The Casque's Lark Part 31

CHAPTER V.

a.s.sa.s.sINATION OF MARION.

Endowed with rare sagacity, a straightforward and firm nature, and ever solicitous of the advice of Victoria, Marion's government was marked with wisdom. The army grew ever more attached to him, and gave him signal proof of its loyalty and admiration up to the day, exactly two months after his acclamation, when he, in turn, fell the victim of another horrible crime. I must narrate to you, my son, the circ.u.mstances of this second crime. It is intimately connected, as you will discover, with the b.l.o.o.d.y plot that drew in its vortex all whom I loved and venerated, leaving you motherless, me a widower, and Victoria desolate.

Two months had elapsed since the fatal night when my wife Ellen, Victorin and his son lost their lives. The sight of my house became insupportable to me; too many were the cruel recollections that cl.u.s.tered around it. Victoria induced me to move to her house with Sampso, who took your mother's place with you.

"Here I am, all alone in the world, separated from my son and grandson to the end of my days," said my foster-sister to me. "You know, Schanvoch, all the affection of my life was centered upon those two beings, so dear to my heart. Do not leave me alone. Come, you, your son and Sampso, come and stay with me. You will aid me thereby to bear the burden of my grief."

At first I hesitated to accept Victoria's offer. Due to a shocking fatality, I was the slayer of her son. True enough, she knew that, despite the enormity of Victorin's outrage, I would have spared his life, had I recognized him. She was aware of and saw the grief that the involuntary and yet legitimate homicide caused me. Nevertheless, and horrid was the recollection thereof to her, I had killed her son. I feared--despite all her protestations, and despite her warmly expressed desire that I move to her house--that my presence, however much wished for during the first loneliness of her bereavement, might become cruel and burdensome to her. Finally I yielded. Often did Sampso, in later years, say to me:

"Alas, Schanvoch, it was only after I saw how tenderly you always spoke of Victorin to his mother, who, in turn, spoke to you of my poor sister Ellen in the touching terms that she did, that I, together with all those who knew us, understood and admired what at first seemed impossible--the intimacy of you and Victoria, the two survivors of those victims of a cruel fatality!"

Whenever Victoria sufficiently surmounted her grief to consider the interests of the country, she applauded herself on having succeeded in deciding Captain Marion to accept the eminent post of which he daily proved himself more worthy. She wrote several times to Tetrik in that sense. He had left the government of Gascony in order to retire with his son, then about twenty years of age, to a house that he owned near Bordeaux, and where, as he said, he sought in poetry whatever solace he could find for the death of Victorin and his son. He composed several odes on those cruel events. Nothing, indeed, could be more touching than an ode written by Tetrik on the subject of "The Two Victorins," and sent by him to Victoria. Accordingly, the letters that he addressed to her during the two months of Marion's administration were marked with profound sadness. They expressed in a manner at once so simple, so delicate and so tender the affection he entertained for her family, and the sorrow that her bereavement caused him, that my foster-sister's attachment for her relative increased by the day. Even I shared the blind confidence that she reposed in him, and forgot the suspicions that were twice awakened in my mind against the man. Moreover, my suspicions vanished before the answer made to me by Eustace, when I questioned him regarding the soldier, my mysterious traveling companion and perpetrator of the a.s.sa.s.sination of Victoria's grandson.

"Commissioned by Captain Marion to provide him with a reliable man for your escort," Eustace answered me, "I picked out a horseman named Bertal. He was ordered to wait for you at the city gate. After nightfall I left the advanced post of the camp contrary to orders and went secretly into the city. I was on my way thither when I met the soldier on horseback. He was riding along the bank of the river, and was on the way to meet you. I told him to say nothing of having met me, should he run across any of our comrades on the road. He promised secrecy, and I went my way. Early the next morning, as I was returning along the river bank from Mayence, where I spent part of the night, I saw Bertal running towards me. He was on foot; he was fleeing distractedly before the just rage of our comrades. When I learned from his own mouth the horrible crime that he even dared to glory in, I killed him on the spot. That is all I know of the wretch."

So far from the information clearing up, it obscured still more the mystery that brooded over that fatal night. The Bohemian girls had disappeared; and all inquiries set on foot regarding Bertal, my traveling companion and subsequent perpetrator of such a horrible deed as the murder of a child, agreed in representing the man as a brave and honest soldier, incapable of the monstrous deed imputed to him, and explainable only on the theory of drunkenness or insane fury.

Accordingly, my son, Marion governed Gaul for two months to the satisfaction of all. One evening, shortly before sunset, seeking some diversion from the grief that oppressed me, I took a walk into the woods near Mayence. I had been walking ahead mechanically a long time, seeking only silence and seclusion and thus penetrating deeper and deeper into the wood, when my feet struck an object that I had not noticed. I tripped and was thus drawn from my sad revery. At my feet lay a casque the visor and gorget of which were turned up. I recognized on the spot Marion's casque by those features peculiar to the casque that he wore. I examined the ground more attentively by the last rays of the sun which penetrated the foliage with difficulty. I detected traces of blood on the gra.s.s; I followed them; they led to a thicket; I entered it.

