He added,
too, after profound reflection, that the horrors Gerard
had alluded to had more than once made him curse and
swear with rage when told by the good cure in his
native village at Eastertide: “but they
chanced in an outlandish nation, and near a thousand
years agone. Mort de ma vie, let us hope it is
not true; or at least sore exaggerated. Do but
see how all tales gather as they roll!”
Then he reflected again, and all in
a moment turned red with ire. “Do ye not
blush to play with your book-craft on your unlettered
friend, and throw dust in his eyes, evening the saints
with these reptiles?”
Then suddenly he recovered his good
humour. “Since your heart beats for vermin,
feel for the carrion crows! they be as good vermin
as these; would ye send them to bed supperless, poor
pretty poppets? Why, these be their larder; the
pangs of hunger would gnaw them dead, but for cold
cut-purse hung up here and there.”
Gerard, who had for some time maintained
a dead silence, informed him the subject was closed
between them, and for ever. “There are things,”
said he, “in which our hearts seem wide as the
poles asunder, and eke our heads. But I love
thee dearly all the same,” he added, with infinite
grace and tenderness.
Towards afternoon they heard a faint
wailing noise on ahead; it grew distincter as they
proceeded. Being fast walkers they soon came up
with its cause: a score of pikemen, accompanied
by several constables, were marching along, and in
advance of them was a herd of animals they were driving.
These creatures, in number rather more than a hundred,
were of various ages, only very few were downright
old: the males were downcast and silent.
It was the females from whom all the outcry came.
In other words, the animals thus driven along at the
law’s point were men and women.
“Good Heaven!” cried Gerard,
“what a band of them! But stay, surely all
those children cannot be thieves; why, there are some
in arms. What on earth is this, Denys?”
Denys advised him to ask that “bourgeois”
with the badge; “This is Burgundy: here
a civil question ever draws a civil reply.”
Gerard went up to the officer, and
removing his cap, a civility which was immediately
returned, said, “For our Lady’s sake, sir,
what do ye with these poor folk?”
“Nay, what is that to you, my
lad?” replied the functionary suspiciously.
“Master, I’m a stranger, and athirst for
knowledge.”
“That is another matter.
What are we doing? ahem. Why we Dost
hear, Jacques? Here is a stranger seeks to know
what we are doing,” and the two machines were
tickled that there should be a man who did not know
something they happened to know. In all ages this
has tickled. However, the chuckle was brief and
moderated by the native courtesy, and the official
turned to Gerard again. “What we are doing?
hum!” and now he hesitated, not from any doubt
as to what he was doing, but because he was hunting
for a single word that should convey the matter.
“Ce que nous
faisons, mon gars? Mais dam nous
TRANSVASONS.”
“You decant? that should mean
you pour from one vessel to another.”
“Precisely.” He explained
that last year the town of Charmes had been sore
thinned by a pestilence, whole houses emptied and trades
short of hands. Much ado to get in the rye, and
the flax half spoiled. So the bailiff and aldermen
had written to the duke’s secretary; and the
duke he sent far and wide to know what town was too
full. “That are we,” had the baillie
of Toul writ back. “Then send four or five
score of your townsfolk,” was the order.
“Was not this to decant the full town into the
empty, and is not the good duke the father of his people,
and will not let the duchy be weakened, nor its fair
towns laid waste by sword nor pestilence; but meets
the one with pike, and arbalest (touching his cap
to the sergeant and Denys alternately), and t’other
with policy? Long live the duke!”
The pikemen of course were not to
be outdone in loyalty; so they shouted with stentorian
lungs “Long live the duke!”
Then the decanted ones, partly because loyalty was
a non-reasoning sentiment in those days, partly perhaps
because they feared some further ill consequence should
they alone be mute, raised a feeble, tremulous shout,
“Long live the Duke!”
But, at this, insulted nature rebelled.
Perhaps indeed the sham sentiment drew out the real,
for, on the very heels of that royal noise, a loud
and piercing wail burst from every woman’s bosom,
and a deep, deep groan from every man’s; oh!
the air filled in a moment with womanly and manly
anguish. Judge what it must have been when the
rude pikemen halted unbidden, all confused; as if
a wall of sorrow had started up before them.
“En avant,” roared the
sergeant, and they marched again, but muttering and
cursing.
“Ah the ugly sound,” said
the civilian, wincing. “Les malheureux!”
cried he ruefully: for where is the single man
can hear the sudden agony of a multitude and not be
moved? “Les ingrats! They are going
whence they were de trop to where they will be welcome:
from starvation to plenty and they object.
They even make dismal noises. One would think
we were thrusting them forth from Burgundy.”
“Come away,” whispered
Gerard, trembling; “come away,” and the
friends strode forward.
