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CHAPTER XLVI. OTHERS IN THE PARK

Chauvelin and his picked escort had in the meanwhile detached themselves from the main body of the squad. Soon the dull thud of their horses’ hoofs treading the soft ground came more softly—then more softly still as they turned into the wood, and the purple shadows seemed to enfold every sound and finally to swallow them completely.

Armand and Marguerite from the depth of the carriage heard Heron’s voice ordering his own driver now to take the lead. They sat quite still and watched, and presently the other coach passed them slowly on the road, its silhouette standing out ghostly and grim for a moment against the indigo tones of the distant country.

Heron’s head, with its battered sugar-loaf hat, and the soiled bandage round the brow, was as usual out of the carriage window. He leered across at Marguerite when he saw the outline of her face framed by the window of the carriage.

“Say all the prayers you have ever known, citizeness,” he said with a loud laugh, “that my friend Chauvelin may find Capet at the chateau, or else you may take a last look at the open country, for you will not see the sun rise on it to-morrow. It is one or the other, you know.”

She tried not to look at him; the very sight of him filled her with horror—that blotched, gaunt face of his, the fleshy lips, that hideous bandage across his face that hid one of his eyes! She tried not to see him and not to hear him laugh.

Obviously he too laboured under the stress of great excitement. So far everything had gone well; the prisoner had made no attempt at escape, and apparently did not mean to play a double game. But the crucial hour had come, and with it darkness and the mysterious depths of the forest with their weird sounds and sudden flashes of ghostly lights. They naturally wrought on the nerves of men like Heron, whose conscience might have been dormant, but whose ears were nevertheless filled with the cries of innocent victims sacrificed to their own lustful ambitions and their blind, unreasoning hates.

He gave sharp orders to the men to close up round the carriages, and then gave the curt word of command:

“En avant!”

Marguerite could but strain her ears to listen. All her senses, all her faculties had merged into that of hearing, rendering it doubly keen. It seemed to her that she could distinguish the faint sound—that even as she listened grew fainter and fainter yet—of Chauvelin and his squad moving away rapidly into the thickness of the wood some distance already ahead.

Close to her there was the snorting of horses, the clanging and noise of moving mounted men. Heron’s coach had taken the lead; she could hear the creaking of its wheels, the calls of the driver urging his beasts.

The diminished party was moving at foot-pace in the darkness that seemed to grow denser at every step, and through that silence which was so full of mysterious sounds.

The carriage rolled and rocked on its springs; Marguerite, giddy and overtired, lay back with closed eyes, her hand resting in that of Armand. Time, space and distance had ceased to be; only Death, the great Lord of all, had remained; he walked on ahead, scythe on skeleton shoulder, and beckoned patiently, but with a sure, grim hand.

There was another halt, the coach-wheels groaned and creaked on their axles, one or two horses reared with the sudden drawing up of the curb.

“What is it now?” came Heron’s hoarse voice through the darkness.

“It is pitch-dark, citizen,” was the response from ahead. “The drivers cannot see their horses’ ears. They wait to know if they may light their lanthorns and then lead their horses.”

“They can lead their horses,” replied Heron roughly, “but I’ll have no lanthorns lighted. We don’t know what fools may be lurking behind trees, hoping to put a bullet through my head—or yours, sergeant—we don’t want to make a lighted target of ourselves—what? But let the drivers lead their horses, and one or two of you who are riding greys might dismount too and lead the way—the greys would show up perhaps in this cursed blackness.”

While his orders were being carried out, he called out once more:

“Are we far now from that confounded chapel?”

“We can’t be far, citizen; the whole forest is not more than six leagues wide at any point, and we have gone two since we turned into it.”

“Hush!” Heron’s voice suddenly broke in hoarsely. “What was that? Silence, I say. Damn you—can’t you hear?”

There was a hush—every ear straining to listen; but the horses were not still—they continued to champ their bits, to paw the ground, and to toss their heads, impatient to get on. Only now and again there would come a lull even through these sounds—a second or two, mayhap, of perfect, unbroken silence—and then it seemed as if right through the darkness a mysterious echo sent back those same sounds—the champing of bits, the pawing of soft ground, the tossing and snorting of animals, human life that breathed far out there among the trees.

