Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  “Dear lad!”

  “I should be in his shoes and he in mine! Lord, what a fool!” with gloomy unction. “What a fool! I must needs think of her when a peasant girl would not look at me. I must needs think of the Countess of Rochechouart! Oh, Lord, as if I had anything to give her! Or aught I could do for her!”

  Bonne did not reply on the instant, But presently, “There is something you can do for her,” she ventured. “It is not much, but — —”

  “What?” he said. “I know nothing.”

  “You can help him.”

  “I?”

  “The mouse helped the lion. You can help him and be at his side, and guard him in danger — for her sake. Just as,” Bonne continued, her voice sinking a little, “if you were a girl, and — and felt for him as you feel for her, you could watch over her and protect her and keep her safe — for his sake. Though it would be harder for a woman, because women are jealous,” Bonne added thoughtfully.

  “And men too!” Roger rejoined from the depths of his small experience. “All the same I will do it. And I am glad it is he. He won’t beat her, or shut her up and leave her in some lonely house as Court people do. I believe,” he continued gloomily, “I’d as soon it was he as any one.”

  Bonne nodded. “That is agreed then,” she said softly, though a moment before she had sighed.

  “Agreed?” rather grumpily. “Well, if one person can agree, it is!” And then, thinking he had spoken thanklessly to the sister who had been his friend and consoler in many a dark hour when the shadow of his deformity had hidden the sun, he laid his hand on hers and pressed it. “Well, agreed it is!” he said more brightly. “They came from their outside world to our poor little life, and we must help them back again, I suppose. I would not wish them ill, if — if it would make me straight again.”

  “That is a big bribe,” she said, smiling. “But neither would I — if it would make me as handsome as Odette!”

  “No!”

  They sat silent then. Far away on their left, where lay the entrance to the camp from the river gorge, men were piling stones under the archway, so as to leave but a narrow passage. Below them on the right the Bat was drilling his pikemen, and alternately launching his lank form this way and that in a fever of impatience. On the sky-line men were pacing to and fro, searching with keen eyes the misty distance of glen and hill; and ever and anon the squeal of a war-horse rang above the multitudinous sounds of the camp. On every side, wherever the eye rested, it discovered signs of strife and turmoil, harbingers of pain and death.

  But though the two who looked down on the scene neither knew it nor thought of it, with them in their little hollow was a power mightier than any, the power that in its highest form does indeed make the world go round; the one power in the world that is above fortune, above death, above the creeds — or, shall we say, behind them. For with them was love in its highest form, the love that gives and does not ask, and being denied — loves. In their clear moments men know that this love is the only real thing in the world; and a thousand times more substantial, more existent, than the objects we grasp and see.

  CHAPTER XIII.

  HOSTAGES.

  There is born of the enthusiasm of self-denial a happiness that while the fervour lasts seems all-sufficing. The skirmish that has routed the van of jealousy stands for the battle; nor does the victor foresee that with the fall of night the enemy will flock again to the attack, and by many an insidious onset strive to change the fortune of the day.

  Still once to have felt the generous impulse, once to have trodden self underfoot and risen god-like above the baser thoughts, is something. And if Bonne and her brother were destined to find the victory less complete than they thought, if they were to know moments when the worst in them raised its head, they were but as the best of us. And again — a reflection somewhat more humorous — had these two been able to read the mind of the man of whom each was thinking, they had met with so curious an enlightenment that they had hardly been able to look at one another. To say that des Ageaux entertained no tender feeling for any one were to say more than the truth; for during the last few days a weakness had crept unwelcome and unbidden into his heart. But he kept it sternly in the background — he who had naught to do with such things — and it did not tend in the direction of the Countess. In point of fact the Lieutenant had other and more serious food for thought; other and more pressing anxieties than love. Forty-eight hours had disclosed the weakness of the position in which he had chosen to place himself. He foresaw, if not the certainty, the probability of defeat. And defeat in the situation he had taken up might be attended by hideous consequences.