When they passed the head of the column,
and saw the men walk with their eyes bent in bitter
gloom upon the ground, and the women, some carrying,
some leading little children, and weeping as they went,
and the poor bairns, some frolicking, some weeping
because “their mammies” wept, Gerard tried
hard to say a word of comfort, but choked and could
utter nothing to the mourners; but gasped, “Come
on, Denys, I cannot mock such sorrow with little words
of comfort.” And now, artist-like, all his
aim was to get swiftly out of the grief he could not
soothe. He almost ran not to hear these sighs
and sobs.
“Why, mate,” said Denys,
“art the colour of a lemon. Man alive, take
not other folk’s troubles to heart! not one
of those whining milksops there but would see thee,
a stranger, hanged without winking.”
Gerard scarce listened to him.
“Decant them?” he groaned;
“ay, if blood were no thicker than wine.
Princes, ye are wolves. Poor things! Poor
things! Ah, Denys! Denys! with looking on
their grief mine own comes home to me. Well-a-day!
ah, well-a-day!”
“Ay, now you talk reason.
That you, poor lad, should be driven all the way from
Holland to Rome is pitiful indeed. But these snivelling
curs, where is their hurt? There is six score
of ’em to keep one another company: besides,
they are not going out of Burgundy.”
“Better for them if they had never been in it.”
“Mechant, va! they are
but going from one village to another, a mule’s
journey! whilst thou there, no more.
Courage, camarade, lé diable est
mort.”
Gerard shook his head very doubtfully,
but kept silence for about a mile, and then he said
thoughtfully, “Ay, Denys, but then I am sustained
by booklearning. These are simple folk that likely
thought their village was the world: now what
is this? more weeping. Oh! ’tis a sweet
world Humph! A little girl that hath broke her
pipkin. Now may I hang on one of your gibbets
but I’ll dry somebody’s tears,” and
he pounced savagely upon this little martyr, like
a kite on a chick, but with more generous intentions.
It was a pretty little lass of about twelve; the tears
were raining down her two peaches, and her palms lifted
to heaven in that utter, though temporary, desolation
which attends calamity at twelve; and at her feet
the fatal cause, a broken pot, worth, say the fifth
of a modern farthing.
“What, hast broken thy pot,
little one?” said Gerard, acting intensest sympathy.
“Helas! bel gars;
as you behold;” and the hands came down from
the sky and both pointed at the fragments. A
statuette of adversity.
“And you weep so for that?”
“Needs I must, bel
gars. My mammy will massacre me. Do
they not already” (with a fresh burst of woe)
“c-c-call me J-J-Jean-net-on C-c-casse tout?
It wanted but this; that I should break my poor pot.
Helas! fallait-il donc, mere de
Dieu?”
“Courage, little love,”
said Gerard; “’tis not thy heart lies broken;
money will soon mend pots. See now, here is a
piece of silver, and there, scarce a stone’s
throw off, is a potter; take the bit of silver to
him, and buy another pot, and the copper the potter
will give thee keep that to play with thy comrades.”
The little mind took in all this,
and smiles began to struggle with the tears:
but spasms are like waves, they cannot go down the
very moment the wind of trouble is lulled. So
Denys thought well to bring up his reserve of consolation
“Courage, ma mie, lé diable
est mort!” cried that inventive warrior
gaily. Gerard shrugged his shoulders at such a
way of cheering a little girl,
“What a fine thing
Is a lute with one string,”
said he.
The little girl’s face broke into warm sunshine.
“Oh, the good news! oh, the
good news!” she sang out with such heartfelt
joy, it went off into a honeyed whine; even as our
gay old tunes have a pathos underneath “So then,”
said she, “they will no longer be able to threaten
us little girls with him, making our lives a burden!”
And she bounded off “to tell Nanette,”
she said.
There is a theory that everything
has its counterpart; if true, Denys it would seem
had found the mind his consigne fitted.
While he was roaring with laughter
at its unexpected success and Gerard’s amazement,
a little hand pulled his jerkin and a little face
peeped round his waist. Curiosity was now the
dominant passion in that small but vivid countenance.
“Est-ce toi qui l’a
tue, beau soldat?”
“Oui, ma mie,”
said Denys, as gruffly as ever he could, rightly deeming
this would smack of supernatural puissance to owners
of bell-like trebles. “C’est
moi. Ca vaut une petite embrassade pas?”
“Je crois ben. Aie! aie!”
“Qu’as-tu?”
“Ca pique! ca pique!”
“Quel dommage! je vais la
couper.”
“Nein, ce n’est rien;
et pisque t’as tue ce mechant.
T’es fièrement beau, tout d’ meme,
toi; t’es lien miex que ma grande
soeur.
