Count Hannibal Part 51

But"--bitterly--"have a care of them! Montsoreau is very like Montereau!

Beware of the bridge!"

He went and came again in half an hour. Then, indeed, though she had spoken as if hope was dead in her, she was on her feet at the first sound of his tread on the stairs; her parted lips and her white face questioned him. He shook his head.

"There is a priest," he said in broken tones, "with them, whom G.o.d will judge. It is his plan, and he is without mercy or pity."

"You bring nothing from--him?"

"They will not suffer him to write again."

"You did not see him?"

"No."

CHAPTER x.x.xV. AGAINST THE WALL.

In a room beside the gateway, into which, as the nearest and most convenient place, Count Hannibal had been carried from his saddle, a man sat sideways in the narrow embrasure of a loophole, to which his eyes seemed glued. The room, which formed part of the oldest block of the chateau, and was ordinarily the quarters of the Carlats, possessed two other windows, deep-set indeed, yet superior to that through which Bigot--for he it was--peered so persistently. But the larger windows looked southwards, across the bay--at this moment the noon-high sun was pouring his radiance through them; while the object which held Bigot's gaze and fixed him to his irksome seat, lay elsewhere. The loophole commanded the causeway leading sh.o.r.ewards; through it the Norman could see who came and went, and even the cross-beam of the ugly object which rose where the causeway touched the land.

On a flat truckle-bed behind the door lay Count Hannibal, his injured leg protected from the coverlid by a kind of cage. His eyes were bright with fever, and his untended beard and straggling hair heightened the wildness of his aspect. But he was in possession of his senses; and as his gaze pa.s.sed from Bigot at the window to the old Free Companion, who sat on a stool beside him, engaged in shaping a piece of wood into a splint, an expression almost soft crept into his harsh face.

"Old fool!" he said. And his voice, though changed, had not lost all its strength and harshness. "Did the Constable need a splint when you laid him under the tower at Gaeta?"

The old man lifted his eyes from his task, and glanced through the nearest window.

"It is long from noon to night," he said quietly, "and far from cup to lip, my lord!"

"It would be if I had two legs," Tavannes answered, with a grimace, half- snarl, half-smile. "As it is--where is that dagger? It leaves me every minute."

It had slipped from the coverlid to the ground. Badelon took it up, and set it on the bed within reach of his master's hand.

Bigot swore fiercely. "It would be farther still," he growled, "if you would be guided by me, my lord. Give me leave to bar the door, and 'twill be long before these fisher clowns force it. Badelon and I--"

"Being in your full strength," Count Hannibal murmured cynically.

"Could hold it. We have strength enough for that," the Norman boasted, though his livid face and his bandages gave the lie to his words. He could not move without pain; and for Badelon, his knee was as big as two with plaisters of his own placing.

Count Hannibal stared at the ceiling. "You could not strike two blows!"

he said. "Don't lie to me! And Badelon cannot walk two yards! Fine fighters!" he continued with bitterness, not all bitter. "Fine bars 'twixt a man and death! No, it is time to turn the face to the wall.

And, since go I must, it shall not be said Count Hannibal dared not go alone! Besides--"

Bigot stopped him with an oath that was in part a cry of pain.

"D---n her!" he exclaimed in fury, "'tis she is that _besides_! I know it. 'Tis she has been our ruin from the day we saw her first, ay, to this day! 'Tis she has bewitched you until your blood, my lord, has turned to water. Or you would never, to save the hand that betrayed us, never to save a man--"

"Silence!" Count Hannibal cried, in a terrible voice. And rising on his elbow, he poised the dagger as if he would hurl it. "Silence, or I will spit you like the vermin you are! Silence, and listen! And you, old ban- dog, listen too, for I know you obstinate! It is not to save him. It is because I will die as I have lived, fearing nothing and asking nothing!

It were easy to bar the door as you would have me, and die in the corner here like a wolf at bay, biting to the last. That were easy, old wolf- hound! Pleasant and good sport!"

"Ay! That were a death!" the veteran cried, his eyes brightening. "So I would fain die!"

