Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  Five seconds, ten, perhaps, Grio — for he it was — wasted in struggling vainly with the door. The man on the other side clung to it with a despair equal to his own. Five seconds, ten, perhaps; but in that space of time, short as it was, the man paid smartly for the sins of his life. When the time of grace had elapsed, with a pike-point a few inches from his back and the gleaming eyes of an avenging burgher behind it, he fled shrieking round the table. He might even yet have escaped by a chance; for all was confusion, and though there was a glare there was no light. But he stumbled over the body of the man whom he had slain without pity a few hours before. He fell writhing, and died on the floor, under a dozen blows, as beasts die in the shambles.

  “Mère Royaume! Mère Royaume!” The cry — the last cry he heard — swelled louder and louder. It swept through the gate, it passed through to the open, and bore far along the Corraterie, far along the ramparts, ay, to the open country, the earnest of victory, the earnest of vengeance.

  Geneva was saved. He who would have betrayed it, slain like Pyrrhus the Epirote by a woman’s hand, lay dead in the dark lane behind the house in which he had lived.

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  THE DAWN.

  Anne was but one of some thousands of women who passed through the trial of that night; who heard the vague sounds of disquiet that roused them at midnight grow to sharp alarms, and these again — to the dull, pulsing music of the tocsin — swell to the uproar of a deadly conflict waged by desperate men in narrow streets. She was but one of thousands who that night heard fate knocking at their hearts; who praying, sick with fear, for the return of their men, showed white faces at barred windows, and by every tossing light that passed along the lane viewed long years of loneliness or widowhood.

  But Anne had this burden also; that she had of herself sent her man into danger; her man, who, but for her pleading, but for her bidding, might not have gone. And that thought, though she had done her duty, laid a cold grip upon her heart. Her work it was if he lay at this moment stark in some dark alley, the first victim of the assault; or, sorely wounded, cried for water; or waited in pain where none but the stricken heard him. The thought bowed her to the ground, sent her to her prayers, took from her alike all memory of the danger that had menaced her this morning, and all consciousness of that which now threatened her, a helpless woman, if the town were taken.

  The house, having its back on the Rue de la Cité, at the point where that street joined the Tertasse, stood in the heart of the conflict; and almost from the moment of the first attack on the Porte Neuve, which Claude was in time to witness, was a centre of fierce and deadly fighting. Anne dared not leave her mother, who, strange to say, slept through the early alarms; and it was bowed on the edge of her mother’s bed — that bed beside which she had tasted so much of happiness and so much of grief — that she passed, not knowing what the turning page might show, the first hour of anxiety and suspense.

  The report of a shot shook her frame. A scream stabbed her like a knife. Lower and lower she thrust her face amid the bed-clothes, striving to shut out sound and knowledge; or, woman-like, she raised her pale, beseeching face that she might listen, that she might hope. If he fell would they tell her? And how he fell, and where? Or would they hold her strange to him? Would she never hear?

  Suddenly her mother opened her eyes, lay a while listening, then slowly sat up and looked at her. Anne saw the awakening alarm in the dear face, that in some mysterious way recalled its youth; and she fancied that to her other troubles, the misery of one of the old paroxysms was going to be added. At such an hour, with such sounds of terror filling the night, with such a glare dancing on the ceiling the first attack had come on, years before. Then the alarm had been fictitious; to-night the calamity which the poor woman had imagined, was happening with every circumstance of peril and alarm.

  But Madame Royaume’s face, though anxious and serious, retained to an astonishing extent its sanity. Whether the strange dream which she had had earlier in the night had prepared her for the state of things to which she awoke, or the weeks and months which had elapsed since that old alarm of fire dropped in some inexplicable way from her — and as one shock had upset, another restored the balance of her mind — certain it is that Anne, watching her with a painful interest, found her sane. Nor did Madame Royaume’s first words dispel the impression.

  “They hold out?” she asked, grasping her daughter’s hand and pressing it. “They hold out?”

