CHAPTER XXIV.
ARMES! ARMES!
Claude did not know all that he had done, or the narrow margin of timeby which he had succeeded. But he did know that he had saved the gate;that gate on the outer side of which four thousand of the picked troopsof Savoy were waiting the word to enter. He knew that he had done itwith death at his elbow and with the cries of his panic-stricken comradein his ears. And in the moment of success he rose above the commonlevel. He felt himself master of fear, lord of death; in the exultationof his triumph he thought nothing too hard or too dangerous for him.
It was well perhaps that he had this feeling, for he had not a moment towaste if he would save himself. As the portcullis struck the ground witha thunderous crash and rebounded, and he turned from the winch to thestairhead, a last warning, cut short in the utterance, reached him, andhe saw through the gloom that his companion was already in the grip of afigure which had succeeded in passing out of the staircase. Claude didnot hesitate. With a roar of rage he ran like a bull at the enemy,struck him full under the arm with his pike, and drove him doubled upinto the stairhead, with such force that the Genevese had much ado tofree himself.
The man was struck helpless--dead for aught that appeared at the moment.But the pike coming in contact with the edge of his corselet had notpenetrated, and Claude recovered it quickly, and levelled it in waitingfor the next comer. At the same time he adjured his comrade to securethe fallen man's weapon. The guard seized it, and the two waited, withsuspended breath, for the sally which they were sure must come.
But the stairs were narrow, the fallen body blocked the outlet, andpossibly the assailants had expected no resistance. Finding it, theythought better of it. A moment and they could be heard beating aretreat.
"Pardieu! they are going!" the guard exclaimed; and he began to shake.
"Ay, but they will return!" Claude answered grimly. "Have no fear ofthat! The portcullis is down, and the only way to raise it, is up thesestairs. But it will be hard if, armed as we are now, we cannot bafflethem! Has he no pistol?"
Marcadel--that was the soldier's name--felt about the prostrate man, butfound none; and bidding him listen and not move for his life--but therewas little need of the injunction--Claude passed over to the inner edgeof the roof, facing the Corraterie. Here he raised his voice and shoutedthe alarm with all the force of his lungs, hoping thus to supplement thecries which here and there had been raised by the Savoyards.
"Aux Armes! Armes!" he cried. "The enemy is at the gate! To arms! Toarms!"
A man ran out of the gateway at the sound of his shouting, levelled amusket and fired at him. The slugs flew wide, and Claude, lifted abovehimself, yelled defiance, knowing that the more shots were fired themore quickly and widely would the alarm be spread.
That it was spreading, that it was being taken up, his position on thegateway enabled him to discern, distant as the Porte Neuve lay from theheart of the town. A flare of light at the rear of the Tertasse, and aconfused hub-bub in that quarter, seemed to show that, though theSavoyards had seized the gate, they had not penetrated beyond it. Awayon his extreme left, where the Porte de la Monnaye, hard by his oldbastion, overlooked the Rhone and the island, were lights again, and asound of a commotion as though there too the enemy held the gate, butfound farther progress closed against them. On the Treille to his right,the most westerly of the three inner gates, and the nearest to the TownHall, the enemy seemed to be preparing an attack, for as he ceased toshout, muskets exploded in that direction; and as far as he could judgethe shots were aimed outwards.
With such alarms at three inner points--to say nothing of the noise atthe more distant Porte Neuve--it seemed impossible that any part of thecity could remain in ignorance of the attack. In truth, as he stoodpeering down into the dark Corraterie, and listening to the heavy trampof unseen feet, now here, now there, and the orders that rose fromunseen throats--even as he prepared to turn, summoned by a warning cryfrom Marcadel, the first note of the alarm-bell smote his ear.
One moment and the air hummed with its heavy challenge, and all ofGeneva that still slept awoke and stood upright. Men ran half naked fromtheir houses. Boys in their teens snatched arms and sallied forth. Whitefaces looked into the night from barred windows or lofty dormers; andacross narrow wynds and under dark Gothic entries men dragged hugechains and hooked them, and hurried on to where the alarm seemed loudestand the risk most pressing. In an instant in pitch-dark alleys lightsgleamed and steel jarred on stone; out of the darkness deep voicesshouted questions, or answered or gave orders, and from a thousandhouses, alike in the wealthy Bourg du Four with its three-storied pilesand in the sordid lanes about the water and the bridges, went up onewail of horror and despair. Men who had dreamed of this night for years,and feared it as they feared God's day, awoke to find their dream afact, and never while they lived forgot that awakening. While women leftalone in their homes bolted and barred and fell to prayers; or claspedto their breasts babes who prattled, not understanding the turmoil, orwhy their mothers looked strangely on them.
