Roger well remembered the big, jolly, black-bearded chief huntsman, who had sired half the prettiest peasant wenches for miles around; and was delighted at the prospect of seeing him again, as it was Chenou who had provided nearly all his relaxation during the months he had spent wading through the Marquis’s musty documents. But Athénaïs said that as Chenou’s cottage was nearly two miles away, it would be best to put off a visit to him until next day, and make do for the time being with the food in her emergency larder.
Having noticed a fowling-piece in one corner of the room, Roger remarked that, while he would be happy with anything she could provide, he might take the gun out for an hour after they had eaten and see if he could bag something for the pot to garnish their evening meal.
“Yes, do,” she smiled. “Despite the new laws which make the game free to all, the place abounds with it, as the village is a good mile away. I have several times shot hares and partridges in what used to be the garden. While you see what you can get, I will tidy up and replenish our water supply.”
When they had finished eating she took from one of her chests of drawers riding breeches, boots and a cloth coat of her own, and began to dress in them; so he said in some surprise, “Why the choice of those unimaginative garments, my sweet? Have you nothing here more graceful with which to adorn your lovely figure?”
“Indeed I have,” came the quick reply; “not much, but enough for me to dress for you tonight, if you wish, in satin and brocade. But at the moment I am about to groom and feed the horses.”
Roger was so accustomed to having his mounts tended for him that he had to confess he had forgotten all about them. Now, he quickly offered to see to them himself, but she laughed and shook her head.
“Nay! It is a compliment that my kisses should have driven the poor beasts from your mind; but I have become used to such menial tasks and am now clad for it. Hunting has ever been the husband’s part, so go to it, and leave all else to me.”
Above ground the sun was shining, the air clear and invigorating. Crossing the open park, Roger entered the nearest belt of woodland and strolled down an overgrown covert. For over an hour he renewed his acquaintance with half-forgotten beauty spots, then shot a hare and returned with it to the château.
The entrance to Athénaïs’s underground retreat was not conspicuous, but quite easy to find, as a rough path had been trodden to it through the rubble. It occurred to Roger as he followed it that she ought to take better precautions against its discovery by some casual visitor to the ruin, but he supposed that its isolation had made her careless. When he reached the stone stairs he ran gaily down them; he was half-way to the bottom of the flight when, out of the darkness, Athénaïs’s voice came in a sudden desperate cry:
“Garde-toi, Rojé! We are discovered!”
His impetus carried him down two more steps. As he pulled up a tall form sprang out from the deep shadows. The light from above showed a brace of pistols levelled at him; behind them the white blob of a face. Next second his eyes adjusted themselves to the semi-darkness. The face of the man who had him at his mercy assumed features. It was Hutot.
CHAPTER XVIII
A GRIM BUSINESS
Roger was standing a little above Hutot, and near enough to have kicked aside one of his pistols—but not both. For a moment they glared at each other in silence, then Hutot’s bloated face broke into a smile and he sneered:
“So I’ve caught you, Citizen Representative, and your aristo bitch as well. I felt sure we’d met before when I saw you in court, but I couldn’t place you. The moment you entered the Légers’ sitting-room I knew you, though. Seeing you in that old screw’s house where we devilled together rang the bell. Then your bitch gave you away entirely. I remember hearing how you’d become secretary to her father and gone to live here. I’ll bet you seduced her then. Anyhow, it was a thousand francs to a rotten apple that the two of you would make for Bécherel, counting on finding a hide-out for her among the reactionary peasants. So many of them are still fools enough to think that they owe something to the gilded lice that battened on them in the past. But you shouldn’t have left your horses in the stable. Finding them told us you couldn’t be far off.”