  “Yes, yes, they hold out,” Anne answered, hoping to soothe her. And she patted the hand that clasped hers. “Have no fear, dear, all will go well.”

  “If they have faith and hold out,” the aged woman replied, listening to the strange medley of sounds that rose to them.

  “They will, they will,” Anne faltered.

  “But there is need of every one!”

  “They are gone, dear,” the girl answered, repressing a sob with difficulty. “We are alone in the house.”

  “So it should be,” Madame Royaume replied, with sternness. “The man to the wall, the maid to the pall! It was ever so!”

  A low cry burst from Anne’s lips. “God forbid!” she wailed. “God forbid! God have mercy!”

  The next moment she could have bitten out her tongue; she knew that such words and such a cry were of all others the most likely to excite her patient. But after some obscure fashion their positions seemed this night to be reversed. It was the mother who in her turn patted her daughter’s hand and sought to soothe her.

  “Ay, God forbid,” she said softly. “But man must do his part. I mind when — —” She paused. Her eyes travelling round the room, fixed their gaze on the fireplace. She seemed to be perplexed by something she saw there, and Anne, still fearing a recurrence of her illness, asked her hurriedly what it was. “What is it; mother?” she said, leaning over her, and following the direction of her eyes. “Is it the great pot you are looking at?”

  “Ay,” Madame Royaume answered slowly. “How comes it here?”

  “There was no one below,” Anne explained. “I brought it up this morning. Don’t you remember? There is no fire below.”

  “No?”

  “That is all, mother. You saw me bring it up.”

  “Ay?” And then after a pause: “Let it down a hook.”

  “But — —”

  “Let it down, child!” And when Anne, to soothe her, had obeyed and let the great pot down until the fire licked its sides, “Is it full?” Madame asked.

  “Half-full, mother.”

  “It will do.” And for a time the woman in the bed was silent.

  Outside there was noise enough. The windows in the room looked into the Corraterie, from which side no more than passing sounds of conflict rose to them; the pounding of running feet, sharp orders, a shot, and then another. But the landing without the bedroom door looked down by a high-set window into the narrow Tertasse; and from this, though the door was shut, rose an inferno of noise, the clash of steel, the cries of the wounded, the shouts of the fighters. The townsfolk, rallying from their first alarm, were driving the enemy out of the Rue de la Cité, penning him into the Tertasse, and preparing to carry that street.

  On a sudden there came, not a cessation of the uproar, but a change in its character. It was as if the current of a river were momentarily stayed and pent up; and then with a mighty crashing of timbers and shifting of pebbles, and a din as of the world’s end, began to run the other way. Anne’s face turned a shade paler; so appalling was the noise, she would fain have stopped her ears. But her mother sat up.

  “What is it?” she asked eagerly. “What is it?”

  “Dear mother, do not fret! It must be — —”

  “Go and see, child! Go to the window in the passage, and see!” Madame Royaume persisted.

  Anne had no wish to go, no wish to see. She pictured her lover in the mêlée whence rose those appalling cries; and gladly would she have hidden her head in the bedclothes and poured out her heart in prayer for him. But
Madame persisted, and she yielded, went into the passage and opened the small window. With the cold air entered a fresh volume of sound. On the walls and timbered gables opposite her — and so near that she could well-nigh touch them with her extended arm — strange lights played luridly; and here and there, at dormers on a level with her, pale faces showed and vanished by turns.

  She looked down. For a moment, in the confusion, in the medley of moving forms, she could discern little or nothing. Then, as her eyes became more accustomed to the sight, she made out that the tide of conflict was running inward into the town, a sign that the invaders were gaining the mastery.

  “Well?” Madame Royaume asked, her voice querulous.

  Anne strove to say something that would soothe her mother. But a sob choked her, and when she regained her speech she felt herself impelled, she knew not why, to tell the truth. “I fear our people are falling back,” she murmured, trembling so violently that she could barely stand.

  “How far? Where are they, child?” Her mother’s voice was eager. “Where are they?”