Something of this, something of the horror of that sudden awakening, andof the confusion in the narrow streets, where voices cried that theenemy were here or there or in a third place, and the bravest knew notwhich way to turn, penetrated to Claude on the roof of the tower; and atthe thought of Anne and the perils that encircled her--for about thehouse in the Corraterie the uproar rose loudest--his heart melted. Buthe had not long to dwell on her peril; not long to dwell on anything.Before the great bell had hurled its warning abroad three times he hadto go. Marcadel's voice, urgent, insistent, summoned him to thestairhead.
"They are mustering at the bottom!" the man whispered over his shoulder.He was on his knees, his head in the hood of the staircase. The woundedman, breathing stertorously, still cumbered the upper steps. Marcadelrested one hand on him.
Claude thrust in his head and listened. He could hear, above the thickbreathing of the Savoyard, the stir of men muttering and moving in thedarkness below; and now the stealthy shuffle of feet, and again thefaint clang of a weapon against the wall. Doubtless it had dawned onsome one in command below, that here on this tower lay the keys ofGeneva: that by themselves three hundred men could not take, nor hold ifthey took, a town manned by five or six thousand; consequently that ifSavoy would succeed in the enterprise so boldly begun, she must by hookor crook raise this portcullis and open this gate. As a fact,Brunaulieu, the captain of the forlorn hope, had passed the word thatthe tower must be taken at any cost; and had come himself from the PorteTertasse, where a brisk conflict was beginning, to see the thing done.
Claude did not know this, but had he known it, it would not have reducedhis courage.
"Yes, I hear them," he whispered in answer to the soldier's words. "Butthey have not mounted far yet. And when they come, if two pikes cannothold this doorway which they can pass but one at a time, there is notruth in Thermopylae!"
"I know naught of that," the other answered, rising nervously to hisfeet. "I don't favour heights. Give me the lee of a wall and fairodds----"
"Odds?" Claude echoed vain-gloriously--but only the stars attended tohim--"I would not have another man!"
Marcadel seized him by the sleeve. His voice rose almost to a scream."But, by Heaven, there is another man!" he cried. "There!" He pointedwith a shaking hand to the outer corner of the leads, in theneighbourhood of the place where the winch of the portcullis stood. "Weare betrayed! We are dead men!" he babbled.
Claude made out a dim figure, crouching against the battlement; and thethought, which was also in Marcadel's mind, that the enemy had set aladder against the wall and outflanked them, rendered him desperate. Atany rate there was but one on the roof as yet: and quick as thought theyoung man lowered his pike and charged the figure.
With a shrill scream the man fell on his knees before him. "Mercy!"cried a voice he knew. "Mercy! Don't kill me! Don't kill me!"
It was Louis Gentilis. Claude halted, looked at him in amazement,spurned him with his
foot. "Up, coward, and fight for your life then!"he said. "Or others will kill you. How come you here?"
The lad still grovelled. "I was in the guard-room," he whimpered. "I hadcome with a message--from the Syndic."
"The Syndic Blondel?"
"Yes! To remind the Captain that he was to go the rounds at elevenexactly. It was late when I got there and they--oh, this dreadfulnight--they broke in, and I, hid on the stairs."
"Well, you can hide no longer. You have got to fight now!" Claudeanswered grimly, "There are no more stairs for any of us except toheaven! I advise you to find something, and do your worst. Take thewinch-bar if you can find nothing else! And----"
He broke off. Marcadel, who had remained at the stairhead, was callingto him in a voice that could no longer be resisted--a voice of despair.Claude ran to him. He found him with his head in the stairway, but withhis pike shortened to strike. "They are coming!" he muttered over hisshoulder. "They are more than half-way up now. Be ready and keep youreyes open. Be ready!" he continued after a pause. "They are nearly--herenow!" His breath began to come quickly; at last stepping back a pace andbringing his point to the charge. "They are here!" he shouted. "Onguard!"
