Saint Martin's Summer

by Rafael Sabatini

  Hitherto his mind had been taken up with the battle only, and if he had thought of retreating, it was but to the end that he might gain a position of some vantage. Now, conscious of his growing fatigue, his thoughts turned them at last to the consideration of flight. Was there no way out of it? Must he kill every man in Condillac before he could hope to escape?

  Whimsically, and almost mechanically, he set himself, in his mind, to count the men. There were twenty mercenaries all told, excluding Fortunio and himself. On Arsenio he might rely not to attack him, perhaps even to come to his assistance at the finish. That left nineteen. Four he had already either killed outright or effectively disabled; so that fifteen remained him. The task of dealing with those other fifteen was utterly beyond him. Presently, no doubt, the two now opposing him would be reinforced by others. So that if any possible way out existed, he had best set about finding it at once.

  He wondered could he cut down these two, make an end of Fortunio, and, running for it, attempt to escape through the postern before the rest of the garrison had time to come up with him or guess his purpose. But the notion was too wild, its accomplishment too impossible.

  He was fighting now with his back to mademoiselle and his face to the tall window, through the leaded panes of which he caught the distorted shape of a crescent moon. Suddenly the idea came to him. Through that window must lie his way. It was a good fifty feet above the moat, he knew, and if he essayed to leap it, it must be an even chance that he would be killed in leaping. But the chance of death was a certain one if he tarried where he was until others came to support his present opponents. And so he briskly determined upon the lesser risk.

  He remembered that the window was nailed down, as it had remained since mademoiselle's pretended attempt at flight. But surely that should prove no formidable obstacle.

  And now that his resolve was taken his tactics abruptly changed. Hitherto he had been sparing of his movements, husbanding his strength against the long battle that seemed promised him. Suddenly he assumed the offensive where hitherto he had but acted in self-defence, and a most deadly offensive was it. He plied his cloak, untwisting it from his arm and flinging it over the head and body of one of his assailants, so that he was enmeshed and blinded by it. Leaping to the fellow's flank, Garnache, with a terrific kick, knocked his legs from under him so that he fell heavily. Then, stooping suddenly, the Parisian ran his blade under the other brave's guard and through the fellow's thigh. The man cried out, staggered, and then went down utterly disabled.

  One swift downward thrust Garnache made at the mass that wriggled under his cloak. The activity of its wriggles increased in the next few seconds, then ceased altogether.

  Tressan felt wet from head to foot with a sweat provoked by horror of what he saw. The Dowager's lips were pouring forth a horrid litany of guard-room oaths, and meanwhile Garnache had swung round to meet Fortunio, the last of all who had stood with him.

  The captain came on boldly, armed with sword and dagger, and in that moment, feeling himself spent, Garnache bitterly repented having relinquished his cloak. Yet he made a stubborn fight, and whilst they fenced and stamped about that room, Marius came to watch them, staggering to his mother's side and leaning heavily upon Tressan's shoulder. The Marquise turned to him, her face livid to the lips.

  "That man must be the very fiend," Garnache heard her tell her son. "Run for help, Tressan, or, God knows, he may escape us yet. Go for men, or we shall have Fortunio killed as well. Bid them bring muskets."

  Tressan, moving like one bereft of wits, went her errand, while the two men fought on, stamping and panting, circling and lunging, their breath coming in gasps, their swords grinding and clashing till sparks leapt from them.

  The dust rose up to envelop and almost choke them, and more than once they slipped in the blood with which the floor was spattered, whilst presently Garnache barely recovered and saved himself from stumbling over the body of one of his victims against which his swiftly moving feet had hurtled.

  And the Dowager, who watched the conflict and who knew something of sword-play, realized that, tired though Garnache might be, unless help came soon or some strange chance gave the captain the advantage, Fortunio would be laid low with the others.

  His circling had brought the Parisian round, so that his back was now to the window, his face to the door of the bedchamber, where mademoiselle still watched in ever-growing horror. His right shoulder was in line with the door of the antechamber, which madame occupied, and he never saw her quit Marius's side and creep slyly into the room to speed swiftly round behind him.

