Rain! Rain! Rain! Incessant, monotonous and dreary! The wind had changed round to the southwest. It blew now in great gusts that sent weird, sighing sounds through the trees, and drove the heavy showers into the faces of the men as they rode on, with heads bent forward against the gale.
The rain-sodden bridles slipped through their hands, bringing out sores and blisters on their palms; the horses were fidgety, tossing their heads with wearying persistence as the wet trickled into their ears, or the sharp, intermittent hailstones struck their sensitive noses.
Three days of this awful monotony, varied only by the halts at wayside inns, the changing of troops at one of the guard-houses on the way, the reiterated commands given to the fresh squad before starting on the next lap of this strange, momentous way; and all the while, audible above the clatter of horses’ hoofs, the rumbling of coach-wheels—two closed carriages, each drawn by a pair of sturdy horses; which were changed at every halt. A soldier on each box urged them to a good pace to keep up with the troopers, who were allowed to go at an easy canter or light jog-trot, whatever might prove easiest and least fatiguing. And from time to time Heron’s shaggy, gaunt head would appear at the window of one of the coaches, asking the way, the distance to the next city or to the nearest wayside inn; cursing the troopers, the coachman, his colleague and every one concerned, blaspheming against the interminable length of the road, against the cold and against the wet.
Early in the evening on the second day of the journey he had met with an accident. The prisoner, who presumably was weak and weary, and not over steady on his feet, had fallen up against him as they were both about to re-enter the coach after a halt just outside Amiens, and citizen Heron had lost his footing in the slippery mud of the road. His head came in violent contact with the step, and his right temple was severely cut. Since then he had been forced to wear a bandage across the top of his face, under his sugar-loaf hat, which had added nothing to his beauty, but a great deal to the violence of his temper. He wanted to push the men on, to force the pace, to shorten the halts; but Chauvelin knew better than to allow slackness and discontent to follow in the wake of over-fatigue.
The soldiers were always well rested and well fed, and though the delay caused by long and frequent halts must have been just as irksome to him as it was to Heron, yet he bore it imperturbably, for he would have had no use on this momentous journey for a handful of men whose enthusiasm and spirit had been blown away by the roughness of the gale, or drowned in the fury of the constant downpour of rain.
Of all this Marguerite had been conscious in a vague, dreamy kind of way. She seemed to herself like the spectator in a moving panoramic drama, unable to raise a finger or to do aught to stop that final, inevitable ending, the cataclysm of sorrow and misery that awaited her, when the dreary curtain would fall on the last act, and she and all the other spectators—Armand, Chauvelin, Heron, the soldiers—would slowly wend their way home, leaving the principal actor behind the fallen curtain, which never would be lifted again.
After that first halt in the guard-room of the Rue Ste. Anne she had been bidden to enter a second hackney coach, which, followed the other at a distance of fifty metres or so, and was, like that other, closely surrounded by a squad of mounted men.
Armand and Chauvelin rode in this carriage with her; all day she sat looking out on the endless monotony of the road, on the drops of rain that pattered against the window-glass, and ran down from it like a perpetual stream of tears.
There were two halts called during the day—one for dinner and one midway through the afternoon—when she and Armand would step out of the coach and be led—always with soldiers close around them—to some wayside inn, where some sort of a meal was served, where the atmosphere was close and stuffy and smelt of onion soup and of stale cheese.
Armand and Marguerite would in most cases have a room to themselves, with sentinels posted outside the door, and they would try and eat enough to keep body and soul together, for they would not allow their strength to fall away before the end of the journey was reached.
For the night halt—once at Beauvais and the second night at Abbeville—they were escorted to a house in the interior of the city, where they were accommodated with moderately clean lodgings. Sentinels, however, were always at their doors; they were prisoners in all but name, and had little or no privacy; for at night they were both so tired that they were glad to retire immediately, and to lie down on the hard beds that had been provided for them, even if sleep fled from their eyes, and their hearts and souls were flying through the city in search of him who filled their every thought.
Of Percy they saw little or nothing. In the daytime food was evidently brought to him in the carriage, for they did not see him get down, and on those two nights at Beauvais and Abbeville, when they caught sight of him stepping out of the coach outside the gates of the barracks, he was so surrounded by soldiers that they only saw the top of his head and his broad shoulders towering above those of the men.
