From the Memoirs of a Minister of France, Stanley John Weyman [read along books txt] 📗

to the woman who was attending to her pot, a dozen heads were stretched out to catch the answer.

Such a feeling—to which, in this instance, the murmur of the stream and the steady downpour of rain doubtless added something—is so contagious that I was not surprised to find Colet and La Font sinking under it. Only Parabere, in fact, rose quite superior to the notion, laughed at their fears, and drank to their better spirits; and, making the best of the situation, as became an old soldier, presently engaged me in tales of the war—fought again the siege of Laon, and buried men whose bodies bad lain for ten years under the oaks at Fontaine Francoise.

Talk of this kind, which we still maintained after we had despatched our supper, was sufficiently engrossing to erase Boisrueil's fancies entirely from my mind. They were recalled by his sudden entrance, with Colet at his elbow, the faces of both full of importance. I saw that they had something to say, and asked what it was.

"We have been examining the back gate, M. le Marquis," Colet said.

"Well, man?"

"It is barricaded, and cannot be opened," he answered.

"Well," I said again, "there is nothing wonderful in that. Anyone can see that there has been rough work here. The front gate was stormed, I suppose, and the back one left standing."

"But if is so barricaded that it is not possible to open it," he objected. "And the men have an idea—"

"Well?" I said, seeing that he hesitated.

"That this is a one-eyed house."

Parabere laughed loudly. "Of course it is!" he said. "That strolling rogue saw the gate as well as the woman, and made his profit of them."

"Pardon, sir!" Boisrueil answered bluntly, "That is just what he did not do!"

"Well," I said, silencing him by a gesture, "is that all?"

"No," he replied; "I have tasted the men's wine."

"And it is drugged?"

"No," he said. "On the contrary, it is a great deal too good for the price—or the house. And you ordered a litre apiece. Some have had two, and not asked twice for it!"

"Ho, ho!" I said, staring at him. "Are you sure of that?"

"Quite!" he said.

I was genuinely startled at last; but Parabere still made light of it. "What!" he said. "Are we a pack of nervous women, or one poor traveller in a solitary inn, that we see shadows and shake at them?"

"The inn is solitary enough," Boisrueil grumbled.

"But we are twenty swords!" Parabere retorted, opening his eyes wide. "Why, I have ridden all day in an enemy's country with less!"

"And been beaten with more at Craon."

"But, man alive, that was in a battle, and by an army!"

"Well, and there may be a battle and an army here," Boisrueil answered sulkily.

I was inclined to laugh at this as extravagance; but seeing that La Font and Colet sided with Boisrueil, I remembered that the latter was no coward though a great gossip; and I thought better of it. Accordingly, resolving to look into the thing myself, I bade La Font fetch a couple of lanthorns, and, when he had done so, went out with him and Boisrueil as if I had a mind to go round the horses before I retired. Parabere declined to accompany me on the ground that he would not be at the pains of it; and Colet I left in the kitchen to keep an eye on the man and woman.

There was no moon, rain was still falling, and the yard, crowded with steaming, shivering horses, was dreary enough where the lanthorns displayed it; but, accustomed to such a sight, I made, without regarding it, for the gate, which a moment's examination showed to be barricaded, as they had described, with great beams and stones. In this there was nothing beyond the ordinary, one entrance to a house being in troublous times better than two; but Boisrueil, bidding me kneel and look lower, I found, when I did so, that the soil under the beams—which did not touch the ground by some inches—was wet, and I began to understand. When he asked me at what hour rain had begun to fall, I answered two in the afternoon, and drew at once the inference at which he aimed—that the beams had been put there, and the gate barricaded, at some later hour.

"We reached here at six," he said; "it was done some time between two and six, my lord; therefore to-day. To-day," he repeated in a low voice; "and by a dozen men at least, Fewer could not move those beams."

"And the object?"

"To prevent our escape."

"But who are they?" I said, looking at him.

"The woman knows," he answered. "We must ask her, my lord."

I assented; and we went back into the house, where it would not have surprised me if we had found the wretches flown and the nest empty. But Colet had done his work too well. They were both there, and, in a moment, at a signal from Boisrueil, were secured and pinioned. Parabere, hearing the scuffle, came out and would have remonstrated, but I silenced him with a sharp word; and, despatching La Font with a couple of discreet men to keep watch in the court that we might not be surprised, I bade one of the servants throw some fir-cones on the fire. These, blazing up, filled the squalid room in a moment with a glare of light, which revealed alike the livid faces of the two prisoners and the excited looks and dark countenances of my escort.

I bade them put the woman forward first, and addressed her sternly, telling her that I knew all, and that she would do well to confess; inasmuch as if she made a clean breast of the matter, I would grant her her life, and if she did not, she would be the first to die, since I would hang her were a single shot fired against the house.

