Classic Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories

by Stephen Brennan

  To Constans’s indignant amazement the peddler stepped forward, as though to take the vacant seat alongside of Issa. But before Constans could move or speak the chapman appeared to recognize the propriety of which he had been so nearly guilty; with a profound genuflection, he withdrew from the dais and found a place at the lower table. The incident had been so momentary that it had passed entirely unnoticed by his father and the Lady Rayne; Constans could not even be sure that Issa had understood, and certainly she gave no sign of discomposure.

  “What presumption!” muttered Constans, under his breath. “These fellows are becoming more insufferable every day, and my father sees nothing.” Constans resolved that the man should be packed off immediately upon the conclusion of the meal. He could easily persuade Sir Gavan that the fellow had none too honest a look, while his wares were assuredly the cheapest trash. He must be got rid of before the women had been beguiled into spending all their pin-money.

  The repast dragged out to its end, and the women withdrew to the upper end of the hall, comparative privacy being secured by large leather screens set up along the edge of the dais. The men remained at the table for deeper potations and the smoking of rank black kinnectikut tobacco in huge wooden pipes.

  A heavy thunderstorm, the first of the season, had come up, and Constans recognized, to his vexation, that he would have no decent excuse for turning the peddler out-of-doors. So he kept his seat at the table in sulky silence, watching the man closely, and ready to note anything of further suspicion in his actions and bearing. But he had his trouble for his pains, for the fellow was the itinerant chapman to the life, even to the stock of gross stories with which he kept his bucolic audience in an uninterrupted guffaw. Pah! Would Sir Gavan never finish his second pipe and give the signal to rise?

  The storm had turned into a heavy downpour, and the peddler was consequently sure of his night’s lodging. He had been summoned again to the presence of the ladies, and, as before, Constans stood aloof and wondered irritably how his fastidious sister could find aught in common with this wayside huckster. She was talking to him now with an animation rare with her, her checks flushed and her eyes glowing.

  “And you have been in Doom—in the city itself?” she asked, incredulously.

  “Yes, gracious lady; and not once, but a score of times. The brocades that I promised to show you after supper will be my witness. And there are some superlative satin and silk lengths which my Lady Rayne wished particularly to see. Will you allow me, then?”

  The peddler, opening an inner compartment of his pack, drew out several pieces of stuff wrapped up in brown linen. Removing the covering, he spread the goods upon the rug before the ladies, holding up each separate piece to the light and expatiating upon its merits in the approved fashion of the shopman. The two women gave a little gasp of astonishment; never had they seen such wondrous beauty of color and finish; their little market-town of Croye held nothing to compare to this.

  “I must send for Meta to advise me,” said the Lady Rayne, glancing fondly from one rich fabric to another. “She ought to know good silk when she sees it, after living so long in Croye; and you, Issa, seem strangely indifferent tonight. You hardly looked at this piece of brocade.”

  Meta, the Lady Rayne’s bedwoman, speedily appeared, and mistress and maid fell into earnest converse. Issa, as in duty bound, listened; then her attention seemed to flag again. She bent over the open pack and picked up a chain of filigree work. It was beautifully fashioned and looked like gold.

  “It is gold,” said the chapman, answering the question in her eyes. “The pure gold of the ancients; you never see that pale yellow nowadays. Ah, yes, a pretty trinket to have brought from the heart of Doom for the delight of a fair woman’s eyes, and well worth its price of a man’s life. But, then, fortune was kind, and I did not have to pay.”

  “Tell me about it,” said the girl, beseechingly, and her breath came short and hot.

  Whereupon the chapman drew a little nearer and began a wondrous tale of a secret visit that he had lately made to Doom, the Forbidden; of how he had crossed the river on a raft, the moon being in its dark quarter; of his landing upon a shaking wharf, where each foot-fall left a print of phosphorescent fire on the rotting planks; then of the marvels that he had seen there—vast warehouses covering whole acres of ground and filled with incalculable store of goods; lofty buildings, whose chimney-pots were in the clouds; palaces of sculptured stone, now empty and despoiled, the habitation of foxes and unclean nocturnal creatures.