  The only one from whom he thought that he might have cause to fear treachery was the man whom he had dropped with a thigh wound, and he was careful to keep beyond the reach of any sudden sword-thrust from that fellow.

  But if he did not see the woman's movements, mademoiselle saw them, and the sight set her eyes dilating with a new fear. She guessed the Dowager's treacherous purpose. And no sooner had she guessed it than, with a choking sob, she told herself that what madame could do that could she also.

  Suddenly Garnache saw an opening; Fortunio's eyes, caught by the Dowager's movements, strayed for a moment past his opponent, and the thing would have been fatal to the captain but that in that moment, as Garnache was on the point of lunging, he felt himself caught from behind, his arms pinioned to his sides by a pair of slender ones that twined themselves about him, and over his shoulder, the breath of it fanning his hot cheek, came a vicious voice—

  "Stab now, Fortunio!"

  The captain asked nothing better. He raised his weary sword-arm and brought his point to the level of Garnache's breast, but in that instant its weight became leaden. Imitating the Marquise, Valerie had been in time. She seized Fortunio's half-lifted arm and flung all her weight upon it.

  The captain cursed her horridly in a frenzy of fear, for he saw that did Garnache shake off the Marquise there would be an end of himself. He sought to wrench himself free of her detaining grasp, and the exertion brought him down, weary as he was, and with her weight hanging to him. He sank to his knees, and the girl, still clinging valiantly, sank with him, calling to Garnache that she held the captain fast.

  Putting forth all his remaining strength, the Parisian twisted from the Dowager's encircling grasp and hurled her from him with a violence he nowise intended.

  "Yours, madame, are the first woman's arms that ever Martin de Garnache has known," said he. "And never could embrace of beauty have been less welcome."

  Panting, he caught up one of the overturned chairs. Holding it by the back he made for the window. He had dropped his sword, and he called to mademoiselle to hold the captain yet an instant longer. He swung his chair aloft and dashed it against the window. There was a thundering crash of shivered glass and a cool draught of that November night came to sweeten the air that had been fouled by the stamping of the fighters.

  Again he swung up his chair and dashed it at the window, and yet again, until no window remained, but a great, gaping opening with a fringe of ragged glass and twisted leadwork.

  In that moment Fortunio struggled to his feet, free of the girl, who sank, almost in a swoon. He sprang towards Garnache. The Parisian turned and flung his now shattered chair toward the advancing captain. It dropped at his feet, and his flying shins struck against an edge of it, bringing him, hurt and sprawling, to the ground. Before he could recover, a figure was flying through the open gap that lately had been a window.

  Mademoiselle sat up and screamed.

  "You will be killed, Monsieur de Garnache! Dear God, you will be killed!" and the anguish in her voice was awful.

  It was the last thing that reached the ears of Monsieur de Garnache as he tumbled headlong through the darkness of the chill November night.

  CHAPTER XVIII. IN THE MOAT

  Fortunio and the Marquise reached the window side by side, and they were in time to hear a dull splash in the waters fifty feet below them. There was a cloud over the little sickle of moo
n, and to their eyes, fresh from the blaze of candle-light, the darkness was impenetrable.

  "He is in the moat," cried the Marquise excitedly, and Valerie, who sat on the floor whither she had slipped when Fortunio shook her off, rocked herself in an agony of fear.

  To the horrors about her—the huddled bodies lying so still upon the floor, the bloody footprints everywhere, the shattered furniture, and the groans of the man with the wounded thigh—to all this she was insensible. Garnache was dead, she told herself; he was surely dead; and it seemed as if the very thought of it were killing, too, a part of her own self.

  Unconsciously she sobbed her fears aloud. "He is dead," she moaned; "he is dead."

