She did not answer nor turn; nor did the fixed gaze of her eyes waver. I thought she did not hear. “Anne!” I cried again, so loudly that the Duchess stirred, and muttered something in her sleep. But the girl showed no sign of consciousness. I put out my hand and touched her.
She turned sharply and saw me, and in an instant drew her skirt away with a gesture of such dread, loathing repulsion as froze me; while a violent shudder convulsed her whole frame. Afterward she seemed unable to withdraw her eyes from me, but sat in the same attitude, gazing at me with a fixed look of horror, as one might gaze at a serpent, while tremor after tremor shook her.
I was frightened and puzzled, and was still staring at her, wondering what I had done, when a footstep fell on the road outside and called away my attention. I turned from her to see a man’s figure looming dark in the doorway. He looked at us — I suppose he had found the horses outside — gazing in surprise at the queer group. I bade him good-morning in Dutch, and he answered as well as his astonishment would let him. He was a short, stout fellow, with a big face, capable of expressing a good deal of astonishment. He seemed to be a peasant or farmer. “What do you here?” he continued, his guttural phrases tolerably intelligible to me.
I explained as clearly as I could that we were on the way to Wesel. Then I awoke the Duchess and her husband, and stretching our chilled and aching limbs, we went outside, the man still gazing at us. Alas! the day was not much better than the night. We could see but a very little way, a couple of hundred yards round us only. The rest was mist — all mist. We appealed to the man for food and shelter, and he nodded, and, obeying his signs rather than his words, we kicked up our starved beasts and plodded out into the fog by his side. Anne mounted silently and without objection, but it was plain that something strange had happened to her. Her condition was unnatural. The Duchess gazed at her very anxiously, and, getting no answers, or very scanty ones, to her questions, shook her head gravely.
But we were on the verge of one pleasure at least. When we reached the hospitable kitchen of the farmhouse it was joy indeed to stand before the great turf fire, and feel the heat stealing into our half-frozen bodies; to turn and warm back and front, while the good wife set bread and hot milk before us. How differently we three felt in half an hour! How the Duchess’s eyes shone once more! How easily rose the laugh to our lips! Joy had indeed come with the morning. To be warm and dry and well fed after being cold and wet and hungry — what a thing this is!
But on one neither food nor warmth seemed to have any effect. Mistress Anne did, indeed, in obedience to my lady’s sharp words, raise her bowl to her lips. But she set it down quickly and sat looking in dull apathy at the glowing peat. What had come over her?
Master Bertie went out with the farmer to attend to the horses, and when he came back he had news.
“There is a lad here,” he said in some excitement, “who has just seen three foreigners ride past on the road, along with two Germans on pack-horses; five in all. They must be three of the party who followed us yesterday.”
I whistled. “Then Clarence got himself out,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “Well! well!”
“I expect that is so,” Master Bertie answered, the Duchess remaining silent. “The question arises again, what is to be done?” he continued. “We may follow them to Wesel, but the good man says the floods are deep between here and the town, and we shall have Clarence and his party before us all the way — shall perhaps run straight into their arms.”
“But what else can we do?” I said. “It is impossible to go back.”
We held a long conference, and by much questioning of our host learned that half a league away was a ferry-boat, which could carry as many as two horses over the river at a time. On the farther side we might hit a road leading to Santon, three leagues distant. Should we go to Santon after all? The farmer thought the roads on that side of the river might not be flooded. We should then be in touch once more with our Dutch friends and might profit by Master Lindstrom’s advice, on which I for one was now inclined to set a higher value.
“The river is bank full. Are you sure the ferry-boat can cross?” I asked.
Our host was not certain. And thereupon an unexpected voice struck in.
“Oh, dear, do not let us run any more risks!” it said. It was Mistress Anne’s. She was herself again, trembling, excited, bright-eyed; as different as possible from the Anne of a few minutes before. A great change had come over her. Perhaps the warmth had done it.
A third course was suggested, to stay quietly where we were. The farmhouse stood at some little distance from the road; and though it was rough — it was very rough, consisting only of two rooms, in one of which a cow was stalled — still it could furnish food and shelter. Why not stay there?
But the Duchess wisely, I think, decided against this. “It is unpleasant to go wandering again,” she said with a shiver. “But I shall not rest until we are within the walls of a town. Master Lindstrom laid so much stress on that. And I fancy that the party who overtook us last night are not the main body. Others will have gone to Wesel by boat perhaps, or along the other bank. There they will meet, and, learning we have not arrived, they will probably return this way and search for us.”
“Clarence — —”
“Yes, if we have Clarence to deal with,” Master Bertie assented gravely, “we cannot afford to lose a point. We will try the ferry.”
It was something gained to start dry and warm. But the women’s pale faces — for little by little the fatigue, the want of rest, the fear, were telling even on the Duchess — were sad to see. I was sore and stiff myself. The wound I had received so mysteriously had bled afresh, probably during last night’s fight. We needed all our courage to put a brave face on the matter, and bear up and go out again into the air, which for the first week in May was cold and nipping. Suspense and anxiety had told in various ways on all of us. While I felt a fierce anger against those who were driving us to these straits. Master Bertie was nervous and excited, alarmed for his wife and child, and inclined to see an enemy in every bush.