“It is citizen Chauvelin and his men,” said the sergeant after a while, and speaking in a whisper.

“Silence—I want to hear,” came the curt, hoarsely-whispered command.

Once more every one listened, the men hardly daring to breathe, clinging to their bridles and pulling on their horses’ mouths, trying to keep them still, and again through the night there came like a faint echo which seemed to throw back those sounds that indicated the presence of men and of horses not very far away.

“Yes, it must be citizen Chauvelin,” said Heron at last; but the tone of his voice sounded as if he were anxious and only half convinced; “but I thought he would be at the chateau by now.”

“He may have had to go at foot-pace; it is very dark, citizen Heron,” remarked the sergeant.

“En avant, then,” quoth the other; “the sooner we come up with him the better.”

And the squad of mounted men, the two coaches, the drivers and the advance section who were leading their horses slowly restarted on the way. The horses snorted, the bits and stirrups clanged, and the springs and wheels of the coaches creaked and groaned dismally as the ramshackle vehicles began once more to plough the carpet of pine-needles that lay thick upon the road.

But inside the carriage Armand and Marguerite held one another tightly by the hand.

“It is de Batz—with his friends,” she whispered scarce above her breath.

“De Batz?” he asked vaguely and fearfully, for in the dark he could not see her face, and as he did not understand why she should suddenly be talking of de Batz he thought with horror that mayhap her prophecy anent herself had come true, and that her mind wearied and over-wrought—had become suddenly unhinged.

“Yes, de Batz,” she replied. “Percy sent him a message, through me, to meet him—here. I am not mad, Armand,” she added more calmly. “Sir Andrew took Percy’s letter to de Batz the day that we started from Paris.”

“Great God!” exclaimed Armand, and instinctively, with a sense of protection, he put his arms round his sister. “Then, if Chauvelin or the squad is attacked—if—”

“Yes,” she said calmly; “if de Batz makes an attack on Chauvelin, or if he reaches the chateau first and tries to defend it, they will shoot us… Armand, and Percy.”

“But is the Dauphin at the Chateau d’Ourde?”

“No, no! I think not.”

“Then why should Percy have invoked the aid of de Batz? Now, when—”

“I don’t know,” she murmured helplessly. “Of course, when he wrote the letter he could not guess that they would hold us as hostages. He may have thought that under cover of darkness and of an unexpected attack he might have saved himself had he been alone; but now—now that you and I are here—Oh! it is all so horrible, and I cannot understand it all.”

“Hark!” broke in Armand, suddenly gripping her arm more tightly.

“Halt!” rang the sergeant’s voice through the night.

This time there was no mistaking the sound; already it came from no far distance. It was the sound of a man running and panting, and now and again calling out as he ran.

For a moment there was stillness in the very air, the wind itself was hushed between two gusts, even the rain had ceased its incessant pattering. Heron’s harsh voice was raised in the stillness.

“What is it now?” he demanded.

“A runner, citizen,” replied the sergeant, “coming through the wood from the right.”

“From the right?” and the exclamation was accompanied by a volley of oaths; “the direction of the chateau? Chauvelin has been attacked; he is sending a messenger back to me. Sergeant—sergeant, close up round that coach; guard your prisoners as you value your life, and—”

The rest of his words were drowned in a yell of such violent fury that the horses, already over-nervous and fidgety, reared in mad terror, and the men had the greatest difficulty in holding them in. For a few minutes noisy confusion prevailed, until the men could quieten their quivering animals with soft words and gentle pattings.

Then the troopers obeyed, closing up round the coach wherein brother and sister sat huddled against one another.

One of the men said under his breath:

“Ah! but the citizen agent knows how to curse! One day he will break his gullet with the fury of his oaths.”

In the meanwhile the runner had come nearer, always at the same breathless speed.

The next moment he was challenged:

“Qui va la?”

