“What a fine thingIs a lute with one string,”
said he.
The little girl's face broke into warm sunshine.
“Oh, the good news! oh, the good news!” she sang out with such heartfelt joy, it went off into a honeyed whine; even as our gay old tunes have a pathos underneath “So then,” said she, “they will no longer be able to threaten us little girls with him, making our lives a burden!” And she bounded off “to tell Nanette,” she said.
There is a theory that everything has its counterpart; if true, Denys it would seem had found the mind his consigne fitted.
While he was roaring with laughter at its unexpected success and Gerard's amazement, a little hand pulled his jerkin and a little face peeped round his waist. Curiosity was now the dominant passion in that small but vivid countenance.
“Est-ce toi qui l'a tue, beau soldat?”
“Oui, ma mie,” said Denys, as gruffly as ever he could, rightly deeming this would smack of supernatural puissance to owners of bell-like trebles. “C'est moi. Ca vaut une petite embrassade—pas?”
“Je crois ben. Aie! aie!”
“Qu'as-tu?”
“Ca pique! ca pique!”
“Quel dommage! je vais la couper.”
“Nein, ce n'est rien; et pisque t'as tue ce mechant. T'es fierement beau, tout d' meme, toi; t'es lien miex que ma grande soeur.
“Will you not kiss me, too, ma mie?” said Gerard.
“Je ne demande par miex. Tiens, tiens, tiens! c'est doulce celle-ci. Ah! que j'aimons les hommes! Des fames, ca ne m'aurait jamais donne l'arjan, blanc, plutot ca m'aurait ri au nez. C'est si peu de chose, les fames. Serviteur, beaulx sires! Bon voiage; et n'oubliez point la Jeanneton!”
“Adieu, petit coeur,” said Gerard, and on they marched; but presently looking back they saw the contemner of women in the middle of the road, making them a reverence, and blowing them kisses with little May morning face.
“Come on,” cried Gerard lustily. “I shall win to Rome yet. Holy St. Bavon, what a sunbeam of innocence hath shot across our bloodthirsty road! Forget thee, little Jeanneton? not likely, amidst all this slobbering, and gibbeting, and decanting. Come on, thou laggard! forward!”
“Dost call this marching?” remonstrated Denys; “why, we shall walk o'er Christmas Day and never see it.”
At the next town they came to, suddenly an arbalestrier ran out of a tavern after them, and in a moment his beard and Denys's were like two brushes stuck together. It was a comrade. He insisted on their coming into the tavern with him, and breaking a bottle of wine. In course of conversation, he told Denys there was an insurrection in the Duke's Flemish provinces, and soldiers were ordered thither from all parts of Burgundy. “Indeed, I marvelled to see thy face turned this way.
“I go to embrace my folk that I have not seen these three years. Ye can quell a bit of a rising without me I trow.”
Suddenly Denys gave a start. “Dost hear Gerard? this comrade is bound for Holland.”
“What then? ah, a letter! a letter to Margaret! but will he be so good, so kind?”
The soldier with a torrent of blasphemy informed him he would not only take it, but go a league or two out of his way to do it.
In an instant out came inkhorn and paper from Gerard's wallet; and he wrote a long letter to Margaret, and told her briefly what I fear I have spun too tediously; dwelt most on the bear, and the plunge in the Rhine, and the character of Denys, whom he painted to the life. And with many endearing expressions bade her to be of good cheer; some trouble and peril there had been, but all that was over now, and his only grief left was, that he could not hope to have a word from her hand till he should reach Rome. He ended with comforting her again as hard as he could. And so absorbed was he in his love and his work, that he did not see all the people in the room were standing peeping, to watch the nimble and true finger execute such rare penmanship.
Denys, proud of his friend's skill, let him alone, till presently the writer's face worked, and soon the scalding tears began to run down his young cheeks, one after another, on the paper where he was then writing comfort, comfort. Then Denys rudely repulsed the curious, and asked his comrade with a faltering voice whether he had the heart to let so sweet a love-letter miscarry? The other swore by the face of St. Luke he would lose the forefinger of his right hand sooner.
Seeing him so ready, Gerard charged him also with a short, cold letter to his parents; and in it he drew hastily with his pen two hands grasping each other, to signify farewell. By-the-by, one drop of bitterness found its way into his letter to Margaret. But of that anon.
Gerard now offered money to the soldier. He hesitated, but declined it. “No, no! art comrade of my comrade; and may” (etc.) “but thy love for the wench touches me. I'll break another bottle at thy charge an thou wilt, and so cry quits.”
“Well said, comrade,” cried Denys. “Hadst taken money, I had invited thee to walk in the courtyard and cross swords with me.”
“Whereupon I had cut thy comb for thee,” retorted the other.
“Hadst done thy endeavour, drole, I doubt not.”
They drank the new bottle, shook hands, adhered to custom, and parted on opposite routes.
