The Lady of Fort St. John Part 20

The young soldier crept slowly down the rocky hillock, avoided another sentinel, and, after long caution and self-restraint and polishing the earth with his buckskin, crawled into the empty trench. The Sable Island ponies continually helped him. They were so nervous and so agile that the sentinels ceased to watch moving shadows.

The soldier looked up at St. John and its tower, knowing that he must enter in some manner before the moon rose. He dreaded the red brightness of moon-dawn, when guards whom he could discern against the stony ascent might detect his forehead above the breastwork. Behind him stretched an alluvial flat to the river's sands. The tide was running swiftly out, and under starlight its swirls and long muscular sweeps could be followed by a practiced eye.

As the soldier glanced warily in every direction, two lights left D'Aulnay's camp and approached him, jerking and flaring in the hands of men who were evidently walking over irregular ground. They might be coming directly to take possession of the trench. But why should they proclaim their intention with torches to the batteries of Fort St. John?

He looked around for some refuge from the advancing circle of smoky shine, and moved backwards along the bottom of the trench. The light stretched over and bridged him, leaving him in a stream of deep shadow, protected by the breastwork from sentinels above. He could therefore lift a cautious eye at the back of the trench, and scan the group now moving betwixt him and the river. There were seven persons, only one of whom strode the stones with reckless feet. This man's hands were tied behind his back, and a rope was noosed around his neck and held at the other end by a soldier.

"It is Klussman, our Swiss!" flashed through the soldier in the trench, with a mighty throb of rage and shame, and anxiety for the lady in the fort. If Klussman had been taken prisoner, the guns of St. John would surely speak in his behalf when he was about to be hanged before its very gate. Such a parade of the act must be discovered on the walls. It was plain that Klussman had deserted to D'Aulnay, and was now enjoying D'Aulnay's grat.i.tude.

"The tree that doth best front the gates," said one of the men, pointing with his torch to an elm in the alluvial soil: "my lord said the tree that doth best front the gates."

"That hath no fit limbs," objected another.

"He said the tree that doth best front the gates," insisted the first man. "Besides this one, what shrub hereabouts is tall enough for our use?"

They moved down towards the elm. A stool carried by one man showed its long legs grotesquely behind his back. There were six persons besides the prisoner, all soldiers except one, who wore the coa.r.s.e, long, cord-girdled gown of a Capuchin. His hood was drawn over his face, and the torches imperfectly showed that he was of the bare-footed order and wore only sandals. He held up a crucifix and walked close beside Klussman. But the Swiss gazed all around the dark world which he was so soon to leave, and up at the fortress he had attempted to betray, and never once at the murmuring friar.

The soldier in the trench heard a breathing near him, and saw that a number of the ponies, drawn by the light, had left their fitful grazing and were venturing step by step beyond the end of the trench. Some a.s.sociation of this scene with soldiers who used to feed them at night, after a hard day of drawing home the winter logs, may have stirred behind their s.h.a.ggy foreheads. He took his hunting-knife with sudden and desperate intention, threw off his moccasins, cut his leggins short at the middle of the leg, and silently divided his blanket into strips.

Preparations were going forward under the elm. One of the soldiers climbed the tree and crept out upon an arched limb, catching the rope end thrown up to him. Both torches were given to one man, that all the others might set themselves to the task. Klussman stood upon the stool, which they had brought for the purpose from the cook's galley in one of their ships. His blond face, across which all his thoughts used to parade, was cast up by the torches like a stiffened mask, hopeless yet fearless in its expression.

"Come, Father Vincent," said the man who had made the knot, sliding down the tree. "This is a Huguenot fellow, and good words are lost on him. I wonder that my lord let him have a friar to comfort him."

"Retire, Father Vincent," said the men around the stool, with more roughness than they would have shown to a favorite confessor of D'Aulnay's. The Capuchin turned and walked toward the trench.

The soldier in the trench could not hear what they said, but he had time for no further thought of Klussman. He had been watching the ponies with the conviction that his own life hung on what he might drive them to do. They alternately snuffed at Klussman's presence and put their noses down to feel for springing gra.s.s. Before they could start and wheel from the friar, the soldier had thrown his hunting-knife. It struck the hind leg of the nearest pony and a scampering and snorting hurricane swept down past the elm. Klussman's stool and the torch-bearer were rolled together. Both lights were stamped out by the panic-struck men, who thought a sally had been made from the fort. Father Vincent saw the knife thrown, and turned back, but the man in the trench seized him with steel muscles and dragged him into its hollow. If the good father uttered cry against such violence, there was also noise under the elm, and the wounded pony yet galloped and snorted toward the river. The young soldier fastened his mouth shut with a piece of blanket, stripped off his capote and sandals and tied him so that he could not move.

Having done all most securely and put the capote and sandals upon himself, the soldier whispered at the friar's ear an apology which must have amused them both,--

"Pardon my roughness, good father. Perhaps you will lend me your clothes?"

XVI.

THE CAMP.

D'Aulnay's sentinels about the walls, understanding that all this confusion was made by a stampede of ponies, kept the silence which had been enjoined on them. But some stir of inquiry seemed to occur in the bastions. Father Vincent, lying helpless in the trench, and feeling the chill of lately opened earth through his shaven head and partly nude body, wondered if he also had met D'Aulnay's grat.i.tude for his recent inquiry into D'Aulnay's fitness to receive the sacraments.