“A friend!” he replied, panting and exhausted. “Where is citizen Heron?”

“Here!” came the reply in a voice hoarse with passionate excitement. “Come up, damn you. Be quick!”

“A lanthorn, citizen,” suggested one of the drivers.

“No—no—not now. Here! Where the devil are we?”

“We are close to the chapel on our left, citizen,” said the sergeant.

The runner, whose eyes were no doubt accustomed to the gloom, had drawn nearer to the carriage.

“The gates of the chateau,” he said, still somewhat breathlessly, “are just opposite here on the right, citizen. I have just come through them.”

“Speak up, man!” and Heron’s voice now sounded as if choked with passion. “Citizen Chauvelin sent you?”

“Yes. He bade me tell you that he has gained access to the chateau, and that Capet is not there.”

A series of citizen Heron’s choicest oaths interrupted the man’s speech. Then he was curtly ordered to proceed, and he resumed his report.

“Citizen Chauvelin rang at the door of the chateau; after a while he was admitted by an old servant, who appeared to be in charge, but the place seemed otherwise absolutely deserted—only—”

“Only what? Go on; what is it?”

“As we rode through the park it seemed to us as if we were being watched, and followed. We heard distinctly the sound of horses behind and around us, but we could see nothing; and now, when I ran back, again I heard. There are others in the park to-night besides us, citizen.”

There was silence after that. It seemed as if the flood of Heron’s blasphemous eloquence had spent itself at last.

“Others in the park!” And now his voice was scarcely above a whisper, hoarse and trembling. “How many? Could you see?”

“No, citizen, we could not see; but there are horsemen lurking round the chateau now. Citizen Chauvelin took four men into the house with him and left the others on guard outside. He bade me tell you that it might be safer to send him a few more men if you could spare them. There are a number of disused farm buildings quite close to the gates, and he suggested that all the horses be put up there for the night, and that the men come up to the chateau on foot; it would be quicker and safer, for the darkness is intense.”

Even while the man spoke the forest in the distance seemed to wake from its solemn silence, the wind on its wings brought sounds of life and movement different from the prowling of beasts or the screeching of night-birds. It was the furtive advance of men, the quick whispers of command, of encouragement, of the human animal preparing to attack his kind. But all in the distance still, all muffled, all furtive as yet.

“Sergeant!” It was Heron’s voice, but it too was subdued, and almost calm now; “can you see the chapel?”

“More clearly, citizen,” replied the sergeant. “It is on our left; quite a small building, I think.”

“Then dismount, and walk all round it. See that there are no windows or door in the rear.”

There was a prolonged silence, during which those distant sounds of men moving, of furtive preparations for attack, struck distinctly through the night.

Marguerite and Armand, clinging to one another, not knowing what to think, nor yet what to fear, heard the sounds mingling with those immediately round them, and Marguerite murmured under her breath:

“It is de Batz and some of his friends; but what can they do? What can Percy hope for now?”

But of Percy she could hear and see nothing. The darkness and the silence had drawn their impenetrable veil between his unseen presence and her own consciousness. She could see the coach in which he was, but Heron’s hideous personality, his head with its battered hat and soiled bandage, had seemed to obtrude itself always before her gaze, blotting out from her mind even the knowledge that Percy was there not fifty yards away from her.

So strong did this feeling grow in her that presently the awful dread seized upon her that he was no longer there; that he was dead, worn out with fatigue and illness brought on by terrible privations, or if not dead that he had swooned, that he was unconscious—his spirit absent from his body. She remembered that frightful yell of rage and hate which Heron had uttered a few minutes ago. Had the brute vented his fury on his helpless, weakened prisoner, and stilled forever those lips that, mayhap, had mocked him to the last?

Marguerite could not guess. She hardly knew what to hope. Vaguely, when the thought of Percy lying dead beside his enemy floated through her aching brain, she was almost conscious of a sense of relief at the thought that at least he would be spared the pain of the final, inevitable cataclysm.

CHAPTER XLVII. THE CHAPEL OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE

The sergeant’s voice broke in upon her misery.

