by Neil Munro
CHAPTER IX -- TRAPPED
It was only at the dawn, or the gloaming, or in night itself--and aboveall in the night--that the castle of Doom had its tragic aspect. Inthe sun of midday, as Count Victor convinced himself on the morrow of anight with no alarms, it could be almost cheerful, and from the gardenthere was sometimes something to be seen with interest of a human kindupon the highway on the shore.
A solitary land, but in the happy hours people were passing to and frobetween the entrances to the ducal seat and the north. Now and thenbands of vagrants from the heights of Glencroe and the high Rest whereWade's road bent among the clouds would pass with little or no appeal tothe hospitality of Doom, whose poverty they knew; now and then rusticsin red hoods, their feet bare upon the gravel, made for the town market,sometimes singing as they went till their womanly voices, even in airsunfamiliar and a language strange and guttural, gave to Count Victoran echo of old mirth in another and a warmer land. Men passed on roughshort ponies; once a chariot with a great caleche roof swung on therutless road, once a company of red-coat soldiery shot like a gleam ofglory across the afternoon, moving to the melody of a fife and drum.
For the latter Mungo had a sour explanation. They were come, it seemed,to attend a trial for murder. A clansman of the Duke's and a far-outcousin (in the Highland manner of speaking) had been shot dead in thecountry of Appin; the suspected assassin, a Stewart of course, was ontrial; the blood of families and factions was hot over the business, andthe Government was sending its soldiery to convoy James Stewart of theGlen, after his conviction, back to the place of execution.
"But, _mon Dieu!_ he is yet to try, is he not?" cried Count Victor.
"Oh ay!" Mungo acquiesced, "but that doesna' maitter; the puir craturis as guid as scragged. The tow's aboot his thrapple and kittlin' himalready, I'll warrant, for his name's Stewart, and in this place I wouldsooner be ca'd Beelzebub; I'd hae a better chance o' my life if I foundmysel' in trouble wi' a Campbell jury to try me."
Montaiglon watched this little cavalcade of military march along theroad, with longing in his heart for the brave and busy outside worldthey represented. He watched them wistfully till they had disappearedround the horn of land he had stood on yesterday, and their fife anddrum had altogether died upon the air of the afternoon. And turning, hefound the Baron of Doom silent at his elbow, looking under his hat-brimat the road.
"More trouble for the fesse checkey, Baron," said he, indicating thepoint whereto the troops had gone.
"The unluckiest blazon on a coat," replied the castellan of Doom;"trouble seems to be the part of every one who wears it. It's in a veryunwholesome quarter when it comes into the boar's den--"
"Boar's den?" repeated Montaiglon interrogatively.
"The head of the pig is his Grace's cognisance. Clan Diarmaid must havegot it first by raiding in some Appin stye, as Petullo my doer down-bysays. He is like most men of his trade, Petullo; he is ready to make histreasonable joke even against the people who pay him wages, and I knowhe gets the wages of the Duke as well as my fees. I'm going down totransact some of the weary old business with him just now, and I'll hintat your coming. A Bordeaux wine merchant--it will seem more like thething than the fish dealer."
"And I know a good deal more about wine than about fish," laughed CountVictor, "so it will be safer."
"I think you would be best to have been coming to the town when theMacfarlanes attacked you, killed your horse, and chased you into myplace. That's the most plausible story we can tell, and it has thevirtue of being true in every particular, without betraying that Bethuneor friendship for myself was in any part of it."
"I can leave it all to your astuteness," said Montaiglon.
The Baron was absent, as he had suggested was possible, all day. Theafternoon was spent by Count Victor in a dull enough fashion, for evenMungo seemed morose in his master's absence, perhaps overweighted by themysteries now left to his charge, disinclined to talk of anything exceptthe vast wars in which his ancestors had shone with blinding splendour,and of the world beyond the confines of Doom. But even his store ofreminiscence became exhausted, and Count Victor was left to his ownresources. Back again to his seat on the rock he went, and again to thesurvey of the mainland that seemed so strangely different a clime fromthis where nothing dwelt but secrecy and decay.