"And I!" Count Hannibal returned, showing his teeth in a grim smile. "I too! Yet I will not! I will not! Because so to die were to die unwillingly, and give them triumph. Be dragged to death? No, old dog, if die we must, we will go to death! We will die grandly, highly, as becomes Tavannes! That when we are gone they may say, 'There died a man!'"

"_She_ may say!" Bigot muttered, scowling.

Count Hannibal heard and glared at him, but presently thought better of it, and after a pause--

"Ay, she too!" he said. "Why not? As we have played the game--for her--so, though we lose, we will play it to the end; nor because we lose throw down the cards! Besides, man, die in the corner, die biting, and he dies too!"

"And why not?" Bigot asked, rising in a fury. "Why not? Whose work is it we lie here, snared by these clowns of fisherfolk? Who led us wrong and betrayed us? He die? Would the devil had taken him a year ago!

Would he were within my reach now! I would kill him with my bare fingers! He die? And why not?"

"Why, because, fool, his death would not save me!" Count Hannibal answered coolly. "If it would, he would die! But it will not; and we must even do again as we have done. I have spared him--he's a white-livered hound!--both once and twice, and we must go to the end with it since no better can be! I have thought it out, and it must be. Only see you, old dog, that I have the dagger hid in the splint where I can reach it. And then, when the exchange has been made, and my lady has her silk glove again--to put in her bosom!"--with a grimace and a sudden reddening of his harsh features--"if master priest come within reach of my arm, I'll send him before me, where I go."

"Ay, ay!" said Badelon. "And if you fail of your stroke I will not fail of mine! I shall be there, and I will see to it he goes! I shall be there!"

"You?"

"Ay, why not?" the old man answered quietly. "I may halt on this leg for aught I know, and come to starve on crutches like old Claude Boiteux who was at the taking of Milan and now begs in the pa.s.sage under the Chatelet."

"Bah, man, you will get a new lord!"

Badelon nodded. "Ay, a new lord with new ways!" he answered slowly and thoughtfully. "And I am tired. They are of another sort, lords now, than they were when I was young. It was a word and a blow then. Now I am old, with most it is--'Old hog, your distance! You scent my lady!'

Then they rode, and hunted, and tilted year in and year out, and summer or winter heard the lark sing. Now they are curled, and paint themselves, and lie in silk and toy with ladies--who shamed to be seen at Court or board when I was a boy--and love better to hear the mouse squeak than the lark sing."

"Still, if I give you my gold chain," Count Hannibal answered quietly, "'twill keep you from that."

"Give it to Bigot," the old man answered. The splint he was fashioning had fallen on his knees, and his eyes were fixed on the distance of his youth. "For me, my lord, I am tired, and I go with you. I go with you.

It is a good death to die biting before the strength be quite gone. Have the dagger too, if you please, and I'll fit it within the splint right neatly. But I shall be there--"

"And you'll strike home?" Tavannes cried eagerly. He raised himself on his elbow, a gleam of joy in his gloomy eyes.

"Have no fear, my lord. See, does it tremble?" He held out his hand.

"And when you are sped, I will try the Spanish stroke--upwards with a turn ere you withdraw, that I learned from Ruiz--on the shaven pate. I see them about me now!" the old man continued, his face flushing, his form dilating. "It will be odd if I cannot s.n.a.t.c.h a sword and hew down three to go with Tavannes! And Bigot, he will see my lord the Marshal by- and-by; and as I do to the priest, the Marshal will do to Montsoreau. Ho!

ho! He will teach him the _coup de Jarnac_, never fear!" And the old man's moustaches curled up ferociously.

Count Hannibal's eyes sparkled with joy. "Old dog!" he cried--and he held his hand to the veteran, who brushed it reverently with his lips--"we will go together then! Who touches my brother, touches Tavannes!"

"Touches Tavannes!" Badelon cried, the glow of battle lighting his bloodshot eyes. He rose to his feet. "Touches Tavannes! You mind at Jarnac--"

"Ah! At Jarnac!"

"When we charged their horse, was my boot a foot from yours, my lord?"

"Not a foot!"

"And at Dreux," the old man continued with a proud, elated gesture, "when we rode down the German pikemen--they were gra.s.s before us, leaves on the wind, thistledown--was it not I who covered your bridle hand, and swerved not in the _melee_?"