“Will you not kiss me, too, ma mie?”
said Gerard.
“Je ne demande
par miex. Tiens, tiens, tiens!
c’est doulce celle-ci. Ah!
que j’aimons les hommes!
Des fames, ca ne m’aurait jamais
donne l’arjan, blanc, plutôt
ca m’aurait ri au nez.
C’est si peu de chose,
les fames. Serviteur, beaulx sires!
Bon voiage; et n’oubliez point la Jeanneton!”
“Adieu, petit coeur,”
said Gerard, and on they marched; but presently looking
back they saw the contemner of women in the middle
of the road, making them a reverence, and blowing
them kisses with little May morning face.
“Come on,” cried Gerard
lustily. “I shall win to Rome yet.
Holy St. Bavon, what a sunbeam of innocence hath shot
across our bloodthirsty road! Forget thee, little
Jeanneton? not likely, amidst all this slobbering,
and gibbeting, and decanting. Come on, thou laggard!
forward!”
“Dost call this marching?”
remonstrated Denys; “why, we shall walk o’er
Christmas Day and never see it.”
At the next town they came to, suddenly
an arbalestrier ran out of a tavern after them, and
in a moment his beard and Denys’s were like two
brushes stuck together. It was a comrade.
He insisted on their coming into the tavern with him,
and breaking a bottle of wine. In course of conversation,
he told Denys there was an insurrection in the Duke’s
Flemish provinces, and soldiers were ordered thither
from all parts of Burgundy. “Indeed, I
marvelled to see thy face turned this way.
“I go to embrace my folk that
I have not seen these three years. Ye can quell
a bit of a rising without me I trow.”
Suddenly Denys gave a start.
“Dost hear Gerard? this comrade is bound for
Holland.”
“What then? ah, a letter! a
letter to Margaret! but will he be so good, so kind?”
The soldier with a torrent of blasphemy
informed him he would not only take it, but go a league
or two out of his way to do it.
In an instant out came inkhorn and
paper from Gerard’s wallet; and he wrote a long
letter to Margaret, and told her briefly what I fear
I have spun too tediously; dwelt most on the bear,
and the plunge in the Rhine, and the character of
Denys, whom he painted to the life. And with many
endearing expressions bade her to be of good cheer;
some trouble and peril there had been, but all that
was over now, and his only grief left was, that he
could not hope to have a word from her hand till he
should reach Rome. He ended with comforting her
again as hard as he could. And so absorbed was
he in his love and his work, that he did not see all
the people in the room were standing peeping, to watch
the nimble and true finger execute such rare penmanship.
Denys, proud of his friend’s
skill, let him alone, till presently the writer’s
face worked, and soon the scalding tears began to run
down his young cheeks, one after another, on the paper
where he was then writing comfort, comfort. Then
Denys rudely repulsed the curious, and asked his comrade
with a faltering voice whether he had the heart to
let so sweet a love-letter miscarry? The other
swore by the face of St. Luke he would lose the forefinger
of his right hand sooner.
Seeing him so ready, Gerard charged
him also with a short, cold letter to his parents;
and in it he drew hastily with his pen two hands grasping
each other, to signify farewell. By-the-by, one
drop of bitterness found its way into his letter to
Margaret. But of that anon.
Gerard now offered money to the soldier.
He hesitated, but declined it. “No, no!
art comrade of my comrade; and may” (etc.) “but
thy love for the wench touches me. I’ll
break another bottle at thy charge an thou wilt, and
so cry quits.”
“Well said, comrade,”
cried Denys. “Hadst taken money, I had invited
thee to walk in the courtyard and cross swords with
me.”
“Whereupon I had cut thy comb
for thee,” retorted the other.
“Hadst done thy endeavour, drôle, I doubt
not.”
They drank the new bottle, shook hands,
adhered to custom, and parted on opposite routes.
This delay, however, somewhat put
out Denys’s calculations, and evening surprised
them ere they reached a little town he was making for,
where was a famous hotel. However, they fell
in with a roadside auberge, and Denys, seeing
a buxom girl at the door, said, “This seems a
decent inn,” and led the way into the kitchen.
They ordered supper, to which no objection was raised,
only the landlord requested them to pay for it beforehand.
It was not an uncommon proposal in any part of the
world. Still it was not universal, and Denys
was nettled, and dashed his hand somewhat ostentatiously
into his purse and pulled out a gold angel. “Count
me the change, and speedily,” said he. “You
tavern-keepers are more likely to rob me than I you.”
While the supper was preparing, Denys
disappeared, and was eventually found by Gerard in
the yard, helping Manon, his plump but not bright
decoy duck, to draw water, and pouring extravagant
compliments into her dullish ear. Gerard grunted
and returned to table, but Denys did not come in for
a good quarter of an hour.