  These were not slow to cast their shadows. The two on the hill had not sat long in silent companionship before the sounds which rose from the camp began to take a sterner note. Roger was the first to mark the change. Rousing himself and shaking off his lugubrious mood, “What is that?” the lad asked. “Do you hear, Bonne? It sounds like trouble somewhere.”

  “Trouble?” she repeated, still half in dreams.

  “Yes, by Jove, but — listen! And what has become” — he was on his feet by this time— “of the Bat’s ragged regiment? They have vanished.”

  “They must be behind the tree,” Bonne answered. And moved by the same impulse they walked a little aside along the slope until they could see the section of the camp immediately below them, which had been hidden hitherto by the branches of the great plane-tree.

  The little group which Bonne had left when her feelings compelled her to flight remained in the same place. But all who formed it, the Vicomte and his eldest daughter as well as des Ageaux and the Countess, were now on their feet. The Vicomte and the ladies stood together in the background, while des Ageaux, who had placed himself before them, confronted an excited body of men, some hundred in number, and composed in part at least of those whom the Bat had been lately drilling. Whether these had broken from his control and gathered their fellows as they moved, or the impulse had come from outside and they were but recruits, their presence rendered the movement more formidable. They were not indeed of so low and savage a type as the creatures who had met des Ageaux in the gate the previous day, but viewed in this serried mass, their lowering brutish faces and clenched hands called up a vivid sense of danger. They must have made some outcry as they approached, or Roger had not noticed their assemblage. But now they were fallen silent. A grim mass of scowling, hard-breathing men, then small suspicious eyes glaring through tangled locks irresistibly reminded the observer of that quarry the most dangerous of all the beasts of chase, the wild boar.

  Bonne’s colour faded as her eyes took in the meaning of the scene. She grew still paler as her brain pictured for the first time the things that might happen in this camp of clowns of whose real sentiments the intruders had so little knowledge, at whose possible treachery it was so easy to guess. Time has not wiped, time never will wipe from the French memory the fear of a Jacquerie. The horrors of that hideous revolt, of its rise and its suppression are stamped on the minds of the unborn. “What is it?” she repeated more than once, her heart fluttering. How very, very near he stood — on whom all depended — to the line of scowling men!

  “A mutiny, I fear!” Roger answered hastily. “Come!” And, with face slightly flushed, he hurried, running and sliding down the slope.

  She was not three paces behind him when he reached the foot. Here they lost sight of the scene, but quickly passed between two huts and reached the Vicomte’s side. Des Ageaux was speaking.

  “I cannot give you the man,” he was saying, “but I can give you justice.”

  “Justice?” the spokesman of the peasants retorted bitterly — he wore the dress of a smith, and belonged to that craft. “Who ever heard but of one sort of justice for the poor man? Justice, Sir Governor, is the poor man’s right to be hung! The poor man’s right to be scourged! The poor man’s right to be broken on the wheel! To see his hut burned and his wife borne off! That is the justice” — rudel
y— “the poor man gets — be it high or low, king’s or lord’s!”

  “Ay, ay!” the stern chorus rose from a hundred throats behind him, “that is the poor man’s justice!”

  “It is to put an end to such things I am here!” des Ageaux replied, marking with a watchful eye the faces before him. He was far from easy, but he had handled men of their kind before, and thought that he knew them.

  “There was never a beginning of such things, and there will never be an end!” the smith returned, the hopelessness of a thousand years of wrong in his words. “Never! But give us this man — he has done all these things, he and his master, and we will believe you.”

  “I cannot give him to you,” des Ageaux answered. The same prisoner, one of Vlaye’s followers, was in question whom the Old Crocans had yesterday required to be given up to them. “But I have told you and I tell you again,” the Lieutenant continued, reading mischief in the men’s faces, “that you shall have justice. If this man has wronged you and you can prove it — —”

  “If!” the peasant cried, and baring his right arm he raised his clenched fist to heaven.

