CHAPTER XVII.
THE HEART OF CAIN.
Seven hours had passed.
The moon had just dropped below the narrow horizon of the camp, but toeyes which looked up from the blackness of the hollow the form of thenearest sentinel, erect on the edge of the cup, showed plain againstthe paler background of sky. The hour was the deadest of the night;but, as the stillest night has its noises, the camp was not withoutnoises. The dull sound of horses browsing, the breath of a thousandsleepers, the low whinny of a mare, or the muttered word of one whodreamed heavily and spoke in his dream, these and the like sounds feda murmurous silence that was one with the brooding heaviness of a Junenight.
Odette de Villeneuve--the ears that drank in the voices of theslumbering host were hers--stood half-hidden in the doorway of herquarters and listened. The inner darkness had become intolerable toher. The wattled walls, though they were ventilated by a hundredcrevices, stifled her. Pent behind them she fancied a hundred things;she saw on the curtain of blackness drawn faces and staring eyes; shemade of the faintest murmur that entered now a roar of voices, and nowthe hoarse beginnings of a scream. Outside, with the cooler airfanning her burning face, she could at least lay hold on reality. Shewas no longer the sport and plaything of her own strained senses. Shecould at least be sure that nothing was happening, that nothing hadhappened--yet. And though she still breathed quickly and crouched likea fearful thing in the doorway, here she could call hate to hersupport, she could reckon her wrongs and think of her lover, andpersuade herself that this was but a nightmare from which she wouldawake to find all well with herself and with him.
If only the thing were over and done! Ah, if only it were done! Thatwas her feeling. If only the thing were done! She bent her ear tolisten; but nothing stirred, no alarm clove the night; and it couldwant little of morning. She fancied that the air struck colder, ladenwith that chill which comes before the dawn: and eastwards she thoughtthat she discerned the first faint lightening of the sky. The day wasat hand and nothing had happened.
She could not say on the instant whether she was sorry or glad. Butshe was sure that she would be sorry when the sun rose high and shoneon her enemy's triumph, and Charles and Roger and Bonne, whom she hadtaught herself to despise, saw their choice justified, and the sidethey had supported victorious. The triumph of those beneath us is hardto bear; and at that picture the Abbess's face grew hard, though therewas no one to see it. The blood throbbed in her head as she thought ofit; throbbed so loudly that she questioned the reality of a sound thata moment later forced itself upon her senses. It was a sound notunlike the pulsing of the blood; not terrible nor loud, butrhythmical, such as the tide makes when it rises slowly butirresistibly to fill some channel left bare at the ebb.
What was it? She stood arrested. Was it only the blood surging in herears? Or was it the silent uprising of a multitude of men, each fromthe place where he lay? Or was it, could it be the stealthy march ofcountless feet across the camp?
It might be that. She listened more intently, staying with one handthe beating of her heart. She decided that it was that.
Thereon it was all she could do to resist the impulse to give thealarm. She had no means of knowing in which direction the unseen bandwas moving. She could guess, but she might be wrong; and in that case,at any moment the night might hurl upon her a hundred brutes whosefirst victim as they charged through the encampment she must be. Shefancied that the darkness wavered; and here and there bred shiftingforms. She fancied that the dull sound was drawing nearer and growinglouder. And--a scream rose in her throat.
She choked it down. An instant later she had her reward, if that was areward which left her white and shuddering--a coward clinging forsupport to the frail wall beside her.
It was a shrill scream rending the night; such an one as had distendedher own throat an instant before--but stifled in mid-utterance in afashion horrible and suggestive. Upon it followed a fierce outcry inseveral voices, cut short two seconds later with the same abruptness,and followed by--silence. Then, while she clung cold, shivering, halffainting to the wattle, the darkness gave forth again that dullshuffling, moving sound, a little quickened perhaps, and a little moreapparent.
This time it caused an alarm. Sharp and clear came a voice from theridge, "What goes there? Answer!"
No answer was given, and "Who goes there?" cried a voice from adifferent point, and then "To arms!" cried a third. "To arms! Toarms!" And on a rising wave of hoarse cries the camp awoke.