“Uphill work at the end of a
march,” said he, shrugging his shoulders.
“What matters that to you!”
said Gerard drily. “The mad dog bites all
the world.”
“Exaggerator. You know
I bite but the fairer half. Well, here comes
supper; that is better worth biting.”
During supper the girl kept constantly
coming in and out, and looking point-blank at them,
especially at Denys; and at last in leaning over him
to remove a dish, dropped a word in his ear; and he
replied with a nod.
As soon as supper was cleared away,
Denys rose and strolled to the door, telling Gerard
the sullen fair had relented, and given him a little
rendezvous in the stable-yard.
Gerard suggested that the calf-pen
would have been a more appropriate locality.
“I shall go to bed, then,” said he, a little
crossly. “Where is the landlord? out at
this time of night? no matter. I know our room.
Shall you be long, pray?”
“Not I. I grudge leaving the
fire and thee. But what can I do? There are
two sorts of invitations a Burgundian never declines.”
Denys found a figure seated by the
well. It was Manon; but instead of receiving
him as he thought he had a right to expect, coming
by invitation, all she did was to sob. He asked
her what ailed her? She sobbed. Could he
do anything for her? She sobbed.
The good-natured Denys, driven to
his wits’ end, which was no great distance,
proffered the custom of the country by way of consolation.
She repulsed him roughly. “Is it a time
for fooling?” said she, and sobbed.
“You seem to think so,”
said Denys, waxing wroth. But the next moment
he added tenderly, “and I, who could never bear
to see beauty in distress.”
“It is not for myself.”
“Who then? your sweetheart?”
“Oh, que nenni.
My sweetheart is not on earth now: and to think
I have not an écu to buy masses for his soul;”
and in this shallow nature the grief seemed now to
be all turned in another direction.
“Come, come,” said Denys,
“shalt have money to buy masses for thy dead
lad; I swear it. Meantime tell me why you weep.”
“For you.”
“For me? Art mad?”
“No; I am not mad. ’Tis
you that were mad to open your purse before him.”
The mystery seemed to thicken, and
Denys, wearied of stirring up the mud by questions,
held his peace to see if it would not clear of itself.
Then the girl, finding herself no longer questioned,
seemed to go through some internal combat. At
last she said, doggedly and aloud, “I will.
The Virgin give me courage? What matters it if
they kill me, since he is dead? Soldier, the
landlord is out.”
“Oh, is he?”
“What, do landlords leave their
taverns at this time of night? also see what a tempest!
We are sheltered here, but t’other side it blows
a hurricane.”
Denys said nothing.
“He is gone to fetch the band.”
“The band! what band?”
“Those who will cut your throat
and take your gold. Wretched man; to go and shake
gold in an innkeeper’s face!”
The blow came so unexpectedly it staggered
even Denys, accustomed as he was to sudden perils.
He muttered a single word, but in it a volume.
“Gerard!”
“Gerard! What is that?
Oh, ’tis thy comrade’s name, poor lad.
Get him out quick ere they come; and fly to the next
town.”
“And thou?”
“They will kill me.”
“That shall they not. Fly with us.”
“’Twill avail me nought:
one of the band will be sent to kill me. They
are sworn to slay all who betray them.”
“I’ll take thee to my
native place full thirty leagues from hence, and put
thee under my own mother’s wing, ere they shall
hurt a hair o’ thy head. But first Gerard.
Stay thou here whilst I fetch him!”
As he was darting off, the girl seized
him convulsively, and with all the iron strength excitement
lends to women. “Stay me not! for pity’s
sake,” he cried; “’tis life or death.”
“Sh! sh!” whispered
the girl, shutting his mouth hard with her hand, and
putting her pale lips close to him, and her eyes, that
seemed to turn backwards, straining towards some indistinct
sound.
He listened.
He heard footsteps, many footsteps,
and no voices. She whispered in his ear, “They
are come.” And trembled like a leaf.
Denys felt it was so. Travellers
in that number would never have come in dead silence.
The feet were now at the very door.
“How many?” said he, in a hollow whisper.
“Hush!” and she put her
mouth to his very ear. And who, that had seen
this man and woman in that attitude, would have guessed
what freezing hearts were theirs, and what terrible
whispers passed between them?
“How armed?”
“Sword and dagger: and the giant with his
axe. They call him the Abbot.”
“And my comrade?”
“Nothing can save him. Better lose one
life than two. Fly!”
Denys’s blood froze at this
cynical advice. “Poor creature, you know
not a soldier’s heart.”