Claude stooped an inch lower, and with gleaming eyes, and feet setwarily apart, waited the onset; waited with suspended breath for thecharge that must come. He could hear the gasps of the wounded man wholay on the uppermost step; and once close to him he caught a sound ofshuffling, moving feet, that sent his heart into his mouth. But secondspassed, and more seconds, and glare as he might into the black mouth ofthe staircase, from which the hood averted even the light of the stars,he could make out nothing, no movement, no sign of life!
The suspense was growing intolerable. And all the time behind him thealarm-bell was flinging "Doom! Doom!" down on the city, and a thousandsounds of fear and strife clutched at his mind and strove to draw itfrom the dark gap at which he waited, as a dog waits for a rat at themouth of its hole. His breath began to come quickly, his knees shook. Heheard his companion gasp--human nerves could stand it no longer. Andthen, just as he felt that, come what might, he must plunge his pikeinto the darkness, and settle the question, the shuffling sound cameanew and steadied him, and he set his teeth and waited--waited still.
But nothing happened, nothing moved. Again the seconds, almost theminutes passed, and the deep note of the alarm-bell swelled louder andheavier, filling all the air, all the night, all the world, with itsiron tongue--setting the tower reeling, the head swimming. In spite ofhimself, in spite of the fact that he knew his life hung on hisvigilance, his thoughts wandered; wandered to Anne, alone anddefenceless in that hell below him, from which such wild sounds werebeginning to rise; to his own fate if he and Marcadel got the worst; tothe advantage a light properly shaded would have given them, had theyhad it. But, alas, they had no light.
And then, while he thought of that, the world was all light. A sheet offlame burst from the hood, dazzled, blinded, scorched him; a crashingreport filled his ears; he recoiled. The ball had missed him, had gonebetween him and Marcadel and struck neither. But for a moment in pureamazement, he stood gaping.
That moment had been his last had the defence lain with him only, oreven with him and Marcadel. It was the senseless form that cumbered theuppermost step which saved them. The man who had fired tripped over itas he sprang out. He fell his length on the roof. The next man, lesshasty or less brave, sank down on the obstacle, and blocked the way forothers.
Before either could rise all was over. Claude brought down his pike onthe head of the first to issue, and laid him lifeless on the leads. Theguard, who was a better man at a pinch than in the anticipation of it,drove the other back--as he tried to rise--with a wound in the face.Then with a yell, assured that in the narrow stairhead the enemy couldnot use their weapons, the two charged their pikes into the obscurity,and thrust and thrust, and thrust again, in the cruelty of rage andfear.
What they struck, or where they struck, they could not see; but theirears told them that they did not strike in vain. A shrill scream and thegurgling cry of a dying man proved it, and the wild struggle that ensuedon the stairs; where the uppermost, weighed down by the fallen men,turned in a panic on those below and fought with them to force them todescend.
Claude shuddered as he listened, as he waited, his pike still levelled;shuddered at the pitiful groaning that issued from the blackness,shuddered at the blows he had struck, and the scream that still echoedin his ears. He had not trembled when he fought, but he trembled at thethought of it.
"They are beaten," he muttered huskily.
"Ay, they are beaten!" Marcadel--he who had trembled before thefight--answered with exultation. "You were right. We wanted no more men!But it was near. If this rogue had not tripped our throats would havesuffered."
"He was a brave man," Claude answered, leaning heavily on his pike. Heneeded its support.
Marcadel knelt down and felt the man over. "Ay," he said, "he was, togive the devil his due! And that reminds me. We've a skulker here whohas escaped so far. He shall play his part now. We must have their arms,but it is dirty work groping in the dark for them; and maybe life enoughin one of them to drive a dagger between one's ribs. He shall do it.Where is he?"
Claude was feeling the reaction which ensues upon intense excitement. Hedid not answer. Nor did he interfere when Marcadel, pouncing on Louis,where he crouched in the darkest corner, forced him forward to the headof the staircase. There the lad fell on his knees weeping futilely,wailing prayers. But the guard kicked him forward.
"In!" he said. "You know what you have to do! In, and strip them! Do youhear? And if you leave as much as a knife----"
"I won't! I daren't!" Louis screamed. And grovelling on his face on theleads he clung to whatever offered itself.