He paused for a second, then went on with relish, “I wonder what the Committee of Public Safety would have to say to you if they learnt that you had made off with a ci-devant Vicomtesse condemned to death for harbouring a rebel leader. There’s nothing against a patriot making such bitches provide him with a bit of fun, but saving their dirty necks is a very different matter. It is the act of a traitor to the Revolution, and punishable by death. I don’t think we’ll have to bother to send you to Paris, though, because the case against you is such a clear one. You have used your official position in an endeavour to save a condemned aristocrat to whose family you are known to have been indebted. My men and I can form a tribunal competent to deal with that. Drop that fowling-piece and put your hands up! If you resist I’ll put a brace of bullets through your guts!”
Roger needed no telling that he was face to face with an enemy who would show him no mercy, and that his life hung by a thread; but Hutot’s wordy savouring of his triumph had at least given him a few seconds in which to think. Nearly a hundred feet away, at the far end of the broad passage, two shadowy figures were moving with a lighted candle. At about half that distance a streak of light showed that the door of Athénaïs’s room was ajar, and sounds of movement came from it. His brain racing wildly, he strove to reconstruct the dire misfortune that had occurred during his absence. It looked as if Hutot had surprised Athénaïs in her room and that some of his men still held her there. She must have been listening intently for his footsteps, but had been too far from the stairs to hear them and give her shout of warning in time to prevent his walking into the trap. Had it been a trap, though? Probably not, otherwise Hutot would have had one or more of his men hiding with him to strengthen the ambush. Roger decided that they could have arrived only a few minutes before himself, and were still hunting for him in the cellars along the passage. Hutot must have been at the bottom of the steps just then by pure accident; but that did not alter the fact that Hutot’s two pistols were now pointing at his stomach.
Desperately he strove to assess his chances. If he moved he was liable to die there on the stairs in the next few moments. His mouth went dry at the thought of what Hutot and his bullies would then do to Athénaïs. Yet if he surrendered, would she be any better off? The tribunal that Hutot had spoken of would be a farce. He meant to settle matters before he left Bécherel. There was murder in his eyes. Yet he was the type of brute who would prefer to take his time over a killing. More than half his pleasure in it would be lost if he were deprived of the opportunity of taunting his victim first. Those small evil eyes of his seemed to be already gloating over the prospect of forcing Athénaïs to witness her lover’s trial and execution as a preliminary to her own immolation. Or, no less soul-shattering for his victims, perhaps he intended to reverse the proceedings.
Swiftly Roger made up his mind that in this present extremity time must prove an enemy rather than a friend. He knew that the shadow of death was on both Athénaïs and himself, and that their last slender hope lay in his forcing an immediate decision.
“Drop those things and put your hands up!” snarled Hutot for the second time.
The fowling-piece was under Roger’s right arm, the dead hare dangled from his left hand. As though about to obey, he let go of the gun, but at such an angle that it clattered down the last few steps on to Hutot’s feet. In order to kick it away, Hutot looked down for the fraction of a second. At that instant Roger flung the hare into his enemy’s face. As the hare left his hand he threw himself backward and slithered down the remaining stairs.
Both pistols exploded simultaneously; the bullets sang over Roger’s head and smacked into the stone stairway. Hutot recoiled under the impact of the hare and was momentarily thrown off his balance. Next second the soles of Roger’s flying feet struck him
on the knees. They landed with the full weight of Roger’s slithering body behind them. Hutot’s legs were struck from under him, his pistols flew from his grasp and he pitched forward. As he fell Roger attempted to jerk himself aside, but failed, and his enemy came crashing down on top of him. Grabbing wildly at one another, each strove to get a grip upon the other’s throat.
Hutot was taller, weightier, and much stronger than Roger, but years of dissipation had played havoc with his constitution, and in a moment he was blowing like a grampus. As they rolled over and over Roger’s heart bounded from the sudden conviction that within a few minutes he would get the better of his adversary. Then, in a flash, he realised that those minutes were unlikely to be granted him.
At the sound of the shots the underground passage had become a babel of sound. Men began to run from the far end of it, and others dashed out of Athénaïs’s room. The opening of the door drove back the darkness. As Roger heaved himself up on top of Hutot, he glimpsed in the half-light four shouting figures rushing towards him.
