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 spit on!
Strangely enough it was the moment of discovery and his conduct in that
moment--it was the anticipation of this, that weighed most heavily on
his guilty mind as he sat in his parlour, his hour of retiring long
past, his household in bed. The city slept round him; how long would it
sleep? And when it awoke, how long dared he, how long would it be
natural for him to ignore the first murmur, the succeeding outcry, the
rising alarm? It was not his cue to do overmuch, to precipitate
discovery, or to assume at once the truth to be the truth. But on the
other hand he must not be too backward.
Try as he would he could not divert his thoughts from this. He saw
himself skulking in his house, listening with a white face to the rush
of armed men along the street. He heard the tumult rising on all sides,
and saw himself stand, guilty and irresolute, between hearth and door,
uncertain if the time had come to go forth. Finally, and before he had
made up his mind to go out, he fancied himself confronted by an entering
face, and in an instant detected. And this it was, this initial
difficulty, oddly enough--and not the subsequent hours of horror,
confusion and danger, of dying men and wailing women--that rode his
mind, dwelt on him and shook his nerves as the crisis approached.
One consolation he had, and one only; but a measureless one. Basterga
had kept his word. He was cured. Six hours earlier he had taken the
_remedium_ according to the directions, and with every hour that had
elapsed since he had felt new life course through his veins. He had had
no return of pain, no paroxysm; but a singular lightness of body,
eloquent of the change wrought in him and the youth and strength that
were to come, had done what could be done to combat the terrors of the
soul, natural in his situation. Pale he was, despite the potion; in
spite of it he trembled and sweated. But he knew himself changed, and
sick at heart as he was, he could only guess at the depths of nervous
despair to which he must have fallen had he not taken the wondrous
draught.
There was that to the good. That to the good. He would live. And life
was the great thing after all; life and health, and strength. If he had
sold his soul, his country, his friends, at least he would live--if
naught happened to him to-night. If naught--but ah, the thought pierced
him to the heart. He who had proved himself in old days no mean soldier
in the field, who had won honour in more than one fight, felt his brow
grow damp, his knees grow flaccid, knew himself a coward. For the life
which he must risk was not the old life, but the new one which he had
bought so dearly; the new one for which he had given his soul, his
country, and his friends. And he dared not risk that! He dared not let
the winds of heaven blow too roughly on that! If aught befel him this
night, the irony of it! The mockery of it! The deadly, deadly folly of
it!
He sweated at the thought. He cursed, cursed frantically his folly in
omitting to give himself out for worse than he was; in omitting to take
to his bed early in the day! Then he might have kept it through the
night, through the fight; then he might have avoided risks. Now he felt
that every ball discharged at a venture must strike him; that if he
showed so much as his face at a window death must find its opportunity.
He would not have dared to pass through a street on a windy day now--for
if a tile fell it must fall on him. And he must fight! He must fight!
His manhood shrivelled within him at the thought. He shuddered. He was
still shuddering, when on the shutter which masked the casement came a
knock, thrice repeated. A cautious knock of which the mere sound implied
an understanding.
The Syndic remained motionless, glaring at the window. Everything on a
night like this, and to an uneasy conscience, menaced danger. At length
it occurred to him that the applicant might be Louis, whom he had sent
with the message to the Porte Neuve: and he took the lamp and went to
admit him, albeit reluctantly, for what did the booby mean by returning?
It was late, and only to open at this hour might, in the light cast by
after events, raise suspicions.
But it was not Louis. The lamp flickering in the draught of the doorway
disclosed a huge dusky form, glimmering metallic here and there, that in
a trice pushed him back, passed by him, entered. It was Basterga. The
Syndic shut the door, and staggered rather than walked after him to the
parlour. There the Syndic set down the lamp, and turned to the scholar,
his face a picture of guilty terror. "What is it?" he muttered. "What
has happened? Is--the thing put off?"
The other's aspect answered his question. A black corselet with shoulder
pieces, and a feathered steel cap raised Basterga's huge stature almost
to the gigantic. Nor did it need this to render him singular; to draw
the eye to him a second time and a third. The man himself in this hour
of his success, this moment of conscious daring, of reliance on his star
and his strength, towered in the room like a demi-god. "No," he
answered, with a ponderous, exultant smile, slow to come, slow to go.
