The descent into the moat of Caylus was rather a ticklish business, even
with the aid of an improvised rope, for the face of the cliff was, for
the most part, smooth, and afforded little in the way of foothold, but
Lagardere was a trained athlete and a man of great physical strength, one
that could use his feet with skill for purchase against the face of the
rock, and he made his way dexterously to the end of his tether. Even when
he had got thus far, and was swinging by his hands from the end of his
taut sash, he was a considerable distance from the ground. But Lagardere
let go with as light a heart as if he were a new Curtius leaping into a
new gulf; and, indeed, if he had been of a mind to make the parallel, he
would have counted his stake as great as the safety of Rome. Dropping
like a plummet, he alighted on his hands and knees on the ground. Quickly
he picked himself up, dusted the earth from his palms, and, after
carefully feeling himself all over to make sure that he was none the
worse, save for the jar of his tumble, he looked about him cautiously. It
was late evening now, and the hot day knew no cooler dusk.
As he looked up from the strange vault in which he stood, the vault that
was formed by the moat of Caylus between the rock on which the castle
rose and the rock on which the Inn of the Seven Devils was perched, he
saw above him the late evening sky painted with the strangest pageant. To
the right of the spot where the sun had declined the purple melancholy of
the heavens was broken by a blaze of gold, such as might have flashed
from the armor of some celestial host marshalled and marching against the
Powers of Darkness. To the left, under lowered eyelids of sable clouds,
there ran a band of red fire that seemed as if it must belt the earth
with its fury, a red fire that might have flamed from the mouth of the
very pit. Lagardere was not over-imaginative, but the strangeness of the
contrast, the fierce splendor of the warring colors, touched the player's
heart beneath the soldier's hide. "The gold of heaven," he murmured, and
saluted the sky to the right. "The rod of hell," he thought, and pointed
towards the left, where distant trees stared, black, angry outlines
against those waves of livid fire. Was not this contest in the clouds a
kind of allegory of the quarrel in which he was now engaged, and was not
his cause very surely, in its righteousness, its justice, its honor,
gilded and invigorated by those noble rays to strive against and
overthrow the legionaries of evil?
Even as he thought such unfamiliar thoughts, the pageant of opposing
forces dimmed and dwindled. The darkness was gathering swiftly, investing
the world with its legion of gloom; and in the shadow of the great Castle
of Caylus, rising like a rock itself out of the solid rock behind
Lagardere, the moat was soon very dark indeed. There was little light in
the moonless sky; there came none from the castle, which in its dim
outline of towers and battlements might have been the enchanted palace of
some fairy tale, so soundless, so lightless, so unpeopled did it seem.
There was a faint gleam discernible in the windows of the Inn on the
other side of the gorge from which he had just succeeded in escaping.
Lagardere looked up at the Inn and laughed; Lagardere looked up at the
castle and smiled. What was she like, he wondered, that beautiful
Gabrielle de Caylus, whom it had been his impudent ambition to woo, and
whom he now knew to be married to Nevers, his appointed antagonist? He
had come all that way with the pleasant intention of killing Nevers, but
he felt more friendly towards his enemy since he had learned of the plot
against his life, and he wondered who was the instigator of that plot,
who was the paymaster of the, as he believed, baffled assassins. For in a
sense he believed them to be baffled, and this for two reasons. The first
was that he heard no sound of stealthy footsteps creeping across the
bridge. The second was that when he glanced up at the Inn window he saw
that the dim glow in the distant window was suddenly occulted, and then
as suddenly became visible again. It was plain to Lagardere that some
one had entered the room and had looked out of the window for an instant.
Therefore some one had already discovered his absence, probably the maid
of the Inn. No doubt she would send word to the bravos, and it might very
well chance that the bravos would not think the odds in their favor
sufficiently good when they knew that they had to deal with Henri de
Lagardere as well as with Louis de Nevers.
Lagardere whistled cheerfully the lilt of a drinking-song as he reflected
thus, for he considered himself quite equal to handling the whole batch
of rascallions if only he had a wall of some kind to back him. He was
fondling the possibility that they had given up the whole business in
disgust at his interruption of their purpose, when it suddenly stabbed
his fancy that they might ambush Nevers on his way. But he dismissed that
fear instantly. He hoped and believed that if they knew he was free they
would give him the first chance to kill Nevers for them. In any case, all
that he could do was to wait patiently where he was and see what the
creeping minutes brought.
The moat of Caylus did not appear to him to be, under the existing
conditions, by any means the ideal field for a duel. In the darkness it
seemed to him to be more happily adapted for a game of blindman's-buff.