That very instant, from somewhere unseen, a pistol cracked. The rearmost figure gave a cry, threw up its arms and fell. Another pistol cracked; a second man lurched sideways, recovered, and staggered back through Athénaïs’s open doorway. The other two men halted, turned about, lost their nerve, bolted for cover after him, and swung the door to.
Darkness descended again upon the passage like a pall; only a glimmer of daylight now lit the end of it nearest to the stairs. Ten feet away Hutot and Roger were still locked in a desperate tussle, but Hutot was tiring fast. Roger suddenly exerted all his strength and succeeded in breaking his adversary’s grip. Kneeling astride Hutot’s body, he clenched his fist and smashed it with all his force, again and again, down into the prostrate man’s face. Hutot, his nose broken, his thick lips streaming blood, squirmed, groaned and cried for mercy; but he cried for it in vain. Even had he been deserving of it, Roger would not have dared to grant it to him while the men he had brought with him remained unaccounted for. The odds were still far too heavily against Athénaïs and himself escaping from this ghastly trap, Drawing his poniard from his belt, Roger drove the sharp blade under Hutot’s ribs. His victim let out a piercing scream. Roger turned the weapon in the wound to free it, drew it out and drove it in again a few inches nearer to the heart. Hutot retched and gave an awful groan, then his body began to quiver violently.
Staggering up, Roger sheathed the poniard, ran to the bottom of the steps and recovered his fowling-piece. The little canister of shot and the powder-horn with which he had gone out were still dangling from his belt. Swiftly loading the gun, he primed it carefully, then stole on tip toe towards the door of Athénaïs’s room. He had almost reached it when he tripped, and nearly fell, over the dead body of the man who had been shot while he was still struggling with Hutot. He had only glimpsed the episode in the semi-darkness. In the wild excitement of the last few moments he had not had a second to wonder how it had occurred. Now, he jumped to the conclusion that in the confusion two of Hutot’s men must have shot each other.
As he recovered from his stumble and stepped over the body, light flooded upon him. The door had been flung open; a man stood framed in it, covering him with a pistol. Roger dropped to one knee and, knowing how the shot of his fowling-piece would scatter, fired from his hip. Struck in the face and body at close range by half a hundred pellets, the man gave a roar of agony, dropped his pistol and stumbled backwards. Clubbing his gun, Roger leapt forward and felled him by a smashing blow on the head.
While the man was still falling two others rushed at Roger. As he swerved to meet them his glance took in the room. Athénaïs was not there, a prisoner, tied to a chair, as he had expected; but a third man was standing back by the divan, clasping an arm from which blood was dripping. One of Roger’s attackers was armed with a sword, the other with a sabre. The first lunged at him. With an awkward swing of the clubbed gun, he knocked the thrust aside. The sabre came slashing down, but he flung himself sideways just in time. Regaining his balance, he dodged another thrust. The movement brought him round with his back to the two cupboards and the stove.
All he could do now was use his unwieldy weapon to parry the cuts and thrusts that his attackers made at him. He dared not lift the butt of the gun to aim a blow from fear of exposing himself to a lunge that might prove fatal. The sweat was pouring from him, his eyes were staring, and his mouth was gaping open.
Suddenly, to his utter consternation, he saw that the wounded man in the rear had drawn a pistol and was seeking an opening to shoot him. Hard pressed as he was, he could do nothing to avoid the shot. It seemed that another few moments must see him crippled by a bullet, then hacked to pieces.