However, we cheered up a little when we reached the ferry and found the boat could cross without much risk. We had to go over in two detachments, and it was nearly an hour past noon before we all stood on the farther bank and bade farewell to the honest soul whose help had been of so much importance to us. He told us we had three leagues to go, and we hoped to be at rest in Santon by four o’clock.
But the three leagues turned out to be more nearly five, while the road was so founderous that we had again and again to quit it.
The evening came on, the light waned, and still we were feeling our way, so to speak — the women tired and on the verge of tears; the men muddy to the waist, savage, and impatient. It was eight o’clock, and dusk was well upon us before we caught sight of the first lights of Santon, and in fear lest the gates might be shut, pressed forward at such speed as our horses could compass.
“Do you go on!” the Duchess adjured us. “Anne and I will be safe enough behind you. Let me take the child, and do you ride on. We cannot pass the night in the fields.”
The importance of securing admission was so great that Master Bertie and I agreed; and cantered on, soon outstripping our companions, and almost in the gloom losing sight of them. Dark masses of woods, the last remnants, apparently, of a forest, lay about the road we had to traverse. We were passing one of these, scarcely three hundred paces short of the town, and I was turning in the saddle to see that the ladies were following safely, when I heard Master Bertie, who was a bow-shot in front of me, give a sudden cry.
I wheeled round hastily to learn the reason, and was just in time to see three horsemen sweep into the road before him from the cover of the trees. They were so close to him — and they filled the road — that his horse carried him amongst them almost before he could check it, or so it seemed to me. I heard their loud challenge, saw his arm wave, and guessed that his sword was out. I spurred desperately to join him, giv
ing a wild shout of encouragement as I did so. But before I could come up, or indeed cross half the distance, the scuffle was over. One man fell headlong from his saddle, one horse fled riderless down the road, and at sight of this, or perhaps of me, the others turned tail without more ado and made off, leaving Master Bertie in possession of the field. The whole thing had passed in the shadow of the wood in less than half a minute. When I drew rein by him he was sheathing his sword. “Is it Clarence?” I cried eagerly.
“No, no; I did not see him. I think not,” he answered. He was breathing hard and was very much excited. “They were poor swordsmen, for Spaniards,” he added— “very poor, I thought.”
I jumped off my horse, and, kneeling beside the man, turned him over. He was badly hurt, if not dying, cut across the neck. He looked hard at him by such light as there was, and did not recognize him as one of our assailants of the night before.
“I do not think he is a Spaniard,” I said slowly. Then a certain suspicion occurred to my mind, and I stooped lower over him.
“Not a Spaniard?” Master Bertie said stupidly. “How is that?”
Before I answered I raised the man in my arms, and, carrying him carefully to the side of the road, set him with his back to a tree. Then I got quickly on my horse. The women were just coming up. “Master Bertie,” I said in a low voice, as I looked this way and that to see if the alarm had spread, “I am afraid there is a mistake. But say nothing to them. It is one of the town-guard you have killed!”
“One of the town-guard!” he cried, a light bursting in on him, and the reins dropping from his hand. “What shall we do? We are lost, man!”
CHAPTER XIV.
AT BAY IN THE GATEHOUSE.
What was to be done? That was the question, and a terrible question it was. Behind us we had the inhospitable country, dark and dreary, the night wind sweeping over it. In front, where the lights twinkled and the smoke of the town went up, we were like to meet with a savage reception. And it was no time for weighing alternatives. The choice had to be made, made in a moment; I marvel to this day at the quickness with which I made it for good or ill.
“We must get into the town!” I cried imperatively. “And before the alarm is given. It is hopeless to fly, Master Bertie, and we cannot spend another night in the fields. Quick, madam!” I continued to the Duchess, as she came up. I did not wait to hear his opinion, for I saw he was stunned by the catastrophe. “We have hurt one of the town-guard through a mistake. We must get through the gate before it is discovered!”
I seized her rein and flogged up her horse, and gave her no time to ask questions, but urged on the party at a hand gallop until the gate was reached. The attempt, I knew, was desperate, for the two men who had escaped had ridden straight for the town; but I saw no other resource, and it seemed to me to be better to surrender peaceably, if that were possible, than to expose the women to another night of such cold and hunger as the last. And fortune so far favored us that when we reached the gate it was open. Probably, the patrol having ridden through to get help, no one had thought fit to close it; and, no one withstanding us, we spurred our sobbing horses under the archway and entered the street.
It was a curious entry, and a curious scene we came upon. I remember now how strange it all looked. The houses, leaning forward in a dozen quaint forms, clear cut against the pale evening sky, caused a darkness as of a cavern in the narrow street below. Here and there in the midst of this darkness hung a lantern, which, making the gloom away from it seem deeper, lit up the things about it, throwing into flaring prominence some barred window with a scared face peering from it, some corner with a puddle, a slinking dog, a broken flight of steps. Just within the gate stood a brazier full of glowing coal, and beside it a halbert rested against the wall. I divined that the watchman had run into the town with the riders, and I drew rein in doubt, listening and looking. I think if we had ridden straight on then, all might have been well; or, at least, we might have been allowed to give ourselves up.