  “They are almost under the window!” And then withdrawing her head with a shudder, while she clung for support to the frame of the window: “They are fighting underneath me now,” she said. “God pity them!”

  “And who is — are we still getting the worst of it?”

  Forced by a kind of fascination, Anne looked out again. “Yes, there is one man, a big man, leads them on,” she said, in the voice of one who, painfully absorbed in a sight, reports it involuntarily. “He is driving our people before him. Ah! he has struck one down this moment. He is almost underneath us now. But his people will not follow him! They are standing. He — he waves them on!”

  “He is beneath us?” Madame’s voice sounded strangely near, strangely insistent. But Anne, wrapt in what she saw, did not heed it.

  “Yes! He is a dozen paces in front of his men. He is underneath us now. He urges them to follow him! He towers above them! He is — —”

  She broke off; close to her sounded a heavy breathing, that even above the babel of the street caught her ear. She drew in her head, looked, and, overwrought by that which she had been witnessing, she shrieked aloud.

  Beside her, bending under the weight of the great steaming pot, stood her mother! Her mother, who had scarcely left her bedroom twice in a twelvemonth, nor crossed it as many times in a week. But it was her mother; endowed at this pass, and for the instant, with supernatural strength. For even as Anne recoiled thunderstruck, the old woman lifted the huge marmite, half-full and steaming as it was, to the ledge of the window, steadied it there an instant, and then, with the gleaming eyes and set pale face of an avenging prophetess, thrust it forth.

  A second they gazed at one another with suspended breath. Then from the street below rose a wild shriek, a crash, and lo, the huge pot lay shattered in the kennel beside the man whom, Heaven directed, it had slain. As if the shock of its fall stayed for an instant even the movement of the world, a silence fell on all: then, as the roar of conflict rose again, louder, more vengeful, with a new note in it, she caught her mother in her arms.

  “Mother! Mother!” she cried. “Mother!”

  The elder woman was white to the lips. “Get me to bed!” she muttered. “Get me to bed!” She had lost the power even to stand. That she had ever borne, even for a yard, the great pot which it taxed Anne’s utmost strength to carry upstairs was a miracle. But a miracle were all the circumstances connected with the act.

  Anne carried her back and laid her on the bed, greatly fearing for her. And thenceforth for a while the girl’s horizon, so wide and stormy an instant before, was narrowed to the bed beside which she stood, narrowed to the dear face on which the lamplight fell, disclosing its death-like pallor. For the time Anne forgot even her lover, was deaf to the struggle outside, was unmindful of the flight of the hours. For her, Geneva might have lain at peace, the night been as other nights, the house below been heavy with the breathing of tired sleepers. She looked neither to the right nor the left, until under her loving hands Madame Royaume revived, opened her eyes and smiled — the smile she had for one face only in the world.

  By that time Anne had lost count of the time. It might be hard on morning, it might be a little after midnight. One thing only was clear, the lamp required oil, and to get it she must descend to the ground floor. She opened the door and listened, wondering dully how the conflict had gone. She had lost count of that also.

  The small window at the head of the stairs remained open as they had left it; and through it a ceaseless hum, as of a hive of bees swarming, poured in from the night, and told of multitudes astir. The alarm-bell had ceased to ring, the wilder sounds of conflict had died down; in the parts about the Tertasse the combat appeared to be at an end. But this might be either because resistance had ceased, or because the battle had rolled away to other quarters, or — which she scarcely dared to hope — because the foe had been driven out.

  As she stood listening, she shivered in the cold air that came from the window. She felt as if she had been beaten, and knew that this came of the shocks she had suffered and the long strain. She feared for her nerves, and hated to go down into the dark parts of the house as if some danger lurked there. She longed for morning, for the light; and thought of Claude and his fate, and wondered why the thought of his danger did not move her to weeping, as it had moved her a few hours earlier.

  In truth she was worn out. The effort to revive her mother had cost her the last remains of strength. Her feet as she descended the stairs were of lead, the brazen notes of the alarm-bell hummed in her ears. When she reached the living-room she set the lamp on one of the tables and sat down wearily, with her eyes on the cold, empty hearth and on the settle where she had sat with his arms about her. And now, if ever, she must weep; but she could not.

