The Abbess Of Vlaye

"Something," the Duke murmured near her ear, "has interrupted the even current of your thoughts, mademoiselle. What is it, I pray?"

"I feel the heat," she answered, holding her hand to her brow, that behind its shelter she might recover her composure. "Do not you?"

"It is like an oven," he answered, "within these earth-walls."

"How I hate them!" she cried, unable to repress the spirit of irritation.

"Do you? Well, so do I," he replied. "But within them-it is nowhere cooler than here."

"I will put that to the proof, my lord," she returned with a smile. And, gliding from him, in spite of the effort he made to detain her, she crossed the grass to her father. Sinking on the sward beside his stool, she began to fan herself.

The Vicomte was in an ill-humour of some days' standing; nor without reason. Dragged, will he nill he, from the house in which his whim had been law, he found himself not only without his comforts, but a cipher in the camp. Not once, but three or four times he had let his judgment be known, and he had looked to see it followed. He might have spoken to the winds. No one, not even his sons, though they listened respectfully, took heed of it. It followed that he saw himself exposed to dangers against which he was not allowed to guard himself, and to a catastrophe which he must await in inaction; while all he possessed stood risked on a venture that for him had neither interest nor motive.

In such a position a man of easier temper and less vanity might be pardoned if he complained. For the Vicomte, fits of senile rage shook him two or three times a day. He learned what it was to be thwarted: and if he hated any one or anything more than the filthy peasants on whom his breeding taught him to look with loathing, it was the man with whose success his safety was bound up, the man who had forced him into this ignominious position.

Of him he could believe no good. When the Abbess, after fanning herself in silence, mentioned the arrival of the Countess's troopers, and asked him if he thought that the Lieutenant was now strong enough to attack, he derided the notion.

"M. de Vlaye will blow this rabble to the winds," he said, with a contemptuous gesture. "We may grill here as long as we please, but the moment we show ourselves outside, pouf! It will be over! What can a handful of riders do against five hundred men as good as themselves?"

"But the peasants?" she suggested, willing to know the worst. "There are some hundreds of them."

"Food for steel!" he answered, with the same contemptuous pantomime.

"Then you think-we were wrong to come here?"

"I think, girl, that we were mad to come here. But not so mad," he continued spitefully, "as those who brought us!"

"Yet Charles thinks that the Governor of Périgord will prevail."

"Charles had his own neck in the noose," the Vicomte growled, "and was glad of company. Since Coutras it is the young lead the old, and the issue you will see. Lieutenant of Périgord? What has the Lieutenant of Périgord or any other governor to do with canaille such as this?"

Odette heaved a sigh of relief and her face lightened. "It will be better so," she said softly. "M. de Vlaye knows, sir, that we had no desire to hurt him, and he will not reckon it against us."

The Vicomte fidgeted in his stool. "I wish I could think so," he answered with a groan. "Curse him! Who is more to blame? If he had left the Countess alone, this would not have happened. They are no better one than the other! But what is this? Faugh!" And he spat on the ground.

There was excuse for his disgust. Across the open ground a group of men were making their way in the direction of the Lieutenant's quarters. They were the same men who had met him at the entrance on his return with the Abbess and Joyeuse: nor had the lapse of four or five days lessened the foulness of their aspect, or robbed them of the slinking yet savage bearing-as of beasts of prey half tamed-which bade beware of them. They shambled forward until they neared des Ageaux, who was writing at an improvised table not far from the Vicomte; then cringing they saluted him. Their eyes squinting this way and that from under matted locks-as if at a gesture they were ready to leap back-added to their beast-like appearance.

The Lieutenant's voice, as he asked the men with asperity what they needed, came clearly to the ears of the group about the Vicomte. But the Old Crocans' answer, expressed at length in a patois of the country, was not audible.

"Foul carrion!" the Vicomte muttered. "What do they here?" while the Abbess and Bonne, who had joined her, contemplated them with eyes of shuddering dislike.

"What, indeed?" Bonne muttered, her cheek pale. She seemed to be unable to take her eyes from them. "They frighten me! Oh, I hope they will not be suffered to remain in the camp!"

"Is it that they wish?" the Vicomte asked.

"Yes, my lord," Solomon answered: he had gone forward, listened awhile and returned. "They say that eleven more of their people were surprised by Vlaye's men three hours ago, and cut to pieces. This is the second time it has happened. They think that they are no longer safe on the hill, and wish to join us."

"God forbid!" Bonne cried, with a strange insistence.

The Abbess looked at her. "Why so frightened?" she said contemptuously. "One might suppose you were in greater danger than others, girl!"

Bonne did not answer, but her distended eyes betrayed the impression which the wretches' appearance made on her. Nor when Charles-who was seldom off the ridge which was his special charge-remarked that after all a man was a man, and they had not too many, could she refrain from a word. "But not those!" she murmured. "Not those!"