But men who have just passed through a life and death struggle, arehard. "You won't?" Marcadel answered, applying his boot brutally, butwithout effect. "You will! Or you will feel my pike between your ribs!In! In, my lad!"
A scream answered each repetition of the word, and proved that thethreat was no empty one. Claude might have intervened, but he rememberedAnne and the humiliations she had suffered in this craven's presence.
"In!" Marcadel repeated a third time. "And if you leave so much as aknife upon them I will throw you off the tower. You understand, do you?Then in, and strip them!"
And driven by sheer torture--for the pike had thrice drawn blood fromhis writhing body--Louis crept, weeping and quaking, into the staircase;and on one of her tormentors Anne was avenged. But Claude was thinkingmore of her present peril than of this; he had moved from the stairhead.A swell in the volume of sound which rose from the Corraterie had drawnhim to that side of the tower, where shaking off the exhaustion whichfor a time had overcome him, he was straining his eyes to learn what waspassing in the babel below.
The sight was a singular one. The Monnaye Gate far to the left, theTertasse immediately before him, and the Treille on his right, were thecentres of separate conflagrations. In one place a house, fired by thepetard employed to force the door, was actually alight. In other placesso great was the conflux of torches, the flash and gleam of weapons, andthe babel of sounds that it wrought on the mind the impression of a fireblazing up in the night. Behind the Porte Tertasse, in the narrowstreets of the Tertasse and the Cite--immediately, therefore, behind theRoyaumes' house--the conflict seemed to rage most hotly, the shots to bemost frequent, the uproar greatest, even the light strongest; for thereflection of the combat below bathed the Tertasse tower in a luridglow. Claude could distinguish the roof of the Royaumes' house; and tosee so much yet to be cut off as completely as if he stood a hundredmiles away, to be so near yet so hopelessly divided, stung him to a newimpatience and a greater daring.
He returned to Marcadel. "Are we going to stay on this tower?" he cried."Shut up here, while this goes forward and we may be of use?"
"I think we have done our part," the other answered soberly. "If any manhas saved Geneva, it is you! Ther
e, man, I give you the credit," hecontinued, in a burst of generosity, "and it is no small thing! For itmight make my fortune. But I have done some little too!"
"Ay! But cannot we----"
"What would you have us do more?" the man continued, and with reason."Leave the roof to them? 'Tis all they want! Leave them to raise the oldiron grate, and let in--what I hear yonder?" He indicated the darkerouter plain below the wall, whence rose the murmur of halted battalions,waiting baffled, and uncertain, the opening of the gate.
"Ay, but if we descend?"
"May we not win the gate from a score?" Marcadel answered, betweencontempt and admiration. "Is that what you mean? And when we have wonit, hold it? No, not if each of us were Gaston of Foix, Bayard, and M.de Crillon rolled into one! But what is this? We are winning or we arelosing! Which is it?"
From the Treille Gate had burst a rabble of men; a struggling crowdillumined by the glare of three or four lights. Pikes and halberdsflashed in the heart of the mob as it swirled and struggled down theCorraterie in the direction of the gate from which the two men viewedit. Half-way thither, in the open, its progress seemed to be checked; ithung and paused, swaying this way and that; it recoiled. But at length,with a roar of triumph, it rolled on anew over half a dozen prostrateforms, and in a trice burst about the base of the Porte Neuve, swept, asit seemed to those above, into the gateway, and--in a twinkling brokeback, repelled by a crashing volley that shook the tower.
"They are our people!" cried Claude.
"Ay!"
"And now is our time!" The lad waved his weapon. "A diversion in therear--and 'tis done!"
"In Heaven's name stop!" cried Marcadel, and he gripped Claude's sleeve."A diversion, ay!" he continued. "But a moment too soon or a moment toolate--and where will we be?"
He spoke in vain. His words were wasted on the air. Claude, not to berestrained, had entered the staircase. Pike in hand he felt his way overthe bodies that choked it; by this time he was half-way down the stairs.Marcadel hesitated, waited a moment, listened; then, partly becausesuccess begets success, and courage courage, partly because he would nothave the triumph taken from him, he too risked all. He snatched fromGentilis' feeble hands a long pistol, part of the spoils of thestaircase; and, staying only to assure himself that a portion of thepriming still lay in the pan, he hurried after his leader.
