Huge chines of beef and mutton, with spare-rib and fowl in apparently
unlimited quantity, formed the staple of the repast, and were reinforced
by vast bowls of the commoner garden vegetables and by bread made of
unbolted flour. Sweetmeats were scarce, for the products of the
sugarcane are difficult to procure in these northern latitudes. Maple
sugar and honey serve as the ordinary substitutes, and even these are
regarded as luxuries, since maple-trees are few in number and
bee-keeping is but little practised. Finally, there were the drinkables,
these including hard cider and a thin, acid wine made from the wild
grape.
Annoyed by the clatter of the dishes and the half-whispered conversation
of the domestics, Constans rose and walked to the dais end of the hall,
where his mother and sister were seated, engaged in the agreeable
occupation of inspecting the contents of a peddler's pack. It was an
imposing array to the eye, and the chapman, kneeling on the floor close
by Issa's stool, kept handing up one article after another for closer
examination. The stuff seemed worthless enough to Constans--trumpery
pieces of quartz crystal set in copper and debased silver, rings and
bangles of a hue unmistakably brassy, hair ribbons, parti-colored dress
goods, pins, needles, and a miscellaneous assortment of useless
trinkets. Constans was genuinely astonished that Issa, who had been
hitherto something of a good-fellow, should seem interested in such
rubbish; but then women were all alike when it was a question of pretty
things to buy. He looked sharply at the peddler, but the latter appeared
commonplace enough, a man of forty or thereabouts, and dressed in the
looped-up gray gaberdine peculiar to the guild of itinerant chapmen.
Possibly he was bald, for he wore a close-fitting skull-cap; his beard,
however, was luxuriant and effectually hid the contour of the lower half
of his face. Constans stood by frowning lightly, but he had no
reasonable pretext for interfering with his sister's amusement, and in
the feminine catalogue of diversions the peddler's infrequent visit held
a prominent place.
The major-domo, wearing a silver chain about his neck by virtue of his
office, advanced to his mistress's chair and announced that the meal was
ready for serving. The Lady Rayne nodded, a brazen gong sounded, the big
folding-doors at the south end were thrown open, and the hall was
quickly filled with the customary throng of retainers and hangers-on.
But all remained standing in silence until the master and mistress had
taken their places. Sir Gavan entered from his workshop, and, offering
his hand to his wife, led her ceremoniously to her seat, Issa and
Constans following.
To Constans's indignant amazement the peddler stepped forward, as though
to take the vacant seat alongside of Issa. But before Constans could
move or speak the chapman appeared to recognize the impropriety of
which he had been so nearly guilty; with a profound genuflection, he
withdrew from the dais and found a place at the lower table. The
incident had been so momentary that it had passed entirely unnoticed by
his father and the Lady Rayne; Constans could not even be sure that Issa
had understood, and certainly she gave no sign of discomposure.
"What presumption!" muttered Constans, under his breath. "These fellows
are becoming more insufferable every day, and my father sees nothing."
Constans resolved that the man should be packed off immediately upon the
conclusion of the meal. He could easily persuade Sir Gavan that the
fellow had none too honest a look, while his wares were assuredly the
cheapest trash. He must be got rid of before the women had been beguiled
into spending all their pin-money.
The repast dragged out to its end, and the women withdrew to the upper
end of the hall, comparative privacy being secured by large leather
screens set up along the edge of the dais. The men remained at the table
for deeper potations and the smoking of rank black kinnectikut tobacco in
huge wooden pipes.
A heavy thunderstorm, the first of the season, had come up, and Constans
recognized, to his vexation, that he would have no decent excuse for
turning the peddler out-of-doors. So he kept his seat at the table in
sulky silence, watching the man closely, and ready to note anything of
further suspicion in his actions and bearing. But he had his trouble for
his pains, for the fellow was the itinerant chapman to the life, even to
the stock of gross stories with which he kept his bucolic audience in an
uninterrupted guffaw. Pah! would Sir Gavan never finish his second pipe
and give the signal to rise?
The storm had turned into a heavy downpour, and the peddler was
consequently sure of his night's lodging. He had been summoned again to
the presence of the ladies, and, as before, Constans stood aloof and
wondered irritably how his fastidious sister could find aught in common
with this wayside huckster. She was talking to him now with an animation
rare with her, her checks flushed and her eyes glowing.
