Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  “Better let me finish him at once!” Grio growled. The prisoner’s face was ashen, his eyes were starting from his head. “Dead men give no alarms.”

  “Mercy! Mercy!” the man gasped.

  “Ay, ay, let him live,” Basterga said good-naturedly. “But he must be gagged. Turn your face to the wall, my man!”

  The poor wretch complied with gratitude. In a twinkling the Paduan’s huge fingers closed round his neck, and over his wind-pipe. “Now strike,” the big man hissed. “He will make no noise!”

  With a sickening thud Grio’s knife sank between the shoulders, a moment the body writhed in Basterga’s herculean grip, then it sank lifeless to the floor. “Had you struck him, fool,” Basterga muttered wrathfully, wiping a little blood from his sleeve, “as you wanted to strike him, he had squealed like a pig! Now ’tis the same, and no noise. Ha! Seize him!”

  He spoke too late. Claude had seen his opportunity, and as the treacherous blow was struck had crept forth. At the moment the other saw him he bounded over the threshold. Even as his feet touched the ground a man who stood outside lunged at him with a pike but missed him — a chance, for Claude had not seen the striker. The next moment the young man had launched himself into the darkness and was running for his life across the Corraterie in the direction of the Porte Neuve.

  He knew that his foes were lying on every side of him, and the cry of “Seize him! Seize him!” went with him, making every step a separate peril. He could not see a yard, but he was young and fleet and active; and the darkness covering him, the men were confused. Over more than one black object he bounded like a deer. Once a man rising in front of him brought him heavily to the ground, but by good fortune it was his foot struck the man, and on the head, and the fellow lay still and let him rise. A moment later another gripped him, but Claude and he fell together, and the younger man, rolling nimbly sideways, got clear and to his feet again, made for the wall on his right, turned left again, and already thought himself over the threshold of the Porte Neuve. The cry “Aux Armes! Aux Armes!” was already on his lips, he thought he had succeeded, when between his eyes and the faintly lighted gateway a dozen forms rose as by magic and poured in before him — so near to him that, unable to check himself, he jostled the hindmost.

  He might have entered with them, so near was he. But he saw that he was too late; he guessed that the outcry behind him had precipitated the attack, and, arresting himself outside the ring of light, but within a few paces of the gateway, he threw himself on the ground and awaited the event. It was not long in declaring itself. For a few seconds a dull roar of shots and shouts and curses filled the gate. Then out again, helter-skelter, with a flash of exploding powder and a whirl of steel and blows, came defenders and assailants in a crowd, the former bent on escaping, the latter on cutting them off from the Porte Tertasse and the town. For an instant after they had poured out the gate seemed quiet, and with his eyes upon it, Claude rose, first to his knees and then to his feet, paused a moment in doubt, then darted in and entered the guard-room.

  The firelight — the other lights in the small, dingy chamber had been trampled under foot — showed him two wounded men groaning on the floor, and the body of a third who lay apparently dead. Claude bent over one, found what he wanted — a half-pike — and glided to the door of the stairs that led to the roof. It was in the same position as in the Tertasse. He opened it, passed through it, mounted two steps, and in the darkness came plump against some one who seized him by the throat.

  The man had no weapon — at any rate he did not strike; and Claude, taken by surprise, could not level his pike in the narrow stairway. For a moment they wrestled, Claude striving to bring his weapon to bear on his foe, the latter trying to strangle him. But the advantage of the stairs lay with the first comer, who was the uppermost, and gradually he bore Claude back and back. The young man, however, would not let go such hold as he had, and both were on the point of falling out on the floor of the guard-room when the light disclosed Claude’s face.

  “You are of us!” his opponent panted. And abruptly he released his grip.

  “Geneva!”

  “I know you!” The man was one of the guard who, in the alarm, had escaped into the stairway. “I know you! You live in the Corraterie!”

  Claude wasted not a second. “Up!” he cried. “We can hold the roof! Up, man, for your life! For your life! It is our only chance!”

  With the fear of death upon him, the other needed no second telling. He turned, and groped upwards in haste; and Claude followed, treading on his heels; nor a moment too soon. While they were still within the staircase, which their elbows rubbed on either side, they heard the enemy swarm into the room below. Cries of triumph, of “Savoy! Savoy!” of “Ville gagnée! gagnée!” hummed dully up to them, and proclaimed the narrowness of their escape. Then the night air met their faces, they bent their heads and passed out upon the leads; they had above them the stars, and below them all the world of night, with its tramp of hidden feet, its swaying lights so tiny and distant, and here and there its cry of “Savoy! Savoy!” that showed that the enemy, relying on their capture of the Porte Neuve, were casting off disguise.

  Claude heard and saw all, but lost not a moment. He had not made this haste for his life only: before he had risen to his knees or set foot in the gate, he had formed his plan. “The Portcullis!” he cried. “The Portcullis! Where are the chains? On this side?” Less than a week before he had stood and watched the guard as they released it and raised it again for practice.