He put his head in his hands a moment,
and a hundred thoughts of dangers baffled whirled
through his brain.
“Listen, girl! There is
one chance for our lives, if thou wilt but be true
to us. Run to the town; to the nearest tavern,
and tell the first soldier there, that a soldier here
is sore beset, but armed, and his life to be saved
if they will but run. Then to the bailiff.
But first to the soldiers. Nay, not a word, but
buss me, good lass, and fly! men’s lives hang
on thy heels.”
She kilted up her gown to run.
He came round to the road with her, saw her cross
the road cringing with fear, then glide away, then
turn into an erect shadow, then melt away in the storm.
And now he must get to Gerard.
But how? He had to run the gauntlet of the whole
band. He asked himself, what was the worst thing
they could do? for he had learned in war that an enemy
does, not what you hope he will do, but what you hope
he will not do. “Attack me as I enter the
kitchen! Then I must not give them time.”
Just as he drew near to the latch,
a terrible thought crossed him. “Suppose
they had already dealt with Gerard. Why, then,”
thought he, “nought is left but to kill, and
be killed;” and he strung his bow, and walked
rapidly into the kitchen. There were seven hideous
faces seated round the fire, and the landlord pouring
them out neat brandy, blood’s forerunner in
every age.
“What? company!” cried
Denys gaily; “one minute, my lads, and I’ll
be with you;” and he snatched up a lighted candle
off the table, opened the door that led to the staircase,
and went up it hallooing. “What, Gerard!
whither hast thou skulked to?” There was no answer.
He hallooed louder, “Gerard, where art thou?”
After a moment, in which Denys lived
an hour of agony, a peevish, half-inarticulate noise
issued from the room at the head of the little stairs.
Denys burst in, and there was Gerard asleep.
“Thank God!” he said,
in a choking voice, then began to sing loud, untuneful
ditties. Gerard put his fingers into his ears;
but presently he saw in Denys’s face a horror
that contrasted strangely with this sudden merriment.
“What ails thee?” said he, sitting up
and staring.
“Hush!” said Denys, and
his hand spoke even more plainly than his lips.
“Listen to me.”
Denys then pointing significantly
to the door, to show Gerard sharp ears were listening
hard by, continued his song aloud but under cover of
it threw in short muttered syllables.
“(Our lives are in peril.)
“(Thieves.)
“(Thy doublet.)
“(Thy sword.)
“Aid.
“Coming.
“Put off time.” Then aloud
“Well, now, wilt have t’other bottle? Say
nay.”
“No, not I.”
“But I tell thee, there are half-a-dozen jolly
fellows. Tired.”
“Ay, but I am too wearied,” said Gerard.
“Go thou.”
“Nay, nay!” Then he went
to the door and called out cheerfully “Landlord,
the young milksop will not rise. Give those honest
fellows t’other bottle. I will pay for’t
in the morning.”
He heard a brutal and fierce chuckle.
Having thus by observation made sure
the kitchen door was shut, and the miscreants were
not actually listening, he examined the chamber door
closely: then quietly shut it, but did not bolt
it; and went and inspected the window.
It was too small to get out of, and
yet a thick bar of iron had been let in the stone
to make it smaller; and just as he made this chilling
discovery, the outer door of the house was bolted with
a loud clang.
Denys groaned. “The beasts are in the shambles.”
But would the thieves attack them while they were
awake? Probably not.
Not to throw away this their best
chance, the poor souls now made a series of desperate
efforts to converse, as if discussing ordinary matters;
and by this means Gerard learned all that had passed,
and that the girl was gone for aid.
“Pray Heaven she may not lose
heart by the way,” said Denys, sorrowfully.
And Denys begged Gerard’s forgiveness
for bringing him out of his way for this.
Gerard forgave him.
“I would fear them less, Gerard,
but for one they call the Abbot. I picked him
out at once. Taller than you, bigger than us both
put together. Fights with an axe. Gerard,
a man to lead a herd of deer to battle. I shall
kill that man to-night, or he will kill me. I
think somehow ’tis he will kill me.”
“Saints forbid! Shoot him
at the door! What avails his strength against
your weapon?”
“I shall pick him out; but if
it comes to hand fighting, run swiftly under his guard,
or you are a dead man. I tell thee neither of
us may stand a blow of that axe: thou never sawest
such a body of a man.”
Gerard was for bolting the door; but
Denys with a sign showed him that half the door-post
turned outward on a hinge, and the great bolt was
little more than a blind. “I have forborne
to bolt it,” said he, “that they may think
us the less suspicious.”
Near an hour rolled away thus.
It seemed an age. Yet it was but a little hour,
and the town was a league distant. And some of
the voices in the kitchen became angry and impatient.