This delay, however, somewhat put out Denys's calculations, and evening surprised them ere they reached a little town he was making for, where was a famous hotel. However, they fell in with a roadside auberge, and Denys, seeing a buxom girl at the door, said, “This seems a decent inn,” and led the way into the kitchen. They ordered supper, to which no objection was raised, only the landlord requested them to pay for it beforehand. It was not an uncommon proposal in any part of the world. Still it was not universal, and Denys was nettled, and dashed his hand somewhat ostentatiously into his purse and pulled out a gold angel. “Count me the change, and speedily,” said he. “You tavern-keepers are more likely to rob me than I you.”
While the supper was preparing, Denys disappeared, and was eventually found by Gerard in the yard, helping Manon, his plump but not bright decoy duck, to draw water, and pouring extravagant compliments into her dullish ear. Gerard grunted and returned to table, but Denys did not come in for a good quarter of an hour.
“Uphill work at the end of a march,” said he, shrugging his shoulders.
“What matters that to you!” said Gerard drily. “The mad dog bites all the world.”
“Exaggerator. You know I bite but the fairer half. Well, here comes supper; that is better worth biting.”
During supper the girl kept constantly coming in and out, and looking point-blank at them, especially at Denys; and at last in leaning over him to remove a dish, dropped a word in his ear; and he replied with a nod.
As soon as supper was cleared away, Denys rose and strolled to the door, telling Gerard the sullen fair had relented, and given him a little rendezvous in the stable-yard.
Gerard suggested that the calf-pen would have been a more appropriate locality. “I shall go to bed, then,” said he, a little crossly. “Where is the landlord? out at this time of night? no matter. I know our room. Shall you be long, pray?”
“Not I. I grudge leaving the fire and thee. But what can I do? There are two sorts of invitations a Burgundian never declines.”
Denys found a figure seated by the well. It was Manon; but instead of receiving him as he thought he had a right to expect, coming by invitation, all she did was to sob. He asked her what ailed her? She sobbed. Could he do anything for her? She sobbed.
The good-natured Denys, driven to his wits' end, which was no great distance, proffered the custom of the country by way of consolation. She repulsed him roughly. “Is it a time for fooling?” said she, and sobbed.
“You seem to think so,” said Denys, waxing wroth. But the next moment he added tenderly, “and I, who could never bear to see beauty in distress.”
“It is not for myself.”
“Who then? your sweetheart?”
“Oh, que nenni. My sweetheart is not on earth now: and to think I have not an ecu to buy masses for his soul;” and in this shallow nature the grief seemed now to be all turned in another direction.
“Come, come,” said Denys, “shalt have money to buy masses for thy dead lad; I swear it. Meantime tell me why you weep.”
“For you.”
“For me? Art mad?”
“No; I am not mad. 'Tis you that were mad to open your purse before him.”
The mystery seemed to thicken, and Denys, wearied of stirring up the mud by questions, held his peace to see if it would not clear of itself. Then the girl, finding herself no longer questioned, seemed to go through some internal combat. At last she said, doggedly and aloud, “I will. The Virgin give me courage? What matters it if they kill me, since he is dead? Soldier, the landlord is out.”
“Oh, is he?”
“What, do landlords leave their taverns at this time of night? also see what a tempest! We are sheltered here, but t'other side it blows a hurricane.”
Denys said nothing.
“He is gone to fetch the band.”
“The band! what band?”
“Those who will cut your throat and take your gold. Wretched man; to go and shake gold in an innkeeper's face!”
The blow came so unexpectedly it staggered even Denys, accustomed as he was to sudden perils. He muttered a single word, but in it a volume.
“Gerard!”
“Gerard! What is that? Oh, 'tis thy comrade's name, poor lad. Get him out quick ere they come; and fly to the next town.”
“And thou?”
“They will kill me.”
“That shall they not. Fly with us.”
“'Twill avail me nought: one of the band will be sent to kill me. They are sworn to slay all who betray them.”
“I'll take thee to my native place full thirty leagues from hence, and put thee under my own mother's wing, ere they shall hurt a hair o' thy head. But first Gerard. Stay thou here whilst I fetch him!”
As he was darting off, the girl seized him convulsively, and with all the iron strength excitement lends to women. “Stay me not! for pity's sake,” he cried; “'tis life or death.”
“Sh!—sh!” whispered the girl, shutting his mouth hard with her hand, and putting her pale lips close to him, and her eyes, that seemed to turn backwards, straining towards some indistinct sound.
He listened.
He heard footsteps, many footsteps, and no voices. She whispered in his ear, “They are come.” And trembled like a leaf.
Denys felt it was so. Travellers in that number would never have come in dead silence.
The feet were now at the very door.
“How many?” said he, in a hollow whisper.
“Hush!” and she put her mouth to his very ear. And who, that had seen this man and woman in that attitude, would have guessed what freezing hearts were theirs, and what terrible whispers passed between them?
“How armed?”
“Sword and dagger: and the giant with his axe. They call him the Abbot.”
“And my comrade?”
“Nothing can save him. Better lose one life than two. Fly!”
Denys's blood froze at this cynical advice. “Poor creature, you know not a soldier's heart.”
He put his head in his hands a moment, and a hundred thoughts of dangers baffled whirled through his brain.