Charles, who in these days saw more of the Bat than of any one else, shrugged his shoulders. "I shall be surprised if he does not receive them," he answered. "They are vermin and may give us trouble. But we must run the risk. If we are to succeed we must run some risks."

Not that risk, however, it appeared. For he had scarcely uttered the words when des Ageaux was seen to raise his hand, and point with stern meaning to the entrance. "No," he said, his voice high and clear. "Begone to your own and look to yourselves! You chose to go your own way and a bloody one! Now your blood be on your own heads! Here is no place for you, nor will I cover you!"

"My lord!" one cried in protest. "My lord, hear us!"

"No!" the Lieutenant replied harshly. "You had your warning and did not heed it! M. de Villeneuve, when he came to you, warned you, and I warned you. It was your own will to withdraw yourselves. You would have naught but blood. You would burn and kill! Now, on your own heads," he concluded with severity, "be your blood!"

They would have protested anew, but he dismissed them with a gesture which permitted no denial. And sullenly, with stealthy gestures of menace, they retreated towards the entrance; and gabbling more loudly as they approached it, seemed to be imprecating vengeance on those who cast them out. In the gate they lingered awhile, turning about and scolding the man on guard. Then they passed out of sight, and were gone.

As the last of them disappeared des Ageaux, who had kept a vigilant eye on their retreat, approached the group about the Vicomte. The old man, though he approved the action, could not refrain from giving his temper vent.

"You are sure that you can do without them," he said, with a sneer. His shaking hand betrayed his dislike of the man to whom he spoke.

"I believe I can," the Lieutenant answered. He spoke with unusual gravity, but the next moment a smile-smiles had been rare with him of late-curved the corners of his mouth. His eyes travelled from one to another, and in a low voice, but one that betrayed his relief, "I will tell you why, if you wish to know, M. le Vicomte."

"Why?"

Des Ageaux' smile grew broader, but his tone remained low. "Because I have news," he returned. "And it is good news. I have had word within the last hour that I may expect M. de Joyeuse's levies about nightfall to-morrow, and a day or two later a reinforcement beyond my hope-fifty men-at-arms whom the Governor of Agen has lent me, and fifty from my garrison of Périgueux. With those we should have enough-though not too many."

They received the news with words of congratulation or with grunts of disdain, according as each felt about it. And all began to discuss the tidings, though still in the tone of caution which the Lieutenant's look enjoined. One only was silent, and with averted face saw the cup of respite dashed from her lips. A hundred men beyond those looked for! Such an accession must change hope to certainty, hazard to surety. A few days would enable the Lieutenant to match rider for rider with Vlaye, and still boast a reserve of four or five hundred undisciplined allies. While jubilant voices hummed in her ears, and those whom she was ready to kill because they hated him rejoiced, the Abbess rose slowly and, detaching herself from the group, walked away.

No one followed her even with the eye; for the Duke, fatigued, and a little hurt that she did not return, had retired into his quarters. Nor would the most watchful have learned much from her movements, or, unless jealous beyond the ordinary, have found aught to suspect in what she did.

She strolled very slowly along the foot of the slope, as if in pure idleness or to stretch limbs cramped by over-long sitting. Presently she came to some tethered horses, and stood and patted them, and looked them over; nor could any but the horses tell-and they could not speak-that while her hand was on them her eyes were roving the camp. Perhaps she found what she sought; perhaps it was chance only that guided her steps in the direction of the tall young man with pale eyes, whose violence had raised him to a certain leadership among the peasants.

It must have been chance, for when she reached his neighbourhood she did not address him. She stooped and-what could be more womanly or more natural? – she spoke to a naked child that rolled on the trampled turf within arm's length of him. What she said-in French or patois, or that infant language of which no woman's tongue is ignorant-the baby could not say, for, like the horses, it could not speak. Yet it must have found something unusual in her face, for it cowered from her, as in terror. And what she said could have no interest for the man who lounged near, though he seemed disturbed by it.

She toyed with the shrinking child a moment, then turned and walked slowly back to the Vicomte's quarters. Her manner was careless, but her face was pale. No wonder. For she had taken a step-and she knew it-which she could never retrace. She had done that which she could not undo. Between her and Bonne and Roger and Charles was a gulf henceforth, though they might not know it. And the Duke? She winced a little, recognising more plainly than before how far she stood below the notion he had of her.

Yet she felt no remorse. On the contrary, the uppermost feeling in her mind-and it ran riot there-was a stormy exultation. They who had dragged her at their chariot wheels would learn that in forcing her to take part against her lover they had made the most fatal of mistakes. They triumphed now. They counted on sure success now. They thought to hang him, as they would hang any low-bred thief! Very good! Let them wait until morning, and talk then of hanging!