"No, Messer Blondel. Far from it. It has not been put off."
"Something has been discovered?"
"No. We are here. That is all."
The Syndic supported himself by a hand pressed hard against the table
behind him. "Here?" he gasped. "You are here? You have the town already?
It is impossible."
"We have three hundred men in the Corraterie," Basterga answered. "We
hold the Tertasse Gate, and the Monnaye. The Porte Neuve is cut off, and
at our mercy; it will be taken when we give the signal. Beyond it four
thousand men are waiting to enter. We hold Geneva in our grip at
last--at last!" And in an accent half tragic, half ironic, he
declaimed:--
"Venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus
Dardaniae! Fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium et ingens
Gloria Teucrorum! Ferus omnia Jupiter Argos
Transtulit!"
And then more lightly, "If you doubt me, how am I here?" he asked. And
he extended his huge arms in the pride of his strength. "Exercise your
warrant now--if you can, Messer Syndic. Syndic," he continued in a tone
of mockery, "where is your warrant now? I have but this moment," he
pointed to wet stains on his corselet, "slain one of your guards. Do
justice, Syndic! I have seized one of your gates by force. Avenge it,
Syndic! Syndic? ha! ha! Here is an end of Syndics."
The Syndic gasped. He was a hard man, not to say an arrogant one, little
used to opposition; one who, times and again, had ridden rough-shod over
the views of his fellows. To be jeered at, after this fashion, to be
scorned and mocked by this man who in the beginning had talked so
silkily, moved so humbly, evinced so much respect, played the poor
scholar so well, was a bitter pill. He asked himself if it was for this
he had betrayed his city; if it was for this he had sold his friends.
And then--then he remembered that it was not for this--not for this, but
for life, dear life, warm life, that he had done this thing. And,
swallowing the rage that was rising within him, he calmed himself.
"It is better to cease to be Syndic than cease to live," he said
coldly.
But the other had no mind to return to their former relations. "True, O
sage!" he answered contemptuously. "But why not both? Because--shall I
tell you?"
"I hear----"
"Yes, and I hear too! The city is rising!" Basterga listened a moment.
"Presently they will ring the alarm-bell, and----"
"If you stay here some one may find you!"
"And find me with you?" Basterga rejoined. He knew that he ought to go,
for his own sake as well as the Syndic's. He knew that nothing was to be
made and much might be lost by the disclosure that was on his tongue.
But he was intoxicated with the success which he had gained; with the
clang of arms, and the glitter of his armed presence. The true spirit of
the man, as happens in intoxication of another kind, rose to the
surface, cruel, waggish, insolent--of an insolence long restrained, the
insolence of the scholar, who always in secret, now in the light, panted
to repay the slights he had suffered, the patronage of leaders, the
scoffs of power. "Ay," he continued, "they may find me with you! But if
you do not mind, I need not. And I was just asking you--why not both?
Life and power, my friend?"
"You know," Blondel answered, breathing quickly. How he hated the man!
How gladly would he have laid him dead at his feet! For if the fool
stayed here prating, if he were found here by those who within a few
moments would come with the alarm, he was himself a lost man. All would
be known.
That was the fear in Blondel's mind; the alarm was growing louder each
moment, and drawing nearer. And then in a twinkling, in two or three
sentences, Basterga put that fear into the second place, and set in its
seat emotions that brooked no rival.
"Why not both?" he said, jeering. "Live and be Syndic, both? Because you
had the scholar's ill, eh, Messer Blondel? Or because your physician
_said_ you had it--to whom I paid a good price--for the advice?" The
devil seemed to look out of the man's eyes, as he spoke in short
sentences, each pointed, each conveying a heart-stab to its hearer.
"To whom--you gave?" Blondel muttered, his eyes dilated.
"A good price--for the advice! A good price to tell you, you had it."
The magistrate's face swelled till it was almost purple, his hands
gripped the front of his coat, and pressed hard against his breast.
"But--the pains?" he muttered. "Did you--but no," with a frightful
grimace, "you lie! you lie!"