“Listen, girl! There is one chance for our lives, if thou wilt but be true to us. Run to the town; to the nearest tavern, and tell the first soldier there, that a soldier here is sore beset, but armed, and his life to be saved if they will but run. Then to the bailiff. But first to the soldiers. Nay, not a word, but buss me, good lass, and fly! men's lives hang on thy heels.”
She kilted up her gown to run. He came round to the road with her, saw her cross the road cringing with fear, then glide away, then turn into an erect shadow, then melt away in the storm.
And now he must get to Gerard. But how? He had to run the gauntlet of the whole band. He asked himself, what was the worst thing they could do? for he had learned in war that an enemy does, not what you hope he will do, but what you hope he will not do. “Attack me as I enter the kitchen! Then I must not give them time.”
Just as he drew near to the latch, a terrible thought crossed him. “Suppose they had already dealt with Gerard. Why, then,” thought he, “nought is left but to kill, and be killed;” and he strung his bow, and walked rapidly into the kitchen. There were seven hideous faces seated round the fire, and the landlord pouring them out neat brandy, blood's forerunner in every age.
“What? company!” cried Denys gaily; “one minute, my lads, and I'll be with you;” and he snatched up a lighted candle off the table, opened the door that led to the staircase, and went up it hallooing. “What, Gerard! whither hast thou skulked to?” There was no answer. He hallooed louder, “Gerard, where art thou?”
After a moment, in which Denys lived an hour of agony, a peevish, half-inarticulate noise issued from the room at the head of the little stairs. Denys burst in, and there was Gerard asleep.
“Thank God!” he said, in a choking voice, then began to sing loud, untuneful ditties. Gerard put his fingers into his ears; but presently he saw in Denys's face a horror that contrasted strangely with this sudden merriment.
“What ails thee?” said he, sitting up and staring.
“Hush!” said Denys, and his hand spoke even more plainly than his lips. “Listen to me.”
Denys then pointing significantly to the door, to show Gerard sharp ears were listening hard by, continued his song aloud but under cover of it threw in short muttered syllables.
“(Our lives are in peril.)
“(Thieves.)
“(Thy doublet.)
“(Thy sword.)
“Aid.
“Coming.
“Put off time.” Then aloud—
“Well, now, wilt have t'other bottle?—Say nay.”
“No, not I.”
“But I tell thee, there are half-a-dozen jolly fellows. Tired.”
“Ay, but I am too wearied,” said Gerard. “Go thou.”
“Nay, nay!” Then he went to the door and called out cheerfully “Landlord, the young milksop will not rise. Give those honest fellows t'other bottle. I will pay for't in the morning.”
He heard a brutal and fierce chuckle.
Having thus by observation made sure the kitchen door was shut, and the miscreants were not actually listening, he examined the chamber door closely: then quietly shut it, but did not bolt it; and went and inspected the window.
It was too small to get out of, and yet a thick bar of iron had been let in the stone to make it smaller; and just as he made this chilling discovery, the outer door of the house was bolted with a loud clang.
Denys groaned. “The beasts are in the shambles.”
But would the thieves attack them while they were awake? Probably not.
Not to throw away this their best chance, the poor souls now made a series of desperate efforts to converse, as if discussing ordinary matters; and by this means Gerard learned all that had passed, and that the girl was gone for aid.
“Pray Heaven she may not lose heart by the way,” said Denys, sorrowfully.
And Denys begged Gerard's forgiveness for bringing him out of his way for this.
Gerard forgave him.
“I would fear them less, Gerard, but for one they call the Abbot. I picked him out at once. Taller than you, bigger than us both put together. Fights with an axe. Gerard, a man to lead a herd of deer to battle. I shall kill that man to-night, or he will kill me. I think somehow 'tis he will kill me.”
“Saints forbid! Shoot him at the door! What avails his strength against your weapon?”
“I shall pick him out; but if it comes to hand fighting, run swiftly under his guard, or you are a dead man. I tell thee neither of us may stand a blow of that axe: thou never sawest such a body of a man.”
Gerard was for bolting the door; but Denys with a sign showed him that half the door-post turned outward on a hinge, and the great bolt was little more than a blind. “I have forborne to bolt it,” said he, “that they may think us the less suspicious.”
Near an hour rolled away thus. It seemed an age. Yet it was but a little hour, and the town was a league distant. And some of the voices in the kitchen became angry and impatient.
“They will not wait much longer,” said Denys, “and we have no chance at all unless we surprise them.”
“I will do whate'er you bid,” said Gerard meekly.
There was a cupboard on the same side as the door; but between it and the window. It reached nearly to the ground, but not quite. Denys opened the cupboard door and placed Gerard on a chair behind it. “If they run for the bed, strike at the napes of their necks! a sword cut there always kills or disables.” He then arranged the bolsters and their shoes in the bed so as to deceive a person peeping from a distance, and drew the short curtains at the head.
Meantime Gerard was on his knees. Denys looked round and saw him.
“Ah!” said Denys, “above all, pray them to forgive me for bringing you into this guet-apens!”