"And you have been in Doom--in the city itself?" she asked,
incredulously.
"Yes, gracious lady; and not once, but a score of times. The brocades
that I promised to show you after supper will be my witness. And there
are some superlative satin and silk lengths which my Lady Rayne wished
particularly to see. Will you allow me, then?"
The peddler, opening an inner compartment of his pack, drew out several
pieces of stuff wrapped up in brown linen. Removing the covering, he
spread the goods upon the rug before the ladies, holding up each
separate piece to the light and expatiating upon its merits in the
approved fashion of the shopman. The two women gave a little gasp of
astonishment; never had they seen such wondrous beauty of color and
finish; their little market-town of Croye held nothing to compare to
this.
"I must send for Meta to advise me," said the Lady Rayne, glancing
fondly from one rich fabric to another. "She ought to know good silk
when she sees it, after living so long in Croye; and you, Issa, seem
strangely indifferent to-night. You hardly looked at this piece of
brocade."
Meta, the Lady Rayne's bedwoman, speedily appeared, and mistress and
maid fell into earnest converse. Issa, as in duty bound, listened; then
her attention seemed to flag again. She bent over the open pack and
picked up a chain of filigree work. It was beautifully fashioned and
looked like gold.
"It is gold," said the chapman, answering the question in her eyes. "The
pure gold of the ancients; you never see that pale yellow nowadays. Ah,
yes, a pretty trinket to have brought from the heart of Doom for the
delight of a fair woman's eyes, and well worth its price of a man's
life. But, then, fortune was kind, and I did not have to pay."
"Tell me about it," said the girl, beseechingly, and her breath came
short and hot.
Whereupon the chapman drew a little nearer and began a wondrous tale of
a secret visit that he had lately made to Doom, the Forbidden; of how he
had crossed the river on a raft, the moon being in its dark quarter; of
his landing upon a shaking wharf, where each foot-fall left a print of
phosphorescent fire on the rotting planks; then of the marvels that he
had seen there--vast warehouses covering whole acres of ground and
filled with incalculable store of goods; lofty buildings, whose
chimney-pots were in the clouds; palaces of sculptured stone, now empty
and despoiled, the habitation of foxes and unclean nocturnal creatures.
Then again of hidden treasure, heaps and heaps of yellow gold; of the
fierce Doomsmen who guarded it so well; of pitfalls and gins and siren
voices that lured the soul astray; of ghastly shapes that crept along
the crumbling walls; of mystery in every sound and shadow; of
treacheries and alarms and the ever present terror of death--a tale of
amazing wonder, at which the blood ran alternately warm and cold and the
heart fluttered with a certain fearful joy.
How the maid hung upon the word, her little breasts heaving and her lips
parted! "You have seen all these things?" she panted. "How wonderful!
And you were not afraid? That was like a man--to be brave----" She
blushed deeply, stammered, and turned to the neglected brocades.
Constans, standing close at hand, was moved to new anger. The
impertinent, how dared he! Yet he had listened himself, and in spite of
himself, for assuredly the fellow talked well.
The evening was now well advanced and the customary hour of retirement
was at hand. It was still raining, but Guyder Touchett, who came in
dripping from his nightly task of posting the watch, remarked that the
wind was changing and that it was likely to clear when the moon rose. Of
course the peddler would now spend the night at the keep, and at his own
request he was allowed to remain in the hall, a straw pallet being
brought in for his accommodation.
* * * * *
"The Rat's-Hole!"
Constans repeated the words half aloud, holding the paper close to the
guttering candle. It was but a tiny scrap, scarce large enough for the
writing that it held. But paper of any kind is rare in these days, and
so the gleam of white had caught his eye as he went up-stairs to his
sleeping apartment. The handwriting was unfamiliar, and besides it was
in back-hand, and it may be disguised as well; he was hardly an expert
in such fine distinctions. But it was plainly a message, and its
possible import startled him. For the Rat's-Hole was the secret exit
that existed behind the jamb of the fireplace at the upper end of the
hall. So cunningly had the panelled door been joinered into the
wainscoting that a man might search for hours and yet not discover the
spring that threw it open. Furthermore, the wainscoting was but a screen
for the real door of iron-bound oak giving passage directly through the
outer wall of the keep to the open country. A jealously guarded secret,
this matter of the Rat's-Hole, and supposed to be known only to the
master of the household and his immediate family. Even among them its
existence was never referred to in ordinary conversation, while its
actual use was restricted to the gravest of emergencies.