There was a half-filled hay-cart in the moat, and bundles of hay were
scattered hither and thither on the ground and littered the place
confusingly. Lagardere began to busy himself in clearing some of this hay
out of the way, so as to afford an untroubled space for the coming
combat. While he was thus engaged he heard for the first time a faint
sound come from the direction of the castle. It was the sound of a door
being turned cautiously upon its hinges. Crouching in the shadow of the
rock down which he had lately descended, Lagardere looked round and saw
dimly two forms emerge like shadows from the very side of the castle. The
new-comers had come forth from a little postern that gave onto the moat,
to which they descended by some narrow steps cut in the rock, and they
now walked a little way slowly into the darkness. Lagardere, all
watchfulness, could hear one of the shadows say to the other, "This way,
monseigneur," and the word "monseigneur" made him wonder. Was he going to
be brought face to face with the Marquis of Caylus, the old ogre whose
grim tyranny had been talked of even in Paris?
The shadow addressed as monseigneur answered, "I see no one," and the
voices of both the shadows were unfamiliar to the listener. But the voice
of the shadow that was saluted as monseigneur sounded like the voice of a
young man.
The leading shadow seemed to be peering into the darkness in front of
him. "I told them to place a sentinel," he said to his companion; and as
he spoke he caught sight of Lagardere, who must have looked as shadowy
to him as he looked to Lagardere, and he pointed as he added: "Yes, there
is some one there, monseigneur."
"Who is it?" the second shadow questioned, and again the voice sounded
youthful to Lagardere's ears.
"It looks like Saldagno," said the first shadow; and, coming a little
farther forward, he called dubiously into the gloom: "Is that you,
Saldagno?"
Now, as Saldagno was the name of one of the swordsmen who had met at the
Inn in menace of Nevers, Lagardere came to the swift conclusion that the
two shadows now haunting him had something to do with that conspiracy,
and that, if it were possible, it would be as well to learn their
purposes. He was, therefore, quite prepared to be Saldagno for the
occasion, and it was with a well-affected Lusitanian accent that he
promptly answered, "Present," and came a little nearer to the strangers.
The first shadow spoke again, craning a long neck into the darkness. "It
is I, Monsieur Peyrolles. Come here."
Lagardere advanced obediently, and the second shadow, coming to the side
of his companion, questioned him. "Would you like to earn fifty
pistoles?"
Although both the voices were strange to Lagardere, the voice of this
second shadow seemed to denote a person of better breeding than his
companion, a person accustomed to command when the other was accustomed
to cajole. Also, it was decidedly the voice of a young man. Whoever the
speaker might be, he certainly was not the crabbed old Marquis de Caylus.
Lagardere endeavored eagerly but unsuccessfully to see the face of the
speaker. Night had by this time fallen completely. The moat was as black
as a wolf's mouth, and the shadow that was muffled in a cloak held a
corner of it so raised that it would have concealed his visage if the
gorge had been flooded with moonlight.
"Who would not?" Lagardere answered, with a swagger which seemed to him
appropriate to a light-hearted assassin.
The shadow gave him commands. "When ten o'clock strikes, tap at this
window with your sword." He pointed as he spoke to the wall of the
castle, and in that wall Lagardere, peering through the obscurity, could
faintly discern a window about a man's height from the moat. The speaker
went on: "A woman will open. Whisper very low, 'I am here.'"
Involuntarily Lagardere echoed the last words, "I am here," and added,
"The motto of Nevers."
There was annoyance in the well-bred voice as it questioned, sharply:
"What do you know of Nevers?"
Peyrolles respectfully answered for the sham Saldagno: "Monseigneur, they
all know whom they are to meet. How they know I cannot tell, but they do
know. But they are to be trusted."
The shadow shrugged his shoulders and resumed his instructions: "The
woman will hand you a child, a baby a few months old. Take it at once to
the Inn." He paused for a moment and then said, slowly: "I trust you are
not tender-hearted."
Lagardere protested with voice and gesture. "You pain me," he declared.
Apparently satisfied, the shadow went on: "If the girl should die in your
arms, no one will blame you, and your fifty pistoles will be a hundred.
'Tis but a quick nip of finger and thumb on an infant's neck. Do you
understand?"
"What I do not understand," retorted Lagardere, "is why you do not do the
job yourself and save your money."
It was now Peyrolles's turn to be annoyed. "Rascal!" he exclaimed,
angrily. But the man he called monseigneur restrained him.
"Calm, Peyrolles, calm! For the very good reason, inquisitive gentleman,
that the lady in question would know my voice or the voice of my friend
here, and as I do not wish her to think that I have anything to do with
to-night's work--"