“They will not wait much longer,”
said Denys, “and we have no chance at all unless
we surprise them.”
“I will do whate’er you bid,” said
Gerard meekly.
There was a cupboard on the same side
as the door; but between it and the window. It
reached nearly to the ground, but not quite. Denys
opened the cupboard door and placed Gerard on a chair
behind it. “If they run for the bed, strike
at the napes of their necks! a sword cut there always
kills or disables.” He then arranged the
bolsters and their shoes in the bed so as to deceive
a person peeping from a distance, and drew the short
curtains at the head.
Meantime Gerard was on his knees.
Denys looked round and saw him.
“Ah!” said Denys, “above
all, pray them to forgive me for bringing you into
this guet-apens!”
And now they grasped hands and looked
in one another’s eyes oh, such a look!
Denys’s hand was cold, and Gerard’s warm.
They took their posts.
Denys blew out the candle.
“We must keep silence now.”
But in the terrible tension of their
nerves and very souls they found they could hear a
whisper fainter than any man could catch at all outside
that door. They could hear each other’s
hearts thump at times.
“Good news!” breathed
Denys, listening at the door. “They are
casting lots.”
“Pray that it may be the Abbot.”
“Yes. Why?
“If he comes alone I can make sure of him.”
“Denys!”
“Ay!”
“I fear I shall go mad, if they do not come
soon.”
“Shall I feign sleep? Shall I snore?”
“Perhaps”
“Do then and God have mercy on us!”
Denys snored at intervals.
There was a scuffling of feet heard
in the kitchen, and then all was still.
Denys snored again. Then took up his position
behind the door.
But he, or they, who had drawn the
lot, seemed determined to run no foolish risks.
Nothing was attempted in a hurry.
When they were almost starved with
cold, and waiting for the attack, the door on the
stairs opened softly and closed again. Nothing
more.
There was another harrowing silence.
Then a single light footstep on the stair; and nothing
more.
Then a light crept under the door and nothing more.
Presently there was a gentle scratching,
not half so loud as a mouse’s, and the false
door-post opened by degrees, and left a perpendicular
space, through which the light streamed in. The
door, had it been bolted, would now have hung by the
bare tip of the bolt, which went into the real door-post,
but as it was, it swung gently open of itself.
It opened inwards, so Denys did not raise his crossbow
from the ground, but merely grasped his dagger.
The candle was held up, and shaded from behind by
a man’s hand.
He was inspecting the beds from the
threshold, satisfied that his victims were both in
bed.
The man glided into the apartment.
But at the first step something in the position of
the cupboard and chair made him uneasy. He ventured
no further, but put the candle on the floor and stooped
to peer under the chair; but as he stooped, an iron
hand grasped his shoulder, and a dagger was driven
so fiercely through his neck that the point came out
at his gullet. There was a terrible hiccough,
but no cry; and half-a-dozen silent strokes followed
in swift succession, each a death-blow, and the assassin
was laid noiselessly on the floor.
Denys closed the door, bolted it gently,
drew the post to, and even while he was going whispered
Gerard to bring a chair. It was done.
“Help me set him up.”
“Dead?”
“Parbleu.”
“What for?”
“Frighten them! Gain time.”
Even while saying this, Denys had
whipped a piece of string round the dead man’s
neck, and tied him to the chair, and there the ghastly
figure sat fronting the door.
“Denys, I can do better. Saints forgive
me!”
“What? Be quick then, we have not many
moments.”
And Denys got his crossbow ready,
and tearing off his straw mattress, reared it before
him and prepared to shoot the moment the door should
open, for he had no hope any more would come singly,
when they found the first did not return.
While thus employed, Gerard was busy
about the seated corpse, and to his amazement Denys
saw a luminous glow spreading rapidly over the white
face.
Gerard blew out the candle; and on
this the corpse’s face shone still more like
a glowworm’s head.
Denys shook in his shoes, and his teeth chattered.
“What, in Heaven’s name, is this?”
he whispered.
“Hush! ’tis but phosphorus, but ’twill
serve.”
“Away! they will surprise thee.”
In fact, uneasy mutterings were heard
below, and at last a deep voice said, “What
makes him so long? is the drôle rifling them?”
It was their comrade they suspected
then, not the enemy. Soon a step came softly
but rapidly up the stairs: the door was gently
tried.
When this resisted, which was clearly
not expected, the sham post was very cautiously moved,
and an eye no doubt peeped through the aperture:
for there was a howl of dismay, and the man was heard
to stumble back and burst into the kitchen, here a
Babel of voices rose directly on his return.
Gerard ran to the dead thief and began
to work on him again.
“Back, madman!” whispered Denys.
“Nay, nay. I know these
ignorant brutes; they will not venture here awhile.