In the afternoon the traffic on the highway had ceased, for the burghnow held all of that wide neighbourhood that had leisure, or any excuseof business to transact in the place where a great event was happening.The few that moved in the sun of the day were, with but one exception,bound for the streets; the exception naturally created some wonder onthe part of Count Victor.
For it was a man in the dress (to judge at a distance) of a gentleman,and his action was singular. He was riding a jet-black horse of largerstature than any that the rustics and farmers who had passed earlierin the day bestrode, and he stood for a time half-hidden among treesopposite the place where Count Victor reclined on a patch of grass amongwhin-bushes. Obviously he did not see Montaiglon, to judge from thecalmness of his scrutiny, and assuredly it was not to the Frenchmanthat, after a little, he waved a hand. Count Victor turned suddenlyand saw a responsive hand withdrawn from the window that had so farmonopolised all his interest in Doom's exterior.
Annapla had decidedly an industrious wooer, more constant than the sunitself, for he seemed to shine in her heavens night and day.
There was, in a sense, but little in the incident, which was open to ascore of innocent or prosaic explanations, and the cavalier was spurringback a few minutes later to the south, but it confirmed Count Victor'sdetermination to have done with Doom at the earliest, and off to wherethe happenings of the day were more lucid.
At supper-time the Baron had not returned. Mungo came up to discoverCount Victor dozing over a stupid English book and wakened him to tellhim so, and that supper was on the table. He toyed with the food, havingno appetite, turned to his book again, and fell asleep in his chair.Mungo again came in and removed the dishes silently, and lookedcuriously at him--so much the foreigner in that place, so perjink inhis attire, so incongruous in his lace with this solitary keep of themountains. It was a strange face the servant turned upon him there atthe door as he retired to his kitchen quarters. And he was not gone longwhen he came back with a woman who walked tiptoe into the doorway.
"That's the puir cratur," said he; "seekin' for whit he'll never find,like the man with the lantern playin' ki-hoi wi' honesty."
She looked with interest at the stranger, said no word, but disappeared.
The peats sunk upon the hearth, crumbling in hearts of fire: on theouter edges the ashes grew grey. The candles of coarse mould, stuck in arude sconce upon the wall above the mantelshelf, guttered to their end,set aslant by wafts of errant wind that came in through the half-opendoor and crevices of the window. It grew cold, and Montaiglon shookhimself into wakefulness. He sat up in his chair and looked about himwith some sense of apprehension, with the undescribable instinct of aman who feels himself observed by eyes unseen, who has slept through animminently dangerous moment.
He heard a voice outside.
"M. le Baron," he concluded. "Late, but still in time to say good-nightto the guest he rather cavalierly treats." And he rose and wentdownstairs to meet his host. The great door was ajar. He went into theopen air. The garden was utterly dark, for clouds obscured thestars, and the air was laden with the saline odour of the wrack belowhigh-water mark. The tide was out. What he had expected was to see Mungoand his master, but behind the castle where they should have been therewas no one, and the voices he heard had come from the side next theshore. He listened a little and took alarm, for it was not one voice butthe voices of several people he heard, and in the muffled whispers ofmen upon some dishonest adventure. At once he recalled the Macfarlanesand the surmise of Baron Doom that in two nights they might be cryingtheir slogan round the walls that harboured their enemy. He ran hastilyback to the house, quickly resumed the sword that had proved little
useto him before, took up the more businesslike pistol that had spoiled thefeatures of the robber with the bladder-like head, and rushed downstairsagain.
"_Qui est la?_" he demanded as he passed round the end of the house andsaw dimly on the rock a group of men who had crossed upon the ebb. Hisappearance was apparently unexpected, for he seemed to cause surpriseand a momentary confusion. Then a voice cried "Loch Sloy!" and thecompany made a rush to bear him down.
He withdrew hastily behind the wall of the garden where he had them atadvantage. As he faced round, the assailants, by common consent, leftone man to do his business. He was a large, well-built man, so faras might be judged in the gloom of the night, and he was attired inHighland clothes. The first of his acts was to throw off a plaid thatmuffled his shoulders; then he snapped a futile pistol, and fell backupon his sword, with which he laid out lustily.