  The soldier, familiar with the tower, should have been able to go to the chains at once. But though he had struggled for his life and was ready to struggle for it again, he had not recovered his nerve, and he shrank from leaving the stairs, in holding which their one chance consisted. He muttered, however, that the winch was on such and such a side, and, with his head in the stairway, indicated the direction with his hand. Claude groped his way to the spot, his breath coming fast; fortunately he laid his hand almost at once on the chains and felt for the spike, which he knew he must draw or knock out. That done, the winch would fly round, and the huge machine fall by its own weight.

  On a sudden, “They are coming!” the soldier cried in a terrified whisper. “My God, they are coming! Come back! Come back!” For Claude had their only weapon, and the guard was defenceless. Defenceless by the side of the stairs up which the foe was climbing!

  The hair rose on Claude’s head, but he set his teeth; though the man died, though he died, the portcullis must fall! More than his own life, more than the lives of both of them, more than lives a hundred or a thousand hung on that bolt; the fate of millions yet unborn, the freedom and the future of a country hung on that bolt which would not give way — though now he had found it and was hammering it. Grinding his teeth, the sweat on his brow, he beat on it with the pike, struck the iron with the strength of despair, stooped to see what was amiss — still with the frenzied prayers of the other in his ears — saw it, and struck again and again — and again!

  Whirr! The winch flew round, barely missing his head. With a harsh, grinding sound that rose with incredible swiftness to a scream, piercing the night, the ponderous grating slid down, crashed home and barred all entrance — closed the Porte Neuve. It did more, though Claude did not know it. It cut off the engineer from the outer gate, of which the keys were at the Town Hall, and against which in another minute, another sixty seconds, he had set his petard. That set and exploded, Geneva had lain open to its enemies. As it was, so small was the margin, so fatally accurate the closing, that when the day rose, it disclosed a portent. When the victors came to examine the spot they found beneath the portcullis the mangled form of one of the engineers, and beside him lay his petard.

  CHAPTER XXIV.

  ARMES! ARMES!

  Claude did not know all that he had done, or the narrow margin of time by 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
troops of Savoy were waiting the word to enter. He knew that he had done it with death at his elbow and with the cries of his panic-stricken comrade in his ears. And in the moment of success he rose above the common level. He felt himself master of fear, lord of death; in the exultation of 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 to waste if he would save himself. As the portcullis struck the ground with a thunderous crash and rebounded, and he turned from the winch to the stairhead, a last warning, cut short in the utterance, reached him, and he saw through the gloom that his companion was already in the grip of a figure which had succeeded in passing out of the staircase. Claude did not 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 up into the stairhead, with such force that the Genevese had much ado to free 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 not penetrated, and Claude recovered it quickly, and levelled it in waiting for the next comer. At the same time he adjured his comrade to secure the fallen man’s weapon. The guard seized it, and the two waited, with suspended breath, for the sally which they were sure must come.

  But the stairs were narrow, the fallen body blocked the outlet, and possibly the assailants had expected no resistance. Finding it, they thought better of it. A moment and they could be heard beating a retreat.

  “Pardieu! they are going!” the guard exclaimed; and he began to shake.

  “Ay, but they will return!” Claude answered grimly. “Have no fear of that! The portcullis is down, and the only way to raise it, is up these stairs. But it will be hard if, armed as we are now, we cannot baffle them! Has he no pistol?”

  Marcadel — that was the soldier’s name — felt about the prostrate man, but found none; and bidding him listen and not move for his life — but there was little need of the injunction — Claude passed over to the inner edge of the roof, facing the Corraterie. Here he raised his voice and shouted the alarm with all the force of his lungs, hoping thus to supplement the cries which here and there had been raised by the Savoyards.

  “Aux Armes! Armes!” he cried. “The enemy is at the gate! To arms! To arms!”

  A man ran out of the gateway at the sound of his shouting, levelled a musket and fired at him. The slugs flew wide, and Claude, lifted above himself, yelled defiance, knowing that the more shots were fired the more quickly and widely would the alarm be spread.

  That it was spreading, that it was being taken up, his position on the gateway enabled him to discern, distant as the Porte Neuve lay from the heart of the town. A flare of light at the rear of the Tertasse, and a confused hub-bub in that quarter, seemed to show that, though the Savoyards had seized the gate, they had not penetrated beyond it. Away on his extreme left, where the Porte de la Monnaye, hard by his old bastion, overlooked the Rhone and the island, were lights again, and a sound of a commotion as though there too the enemy held the gate, but found farther progress closed against them. On the Treille to his right, the most westerly of the three inner gates, and the nearest to the Town Hall, the enemy seemed to be preparing an attack, for as he ceased to shout, muskets exploded in that direction; and as far as he could judge the shots were aimed outwards.