"The Rat's-Hole!" A message, an agreement, an appointment? By whose hand
had these words been written? For whose eye had they been intended?
It would have been the wiser course to have communicated at once with
Sir Gavan, but the latter, feeling somewhat indisposed, had retired
early, and Constans hesitated to disturb him. Moreover, the boy stood in
awe of his father, and of late a feeling of estrangement had been
growing up between them. To Sir Gavan, Constans, with his dreamy,
inactive nature, was a keen disappointment--so different from his
brother Tennant. And Constans felt that his father did not understand
him nor, indeed, cared to do so. Latterly, they had gone their own ways,
and now at this perplexing juncture Constans could not bring himself to
take his father into his confidence.
When, a few moments later, the lights had been formally extinguished for
the night, Constans made his way back to the hall; he had to pass close
by the pallet occupied by the peddler, and he paused an instant to
listen to his deep and measured breathing. Surely the man slept.
Even in the dark Constans knew how to put his hand on the spring in the
wainscoting, and it yielded to his touch. It was discomposing to find
the key of the real door standing, ready for turning, in the lock. In
theory, the key was never out of the master's immediate possession. An
oversight, then? Constans's mind reverted to the one occasion in his
remembrance on which the Rat's-Hole had been used, that day a fortnight
back, when his sister Issa came out of the birch-copse, with her hands
full of May-bloom and Quinton Edge had waited under cover of the alders.
It was possible; his father might have forgotten. And yet----
Constans took the key and slipped it into the bosom of his doublet. Then
closing the secret door in the wainscoting, he drew one of the big
leather screens into convenient position and crouched down behind it.
The dying fire gave out a flickering and uncertain light; he watched the
grotesque procession of the shadows on the opposite wall until his eyes
grew heavy. The odor of a smouldering bough of balsam-fir hung in the
air--warm, spicy, soporific. He slept.
VI
TROY TOWN
Constans awoke just as the footsteps died away; he listened, but again
the stillness was profound. He felt his way to the secret door; the
wainscot screen stood ajar. It was plain that some one had come to the
Rat's-Hole only to discover that the key of the outside door was
missing. Constans realized that he, too, had missed something--his
chance to get to the bottom of the mystery. Shame on such a sentinel!
Without any definite plan of action, Constans made his way to the lower
hall. The moonbeams were pouring a flood of light through the east
windows and he could see plainly. The peddler's couch was empty, save
for his gabardine of gray and the false hair that had served him for a
beard. There were two figures dimly visible in the obscurity of the
vaulted entrance to the water gate. They were working at the clumsy
fastenings of the doors. As Constans ran up he recognized his sister
Issa and the man who called himself Quinton Edge.
Without a word Constans seized the girl by the arm and swung her behind
him. He struck at the Doomsman with his hunting-knife, but the latter
caught his wrist with the grip of a wolf-trap. Yet even at that moment
of stress Quinton Edge's voice preserved its soft, mincing inflections;
the man wore his irritating affectations of speech as jauntily as he did
the ostrich plumes in his cap.
"A brave ruffling of feathers--but gently, gently boy, you are
frightening the lady. She goes with me of her full consent. Is it not
so, sweetheart?"
"You lie!" said the boy, thickly.
The man laughed. "I tell you," he went on, "that the girl is mine by her
own choice, and you have only to stand aside quietly to save the house
and your own skin. But softly now; you are tearing the lace of my
sleeve. A plague on your clumsy fingers!"
With a wrench Constans twisted himself free and turned to face his
sister. "Issa!" he implored.
But she, with eyes like rain-washed stars, only looked beyond him to
where Quinton Edge stood, softly smiling and holding out his womanish
white hands. She would have rejoined him, but once again Constans forced
her back. The dangling rope of the alarm-bell grazed his hand; he
clutched at it, and a clang re-echoed through the court-yard, rousing
the recreant warders from their slumbers. In that same instant Quinton
Edge blew his whistle.
