The Touchstone of Fortune Part 46

But the king, growing suspicious because of her haste, caught her by the arm, saying: "You remain here. I'll return the treaty."

She drew her arm from the king's grasp and started so hurriedly toward the door that the king took alarm and followed her, crying out:--

"I tell you I'll send the packet by other hands. You remain here."

She did not stop, so he caught her again by the arm, and spoke sharply: "You are to remain with me. Do you hear? I'm not to be played with. I'll send the packet--"

But she broke from his grasp, hastily opened the door, and found herself not at the head of the privy stairs, but in the king's anteroom, surrounded by a half dozen men in armor one of whom attempted to seize her. Instantly she sprang back to the king's closet, screaming, not as a signal to us, for she had forgotten our agreement in that respect, but in genuine fright.

Her screams brought George, De Grammont, and myself to the door at the head of the stairs in less time than one could count ten. We drew our swords, and I tried to open the door, but found it locked.

"The oars! The heavy oars!" whispered De Grammont.

I ran down the stairs to the boat and was about to ask Bettina to hand me the oars, when she, antic.i.p.ating me, whispered:--

"I heard some one call for the oars, so I threw them out. There they are!"

There they were, true enough, halfway up the water stairs, ready for my hand, because of Betty's quickness.

In less than ten seconds I was at the top of the stairs again, and within twenty seconds more we had battered down the door with our heavy ash oars. In the king's closet we found Frances, surrounded by men at arms, and the king crouching in a corner, barricaded by small pieces of furniture.

George fired his pistol, and one of the six men fell, whereupon several pistol shots were fired, filling the small room with powder smoke, but injuring no one so far as we knew. De Grammont found an opening in another man's armor, and four stood between us and Frances. Then the real fight began--four against three. This would have been heavy odds in an open field, but it was not so formidable in a small room almost dark with smoke. Above all, the troopers were fighting for pay; we were fighting for life.

The four men charged us fiercely, and while we were fighting just inside the room, Frances worked her way from behind our antagonists toward the battered door and was about to make her escape when one of the king's men struck her a cowardly blow with the hilt of his sword, and she fell to the floor at the head of the stairs.

"You and Hamilton take her to the boat," cried De Grammont, speaking to me, but continuing to fence, as though by instinct. "I'll hold the door till you call; then I'll run. The next best thing to fighting is running."

I regretted the use of Hamilton's name, as it would betray his presence, if overheard, which otherwise would not have been suspected, all of us being well masked. But I had no time to waste in vain regrets, so George and I lifted Frances from the floor and helped her down to the boat, leaving De Grammont just outside the battered door, defending himself n.o.bly against four armed men and keeping them inside the king's closet.

He seemed to be enjoying himself, for he was laughing, bowing, parrying, and thrusting, as though he were at a frolic rather than a fight. There is but one people on earth in whose blood is mingled fire and ice--the French.

When we reached the water, we found that the running tide had carried the boat a short distance down-stream, but Bettina was standing on the stern thwart, bending this way and that in her endeavor to scull back to the landing by means of the steering oar. Every drop of blood in Bettina's plump little body was worth its weight in triple fine gold to us that night, for she brought the boat back to us without delay, and George helped Frances aboard while I ran to the foot of the privy stairs, shouting loudly:--

"Come on, Berkeley! Come quickly!"

Usually I think of the right thing to say a fortnight after the opportunity, but this once the name Berkeley came to me in the nick of time, and I evened my score with its possessor for many a dirty trick he had put upon me. To suspect was to condemn with Charles, and I knew that if he heard me call Berkeley's name, that consummate villain would suffer the royal frown. And so he did, never having been able to explain, nor deny, satisfactorily to the king, his presence at the head of the privy stairs that night. But to return to the fight.

De Grammont heard my summons, came down the stairs three steps at a time, and sprang into the boat from the landing.

"The oars! The oars!" cried Hamilton.

"Death is between them and us!" cried De Grammont.

"Let us go!" cried Betty. "I'll scull the boat with the steering oar!"

There was not a man in the boat who knew the art of propelling it with one oar. Truly Betty was our salvation that night.

I shoved the boat off, Betty turned its head down-stream, and away we shot. We were not ten paces from the water stairs when five men came running from the privy stairs to the landing. I recognized the king, who was in the lead. As they reached the water edge of the landing, I heard a splash. Majesty, in his eagerness to overtake us, had gathered too great headway and had landed, if I may use the word, in the water.

The other men, being in armor, were compelled to doff their iron before jumping in to save the king. The night was dark, but we were so near the landing that I saw two of the men begin to throw off their armor, and presently I heard two splashes, followed quickly by two pistol shots in our direction. In our direction, I say, because both of the b.a.l.l.s struck our boat.