And now they grasped hands and looked in one another's eyes oh, such a look! Denys's hand was cold, and Gerard's warm.
They took their posts.
Denys blew out the candle.
“We must keep silence now.”
But in the terrible tension of their nerves and very souls they found they could hear a whisper fainter than any man could catch at all outside that door. They could hear each other's hearts thump at times.
“Good news!” breathed Denys, listening at the door. “They are casting lots.”
“Pray that it may be the Abbot.”
“Yes. Why?
“If he comes alone I can make sure of him.”
“Denys!”
“Ay!”
“I fear I shall go mad, if they do not come soon.”
“Shall I feign sleep? Shall I snore?”
“Will that———-?
“Perhaps”
“Do then and God have mercy on us!”
Denys snored at intervals.
There was a scuffling of feet heard in the kitchen, and then all was still.
Denys snored again. Then took up his position behind the door.
But he, or they, who had drawn the lot, seemed determined to run no foolish risks. Nothing was attempted in a hurry.
When they were almost starved with cold, and waiting for the attack, the door on the stairs opened softly and closed again. Nothing more.
There was another harrowing silence.
Then a single light footstep on the stair; and nothing more.
Then a light crept under the door and nothing more.
Presently there was a gentle scratching, not half so loud as a mouse's, and the false door-post opened by degrees, and left a perpendicular space, through which the light streamed in. The door, had it been bolted, would now have hung by the bare tip of the bolt, which went into the real door-post, but as it was, it swung gently open of itself. It opened inwards, so Denys did not raise his crossbow from the ground, but merely grasped his dagger.
The candle was held up, and shaded from behind by a man's hand.
He was inspecting the beds from the threshold, satisfied that his victims were both in bed.
The man glided into the apartment. But at the first step something in the position of the cupboard and chair made him uneasy. He ventured no further, but put the candle on the floor and stooped to peer under the chair; but as he stooped, an iron hand grasped his shoulder, and a dagger was driven so fiercely through his neck that the point came out at his gullet. There was a terrible hiccough, but no cry; and half-a-dozen silent strokes followed in swift succession, each a death-blow, and the assassin was laid noiselessly on the floor.
Denys closed the door, bolted it gently, drew the post to, and even while he was going whispered Gerard to bring a chair. It was done.
“Help me set him up.”
“Dead?”
“Parbleu.”
“What for?”
“Frighten them! Gain time.”
Even while saying this, Denys had whipped a piece of string round the dead man's neck, and tied him to the chair, and there the ghastly figure sat fronting the door.
“Denys, I can do better. Saints forgive me!”
“What? Be quick then, we have not many moments.”
And Denys got his crossbow ready, and tearing off his straw mattress, reared it before him and prepared to shoot the moment the door should open, for he had no hope any more would come singly, when they found the first did not return.
While thus employed, Gerard was busy about the seated corpse, and to his amazement Denys saw a luminous glow spreading rapidly over the white face.
Gerard blew out the candle; and on this the corpse's face shone still more like a glowworm's head.
Denys shook in his shoes, and his teeth chattered.
“What, in Heaven's name, is this?” he whispered.
“Hush! 'tis but phosphorus, but 'twill serve.”
“Away! they will surprise thee.”
In fact, uneasy mutterings were heard below, and at last a deep voice said, “What makes him so long? is the drole rifling them?”
It was their comrade they suspected then, not the enemy. Soon a step came softly but rapidly up the stairs: the door was gently tried.
When this resisted, which was clearly not expected, the sham post was very cautiously moved, and an eye no doubt peeped through the aperture: for there was a howl of dismay, and the man was heard to stumble back and burst into the kitchen, here a Babel of voices rose directly on his return.
Gerard ran to the dead thief and began to work on him again.
“Back, madman!” whispered Denys.
“Nay, nay. I know these ignorant brutes; they will not venture here awhile. I can make him ten times more fearful.”
“At least close that opening! Let them not see you at your devilish work.”
Gerard closed the sham post, and in half a minute his brush gave the dead head a sight to strike any man with dismay. He put his art to a strange use, and one unparalleled perhaps in the history of mankind. He illuminated his dead enemy's face to frighten his living foe: the staring eyeballs he made globes of fire; the teeth he left white, for so they were more terrible by the contrast; but the palate and tongue he tipped with fire, and made one lurid cavern of the red depths the chapfallen jaw revealed: and on the brow he wrote in burning letters “La Mort.” And, while he was doing it, the stout Denys was quaking, and fearing the vengeance of Heaven; for one mans courage is not another's; and the band of miscreants below were quarrelling and disputing loudly, and now without disguise.
The steps that led down to the kitchen were fifteen, but they were nearly perpendicular: there was therefore in point of fact no distance between the besiegers and besieged, and the latter now caught almost every word. At last one was heard to cry out, “I tell ye the devil has got him and branded him with hellfire. I am more like to leave this cursed house than go again into a room that is full of fiends.”
“Art drunk? or mad? or a coward?” said another.
“Call me a coward, I'll give thee my dagger's point, and send thee where Pierre sits o' fire for ever.
