The Abbess Of Vlaye Part 19

s.n.a.t.c.hing the sword fallen from his brother's hands, in five and twenty months he had used it with such effect as to win from the King the baton of a marshal as the price of his obedience.

"M. de Joyeuse!" Roger muttered, as he watched them lay the unconscious man on an improvised couch in the corner. "M. de Joyeuse?

It seems incredible!"

"There is nothing credible about them," the man answered darkly. "The old fool who keeps the gate here would try the belief of most with his fables. But he'll never put the handle to their hatchet," with a nod of meaning. "Yet to listen to him, Charlemagne and the twelve were not on a level with his master--once! But where are you going, young sir?"

in an altered tone.

"To tell the Vicomte what has occurred," Roger answered, his hand on the latch of the inner door--the door that led to the stairs and the upper rooms.

"By your leave!"

"I don't understand."

"By your leave, I say!" the trooper answered more sharply, and in a twinkling he had intervened, turned the key in the lock and withdrawn it. "I am sorry, young sir," he continued, coolly facing about again, "but until we know what is to do, and what the Captain's orders are--he has a trump card in his hand now, or I am mistaken--I must keep you here, by your leave."

"Against my leave!"

"As you please for that."

"I should have though that you had had enough of keeping people!"

Roger retorted angrily.

"May-be Ampoule has," the man answered with a faint sneer. "I'll see if I have not better luck. Come, young sir," he continued with good-humour, "you cannot say that I have been aught but gentle so far.

You've fared better with me, ay, a _mort_ better, than you'd have fared if the Captain had been here. But I don't want to have to hurt you if it comes to blows upstairs. You are safer here looking after the Duke. And trust me, you'll thank me, some day."

Roger glared at him in resentment. He felt that he who lay helpless in the corner would have known how to deal with the man and the situation; but, for himself, he did not. To attempt force was out of the question, and the trooper had withdrawn and closed the door, leaving Roger alone with the patient, before the idea of bribery occurred to the lad. It was as well perhaps; for what was there at Villeneuve, what had they in that poverty-stricken home of such a value as to outweigh the wrath of Vlaye? Or to corrupt men who had seen, without daring to touch, a ring worth a King's ransom?

Nothing, for certain, which it was in Roger's power to give. Moreover, the situation, though full of peril, seemed less desperate. The Duke's act, if it had wrought no more, had sobered the men, and his presence, wounded as he was, was a factor Roger could not estimate. The respect with which the men treated him when he lay at their mercy, and their care to do the best for him, to say nothing of the feelings of awe and admiration in which they held him--these things promised well. The question was, how would his presence affect M. de Vlaye? And his pursuit of the Countess?

Roger had no notion. The possession of the person of a prince who ruled a great part of Languedoc might touch the Captain of Vlaye--a minnow by comparison, but in his own water--in a number of ways. It might strengthen him in his present design, or it might turn him from it by opening some new prospect to his ambition. Again, M. de Vlaye might treat the Duke in one of several modes; as an enemy, as a friend, as a hostage. He might use the occasion well or ill. He might work on fears or grat.i.tude. All to Roger was dark and uncertain; as dark as the courtyard, where the flames of the huge fire had sunk low, and men by the dull glow of the red embers were removing in a cloak the body of the unfortunate Ampoule. Ay, and as uncertain as the breathing of the wounded man in the corner, which now seemed to stop, and now hurried weakly on.

Roger paced the room. He did not know for certain what had become of the Countess, or of his sister, or of his father. He took it for granted that they had sought the greater safety of the upper rooms. He had himself, earlier in the evening, suggested that if the worst threatened they might retreat to the tower chamber, and there defend themselves; but the Vicomte had pooh-poohed the suggestion, and though Bonne, who persisted in expecting help from outside, had supported it, the plan had been given up. Still they were gone, and they could have retired no other way. He listened at the locked door, hoping to hear feet on the stairs; for they must be anxious about him. But all was still. His sister, the Countess, the Vicomte, might have melted into the air--as far as he was concerned.