  The Marquise overheard that piteous cry, and turned to survey the girl, her brows lifting, her lips parting in an astonishment that for a second effaced the horrors of that night. Suspicion spread like an oil stain in her evil mind. She stepped forward and caught the girl by one of her limp arms. Marius, paler than his stunning had left him, leaned more heavily against the door-post, and looked on with bloodshot eyes. If ever maiden avowed the secret of her heart, it seemed to him that Valerie avowed it then.

  The Marquise shook her angrily.

  "What was he to you, girl? What was he to you?" she demanded shrilly.

  And the girl, no more than half conscious of what she was saying, made answer:

  "The bravest gentleman, the noblest friend I have ever known."

  Pah! The Dowager dropped her arm and turned to issue a command to Fortunio. But already the fellow had departed. His concern was not with women, but with the man who had escaped him. He must make certain that the fall had killed Garnache.

  Breathless and worn as he was, all spattered now with blood from the scratch in his cheek, which lent him a terrific aspect, he dashed from that shambles and across the guard-room. He snatched up a lighted lantern that had been left in the doorway and leapt down the stairs and into the courtyard. Here he came upon Monsieur de Tressan with a half-dozen fellows at his heels, all more or less half clad, but all very fully armed with swords and knives, and one or two with muskets.

  Roughly, with little thought for the dignity of his high office, he thrust the Lord Seneschal aside and turned the men. Some he ordered off to the stables to get horses, for if Garnache had survived his leap and swum the moat, they must give chase. Whatever betide, the Parisian must not get away. He feared the consequences of that as much for himself as for Condillac. Some five or six of the men he bade follow him, and never pausing to answer any of Tressan's fearful questions, he sped across the courtyard, through the kitchens—which was the nearest way—into the outer quadrangle. Never pausing to draw breath, spent though he was, he pursued his flight under the great archway of the keep and across the drawbridge, the raising of which had been that night postponed to await the Lord Seneschal's departure.

  Here on the bridge he paused and turned in a frenzy to scream to his followers that they should fetch more torches. Meanwhile he snatched the only one at hand from the man-at-arms that carried it.

  His men sprang into the guard-room of the keep, realizing from his almost hysterical manner the urgent need for haste. And while he waited for them, standing there on the bridge, his torch held high, he scanned by its lurid red light the water as far as eye could reach on either side of him.

  There was a faint movement on the dark, oily surface for all that no wind stirred. Not more than four or five minutes could have elapsed since Garnache's leap, and it would seem as if the last ripple from the disturbance of his plunge had not yet rolled itself out. But otherwise there was nothing here, nor did Fortunio expect aught. The window of the Northern Tower abutted on to the other side of the chateau, and it was there he must look for traces of the fugitive or for his body.

  "Hasten!" he shouted over his shoulder. "Follow me!" And without waiting for them he ran across the bridge and darted round the building, his torch scattering a shower of sparks behind him on the night, and sending little rills of blood-red light down the sword which he still carried.

  He gained the spot where Garnache must have fallen, and he stood below the radiance that clove the night from the shattered window fifty feet above, casting the light of his torch this way and that over the black bosom of the moat. Not a ripple moved now upon that even, steely surface. Voices sounded behind him, and with them a great glare of ruddy light came to herald the arrival of his men. He turned to them and pointed with his sword away from the chateau.

  "Spread yourselves!" he shouted. "Make search yonder. He cannot have gone far."

  And they, but dimly realizing whom they sought, yet realizing that they sought a man, dashed off and spread themselves as he had bidden them, to search the stretch of meadowland, where ill must betide any fugitive, since no cover offered.

  Fortunio remained where he was at the edge of the moat. He stooped, and waving his torch along the ground he moved to the far angle of the chateau, examining the soft, oozy clay. It was impossible that a man could have clambered out over that without leaving some impression. He reached the corner and found the clay intact; at least, nowhere could he discover a mark of hands or a footprint set as would be that of a man emerging from the water.

  He retraced his steps and went back until he had reached the eastern angle of the chateau, yet always with the same result. He straightened himself at last, and his manner was more calm; his frenzied haste was gone, and deliberately he now raised his torch and let its light shine again over the waters. He pondered them a moment, his dark eyes musing almost regretfully.