There, stretched upon some tree branches that were bent and broken with his fall, I saw Marion, bareheaded and bathed in his own blood. I thought he was dead, or at least unconscious. I was mistaken. As I stooped to raise him and to give him some aid, my eyes caught his; they were fixed but still clear, despite approaching dissolution.

"Go away, Schanvoch!" Marion said in a voice that though fainting indicated anger. "I dragged myself to this spot in order to die in peace--I threw myself into this thicket to escape detection. Go away, Schanvoch! Leave me alone!"

"Leave you!" I cried, looking at him in stupor and observing that his blouse was red with blood just above the heart. "Leave you when your blood is flowing over your clothes, and when your wound is perhaps mortal!"

"Oh, perhaps!" replied Marion with a sarcastic smile. "It is certainly mortal, thanks to the G.o.ds!"

"I shall run to town!" I cried without stopping to consider the distance that I had just walked, absorbed as I was in my own sorrow. "I shall go for help!"

"Ha! Ha! Ha!--to run to the city--and we are two leagues away!" replied Marion with a lugubrious peal of laughter. "I am not afraid of any help that you may bring, Schanvoch. I shall be dead in less than a quarter of an hour. But, in the name of heaven, go away!"

"Are you resolved to die--did you smite yourself with your sword?"

"You have said it."

"No! You are trying to deceive me. Your sword is in its sheath."

"What is that to you? Go away--"

"You were struck by an a.s.sa.s.sin!" I exclaimed as I ran forward and picked up a sword still b.l.o.o.d.y, that my eyes just fell upon and that lay at a little distance. "This is the weapon that was used."

"I fought in loyal combat--leave me--Schanvoch--"

"You did not fight, and you did not wound yourself. Your sword lies beside you in its sheath. No, no! You fell under the blows of some cowardly a.s.sa.s.sin. Marion, let me examine your wound. Every soldier is something of a surgeon--if the flow of blood is staunched it may be enough to save your life--"

"Stop the flow of blood!" cried Marion casting at me an angry look.

"Just you try to stop the flow of the blood from my wound, and you will see how I will receive you--"

"I shall endeavor to save you," I answered, "despite yourself."

As I spoke I approached Marion who lay flat upon his back. Just as I stooped over him he bent both his knees over his stomach and immediately struck out violently with his feet. The kick took me in the chest and threw me over upon the gra.s.s--so powerful was the expiring Hercules.

"Will you still bring me help despite myself?" asked Marion as I rose up, not angry but desolate over his brutality. If I should be overcome in this sad struggle, it was clear that I would be compelled to give up the hope of bringing help to the wounded man.

"Very well! Die!" I said to him, "since such is your wish. Die, since you forget that Gaul needs your services. But be sure of one thing--your death will be avenged--we shall discover the name of your a.s.sa.s.sin--"

"There has been no a.s.sa.s.sin--I gave myself the wound--"

"This sword belongs to someone," I said picking up the weapon. As I examined it I thought I could see through the blood that covered it that its blade bore an inscription. To ascertain the fact, I wiped it with some leaves. While I was engaged at this Marion cried in agony:

"Will you leave that sword alone! Quit rubbing upon the blade! Oh! My strength fails me, or I would rise and s.n.a.t.c.h the weapon from your hands. A curse upon you, who have come to disturb my last moments! Oh!

It must be the devil who sent you!"

"It is the G.o.ds who sent me!" I cried struck almost dumb with horror.

"It is Hesus who sent me for the punishment of the most horrible of crimes! A friend slay his friend!"

"You lie! You lie!"

"It is Eustace who dealt you the wound!"

"You lie! Oh! Why am I sinking so fast--I would smother those words in your cursed throat!"

"You were struck by this sword, the gift of your friendship to an infamous murderer--"

"It is false!"

"'_Marion forged this sword for his dear friend Eustace_'--that is the sentence engraved upon this blade," I replied to him pointing with my finger at the inscription graven in the steel. "This is the sword that you forged yourself."

"The inscription proves nothing," observed Marion in great anguish. "The man who struck me stole the sword from my friend Eustace--that's all."

"You still seek to screen that man! Oh! There will be no punishment too severe for the cowardly murderer!"

"Listen, Schanvoch," replied Marion in a sinking and suppliant voice: "I am about to die--nothing is denied to an expiring man--"

"Oh! Speak! Speak, good and brave soldier. Seeing that, to the misfortune of Gaul, fatality prevents me from saving you, speak! I shall execute your last will--"

"Schanvoch, the oath that soldiers give each other at the moment of death--is sacred, is it not?"

"Yes, my brave Marion."

"Swear to me--that you will reveal to no one that you found here the sword of my friend Eustace."

"You, his victim--and you wish to save him!"