Like a bolt from the blue, help came to him when he had no earthly reason to expect it. One of the cupboards behind him swung open; an explosion almost wrecked his left eardrum. As his attackers sprang back he threw a swift glance over his shoulder. Athénaïs was standing between the doors of the cupboard holding a brace of pistols. From the barrel of one a spiral of blue smoke was issuing. She had just fired it at the man who had been seeking a chance to shoot him. The man had dropped his pistol and, wounded a second time, had collapsed across the table. Her second pistol banged. The man with the sabre jerked like a puppet on wires, clapped his hand to his side, reeled against the wall, then toppled over. Lifting his fowling-piece, Roger rushed upon the third man, beat down his sword and bashed sideways at his head. In an endeavour to avoid the blow the man jerked back, but the butt of the gun caught him on the chin. With a loud grunt, he swivelled half round and crashed to the floor.
Athénaïs had thrown her pistols down on to a chair and snatched up a kitchen knife. Like a tigress she attacked, one after another, the sans-culottes that Hutot had brought with him. Three out of the five were still alive, but incapable of resistance. Her face chalk-white with hate, her blue eyes blazing, she slashed and stabbed at them in turn until their groans and whimpering had ceased and all five lay dead.
Roger, gasping and temporarily exhausted from his fight for life, made no effort to stop her. It was men such as these who had burned her children alive, so who could contest her right to exact vengeance? The whole ferocious encounter had taken place in an incredibly short space of time. Barely six minutes had elapsed since Roger had started down the stairs, fowling-piece and hare in hand, suspecting nothing; now Athënaïs’s retreat was a bloody shambles.
Leaving the knife sticking in the last of her victims, she turned, with staring eyes, to look at Roger. Her steps now faltering and uncertain, she staggered towards him. Suddenly she half lifted her arms and burst into a passion of tears. He caught her to him as she fell and held her in a tight embrace, while she sobbed out her heart upon his chest.
It took him a long time to calm her, but during the process he got from her enough coherent scraps of speech to learn how it was she had been able to aid him in such a decisive fashion. The hanging cupboard from which she had emerged contained only some of her clothes and it backed on to a doorway opening into the next cellar. Chenou had removed the back of the cupboard so that she could pass through it in an emergency. His idea had been that if at any time while occupying her retreat she heard steps approaching she could enter the cupboard, close it behind her and watch through its keyhole whoever entered her room. If it proved to be Chenou, well and good; but if it was an enemy, she would have a chance to escape through the door of the further cellar. Hutot and his men had nearly caught her, as she had at first taken the sounds of their approach for Roger’s returning; but the noise of so many footsteps outside had warned her in time. She had gone through into the empty cellar, but by the time she had loaded her pistols and reached its far door she found that her escape was cut off by men exploring other cellars between her and the steps. A moment later, as she peered along the passage to the square of daylight that lit the stone stairs, she had seen Roger’s boots as he came down them, and given her shout of warning.
Her shout ha
d brought the two men who were exploring her end of the passage running towards her; so she had had to crouch back against the wall, holding her breath to save herself from discovery. At one moment they had been fumbling about within a yard of her, but their running forward had blown their candle out, and the pitch darkness had mercifully hidden her from them.
Then, as Hutot’s pistols had gone off, they had turned and raced off towards him. She had stepped out into the passage and shot them in their backs. One, as it transpired, she had shot dead; the second, wounded, had staggered into her room with two others who had just emerged from it. She was still reloading her pistols when the door of her room had opened again, there had come the flash of Roger’s fowling-piece and she had seen him dash inside. Instantly the idea had come to her of taking in the rear the men he was attacking. She had recrossed the empty cellar and scrambled through the cupboard to find him, unexpectedly, with his back to her; so she had had to fire over his shoulder.
As her sobbing eased, he carried her to the divan, laid her on it, gave her a tot of brandy from his flask, and covered her up. Then he set about the gruesome task of disposing of the bodies. There were the four inside the room, that of the man whom Athénaïs had shot through the back just outside it, and Hutot’s. One by one Roger dragged them to the far end of the passage, where its roof had fallen in and it was blocked by a mass of debris. There, he laid them out side by side, as close together as possible, then piled rubble upon them until they were completely hidden and unlikely to be discovered unless a deliberate search was made for them.
The Man who Killed the King Page 36