Once Marguerite had put all her pride, all her dignity by, and asked citizen Chauvelin for news of her husband.
“He is well and cheerful, Lady Blakeney,” he had replied with his sarcastic smile. “Ah!” he added pleasantly, “those English are remarkable people. We, of Gallic breed, will never really understand them. Their fatalism is quite Oriental in its quiet resignation to the decree of Fate. Did you know, Lady Blakeney, that when Sir Percy was arrested he did not raise a hand. I thought, and so did my colleague, that he would have fought like a lion. And now, that he has no doubt realised that quiet submission will serve him best in the end, he is as calm on this journey as I am myself. In fact,” he concluded complacently, “whenever I have succeeded in peeping into the coach I have invariably found Sir Percy Blakeney fast asleep.”
“He—” she murmured, for it was so difficult to speak to this callous wretch, who was obviously mocking her in her misery—“he—you—you are not keeping him in irons?”
“No! Oh no!” replied Chauvelin with perfect urbanity. “You see, now that we have you, Lady Blakeney, and citizen St. Just with us we have no reason to fear that that elusive Pimpernel will spirit himself away.”
A hot retort had risen to Armand’s lips. The warm Latin blood in him rebelled against this intolerable situation, the man’s sneers in the face of Marguerite’s anguish. But her restraining, gentle hand had already pressed his. What was the use of protesting, of insulting this brute, who cared nothing for the misery which he had caused so long as he gained his own ends?
And Armand held his tongue and tried to curb his temper, tried to cultivate a little of that fatalism which Chauvelin had said was characteristic of the English. He sat beside his sister, longing to comfort her, yet feeling that his very presence near her was an outrage and a sacrilege. She spoke so seldom to him, even when they were alone, that at times the awful thought which had more than once found birth in his weary brain became crystallised and more real. Did Marguerite guess? Had she the slightest suspicion that the awful cataclysm to which they were tending with every revolution of the creaking coach-wheels had been brought about by her brother’s treacherous hand?
And when that thought had lodged itself quite snugly in his mind he began to wonder whether it would not be far more simple, far more easy, to end his miserable life in some manner that might suggest itself on the way. When the coach crossed one of those dilapidated, parapetless bridges, over abysses fifty metres deep, it might be so easy to throw open the carriage door and to take one final jump into eternity.
So easy—but so damnably cowardly.
Marguerite’s near presence quickly brought him back to himself. His life was no longer his own to do with as he pleased; it belonged to the chief whom he had betrayed, to the sister whom he must endeavour to protect.
Of Jeanne now he thought but little. He had put even the memory of her by—tenderly, like a sprig of lavender pressed between the faded leaves of his own happiness. His hand was no longer fit to hold that of any pure woman—his hand had on it a deep stain, immutable, like the brand of Cain.
Yet Marguerite beside him held his hand and together they looked out on that dreary, dreary road and listened to of the patter of the rain and the rumbling of the wheels of that other coach on ahead—and it was all so dismal and so horrible, the rain, the soughing of the wind in the stunted trees, this landscape of mud and desolation, this eternally grey sky.
“Now, then, citizen, don’t go to sleep; this is Crecy, our last halt!”
Armand woke up from his last dream. They had been moving steadily on since they left Abbeville soon after dawn; the rumble of the wheels, the swaying and rocking of the carriage, the interminable patter of the rain had lulled him into a kind of wakeful sleep.
Chauvelin had already alighted from the coach. He was helping Marguerite to descend. Armand shook the stiffness from his limbs and followed in the wake of his sister. Always those miserable soldiers round them, with their dank coats of rough blue cloth, and the red caps on their heads! Armand pulled Marguerite’s hand through his arm, and dragged her with him into the house.
The small city lay damp and grey before them; the rough pavement of the narrow street glistened with the wet, reflecting the dull, leaden sky overhead; the rain beat into the puddles; the slate-roofs shone in the cold wintry light.
This was Crecy! The last halt of the journey, so Chauvelin had said. The party had drawn rein in front of a small one-storied building that had a wooden verandah running the whole length of its front.
