“Let me go! Let me go!” she repeated.
“Witch, you shall go!” they answered ruthlessly. “To hell!”
“Ay, with her dam! To the water with her! To the water!”
“Look for the devil’s mark! Search her! Again, Martha! Bring her down! Bring her down, and we’ll soon see whether — —”
Then he reached them. The man, one of the few present, who had bidden them search her fell headlong on his face in the gutter, struck behind as by a thunder-bolt. The great Bible flew one way, the hag’s stick flew another — and in its flight felled a second woman. In a twinkling Claude was on the steps, and in the heart of the crowd stood two people, not one; in a twinkling his arm was round the girl, his pale, furious face confronted her tormentors, his blazing eyes beat down theirs! More than all, his iron bar, brandished recklessly this way and that, threatened the brains of the man or the woman who was bold enough to withstand him.
For he was beside himself with rage. He learned in that moment that he was of those who fight with joy and rejoicing, and laugh where others shake. The sight of that white, bleeding face, of that hanging hair, of that suppliant arm, above all, the sound of that patient “Let me go! Let me go!” that expected nothing and hoped nothing, had turned his blood to fire. The more numerous his opponents — if they were men — the better he would be pleased; and if they were women, such women, unsexed by hate and superstition, as he saw before him, women looking a millionfold more like witches than the girl they accused, the worse for them! His arm would not falter!
It seemed of steel indeed. The bar quivered like a reed in his grasp, his eyes darted hither and thither, he stood an inch taller than at other times. He was like the war-horse that sniffs the battle.
And yet he was cool after a fashion. He must get her home, and to do so he must not lose a moment. The vantage of the steps on which they stood, raised a hand’s breath above their assailants, was a thing to be weighed; but it would not serve them if these cursed women mustered, and the cowardly crew before him throve to a mob. He must home with her. But the door was locked, and she could only go in as he had come out. Still, she must go.
He thought all this between one stride and another — and other thoughts thick as leaves falling in a wind. Then, “Fools!” he thundered, and had her down the steps, and was dragging her towards her door before they awoke from their surprise, or thought of attacking him. The woman with the big Bible had had her fill — though he had not struck her but her stick — and sat where she had fallen in the mud. The other woman hugged herself in pain. The man was in no hurry to be up, having once felt Claude’s knee in the small of his back. For a few seconds no one moved; and when they recovered themselves he was half-way to the Royaumes’ door.
They snatched up mud, then, and flung it after the pair with shrill execrations. And the woman who had picked up the stick hurled it in a frenzy after them, but wide of the mark. A dozen stones fell round them, and the cry of “The Witch! The Witch!” — cry so ominous, so cruel, cry fraught with death for so many poor creatures — followed hard on them. But they were within five paces of the door now, and if he could lift her to the window ——
“The key,” she murmured in his ear. “The key is in the lock!”
She had her wits, too, then, and her courage! He felt a glow of pride, his arm pressed her more closely to him. “Unlock it!” he answered, and leaving her to it, having now no fear that she would faint or fall, he turned on the rabble with his bar.
But they were for words, not blows, a rabble of cowards and women. They turned tail with screams and fled to a distance, more than one falling in the sudden volte-face. He made no attempt to pursue them along the rampart, but looked behind him, and found that she had opened the door. She had taken out the key, and was waiting for him to enter.
He went up the steps, entered, and she closed the door quickly. It shut out in a moment the hootings of the returning women. While she locked it on the inside, he raised the bars and slid them into their places. Then, not till then, he turned to her.
Her face averted, she was staunching the blood which trickled from her cheek. “It was the child’s mother!” she faltered, a sob in her voice. “I went to her. I thought — that she would believe. Get me some water, please! I must go upstairs. My mother will be frightened.”
He was astonished: on fire himself, with every pulse beating madly, he was prepared for her to faint, to fall, to fling herself into his arms in gratitude; prepared for everything but this self-forgetfulness. “Water?” he said doubtfully, “but had you not better — take some wine, Anne?”
“To wash! To wash!” she replied sharply, almost angrily. “How can I go to her in this state? And do you shut the shutters.”
A stone had that moment passed through a pane of one of the windows. The rout of women were gathering before the house; the step she advised was plainly necessary. Fortunately the Royaumes’ house, like all in the Corraterie — which formed an inner line of defence pierced by the Tertasse gate — had outside shutters of massive thickness, capable of being lowered from within. He closed these in haste and found, when he turned from the task and looked for her — a small round hole in each shutter made things dimly visible — that she was gone to soothe her mother.
He could not but love her the more for it. He could not but respect her the more for her courage, for her thoughtfulness, her self-denial. But when the heart is full and would unburden itself, when the brain teems with pent-up thoughts, when the excitement of action and of peril wanes and the mind would fain tell and hear and compare and remember — then to be alone, to be solitary, is to sink below one’s self.