Once or twice, indeed, in the afternoon she was visited by misgivings. The man she had seen was a mere savage; he might not have understood. Or he might betray her, though that could hurt her little since no one would believe him. Or the peasants, though wrought to fury, might recoil at the last like the cowards they were!

But these and the like doubts arose not from compunction, but from mistrust. Compunction was to come later, when evening fell and from the door of the Duke's quarters she viewed the scene, now familiar, of the hostages' departure in the dusk-saw the horses drawn up and the two whom she was dooming in act to mount. It was then that a sudden horror of what she was about seized her-she was young, a mere girl-and she rose with a stifled cry from her stool. It was not yet too late. A cry, a word would save them. Would save them still! Impulsively she moved a pace towards them, intending-ay, for a moment, intending to say that word.

But she stopped. A word would save them, but-she was forgetting-it would doom her lover! And on that thought, and to reinforce it, there rose before her mind's eye the pale puling features of the Countess-her rival! Was she to be put aside for a thing like that? Was it to such a half-formed child as that she must surrender her lover? She pressed her hands together, and, returning to her seat, she turned it about that her eyes might not see them as they went through the dusk.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE HEART OF CAIN

Seven hours had passed.

The moon had just dropped below the narrow horizon of the camp, but to eyes which looked up from the blackness of the hollow the form of the nearest sentinel, erect on the edge of the cup, showed plain against the paler background of sky. The hour was the deadest of the night; but, as the stillest night has its noises, the camp was not without noises. The dull sound of horses browsing, the breath of a thousand sleepers, the low whinny of a mare, or the muttered word of one who dreamed heavily and spoke in his dream, these and the like sounds fed a murmurous silence that was one with the brooding heaviness of a June night.

Odette de Villeneuve-the ears that drank in the voices of the slumbering host were hers-stood half-hidden in the doorway of her quarters and listened. The inner darkness had become intolerable to her. The wattled walls, though they were ventilated by a hundred crevices, stifled her. Pent behind them she fancied a hundred things; she saw on the curtain of blackness drawn faces and staring eyes; she made of the faintest murmur that entered now a roar of voices, and now the hoarse beginnings of a scream. Outside, with the cooler air fanning her burning face, she could at least lay hold on reality. She was no longer the sport and plaything of her own strained senses. She could at least be sure that nothing was happening, that nothing had happened-yet. And though she still breathed quickly and crouched like a fearful thing in the doorway, here she could call hate to her support, she could reckon her wrongs and think of her lover, and persuade herself that this was but a nightmare from which she would awake to find all well with herself and with him.

If only the thing were over and done! Ah, if only it were done! That was her feeling. If only the thing were done! She bent her ear to listen; but nothing stirred, no alarm clove the night; and it could want little of morning. She fancied that the air struck colder, laden with that chill which comes before the dawn: and eastwards she thought that she discerned the first faint lightening of the sky. The day was at hand and nothing had happened.

She could not say on the instant whether she was sorry or glad. But she was sure that she would be sorry when the sun rose high and shone on her enemy's triumph, and Charles and Roger and Bonne, whom she had taught herself to despise, saw their choice justified, and the side they had supported victorious. The triumph of those beneath us is hard to bear; and at that picture the Abbess's face grew hard, though there was no one to see it. The blood throbbed in her head as she thought of it; throbbed so loudly that she questioned the reality of a sound that a moment later forced itself upon her senses. It was a sound not unlike the pulsing of the blood; not terrible nor loud, but rhythmical, such as the tide makes when it rises slowly but irresistibly to fill some channel left bare at the ebb.

What was it? She stood arrested. Was it only the blood surging in her ears? Or was it the silent uprising of a multitude of men, each from the place where he lay? Or was it, could it be the stealthy march of countless feet across the camp?

It might be that. She listened more intently, staying with one hand the beating of her heart. She decided that it was that.

Thereon it was all she could do to resist the impulse to give the alarm. She had no means of knowing in which direction the unseen band was 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 whose first victim as they charged through the encampment she must be. She fancied that the darkness wavered; and here and there bred shifting forms. She fancied that the dull sound was drawing nearer and growing louder. And-a scream rose in her throat.

She choked it down. An instant later she had her reward, if that was a reward which left her white and shuddering-a coward clinging for support to the frail wall beside her.

It was a shrill scream rending the night; such an one as had distended her own throat an instant before-but stifled in mid-utterance in a fashion horrible and suggestive. Upon it followed a fierce outcry in several voices, cut short two seconds later with the same abruptness, and followed by-silence. Then, while she clung cold, shivering, half fainting to the wattle, the darkness gave forth again that dull shuffling, moving sound, a little quickened perhaps, and a little more apparent.