The tall form of the Bat seemed to start up within a yard of theAbbess. He seized a stick that hung beside a drum on a post, and in atwinkling the hurried notes of the Alert pulsed through the camp. Onthe instant men rose from the earth about him; while frightened faces,seen by the rays of a passing light, looked from hut-doors, and thecries of a waiting-maid struggling in hysterics mingled with the wordsof command that brought the troopers into line and manned the groundin front of the Vicomte's quarters. A trooper flew up the slopingrampart to learn from the sentry what he had seen, and was back asquickly with the news that the guards knew no more than was knownbelow. They had only heard a suspicious outcry, and following on itsounds which suggested the movement of a body of men.
The Bat, bringing order out of confusion--and in that well aided byRoger, though the lad's heart was bursting with fears for hismistress--could do naught at the first blush but secure his position.But when he had got his men placed, and lanthorns so disposed as toadvantage them and hamper an attack, he turned sharply on the man."Did they hear my lord's voice?" he asked.
"It was their fancy. Certainly the outcry came from that part of thecamp."
"Then out on them!" Roger exclaimed, unable to control himself. "Outon them. To saddle and let us charge, and woe betide them if theystand!"
"Softly, softly," the Bat said. "Orders, young sir! Mine are to standfirm, whatever betides, and guard the women! And that I shall do untildaylight."
"Daylight?" Roger cried.
"Which is not half an hour off!"
"Half an hour!" The lad's tone rang with indignation. "Are you a manand will you leave a woman at their mercy?" He was white with rage andshaking. "Then I will go alone. I will go to their quarters--I,alone!" As he thought of the girl he loved and her terrors his heartwas too big for his breast.
"And throw away another life?" the Bat replied sternly. "For shame!"
"For shame, I?"
"Ay, you! To call yourself a soldier and cry fie on orders!"
He would have added more, but he was forestalled by the Vicomte. Inhis high petulant tone he bade his son stand for a fool. "There arewomen here," he continued, sensibly enough, "and we are none too manyto guard them, as we are."
"Ay, but she" Roger retorted, trembling, "is alone there."
"A truce to this!" the Bat struck in, with heat. "To your post, sir,and do your duty, or we are all lost together. Steady, men, steady!"as a slight movement of the troopers at the breastwork made itselffelt rather than seen. "Pikes low! Pikes low! What is it?"
He saw then. The commotion was caused by the approach of a group ofmen, three or four in number, whose neighbourhood one of the lightshad just betrayed. "Who comes there?" cried the leader of theCountess's troopers, who was in charge of that end of the line. "Areyou friends?"
"Ay, ay! Friends!"
If so, they were timorous friends. For when they were bidden toadvance to the spot where the Bat with the Vicomte and Roger awaitedthem, their alarm was plain. The foremost was the man who had spokenfor the peasants at the debate some days before. But the smith'sboldness and independence were gone; he was ashake with fear. "I havebad news," he stammered. "Bad news, my lords!"
"The worse for some one!" the Bat answered with a grim undernote thatshould have satisfied even Roger. As he spoke he raised one of thelights from the ground, and held it so that its rays fell on thepeasants' faces. "Has harm happened to the hostages?"
"God avert it! But they h
ave been carried off," the man falteredthrough his ragged beard. It was evident that he was thoroughlyfrightened.
"Carried off?"
"Ay, carried off!"
"By whom? By whom, rascal?" The Bat's eyes glared dangerously. "ByHeaven, if you have had hand or finger in it----" he added.
"Should I be here if I had?" the man answered, piteously extending hisopen hands.
"I know not. But now you are here, you will stay here! Surround them!"And when the order had been carried out, "Now speak, or your skin willpay for it," the Bat continued. "What has happened, spawn of thedung-heap?"
"Some of our folk--God knows without our knowledge"--the smithwhined--"brought in a party of the men on the hill----"
"The Old Crocans from the town?"
"Ay! And they seized the--my lord and the lady--and got off with them!As God sees me, they were gone before we were awake!" he protested,seeing the threatening blade with which Roger was advancing upon him.
