Bardelys the Magnificent, Rafael Sabatini [best free e book reader .txt] 📗

cried the other, roused to an equal fierceness.

“Will you explain?”

 

“Aye,” snarled Marsac, and his sword flashed from his scabbard,”

I’ll explain. As God lives, I’ll explain - with this!” And he

whirled his blade under the eyes of the invalid. “Come, my master,

the comedy’s played out. Cast aside that crutch and draw; draw,

man, or, sangdieu, I’ll run you through as you stand!”

 

There was a commotion below. The landlord and a posse of his

satellites - waiters, ostlers, and stableboys - rushed between

them, and sought to restrain the bloodthirsty Marsac. But he

shook them off as a bull shakes off a pack of dogs, and like an

angry bull, too, did he stand his ground and bellow. In a moment

his sweeping sword had cleared a circle about him. In its

lightning dartings hither and thither at random, it had stung a

waiter in the calf, and when the fellow saw the blood staining his

hose, he added to the general din his shrieks that he was murdered.

Marsac swore and threatened in a breath, and a kitchen wench, from

a point of vantage on the steps, called shame upon him and abused

him roundly for a cowardly assassin to assail a poor sufferer who

could hardly stand upright.

 

“Po’ Cap de Dieu!” swore Castelroux at my elbow. “Saw you ever such

an ado? What has chanced?”

 

But I never stayed to answer him. Unless I acted quickly blood

would assuredly be shed. I was the one man who could explain

matters, and it was a mercy for Lesperon that I should have been at

hand in the hour of his meeting that fire-eater Marsac. I forgot

the circumstances in which I stood to Castelroux; I forgot

everything but the imminent necessity that I should intervene.

Some seven feet below our window was the roof of the porch; from

that to the ground it might be some eight feet more. Before my

Gascon captain knew what I was about, I had swung myself down from

the window on to the projecting porch. A second later, I created

a diversion by landing in the midst of the courtyard fray, with the

alarmed Castelroux - who imagined that I was escaping - following

by the same unusual road, and shouting as he came “Monsieur de

Lesperon! Hi! Monsieur de Lesperon! Mordieu! Remember your

parole, Monsieur de Lesperon!”

 

Nothing could have been better calculated to stem Marsac’s fury;

nothing could have so predisposed him to lend an ear to what I had

to say, for it was very evident that Castelroux’s words were

addressed to me, and that it was I whom he called by the name of

Lesperon. In an instant I was at Marsac’s side. But before I

could utter a word, “What the devil does this mean?” he asked,

eyeing me with fierce suspicion.

 

“It means, monsieur, that there are more Lesperons than one in

France. I am the Lesperon who was at Lavedan. If you doubt me,

ask this gentleman, who arrested me there last night. Ask him,

too, why we have halted here. Ask him, if you will, to show you

the letter that you left at Lavedan making an assignation here

before noon to-day, which letter I received.”

 

The suspicion faded from Marsac’s eyes, and they grew round with

wonder as he listened to this prodigious array of evidence.

Lesperon looked on in no less amazement, yet I am sure from the

manner of his glance that he did not recognize in me the man that

had succoured him at Mirepoix. That, after all, was natural

enough; for the minds of men in such reduced conditions as had been

his upon that night are not prone to receive very clear impressions,

and still less prone to retain such impressions as they do receive.

 

Before Marsac could answer me, Castelroux was at my side.

 

“A thousand apologies!” he laughed. “A fool might have guessed the

errand that took you so quickly through that window, and none but

a fool would have suspected you of seeking to escape. It was

unworthy in me, Monsieur de Lesperon.”

 

I turned to him while those others still stood gaping, and led him

aside.

 

“Monsieur le Capitaine,” said I, “you find it troublesome enough

to reconcile your conscience with such arrests as you are charged

to make, is it not so.

 

“Mordieu!” he cried, by way of emphatically assenting.

 

“Now, if you should chance to overhear words betraying to you

certain people whom otherwise you would never suspect of being

rebels, your soldier’s duty would, nevertheless, compel you to

apprehend them, would it not?”

 

“Why, true. I am afraid it would,” he answered, with a grimace.

 

“But, if forewarned that by being present in a certain place you

should overhear such words, what course would you pursue?”

 

“Avoid it like a pestilence, monsieur,” he answered promptly.

 

“Then, Monsieur le Capitaine, may I trespass upon your generosity

to beseech you to let me take these litigants to our room upstairs,

and to leave us alone there for a half-hour?”

 

Frankness was my best friend in dealing with Castelroux - frankness

and his distaste for the business they had charged him with. As

for Marsac and Lesperon, they were both eager enough to have the

mystery explained, and when Castelroux having consented - I invited

them to my chamber, they came readily enough.

 

Since Monsieur de Lesperon did not recognize me, there was no reason

why I should enlighten him touching my identity, and every reason

why I should not. As soon as they were seated, I went to the heart

of the matter at once and without preamble.