After the pistol shots, all was quiet, but I knew that one of the king's barges, with a dozen men at as many sweeps, and a score of men at arms, would soon follow us. I made my way to the stern thwart of our boat, where Betty was sculling for dear life, taking her course diagonally across the river toward the Southwark bank. After we had pa.s.sed the swift current in the middle of the river, which I thought she had been seeking, I asked:--

"Why do you not keep to the centre, Betty? You are making toward the other bank."

"Yes," she replied, with what breath she could spare. "We'll find a stand of boats tied to poles almost opposite Temple Bar stairs. There we may take a pair of oars. I'm afraid I can't hold out at this much longer."

We soon found the boat stand, and, with little ceremony, appropriated a pair of oars, leaving a crown on the thwart of the rifled boat.

Hamilton and I quickly adjusted the stolen sweeps in the oar-locks, Betty sat down on the stern thwart, guided the boat to the swift water of the centre, and immediately we sped toward London Bridge at a fine rate.

Presently, as we had expected, we heard the rapid, regular stroke of the sweeps in the king's barge, and in a few minutes it was so close behind us that we could see the men at the sweeps. When they saw us, they fired their pistols at us, but we did not hear the bullets splash in the water, so we knew they did not have our range.

My greatest fear of the bullets was for Bettina's sake, she being in the rear and more exposed to the enemy's fire than we who were at the sweeps, but I could not leave my oar to take her place, nor could I have steered the boat had I done so, being unfamiliar with the river. All I could do was to hasten our stroke, which George and I did to our utmost, and soon the welcome beacon over the centre arch of London Bridge came into view, dimly at first, but brightening with every stroke of our sweeps. As we approached the Bridge, De Grammont nervously called our attention to the danger ahead of us.

"Yes, we'll take the middle arch, and I shall enjoy seeing the king's barge follow us," I answered, with what breath I could spare.

"Take the middle arch, and the tide running as a river in flood?" cried De Grammont, speaking French, being too excited to sort out English words. "Never! Never! Let me out!"

"Do not fear, count," I answered. "Our pilot--"

"Our pilot! Ah, sacrament! We are lost! Our pilot is a mere girl!"

"But a wonder, count, a wonder. There is no waterman on the river in whose hands we should be safer," I replied, expressing my confidence in stronger terms than it really deserved. To shoot London Bridge when the tide was running out, as it then was, would give pause to the hardiest waterman. A misstroke of the steering oar, the slightest faltering in the hands that held it, the mere touch of the boat's nose against the jagged rocks and logs of the pier, and all would be lost.

We could not stop to put De Grammont on sh.o.r.e, and presently recognizing that fact, he sat down in resignation in the bow of the boat, remarking with a sigh, as though speaking to himself:--

"Ah, the beautiful land!"

By that time the flambeau was blazing not two hundred yards ahead of us.

The current had caught us, and the waves of the running tide came almost to the gunwale of the boat. Bettina had risen to her feet, leaving her hat, vizard, and cloak in the bottom of the boat, and was standing on the stern thwart, her back towards us and her face up-stream. Behind us, perhaps three hundred yards, came the king's great barge, ablaze with torches. The men in the barge had ceased firing, supposing, probably, that we should be forced to land above the Bridge, and should then become an easy prey. But we had Bettina with us; they had not. Besides ours, there was not another one in the world.

On came the flambeau over the middle arch. It seemed to be coming toward us rather than we going toward it. Nearer lowered the black dim outline of the houses on the Bridge, with here and there the flicker of a candle in a window, magnified to starlike brightness by distance.

Clearer and clearer came the dash and the splash, the roar and the turmoil of the waters pouring through the terrible death's door, the middle arch. Yet over the middle arch was the only flambeau on London Bridge, placed there because it was the broadest of all the spans, and we dared not attempt to pa.s.s under the Bridge in the dark.

But worse than the middle arch ahead of us was the king's barge following close behind us. It, too, was in the current, though its twelve sweeps could easily have taken it ash.o.r.e. I suppose that pride and eagerness to overtake us prompted its captain to follow in our wake. At any rate, he continued and was narrowing the distance between us with each stroke of the sweeps. When I asked Bettina if she thought they would attempt the arch, she replied:--

"I hope not," then laughing softly, "--for their own sakes. The royal barges are not built to shoot the bridge."

As we approached the bridge, Betty turned her eyes backward toward it every few seconds, taking her bearings and bringing the boat's nose now a little to the right, now to the left, and again holding it straight ahead.

When we were within twenty yards of the middle arch, she told us to cease rowing, and we obeyed, leaving the boat in her hands.

The roar of the falling waters, tumbling in a cataract on the further side of the Bridge, frightened me, but if Betty heard it she did not fear it, for she began to sing the plaintive little French lullaby we had so often heard, and De Grammont, leaning forward, touched me on the back as he whispered:--

"G.o.d gives us an angel to steer our boat."

The next moment the water caught us in its mighty suck, just under the upper edge of the arch, and almost before we were aware that we had started through, our boat made a plunge on the lower side, the perilous moment was past, and we were floating in comparatively still water two score yards below London Bridge.