A Night Alarm
“Well, friend Gaspard, if these English wolves have the better of us in
the open field, we are as good as they when it comes to defending
towns. Six months, and better, have the rogues lain before our town,
and not got it yet.”
So spoke a Breton soldier to his comrade, as they stood on the walls of
Rennes on a gloomy November evening in 1353, looking down on the
countless white tents that shimmered ghost-like through the deepening
gloom, and the lights that spangled the blackness like huge glow-worms.
Amid the great struggle between France and England, the rival claimants
of the Duchy of Brittany, Charles of Blois and Earl de Montfort, had
got up a little private war of their own. Most of the leading Breton
knights (including Bertrand du Guesclin) supported Charles’s cause,
while England sided with the Earl; and Rennes being the most important
town that held out for Charles, the English were doing their best to
take it, though as yet in vain.
“They will have the town sooner or later, though, Pierre,” said the
elder soldier, despondingly; “for ere long we shall have nought to eat,
unless we can chew pike-staves like mutton-bones, and swallow
arrow-heads for New Year cakes!”
“Well, these English have no cause to crow over us on that score,”
cried his more hopeful comrade; “for, thou know’st, yon Picard who
escaped from them to us yester-eve, brought word that the thieves had
well-nigh spent their stores, and were at their wits’ end to replenish
them.”
“It will end, then, in a match of who can starve the longest,” said
Gaspard, with a grim smile; “and at that game I fear them nought, for
methinks we Bretons can hold out without food as long as any man alive.”
“Ay, truly; and these cold nights that are coming will try the English
rogues hard, encamped as they be in the open field.”
“I fear it will ne’er come as far as that,” put in a third man, who had
just come up. “Heard ye not, lads, yon great shouting in the English
camp but now? and know ye what it meant?”
“What meant it?” asked both at once.
“Marry, it meant that yon movable tower of theirs is at last ready to
attack our walls, and by to-morrow’s sunrise it will be upon us. Even
so said a dog of an English archer who stood nigh the wall, and called
to me but now in scorn, ‘Make room in your sty, ye Breton piglings; the
great sow is coming.’”
His hearers eyed each other in blank dismay, for in that age these
formidable engines were the terror of every besieged garrison. The
invention of gunpowder, though more than half a century old, had as yet
made little difference in war; and not till a century later did the
fall of Constantinople before the Turk’s breaching-cannon show the full
power of the new artillery. The chief mode of attack was still with
high wooden towers, which (protected from fire by a cover of raw hides,
and from stones by their sloping roofs and solid build) were pushed
close up to the city walls; and while the men who filled the upper
story sprang on the ramparts sword in hand, the sappers in the lower
one made a breach or beat in a gate, thus combining both modes of
assault, mine and escalade.
“If this be so,” said Gaspard, “may God have mercy on us, for we shall
find none from man.”
He spoke too truly. In that iron age, though the lives of knights and
nobles might be spared for ransom, those of common soldiers were held
cheap as flies; and the slaughter of the whole garrison was in such
cases so completely a matter of course, that the defenders of the
doomed city already counted themselves dead men.
“There is no hope for us, in truth,” growled the third man, “for five
hundred men (and we number but that) cannot make good such a circuit of
wall against five thousand. We are lost, unless aid come from without,
and I see not how that can be.”
“It cannot,” said Pierre, whose set, grim face, lit for a moment by the
glare of the watch-fires below, showed how utterly he had given himself
up for lost. “There is no army of friends at hand, and, without an army
to back him, there lives but one man in Brittany this day who could
break through yon English host, and he is far away.”
“Thou mean’st our Bertrand du Guesclin. Would to Heaven he were here,
for he alone would be worth an army.”
“Ay, that would he!” cried the third Breton, forgetting his own peril
in his simple, honest exultation at his countryman’s prowess. “Well may
they call him ‘The Grim Knight,’ for grim hath he truly been to his
country’s foes. Heard ye what he did at the siege of Dinan, a year
agone? He was returning with his men from a sally against the English
camp, and was already nigh to the town gate, having broken his way
through their host, and all seemed safe for him, when suddenly he
missed from his neck a rosary that he ever bare, the gift, men say, of
the fair lady to whom he is betrothed, Tiphaine de Raguenel, whom they
call ‘the Fairy.’”
“And what did he?” asked both listeners at once.
“What did he? Why, he turned his horse, and back he dashed into the
midst of the pursuing English. One of their archer-knaves had already
found the chain, and snatched it up; but scarce had he touched it, when
his head was swept from his shoulders, and Messire Bertrand, turning on
the others, smote them down with his axe as the hail beats down the
corn. But the knaves laid on load stoutly, and sore was the fray, when
up came one who seemed a captain among them, and cried, ‘Shame on ye,
lads! let the gallant gentleman pass free! for so good a knight
deserveth all the honour we can pay him.’ So the fray was stayed, and
our Bertrand came safe to the town.”
