DOOMED.
Remembering that his horse (which he would require ere long to carry
him to the mountains, since although, as he had thanked God again and
again, Urbaine was in no danger, Baville would doubtless desire him to
obtain her release at once) had been left in the stables behind the
Porte des Carmes, Martin made his way there. Went toward the gate,
resolved to fetch it away and place it in some more secure spot than
the one in which several dragoons had tied up theirs ere dismounting.
Reaching the yard, he found the animal; found also that the dragoons
must have preceded him, since now all their horses were gone excepting
one, which, by its caparisons and trappings, by the great gold sun
upon the bridle, the throat-plume and saddle-flaps, as well as by its
fleecy bear-skin saddle-cloth, was plainly an officer's.
"A fine beast," he mused as, ere he removed his own horse, he held a
bucket of water to its mouth, "a fine beast. Too good to be employed
in carrying its rider to such work as he and his men have been about
to-day."
As he thought thus he heard the heavy ring of spurred boots upon the
rough flags of the yard, also the clang of a metal scabbard-tip on
them, and, glancing round, saw coming toward him a young dragoon
officer, his face flushed, perhaps with the heat, perhaps with the
business that he and his troops had been recently employed upon.
"_Peste!_" the man exclaimed as he came up to his own steed and began
unfastening the bridle from the staple to which it was attached.
"_Peste!_ Hot work, monsieur, this morning, what with the glaring sun
and the flames from the mill. _N'est-ce pas, monsieur?_ Yet, yet I
wish those heretics had not been of the feeble. It is no soldier's
work slaughtering babes and women and _vieillards_. My God!" he broke
off, exclaiming, a moment later, "So it is you, villain!"
"What!" exclaimed Martin, astonished at this sudden change of speech
and regarding him as though he were a madman. "What! _Villain!_ To
whom does monsieur apply that word?" and the look upon his face should
have warned the young man to be careful of his words.
"To whom," the other sneered, however, "to whom? To whom should I
apply it but one? Who else is there in the stable-yard but you to whom
it would apply? And if there were fifty more, I should still address
it to you. Also the word murderer."
"To me! Are you mad that you assault a stranger thus with such
opprobrium? Answer, or, being sane, draw the weapon by your side."
"Which is that which I intend to do. Yet I know not whether you are
fit to cross blades with. You! You!"
"You will know it shortly," Martin said quietly, as now he drew his
own sword and stood before him, "unless, that is, you have some very
tangible explanation of your words to offer."
"Explanation! Explanation! Oh, _avec ça!_ you shall have an
explanation. Are you not the fellow who sat on the bridge when De
Peyre's dragoons rode into Montvert after the murder of the Abbé du
Chaila? Are you not the man who led the attack on the Intendant's
daughter, dragging her from her carriage, carried her off to the
mountains, to your accursed _attroupés_; doubtless assisted in her
murder? Answer that, _maraud_, and tell no lies."
And even as he spoke he struck at him with the gauntlet he held in his
hand, muttering, "I loved her, I loved her, and I will slay you." Then
said again, "Answer ere I slay you."
"I will answer you," said Martin quietly still--so quietly, yet
ominously, that, had the man before him not been a soldier, he would
have been well advised to flee from out the yard. "But it must be
later; when I have stretched you at my feet for your insolence. You
shall have the explanation when I have paid you back that blow, when
your soul is hurrying to join your victims of this morning."
His blood was up now. The abusive words of the soldier; the sting of
the heavy gauntlet still upon his cheek; perhaps, though that he
scarce recognized, the feeling of hate against this swashbuckler for
having dared to dream of loving Urbaine--all combined to make him
resolute to kill the man before him. Also the horror, the disgust,
that every effort he had made, every danger he had run, should be
subjected to such misinterpretation, added to the accusation, if any
addition were needed, that doubtless he had murdered her. For the
first time in the course of this unholy war his weapon was unsheathed,
about to be used. It should not find its scabbard again till it was
wet with this man's life blood.
"Have I been mistaken?" the soldier said, astonished by his words,
above all by his calm. "Made some strange error?"
"You have. No greater in your life than that foul blow. Put up your
weapon before you, or I run you through as you stand here. Quick, _en
garde_. I am neither 'woman, babe, nor _vieillard_.'"
"If it must be, it must----"
"It must!"
"_Soit!_ If you will have it so."
The yard was large enough for any pair of _escrimeurs_ to make fair
play in, yet had it been smaller it would have well sufficed, as the
dragoon found. Found that he had his master here before him, a man in
whose hands he was a child; a fencer who would not let him move from
the spot he was on, except backward slowly to the wall. And that not
by his own desire, but because the iron wrist in front of him rendered
resistance to its owner's will impossible.
Sword-play such as this he had never known, nor an adversary who
parried every thrust as he made it, yet never lunged himself,
reserving, doubtless, all his strength for that lunge at last.
Strength to thrust through muscle and chest-wall the blade which would
pierce his heart.