I can make him ten times more fearful.”
“At least close that opening!
Let them not see you at your devilish work.”
Gerard closed the sham post, and in
half a minute his brush gave the dead head a sight
to strike any man with dismay. He put his art
to a strange use, and one unparalleled perhaps in
the history of mankind. He illuminated his dead
enemy’s face to frighten his living foe:
the staring eyeballs he made globes of fire; the teeth
he left white, for so they were more terrible by the
contrast; but the palate and tongue he tipped with
fire, and made one lurid cavern of the red depths the
chapfallen jaw revealed: and on the brow he wrote
in burning letters “La Mort.” And,
while he was doing it, the stout Denys was quaking,
and fearing the vengeance of Heaven; for one mans
courage is not another’s; and the band of miscreants
below were quarrelling and disputing loudly, and now
without disguise.
The steps that led down to the kitchen
were fifteen, but they were nearly perpendicular:
there was therefore in point of fact no distance between
the besiegers and besieged, and the latter now caught
almost every word. At last one was heard to cry
out, “I tell ye the devil has got him and branded
him with hellfire. I am more like to leave this
cursed house than go again into a room that is full
of fiends.”
“Art drunk? or mad? or a coward?” said
another.
“Call me a coward, I’ll
give thee my dagger’s point, and send thee where
Pierre sits o’ fire for ever.
“Come, no quarrelling when work
is afoot,” roared a tremendous diapason, “or
I’ll brain ye both with my fist, and send ye
where we shall all go soon or late.”
“The Abbot,” whispered Denys gravely.
He felt the voice he had just heard
could belong to no man but the colossus he had seen
in passing through the kitchen. It made the place
vibrate. The quarrelling continued some time,
and then there was a dead silence.
“Look out, Gerard.”
“Ay. What will they do next?”
“We shall soon know.”
“Shall I wait for you, or cut down the first
that opens the door?”
“Wait for me, lest we strike
the same and waste a blow. Alas! we cannot afford
that.”
Dead silence.
Sudden came into the room a thing
that made them start and their hearts quiver.
And what was it? A moonbeam.
Even so can this machine, the body,
by the soul’s action, be strung up to start
and quiver. The sudden ray shot keen and pure
into that shamble.
Its calm, cold, silvery soul traversed
the apartment in a stream of no great volume, for
the window was narrow.
After the first tremor Gerard whispered,
“Courage, Denys! God’s eye is on
us even here.” And he fell upon his knees
with his face turned towards the window.
Ay it was like a holy eye opening
suddenly on human crime and human passions. Many
a scene of blood and crime that pure cold eye had rested
on; but on few more ghastly than this, where two men,
with a lighted corpse between them, waited panting,
to kill and be killed. Nor did the moonlight
deaden that horrible corpse-light. If anything
it added to its ghastliness: for the body sat
at the edge of the moonbeam, which cut sharp across
the shoulder and the ear, and seemed blue and ghastly
and unnatural by the side of that lurid glow in which
the face and eyes and teeth shone horribly. But
Denys dared not look that way.
The moon drew a broad stripe of light
across the door, and on that his eyes were glued.
Presently he whispered, “Gerard!”
Gerard looked and raised his sword.
Acutely as they had listened, they
had heard of late no sound on the stair. Yet
therein the door-post, at the edge of the stream of
moonlight, were the tips of the fingers of a hand.
The nails glistened.
Presently they began to crawl and
crawl down towards the bolt, but with infinite slowness
and caution. In so doing they crept into the
moonlight. The actual motion was imperceptible,
but slowly, slowly, the fingers came out whiter and
whiter; but the hand between the main knuckles and
the wrist remained dark.
Denys slowly raised his crossbow.
He levelled it. He took a long steady aim.
Gerard palpitated. At last the
crossbow twanged. The hand was instantly nailed,
with a stern jar, to the quivering door-post.
There was a scream of anguish. “Cut,”
whispered Denys eagerly, and Gerard’s uplifted
sword descended and severed the wrist with two swift
blows. A body sank down moaning outside.
The hand remained inside, immovable,
with blood trickling from it down the wall. The
fierce bolt, slightly barbed, had gone through it and
deep into the real door-post.
“Two,” said Denys, with terrible cynicism.
He strung his crossbow, and kneeled behind his cover
again.
“The next will be the Abbot.”
The wounded man moved, and presently
crawled down to his companions on the stairs, and
the kitchen door was shut.
There nothing was heard now but low
muttering. The last incident had revealed the
mortal character of the weapons used by the besieged.
“I begin to think the Abbot’s
stomach is not so great as his body,” said Denys.