The man had apparently done as the citizen agent had ordered, and had closely examined the little building that stood on the left—a vague, black mass more dense than the surrounding gloom.

“It is all solid stone, citizen,” he said; “iron gates in front, closed but not locked, rusty key in the lock, which turns quite easily; no windows or door in the rear.”

“You are quite sure?”

“Quite certain, citizen; it is plain, solid stone at the back, and the only possible access to the interior is through the iron gate in front.”

“Good.”

Marguerite could only just hear Heron speaking to the sergeant. Darkness enveloped every form and deadened every sound. Even the harsh voice which she had learned to loathe and to dread sounded curiously subdued and unfamiliar. Heron no longer seemed inclined to storm, to rage, or to curse. The momentary danger, the thought of failure, the hope of revenge, had apparently cooled his temper, strengthened his determination, and forced his voice down to a little above a whisper. He gave his orders clearly and firmly, and the words came to Marguerite on the wings of the wind with strange distinctness, borne to her ears by the darkness itself, and the hush that lay over the wood.

“Take half a dozen men with you, sergeant,” she beard him say, “and join citizen Chauvelin at the chateau. You can stable your horses in the farm buildings close by, as he suggests and run to him on foot. You and your men should quickly get the best of a handful of midnight prowlers; you are well armed and they only civilians. Tell citizen Chauvelin that I in the meanwhile will take care of our prisoners. The Englishman I shall put in irons and lock up inside the chapel, with five men under the command of your corporal to guard him, the other two I will drive myself straight to Crecy with what is left of the escort. You understand?”

“Yes, citizen.”

“We may not reach Crecy until two hours after midnight, but directly I arrive I will send citizen Chauvelin further reinforcements, which, however, I hope may not necessary, but which will reach him in the early morning. Even if he is seriously attacked, he can, with fourteen men he will have with him, hold out inside the castle through the night. Tell him also that at dawn two prisoners who will be with me will be shot in the courtyard of the guard-house at Crecy, but that whether he has got hold of Capet or not he had best pick up the Englishman in the chapel in the morning and bring him straight to Crecy, where I shall be awaiting him ready to return to Paris. You understand?”

“Yes, citizen.”

“Then repeat what I said.”

“I am to take six men with me to reinforce citizen Chauvelin now.”

“Yes.”

“And you, citizen, will drive straight back to Crecy, and will send us further reinforcements from there, which will reach us in the early morning.”

“Yes.”

“We are to hold the chateau against those unknown marauders if necessary until the reinforcements come from Crecy. Having routed them, we return here, pick up the Englishman whom you will have locked up in the chapel under a strong guard commanded by Corporal Cassard, and join you forthwith at Crecy.”

“This, whether citizen Chauvelin has got hold of Capet or not.”

“Yes, citizen, I understand,” concluded the sergeant imperturbably; “and I am also to tell citizen Chauvelin that the two prisoners will be shot at dawn in the courtyard of the guard-house at Crecy.”

“Yes. That is all. Try to find the leader of the attacking party, and bring him along to Crecy with the Englishman; but unless they are in very small numbers do not trouble about the others. Now en avant; citizen Chauvelin might be glad of your help. And—stay—order all the men to dismount, and take the horses out of one of the coaches, then let the men you are taking with you each lead a horse, or even two, and stable them all in the farm buildings. I shall not need them, and could not spare any of my men for the work later on. Remember that, above all, silence is the order. When you are ready to start, come back to me here.”

The sergeant moved away, and Marguerite heard him transmitting the citizen agent’s orders to the soldiers. The dismounting was carried on in wonderful silence—for silence had been one of the principal commands—only one or two words reached her ears.

“First section and first half of second section fall in, right wheel. First section each take two horses on the lead. Quietly now there; don’t tug at his bridle—let him go.”

And after that a simple report:

“All ready, citizen!”

“Good!” was the response. “Now detail your corporal and two men to come here to me, so that we may put the Englishman in irons, and take him at once to the chapel, and four men to stand guard at the doors of the other coach.”