  Then again of hidden treasure, heaps and heaps of yellow gold; of the fierce Doomsmen who guarded it so well; of pitfalls and gins and siren voices that lured the soul astray; of ghastly shapes that crept along the crumbling walls; of mystery in every sound and shadow; of treacheries and alarms and the ever present terror of death—a tale of amazing wonder, at which the blood ran alternately warm and cold and the heart fluttered with a certain fearful joy.

  How the maid hung upon the word, her little breasts heaving and her lips parted! “You have seen all these things?” she panted. “How wonderful! And you were not afraid? That was like a man—to be brave——” She blushed deeply, stammered, and turned to the neglected brocades. Constans, standing close at hand, was moved to new anger. The impertinent, how dared he! Yet he had listened himself, and in spite of himself, for assuredly the fellow talked well.

  The evening was now well advanced and the customary hour of retirement was at hand. It was still raining, but Guyder Touchett, who came in dripping from his nightly task of posting the watch, remarked that the wind was changing and that it was likely to clear when the moon rose. Of course the peddler would now spend the night at the keep, and at his own request he was allowed to remain in the hall, a straw pallet being brought in for his accommodation.

  “The Rat’s-Hole!”

  Constans repeated the words half aloud, holding the paper close to the guttering candle. It was but a tiny scrap, scarce large enough for the writing that it held. But paper of any kind is rare in these days, and so the gleam of white had caught his eye as he went upstairs to his sleeping apartment. The handwriting was unfamiliar, and besides it was in back-hand, and it may be disguised as well; he was hardly an expert in such fine distinctions. But it was plainly a message, and its possible import startled him. For the Rat’s-Hole was the secret exit that existed behind the jamb of the fireplace at the upper end of the hall. So cunningly had the panelled door been joinered into the wainscoting that a man might search for hours and yet not discover the spring that threw it open. Furthermore, the wainscoting was but a screen for the real door of iron-bound oak giving passage directly through the outer wall of the keep to the open country. A jealously guarded secret, this matter of the Rat’s-Hole, and supposed to be known only to the master of the household and his immediate family. Even among them its existence was never referred to in ordinary conversation, while its actual use was restricted to the gravest of emergencies.

  “The Rat’s-Hole!” A message, an agreement, an appointment? By whose hand had these words been written? For whose eye had they been intended?

  It would have been the wiser course to have communicated at once with Sir Gavan, but the latter, feeling somewhat indisposed, had retired early, and Constans hesitated to disturb him. Moreover, the boy stood in awe of his father, and of late a feeling of estrangement had been growing up between them. To Sir Gavan, Constans, with his dreamy, inactive nature, was a keen disappointment—so different from his brother Tennant. And Constans felt that his father did not understand him nor, indeed, cared to do so. Latterly, they had gone their own ways, and now at this perplexing juncture Constans could not bring himself to take his father into his confidence.

  When, a few moments later, the lights had been formally extinguished for the night, Constans made his way back to the hall; he had to pass close by the pallet occupied by the peddler, and he paused an instant to listen to his deep and measured breathing. Surely the man slept.

  Even i
n the dark Constans knew how to put his hand on the spring in the wainscoting, and it yielded to his touch. It was discomposing to find the key of the real door standing, ready for turning, in the lock. In theory, the key was never out of the master’s immediate possession. An oversight, then? Constans’s mind reverted to the one occasion in his remembrance on which the Rat’s-Hole had been used, that day a fortnight back, when his sister Issa came out of the birch-copse, with her hands full of May-bloom and Quinton Edge had waited under cover of the alders. It was possible; his father might have forgotten. And yet——

  Constans took the key and slipped it into the bosom of his doublet. Then closing the secret door in the wainscoting, he drew one of the big leather screens into convenient position and crouched down behind it. The dying fire gave out a flickering and uncertain light; he watched the grotesque procession of the shadows on the opposite wall until his eyes grew heavy. The odor of a smouldering bough of balsam-fir hung in the air—warm, spicy, soporific. He slept.