  But the Lieutenant went on as if the man had not spoken. “If you can prove these things upon him by witnesses here present — —”

  “You will give him to us?”

  “No, I will not do that!”

  “You will give him to us!” the smith repeated, refusing to hear the denial. And all along the line of scowling faces — the line that wavered ominously at moments of emotion as if it would break about the little group — ran a swift gleam of white teeth.

  But des Ageaux did not blench. He raised his hand for silence, and his voice was steady as a rock as he made answer. “No,” he said, “I will not give him to you. He belongs neither to me nor to you, but to God and the King, whose is justice.”

  “To God!” the other snarled, “whose is justice! Rather, whose servants hold the lamb that the devils may flay it! And for the King, Sir Governor, a fig for him! Our own hands are worth a dozen kings!”

  “Stay!” The line was swaying; in the nick of time des Ageaux’ voice, and perhaps something in his eye, stayed it. “Listen to me one moment,” he continued. “To-morrow morning — for I have not time to-day — the man you accuse shall be tried. If he be guilty, before noon he shall die. If he be not guilty, he shall go!”

  A murmur of protest.

  But des Ageaux raised his head higher and spoke more sternly. “He shall go!” he repeated — and for the moment he mastered them. “If he be innocent he shall go! What more do you claim? To what beyond have you a right? And now,” he continued, as he saw them pause angry but undecided, “for yourselves! I have told you, I tell you again that this is your last chance. That I and the offer I make you are your last hope! There is a man there” — with his forefinger he singled out a tall youth with a long, narrow face and light blue eyes— “who promises that when you are attacked he will wave his arm, and Vlaye and his riders will fall on their faces as fell the walls of Jericho! Do you believe him? Will you trust your wives and children to him? And another” — again he singled out a man, a beetle-browed dwarf, hideous of aspect, survivor of some ancient race— “who promises victory if you will sacrifice your captives on yonder stone! Do you believe him? And if you do not trust these, in what do you trust? Can naked men stand before mailed horses? Can you take castles with your bare hands? You have left your villages, you have slain your oxen, you have burned your tools, you have slain your lords’ men, you have taken the field. Have peasants ever done these things — and not perished sooner or later on gibbets and in dungeons? And such will be your fate, and the fate of your women and your children, if you will go your way and will not listen!”

  “What do you promise us?” The question in various forms broke from a dozen throats.

  “First, justice on the chief of your oppressors.”

  “The Captain of Vlaye?”

  “The same.”

  “Ay, ay!” Their harsh cries marked approval. Some with dark looks spat on their hands and worked their right arms to and fro.

  “Next,” des Ageaux continued, “that which never peasant who took the field had yet — pardon for the past. To those who fear not to go back, leave to return to their homes. To those who have broken their lords’ laws a settlement elsewhere with their wives and children. To every man of his hands, when he leaves, ten deniers out of the spoils of Vlaye to carry him to his home.”

  Nine out of ten marked their approval by a shout; and des Ageaux heaved a sigh of relief, thinking all well. But the smith turned and exchanged some words with the men nearest him, chiding them and reminding them of something. Then he turned again.

  “Fine words! But for all this what pledge, Sir Governor?” he asked with a sneer. “What warranty that when we have done our part we shall not to gibbet or gallows like our fellows?”

  “The King’s word!”

  “Ay? And hostages? What hostages?”

  “Hostages?” The Lieutenant’s voice rang sharp with anger.

  “Ay, hostages!” the man answered sturdily, informed by the murmurs of his fellows that he had got them back into the road from which des Ageaux’ arguments had led them. “We must have hostages.”

  Clearly they had made up their minds to this, they had determined on it beforehand. For with one voice, “We must have hostages!” they thundered.

  Des Ageaux paused before he answered — paused in dismay. It looked as if — already he feared it — he had put out his hand too far. As if he had trusted too implicitly to his management of men, and risked not himself only, but women; women of the class to which these human beasts set down their wrongs, women on whom the least accident or provocation might lead them to wreak their vengeance! If it were so! But he dared not follow up the thought, lest the coolness on which all depended should leave him. Instead, “We are all your hostages,” he said.