The promise found her unmoved, but the threat, uttered in a tone which showed that I was in earnest, proved more effectual. With an ugly look, under which my men shrank as if her eye had power to scorch them, the hag said that she would confess, and, with impotent rage, admitted the truth of Boisrueil's surmises. The rearward gate had been barricaded that afternoon by the Great Band, who had had notice of our coming, and intended to attack us at midnight. I asked her how many they mustered.

"A hundred," she answered sullenly.

"Very well," I said. "And, supposing that we do not wait for them, how shall we escape? By the road to Gueret?"

"Fifty lie in ambush on it."

"By the road by which we came?"

"The other fifty lie there."

"Across the river?"

"There is no ford."

"Then in the village? If we seize some other building?"

"The village is watched, and this house," she answered, with a sparkle of joy in her eye.

At that the position began to assume so serious an aspect that I turned to Parabere to take his advice. We numbered twenty in all, and were well armed; but five to one are large odds, and we had little ammunition, while, for all we knew, the house might be fired with ease from the outside. The roads north and south being occupied, and the river enclosing us on the west, there remained only one direction in which escape seemed possible; but, as we knew nothing of the country, and the brigands everything, the desperate idea of plunging into it blindly, at night, and with pursuers at our heels, was dismissed as soon as formed.

Parabere interrupted these calculations by drawing me aside into the room in which we had supped, where, after rallying me on the whimsical notion of the Grand Master of the Ordnance and Governor of the Bastile being besieged in a paltry inn, he confessed that he had been wrong, and that the adventure was likely to prove serious. "Ten to one this is the very band that Bareilles is pursuing," he said.

"Very likely," I answered bluntly; "but the question is how are we to evade them. Are we to fight or fly?"

"Well, for lighting," he replied coolly; "the front gate lies in the road, there are no shutters to half the windows, the door is crazy, and there is a thatched pent-house against one wall."

"And no help-nearer than Gueret."

"Three leagues," he assented. "And from that we are cut off. Fifty men in the gorge might hold it against five hundred. Better man the courtyard here than that, tether the horses in the gateway, and fight it out."

"Perhaps so," I said; and we looked at one another, hearing through the open door the men muttering and whispering in the kitchen, and above their voices the dull murmur of the stream, which seemed of a piece with the bleak night outside, the ruined hamlet, and the danger that lurked round us. Bitterly repenting the hardihood that had led me to expose myself to such risks in breach of the King's commandment, I found it difficult to direct my mind to the immediate question. So many reflections connected with my mission at Chatelherault and other affairs of state would intrude that I seemed to be occupied rather with the results of my death at this juncture, and particularly the injury which it must inflict on the King's service, than with the question how I could escape.

However, Parabere soon recalled me to the point. "It is now ten o'clock," he said in a placid tone; "we have two hours."

"Yes," I answered; then, as if my mind had all the time been running in an under-current to the desired goal, I continued, "And we must make the most of them. We must remove the barricade, in the dark and quietly, from the rear to the front gate. Do you see? Then the moment they sound the attack in front we must slip out at the back, make a dash for the road, and through the gorge to Gueret."

"Good," Parabere assented, with the utmost coolness. "Why not? Let us do it."

We went in, and in a moment the orders were given, and, the men being charged to be silent and to make as little noise as possible over the work, we had every hope of accomplishing it undetected. To go out into the road and raise and replace the shattered gate would have been too bold a step. We contented ourselves, therefore, with removing four great baulks of timber from the one gate to the other, and placing them across the gap in such a manner that, being supported by large stones, they formed a pretty high barrier. To these, at Boisrueil's suggestion, were added three doors which we forced from their hinges in the house, and behind the whole, to cover our retreat the better, we tethered six sumpter horses in two lines.

It remained only to unbar the rear gate and see that it opened easily. This being done, as we had done all the rest, stealthily and in darkness, and by men who dared not speak above a whisper, I gave the word to hang the male prisoner and gag and bind the woman. Colet undertook these duties, and with a grim humour of his own hung the rascally host on the threshold where the brigands must run against him when they entered. Then I directed every man to saddle and bridle his nag and stand by it, and so we waited with what patience we might for the DENOUEMENT.

It seemed very long in coming, yet when it did, what with the restless movements of the horses and the melancholy murmur of the stream, it well-nigh took us by surprise. It was Boisrueil who touched my sleeve and made me aware of a low trampling on the road outside, a sound that had scarcely become clearly audible before it ceased. I judged that the moment was come, and passed the word in a whisper to open the gates. Unfortunately, they creaked, and I feared for a moment that I had been premature; but before they were more than ajar a harsh whistle startled the silence, a flare blazed up on the road, and a voice cried to charge.

On the instant the ground shook under the assailants' rush, but the barricade, which doubtless took the rogues by surprise, brought them to a sudden stop, and gave us time to file out. The heavy rain which was failing served to cover our movements almost as well as the baggage horses which we had posted for the