The usual low narrow room greeted Armand and Marguerite as they entered; the usual mildewed walls, with the colour wash flowing away in streaks from the unsympathetic beam above; the same device, “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite!” scribbled in charcoal above the black iron stove; the usual musty, close atmosphere, the usual smell of onion and stale cheese, the usual hard straight benches and central table with its soiled and tattered cloth.
Marguerite seemed dazed and giddy; she had been five hours in that stuffy coach with nothing to distract her thoughts except the rain-sodden landscape, on which she had ceaselessly gazed since the early dawn.
Armand led her to the bench, and she sank down on it, numb and inert, resting her elbows on the table and her head in her hands.
“If it were only all over!” she sighed involuntarily. “Armand, at times now I feel as if I were not really sane—as if my reason had already given way! Tell me, do I seem mad to you at times?”
He sat down beside her and tried to chafe her little cold hands.
There was a knock at the door, and without waiting for permission Chauvelin entered the room.
“My humble apologies to you, Lady Blakeney,” he said in his usual suave manner, “but our worthy host informs me that this is the only room in which he can serve a meal. Therefore I am forced to intrude my presence upon you.”
Though he spoke with outward politeness, his tone had become more peremptory, less bland, and he did not await Marguerite’s reply before he sat down opposite to her and continued to talk airily.
“An ill-conditioned fellow, our host,” he said—“quite reminds me of our friend Brogard at the Chat Gris in Calais. You remember him, Lady Blakeney?”
“My sister is giddy and over-tired,” interposed Armand firmly. “I pray you, citizen, to have some regard for her.”
“All regard in the world, citizen St. Just,” protested Chauvelin jovially. “Methought that those pleasant reminiscences would cheer her. Ah! here comes the soup,” he added, as a man in blue blouse and breeches, with sabots on his feet, slouched into the room, carrying a tureen which he incontinently placed upon the table. “I feel sure that in England Lady Blakeney misses our excellent croutes-au-pot, the glory of our bourgeois cookery—Lady Blakeney, a little soup?”
“I thank you, sir,” she murmured.
“Do try and eat something, little mother,” Armand whispered in her ear; “try and keep up your strength for his sake, if not for mine.”
She turned a wan, pale face to him, and tried to smile.
“I’ll try, dear,” she said.
“You have taken bread and meat to the citizens in the coach?” Chauvelin called out to the retreating figure of mine host.
“H’m!” grunted the latter in assent.
“And see that the citizen soldiers are well fed, or there will be trouble.”
“H’m!” grunted the man again. After which he banged the door to behind him.
“Citizen Heron is loath to let the prisoner out of his sight,” explained Chauvelin lightly, “now that we have reached the last, most important stage of our journey, so he is sharing Sir Percy’s mid-day meal in the interior of the coach.”
He ate his soup with a relish, ostentatiously paying many small attentions to Marguerite all the time. He ordered meat for her—bread, butter—asked if any dainties could be got. He was apparently in the best of tempers.
After he had eaten and drunk he rose and bowed ceremoniously to her.
“Your pardon, Lady Blakeney,” he said, “but I must confer with the prisoner now, and take from him full directions for the continuance of our journey. After that I go to the guard-house, which is some distance from here, right at the other end of the city. We pick up a fresh squad here, twenty hardened troopers from a cavalry regiment usually stationed at Abbeville. They have had work to do in this town, which is a hot-bed of treachery. I must go inspect the men and the sergeant who will be in command. Citizen Heron leaves all these inspections to me; he likes to stay by his prisoner. In the meanwhile you will be escorted back to your coach, where I pray you to await my arrival, when we change guard first, then proceed on our way.”
Marguerite was longing to ask him many questions; once again she would have smothered her pride and begged for news of her husband, but Chauvelin did not wait. He hurried out of the room, and Armand and Marguerite could hear him ordering the soldiers to take them forthwith back to the coach.
As they came out of the inn they saw the other coach some fifty metres further up the street. The horses that had done duty since leaving Abbeville had been taken out, and two soldiers in ragged shirts, and with crimson caps set jauntily over their left ear, were leading the two fresh horses along. The troopers were still mounting guard round both the coaches; they would be relieved presently.