  With such alarms at three inner points — to say nothing of the noise at the more distant Porte Neuve — it seemed impossible that any part of the city could remain in ignorance of the attack. In truth, as he stood peering down into the dark Corraterie, and listening to the heavy tramp of unseen feet, now here, now there, and the orders that rose from unseen throats — even as he prepared to turn, summoned by a warning cry from Marcadel, the first note of the alarm-bell smote his ear.

  One moment and the air hummed with its heavy challenge, and all of Geneva that still slept awoke and stood upright. Men ran half naked from their houses. Boys in their teens snatched arms and sallied forth. White faces looked into the night from barred windows or lofty dormers; and across narrow wynds and under dark Gothic entries men dragged huge chains and hooked them, and hurried on to where the alarm seemed loudest and the risk most pressing. In an instant in pitch-dark alleys lights gleamed and steel jarred on stone; out of the darkness deep voices shouted questions, or answered or gave orders, and from a thousand houses, alike in the wealthy Bourg du Four with its three-storied piles and in the sordid lanes about the water and the bridges, went up one wail 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 a fact, and never while they lived forgot that awakening. While women left alone in their homes bolted and barred and fell to prayers; or clasped to their breasts babes who prattled, not understanding the turmoil, or why their mothers looked strangely on them.

  Something of this, something of the horror of that sudden awakening, and of the confusion in the narrow streets, where voices cried that the enemy were here or there or in a third place, and the bravest knew not which way to turn, penetrated to Claude on the roof of the tower; and at the thought of Anne and the perils that encircled her — for about the house in the Corraterie the uproar rose loudest — his heart melted. But he 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 had to go. Marcadel’s voice, urgent, insistent, summoned him to the stairhead.

  “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 wounded man, breathing stertorously, still cumbered the upper steps. Marcadel rested one hand on him.

  Claude thrust in his head and listened. He could hear, above the thick breathing of the Savoyard, the stir of men muttering and moving in the darkness below; and now the stealthy shuffle of feet, and again the faint clang of a weapon against the wall. Doubtless it had dawned on some one in command below, that here on this tower lay the keys of Geneva: that by themselves three hundred men could not take, nor hold if they took, a town manned by five or six thousand; consequently that if Savoy would succeed in the enterprise so boldly begun, she must by hook or crook raise this portcullis and open this gate. As a fact, Brunaulieu, the captain of the forlorn hope, had passed the word that the tower must be taken at any cost; and had come himself from the Porte Tertasse, 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 reduced his courage.

  “Yes, I hear them,” he whispered in answer to the soldier’s words. “But they have not mounted far yet. And when they come, if two pikes cannot hold this doorway which they can pass but one at a time, there is no truth in Thermopylæ!”

  “I know naught of that,” the other answered, rising nervously to his feet. “I don’t favour heights. Give me the lee of a wall and fair odds — —”

  “Odds?” Claude echoed vain-gloriously — but only the stars attended to him— “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 pointed with a shaking hand to the outer corner of the leads, in the neighbourhood of the place where the winch of the portcullis stood. “We are betrayed! We are dead men!” he babbled.

  Claude made out a dim figure, crouching against the battlement; and the thought, which was also in Marcadel’s mind, that the enemy had set a ladder against the wall and outflanked them, rendered him desperate. At any rate there was but one on the roof as yet: and quick as thought the young 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 s
aid. “Or others will kill you. How come you here?”

  The lad still grovelled. “I was in the guard-room,” he whimpered. “I had come with a message — from the Syndic.”

  “The Syndic Blondel?”

  “Yes! To remind the Captain that he was to go the rounds at eleven exactly. It was late when I got there and they — oh, this dreadful night — they broke in, and I, hid on the stairs.”

  “Well, you can hide no longer. You have got to fight now!” Claude answered grimly, “There are no more stairs for any of us except to heaven! I advise you to find something, and do your worst. Take the winch-bar if you can find nothing else! And — —”

  He broke off. Marcadel, who had remained at the stairhead, was calling to 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 with his pike shortened to strike. “They are coming!” he muttered over his shoulder. “They are more than half-way up now. Be ready and keep your eyes open. Be ready!” he continued after a pause. “They are nearly — here now!” His breath began to come quickly; at last stepping back a pace and bringing his point to the charge. “They are here!” he shouted. “On guard!”

  Claude stooped an inch lower, and with gleaming eyes, and feet set warily apart, waited the onset; waited with suspended breath for the charge that must come. He could hear the gasps of the wounded man who lay on the uppermost step; and once close to him he caught a sound of shuffling, moving feet, that sent his heart into his mouth. But seconds passed, and more seconds, and glare as he might into the black mouth of the 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 the alarm-bell was flinging “Doom! Doom!” down on the city, and a thousand sounds of fear and strife clutched at his mind and strove to draw it from the dark gap at which he waited, as a dog waits for a rat at the mouth of its hole. His breath began to come quickly, his knees shook. He heard his companion gasp — human nerves could stand it no longer. And then, just as he felt that, come what might, he must plunge his pike into the darkness, and settle the question, the shuffling sound came anew and steadied him, and he set his teeth and waited — waited still.