“Come, no quarrelling when work is afoot,” roared a tremendous diapason, “or I'll brain ye both with my fist, and send ye where we shall all go soon or late.”
“The Abbot,” whispered Denys gravely.
He felt the voice he had just heard could belong to no man but the colossus he had seen in passing through the kitchen. It made the place vibrate. The quarrelling continued some time, and then there was a dead silence.
“Look out, Gerard.”
“Ay. What will they do next?”
“We shall soon know.”
“Shall I wait for you, or cut down the first that opens the door?”
“Wait for me, lest we strike the same and waste a blow. Alas! we cannot afford that.”
Dead silence.
Sudden came into the room a thing that made them start and their hearts quiver.
And what was it? A moonbeam.
Even so can this machine, the body, by the soul's action, be strung up to start and quiver. The sudden ray shot keen and pure into that shamble.
Its calm, cold, silvery soul traversed the apartment in a stream of no great volume, for the window was narrow.
After the first tremor Gerard whispered, “Courage, Denys! God's eye is on us even here.” And he fell upon his knees with his face turned towards the window.
Ay it was like a holy eye opening suddenly on human crime and human passions. Many a scene of blood and crime that pure cold eye had rested on; but on few more ghastly than this, where two men, with a lighted corpse between them, waited panting, to kill and be killed. Nor did the moonlight deaden that horrible corpse-light. If anything it added to its ghastliness: for the body sat at the edge of the moonbeam, which cut sharp across the shoulder and the ear, and seemed blue and ghastly and unnatural by the side of that lurid glow in which the face and eyes and teeth shone horribly. But Denys dared not look that way.
The moon drew a broad stripe of light across the door, and on that his eyes were glued. Presently he whispered, “Gerard!”
Gerard looked and raised his sword.
Acutely as they had listened, they had heard of late no sound on the stair. Yet therein the door-post, at the edge of the stream of moonlight, were the tips of the fingers of a hand.
The nails glistened.
Presently they began to crawl and crawl down towards the bolt, but with infinite slowness and caution. In so doing they crept into the moonlight. The actual motion was imperceptible, but slowly, slowly, the fingers came out whiter and whiter; but the hand between the main knuckles and the wrist remained dark.
Denys slowly raised his crossbow.
He levelled it. He took a long steady aim.
Gerard palpitated. At last the crossbow twanged. The hand was instantly nailed, with a stern jar, to the quivering door-post. There was a scream of anguish. “Cut,” whispered Denys eagerly, and Gerard's uplifted sword descended and severed the wrist with two swift blows. A body sank down moaning outside.
The hand remained inside, immovable, with blood trickling from it down the wall. The fierce bolt, slightly barbed, had gone through it and deep into the real door-post.
“Two,” said Denys, with terrible cynicism.
He strung his crossbow, and kneeled behind his cover again.
“The next will be the Abbot.”
The wounded man moved, and presently crawled down to his companions on the stairs, and the kitchen door was shut.
There nothing was heard now but low muttering. The last incident had revealed the mortal character of the weapons used by the besieged.
“I begin to think the Abbot's stomach is not so great as his body,” said Denys.
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the following events happened all in a couple of seconds. The kitchen door was opened roughly, a heavy but active man darted up the stairs without any manner of disguise, and a single ponderous blow sent the door not only off its hinges, but right across the room on to Denys's fortification, which it struck so rudely as nearly to lay him flat. And in the doorway stood a colossus with a glittering axe.
He saw the dead man with the moon's blue light on half his face, and the red light on the other half and inside his chapfallen jaws: he stared, his arms fell, his knees knocked together, and he crouched with terror.
“LA MORT!” he cried, in tones of terror, and turned and fled. In which act Denys started up and shot him through both jaws. He sprang with one bound into the kitchen, and there leaned on his axe, spitting blood and teeth and curses.
Denys strung his bow and put his hand into his breast.
He drew it out dismayed.
“My last bolt is gone,” he groaned.
“But we have our swords, and you have slain the giant.”
“No, Gerard,” said Denys gravely, “I have not. And the worst is I have wounded him. Fool! to shoot at a retreating lion. He had never faced thy handiwork again, but for my meddling.”
“Ha! to your guard! I hear them open the door.”
Then Denys, depressed by the one error he had committed in all this fearful night, felt convinced his last hour had come. He drew his sword, but like one doomed. But what is this? a red light flickers on the ceiling. Gerard flew to the window and looked out. There were men with torches, and breastplates gleaming red. “We are saved! Armed men!” And he dashed his sword through the window shouting, “Quick! quick! we are sore pressed.”
“Back!” yelled Denys; “they come! strike none but him!”
That very moment the Abbot and two men with naked weapons rushed into the room. Even as they came, the outer door was hammered fiercely, and the Abbot's comrades hearing it, and seeing the torchlight, turned and fled. Not so the terrible Abbot: wild with rage and pain, he spurned his dead comrade, chair and all, across the room, then, as the men faced him on each side with kindling eyeballs, he waved his tremendous axe like a feather right and left, and cleared a space, then lifted it to hew them both in pieces.