  "Drowned!" he said aloud, and sheathed his sword.

  From the window overhead a voice hailed him. He looked up and saw the Dowager, and, behind her, the figure of her son. Away in the meadows the lights of his men's torches darted hither and thither like playful jack-o'-lanterns.

  "Have you got him, Fortunio?"

  "Yes, madame," he answered with assurance. "You may have his body when you will. He is underneath here." And he pointed to the water.

  They appeared to take his word for it, for they questioned him no further. The Marquise turned to mademoiselle, who was still sitting on the floor.

  "He is drowned, Valerie," she said slowly, watching the girl's face.

  Valerie looked up. Her eyes were very wide, and her lips moved for a second. Then she fell forward without a word. This last horror, treading on the heels of all those that already had assailed her, proved too great a strain for her brave spirit. She had swooned.

  Tressan entered at that moment, full of questions as to what might be toward, for he had understood nothing in the courtyard. The Marquise called to him to help her with the girl, Marius being still too faint, and between them they bore her to her chamber, laid her on the bed, and, withdrawing, closed the door upon her. Then she signed to Marius and the Seneschal.

  "Come," she said; "let us go. The sight and smell of the place are turning me sick, although my stomach is strong enough to endure most horrors."

  She took up one of the candle-branches to light them, and they went below and made their way to the hall, where they found Marius's page, Gaston, looking very pale and scared at the din that had filled the chateau during the past half-hour or so. With him was Marius's hound, which the poor boy had kept by him for company and protection in that dreadful time.

  The Marquise spoke to him kindly, and she stooped to pat the dog's glossy head. Then she bade Gaston set wine for them, and when it was fetched the three of them drank in brooding, gloomy silence.

  The draught invigorated Marius, it cheered Tressan's drooping spirits, and it quenched the Dowager's thirst. The Seneschal turned to her again with his unanswered questions touching the end of that butchery above-stairs. She told him what Fortunio had said that Garnache was drowned as a consequence of his mad leap from the window.

  Into Tressan's mind there sprang the memory of the thing Garnache had promised should befall him in such a case. It drove the colour from his cheeks and brought great lines
of fearful care into sharp relief about his mouth and eyes.

  "Madame, we are ruined!" he groaned.

  "Tressan," she answered him contemptuously, "you are chicken-hearted. Listen to me. Did he not say that he had left his man behind him when he came to Condillac? Where think you that he left his man?"

  "Maybe in Grenoble," answered the Seneschal, staring.

  "Find out," she told him impressively, her eyes on his, and calm as though they had never looked upon such sights as that very night had offered them. "If not in Grenoble, certainly, at least, somewhere in this Dauphiny of which you are the King's Lord Seneschal. Turn the whole province inside out, man, but find the fellow. Yours is the power to do it. Do it, then, and you will have no consequences to fear. You have seen the man?"

  "Ay, I have seen him. I remember him; and his name, I bethink me, is Rabecque."

  He took courage; his face looked less dejected.

  "You overlook nothing, madame," he murmured. "You are truly wonderful. I will start the search this very night. My men are almost all at Montelimar awaiting my commands. I'll dispatch a messenger with orders that they are to spread themselves throughout Dauphiny upon this quest."

  The door opened, and Fortunio entered. He was still unwashed and terrible to look upon, all blood-bespattered. The sight of him drove a shudder through Tressan. The Marquise grew solicitous.

  "How is your wound, Fortunio?" was her first question.

  He made a gesture that dismissed the matter.

  "It is nothing. I am over full-blooded, and if I am scratched, I bleed, without perceiving it, enough to drain another man."

  "Here, drink, mon capitaine," she urged him, very friendly, filling him a cup with her own hands. "And you, Marius?" she asked. "Are you recovering strength?"

  "I am well," answered Marius sullenly. His defeat that evening had left him glum and morose. He felt that he had cut a sorry figure in the affair, and his vanity was wounded. "I deplore I had so little share in the fight," he muttered.