The Long Night - Stanley Weyman (free novel 24 .txt) 📗

him more earnestly; with pleading eyes which it was hard to refuse. "Would you, to save us, have betrayed Geneva?"

He groaned--she had moved him. "God knows!" he answered. "To save you--I think I would!"

"You would not! You would not!" she repeated. "Neither must you do this! Honour, faith, duty, all forbid it!"

"And love?" he cried.

"And love!" she answered. "For who would love dishonoured? Who would love in shame? No; go as you have come, and give the alarm! And do, and help! Go, as you have come! But how"--with a startled look as she thought of the trap-door--"did you come?"

"By the Tertasse Gate," he explained. "There were but two men on guard, and they were asleep. I passed them unseen, climbed the stairs to the leads--I have been up twice before--and crossed the roofs. I knew I could come this way unseen, and if I had come by the door----"

She understood and cut him short. "Then go as you came and rouse the watch in the gate!" she cried feverishly. "Rouse them and all, and Heaven grant you be not too late! Go, Claude, for the love of me, for the love of God, go quickly!" Her hands on his arm shook with eagerness. "So that, if there be treachery here----"

"There is treachery!" he said darkly. "Grio----"

"We at least shall have no part in it! You will go? You will go?" she repeated, clinging to his arm, trembling against him, looking up to him with eyes which he could not resist. Love wrestled here, on the higher, the nobler, the unselfish side, and came the stronger out of the contest. There were tears in his eyes as he answered.

"I will go. You are right, Anne. But you will be alone."

"I run no greater risk than others," she answered. He held her to him, and their lips met once. And in that instant, her heart beating against his, she comprehended to what she was sending him, into what peril of life, into what a dark hell of force and fire and blood; and her arms clung to him as if she could not let him go. Then, "Go, and God keep you!" she murmured in a choked voice. And she thrust him from her.

A moment later he was on the roof, and she was kneeling where he had left her, bowed down, with her face on the bare stairs in an agony of prayer for him. But not for long; she had her part to do. She hurried down to the living-room and made sure that the strong shutters were secured; then up to Basterga's room and to Grio's, and as far as her strength went she piled the furniture against the iron-barred casements that looked on to the ramparts. While she worked her ears listened for the alarm, but, until she had finished and was ascending with the light to her mother's room she heard nothing. Then a distant cry, a faint challenge, the drum-drum of running feet, a second cry--and silence. It might be his death-cry she had heard; and she stood with a white face, shivering, waiting, bearing the woman's burden of suspense. To lie down by her mother was impossible; rapine, murder, fire, all the horrors, all the perils of a city taken by surprise, crowded into her mind. Yet they moved her not so much as the dangers he ran, whom she had sent forth to confront them, whom she had plucked from her own breast that he might face them!

Meanwhile, Claude, after gaining the tiles, paused a moment to consider his next step. Far below him, on the narrow, black triangle of the Corraterie, lay the Savoyards, some three hundred in number, who had scaled the wall. Out of the darkness of the plain, beyond and below them, rose the faint, distant quacking of alarmed ducks, proving that others of the enemy moved there. Even as he listened, the whirr of a wild goose winging its flight over the city came to his ear. On his left, with a dim oil lamp marking, here or there, the meeting of four ways, the town slept unsuspicious, recking nothing of the fate prepared for it.

It was a solemn moment, and Claude on the roof under the night sky, felt it to be so. Restored to his higher self, he breathed a prayer for guidance and for her, and was as eager now as he had before been cold. But not the less for that did he ply the wits that, working freely in this hour of peril, proved him one of those whom battle owns for master. He had gathered enough, lying on his face in the bastion, to feel sure that the forlorn hope which had gained a footing on the wall would not move until the arrival of the main body whom it was its plan to admit by the Porte Neuve. To carry the alarm to the Porte Neuve, therefore, and secure that gate, seemed to be the first and most urgent step; since to secure the Tertasse and the other inner gates would be of little avail, if the main body of the enemy were once in possession of the ramparts. The course that at first sight seemed the most obvious--to enter the town, give the alarm at the town hall, and set the tocsin ringing--he rejected; for while the town was arming, the three hundred who had entered might seize the Porte Neuve, and so secure the entrance of the main body.

These calculations occupied no more than a few seconds: then, his mind made up to the course he must pursue, he crawled as quickly, but also as quietly, as he could along the dark parapets until he gained the leads of the Tertasse. Safe so far, he proceeded, with equal or greater caution, to descend the narrow cork-screw staircase, that led to the guard-room on the ground floor.

He forgot that it is more easy to ascend without noise than to descend. With all his care he stumbled when he was within three steps of the bottom. He tried to save himself, but fell against the half-open door, flung it wide, and, barely keeping his feet, found himself face to face with the two watchmen, who, startled by the noise, had sprung to their feet, thinking the devil was upon them. One, with an oath upon his lips, reached for his half-pike; his fellow, less sober, steadied himself by resting a hand on the table.

If they gave the alarm, his plan was gone. The enemy, finding themselves discovered, would seize the Porte Neuve. "One minute!" he cried breathlessly. "Let me explain!"

"You!" the more sober retorted, glaring fiercely at him. "Who the devil are you? And where have you been?"

"Quiet, man, quiet!"

"What is it?"

"Treason!" Claude answered, imploring silence by a gesture. "Treason! That is what it is! But for God's sake, no noise! No noise, man, or our throats are as good as cut! Savoy has the wall!"

The man stared, and no wonder. "You are mad," he said, "or drunk! Savoy----"

"Fool, it is so!" Claude cried, beside himself with impatience.

"Savoy?"

"They are under the trees on the ramparts within a few yards of us now! Three hundred of them! A word and you will feel their pikes in your breast! Listen to me!"

But with a laugh of derision the drunken man cut him short. "Savoy here--on the wall!" he hiccoughed. "And we on guard!"

"It is so!" Claude urged. "Believe me, it is so! And we must be wary."

"You lie, young man! And I'll--hic--I'll prove it! See here! Savoy on the wall, indeed! Savoy? And we on guard?"

He lurched in two strides to the outer door, seized it, and supported himself by it. Claude leant forward to stop him, but could not reach, being on the other side of the table. He called to the other to do so. "Stop him!" he said. "Stop him!"

The man might have done so, but he did not stir; and "Stop him?" the sot answered, his hand on the door. "Not--two of you--will stop him! Now, then! Savoy, indeed! On the wall? I'll show you!"

He let the door go, and reeled three paces into the darkness outside, waving his hands as if he drove chickens. "Savoy! Savoy!" he cried; but whether in drunken bravado, in derision, or in pure disbelief, God only knows! For the word had barely passed his lips the second time before a gurgling scream followed, freezing the hearts of the two listeners; and, before the second guard could close the door or move from his place on the hearth, four men sprang in out of the darkness, and bore him back. Before he had struck a blow they had pinned him against the wall.

Claude owed his escape to his position behind the door. They did not see him as they sprang in, intent on the one they did see. He knew resistance to be futile, and a bound carried him into the darkness of the cork-screw staircase. Once there, he dared not move. Thence he saw and heard what followed.

The man pinned against the wall, with the point of a knife flickering before his eyes, begged piteously for his life.

"Then silence!" Basterga answered--for the foremost who had entered was he. "A word and you die!"

"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