This time it caused an alarm. Sharp and clear came a voice from the ridge, "What goes there? Answer!"

No answer was given, and "Who goes there?" cried a voice from a different point, and then "To arms!" cried a third. "To arms! To arms!" 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 the Abbess. He seized a stick that hung beside a drum on a post, and in a twinkling the hurried notes of the Alert pulsed through the camp. On the instant men rose from the earth about him; while frightened faces, seen by the rays of a passing light, looked from hut-doors, and the cries of a waiting-maid struggling in hysterics mingled with the words of command that brought the troopers into line and manned the ground in front of the Vicomte's quarters. A trooper flew up the sloping rampart to learn from the sentry what he had seen, and was back as quickly with the news that the guards knew no more than was known below. They had only heard a suspicious outcry, and following on it sounds which suggested the movement of a body of men.

The Bat, bringing order out of confusion-and in that well aided by Roger, though the lad's heart was bursting with fears for his mistress-could do naught at the first blush but secure his position. But when he had got his men placed, and lanthorns so disposed as to advantage 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 the camp."

"Then out on them!" Roger exclaimed, unable to control himself. "Out on them. To saddle and let us charge, and woe betide them if they stand!"

"Softly, softly," the Bat said. "Orders, young sir! Mine are to stand firm, whatever betides, and guard the women! And that I shall do until daylight."

"Daylight?" Roger cried.

"Which is not half an hour off!"

"Half an hour!" The lad's tone rang with indignation. "Are you a man and will you leave a woman at their mercy?" He was white with rage and shaking. "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 heart was 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. In his high petulant tone he bade his son stand for a fool. "There are women here," he continued, sensibly enough, "and we are none too many to 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 itself felt rather than seen. "Pikes low! Pikes low! What is it?"

He saw then. The commotion was caused by the approach of a group of men, three or four in number, whose neighbourhood one of the lights had just betrayed. "Who comes there?" cried the leader of the Countess's troopers, who was in charge of that end of the line. "Are you friends?"

"Ay, ay! Friends!"

If so, they were timorous friends. For when they were bidden to advance to the spot where the Bat with the Vicomte and Roger awaited them, their alarm was plain. The foremost was the man who had spoken for the peasants at the debate some days before. But the smith's boldness and independence were gone; he was ashake with fear. "I have bad news," he stammered. "Bad news, my lords!"

"The worse for some one!" the Bat answered with a grim undernote that should have satisfied even Roger. As he spoke he raised one of the lights from the ground, and held it so that its rays fell on the peasants' faces. "Has harm happened to the hostages?"

"God avert it! But they have been carried off," the man faltered through his ragged beard. It was evident that he was thoroughly frightened.

"Carried off?"

"Ay, carried off!"

"By whom? By whom, rascal?" The Bat's eyes glared dangerously. "By Heaven, if you have had hand or finger in it-" he added.

"Should I be here if I had?" the man answered, piteously extending his open 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 will pay for it," the Bat continued. "What has happened, spawn of the dung-heap?"

"Some of our folk-God knows without our knowledge" – the smith whined-"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 shall follow with the first light. If a hair of their heads be injured, I shall hang you first, and the rest of you by batches as the trees will bear!" And with a black and terrible look the Bat swore an oath to chill the blood. The leader of the Countess's men repeated it after him, word for word; and Roger, silent but with rage in his eyes, stood shaking between them, his blade in his hand.

The Vicomte, his fears for the safety of his own party allayed, turned to see who were present. He discovered his eldest daughter, leaning as if 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 peril ourselves, and should set an example. Where is your sister?"

"I do not know," the Abbess replied shakily. It was being borne in on her that not two lives, but the lives of many, of scores and of hundreds, might pay for what she had done. And she was new to the work. "I have not seen her," she repeated with greater firmness, as she summoned hate to her support, and called up before her fancy the Countess's childish attractions. "She must be sleeping."

"Sleeping?" the Vicomte echoed in astonishment. He was going to add more when another took the words out of his mouth.

"What is that?" It was Roger's voice fiercely raised. "By Heaven! It is Fulbert."

It was Fulbert. As the men, of whom some were saddling-for the light was beginning to appear-pressed forward to look, the steward crawled out of the gloom about the brook, and, raising himself on one hand, made painful efforts to speak. He looked like a dead man risen; nor did the uncertain light of the lanthorns take from the horror of his appearance. Probably he had been left for dead, for the smashing blow of some blunt weapon had beaten in one temple and flooded his face and beard with blood. The Abbess, faint and sick, appalled by this first sign of her handiwork, hid her eyes.

"Follow! Follow!" the poor creature muttered, swaying as he strove to rise 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 those words in such a tone that it was plain that he no longer understood them, but said them mechanically. Perhaps they had been the last he had uttered before he was struck down.