The words were scarcely out of his
mouth when the following events happened all in a
couple of seconds. The kitchen door was opened
roughly, a heavy but active man darted up the stairs
without any manner of disguise, and a single ponderous
blow sent the door not only off its hinges, but right
across the room on to Denys’s fortification,
which it struck so rudely as nearly to lay him flat.
And in the doorway stood a colossus with a glittering
axe.
He saw the dead man with the moon’s
blue light on half his face, and the red light on
the other half and inside his chapfallen jaws:
he stared, his arms fell, his knees knocked together,
and he crouched with terror.
“La mort!” he
cried, in tones of terror, and turned and fled.
In which act Denys started up and shot him through
both jaws. He sprang with one bound into the
kitchen, and there leaned on his axe, spitting blood
and teeth and curses.
Denys strung his bow and put his hand into his breast.
He drew it out dismayed.
“My last bolt is gone,” he groaned.
“But we have our swords, and you have slain
the giant.”
“No, Gerard,” said Denys
gravely, “I have not. And the worst is I
have wounded him. Fool! to shoot at a retreating
lion. He had never faced thy handiwork again,
but for my meddling.”
“Ha! to your guard! I hear them open the
door.”
Then Denys, depressed by the one error
he had committed in all this fearful night, felt convinced
his last hour had come. He drew his sword, but
like one doomed. But what is this? a red light
flickers on the ceiling. Gerard flew to the window
and looked out. There were men with torches,
and breastplates gleaming red. “We are saved!
Armed men!” And he dashed his sword through
the window shouting, “Quick! quick! we are sore
pressed.”
“Back!” yelled Denys; “they come!
strike none but him!”
That very moment the Abbot and two
men with naked weapons rushed into the room.
Even as they came, the outer door was hammered fiercely,
and the Abbot’s comrades hearing it, and seeing
the torchlight, turned and fled. Not so the terrible
Abbot: wild with rage and pain, he spurned his
dead comrade, chair and all, across the room, then,
as the men faced him on each side with kindling eyeballs,
he waved his tremendous axe like a feather right and
left, and cleared a space, then lifted it to hew them
both in pieces.
His antagonists were inferior in strength,
but not in swiftness and daring, and above all they
had settled how to attack him. The moment he
reared his axe, they flew at him like cats, and both
together. If he struck a full blow with his weapon
he would most likely kill one, but the other would
certainly kill him: he saw this, and intelligent
as well as powerful, he thrust the handle fiercely
in Denys’s face, and, turning, jobbed with the
steel at Gerard. Denys went staggering back covered
with blood. Gerard had rushed in like lightning,
and, just as the axe turned to descend on him, drove
his sword so fiercely through the giant’s body,
that the very hilt sounded on his ribs like the blow
of a pugilist, and Denys, staggering back to help his
friend, saw a steel point come out of the Abbot behind.
The stricken giant bellowed like a
bull, dropped his axe, and clutching Gerard’s
throat tremendously, shook him like a child. Then
Denys with a fierce snarl drove his sword into the
giant’s back. “Stand firm now!”
and he pushed the cold steel through and through the
giant and out at his breast.
Thus horribly spitted on both sides,
the Abbot gave a violent shudder, and his heels hammered
the ground convulsively. His lips, fast turning
blue, opened wide and deep, and he cried, “La
mort!-La mort!-La mort!!”
the first time in a roar of despair, and then twice
in a horror-stricken whisper, never to be forgotten.
Just then the street door was forced.
Suddenly the Abbot’s arms whirled
like windmills, and his huge body wrenched wildly
and carried them to the doorway, twisting their wrists
and nearly throwing them off their legs.
“He’ll win clear yet,”
cried Denys: “out steel! and in again!”
They tore out their smoking swords,
but ere they could stab again, the Abbot leaped full
five feet high, and fell with a tremendous crash against
the door below, carrying it away with him like a sheet
of paper, and through the aperture the glare of torches
burst on the awe-struck faces above, half blinding
them.
The thieves at the first alarm had
made for the back door, but driven thence by a strong
guard ran back to the kitchen, just in time to see
the lock forced out of the socket, and half-a-dozen
mailed archers burst in upon them. On these in
pure despair they drew their swords.
But ere a blow was struck on either
side, the staircase door behind them was battered
into their midst with one ponderous blow, and with
it the Abbot’s body came flying, hurled as they
thought by no mortal hand, and rolled on the floor
spouting blood from back and bosom in two furious
jets, and quivered, but breathed no more.
The thieves smitten with dismay fell
on their knees directly, and the archers bound them,
while, above, the rescued ones still stood like statues
rooted to the spot, their dripping swords extended
in the red torchlight, expecting their indomitable
enemy to leap back on them as wonderfully as he had
gone.