The Lieutenant held the lad back. "Very good," he said. "We shallfollow with the first light. If a hair of their heads be injured, Ishall hang you first, and the rest of you by batches as the trees willbear!" And with a black and terrible look the Bat swore an oath tochill the blood. The leader of the Countess's men repeated it afterhim, word for word; and Roger, silent but with rage in his eyes, stoodshaking between them, his blade in his hand.
The Vicomte, his fears for the safety of his own party allayed, turnedto see who were present. He discovered his eldest daughter, leaning asif not far from fainting, against the doorway of the Duke's quarters."Courage, girl," he said, in a tone of rebuke. "We are in no perilourselves, and should set an example. Where is your sister?"
"I do not know," the Abbess replied shakily. It was being borne in onher that not two lives, but the lives of many, of scores and ofhundreds, might pay for what she had done. And she was new to thework. "I have not seen her," she repeated with greater firmness, asshe summoned hate to her support, and called up before her fancy theCountess's childish attractions. "She must be sleeping."
"Sleeping?" the Vicomte echoed in astonishment. He was going to addmore when another took the words out of his mouth.
"What is that?" It was Roger's voice fiercely raised. "By Heaven! Itis Fulbert."
It was Fulbert. As the men, of whom some were saddling--for the lightwas beginning to appear--pressed forward to look, the steward crawledout of the gloom about the brook, and, raising himself on one hand,made painful efforts to speak. He looked like a dead man risen; nordid the uncertain light of the lanthorns take from the horror of hisappearance. Probably he had been left for dead, for the smashing blowof some blunt weapon had beaten in one temple and flooded his face andbeard with blood. The Abbess, faint and sick, appalled by this firstsign of her handiwork, hid her eyes.
"Follow! Follow!" the poor creature muttered, swaying as he strove torise to his feet. "A rescue!"
"With the first light," the Bat answered him. "With the first light!How many are they?"
But he only muttered, "Follow! A rescue! A rescue!" and repeated thosewords in such a tone that it was plain that he no longer understoodthem, but said them mechanically. Perhaps they had been the last hehad uttered before he was struck down.
The Bat saw how it was with him; he had seen men in that state before."With the first light!" he said, to soothe him. "With the first lightwe follow!" Then turning to his men he bade them carry the poor fellowin and see to his hurts.
Roger sprang forward, eager to help. And they were bearing the man tothe rear, and the Abbess had taken heart to uncover her eyes, whilestill averting them, when a strange sound broke from her lips--lipsblanched in an instant to the colour of paper. It caught the ear ofthe Bat, who stood nearest to her. He turned. The Abbess, with armoutstretched, was pointing to the door of the Countess's hut. There,visible, though she seemed to shrink from sight, and even raised herhand in deprecation, stood the Countess herself.
"By Heaven!" the Bat cried. And he stood. While Roger, in place ofadvancing, gazed on her as on a ghost.
She tried to speak, but no sound came. And for the Abbess she had aseasily spoken as the dead. Her senses tottered, the slim figure dancedbefore her eyes, the voices of those who spoke came from a great wayoff.
It was the Vicomte who, being the least concerned, was first to findhis voice. "Is it you, Countess?" he quavered.
The Countess nodded. She could not speak.
"But how--how have you escaped?"
"Ay, how?" the Bat chimed in more soberly. He saw that it was nophantom, though the mystery seemed none the less for that. "How comeyou here, Countess? How--am I mad, or did you not go to their quartersat sundown?"
"No," she whispered. "I did not go." She framed the words withdifficulty. Between shame and excitement she seemed ready to sink intothe earth.
"No? You did not? Then who--who did go? Some one went."
She made a vain attempt to speak. Then commanding herself--
"Bonne went--in my place," she cried. And clapping her hands to herface in a paroxysm of grief, she leant, weeping, against the post ofthe door.
They looked at one another and began to understand, and to see. Andone had opened his mouth to speak, when a strangled cry drew all eyesto the Abbess. She seemed to be striving to put something from her.Her staring eyes, her round mouth of horror, her waving fingers madeup a picture of terror comparable only to one of those masks which theGreeks used in their tragedies of fate. A moment she showed thus, andnone of those who turned eye on her doubted that they were looking ona stress of passion beside which the Countess's grief was but a punything. The next moment she fell her length in a swoon.