His antagonists were inferior in strength, but not in swiftness and daring, and above all they had settled how to attack him. The moment he reared his axe, they flew at him like cats, and both together. If he struck a full blow with his weapon he would most likely kill one, but the other would certainly kill him: he saw this, and intelligent as well as powerful, he thrust the handle fiercely in Denys's face, and, turning, jobbed with the steel at Gerard. Denys went staggering back covered with blood. Gerard had rushed in like lightning, and, just as the axe turned to descend on him, drove his sword so fiercely through the giant's body, that the very hilt sounded on his ribs like the blow of a pugilist, and Denys, staggering back to help his friend, saw a steel point come out of the Abbot behind.
The stricken giant bellowed like a bull, dropped his axe, and clutching Gerard's throat tremendously, shook him like a child. Then Denys with a fierce snarl drove his sword into the giant's back. “Stand firm now!” and he pushed the cold steel through and through the giant and out at his breast.
Thus horribly spitted on both sides, the Abbot gave a violent shudder, and his heels hammered the ground convulsively. His lips, fast turning blue, opened wide and deep, and he cried, “LA MORT!-LA MORT!-LA MORT!!” the first time in a roar of despair, and then twice in a horror-stricken whisper, never to be forgotten.
Just then the street door was forced.
Suddenly the Abbot's arms whirled like windmills, and his huge body wrenched wildly and carried them to the doorway, twisting their wrists and nearly throwing them off their legs.
“He'll win clear yet,” cried Denys: “out steel! and in again!”
They tore out their smoking swords, but ere they could stab again, the Abbot leaped full five feet high, and fell with a tremendous crash against the door below, carrying it away with him like a sheet of paper, and through the aperture the glare of torches burst on the awe-struck faces above, half blinding them.
The thieves at the first alarm had made for the back door, but driven thence by a strong guard ran back to the kitchen, just in time to see the lock forced out of the socket, and half-a-dozen mailed archers burst in upon them. On these in pure despair they drew their swords.
But ere a blow was struck on either side, the staircase door behind them was battered into their midst with one ponderous blow, and with it the Abbot's body came flying, hurled as they thought by no mortal hand, and rolled on the floor spouting blood from back and bosom in two furious jets, and quivered, but breathed no more.
The thieves smitten with dismay fell on their knees directly, and the archers bound them, while, above, the rescued ones still stood like statues rooted to the spot, their dripping swords extended in the red torchlight, expecting their indomitable enemy to leap back on them as wonderfully as he had gone.
“Here be we. God bless you all! God bless you!”
There was a rush to the stairs, and half-a-dozen hard but friendly hands were held out and grasped them warmly.
“Y'have saved our lives, lads,” cried Denys, “y'have saved our lives this night.”
A wild sight met the eyes of the rescued pair. The room flaring with torches, the glittering breastplates of the archers, their bronzed faces, the white cheeks of the bound thieves, and the bleeding giant, whose dead body these hard men left lying there in its own gore.
Gerard went round the archers and took them each by the hand with glistening eyes, and on this they all kissed him; and this time he kissed them in return. Then he said to one handsome archer of his own age, “Prithee, good soldier, have an eye to me. A strange drowsiness overcomes me. Let no one cut my throat while I sleep—for pity's sake.”
The archer promised with a laugh; for he thought Gerard was jesting: and the latter went off into a deep sleep almost immediately.
Denys was surprised at this: but did not interfere; for it suited his immediate purpose. A couple of archers were inspecting the Abbot's body, turning it half over with their feet, and inquiring, “Which of the two had flung this enormous rogue down from an upper storey like that; they would fain have the trick of his arm.”
Denys at first pished and pshawed, but dared not play the braggart, for he said to himself, “That young vagabond will break in and say 'twas the finger of Heaven, and no mortal arm, or some such stuff, and make me look like a fool.” But now, seeing Gerard unconscious, he suddenly gave this required information.
“Well, then, you see, comrades, I had run my sword through this one up to the hilt, and one or two more of 'em came buzzing about me; so it behoved me have my sword or die: so I just put my foot against his stomach, gave a tug with my hand and a spring with my foot, and sent him flying to kingdom come! He died in the air, and his carrion rolled in amongst you without ceremony: made you jump, I warrant me. But pikestaves and pillage! what avails prattling of, these trifles once they are gone by? buvons, camarades, buvons.”
The archers remarked that it was easy to say “buvons” where no liquor was, but not so easy to do it.
“Nay, I'll soon find you liquor. My nose hath a natural alacrity at scenting out the wine. You follow me: and I my nose: bring a torch!” And they left the room, and finding a short flight of stone steps, descended them and entered a large, low, damp cellar.
It smelt close and dank: and the walls were encrusted here and there with what seemed cobwebs; but proved to be saltpetre that had oozed out of the damp stones and crystallized.
“Oh! the fine mouldy smell,” said Denys; “in such places still lurks the good wine; advance thy torch. Diable! what is that in the corner? A pile of rags? No: 'tis a man.”
