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

a third time. "And if you leave so much as a knife 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 from his writhing body--Louis crept, weeping and quaking, into the staircase; and on one of her tormentors Anne was avenged. But Claude was thinking more 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 drawn him to that side of the tower, where shaking off the exhaustion which for a time had overcome him, he was straining his eyes to learn what was passing in the babel below.

The sight was a singular one. The Monnaye Gate far to the left, the Tertasse immediately before him, and the Treille on his right, were the centres of separate conflagrations. In one place a house, fired by the petard employed to force the door, was actually alight. In other places so great was the conflux of torches, the flash and gleam of weapons, and the babel of sounds that it wrought on the mind the impression of a fire blazing up in the night. Behind the Porte Tertasse, in the narrow streets of the Tertasse and the Cite--immediately, therefore, behind the Royaumes' house--the conflict seemed to rage most hotly, the shots to be most frequent, the uproar greatest, even the light strongest; for the reflection of the combat below bathed the Tertasse tower in a lurid glow. Claude could distinguish the roof of the Royaumes' house; and to see so much yet to be cut off as completely as if he stood a hundred miles away, to be so near yet so hopelessly divided, stung him to a new impatience 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 man has saved Geneva, it is you! There, man, I give you the credit," he continued, in a burst of generosity, "and it is no small thing! For it might 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 old iron grate, and let in--what I hear yonder?" He indicated the darker outer 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, between contempt and admiration. "Is that what you mean? And when we have won it, 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 are losing! Which is it?"

From the Treille Gate had burst a rabble of men; a struggling crowd illumined by the glare of three or four lights. Pikes and halberds flashed in the heart of the mob as it swirled and struggled down the Corraterie in the direction of the gate from which the two men viewed it. Half-way thither, in the open, its progress seemed to be checked; it hung 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 prostrate forms, and in a trice burst about the base of the Porte Neuve, swept, as it seemed to those above, into the gateway, and--in a twinkling broke back, 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 the rear--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 too late--and where will we be?"

He spoke in vain. His words were wasted on the air. Claude, not to be restrained, had entered the staircase. Pike in hand he felt his way over the bodies that choked it; by this time he was half-way down the stairs. Marcadel hesitated, waited a moment, listened; then, partly because success begets success, and courage courage, partly because he would not have the triumph taken from him, he too risked all. He snatched from Gentilis' feeble hands a long pistol, part of the spoils of the staircase; and, staying only to assure himself that a portion of the priming still lay in the pan, he hurried after his leader.

By this time Claude was within four stairs of the guard-room. The low door that admitted to it stood open; and towards it a man, hearing the hasty tread of feet, had that moment turned a startled face. There was no room for anything but audacity, and Claude did not flinch. In two bounds, he hurled himself through the door on to the man, missed him with his pike--but was himself missed. In a flash the two were rolling together 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 the room came from the fire, the three were interlaced, and Claude was young and agile as an eel: he evaded the first thrust, and the second. The third went home in his shoulder, but desperate with pain he seized the hand that held the poniard, and clung to it; and before the man who had been the first to fall could regain his pike, or a third man who was present, but who was wounded, could drag himself, swearing horribly, to the spot, Marcadel fired from the stairs, and killed the wounded man. The next instant with a yell of "Geneva!" he sprang on the others under cover of the smoke that filled the room.

The combat was still but of two to two; and without the guard-room but almost within arm's length, were a dozen Savoyards, headed by Picot the engineer; any one of whom might, by entering, turn the scale. But the pistol-shot had come to the ears of the attacking party: that instant, guessing that they had allies within, they rallied and with loud cries returned 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 the guard-room opened--struck down Picot, and, hacking and hewing, with cries of "Porte Gagnee! Porte Gagnee!" bore the Savoyards back.

For the half of a minute the low-groined archway was a whirl of arms and steel 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. But the burghers, fighting bareheaded for their wives and hearths, were not to be denied; by-and-by the Savoyards gave back, broke, and saved themselves. One fierce group cut its way out and fled into the darkness of the Corraterie. Of the others four men remained on the ground, while two turned and tried to retreat into the guard-room.

But on the threshold they met Claude, vicious and wounded, his eyes in a flame; and he struck and killed the foremost. The other fell under the blows of the pursuing burghers, and across the two bodies Claude and Marcadel met their allies, the leaders of the assault. Strange to say, the foremost and the midmost of these was a bandy-legged tailor, with a great two-handed sword, red to the hilt; to such a place can valour on such a night raise a man. On his right stood Blandano, Captain of the Guard, bareheaded and black with powder; on his left Baudichon the councillor, panting, breathless, his fat face running with sweat and blood--for he bore an ugly wound--but with unquenchable courage in his eyes. 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 of them 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. "And I helped him."

"Then he has saved Geneva, and you have helped him!" Blandano rejoined bluntly. "Your name, young man."

Claude told him.

"Good!" Blandano answered. "If I live to see the morning light, it shall not be forgotten!"

Baudichon leant across the dead, and shook Claude's hand. "For the women and children!" he said, his fat face shaking like a jelly; though no man had fought that night with a more desperate valour. "If I live to see the morning inquire for Baudichon of the council."

Jehan Brosse, the bandy-legged tailor with the huge sword--he was but five feet high and no one up to that night had known him for a hero--squared his shoulders and looked at Claude, as one who takes another under his protection. "Baudichon the councillor, whom all men know in Geneva," he said with an affectionate look at the great man--he was proud of the company to which his prowess had raised him. "You will not forget the name! no fear of that! And now on!"

"Ay, on!" Blandano answered, looking round on his panting followers, of whom some were staunching their wounds and some, with dark faces and gleaming eyeballs, were loading and priming their arms. "But I think the 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 main guards 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 the question!"


CHAPTER XXV.

BASTERGA AT ARGOS.

The fear that Blandano might postpone the night-round, to a time which would involve discovery, haunted Blondel; and late on this eventful evening he despatched Louis, as we have seen, to the Porte Neuve to remind the Captain of his orders. That done--it was all he could do--the Syndic sat down in his great chair, and prepared himself to wait. He knew that he had before him some hours of uncertainty almost intolerable; and a peril, a hundred times more hard to face, because in the pinch of it he must play two parts; he must run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, and, a traitor standing forward for the city he had betrayed, he must have an eye to his reputation as well as his life.

He had no doubt of the success of Savoy, the walls once passed. Moreover, the genius of Basterga had imposed itself upon him as that of a man unlikely to fail. But some resistance there must be, some bloodshed--for the town held many devoted men; one hour at least of butchery, and that followed, he shuddered to think it, by more than one hour of excess, of cruelty, of rapine. From such things the captured cities of that day rarely escaped. In all that happened, the resistance and the peril, he must, he knew, show himself; he must take his part and run his risk if he would not be known for what he was, if he would not leave a name that men would