For a time, while his pulses still beat high, while the heat of battle still wrought in him, and the noise without continued, and there seemed a prospect of things to be done, he stood up against this. Thump! Thump! They were stoning the shutters. Let them! He placed the settle across the hearth, and in this way cut off the firelight that might have betrayed those in the room to eyes peeping through the holes. By-and-by the shrill vixenish cries rose louder, he caught the sound of voices in altercation, and of hoarse orders: and slowly and reluctantly the babel seemed to pass away. An anxious moment followed: fearfully he listened for the knock of the law, the official summons which must make all his efforts useless. But it did not come.
It was when the silence which ensued had lasted some minutes that the strangeness and aloofness of his position in this darkened room began to weigh on his spirits. His eyes had adapted themselves to the gloom, and he could make out the shapes of the furniture. But it was morning! It was day! Outside, the city was beginning to go about its ordinary work, its ordinary life. The streets were filling, the classes were mustering. And he sat here in the dark! The longer he stared into the strange, depressing gloom, the farther he seemed from life; the more solitary, the more hopeless, the more ominous seemed the position.
Alone with two women whom the worst of fates threatened! Whose pains and ultimate lot the brawl in which he had taken part foreshadowed too clearly. For thus and with as little cause perished in those days thousands of the helpless and the friendless. Alone with these two, under the roof from which all others had fled, barred with them behind the gloomy shutters until the hour came, and their fellows, shuddering, cast them out — what chance had he of escaping their lot?
Or what desire to escape it? None, he told himself. None! But he who fights best when blows are to be struck and things can be done finds it hard to sit still where it is the inevitable that must be faced. And while Claude told himself that he had no desire to escape, since escape for her was impossible, his mind sought desperately the means of saving all. The frontier lay but a league away. Conceivably they might lower themselves from the wall by night; conceivably his strength might avail to carry her mother to the frontier. But, alas! the crime of witchcraft knew no frontier; the reputation of a witch once thrown abroad, flew fast as the swiftest horse. Before they had been three days in Savoy, the w
omen would be reported, seized and examined; and their fate at Faucigny or Bonneville would be no less tragic than in the Bourg du Four of Geneva.
Yet, something must be done, something could surely be done. But what? The bravest caught in a net struggles the most desperately, and involves himself the most hopelessly. And Claude felt himself caught in a net. He felt the deadly meshes cling about his limbs, the ropes fetter and benumb him. From the sunshine of youth, from freedom, from a life without care, he had passed in a few days into the grip of this αναγκη, this dire necessity, this dark ante-chamber of death. Was it wonderful that for a moment, recognising the sacrifice he was called upon to make and its inefficacy to save, he rebelled against the love that had drawn him to this fate, that had led him to this, that in others’ eyes had ruined him? Ay, but for a moment only. Then with a heart bursting with pity for her, with love for her, he was himself. If it must be, it must be. The prospect was dark as the room in which he stood, confined and stifling, sordid and shameful; the end one which would make his name a marvel and an astonishment. But the prospect and the end were hers too; they would face them together. Haply he might spare her some one pang, haply he might give her some one moment of happiness, the support of one at least who knew her pure and spotless. And while he thought of it — surprise of surprises — he bowed his head on his folded arms and wept.
Not in pity for himself, but for her. It was the thought of her gentleness, her loving nature, her harmlessness — and the end this, the reward this — which overcame him; which swelled his breast until only tears could relieve it. He saw her as a dove struggling in cruel hands; and the pity which, had there been chance or hope, or any to smite, would have been rage, could find no other outlet. He wept like a woman; but it was for her.
And she, who had descended unheard, and stood even now at the door, with a something almost divine in her face — a something that was neither love nor compassion, maid’s fancy nor mother’s care, but a mingling of all these, saw. And her heart bled for him; her arms in fancy went round him, in fancy his head was on her breast, she comforted him. She, who a moment before had almost sunk down on the stairs, worn out by her sufferings and the strain of hiding them from her mother’s eyes, forgot her weakness in thought for him.
She had no contempt for his tears. She had seen him stand between herself and her tormentors, she had seen the flash of his eye, heard his voice, knew him brave. But the fate, for which long thought and hours on her knees had prepared her — so that it seemed but a black and bitter passage with peace beyond — appalled her for him; and might well appal him. The courage of men is active, of women passive; with a woman’s instinct she knew this, allowed for it, and allowed, too, for another thing — that he was fasting.
When he looked up, startled by the tinkle of pewter and the rustle of her skirt, she was kneeling between the settle and the fire, preparing food. He flattered himself that in the dark she had not seen him, and when he had regained his self-control he stepped to the settle-back and looked over it.
“You did not see me?” he said.
She did not answer at once, but finished what she was doing. Then she stood up and handed him a bowl. “The bread is on the table,” she said, indicating it. She was a woman, and, dark as it was, she kept the disfigured cheek turned from him.
He would have replied, but she made a sign to him to eat, and, seating herself on a stool in the corner with her plate on her lap, she set him an example. Apart from her weary attitude, and the droop of her head, he might have deemed the scene in which they had taken part a figment of his brain. But round them was the gloom of the closed room!
“You did not see me?” he repeated presently.