And this, anxious as he was for them, vexed him. He had failed! The long silence that had brooded over the decaying house, the dull life against which he and his brother had fretted, were come to an end with a vengeance. But what use had he made of the opportunity? When he should have been playing the hero upstairs, when he should have been the head and front of the defence, directing all, inspiring all, he lay here in a locked room like a naughty child who must be shielded from harm.

A movement on the part of the sick man cut short his thoughts. The Duke was making futile attempts to raise himself on his elbow.

"Ageaux! Des Ageaux!" he muttered. "You are satisfied now! I struck him fairly."

Roger hurried to him and leant over him. "Lie still and do not speak,"

he said, hoping to soothe him.

"We are quits now," the Duke whispered. "We are quits now. Say so, man!" he continued querulously. "I tell you Vlaye will trouble you no more. I struck him fairly in the throat."

"Yes, yes," Roger replied. It was evident that the Duke was rambling in his mind, and took him for some one else. "We are quits now."

"Quits," the wounded man muttered, as if he found some magic in the words. And he drowsed off again into the half-sleep, half-swoon of exhaustion.

Roger could make nothing of it, except that the Duke had Vlaye in his mind, and fancied that it was he whom he had killed. But des Ageaux, whom he fancied he was addressing? Roger knew him by name and that he was Governor of Perigord, a man of name and position beyond his rank.

But how came he in this galley? Oh, yes. He remembered now. His name had been mentioned in connection with the death of the eldest Joyeuse at Coutras.

Roger snuffed the candles, and mixing a little wine with water, put it by the Duke's side. Then he wandered to the locked door, and again listened fruitlessly. Thence, for he could not rest, he went to the window, where he pressed his forehead against the cool gla.s.s. The fire had sunk lower; it was now no more than an angry eye glowing in the darkness. He could discern little by its light. No one moved, the courtyard seemed as vacant and deserted as the house. Or no. In the direction of the gate he caught the glint of a lanthorn and the movement of several figures, revealed for an instant and as suddenly obscured. He continued to watch the place where the light had vanished, and presently out of the obscurity grew a black ma.s.s that slowly took the form of a number of men crossing the court in a silent body, five or six abreast. The tramp of their feet, inaudible on the soil, rumbled hollowly as they mounted the bridge, which creaked beneath them. He caught the gleam of weapons, heard a low order given, fell back from the window. He had little doubt what they were about to do.

He was right. The heavy, noisy entry into the outer hall had scarcely prepared him before the door was thrown open and they filed into the room in which he stood.

What could he do? Resistance was out of the question. "What is it?" he asked, making a show of confronting them.

"No matter, young sir," the man who had before taken charge answered gruffly. "Stand you on one side and no harm will happen to you."

"But----"

"Stand back! Stand back!" the man answered sternly. "We are on no boy's errand!" Then to his party, "Bring the lights," he continued, and advancing to the inner door he unlocked it. "Who has the hammer?

Good, do you come first with me. And let the last two stand here and keep the door."

He went through without more words, and disappeared up the staircase, followed by his men in single file. The two last remained on guard at the door, and they and Roger waited in the semi-darkness listening to the lumbering tread of the troopers as they stumbled on the wooden stairs, or their weapons clanged against the wall. Roger clenched his hands hard, vowing vengeance; but what could he do? And he had one consolation. Ampoule's death had sobered the men. They would execute their orders, but the fear of outrage and excess which had dwelt on his mind earlier in the evening no longer seemed serious.

The sound of the men's feet on the stairs had ceased; he guessed that they were searching the rooms overhead. A moment later their movements made this clear. He heard their returning footsteps and their raised voices in the upper pa.s.sage. They seemed to confer, and to halt for a minute undecided. Then a door, doubtless the one which led to the roof, was tried, and tried again. But in vain, for the next moment a voice cried harshly, "Open! Open!" and after an interval a crash, twice repeated, proclaimed that the hammer was being brought into use.