The Doomsmen must have already crossed the moat and been close up to the
water gate, for the response to their leader's call was immediate.
Quinton Edge had just time to remove the last of the bars securing the
barrier when the night-watch streamed out tumultuously from their
quarters under the arch, and he was obliged to retreat into the
court-yard. But already the outlaws had forced apart the wooden leaves
of the water gate; now they filled the vaulted passageway, and by sheer
impact of superior weight began to drive back the bewildered and
disorganized defenders. Friend and foe together, the mass surged into
the quadrangle, a blind, indefinite cluster of struggling men, like to a
swarm of hiving bees.
The storm had blown over, but the moon was every now and then obscured
by masses of scurrying cloud-wrack, and in these periods of
semi-darkness Doomsman and Stockader were hardly to be told apart. So
closely packed was the scrimmage that the use of any missile weapon was
impossible. The dagger and the night-stick (the latter a stout truncheon
weighted with lead) were doing the work, and effectively, too. And in
that press a man might be struck and die upon his feet, the corpse being
stayed from falling through its juxtaposition to the bodies of the
living.
The men of the keep, now that they had recovered from their first
discomfiture, rallied manfully. So stubborn and bitter raged the
struggle that there was not a sound to be heard outside the noise of
scuffling feet and the thud of blows. A man when hard beset for his life
has no breath to spare for either oath of despair or shout of triumph.
But not for long were the scales to swing so evenly; presently the ranks
of the Stockaders yielded again to the pressure and broke into separate
groups. Then were to be heard the groans of the wounded and dying; then
for the first time the yell of the Doomsmen broke forth, ear-piercing in
its exultancy.
Constans had managed to reach the shelter of the Great House, half
dragging, half carrying the fainting form of his sister. Already Sir
Gavan, with Tennant and the house-servants, were under arms and making
what preparations they could for the final stand. A hopeless task it
seemed, for the outlaws were now in full possession of the rest of the
keep. The retainers occupying the general quarters in the south barracks
had fallen easy victims. Surprised, out-numbered, and poorly armed, they
had been quickly cut down as they reached the court-yard, and active
resistance to the invaders was at an end.
Now the attack was turned directly upon the entrance to the Great House,
and Sir Gavan, with his handful of followers, waited on the threshold
for the inevitable issue. Already the ponderous door of iron-banded oak
was groaning and splintering under the hail of blows. And in the
forefront, with a laugh upon his lips, hewed Quinton Edge.
The barrier was down at last and the wolves were free to fall upon their
quarry. A score of men, all told, against a hundred; the outcome was
hardly doubtful. Yet it was not Gavan of the Greenwood Keep who held up
his hand in sign of parley, but the Doomsman, Quinton Edge.
"The maiden Issa," he said, speaking with a smooth insolence that made
Constans set his teeth. "Give her safely to my hand and your goods and
your lives shall go free of further damage. A cheap bargain; but speak
quickly, old man, these hounds of mine are not to be held in leash for
long."
The partisans on either side had fallen back, leaving the two leaders
face to face. Sir Gavan plucked twice at his throat, where the veins
stood out like cords, constricting the vocal passages so that he
stuttered thickly as he spoke.
"This--this gallows-scape!" he stammered. "This burner of peasants'
hayricks, this pitiful plunderer of hen-roosts and cattle byres! If it
were a man, now--to nail the insult to his lips----"
"We lose time," interrupted the Doomsman. "I have named my price."
"The price--ah, yes, the price. Tennant, Constans, you heard what he
said. But where is my child? Let the girl stand forth; she is her
father's daughter, and she shall answer for herself."
"I will abide by it," said Quinton Edge, with cool confidence.
The half-circle opened and Issa stood before them; a mere child she
looked in her simple slip of white and with her fair hair all unbound. A
vague terror seized upon Sir Gavan. What was this question that he was
about to ask of his daughter? Could there be other than the one answer?
How quietly she stood there and waited. Yes, and they were all waiting
upon him; he must speak.
"Issa!"
It seemed to him that he had shouted aloud; then he realized that he had
not spoken at all. "Issa!" he said, again, and she turned towards him.
"This man; he is not known to you. How could it be?"
