Michel and Angele [A Ladder of Swords] Part 2

Some shook their heads sullenly, others appeared uncertain, but their wives and children clung to them, and none stirred. Looking round helplessly, Angele saw the tall figure of the Seigneur of Rozel. He had been watching the scene for some time. Now he came quickly to her.

"Is it the very man?" he asked her, jerking a finger towards the struggling figures in the sea.

"Yes, oh yes," she replied, nodding her head piteously. "G.o.d tells my heart it is."

Her father drew near and interposed.

"Let us kneel and pray for two dying men," said he, and straightway knelt upon the sand.

"By St. Martin, we've better medicine than that, apothecary!" said Lempriere of Rozel loudly, and, turning round, summoned two serving-men.

"Launch my strong boat," he added. "We will pick these gentlemen from the brine, or know the end of it all."

The men hurried gloomily to the long-boat, ran her down to the sh.o.r.e and into the surf.

"You are going--you are going to save him, dear Seigneur?" asked the girl tremulously.

"To save him--that's to be seen, mistress," answered Lempriere, and advanced to the fishermen. By dint of hard words, and as hearty encouragement and promises, he got a half-dozen strong sailors to man the boat.

A moment after, they were all in. At a motion from the Seigneur, the boat was shot out into the surf, and a cheer from the sh.o.r.e gave heart to De la Foret and Buonespoir, who were being driven upon the rocks.

The Jerseymen rowed gallantly; and the Seigneur, to give them heart, promised a shilling, a capon, and a gallon of beer to each, if the rescue was made. Again and again the two men seemed to sink beneath the sea, and again and again they came to the surface and battled further, torn, battered, and b.l.o.o.d.y, but not beaten. Cries of "We're coming, gentles, we're coming!" from the Seigneur of Rozel, came ringing through the surf to the dulled ears of the drowning men, and they struggled on.

There never was a more gallant rescue. Almost at their last gasp the two were rescued.

"Mistress Aubert sends you welcome, sir, if you be Michel de la Foret,"

said Lempriere of Rozel, and offered the fugitive his horn of liquor as he lay blown and beaten in the boat.

"I am he," De la Foret answered. "I owe you my life, Monsieur," he added.

Lempriere laughed. "You owe it to the lady; and I doubt you can properly pay the debt," he answered, with a toss of the head; for had not the lady refused him, the Seigneur of Rozel, six feet six in height, and all else in proportion, while this gentleman was scarce six feet.

"We can have no quarrel upon the point," answered De la Foret, reaching out his hand; "you have at least done tough work for her, and if I cannot pay in gold, I can in kind. It was a generous deed, and it has made a friend for ever of Michel de la Foret."

"Raoul Lempriere of Rozel they call me, Michel de la Foret, and by Rollo the Duke, but I'll take your word in the way of friendship, as the lady yonder takes it for riper fruit! Though, faith, 'tis fruit of a short summer, to my thinking."

All this while Buonespoir the pirate, his face covered with blood, had been swearing by the little finger of St. Peter that each Jerseyman there should have the half of a keg of rum. He went so far in grat.i.tude as to offer the price of ten sheep which he had once secretly raided from the Seigneur of Rozel and sold in France; for which he had been seized on his later return to the island, and had escaped without punishment.

Hearing, Lempriere of Rozel roared at him in anger: "Durst speak to me!

For every fleece you thieved I'll have you flayed with bow-strings if ever I sight your face within my boundaries."

"Then I'll fetch and carry no more for M'sieu' of Rozel," said Buonespoir, in an offended tone, but grinning under his reddish beard.

"When didst fetch and carry for me, varlet?" Lempriere roared again.

"When the Seigneur of Rozel fell from his horse, overslung with sack, the night of the royal Duke's visit, and the footpads were on him, I carried him on my back to the lodge of Rozel Manor. The footpads had scores to settle with the great Rozel."

For a moment the Seigneur stared, then roared again, but this time with laughter.

"By the devil and Rollo, I have sworn to this hour that there was no man in the isle could have carried me on his shoulders. And I was right, for Jersiais you're none, neither by adoption nor grace, but a citizen of the sea."

He laughed again as a wave swept over them, drenching them, and a sudden squall of wind came out of the north. "There's no better head in the isle than mine for measurement and thinking, and I swore no man under eighteen stone could carry me, and I am twenty-five--I take you to be nineteen stone, eh?"

"Nineteen, less two ounces," grinned Buonespoir.