In the dark it was impossible to make pretty fighting of the encounter.The Frenchman saw the odds too much against him, and realised theweakness of his flank; he lunged hurriedly through a poor guard of hisopponent's, and pierced the fleshiness of the sword-arm. The man growledan oath, and Count Victor retreated.
Mungo, with a blanched face, was trembling in the entrance, and a womanwas shrieking upstairs. The hall, lit by a flambeau that Mungo heldin one hand, while the other held a huge horse-pistol, looked like theentrance to a dungeon,--something altogether sinister and ugly to theforeigner, who had the uneasy notion that he fought for his life ina prison. And the shrieks aloft rang wildly through the night likesomething in a story he had once read, with a mad woman incarcerated,and only to manifest herself when danger and mystery threatened.
"In ye come! in ye come!" cried the servant, trembling excessively tillthe flambeau shook in his hand and his teeth rattled together. "In yecome, and I'll bar the door."
It was time, indeed, to be in; for the enemy leaped at the oak as CountVictor threw it back upon its hinges, rather dubious of the bars thatwere to withstand the weight without.
The sight of them reassured, however: they were no light bars Mungodrew forth from their channels in the masonry, but huge black iron-boundblocks a foot thick that ran in no staples, but could themselves securethe ponderous portals against anything less than an assault with cannon.
It was obvious that the gentry outside knew the nature of thisobstruction, for, finding the bars out, they made no attempt to forcethe door.
Within, the Count and servant looked at each other's faces--the latterwith astonishment and fear, the former with dumb questioning, and hisear to the stair whence came the woman's alarms.
"The Baron tell't us there would be trouble," stammered the retainer,fumbling with the pistol so awkwardly that he endangered the body of hisfellow in distress. "Black Andy was never kent to forget an injury, andI aye feared that the low tides would bring him and his gang aboot thecastle. Good God! do you hear them? It's a gey wanchancy thing this!" hecried in terror, as the shout "Loch Sloy!" arose again outside, and thesound of voices was all about the castle.
The woman within heard it too, for her cries became more hysterical thanever.
"D--n ye, ye skirlin' auld bitch!" said the retainer, turning inexasperation, "can ye no steeck your jaw, and let them dae the howlin'outside?" But it was in a tone of more respect he shouted up the stairsome words of assurance.
Yet there was no abatement of the cries, and Montaiglon, less--to dohim justice--to serve his curiosity as to Annapla than from a naturalinstinct to help a distressed woman, put a foot on the stair to mount.
"Na, na! ye mauna leave me here!" cried Mungo, plucking at his sleeve.
There was something besides fear in the appeal, there was alarm ofanother sort that made Montaiglon pause and look the servitor in theeyes. He found confusion there as well as alarm at the furore outsideand the imminent danger of the castle.
"I wish to God he was here himser," said Mungo helplessly, but still hedid not relinquish his hold of Count Victor's sleeve.
"That need not prevent us comforting the lady," said Count Victor,releasing himself from the grasp.
"Let her alane, let her alane!" cried the servant distractedly,following the Frenchman upstairs.
Count Victor paid no heed: he was now determined to unveil a mysterythat for all he knew might menace himself in this household of strangemidnight happenings. The cries of the woman came from the corridor hehad guessed her chamber to occupy, and to this he hastened. But he hadscarcely reached the corridor when the flambeau Mungo held was suddenlyblown out, and this effectively checked his progress. He turned for anexplanation.
"D--n that draught!" said Mungo testily, "it's blawn oot my licht."
"We'll have to do without it, then," said the Count, "but you must showme the way to this shrieking woman."
"A' richt," said Mungo, "mind yer feet!" He passed before the Count andcautiously led him up to the passage where the woman's cries, a littleless vehement, were still to be heard.
"There ye are! and muckle gude may it dae ye," he said, stopping at adoor and pushing it open.
Count Victor stepped into darkness, thrust lightly as he went by theservant's hand, and the door closed with a click behind him. He was aprisoner! He had the humour to laugh softly at the conventionality ofthe deception as he vainly felt in an empty room for a non-existingdoorhandle, and realised that Mungo had had his own way after all. Theservant's steps declined along the corridor and down the stair, with awoman's to keep them company and a woman's sobs, all of which convincedthe Count that his acquaintance with Annapla was not desired by theresidents of Doom.