The necessary orders were given, and after that there came the curt command:

“En avant!”

The sergeant, with his squad and all the horses, was slowly moving away in the night. The horses’ hoofs hardly made a noise on the soft carpet of pine-needles and of dead fallen leaves, but the champing of the bits was of course audible, and now and then the snorting of some poor, tired horse longing for its stable.

Somehow in Marguerite’s fevered mind this departure of a squad of men seemed like the final flitting of her last hope; the slow agony of the familiar sounds, the retreating horses and soldiers moving away amongst the shadows, took on a weird significance. Heron had given his last orders. Percy, helpless and probably unconscious, would spend the night in that dank chapel, while she and Armand would be taken back to Crecy, driven to death like some insentient animals to the slaughter.

When the grey dawn would first begin to peep through the branches of the pines Percy would be led back to Paris and the guillotine, and she and Armand will have been sacrificed to the hatred and revenge of brutes.

The end had come, and there was nothing more to be done. Struggling, fighting, scheming, could be of no avail now; but she wanted to get to her husband; she wanted to be near him now that death was so imminent both for him and for her.

She tried to envisage it all, quite calmly, just as she knew that Percy would wish her to do. The inevitable end was there, and she would not give to these callous wretches here the gratuitous spectacle of a despairing woman fighting blindly against adverse Fate.

But she wanted to go to her husband. She felt that she could face death more easily on the morrow if she could but see him once, if she could but look once more into the eyes that had mirrored so much enthusiasm, such absolute vitality and whole-hearted self-sacrifice, and such an intensity of love and passion; if she could but kiss once more those lips that had smiled through life, and would smile, she knew, even in the face of death.

She tried to open the carriage door, but it was held from without, and a harsh voice cursed her, ordering her to sit still.

But she could lean out of the window and strain her eyes to see. They were by now accustomed to the gloom, the dilated pupils taking in pictures of vague forms moving like ghouls in the shadows. The other coach was not far, and she could hear Heron’s voice, still subdued and calm, and the curses of the men. But not a sound from Percy.

“I think the prisoner is unconscious,” she heard one of the men say.

“Lift him out of the carriage, then,” was Heron’s curt command; “and you go and throw open the chapel gates.”

Marguerite saw it all. The movement, the crowd of men, two vague, black forms lifting another one, which appeared heavy and inert, out of the coach, and carrying it staggering up towards the chapel.

Then the forms disappeared, swallowed up by the more dense mass of the little building, merged in with it, immovable as the stone itself.

Only a few words reached her now.

“He is unconscious.”

“Leave him there, then; he’ll not move!”

“Now close the gates!”

There was a loud clang, and Marguerite gave a piercing scream. She tore at the handle of the carriage door.

“Armand, Armand, go to him!” she cried; and all her self-control, all her enforced calm, vanished in an outburst of wild, agonising passion. “Let me get to him, Armand! This is the end; get me to him, in the name of God!”

“Stop that woman screaming,” came Heron’s voice clearly through the night. “Put her and the other prisoner in irons—quick!”

But while Marguerite expended her feeble strength in a mad, pathetic effort to reach her husband, even now at this last hour, when all hope was dead and Death was so nigh, Armand had already wrenched the carriage door from the grasp of the soldier who was guarding it. He was of the South, and knew the trick of charging an unsuspecting adversary with head thrust forward like a bull inside a ring. Thus he knocked one of the soldiers down and made a quick rush for the chapel gates.

The men, attacked so suddenly and in such complete darkness, did not wait for orders. They closed in round Armand; one man drew his sabre and hacked away with it in aimless rage.

But for the moment he evaded them all, pushing his way through them, not heeding the blows that came on him from out the darkness. At last he reached the chapel. With one bound he was at the gate, his numb fingers fumbling for the lock, which he could not see.

It was a vigorous blow from Heron’s fist that brought him at last to his knees, and even then his hands did not relax their hold; they gripped the ornamental scroll of the gate, shook the gate itself in its rusty hinges, pushed and pulled with the unreasoning strength of despair. He had a sabre cut across his brow, and the blood flowed in a warm, trickling stream down his face. But of this he was unconscious; all that he wanted, all that he was striving for with agonising heart-beats and cracking sinews, was to get to his friend, who was lying in there unconscious, abandoned—dead, perhaps.