"Did I bribe him--to give you those too?" the other answered, with a
ruthless laugh. "You have alighted on it, most grave and reverend sage.
You have alighted on the exact fact, so clever are you! That was
precisely what I did some months back, after I heard that you, being
fearful as rich men are, had been to him for some fancied ill. You had
two medicines? You remember? The one gave, the other soothed your
trouble. And now that you understand, now that your mind is free from
care, and you can sleep without fear of the scholar's ill--will you not
thank me for your cure, Messer Blondel?"
"Thank you?" the magistrate panted. "Thank you?" He stepped back two
paces, groping with his hands, as if he sought to support himself by the
table from which he had advanced.
"Ay, thank me!"
"No, but I will pay you!" and with the word Blondel snatched from the
table a pistol which he had laid within his reach an hour earlier.
Before the giant, confident in his size, discovered his danger, the
muzzle was at his breast. It was too late to move then--three paces
divided the men; but, in his haste to raise the pistol, Blondel had not
shaken from it the handkerchief under which he had hidden it, and the
lock fell on a morsel of the stuff. The next moment Basterga's huge hand
struck aside the useless weapon, and flung Blondel gasping against the
wall.
"Fool!" the scholar cried, towering above the baffled, shrinking man
whose attempt had placed him at his mercy. "Think you that Caesar
Basterga was born to perish by your hand? That the gods made me what I
am, I who carry to-night the fortunes of a nation and the fate of a
king, that I might fall by so pitiful a creature as you! Ay, 'tis the
alarm-bell, you are right. And by-and-by your friends will be here. It
is a wonder," he continued, with a cruel look, "that they are not here
already; but perhaps they have enough to fill their hands! And come or
stay--if they be like you, poor fool, weak in body as in wit--I care
not! I, Caesar Basterga, this night lord of Geneva, and in the time to
come, and thanks to you----"
"Curse you!" Blondel gasped.
"That which I dare be sworn you have dreamt of being!"--the scholar
continued with a subtle smile. "The Grand Duke's _alter ego_, Mayor of
the Palace, Adviser to his Highness! Yes, I hit you there? I touch you
there! Oh, vanity of little men, I thought so! "He broke off and
listened, as sharp on one another two gun-shots rang out at no great
distance from the house. A third followed as he hearkened: and on it a
swelling wave of sound that rose with each second louder and nearer.
"Ay, 'tis known now!" Basterga resumed, in a tone more quiet, but not
less confident. "And I must go, my dear friend--who thought a minute
ago to speed me for ever. Know that it lies not in hands mean as yours
to harm Caesar Basterga of Padua! And that to-night, of all nights, I
bear a charmed life! I carry, Syndic, a kingdom and its fortunes!"
He seemed to swell with the thought, and in comparison of the sickly man
scowling darkly on him from the wall, he did indeed look a king, as he
turned to the door, flung it wide and passed into the passage. With only
the street door between him and the hub-bub that was beginning to fill
the night, he could measure the situation. He had stayed late. The beat
of many feet hastening one way--towards the Porte Tertasse--the clatter
of weapons as here and there a man trailed his pike on the stones, the
roar of rising voices, the rattle of metal as some one hauled a chain
across the end of the Bourg du Four and hooked it--sounds such as these
might have alarmed an ordinary man who knew himself cut off from his
party, and isolated among foes.
But Basterga did not quail. His belief in his star was genuine; he was
intoxicated with the success which he fancied lay within his grasp. He
carried Caesar and his fortunes! was it in mean men to harm him? Nay, so
confident was he, that when he had opened the door he stood an instant
on the threshold viewing the strange scene, and quoted with an
appreciation as strange--
"At domus interior gemitu miseroque tumultu
Miscetur, penitusque cavae plangoribus aedes
Femineis ululant; ferit aurea sidera clamor"--
from his favourite poet. After which without hesitation but also without
hurry he turned and plunged into the stream of passers that was hurrying
towards the Porte Tertasse.