By this time Claude was within four stairs of the guard-room. The lowdoor that admitted to it stood open; and towards it a man, hearing thehasty tread of feet, had that moment turned a startled face. There wasno room for anything but audacity, and Claude did not flinch. In twobounds, he hurled himself through the door on to the man, missed himwith his pike--but was himself missed. In a flash the two were rollingtogether on the floor.
In their fall they brought down a third man, who, swearing horribly,made repeated stabs at Claude with a dagger. But the only light in theroom came from the fire, the three were interlaced, and Claude was youngand agile as an eel: he evaded the first thrust, and the second. Thethird went home in his shoulder, but desperate with pain he seized thehand that held the poniard, and clung to it; and before the man who hadbeen the first to fall could regain his pike, or a third man who waspresent, but who was wounded, could drag himself, swearing horribly, tothe spot, Marcadel fired from the stairs, and killed the wounded man.The next instant with a yell of "Geneva!" he sprang on the others undercover of the smoke that filled the room.
The combat was still but of two to two; and without the guard-room butalmost within arm's length, were a dozen Savoyards, headed by Picot theengineer; any one of whom might, by entering, turn the scale. But thepistol-shot had come to the ears of the attacking party: that instant,guessing that they had allies within, they rallied and with loud criesreturned to the attack. Even while Marcadel having disposed of one more,stood over the struggling pair on the floor, doubting where to strike,the burghers burst a second time into the gateway--on which theguard-room opened--struck down Picot, and, hacking and hewing, withcries of "Porte Gagnee! Porte Gagnee!" bore the Savoyards back.
For the half of a minute the low-groined archway was a whirl of arms andsteel and flame. Half a dozen single combats were in progress at once;amid yells and groans, and the jar and clash of a score of weapons. Butthe burghers, fighting bareheaded for their wives and hearths, were notto be denied; by-and-by the Savoyards gave back, broke, and savedthemselves. One fierce group cut its way out and fled into the darknessof the Corraterie. Of the others four men remained on the ground, whiletwo turned and tried to retreat into the guard-room.
But on the threshold they met Claude, vicious and wounded, his eyes in aflame; and he struck and killed the foremost. The other fell under theblows of the pursuing burghers, and across the two bodies Claude andMarcadel met their allies, the leaders of the assault. Strange to say,the foremost and the midmost of these was a bandy-legged tailor, with agreat two-handed sword, red to the hilt; to such a place can valour onsuch a night raise a man. On his right stood Blandano, Captain of theGuard, bareheaded and black with powder; on his left Baudichon thecouncillor, panting, breathless, his fat face running with sweat andblood--for he bore an ugly wound--but with unquenchable courage in hiseyes. A man may be fat and yet a lion.
It was a moment in the lives of the five men who thus met which none ofthem ever forgot. "Was it one of you two who lowered the portcullis?"Blandano gasped, as he leaned an instant on his sword.
"He did," Marcadel answered, laying his hand on Claude's shoulder. "AndI helped him."
"Then he has saved Geneva, and you have helped him!" Blandano rejoinedbluntly. "Your name, young man."
Claude told him.
"Good!" Blandano answered. "If I live to see the morning light, it shallnot be forgotten!"
Baudichon leant across the dead, and shook Claude's hand. "For the womenand children!" he said, his fat face shaking like a jelly; though no manhad fought that night with a more desperate valour. "If I live to seethe morning inquire for Baudichon of the council."
Jehan Brosse, the bandy-legged tailor with the huge sword--he was butfive feet high and no one up to that night had known him for ahero--squared his shoulders and looked at Claude, as one who takesanother under his protection. "Baudichon the councillor, whom all menknow in Geneva," he said with an affectionate look at the great man--hewas proud of the company to which his prowess had raised him. "You willnot forget the name! no fear of that! And now on!"
"Ay, on!" Blandano answered, looking round on his panting followers, ofwhom some were staunching their wounds and some, with dark faces andgleaming eyeballs, were loading and priming their arms. "But I thinkthe worst is over and we shall win through now. We have this gate safe,and it is the key, as I told you. If all be well elsewhere, and the mainguards be held----"
"Ay, but are they?" Baudichon muttered nervously: he reeled a little,for the loss of blood was beginning to tell upon him. "That is thequestion!"
The Long Night Page 24