They gathered round with the torch, and lo! a figure crouched on a heap in the corner, pale as ashes and shivering.
“Why, it is the landlord,” said Denys.
“Get up, thou craven heart!” shouted one of the archers.
“Why, man, the thieves are bound, and we are dry that bound them. Up! and show us thy wine; for no bottles see here.”
“What, be the rascals bound?” stammered the pale landlord; “good news. W-w-wine? that will I, honest sirs.”
And he rose with unsure joints and offered to lead the way to the wine cellar. But Denys interposed. “You are all in the dark, comrades. He is in league with the thieves.”
“Alack, good soldier, me in league with the accursed robbers! Is that reasonable?”
“The girl said so anyway.”
“The girl! What girl? Ah! Curse her, traitress!”
“Well,” interposed the other archer; “the girl is not here, but gone on to the bailiff. So let the burghers settle whether this craven be guilty or no: for we caught him not in the act: and let him draw us our wine.”
“One moment,” said Denys shrewdly. “Why cursed he the girl? If he be a true man, he should bless her as we do.”
“Alas, sir!” said the landlord, “I have but my good name to live by, and I cursed her to you, because you said she had belied me.”
“Humph! I trow thou art a thief, and where is the thief that cannot lie with a smooth face? Therefore hold him, comrades: a prisoner can draw wine an if his hands be not bound.”
The landlord offered no objection; but on the contrary said he would with pleasure show them where his little stock of wine was, but hoped they would pay for what they should drink, for his rent was due this two months.
The archers smiled grimly at his simplicity, as they thought it; one of them laid a hand quietly but firmly on his shoulder, the other led on with the torch.
They had reached the threshold when Denys cried “Halt!”
“What is't?”
“Here be bottles in this corner; advance thy light.”
The torch-bearer went towards him. He had just taken off his scabbard and was probing the heap the landlord had just been crouched upon.
“Nay, nay,” cried the landlord, “the wine is in the next cellar. There is nothing there.”
“Nothing is mighty hard, then,” said Denys, and drew out something with his hand from the heap.
It proved to be only a bone.
Denys threw it on the floor: it rattled.
“There is nought there but the bones of the house,” said the landlord.
“Just now 'twas nothing. Now that we have found something 'tis nothing but bones. Here's another. Humph? look at this one, comrade; and you come too and look at it, and bring you smooth knave along.”
The archer with the torch, whose name was Philippe, held the bone to the light and turned it round and round.
“Well?” said Denys.
“Well, if this was a field of battle, I should say 'twas the shankbone of a man; no more, no less. But 'tisn't a battlefield, nor a churchyard; 'tis an inn.”
“True, mate; but yon knave's ashy face is as good a light to me as a field of battle. I read the bone by it, Bring yon face nearer, I say. When the chine is amissing, and the house dog can't look at you without his tail creeping between his legs, who was the thief? Good brothers mine, my mind it doth misgive me. The deeper I thrust the more there be. Mayhap if these bones could tell their tale they would make true men's flesh creep that heard it.”
“Alas! young man, what hideous fancies are these! The bones are bones of beeves, and sheep, and kids, and not, as you think, of men and women. Holy saints preserve us!”
“Hold thy peace! thy words are air. Thou hast not got burghers by the ear, that know not a veal knuckle from their grandsire's ribs; but soldiers-men that have gone to look for their dear comrades, and found their bones picked as clean by the crows as these I doubt have been by thee and thy mates. Men and women, saidst thou? And prithee, when spake I a word of women's bones? Wouldst make a child suspect thee. Field of battle, comrade! Was not this house a field of battle half an hour agone? Drag him close to me, let me read his face: now then, what is this, thou knave?” and he thrust a small object suddenly in his face.
“Alas! I know not.”
“Well, I would not swear neither: but it is too like the thumb bone of a man's hand; mates, my flesh it creeps. Churchyard! how know I this is not one?”
And he now drew his sword out of the scabbard and began to rake the heap of earth and broken crockery and bones out on the floor.
The landlord assured him he but wasted his time. “We poor innkeepers are sinners,” said he; “we give short measure and baptize the wine: we are fain to do these things; the laws are so unjust to us; but we are not assassins. How could we afford to kill our customers? May Heaven's lightning strike me dead if there be any bones there but such as have been used for meat. 'Tis the kitchen wench flings them here: I swear by God's holy mother, by holy Paul, by holy Dominic, and Denys my patron saint—ah!”
Denys held out a bone under his eye in dead silence. It was a bone no man, however ignorant, however lying, could confound with those of sheep or oxen. The sight of it shut the lying lips, and palsied the heartless heart.
The landlord's hair rose visibly on his head like spikes, and his knees gave way as if his limbs had been struck from under him. But the archers dragged him fiercely up, and kept him erect under the torch, staring fascinated at the dead skull which, white as the living cheek opposed, but no whiter, glared back again at its murderer, whose pale lip now opened and opened, but could utter no sound.