Marguerite would have given ten years of her life at this moment for the privilege of speaking to her husband, or even of seeing him—of seeing that he was well. A quick, wild plan sprang up in her mind that she would bribe the sergeant in command to grant her wish while citizen Chauvelin was absent. The man had not an unkind face, and he must be very poor—people in France were very poor these days, though the rich had been robbed and luxurious homes devastated ostensibly to help the poor.
She was about to put this sudden thought into execution when Heron’s hideous face, doubly hideous now with that bandage of doubtful cleanliness cutting across his brow, appeared at the carriage window.
He cursed violently and at the top of his voice.
“What are those d—d aristos doing out there?” he shouted.
“Just getting into the coach, citizen,” replied the sergeant promptly.
And Armand and Marguerite were immediately ordered back into the coach.
Heron remained at the window for a few moments longer; he had a toothpick in his hand which he was using very freely.
“How much longer are we going to wait in this cursed hole?” he called out to the sergeant.
“Only a few moments longer, citizen. Citizen Chauvelin will be back soon with the guard.”
A quarter of an hour later the clatter of cavalry horses on the rough, uneven pavement drew Marguerite’s attention. She lowered the carriage window and looked out. Chauvelin had just returned with the new escort. He was on horseback; his horse’s bridle, since he was but an indifferent horseman, was held by one of the troopers.
Outside the inn he dismounted; evidently he had taken full command of the expedition, and scarcely referred to Heron, who spent most of his time cursing at the men or the weather when he was not lying half-asleep and partially drunk in the inside of the carriage.
The changing of the guard was now accomplished quietly and in perfect order. The new escort consisted of twenty mounted men, including a sergeant and a corporal, and of two drivers, one for each coach. The cortege now was filed up in marching order; ahead a small party of scouts, then the coach with Marguerite and Armand closely surrounded by mounted men, and at a short distance the second coach with citizen Heron and the prisoner equally well guarded.
Chauvelin superintended all the arrangements himself. He spoke for some few moments with the sergeant, also with the driver of his own coach. He went to the window of the other carriage, probably in order to consult with citizen Heron, or to take final directions from the prisoner, for Marguerite, who was watching him, saw him standing on the step and leaning well forward into the interior, whilst apparently he was taking notes on a small tablet which he had in his hand.
A small knot of idlers had congregated in the narrow street; men in blouses and boys in ragged breeches lounged against the verandah of the inn and gazed with inexpressive, stolid eyes on the soldiers, the coaches, the citizen who wore the tricolour scarf. They had seen this sort of thing before now—aristos being conveyed to Paris under arrest, prisoners on their way to or from Amiens. They saw Marguerite’s pale face at the carriage window. It was not the first woman’s face they had seen under like circumstances, and there was no special interest about this aristo. They were smoking or spitting, or just lounging idly against the balustrade. Marguerite wondered if none of them had wife, sister, or mother, or child; if every sympathy, every kind of feeling in these poor wretches had been atrophied by misery or by fear.
At last everything was in order and the small party ready to start.
“Does any one here know the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, close by the park of the Chateau d’Ourde?” asked Chauvelin, vaguely addressing the knot of gaffers that stood closest to him.
The men shook their heads. Some had dimly heard of the Chateau d’Ourde; it was some way in the interior of the forest of Boulogne, but no one knew about a chapel; people did not trouble about chapels nowadays. With the indifference so peculiar to local peasantry, these men knew no more of the surrounding country than the twelve or fifteen league circle that was within a walk of their sleepy little town.
One of the scouts on ahead turned in his saddle and spoke to citizen Chauvelin:
“I think I know the way pretty well; citizen Chauvelin,” he said; “at any rate, I know it as far as the forest of Boulogne.”
Chauvelin referred to his tablets.
“That’s good,” he said; “then when you reach the mile-stone that stands on this road at the confine of the forest, bear sharply to your right and skirt the wood until you see the hamlet of—Le—something. Le—Le—yes—Le Crocq—that’s it in the valley below.”
“I know Le Crocq, I think,” said the trooper.
“Very well, then; at that point it seems that a wide road strikes at right angles into the interior of the forest; you follow that until a stone chapel with a colonnaded porch stands before you on your left, and the walls and gates of a park on your right. That is so, is it not, Sir Percy?” he added, once more turning towards the interior of the coach.