* * * * *
When she came to herself an hour later she lay for a time with eyesopen but vacant, eyes which saw but conveyed no image to the ailingbrain. The sun was still low. Its shafts darting through theinterstices in the wall of the hut were laden with a million dancingmotes, which formed a shifting veil of light between her eyes and theroof. She seemed to have been gazing at this a whole aeon when thefirst conscious thought pierced her mind, and she asked herself whereshe was.
Where? Not in her own lodging, nor alone. This was borne in on her.For on one side of her couch crouched one of her women; on the otherknelt the Countess, her face hidden. In the doorway behind the head ofthe bed, and so beyond the range of her vision, were others; the lowdrone of voices, her father's, the Duke's, penetrated one by one toher senses still dulled by the shock she had suffered. Something hadhappened then; something serious to her, or she would not lie thussurrounded with watchers on all sides of her bed. Had she been ill?
She considered this silently, and little by little began to remember:the flight to the camp, the camp life, the Duke's hut in which she hadpassed most of her time in the camp. Yes, she was in the Duke's hut,and that was his voice. She was lying on his couch. They had beenbesieged, she remembered. Had she been wounded? From under half-closedlids she scrutinised the two women beside her. The one she knew. Theother must be her sister. Yes, her sister would be the first to come,the first to aid her. But it was not her sister. It was----
She knew.
She called on God and lay white and mute, shaking violently, but withclosed eyes. The women rose and looked at her, and suggested remedies,and implored her to speak. But she lay cold and dumb, and only fromtime to time by violent fits of trembling showed that she was alive.What had she done? What had she done?
The women could make nothing of her. Nor when they had tried theirutmost could her father, though he came and chid her querulously; histone the sharper for the remorse he was feeling. He had had an hour tothink; and during that hour the obedience which his less cherisheddaughter had ever paid him, her cheerful care of him, her patiencewith him, had risen before him; and, alas, with these thoughts, thememory of many an unkind word and act, many a taunt flung at her aslightly as at the dog that cumbered the hearth. To balance theaccount, and a little perhaps because the
way in which Odette took itwas an added reproach to him, he spoke harshly to the Abbess--such ishuman nature! But, for all the effect his words had on her, he mighthave addressed a stone. That which she had done thundered too loudlyin her ears for another's voice to enter.
She had not loved her sister over dearly, and into such love as shehad given contempt had entered largely. But she was her sister. Shewas her sister! Memories of childish days in the garden at Villeneuve,when Bonne had clung to her hand and run beside her, and prattled,and played, and quarrelled, and yielded to her--being always thegentler--rose in her mind; and memories of little words and acts, andof Bonne's face on this occasion and on that! And dry-eyed she shookwith horror of the thing she had done. Her sister! She had done hersister to death more cruelly, more foully, more barbarously, than ifshe had struck her lifeless at her feet.
An age, it seemed to her, she lay in this state, cold, paralysed,without hope. Then a word caught her ear and fixed her attention.
"They have been away two hours," Joyeuse muttered, speaking low to theVicomte. "They should be back."
"What could they do?" the Vicomte answered in a tone of despair.
"Forty swords can do much," Joyeuse answered hardily. "Were I sound Ishould know what to do. And that right well!"
"They started too late."
"The greater reason they should be back! Were all over they would beback."
"I have no hope."
"I have. Had they desired to kill them only," the Duke continued withreason, "the brutes had done it here, in a moment! If they did nothope to use them why carry them off?"
But the Vicomte with a quivering lip shook his head. He was stillthinking--with marvellous unselfishness for him--of the daughter whohad borne with him so long and so patiently. For des Ageaux theremight be hope and a chance. But a woman in the hands of savages suchas those he had seen in the town on the hill! He shuddered as hethought of it. Better death, better death a hundred times than that.He did not wish to see her again.
But in one heart the mention of hope had awakened hope. The Abbessraised herself on her elbow. "Who have gone?" she asked in a voice sohollow and changed they started as at the voice of a stranger. "Whoare gone?" she repeated.