He had been right not to quail. In the medley of light and shadow which
filled the Bourg du Four and the streets about the Town Hall, in the
confusion, in the rush of all in one direction and with one intent, no
one paid heed to him, or supposed him to belong to the enemy. Some cried
"To the Treille! They are there! To the Treille!" And these wheeled that
way. But more, guided by the sounds of conflict, held on to the point
where the short, narrow street of the Tertasse turned left-handed out of
the equally narrow Rue de la Cite--the latter leading onwards to the
Porte de la Monnaye, and the bridges. Here, at the meeting of the two
confined lanes, overhung by timbered houses, and old gables of strange
shapes, a desperate conflict was being fought. The Savoyards, masters of
the gate, had undertaken to push their way into the town by the Rue
Tertasse; not doubting that they would be supported by-and-by, upon the
entrance of their main body through the Porte Neuve. They had proceeded
no farther, however, than the junction with the Rue de la Cite--a point
where darkness was made visible by two dim oil lamps--before, the alarm
being given, they found themselves confronted by a dozen half-clad
townsfolk, fresh from their beds; of whom five or six were at once laid
low. The survivors, however, fought with desperation, giving back, foot
by foot; and as the alarm flew abroad and the city rose, every moment
brought the defenders a reinforcement--some father just roused from
sleep, armed with the chance weapon that came to hand, or some youth
panting for his first fight. The assailants, therefore, found themselves
stayed; slowly they were driven back into the narrow gullet of the
Tertasse. Even there they were put to it to hold their ground against an
ever-increasing swarm of citizens, whom despair and the knowledge that
they were fighting on their hearths, for their wives, and for their
children, brought up in renewed strength.
In the Tertasse, however, where it was not possible to outflank them,
and no dark side-alley, vomiting now and again a desperate man, gave one
to death, a score could hold out against a hundred. Here then, with the
gateway at their backs--whence three or four could fire over their
heads--the Savoyards stood stubbornly at bay, awaiting the
reinforcements which they were sure would come from the Porte Neuve.
They were picked troops not easily discouraged; and they had no fear
that aught serious had happened. But they asked impatiently why
D'Albigny with the main body did not come; why Brunaulieu with the
Monnaye in his hands did not see that the time was opportune. They
chafed at the delay. Give the city time to array itself, let it recover
from its first surprise, and all their forces might scarcely avail to
crush opposition.
It was at this moment, when the burghers had drawn back a little that
they might deliver a decisive attack, that Basterga came up. Fabri the
Syndic had taken the command, and had shouted to all who had windows
looking on the lane to light them. He had arrayed his men in some sort
of order and was on the point of giving the word to charge, when he
heard the steps of Basterga and some others coming up; he waited to
allow them to join him. The instant they arrived he gave the word, and
followed by some thirty burghers armed with half-pikes, halberds,
anything the men had been able to snatch up, he charged the Savoyards
bravely.
In the narrow lane but four or five could fight abreast, and the Grand
Duke's men were clad in steel and well armed. Nevertheless Fabri bore
back the first line, pressed on them stoutly, and amid a wild _melee_ of
struggling men and waving weapons, began to drive the troop, in spite of
a fierce resistance, into the gate. If he could do this and enter with
them, even though he lost half his men, he might save the city.
But the Savoyards, though they gave back, gave back slowly. Within
twenty paces of the gate the advance wavered, stopped, hung an instant.
Of that instant Basterga took advantage. He had moved on undetected,
with the rearmost burghers: now he saw his opportunity and seized it. He
flung to either side the man to right and left of him. He struck down,
almost with the same movement, the man in front. He rushed on Fabri, who
in the middle of the first line was supporting, though far from young, a
single combat with one of the Savoyard leaders. On him Basterga's coward
weapon alighted without warning, and laid him low. To strike down
another, and turning, range himself in the van of the foreigners with a
mighty "Savoy! Savoy!" was Basterga's next action; and it sufficed. The
panic-stricken burghers, apprised of treason in their ranks, gave back
every way. The Savoyards saw their advantage, rallied, and pressed them.
Speedily the Italians regained the ground they had lost, and with the
tall form of their champion fighting in the van, began to sweep the
towns-folk back into the Rue de la Cite.