Apparently the answer satisfied him, for he gave the quick word of command, “En avant!” then turned back towards his own coach and finally entered it.
“Do you know the Chateau d’Ourde, citizen St. Just?” he asked abruptly as soon as the carriage began to move.
Armand woke—as was habitual with him these days—from some gloomy reverie.
“Yes, citizen,” he replied. “I know it.”
“And the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre?”
“Yes. I know it too.”
Indeed, he knew the chateau well, and the little chapel in the forest, whither the fisher-folk from Portel and Boulogne came on a pilgrimage once a year to lay their nets on the miracle-working relic. The chapel was disused now. Since the owner of the chateau had fled no one had tended it, and the fisher-folk were afraid to wander out, lest their superstitious faith be counted against them by the authorities, who had abolished le bon Dieu.
But Armand had found refuge there eighteen months ago, on his way to Calais, when Percy had risked his life in order to save him—Armand—from death. He could have groaned aloud with the anguish of this recollection. But Marguerite’s aching nerves had thrilled at the name.
The Chateau d’Ourde! The Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre! That was the place which Percy had mentioned in his letter, the place where he had given rendezvous to de Batz. Sir Andrew had said that the Dauphin could not possibly be there, yet Percy was leading his enemies thither, and had given the rendezvous there to de Batz. And this despite that whatever plans, whatever hopes, had been born in his mind when he was still immured in the Conciergerie prison must have been set at naught by the clever counter plot of Chauvelin and Heron.
“At the merest suspicion that you have played us false, at a hint that you have led us into an ambush, or if merely our hopes of finding Capet at the end of the journey are frustrated, the lives of your wife and of your friend are forfeit to us, and they will both be shot before your eyes.”
With these words, with this precaution, those cunning fiends had effectually not only tied the schemer’s hands, but forced him either to deliver the child to them or to sacrifice his wife and his friend.
The impasse was so horrible that she could not face it even in her thoughts. A strange, fever-like heat coursed through her veins, yet left her hands icy-cold; she longed for, yet dreaded, the end of the journey—that awful grappling with the certainty of coming death. Perhaps, after all, Percy, too, had given up all hope. Long ago he had consecrated his life to the attainment of his own ideals; and there was a vein of fatalism in him; perhaps he had resigned himself to the inevitable, and his only desire now was to give up his life, as he had said, in the open, beneath God’s sky, to draw his last breath with the storm-clouds tossed through infinity above him, and the murmur of the wind in the trees to sing him to rest.
Crecy was gradually fading into the distance, wrapped in a mantle of damp and mist. For a long while Marguerite could see the sloping slate roofs glimmering like steel in the grey afternoon light, and the quaint church tower with its beautiful lantern, through the pierced stonework of which shone patches of the leaden sky.
Then a sudden twist of the road hid the city from view; only the outlying churchyard remained in sight, with its white monuments and granite crosses, over which the dark yews, wet with the rain and shaken by the gale, sent showers of diamond-like sprays.
Progress was not easy, and very slow along the muddy road; the two coaches moved along laboriously, with wheels creaking and sinking deeply from time to time in the quagmire.
When the small party finally reached the edge of the wood the greyish light of this dismal day had changed in the west to a dull reddish glow—a glow that had neither brilliance nor incandescence in it; only a weird tint that hung over the horizon and turned the distance into lines of purple.
The nearness of the sea made itself already felt; there was a briny taste in the damp atmosphere, and the trees all turned their branches away in the same direction against the onslaught of the prevailing winds.
The road at this point formed a sharp fork, skirting the wood on either side, the forest lying like a black close mass of spruce and firs on the left, while the open expanse of country stretched out on the right. The south-westerly gale struck with full violence against the barrier of forest trees, bending the tall crests of the pines and causing their small dead branches to break and fall with a sharp, crisp sound like a cry of pain.
The squad had been fresh at starting; now the men had been four hours in the saddle under persistent rain and gusty wind; they were tired, and the atmosphere of the close, black forest so near the road was weighing upon their spirits.