“Ah!” said Denys solemnly, and trembling now with rage, “look on the sockets out of which thou hast picked the eyes, and let them blast thine eyes, that crows shall pick out ere this week shall end. Now, hold thou that while I search on. Hold it, I say, or here I rob the gallows—” and he threatened the quaking wretch with his naked sword, till with a groan he took the skull and held it, almost fainting.
Oh! that every murderer, and contriver of murder, could see him, sick, and staggering with terror, and with his hair on end, holding the cold skull, and feeling that his own head would soon be like it. And soon the heap was scattered, and alas! not one nor two, but many skulls were brought to light, the culprit moaning at each discovery.
Suddenly Denys uttered a strange cry of distress to come from so bold and hard a man; and held up to the torch a mass of human hair. It was long, glossy, and golden. A woman's beautiful hair. At the sight of it the archers instinctively shook the craven wretch in their hands: and he whined.
“I have a little sister with hair just so fair and shining as this,” gulped Denys. “Jesu! if it should be hers! There quick, take my sword and dagger, and keep them from my hand, lest I strike him dead and wrong the gibbet. And thou, poor innocent victim, on whose head this most lovely hair did grow, hear me swear this, on bended knee, never to leave this man till I see him broken to pieces on the wheel even for thy sake.”
He rose from his knee. “Ay, had he as many lives as here be hairs, I'd have them all, by God,” and he put the hair into his bosom. Then in a sudden fury seized the landlord fiercely by the neck, and forced him to his knees; and foot on head ground his face savagely among the bones of his victims, where they lay thickest; and the assassin first yelled, then whined and whimpered, just as a dog first yells, then whines, when his nose is so forced into some leveret or other innocent he has killed.
“Now lend me thy bowstring, Philippe!” He passed it through the eyes of a skull alternately, and hung the ghastly relic of mortality and crime round the man's neck; then pulled him up and kicked him industriously into the kitchen, where one of the aldermen of the burgh had arrived with constables, and was even now taking an archer's deposition.
The grave burgher was much startled at sight of the landlord driven in bleeding from a dozen scratches inflicted by the bones of his own victims, and carrying his horrible collar. But Denys came panting after, and in a few fiery words soon made all clear.
“Bind him like the rest,” said the alderman sternly. “I count him the blackest of them all.”
While his hands were being bound, the poor wretch begged piteously that “the skull might be taken from him.”
“Humph!” said the alderman. “Certes I had not ordered such a thing to be put on mortal man. Yet being there, I will not lift voice nor finger to doff it. Methinks it fits thee truly, thou bloody dog. 'Tis thy ensign, and hangs well above a heart so foul as thine.”
He then inquired of Denys if he thought they had secured the whole gang, or but a part.
“Your worship,” said Denys, “there are but seven of them, and this landlord. One we slew upstairs, one we trundled down dead, the rest are bound before you.”
“Good! go fetch the dead one from upstairs, and lay him beside him I caused to be removed.”
Here a voice like a guinea-fowl's broke peevishly in. “Now, now, now, where is the hand? that is what I want to see.” The speaker was a little pettifogging clerk.
“You will find it above, nailed to the door-post by a crossbow bolt.”
“Good!” said the clerk. He whispered his master, “What a goodly show will the 'pieces de conviction' make!” and with this he wrote them down, enumerating them in separate squeaks as he penned them. Skulls—Bones—A woman's hair—A thief's hands 1 axe—2 carcasses—1 crossbow bolt. This done, he itched to search the cellar himself: there might be other invaluable morsels of evidence, an ear, or even an earring. The alderman assenting, he caught up a torch and was hurrying thither, when an accident stopped him, and indeed carried him a step or two in the opposite direction.
The constables had gone up the stair in single file.
But the head constable no sooner saw the phosphorescent corpse seated by the bedside, than he stood stupefied; and next he began to shake like one in an ague, and, terror gaining on him more and more, he uttered a sort of howl and recoiled swiftly. Forgetting the steps in his recoil, he tumbled over backward on his nearest companion; but he, shaken by the shout of dismay, and catching a glimpse of something horrid, was already staggering back, and in no condition to sustain the head constable, who, like most head constables, was a ponderous man. The two carried away the third, and the three the fourth, and they streamed into the kitchen, and settled on the floor, overlapping each other like a sequence laid out on a card-table. The clerk coming hastily with his torch ran an involuntary tilt against the fourth man, who, sharing the momentum of the mass, knocked him instantly on his back, the ace of that fair quint; and there he lay kicking and waving his torch, apparently in triumph, but really in convulsion, sense and wind being driven out together by the concussion.
“What is to do now, in Heaven's name?” cried the alderman, starting up with considerable alarm. But Denys explained, and offered to accompany his worship. “So be it,” said the latter. His men picked themselves ruefully up, and the alderman put himself at their head and examined the premises above and below. As for the prisoners, their interrogatory was postponed till they could be confronted with the servant.
Before dawn, the thieves, alive and dead, and all the relics and evidences of crime and retribution, were swept away into the law's net, and the inn was silent and almost deserted. There remained but one constable, and Denys and Gerard, the latter still sleeping heavily.