But arrived at the meeting of the ways, Basterga's followers paused,
hesitating to expose their flank by entering this second street. The
Genevese saw this, rallied in their turn, and for a moment seemed to be
holding their own. But three or four of their doughtiest fighters lay
stark in the kennel, they had no longer a leader, they were poorly armed
and hastily collected; and devoted as they were, it needed little to
renew the panic and start them in utter rout. Basterga saw this, and
when his men still hung back, neglecting the golden opportunity, he
rushed forward, almost alone, until he stood conspicuous between the two
bands--the one hesitating to come on, the other hesitating to fly.
"Savoy!" he thundered, "Ville gagnee! The city is ours! Cowards, come
on!" And waving his halberd above his head, he beckoned to his followers
to advance.
Had they done so, had they charged on the instant, they had changed all
for him, and perhaps all for Geneva. But they hung a moment, and the
next, as in shame they drew themselves together for the charge, their
champion stooped forward with a shrill scream. The next instant he
received full on his nape a heavy iron pot, that descending with
tremendous force from a window above him, rolled from him broken into
three pieces.
He went down under the blow as if a sledge-hammer had struck him; and so
sudden, so dramatic was the fall--his armour clanging about him--that
for an instant the two bands held their hands and stood staring, as
indifferent crowds stand and gaze in the street. A dozen on the
patriots' side knew the house from which the _marmite_ fell, and marked
it; and half as many saw at the small window whence it came the grey
locks and stern wrinkled face of an aged woman. The effect on the
burghers was magical. As if the act symbolised not only the loved ones
for whom they fought, but the dire distress to which they were come,
they rushed on the foreign men-at-arms with a spirit and a fury hitherto
unknown. With a ringing shout of "Mere Royaume! Mere Royaume!"--raised
by those who knew the old woman, and taken up by many who did not--they
swept the foe, shaken by the fall of their leader, along the narrow
Tertasse, pressed on them, and, still shouting the new war-cry, entered
the gateway along with them.
"Mere Royaume! Mere Royaume!" The name rang savagely in the groining of
the arch, echoed dully in the obscurity in which the fierce struggle
went on. And men struck to its rhythm, and men died to it. And men who
heard it thus and lived never forgot it, nor ever went back in their
minds to that night without recalling it.
To one man, flurried already, and a coward at heart, the name carried a
paralysing assurance of doom. He had seen Basterga fall--by this woman's
hand of all hands in the world--and he had been the first to flee. But
in the lane he tripped over Fabri, he fell headlong, and only raised
himself in time to gain the gateway a few feet in front of the avenging
pikes. Still, he might escape, he hoped to escape, through the gate and
into the open Corraterie. But the first to reach the gates had taken in
hand to shut them, and so to prevent the townsfolk reaching the
Corraterie. One of the great doors, half-closed, blocked his way, and
instinctively--ignorant how far behind him the pike-points were--he
sprang aside into the guard-room.
His one chance now--for he was cut off, and knew it--lay in reaching the
staircase and mounting to the roof. A bound carried him to the door, he
grasped the handle. But a fugitive who had only a second before saved
himself that way, took him for a pursuer, dragged the door close and
held it--held it in spite of his efforts and his imprecations.
Five seconds, ten, perhaps, Grio--for he it was--wasted in struggling
vainly with the door. The man on the other side clung to it with a
despair equal to his own. Five seconds, ten, perhaps; but in that space
of time, short as it was, the man paid smartly for the sins of his life.
When the time of grace had elapsed, with a pike-point a few inches from
his back and the gleaming eyes of an avenging burgher behind it, he fled
shrieking round the table. He might even yet have escaped by a chance;
for all was confusion, and though there was a glare there was no light.
But he stumbled over the body of the man whom he had slain without pity
a few hours before. He fell writhing, and died on the floor, under a
dozen blows, as beasts die in the shambles.
"Mere Royaume! Mere Royaume!" The cry--the last cry he heard--swelled
louder and louder. It swept through the gate, it passed through to the
open, and bore far along the Corraterie, far along the ramparts, ay, to
the open country, the earnest of victory, the earnest of vengeance.
Geneva was saved. He who would have betrayed it, slain like Pyrrhus the
Epirote by a woman's hand, lay dead in the dark lane behind the house in
which he had lived.