A scrambling of hasty feet followed, and then silence--doubtless they were crossing the roof--and then a pistol shot! One pistol shot!

Roger glared at the men who had been left with him. They opened the door more widely, and stepping through seemed to listen. For a moment the wild notion of locking the door on them, of locking the door on all, occurred to Roger. But he discarded it.

CHAPTER IX.

SPEEDY JUSTICE.

The elder of the Villeneuve brothers was less happy than Roger, in that the Vicomte had pa.s.sed to him a portion of his crabbed nature.

Something of the bitterness, something of the hardness of the father lurked in the son; who in the like unfortunate circ.u.mstances might have grown to be such another as his sire, but with more happy surroundings and a better fate still had it in him to become a generous and kindly gentleman.

It was this latent crabbedness that had kept the injustice of his lot ever before his gaze. Roger bore lightly with his heavier burden, and only the patient sweetness of his eyes told tales. Bonne was almost content; if she fretted it was for others, and if she dreamed of the ancient glories of the house, it was not for the stiff brocades and jewelled stomacher of her grandame that she pined.

But with Charles it was otherwise. The honour of the family was more to him, for he was the heir. Its dignity and welfare were his in a particular sense; and had he been of the most easy disposition, he must still have found it hard to see all pa.s.sing; to see the end, and to stand by with folded arms. But when to the misery of inaction and the hopelessness of the outlook were added the Vicomte's daily and hourly taunts, and all fell on a nature that had in it the seeds of unhappiness, what wonder if the young man broke away and sought in action, however desperate, a remedy for his pains?

A step which he would now have given the world to undo. As he rode a prisoner along the familiar track, which he had trodden a thousand times in freedom and safety, the iron entered into his soul. The sun shone, the glades were green, in a hundred brakes the birds sang, in shady dells and under oaks the dew sparkled; but he rode, his feet fastened under his horse's belly, his face set towards Vlaye. In an hour the dungeon door would close on him. He would have given the world, had it been his, to undo the step.

Not that he feared the dungeon so much, or even death; though the thought of death, amid the woodland beauty of this June day, carried a chill all its own, and death comes cold to him who awaits it with tied hands. But he could have faced death cheerfully--or he thought so--had he fallen into a stranger's power; had the victory not been so immediately, so easily, so completely with Vlaye--whom he hated. To be dragged thus before his foe, to read in that sneering face the contempt which events had justified, to lie at his mercy who had treated him as a silly clownish lad, to be subjected, may-be, to some contemptuous degrading punishment--this was a prospect worse than death, a prospect maddening, insupportable! Therefore he looked on the woodland with eyes of despair, and now and again, in fits of revolt, had much ado not to fight with his bonds, or hurl unmanly insults at his captors.

They, for their part, took little heed of him. They had not bound his hands, but had tied the reins of his horse to one of their saddles, and, satisfied with this precaution, they left him to his reflections.

By-and-by those reflections turned, as the thoughts of all captives turn, to the chance of escape; and he marked that the men--they numbered five--seemed to be occupied with something which interested them more than their prisoner. What it was, of what nature or kind, he had no notion; but he observed that as surely as they recalled their duty and drew round him, so surely did the lapse of two or three minutes find them dispersed again in pairs--it might be behind, it might be before him.

When this happened they talked low, but with an absorption so entire that once he saw a man jam his knee against a sapling which he failed to see, though it stood in his path; and once a man's hat was struck from his head by a bough which he might have avoided by stooping.

Naturally the trooper to whose saddle he was attached had no part in these conferences. And by-and-by this man, a grizzled, thick-set fellow with small eyes, grew impatient, and even, it seemed, suspicious. For a time he vented his dissatisfaction in grunts and looks, but at last, when the four others had got together and were colloguing with heads so close that a saddle-cloth would have covered them, he could bear it no longer.

"Come, enough of that!" he cried surlily. "One of you take him, and let me hear what you have settled. I'd like my say as well as another."

"Ay, ay, Baptist," one of the four answered. "In a minute, my lad."