But we hesitated a moment, and were lost. No doubt, though we saw but one, there were a score of people watching us, who took us for four men, Master Bertie and I being in front; and these, judging from the boldness of our entry that there were more behind, concluded that this was a foray upon the town. At any rate, they took instant advantage of our pause. With a swift whir an iron pot came hurtling past me, and, missing the Duchess by a hand’s-breadth, went clanking under the gatehouse. That served for a signal. In a moment an alarm of hostile cries rose all round us. An arrow whizzed between my horse’s feet. Half a dozen odd missiles, snatched up by hasty hands, came raining in on us out of the gloom. The town seemed to be rising as one man. A bell began to ring, and a hundred yards in front, where the street branched off to right and left, the way seemed suddenly alive from wall to wall with lights and voices and brandished arms, the gleam of steel, and the babel of a furious crowd — a crowd making down toward us with a purpose we needed no German to interpret.
It was a horrible moment; the more horrible that I had not expected this fury, and was unnerved as well as taken aback by it. Remembering that I had brought my companions here, and that two were women, one was a child, I quailed. How could I protect them? There was no mistaking the stern meaning of those cries, of that rage so much surpassing anything I had feared. Though I did not know that the man we had struck down was a bridegroom, and that there were those in the crowd in whose ears the young wife’s piercing scream still rang, I yet quailed before their yells and curses.
As I glanced round for a place of refuge, my eyes lit on an open doorway close to me, and close also to the brazier and halbert. It was a low stone doorway, beetle-browed, with a coat of arms carved over it. I saw in an instant that it must lead to the tower above us — the gatehouse; and I sprang from my horse, a fresh yell from the houses hailing the act. I saw that, if we were to gain a moment for parleying, we must take refuge there. I do not know how I did it, but somehow I made myself understood by the others and got the women off their horses and dragged Mistress Anne inside, where at once we both fell in the darkness over the lower steps of a spiral staircase. This hindered the Duchess, who was following, and I heard a scuffle taking place behind us. But in that confined space — the staircase was very narrow — I could give no help. I could only stumble upward, dragging the fainting girl after me, until we emerged through an open doorway at the top into a room. What kind of room I did not notice then, only that it was empty. Notice! It was no time for taking notice. The bell was clanging louder and louder outside. The mob were yelling like hounds in sight of their quarry. The shouts, the confused cries, and threats, and questions deafened me. I turned to learn what was happening behind me. The other two had not come up.
I felt my way down again, one hand on the central pillar, my shoulder against the outside wall. The stair-foot was faintly lit by the glow from outside, and on the bottom step I came on some one, hurt or dead, just a dark mass at my feet. It was Master Bertie. I gave a cry and leaped over his body. The Duchess, brave wife, was standing before him, the halbert which she had snatched up presented at the doorway and the howling mob outside.
Fortunately the crowd had not yet learned how few we were; nor saw, I think, that it was but a woman who confronted them. To rush into the low doorway and storm the narrow winding staircase in the face of unknown numbers was a task from which the bravest veterans might have flinched, and the townsfolk, furious as they were, hung back. I took advantage of the pause. I grasped the halbert myself and pushed the Duchess back. “Drag him up!” I muttered. “If you cannot manage it, call Anne!”
But grief and hard necessity gave her strength, and, despite the noise in front of me, I heard her toil panting up with her burden. When I judged she had reached the room above, I too turned and ran up after her, posting myself in the last angle just below the room. There I was sheltered from missiles by the turn in the staircase, and was further protected by the darkness. Now I could hold the way with little risk, for only o
ne could come up at a time, and he would be a brave man who should storm the stairs in my teeth.
All this, I remember, was done in a kind of desperate frenzy, in haste and confusion, with no plan or final purpose, but simply out of the instinct of self-preservation, which led me to do, from moment to moment, what I could to save our lives. I did not know whether there was another staircase to the tower, nor whether there were enemies above us; whether, indeed, enemies might not swarm in on us from a dozen entrances. I had no time to think of more than just this; that my staircase, of which I did know, must be held.
I think I had stood there about a minute, breathing hard and listening to the din outside, which came to my ears a little softened by the thick walls round me — so much softened, at least, that I could hear my heart beating in the midst of it — when the Duchess came back to the door above. I could see her, there being a certain amount of light in the room behind her, but she could not see me. “What can I do?” she asked softly.
I answered by a question. “Is he alive?” I muttered.
“Yes; but hurt,” she answered, struggling with a sob, with a fluttering of the woman’s heart she had repressed so bravely. “Much hurt, I fear! Oh, why, why did we come here?”
She did not mean it as a reproach, but I took it as one, and braced myself more firmly to meet this crisis — to save her at least if it should be any way possible. When she asked again “Can I do anything?” I bade her take my pike and stand where I was for a moment. Since no enemy had yet made his appearance above, the strength of our position seemed to hold out some hope, and it was the more essential that I should understand it and know exactly what our chances were.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 59