Strange sounds came to them from out the dense network of trees—the screeching of night-birds, the weird call of the owls, the swift and furtive tread of wild beasts on the prowl. The cold winter and lack of food had lured the wolves from their fastnesses—hunger had emboldened them, and now, as gradually the grey light fled from the sky, dismal howls could be heard in the distance, and now and then a pair of eyes, bright with the reflection of the lurid western glow, would shine momentarily out of the darkness like tiny glow-worms, and as quickly vanish away.
The men shivered—more with vague superstitious fear than with cold. They would have urged their horses on, but the wheels of the coaches stuck persistently in the mud, and now and again a halt had to be called so that the spokes and axles might be cleared.
They rode on in silence. No one had a mind to speak, and the mournful soughing of the wind in the pine-trees seemed to check the words on every lip. The dull thud of hoofs in the soft road, the clang of steel bits and buckles, the snorting of the horses alone answered the wind, and also the monotonous creaking of the wheels ploughing through the ruts.
Soon the ruddy glow in the west faded into soft-toned purple and then into grey; finally that too vanished. Darkness was drawing in on every side like a wide, black mantle pulled together closer and closer overhead by invisible giant hands.
The rain still fell in a thin drizzle that soaked through caps and coats, made the bridles slimy and the saddles slippery and damp. A veil of vapour hung over the horses’ cruppers, and was rendered fuller and thicker every moment with the breath that came from their nostrils. The wind no longer blew with gusty fury—its strength seemed to have been spent with the grey light of day—but now and then it would still come sweeping across the open country, and dash itself upon the wall of forest trees, lashing against the horses’ ears, catching the corner of a mantle here, an ill-adjusted cap there, and wreaking its mischievous freak for a while, then with a sigh of satisfaction die, murmuring among the pines.
Suddenly there was a halt, much shouting, a volley of oaths from the drivers, and citizen Chauvelin thrust his head out of the carriage window.
“What is it?” he asked.
“The scouts, citizen,” replied the sergeant, who had been riding close to the coach door all this while; “they have returned.”
“Tell one man to come straight to me and report.”
Marguerite sat quite still. Indeed, she had almost ceased to live momentarily, for her spirit was absent from her body, which felt neither fatigue, nor cold, nor pain. But she heard the snorting of the horse close by as its rider pulled him up sharply beside the carriage door.
“Well?” said Chauvelin curtly.
“This is the cross-road, citizen,” replied the man; “it strikes straight into the wood, and the hamlet of Le Crocq lies down in the valley on the right.”
“Did you follow the road in the wood?”
“Yes, citizen. About two leagues from here there is a clearing with a small stone chapel, more like a large shrine, nestling among the trees. Opposite to it the angle of a high wall with large wrought-iron gates at the corner, and from these a wide drive leads through a park.”
“Did you turn into the drive?”
“Only a little way, citizen. We thought we had best report first that all is safe.”
“You saw no one?”
“No one.”
“The chateau, then, lies some distance from the gates?”
“A league or more, citizen. Close to the gates there are outhouses and stabling, the disused buildings of the home farm, I should say.”
“Good! We are on the right road, that is clear. Keep ahead with your men now, but only some two hundred metres or so. Stay!” he added, as if on second thoughts. “Ride down to the other coach and ask the prisoner if we are on the right track.”
The rider turned his horse sharply round. Marguerite heard-the clang of metal and the sound of retreating hoofs.
A few moments later the man returned.
“Yes, citizen,” he reported, “the prisoner says it is quite right. The Chateau d’Ourde lies a full league from its gates. This is the nearest road to the chapel and the chateau. He says we should reach the former in half an hour. It will be very dark in there,” he added with a significant nod in the direction of the wood.
Chauvelin made no reply, but quietly stepped out of the coach. Marguerite watched him, leaning out of the window, following his small trim figure as he pushed his way past the groups of mounted men, catching at a horse’s bit now and then, or at a bridle, making a way for himself amongst the restless, champing animals, without the slightest hesitation or fear.
Soon his retreating figure lost its sharp outline silhouetted against the evening sky. It was enfolded in the veil of vapour which was blown out of the horses’ nostrils or rising from their damp cruppers; it became more vague, almost ghost-like, through the mist and the fast-gathering gloom.
Presently a group of troopers hid him entirely from her view, but she could hear his thin, smooth voice quite clearly as he called to citizen Heron.