"All but eight spears!" the Duke answered.
"Why not all?" she cried feverishly. "Why not all?"
"Some it was necessary to keep," Joyeuse replied gently. "Not one hasbeen kept that could go. If your sister can be saved, she will besaved."
"Too late!" the Vicomte muttered. And he shook his head.
The Abbess sank back with a groan. But a moment later she broke into apassion of weeping. The cord that had bound her heart had snapped. Thefirst horror of the thing which she had done was passing. The firstexcuse, the first suggestion that for that which she had not intendedshe was not answerable, was whispering at the threshold of her ear. Asshe wept in passionate, in unrestrained abandonment, regarding none ofthose about her, wonder, an almost resentful wonder, grew in theVicomte's heart. He had not given her credit for a tithe, for ahundredth part of the affection she felt for her sister! For the Duke,he, who had seen her consistently placid, garbed in gentle dignity,and as unemotional as she was beautiful, marvelled for a differentreason. He hailed the human in her with delight; he could have blessedthe weeping girl for every tear that proclaimed her woman. By thedepth of her love for her sister he plumbed her capacity for a moreearthly passion. He rejoiced, therefore, as much as he marvelled.
There was one other upon whom Odette's sudden breakdown wrought evenmore powerfully; and that was the Countess. While the sister remainedstunned by the dreadful news and deaf to consolation, the poor child,who took all to herself and mingled shame with her grief, had notdared to speak; she had not found the heart or the courage to speak.Awed by the immensity of the catastrophe, and the Abbess's strickenface, she had cowered on her knees beside the bed with her facehidden; and weeping silently and piteously, had not presumed totrouble the other with her remorse or her useless regret. But thetears of a woman appeal to another woman after a fashion all theirown. They soften, they invite. No sooner, then, had Odette proclaimedherself human by the abandonment of her grief than the Countess feltthe impulse to throw herself into her arms and implore herforgiveness. She knew, none better, that Bonne had suffered in herplace; that in her place and because of her fears--proved only tooreal--she had gone to death or worse than death; that the fault laywith herself. And that she took it to herself, that her heart was fullof remorse and love and contrition--all this she longed to say to thesister. Before Odette knew what to expect or to fear, the youngerwoman was in her arms.
One moment. The next Odette struck her--struck her with furious,frantic rage, and flung her from her. "It is you! You have done this!You!" she cried, panting, and with blazing eyes. "You have killed her!You!"
The young girl staggered back with the mark of the Abbess's fingerscrimson on her cheek. She stood an instant breathing hard, thecombative instinct awakened by the blow showing in her eyes and hersmall bared teeth. Then she flung her hands to her face. "It is true!It is true!" she sobbed. "But I did not know!"
"Know?" the Abbess cried back relentlessly; and she was going to addother and madder and more insulting words, when her father's face ofamazement checked her. She fell back sullenly, and with a gesture ofdespair turned her face to the wall.
The Vicomte was on his feet, shocked by what had passed. He began tobabble words of apology, of excuse; while Joyeuse, ravished, strangeto say, by the spirit of the woman he had deemed above anger and abovepassion, smiled exultant, wondering what new, what marvellous, whatincomparable side of herself this wonderful woman would next exhibit.He who had exhausted all common types, all common moods, saw that hehad here the quintessence both of heaven and earth. Her beauty, hermeekness, her indignation, her sorrow--what an amalgam was here! Andhow all qualities became her!
Had Roger been there he had taken, it is possible, another view. Buthe was not; and presently into the halting flow of the Vicomte's wordscrept a murmur, a tramp of feet, a sound indescribable, butproclaiming news. He broke off. "What is it?" he said. "What is it?"
"News! Ay, news, for a hundred crowns!" the Duke answered. He moved tothe door.
The Countess, her face bedabbled with tears, tears of outraged prideas well as grief, stayed her sobs and looked in the same direction.Even the Abbess caught the infection, and raising her head from thepillow listened with parted lips and staring eyes. News! There wasnews. But what was it? Good or bad? The Abbess, her heart standingstill, bit her lip till the blood came.
The murmur of voices drew nearer.
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