 

“A fortnight ago, gentlemen,” said I, “I was driven by a pack of

dragoons across the Garonne. I was wounded in the shoulder and very

exhausted, and I knocked at the gates of Lavedan to crave shelter.

That shelter, gentlemen, was afforded me, and when I had announced

myself as Monsieur de Lesperon, it was all the more cordially

because one Monsieur de Marsac, who was a friend of the Vicomte de

Lavedan, and a partisan in the lost cause of Orleans, happened often

to have spoken of a certain Monsieur de Lesperon as his very dear

friend. I have no doubt, gentlemen, that you will think harshly of

me because I did not enlighten the Vicomte. But there were reasons

for which I trust you will not press me, since I shall find it

difficult to answer you with truth.”

 

“But is your name Lesperon?” cried Lesperon.

 

“That, monsieur, is a small matter. Whether my name is Lesperon or

not, I confess to having practised a duplicity upon the Vicomte and

his family, since I am certainly not the Lesperon whose identity I

accepted. But if I accepted that identity, monsieur, I also

accepted your liabilities, and so I think that you should find it

in your heart to extend me some measure of forgiveness. As Rene de

Lesperon, of Lesperon in Gascony, I was arrested last night at

Lavedan, and, as you may observe, I am being taken to Toulouse to

stand the charge of high treason. I have not demurred; I have not

denied in the hour of trouble the identity that served me in my

hour of need. I am taking the bitter with the sweet, and I assure

you, gentlemen, that the bitter predominates in a very marked degree.”

 

“But this must not be,” cried Lesperon, rising. “I know not what use

you may have made of my name, but I have no reason to think that you

can have brought discredit upon it, and so—”

 

“I thank you, monsieur, but—”

 

“And so I cannot submit that you shall go to Toulouse in my stead.

Where is this officer whose prisoner you are? Pray summon him,

monsieur, and let us set the matter right.”

 

“This is very generous,” I answered calmly. “But I have crimes

enough upon my head, and so, if the worst should befall me, I am

simply atoning in one person for the errors of two.”

 

“But that is no concern of mine!” he cried.

 

“It is so much your concern that if you commit so egregious a blunder

as to denounce yourself, you will have ruined yourself, without

materially benefitting me.

 

He still objected, but in this strain I argued for some time, and

to such good purpose that in the end I made him realize that by

betraying himself he would not save me, but only join me on the

journey to the scaffold.

 

“Besides, gentlemen,” I pursued, “my case is far from hopeless. I

have every confidence that, as matters stand, by putting forth my

hand at the right moment, by announcing my identity at the proper

season, I can, if I am so inclined, save my neck from the headsman.”

 

“If you are so inclined?” they both cried, their looks charged with

inquiry.

 

“Let that be,” I answered; “it does not at present concern us. What

I desire you to understand, Monsieur de Lesperon, is that if I go

to Toulouse alone, when the time comes to proclaim myself, and it is

found that I am not Rene de Lesperon, of Lesperon in Gascony, they

will assume that you are dead, and there will be no count against me.

 

“But if you come with me, and thereby afford proof that you are

alive, my impersonation of you may cause me trouble. They may opine

that I have been an abettor of treason, that I have attempted to

circumvent the ends of justice, and that I may have impersonated you

in order to render possible your escape. For that, you may rest

assured, they will punish me.

 

“You will see, therefore, that my own safety rests on your passing

quietly out of France and leaving the belief behind you that you are

dead - a belief that will quickly spread once I shall have cast off

your identity. You apprehend me?”

 

“Vaguely, monsieur; and perhaps you are right. What do you say,

Stanislas?”

 

“Say?” cried the fiery Marsac. “I am weighed down with shame, my

poor Rene, for having so misjudged you.”

 

More he would have said in the same strain, but Lesperon cut him

short and bade him attend to the issue now before him. They

discussed it at some length, but always under the cloud in which

my mysteriousness enveloped it, and, in the end, encouraged by my

renewed assurances that I could best save myself if Lesperon were

not taken with me, the Gascon consented to my proposals.

 

Marsac was on his way to Spain. His sister, he told us, awaited

him at Carcassonne. Lesperon should set out with him at once, and

in forty-eight hours they would be beyond the reach of the King’s

anger.

 

“I have a favour to ask of you, Monsieur de Marsac,” said I, rising;

for our business was at an end. “It is that if you should have an

opportunity of communicating with Mademoiselle de Lavedan, you will

let her know that I am not - not the Lesperon that is betrothed to

your sister.”

 

“I will inform her of it, monsieur,” he answered readily; and then,

of a sudden, a look of understanding and of infinite pity came into

his eyes. “My God!” he cried.

 

“What is it, monsieur?” I asked, staggered by that sudden outcry.

 

“Do not ask me, monsieur, do not ask me. I had forgotten for the

moment, in the excitement of all these revelations. But—” He

stopped short.

 

“Well, monsieur?”

 

He seemed to ponder a moment, then looking at me again with that

same compassionate glance, “You had better know,” said he.