“Why, then,” cried Pierre, in surprise, “there is some courtesy even
among these English! But, having warred so long in France, belike they
have learned good manners here.”
“Doubtless,” said Gaspard; “but we, at least, have no mercy to hope
from them. Commend your souls to God, comrades, for we shall never, I
trow, see another sun go down.”
The same gloomy conviction was in the mind of every man in that doomed
fortress; and, even in an age when men cast away their own lives or
those of others as lightly as children their broken toys, the most
reckless of these rough soldiers could not be wholly unmoved by the
thought that, strong and bold as they stood there, full of life and
health and daring, they would all, ere another sun went down, be lying
cold and dead. Many a hard hand, still red with recent slaughter, was
uplifted to heaven that night in heart-felt supplication; and many a
rude man-at-arms strove to call to mind some long-forgotten prayer.
Slowly and wearily the dismal night wore on, and as dawn drew nigh, the
sentinels on the walls, looking toward the English camp, strained their
eyes and ears for any sign of the fatal assault that was to end all.
The moon had set, and the only light was from the dying watch-fires;
but their faint glow sufficed to show to a keen-eyed young soldier on
the tower above the Dinan Gate a strange and ghostly sight.
At the eastern angle of the enemy’s camp burned a fire larger and
brighter than the rest, and as he gazed, its blaze was suddenly
obscured—then left clear again—then obscured once more; and thus it
kept vanishing and reappearing by turns for several minutes together,
as if a long train of shadows were passing between it and himself.
At that unearthly hour, and in that superstitious age, such an
apparition would have unnerved the boldest man; but even this was not
all. Though these ghostly riders were numerous enough to have made
their hoof-tramp on this rough and rocky ground plainly heard, even at
that distance, amid the tomb-like silence of night, not a sound reached
the strained ear of the sentry, who crossed himself tremulously,
convinced that what he saw was not of this world.
But the next moment brought him some encouragement; for, as the shadowy
train drew nearer, an English sentinel’s hoarse voice was heard
challenging it, and another voice replying with the counter-sign.
This did not sound very ghostly, and the bold Breton, reflecting that a
spirit would have no need of pass-words, was beginning to feel more
composed, when a new and disturbing idea came to trouble him. As these
strange riders were not ghosts, they must be English reinforcements
coming up for the final assault; and this would make the case of the
defenders more hopeless than ever.
Hardly had the thought struck him, when it was put to flight, and his
superstitious terrors revived in full force, by a new and startling
turn of this strange adventure.
The shadowy horsemen, dimly seen by the faint light of the dying fires,
had all this while been gliding nearer and nearer to the town,
noiselessly as ever. The sentry, watching them keenly, was just
beginning to wonder if there could be a traitor within the fortress,
and if these night-prowlers were advancing on it in the hope of having
its gate opened to them, when, all at once, the foremost rider sank
into the earth before the very eyes of the astounded watcher; and all
the rest vanished in the same way, man by man, till not one was
left—and all this without the slightest sound.
The sturdy Breton trembled like a leaf; but the man who just then came
up to take his place hardly noticed how silently he slunk away,
supposing him merely tired and sleepy, as was quite natural.
The new-comer, however, was fated to be as much startled in his turn.
Hardly had he begun to pace up and down, when a shadowy rider seemed to
issue from the ground, silently as a dream, a little to his left; and
then, one by one, the ghostly horsemen rose through the earth again as
noiselessly as they had vanished into it!
For a moment, the new sentry was as much scared as his comrade; but he
was a more experienced soldier, and the true explanation of this
prodigy soon suggested itself to him. He called to mind that this part
of the English camp was traversed by a deep and narrow ravine, through
which the seeming phantoms must have made their way; and as for their
silent movements, the veteran knew that horse-hoofs may sometimes be
muffled!
Then came a cheering thought. Had these men belonged to the besieging
host, they would have had no need for such caution; they must be
friends, trying to reach the town without being detected!
Filled with joy at such unhoped-for help in their sorest need, he lost
no time in announcing his discovery; and several officers hastened to
the spot, just as a single form detached itself from the shadowy train,
and rode close up to the gate.
“Open, I pray,” he whispered; “we bring you aid and food.”
“And perchance death too,” said a veteran officer, warily. “How know we
that ye are not betraying us? The English knaves have disguised them
thus ere now. Till we know more of you, ye enter not here.”