  Constans awoke just as the footsteps died away; he listened, but again the stillness was profound. He felt his way to the secret door; the wainscot screen stood ajar. It was plain that some one had come to the Rat’s-Hole only to discover that the key of the outside door was missing. Constans realized that he, too, had missed something—his chance to get to the bottom of the mystery. Shame on such a sentinel!

  Without any definite plan of action, Constans made his way to the lower hall. The moonbeams were pouring a flood of light through the east windows and he could see plainly. The peddler’s couch was empty, save for his gabardine of gray and the false hair that had served him for a beard. There were two figures dimly visible in the obscurity of the vaulted entrance to the water gate. They were working at the clumsy fastenings of the doors. As Constans ran up he recognized his sister Issa and the man who called himself Quinton Edge.

  Without a word Constans seized the girl by the arm and swung her behind him. He struck at the Doomsman with his hunting-knife, but the latter caught his wrist with the grip of a wolf-trap. Yet even at that moment of stress Quinton Edge’s voice preserved its soft, mincing inflections; the man wore his irritating affectations of speech as jauntily as he did the ostrich plumes in his cap.

  “A brave ruffling of feathers—but gently, gently boy, you are frightening the lady. She goes with me of her full consent. Is it not so, sweetheart?”

  “You lie!” said the boy, thickly.

  The man laughed. “I tell you,” he went on, “that the girl is mine by her own choice, and you have only to stand aside quietly to save the house and your own skin. But softly now; you are tearing the lace of my sleeve. A plague on your clumsy fingers!”

  With a wrench Constans twisted himself free and turned to face his sister. “Issa!” he implored.

  But she, with eyes like rain-washed stars, only looked beyond him to where Quinton Edge stood, softly smiling and holding out his womanish white hands. She would have rejoined him, but once again Constans forced her back. The dangling rope of the alarm-bell grazed his hand; he clutched at it, and a clang re-echoed through the courtyard, rousing the recreant warders from their slumbers. In that same instant Quinton Edge blew his whistle.

  The Doomsmen must have already crossed the moat and been close up to the water gate, for the response to their leader’s call was immediate. Quinton Edge had just time to remove the last of the bars securing the barrier when the night-watch streamed out tumultuously from their quarters under the arch, and he was obliged to retreat into the courtyard. But already the outlaws had forced apart the wooden leaves of the water gate; now they filled the vaulted passageway, and by sheer impact of superior weight began to drive back the bewildered and disorganized defenders. Friend and foe together, the mass surged into the quadrangle, a blind, indefinite cluster of struggling men, like to a swarm of hiving bees.

  The storm had blown over, but the moon was every now and then obscured by masses of scurrying cloud-wrack, and in these periods of semi-darkness Doomsman and Stockader were hardly to be told apart. So closely packed was the scrimmage that the use of any missile weapon was impossible. The dagger and the night-stick (the latter a stout truncheon weighted with lead) were doing the work, and effectively, too. And in that press a man might be struck and die upon his feet, the corpse being stayed from falling through its juxtaposition to the bodies of the living.

  The men of the keep, now that they had recovered from their first discomfiture, rallied manfully. So stubborn and bitter raged the struggle that there was not a sound to be heard outside the noise of scuffling feet and the thud of blows. A man when hard beset for his life has no breath to spare for either oath of despair or shout of triumph. But not for long were the scales to swing so evenly; presently the ranks of the Stockaders yielded again to the pressure and broke into separate groups. Then were to be heard the groans of the wounded and dying; then for the first time the yell of the Doomsmen broke forth, ear-piercing in its exultancy.