  The lamp burned low, and cast smoky shadows on the ceiling and the walls. The shuttered windows showed their dead faces. The cheerful soul of the room had passed from it with the fire, leaving the shell gloomy, lifeless, repellent. Anne drowsed a moment in sheer exhaustion, and would have slept, if the lamp on the point of expiring had not emitted a sound and roused her. She rose reluctantly, dragged herself to the great cupboard under the stairs, and, having lighted a rushlight at the dying flame, put out the lamp and refilled it.

  She was about to re-light it, and had taken the rushlight in her hand for the purpose, when she heard through the shuttered windows and the barred door a growing clamour; the tramp of heavy feet, the hum of many voices, the buzz of a crowd that, almost as soon as she awoke to its near presence, came to a stand before the house. The tumult of voices raised all at once in different keys did not entirely drown the clash of arms; and while she stood, sullenly regarding the door, and resigned to the inevitable, whatever it might be, thin shafts of light pierced the shutters and stabbed the gloom about her.

  With that a hail-storm of knocks fell on the door and on the shutters. A dozen voices cried, “Open! Open!” The jangle of a halberd as its bearer let the butt drop heavily on the stone steps added force to the summons.

  Anne’s first impulse was to retreat upstairs, and leave them to do their worst. Her next — she was in a state of collapse in which resistance seemed useless — was to open. She moved to the door, and with cold hands removed the huge bars and let down the chain. It was only when she had done so much, when it remained only to unlock, that she wavered; that she trembled to think on what the crowd might be bent, and what might be her fate at their hands. She paused then, with her fingers on the key; but not for long. She remembered that, before she descended, she had heard neither shot nor cry. Resistance therefore had ceased, and that of a single house, held by two helpless women, could avail nothing, could but excite to fury and reprisals.

  She turned the key and opened. The lights dazzled her. The doorway, as she stood faltering, almost fainting, before it, seemed to be full of grotesque dancing faces, some swathed in bandages, others powder-blackened, some hot w
ith excitement, others pallid with fatigue. They were such faces, piled one above the other, as are seen in bad dreams.

  On the intruders’ side, those who pressed in first saw a girl strangely quiet, who held the door wide for them. “My mother is ill,” she said in a voice that strove for composure; if they were the enemy, her only hope, her only safety, lay in courage. “And she is old,” she continued. “Do not harm her.”

  “We come to do harm neither to you nor to her,” a voice replied. And the foremost of the troop, a thick dwarfish man with a huge two-handed sword, stood aside. “Messer Baudichon,” he said to one behind him, “this is the daughter.”

  She knew the fat, sturdy councillor — who in Geneva did not? — and through her stupor she recognised him, although a great bandage swathed half his head, and he was pale. And, beginning to have an inkling that things were well, she began also to tremble. By his side stood Messer Petitot — she knew him, too, he had been Syndic the year before — and a man in hacked and blood-stained armour with his arm in a sling and his face black with powder. These three, and behind them a dozen others — men whom she had seen on high days robed in velvet, but who now wore, one and all, the ugly marks of that night’s work — looked on her with a strange benevolence. And Baudichon took her hand.

  “We do not come to harm you,” he said. “On the contrary we come to thank you and yours. In the name of the city of Geneva, and of all those here with me — —”

  “Ay! Ay!” shouted Jehan Brosse, the tailor. And he rang his sword on the doorstep. “Ay! Ay!”

  “We come to thank you for the blow struck this night from this house! That it rid us of one of our worst foes was a small thing, girl. But that it put heart into our burghers and strength into their arms at a critical moment was another and a greater thing. Which shall not, if Geneva stand — as stand by God’s pleasure she shall, the stronger for this night’s work — be forgotten! The name of Mère Royaume will at the next meeting of the Greater Council be inscribed among the names of those whom the Free City thanks for their services this night!”