“We are close to the end of our journey now, citizen,” she heard him say. “If the prisoner has not played us false little Capet should be in our charge within the hour.”
A growl not unlike those that came from out the mysterious depths of the forest answered him.
“If he is not,” and Marguerite recognised the harsh tones of citizen Heron—“if he is not, then two corpses will be rotting in this wood tomorrow for the wolves to feed on, and the prisoner will be on his way back to Paris with me.”
Some one laughed. It might have been one of the troopers, more callous than his comrades, but to Marguerite the laugh had a strange, familiar ring in it, the echo of something long since past and gone.
Then Chauvelin’s voice once more came clearly to her ear:
“My suggestion, citizen,” he was saying, “is that the prisoner shall now give me an order—couched in whatever terms he may think necessary—but a distinct order to his friends to give up Capet to me without any resistance. I could then take some of the men with me, and ride as quickly as the light will allow up to the chateau, and take possession of it, of Capet, and of those who are with him. We could get along faster thus. One man can give up his horse to me and continue the journey on the box of your coach. The two carriages could then follow at foot pace. But I fear that if we stick together complete darkness will overtake us and we might find ourselves obliged to pass a very uncomfortable night in this wood.”
“I won’t spend another night in this suspense—it would kill me,” growled Heron to the accompaniment of one of his choicest oaths. “You must do as you think right—you planned the whole of this affair—see to it that it works out well in the end.”
“How many men shall I take with me? Our advance guard is here, of course.”
“I couldn’t spare you more than four more men—I shall want the others to guard the prisoners.”
“Four men will be quite sufficient, with the four of the advance guard. That will leave you twelve men for guarding your prisoners, and you really only need to guard the woman—her life will answer for the others.”
He had raised his voice when he said this, obviously intending that Marguerite and Armand should hear.
“Then I’ll ahead,” he continued, apparently in answer to an assent from his colleague. “Sir Percy, will you be so kind as to scribble the necessary words on these tablets?”
There was a long pause, during which Marguerite heard plainly the long and dismal cry of a night bird that, mayhap, was seeking its mate. Then Chauvelin’s voice was raised again.
“I thank you,” he said; “this certainly should be quite effectual. And now, citizen Heron, I do not think that under the circumstances we need fear an ambuscade or any kind of trickery—you hold the hostages. And if by any chance I and my men are attacked, or if we encounter armed resistance at the chateau, I will despatch a rider back straightway to you, and—well, you will know what to do.”
His voice died away, merged in the soughing of the wind, drowned by the clang of metal, of horses snorting, of men living and breathing. Marguerite felt that beside her Armand had shuddered, and that in the darkness his trembling hand had sought and found hers.
She leaned well out of the window, trying to see. The gloom had gathered more closely in, and round her the veil of vapour from the horses’ steaming cruppers hung heavily in the misty air. In front of her the straight lines of a few fir trees stood out dense and black against the greyness beyond, and between these lines purple tints of various tones and shades mingled one with the other, merging the horizon line with the sky. Here and there a more solid black patch indicated the tiny houses of the hamlet of Le Crocq far down in the valley below; from some of these houses small lights began to glimmer like blinking yellow eyes. Marguerite’s gaze, however, did not rest on the distant landscape—it tried to pierce the gloom that hid her immediate surroundings; the mounted men were all round the coach—more closely round her than the trees in the forest. But the horses were restless, moving all the time, and as they moved she caught glimpses of that other coach and of Chauvelin’s ghostlike figure, walking rapidly through the mist. Just for one brief moment she saw the other coach, and Heron’s head and shoulders leaning out of the window. His sugar-loaf hat was on his head, and the bandage across his brow looked like a sharp, pale streak below it.
“Do not doubt it, citizen Chauvelin,” he called out loudly in his harsh, raucous voice, “I shall know what to do; the wolves will have their meal to-night, and the guillotine will not be cheated either.”
Armand put his arm round his sister’s shoulders and gently drew her back into the carriage.
“Little mother,” he said, “if you can think of a way whereby my life would redeem Percy’s and yours, show me that way now.”
But she replied quietly and firmly:
“There is no way, Armand. If there is, it is in the hands of God.”
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.