  “And what of those? And those?” the smith answered. With a cunning look he pointed to the two knots of troopers whom des Ageaux had brought with him. “And by-and-by there will be more. Madame” — he pointed to the little Countess who had shrunk to Bonne’s side, and stood with the elder girl’s arm about her— “Madame has sent for fifty riders from her lands in the north — on, we know! And the Duke who is ill, for another hundred and fifty from Bergerac! When they come” — with a leer— “where will be our hostages? No, it is now we must talk, Sir Governor, or not at all.”

  Des Ageaux, his cheek flushed, reflected amid an uneasy silence. He knew that two of his riders were away bearing letters, and that four more were patrolling the valley; that two with Charles de Villeneuve were isolated on the ridge, unable to help; in a word, that no more than twelve or thirteen were within call, who, separated from their horses, were no match for a mob of men outnumbering them by five or six to one, and whom the first blow would recruit from every quarter of the seething camp. He had miscalculated, and saw it. He had miscalculated, and the consequences he dare not weigh. The men in whose power he had placed himself — and so much more than himself — were not the dull clods he had deemed them, but alike ferocious and suspicious, ready on the first hint of treachery to exact a fearful vengeance. No man had ever kept faith with them; why should they believe that he would keep faith? He shut his teeth hard. “I will consider the matter,” he said, “and let you know my answer to-morrow at noon.” He spoke as ending the conference, and he made as if he would turn on his heel.

  “Ay, when madame’s fifty spears are come?” the smith cried. “That will not do! If you mean us well give us hostages. If you mean us ill,” taking one step forward with an insolent gesture ——

  “Fool, I mean you no ill!” the Lieutenant answered sternly. “If I meant you ill, why should I be here?”

  But “Hostages! Hostages!” the crowd answered, raising weapons and fists.

  Their cries drowned his words. A score of hands threatened him. Without looking, he felt that the Bat and his troopers, a little clum
p apart, were preparing to intervene, and he knew that on his next movement all depended. The pale faces behind him he could not see, for he was aware that if his eye left his opponents, they would fall upon him. At any second a hurried gesture, or the least sign of fear might unloose the torrent, and well was it for all that in many a like scene his nerve had been tempered to hardness. He shrugged his shoulders.

  “Well,” he said, “you shall have your hostages.”

  “Ay, ay!” A sudden relaxation, a falling back into quietude of the seething mass approved the consent.

  “You shall have my lieutenant,” he continued, “and — —”

  “And I will be the other,” cried Roger manfully. He stepped forward. “I am the son of M. le Vicomte there! I will be your hostage,” he repeated.

  But the smith, turning to his followers, grinned. “We’d be little the better for them,” he said. “Eh? No, Sir Governor! We must have our choice!”

  “Your choice, rogues?”

  “Ay, we’ll have the pick!” the crowd shouted. “The best of the basket!” Amid ferocious laughter.

  Des Ageaux had suspected for some hours past that he had done a foolish, a fatally foolish thing in trusting these men, whom no man had ever trusted. He saw now that only two courses stood open to him. He might strike the smith down at his feet, and risk all on the effect which the act might have on his followers; or he might yield what they asked, allow them to choose their hostages, and trust to time and skill for the rest. His instincts were all for the bolder course, but he had women behind him, and their chance in a conflict so unequal must be desperate. With a quietness and firmness characteristic of the man he accepted his defeat.

  “Very well,” he said. “It matters nothing. Whom will you have?”

  “We’ll have you,” the smith replied grinning, “and her!” With a grimy hand he pointed to the little Countess who with Bonne’s arm about her and Fulbert at her elbow was staring fascinated at the line of savage faces.

  “You cannot have a lady!” the Lieutenant answered with a chill at his heart.