God Wills It! Part 20

"For the sake of Mary Kurkuas, do not rush into this blood-feud. G.o.d will not bless you if you go beyond Raoul!"

Longsword threw back his head.

"I were unworthy of Mary Kurkuas if I yielded a hair! No power shall shake me! Let Christ pity them; I will not!"

Sebastian turned away.

"Dear Lord," he prayed, "Thou seest how my sweet son is torn by the fiends who seek his soul; first he forgets Jerusalem, now will dip his hands wantonly in Christian blood. Spare him; pity him; restore him to himself."

That night Richard sat at chess with Musa; played skilfully, laughed loud. His talk was merry, but his face was very hard.

CHAPTER XIII

HOW RICHARD SINNED AGAINST HEAVEN

Night was falling. There was a gray mist creeping over the mountain; the ash trees and beeches loomed to spectral size; the sky was thick with dun cloud-banks. But De Carnac, as he looked upward, muttered to Longsword in a bated whisper, "The clouds are less heavy; wait two hours--they will break and give us the moon."

"Hist, men!" Richard cautioned the band about him; "not yet; we must wait for darkness."

Long had they already waited,--those score of Saracens and fifty or more St. Julien men, lying in ambush behind the trees, north of the crag whereon perched the Valmont castle, the only side where an easy road led up to the outer rampart, within which still lowered the great keep. They had seen men go in and out, but none molested them in the safe shadow of the trees. Their hearts had leaped at the chirp of each cricket, the call of each wood-bird. The sounds died away; naught followed; each man listened to the beating in his own breast.

It grew darker. Now the last light shimmered between the leaf-laden branches; a murky haze overspread tree and shrub and moss-covered ground until all objects were lost in the black night. The castle was a good three hundred paces away, but it was so still that they heard the rattle of the porter's keys when he made fast the great outer gate. The chains of the drawbridge rattled; they could see a lantern flash on a steel cap as its owner made the parapet rounds; a few glints of light from the narrow windows in the keep faded one by one; then--silence.

Richard felt for his sheath and loosened Trenchefer; then whispered to a shock-pated "villain," whose wrists were bound, and the cord in Herbert's keeping:--

"Now, Giles of the Mill, serve us true in this; for as I hope in heaven, your hands shall be stricken off, and the stumps plunged in hot sulphur, if you play false!"

"Never fear, lord," answered the fellow. "Raoul hung my eldest son for fishing in his stream after mid-Lent; never fear his brother will fail to let down the ladder."

Richard rose to his feet very slowly. It was so dark under the trees that the keenest eye saw only blackness. On the western hill-crest, where the clouds gave way, the last bars of pale light still hung, but dimming each moment.

"_Nox ruit interea, et montes umbrantur_," repeated Sebastian, softly, at Longsword's elbow.

"_Ai_, father," muttered the Norman, turning, "why did you not remain in the glen by the horses? We will call you, if any need shriving."

"And shall not the shepherd go with the sheep?" said Sebastian, solemnly. "Ah! dear son, if G.o.d bless you this night, slay the guilty, but spare the innocent!"

"Time enough," protested Richard, "to consider, when we see the inside of that keep. By St. Michael, it will be no jaunty hawking!"

Sebastian laid his great, iron-capped mace upon his shoulder. "This weapon I bear," said he, "that I may not live by the sword, and so by the sword perish."

"Now, my men!" commanded Richard, his voice still very low; and silently the long line of dark figures rose from the fern brake. As they rose, a distant bell pealed out many miles away, the notes stealing in among the trees like echoes from an untrodden world.

"They toll some one who has died in Bredon," whispered Bertrand, the squire. "Let us pray," said Richard. And all the Christians knelt. The Saracens stood dumbly, but perhaps said their word to "Allah,"--for who among them was fated to see another morning?

So Richard prayed--a wild, unholy prayer, as became his unholy frame of mind; and he ended, "Thus I confide myself to the stout heart Thou hast given me, and to my good sword, and my good right arm; but last of all to Thee!" And one may hope the Most High rejoiced that He was not utterly forgotten.

"Come!" commanded Longsword, rising. "Keep your shields from banging, all the crossbows ready, and the swords loose. De Carnac, you have torches; we shall need them; and you, Herbert--the great axe."

Softly as birds upon the wing, those seventy mad spirits stole across the band of open ground betwixt forest and castle. Then they halted before the looming outworks. They heard the sentinel above tramp along the platform. A stray gleam of light touched his lance-head. He might have tossed a pebble down upon Longsword's helm. Herbert laid down his great axe, set his crossbow, laid a quarrel and levelled into the dark.

"Not as you love me!" growled Richard, clapping a hand on the reckless veteran; "will you blast all now?"

Tramp, tramp; the sentry was gone round behind the other side of the keep. Richard crept up to the wall, and at his side Musa. It was so dark here, they only knew the barrier by their hands.

"Now, Giles, your signal!" Longsword pa.s.sed the word. And then sounded a low bird-call, a second, a third; then silence again. More steps on the parapet above; and a voice very far away, and mysterious in the dark.

"Below there?"

"Yes," answered Richard.

"Here; the ladder; I have fastened it." And something whirred down into the gloom, and struck the ground lightly. It was the end of a rope ladder. Richard groped for it, caught, and gave command.

"Stand by, men; I will go first; who second?"

"Who but I, brother?" protested Musa, in his ear.

"Good; let us gain the parapet, if we may, in silence; then storm the drawbridge and the keep-gate before the alarm. And now"--and he gripped Trenchefer in his teeth and began to climb.

Two rounds he had mounted, when there was a second step above; then a shout, cry, scuffle:--

"Devil! Traitor! Help!" and in an eye-twinkle there was a torch flaming on the parapet. Richard paused a moment. Right at the crown of the battlement stood a figure in armor, and behind the bulwark was the noise of struggle. Louder the shout:--

"Treachery! attack! to arms!"

Twenty voices had it now. A mighty horn was blaring; a great bell was tossing up its brazen throat in ringing clangor.

"Down, lord, down!" it was Herbert who called.

"Follow me, all who love G.o.d!" flung back Richard; and he sped up the ladder, and Musa after him. Twenty rounds there were to clear; and at the top, one who was swinging his sword to cut the cords. But in the torchlight Herbert again levelled, and whing!--his quarrel had sped clean through the man-at-arms. A second was there, a third, but a flight of Saracen arrows smote them. Richard never knew how he climbed those rounds. He was grasping the battlement--a long leap cleared it.

He had won the platform; beside him was Musa; and beside Musa stood Herbert. The parapet was theirs--and what a sight!

Upon the summit of the great keep a huge bonfire had sprung up, and the tall flames leaped toward the inky heavens. Down the long bridge from the keep-door were running men in armor,--ten, twenty, twoscore,--and their swords were flashing. And two mighty shouts came swelling from within and without:--

"G.o.d and De Valmont!"

"Our Lady of St. Julien!"

Richard saw a man in a silvered casque running down the drawbridge--a dwarfish man with the shoulders of a bull; over his head danced the spiked ball of an armed whip.

"Ah! St. Julien dogs!" was his shout. "To the fiends with them all!"

"Up, men!" roared Richard, his voice swelling above battle-shout, bell, and fire. But a great curse came from Herbert. "G.o.d spare our souls! One rope of the ladder is snapped!"

"Make it fast," flew back the answer. "Musa and I will cover you. Ha, my brother?"