"I'll laugh De Carteret of St. Ouen's out of his stockings over this,"

answered Lempriere. "Trust me for knowing weights and measures! Look you, varlet, thy sins be forgiven thee. I care not about the fleeces, if there be no more stealing. St. Ouen's has no head--I said no one man in Jersey could have done it--I'm heavier by three stone than any man in the island." Thereafter there was little speaking among them, for the danger was greater as they neared the sh.o.r.e. The wind and the sea were against them; the tide, however, was in their favour. Others besides M. Aubert offered up prayers for the safe-landing of the rescued and rescuers. Presently an ancient fisherman broke out into a rude sailor's chanty, and every voice, even those of the two Huguenots, took it up:

"When the Four Winds, the Wrestlers, strive with the Sun, When the Sun is slain in the dark; When the stars burn out, and the night cries To the blind sea-reapers, and they rise, And the water-ways are stark-- G.o.d save us when the reapers reap!

When the ships sweep in with the tide to the sh.o.r.e, And the little white boats return no more; When the reapers reap, Lord give Thy sailors sleep, If Thou cast us not upon the sh.o.r.e, To bless Thee evermore: To walk in Thy sight as heretofore Though the way of the Lord be steep!

By Thy grace, Show Thy face, Lord of the land and the deep!"

The song stilled at last. It died away in the roar of the surf, in the happy cries of foolish women, and the laughter of men back from a dangerous adventure. As the Seigneur's boat was drawn up the sh.o.r.e, Angele threw herself into the arms of Michel de la Foret, the soldier dressed as a priest.

Lempriere of Rozel stood abashed before this rich display of feeling.

In his hottest youth he could not have made such pa.s.sionate motions of affection. His feelings ran neither high nor broad, but neither did they run low and muddy. His nature was a straight level of sensibility--a rough stream between high banks of prejudice, topped with the foam of vanity, now brawling in season, and now going steady and strong to the sea. Angele had come to feel what he was beneath the surface. She felt how unimaginative he was, and how his humour, which was but the horse-play of vanity, helped him little to understand the world or himself. His vanity was ridiculous, his self-importance was against knowledge or wisdom; and Heaven had given him a small brain, a big and n.o.ble heart, a pedigree back to Rollo, and the absurd pride of a little lord in a little land. Angele knew all this; but realised also that he had offered her all he was able to offer to any woman.

She went now and put out both hands to him. "I shall ever pray G.o.d's blessing on the lord of Rozel," she said, in a low voice.

"'Twould fit me no better than St. Ouen's sword fits his fingers. I'll take thine own benison, lady--but on my cheek, not on my hand as this day before at four of the clock." His big voice lowered. "Come, come, the hand thou kissed, it hath been the hand of a friend to thee, as Raoul Lempriere of Rozel said he'd be. Thy lips upon his cheek, though it be but a rough fellow's fancy, and I warrant, come good, come ill, Rozel's face will never be turned from thee. Pooh, pooh! let yon soldier-priest shut his eyes a minute; this is 'tween me and thee; and what's done before the world's without shame."

He stopped short, his black eyes blazing with honest mirth and kindness, his breath short, having spoken in such haste.

Her eyes could scarce see him, so full of tears were they; and, standing on tiptoe, she kissed him upon each cheek.

"'Tis much to get for so little given," she said, with a quiver in her voice; "yet this price for friendship would be too high to pay to any save the Seigneur of Rozel."

She hastily turned to the men who had rescued Michel and Buonespoir.

"If I had riches, riches ye should have, brave men of Jersey," she said; "but I have naught save love and thanks, and my prayers too, if ye will have them."

"'Tis a man's duty to save his fellow an' he can," cried a gaunt fisherman, whose daughter was holding to his lips a bowl of conger-eel soup.

"'Twas a good deed to send us forth to save a priest of Holy Church,"

cried a weazened boat-builder with a giant's arm, as he buried his face in a cup of sack, and plunged his hand into a fishwife's basket of limpets.

"Aye, but what means she by kissing and arm-getting with a priest?"

cried a snarling vraic-gatherer. "'Tis some jest upon Holy Church, or yon priest is no better than common men but an idle shame."

By this time Michel was among them. "Priest I am none, but a soldier,"

he said in a loud voice, and told them bluntly the reasons for his disguise; then, taking a purse from his pocket, thrust into the hands of his rescuers and their families pieces of silver and gave them brave words of thanks.

But the Seigneur was not to be outdone in generosity. His vanity ran high; he was fain to show Angele what a gorgeous gentleman she had failed to make her own; and he was in ripe good-humour all round.

"Come, ye shall come, all of ye, to the Manor of Rozel, every man and woman here. Ye shall be fed, and fuddled too ye shall be an' ye will; for honest drink which sends to honest sleep hurts no man. To my kitchen with ye all; and you, messieurs"--turning to M. Aubert and De la Fore-"and you, Mademoiselle, come, know how open is the door and full the table at my Manor of Rozel--St. Ouen's keeps a beggarly board."

CHAPTER IV