“Curse you,” struck Heron’s voice close to his ear. “Cannot some of you stop this raving maniac?”

Then it was that the heavy blow on his head caused him a sensation of sickness, and he fell on his knees, still gripping the ironwork.

Stronger hands than his were forcing him to loosen his hold; blows that hurt terribly rained on his numbed fingers; he felt himself dragged away, carried like an inert mass further and further from that gate which he would have given his lifeblood to force open.

And Marguerite heard all this from the inside of the coach where she was imprisoned as effectually as was Percy’s unconscious body inside that dark chapel. She could hear the noise and scramble, and Heron’s hoarse commands, the swift sabre strokes as they cut through the air.

Already a trooper had clapped irons on her wrists, two others held the carriage doors. Now Armand was lifted back into the coach, and she could not even help to make him comfortable, though as he was lifted in she heard him feebly moaning. Then the carriage doors were banged to again.

“Do not allow either of the prisoners out again, on peril of your lives!” came with a vigorous curse from Heron.

After which there was a moment’s silence; whispered commands came spasmodically in deadened sound to her ear.

“Will the key turn?”

“Yes, citizen.”

“All secure?”

“Yes, citizen. The prisoner is groaning.”

“Let him groan.”

“The empty coach, citizen? The horses have been taken out.”

“Leave it standing where it is, then; citizen Chauvelin will need it in the morning.”

“Armand,” whispered Marguerite inside the coach, “did you see Percy?”

“It was so dark,” murmured Armand feebly; “but I saw him, just inside the gates, where they had laid him down. I heard him groaning. Oh, my God!”

“Hush, dear!” she said. “We can do nothing more, only die, as he lived, bravely and with a smile on our lips, in memory of him.”

“Number 35 is wounded, citizen,” said one of the men.

“Curse the fool who did the mischief,” was the placid response. “Leave him here with the guard.”

“How many of you are there left, then?” asked the same voice a moment later.

“Only two, citizen; if one whole section remains with me at the chapel door, and also the wounded man.”

“Two are enough for me, and five are not too many at the chapel door.” And Heron’s coarse, cruel laugh echoed against the stone walls of the little chapel. “Now then, one of you get into the coach, and the other go to the horses’ heads; and remember, Corporal Cassard, that you and your men who stay here to guard that chapel door are answerable to the whole nation with your lives for the safety of the Englishman.”

The carriage door was thrown open, and a soldier stepped in and sat down opposite Marguerite and Armand. Heron in the meanwhile was apparently scrambling up the box. Marguerite could hear him muttering curses as he groped for the reins, and finally gathered them into his hand.

The springs of the coach creaked and groaned as the vehicle slowly swung round; the wheels ploughed deeply through the soft carpet of dead leaves.

Marguerite felt Armand’s inert body leaning heavily against her shoulder.

“Are you in pain, dear?” she asked softly.

He made no reply, and she thought that he had fainted. It was better so; at least the next dreary hours would flit by for him in the blissful state of unconsciousness. Now at last the heavy carriage began to move more evenly. The soldier at the horses’ heads was stepping along at a rapid pace.

Marguerite would have given much even now to look back once more at the dense black mass, blacker and denser than any shadow that had ever descended before on God’s earth, which held between its cold, cruel walls all that she loved in the world.

But her wrists were fettered by the irons, which cut into her flesh when she moved. She could no longer lean out of the window, and she could not even hear. The whole forest was hushed, the wind was lulled to rest; wild beasts and night-birds were silent and still. And the wheels of the coach creaked in the ruts, bearing Marguerite with every turn further and further away from the man who lay helpless in the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre.

Yaş sınırı:
12+
Litres'teki yayın tarihi:
20 temmuz 2018
Hacim:
430 s. 1 illüstrasyon
Telif hakkı:
Public Domain
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