  Constans had managed to reach the shelter of the Great House, half dragging, half carrying the fainting form of his sister. Already Sir Gavan, with Tennant and the house-servants, were under arms and making what preparations they could for the final stand. A hopeless task it seemed, for the outlaws were now in full possession of the rest of the keep. The retainers occupying the general quarters in the south barracks had fallen easy victims. Surprised, outnumbered, and poorly armed, they had been quickly cut down as they reached the courtyard, and active resistance to the invaders was at an end.

  Now the attack was turned directly upon the entrance to the Great House, and Sir Gavan, with his handful of followers, waited on the threshold for the inevitable issue. Already the ponderous door of iron-banded oak was groaning and splintering under the hail of blows. And in the forefront, with a laugh upon his lips, hewed Quinton Edge.

  The barrier was down at last and the wolves were free to fall upon their quarry. A score of men, all told, against a hundred; the outcome was hardly doubtful. Yet it was not Gavan of the Greenwood Keep who held up his hand in sign of parley, but the Doomsman, Quinton Edge.

  “The maiden Issa,” he said, speaking with a smooth insolence that made Constans set his teeth. “Give her safely to my hand and your goods and your lives shall go free of further damage. A cheap bargain; but speak quickly, old man, these hounds of mine are not to be held in leash for long.”

  The partisans on either side had fallen back, leaving the two leaders face to face. Sir Gavan plucked twice at his throat, where the veins stood out like cords, constricting the vocal passages so that he stuttered thickly as he spoke.

  “This—this gallows-scape!” he stammered. “This burner of peasants’ hayricks, this pitiful plunderer of hen-roosts and cattle byres! If it were a man, now—to nail the insult to his lips——”

  “We lose time,” interrupted the Doomsman. “I have named my price.”

  “The price—ah, yes, the price. Tennant, Constans, you heard what he said. But where is my child? Let the girl stand forth; she is her father’s daughter, and she shall answer for herself.”

  “I will abide by it,” said Quinton Edge, with cool confidence.

  The half-circle opened and Issa stood before them; a mere child she looked in her simple slip of white and with her fair hair all unbound. A vague terror seized upon Sir Gavan. What was this question that he was about to ask of his daughter? Could there be other than the one answer? How quietly she stood there and waited. Yes, and they were all waiting upon him; he must speak.

  “Issa!”

  It seemed to him that he had shouted aloud; then he realized that he had not spoken at all. “Issa!” he said, again, and she turned towards him.

  “This man; he is not known to you. How could it be?”

  “Yet it is the truth, my father,” answered the girl, steadily. “It is just a month ago that chance set us face to face—one day when I rode alone in the green drive.”

  “And thereafter?”

  “Once he came to
the walled garden, adventuring the thousand chances of discovery. Yet how he managed to cross the stockade-line I know not, for I was frightened, and begged him to leave me. And this he did most courteously, only swearing that he would again return.”

  “The third time?”

  “That was the day—the day of the first May-bloom—the Ochre brook and the Doomsmen——” The girl’s voice faltered.

  “Yet never a word to me or to your mother?”

  “It was not my secret,” she answered, bravely; and upon that Quinton Edge himself took up the word.

  “The blame is mine, since I used the peril in which I stood to set a seal upon her lips. A true and loyal maid is your daughter, and it was only after she had twice said me nay that I resolved to take without the asking. So I came that day which we both remember, and waited under the alder bushes, and once again I missed my cast. Yet was the quest not altogether fruitless, for I carried away this token from my lady’s hostile garden.”

  He drew a faded spray of the May-bloom from his doublet and touched it lightly to his lips.

  “What gentleman could refuse to redeem so dear a pledge? You have seen how I took head in hand and sat me down under your own roof-tree, my good Gavan of the keep. Faith, it was an even chance on which side the platter would fall, but this time the luck was mine. We should have been leagues away in the sun’s eye by now, only that a peevish boy would have his way.”

  “And this—this is also true?” said Sir Gavan, and it seemed that the preceding silence had been very long.

  “It is true.” She had answered quietly, almost mechanically, but the heart of the Lady Rayne thrilled to the new note in her child’s voice.