"But I will tell my lord of Charnisay the truth about his sins," thought Father Vincent, unable to form any words with a pinioned mouth, "though he should go the length of procuring my death."

The soldier with his buckskin covered by Father Vincent's capote stepped out into the starlight and turned his cowled face toward the fort. He intended to tell the sentinels that D'Aulnay had sent him with a message to the commandant of St. John. The guards, discerning his capote, would perhaps obey a beckoning finger, and believe that he had been charged with silence; for not having heard the churchman's voice he dared not try to imitate it, and must whisper. But that unforeseen element which the wisest cannot rule out of their fate halted him before he took a dozen steps up the hill.

"Where is Father Vincent de Paris?" called some impatient person below the trench. Five figures coming from the tree gained distinctness as they advanced, but it was a new-comer who demanded again,--

"Where is Father Vincent de Paris? Did he not leave the camp with you?"

The soldier went down directly where his gray capote might speak for itself to the eye, and the man who carried the stool pointed with it toward the evident friar.

"There stands the friar behind thee. He hath been tumbled into the trench, I think."

"Is your affair done?"

"And well done, except that some cattle ran mad among us but now, and we thought a sally had been made, so we put out our torches."

"With your stupid din," said the messenger from camp, "you will wake up the guns of the fort at the very moment when Sieur D'Aulnay would send his truce bearer in."

"I thank the saints I am not like to be used for his agent," said the man who had been upset with the torches, "if the walls are to be stormed as they were this morning."

"He wants Father Vincent de Paris," said the under officer from camp.

"Good father, you took more license in coming hither than my lord intended."

The soldier made some murmured noise under his cowl. He walked beside the officer and heard one man say to another behind him,--

"These holy folks have more courage than men-at-arms. My lord was minded to throw this one out of the ship when he sailed from Port Royal."

"The Sieur D'Aulnay hath too much respect to his religion to do that,"

answered the other.

"You had best move in silence," said the officer, turning his head toward them, and no further words broke the march into camp. D'Aulnay's camp was well above the reach of high tide, yet so near the river that soft and regular splashings seemed encroaching on the tents. The soldier noticed the batteries on their height, and counted as ably as he could for the cowl and night dimness the number of tents holding this little army. Far beyond them the palpitating waters showed changeful surfaces on Fundy Bay.

The capote was long for him. He kept his hands within the sleeves.

Before the guard-line was pa.s.sed he saw in the middle of the camp an open tent. A long torch stood in front of it with the point stuck in the ground. The floating yellow blaze showed the tent's interior, its simple fittings for rest, the magnificent arms and garments of its occupant, and first of all, D'Aulnay de Charnisay himself, sitting with a rude camp table in front of him. He was half m.u.f.fled in a furred cloak from the balm of that Easter night. Papers and an ink-horn were on the table, and two officers stood by, receiving orders.

This governor of Acadia had a triangular face with square temples and pointed beard, its crisp fleece also concealing his mouth except the thin edges of his lips. It was a handsome nervous face of black tones; one that kept counsel, and was not without humor. He noticed his subordinate approaching with the friar. The men sent to execute Klussman were dispersed to their tents.

"The Swiss hath suffered his punishment?" he inquired.

"Yes, my lord D'Aulnay. I met the soldiers returning."

"Did he say anything further concerning the state of the fort?"

"I know not, my lord. But I will call the men to be questioned."

"Let it be. He hath probably not lied in what he told me to-day of its weak garrison. But help is expected soon with La Tour. Perhaps he told more to the friar in their last conference."

"Heretics do not confess, my lord."

"True enough; but these churchmen have inquisitive minds which go into men's affairs without confession," said the governor of Acadia with a smile which lengthened slightly the thread-lines of his lips. D'Aulnay de Charnisay had an eye with a keen blue iris, sorting not at all with the pigments of his face. As he cast it on the returned friar his mere review deepened to a scrutiny used to detecting concealments.

"Hath this Capuchin shrunk?" exclaimed D'Aulnay. "He is not as tall as he was."

All present looked with quickened attention at the soldier, who expected them to pull off his cowl and expose a head of thrifty cl.u.s.ters which had never known the tonsure. His beaver cap lay in the trench with the real Father Vincent.

He folded his arms on his breast with a gesture of patience which had its effect. D'Aulnay's followers knew the warfare between their seignior and Father Vincent de Paris, the only churchman in Acadia who insisted on bringing him to account; and who had found means to supplant a favorite priest on this expedition, for the purpose of watching him.

D'Aulnay bore it with a.s.sumed good-humor. He had his religious scruples as well as his revenges and ambitions. But there were ways in which an intruding churchman could be martyred by irony and covert abuse, and by discomfort chargeable to the circ.u.mstances of war. Father Vincent de Paris, on his part, bore such martyrdom silently, but stinted no word of needed rebuke. A woman's mourning in the dusky tent next to D'Aulnay's now rose to such wildness of piteous cries as to divert even him from the shrinkage of Father Vincent's height. No other voice could be heard, comforting her. She was alone with sorrow in the midst of an army of fray-hardened men. A look of embarra.s.sment pa.s.sed over De Charnisay's face, and he said to the officer nearest him,--

"Remove that woman to another part of the camp."