She stood up. “I would I had never seen you!” she cried; and her anguished tone bore witness to the truth of her words. “It is the worst, it is the bitterest thing of all! of all!” she repeated. The settle was between them, and she rested her hands on the back of it. He stooped, and, in the darkness, covered them with kisses, while his breast heaved with the swell of the storm which her entrance had cut short. “For all but that I was prepared,” she continued; “I was ready. I have seen for weeks the hopelessness of it, the certain end, the fate before us. I have counted the cost, and I have learned to look beyond for — for all we desire. It is a sharp passage, and peace. But you” — her voice rested on the same tragic note of monotony— “are outside the sum, and spoil all. A little suffering will kill my mother, a little, a very little fear. I doubt if she will live to be taken hence. And I — I can suffer. I have known all, I have foreseen all — long! I have learned to think of it, and I can learn by God’s help to bear it! And in a little while, a very little while, it will be over, and I shall be at rest. But you — you, my love — —”
Her voice broke, her head sunk forward. His lips met hers in a first kiss; a kiss, salted by the tears that ran unchecked down his face. For a long minute there was silence in the room, a silence broken only by the low, inarticulate murmur of his love — love whispered brokenly on her tear-wet lips, on her cold, closed eyelids. She made no attempt to withdraw her face, and presently the murmur grew to words of defiance, of love that mocked at peril, mocked at shame, mocked at death, having assurance of its own, having assurance of her.
They fell on her ears as warm thaw-rain on frozen sward; and slowly into the pallor of her face, the whiteness of her closed eyelids, crept a tender blush. Strange that for a few brief moments they were happy; strange, proof marvellous of the dominance of the inner life over the outer, of love over death.
“My love, my love!”
“Again!” — he murmured.
“My love, my love!”
But at length she came to herself, she remembered. “You will go?” she said. She put him from her and held him fondly at arm’s length, her hands on his shoulders. “You will go? It is all you can do for me. You will go and live?”
“Without you?”
“Yes. Better, a hundred times better so — for me.”
“And for me? Why may I not save you and her?”
“It is impossible!”
“Nothing is impossible to love,” he answered. “The nights are long, the wall is not too high! No wall is too high for love! It is but a league to the frontier, and I am strong.”
“Who would receive us?” she asked sadly. “Who would shelter us? In Savoy, if we were not held for sorcery, we should be delivered to the Inquisition.”
“We might gain friends?”
“With what? No,” she continued, her hands cleaving more tightly to him; “you must go, dear love! Dear love! You must go! It is all you can do for me, and it is much! Oh, indeed, it is much! It is very much!”
He drew her to him as near as the settle would permit, until she was kneeling on it, and in spite of her faint resistance he could look into her eyes. “Were you in my place, would you leave me?” he asked.
“Yes,” she lied bravely, “I would.”
But the flash of resentment in her eyes gave her voice the lie, and he laughed joyfully. “You would not!” he said. “You would not leave me on this side of death!”
She tried to protest.
“Nor will I you,” he continued, stopping her mouth with fresh kisses. “Nor will I you till death! Did you think me a coward?” He held her from him and looked into her reproachful eyes. “Or a Tissot? Tissot left you. Or Louis Gentilis?”
But she made him know that he was none of these in a way that satisfied him; and a moment later her mother’s voice called her from the room. He thought, having no experience of a woman’s will, that he had done with that; and in her absence he betook himself to examining the defences of the house. He replaced the bar which he had wrested from the window; wedging it into its socket with a morsel or two of molten lead. The windows of the bedrooms, his own and Louis’, looked into a narrow lane, the Rue de la Cité, that ran at the back of the Corraterie in a line with the ramparts; but not only were they almost too small to permit the passage of
a full-grown man, they were strongly barred. Against such a rabble, as had assaulted Anne, or even a more formidable mob, the house was secure. But if the law intervened neither bar nor bolt could save them.
He fell to thinking of this, and stood, arrested in the middle of the darkened room that, as the hours went by, was beginning to take on a familiar look. The day was passing, all without remained quiet, nothing had happened. Was it possible that nothing would happen? Was it possible that the girl through long brooding exaggerated the peril? And that the worst to be feared was such an outbreak as had occurred that morning? Such an outbreak as might not take place again, since mobs were fickle things.
He dwelt a while on this more hopeful view of things. Then he recalled Basterga’s threats, the Syndic’s face, the departure of Louis and Grio; and his heart sank as lead sinks. The rumour so quickly spread — by what hints, what innuendoes, what cunning inquiries, what references to the old, invisible, bedridden woman, he could but guess — that rumour bore witness to a malice and a thirst for revenge which were not likely to stop at words. And Louis’ flight? And Grio’s? And Basterga’s? — for he did not return. To believe that all these, taken together, these and the outrage of the morning, portended anything but danger, anything but the worst, demanded a hopefulness that even his youth and his love could not compass.
Yet when she descended he met her with brave looks.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE REMEDIUM.
Blondel’s thin lips were warrant — to such of the world as had eyes to see — that in the ordinary things of life he would have been one of the last to put faith in a man of Basterga’s stamp: and one of the first, had the case been other than his own, to laugh at the credulity he was displaying. He would have seen — no one more clearly — that, in making the bargain he had made, he was in the position of a drowning man who clutches at a straw; not because he believes that the straw will support him, but because he has no other hope, and is loth to sink.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 425