“Dally not, in Heaven’s name! life and death are on every moment!” said
the other vehemently, though still in a subdued tone. “I speak truth, I
vow it by St. Anne of Auray! Call quickly your commandant, Sir Godefroi
de Kerimel, if ye will not believe me.”
But there was no need, for the commandant was already on the spot.
“Who art thou who wouldst speak with me?” he cried, looking keenly over
the ramparts at the dim form below.
“Yvon de Laconnet,” said the stranger; “thou hast heard of me, belike.
Our captain bade me tell thee, as a token that we be true men, that we
have with us ‘Ar fol goët.’”
Most men would have seen no meaning in these Breton words, which imply
merely “The fool of the forest;” but to De Kerimel and his men the
strange phrase was like an electric shock.
“Open the gate!” he cried, “and praised be God, who hath sent such aid
in our need!”
The gate was opened, and in filed a hundred and fifty stout
men-at-arms, each with a bag of meal at his saddle-bow, a welcome sight
to the famished garrison.
De Laconnet told in few words how he and his men, on their way to the
town, had met an English raiding party a hundred strong, and, falling
on them by surprise, had cut them off to a man. Assuming as a disguise
the red crosses of their slain foes, and getting the pass-word from one
of their number, who had stolen in among the English after dark to
learn it, they had come safe through the besieging army with their
precious burden.
“But where is _he_, then?” asked Sir Godefroi, keenly scanning the long
file of riders as they passed.
De Laconnet replied in a whisper so low as to be barely audible; but it
seemed to startle the other like a thunder-clap.
“Now, may God guard him!” cried De Kerimel, crossing himself, “for
never was such peril dared by mortal man!”
In truth, great as were the dangers that this chosen band had braved,
they were nothing to the terrific peril which their leader was then
facing. For that leader was one who thought nothing done while anything
remained to do; and, where others would have been content to bring food
and help to the hard-pressed fortress, he aimed at nothing less than
the destruction of the formidable engine before which it was about to
fall.
Tall, gaunt, black, loomed against the star-lit sky (the golden
spangles of which were just paling at the approach of dawn), the huge
movable tower, so much dreaded by the defenders. At each corner of the
platform on which it stood, the wary English leader had planted a
sentinel; for he knew to his cost the daring of the besieged, and fully
expected a desperate sally that night to attack the fatal engine.
But no sally came; and the four guards, drowsy with cold and watching,
were yawning and rubbing their numbed hands, and doing their best to
keep awake, when a hoof-tramp was heard, and up rode a single horseman,
wearing the red cross of England.
“Hold, and give the word!” cried the foremost sentry, on the alert in a
moment, while his comrade drew up to him, all ready for action.
“St. George for Guienne!” replied the new-comer at once. “Ye keep good
watch, lads; but methinks there is little need of it now.”
“Why so?” asked both at once, while the other two guards came round
from the farther side of the tower to listen.
“Marry, the only foe within reach is already overthrown. Ye know we
went forth on a foray yester-morn; and our hap was to light on a whole
troop of these dainty Frenchmen, riding in hot haste toward the town,
and every man with a bag of meal slung to his saddle, thinking belike
to catch us napping, and get through to the hungry town with their
baker’s ware!”
The listening Englishmen gave an angry growl.
“But they reckoned without their host, for we fell upon them in right
English fashion, and when we got among these meal-carriers, St. George!
but we baked them a cake that they little relished! None escaped save
the few we spared for ransom; and I have here two good war-steeds sent
by our captain as a gift to stout Sir Nicholas, whom Heaven long
preserve to command us!”
The narrator spoke loudly and rapidly, almost as if trying to drown
some tell-tale sound; and so he was, though it would have needed a very
quick ear to catch, amid the timbers that supported the formidable
tower, a faint scraping, like the working of a well-oiled saw!
But even had they heard it, the English would hardly have heeded it, so
taken up were they with the news of the supposed victory, and the noble
horses that were its trophies, around which they pressed with a true
English interest in a horse.
“They be goodly beasts, in truth,” said one; “but I trow we have many a
better nag in merry Yorkshire.”
“Nay, there thou speak’st without warrant, Hal,” cried a second. “See
this black, what bone and sinew he hath! and what breadth too! Marry,
he might bear Guy of Warwick, or Bevis of Hampton, armed at all points!”
Just then a faint clink, as of metal, was heard from the engine; and
the strange horseman started slightly, and shot a nervous glance at it,
unseen by the rest.
“Hark! what sound was that?” cried an archer.
“A screw started in the framework, belike,” said another. “It will make
more noise ere long, when set against yon walls.”
All laughed hoarsely at the grim jest; but the laughers little dreamed
what was going on within a few feet of where they stood!