"Yet it is the truth, my father," answered the girl, steadily. "It is
just a month ago that chance set us face to face--one day when I rode
alone in the green drive."
"And thereafter?"
"Once he came to the walled garden, adventuring the thousand chances of
discovery. Yet how he managed to cross the stockade-line I know not,
for I was frightened, and begged him to leave me. And this he did most
courteously, only swearing that he would again return."
"The third time?"
"That was the day--the day of the first May-bloom--the Ochre brook and
the Doomsmen----" The girl's voice faltered.
"Yet never a word to me or to your mother?"
"It was not my secret," she answered, bravely; and upon that Quinton
Edge himself took up the word.
"The blame is mine, since I used the peril in which I stood to set a
seal upon her lips. A true and loyal maid is your daughter, and it was
only after she had twice said me nay that I resolved to take without the
asking. So I came that day which we both remember, and waited under the
alder bushes, and once again I missed my cast. Yet was the quest not
altogether fruitless, for I carried away this token from my lady's
hostile garden."
He drew a faded spray of the May-bloom from his doublet and touched it
lightly to his lips.
"What gentleman could refuse to redeem so dear a pledge? You have seen
how I took head in hand and sat me down under your own roof-tree, my
good Gavan of the keep. Faith, it was an even chance on which side the
platter would fall, but this time the luck was mine. We should have been
leagues away in the sun's eye by now, only that a peevish boy would have
his way."
"And this--this is also true?" said Sir Gavan, and it seemed that the
preceding silence had been very long.
"It is true." She had answered quietly, almost mechanically, but the
heart of the Lady Rayne thrilled to the new note in her child's voice.
"Issa!" she cried, softly, and fell to weeping, not as a mother for her
daughter but as one woman who sorrows for another.
"Issa!" she said, again, but neither then nor thereafter did the girl
vouchsafe her mother look or word, all her soul seeming to hang upon the
will of the man who had brought this woe upon her house. There was no
need for word to pass; reading the command in her lover's eyes, she
slipped from her mother's detaining clasp and placed her hand in his.
Now, Issa was exceeding fair to look upon, and Quinton Edge's blood
stirred hotly within him. And so for once he lost his head and did a
foolish thing (only that no woman would agree that it was foolish), for
there, in the presence of all, he quickly drew her face to his and
kissed her on the lips. Then turning to his men, he made as though to
send them from the house.
But it was not to be. A keen-pointed, heavy throwing-knife hung at Sir
Gavan's side. Without a word he snatched it from the sheath, poised and
flung it with all his force at his enemy's heart, a master throw and
executed like a flash of light. Issa felt rather than saw the coming of
the missile, and with an instinctive movement contrived to interpose her
own delicate body. The steel bit deep into the white flesh, and with a
little, shuddering cry the girl sank to the floor; out leaped Quinton
Edge's sword. Constans, supporting his mother, felt her hand grow cold
in his. He laid her gently down upon a convenient settle and thanked God
that she, too, was safe.
It seemed to Constans that he was wandering in a bristling thicket of
steel points; thunderous crashes re-echoed in his ears; the red light
from the burning building eddied about his feet, a sea of blood and
flame. His father and Tennant were down, never to rise again; a few
paces in front of him Guyder Touchett headed a little knot of the
defenders, swearing furiously as he hewed and hacked. A half-dozen
against ten times their number; the issue could not be doubtful. Even as
he gazed, two of the six sunk to their knees and then fell face
downward, a dreadful sign that even a child might understand.
Now, Guyder Touchett stood alone, and about him a snarling pack of Dom
Gillian's wolves, waiting cautiously upon one another, for the Stockader
had a long sword-arm. Thereupon a man broke out of the press, signing
the prudent ones to fall back. It was Quinton Edge, and, as ever, he was
laughing, only that now his laughter sounded like to a bell that has
cracked in the ringing. The swords clashed together; then the Doomsman
dropped his point.
"You are too good a man for crows' meat," he said, shortly. "Stand clear
and save your ears; my business is with the white-faced boy behind you."
But Guyder Touchett, ruddy, full-bodied, and loving his life as well as
any man, only girded at him, saying:
"Is there, then, a deeper hell than this? I follow where my master has
gone, and you, my lord, shall show me the way."
"The more fool you," quoth Quinton Edge, and drove at him.