He felt that he was doomed. There rose before him an old _manoir_ with
a window high up in a _tourelle_, a window from which he knew that,
even now, a gray-haired, sad-eyed woman--his mother!--watched as she
had often watched for his coming. Ah, well, he would never appear
again to gladden her. Never, never, through all the years that she
might live. Never!
There was a click, a tic-tac of steel against steel that told him his
reflections were but too true and just, that the gray-haired woman's
chance of ever seeing him again would be gone in a few seconds now.
Also he experienced that feeling which every swordsman has known more
than once, the feeling that the wrist of the opponent is preparing the
way for the deadly lunge, the feeling that his own guard is being
pressed down with horrible, devilish force, that the lightning thrust
will be through him in a moment.
For a moment he was saved, his agony prolonged by an interruption. Two
men--warders--had appeared on the roof of the gate, and, seeing what
was going on below, stood there watching the play of the swords.
Joking and jeering, too, about his incompetency in spite of the
scarlet and gold he wore, bidding him take heart; that soon it would
be over; also that the pain was not great after the first bite of the
steel.
And disturbed, agitated, he but clumsily endeavoured to guard himself
from that awful pressure, knowing that the thrust must come directly.
Astonished, he found it did not do so. Instead, the pressure relaxed.
A moment later his adversary spoke to him.
"Those fellows agitate you. Take breath," and the dreaded blade was
still. Soon both weapons were unlocked.
"You are very noble," the dragoon said. "I--I--no matter. Let us
continue," and muttered to himself, "as well now as three moments
later," preparing for the death he knew was to be his. Or rather
thought was to be his, not dreaming that it would never be dealt to
him by the calm and apparently implacable swordsman before him. For
Martin, his blood cooling as he learned how poor a foeman he was
opposed to, a swordsman unworthy of his steel, had resolved to dismiss
him, strike up his weapon and give him his life, with some
contemptuous words added to the gift.
Not understanding, however, all that was in the brain of the man who,
as a boy, had been sent across the Alps from Paris to the best
_maestri di scherma_ of Padua and Florence to learn all they could
teach in the use of small arms; not knowing this, the other prepared
himself for his fate, seeing now that the men on the roof jeered and
fleered no longer; instead, stared with a look of apprehension at the
entrance to the yard.
Started, too, at a voice which Martin heard, as the others heard.
"Strike up that man's guard," the voice cried. "Secure him. For you,
Montglas, touch him not at your peril. Arrest the English spy."
The voice of Baville! As Martin knew well enough ere, contemptuously
disarming the dragoon by a _flanconnade_, he turned and faced the
Intendant. The man whose child he had saved, yet who now denounced him
as an English spy; who had learned by some means that he was a subject
of France's bitterest foe.
Behind him there stood six Croatian Cravates, part of the Intendant's
guards, swarthy fellows whose very name caused tremblings to all in
France, though they themselves had trembled once before Prince
Eugene's soldiers, and were to tremble again as Marlborough hedged
them in with English steel later--men who now advanced to seize the
English spy.
"Take his sword from him," Baville said. "If he resists, knock him on
the head. Yet spare his life. That is mine to deal with."
For a moment the glittering blade flashed ominously before the
Croatians; glittered, too, before Baville's eyes. Then the point was
lowered to the ground, and Martin spoke.
"What," he asked calmly, "do these orders mean?"
"Mean?" echoed Baville. "Mean! You ask _me_ that? They mean that you
are in my hands. That to-morrow you die."
"Upon what charge?"
"Bah! I equivocate not with such as you," and he turned to go. "Nay,"
he exclaimed violently, looking round as Martin again addressed him.
"Speak not. I require no answer. If you reply I shall forget that I am
the King's Intendant, shall remember only that you are the murderer of
my child, shall bid these men despatch you here upon this spot."
"The--murderer--of--your--child!" Martin repeated. "Of--of----"
"Of Urbaine Ducaire."
"You believe that?"
"Believe it? I know it. This man whom but now you attempted to slay,
le Baron de Montglas, saw you drag her from her carriage, carry her
off. Enough. Answer me not. Take him," he said to the Croatians, "to
the citadel." Then, once more addressing Martin, he said, his voice
calm now, his tones gentle:
"To-morrow you will have your chance to speak, even you, an English
spy, you, the murderer of an innocent woman, will not be condemned
unheard. The Court will sit at the earliest moment possible."
"What if I tell you that Urbaine Ducaire lives, is well, happy? What
then?"
As Martin spoke he saw the handsome face of the Intendant flush, the
dark olive complexion become suffused with a warm glow, the dark, full
eyes sparkle beneath their long black lashes. Saw, too, that he took a
step forward toward him, whispering, "Lives--is happy!" Next, turned
away again with a movement of contempt.
"What then!" he exclaimed, once more addressing Martin. "What then!
What, you ask, should I say or do? Say it is a lie, such as you told
before, only of five thousand times a deeper dye--a lie such as the
lie you uttered when you proclaimed yourself a _propriétaire_ of the
North. Shall do that which no power on earth, not Louis' own, can
prevent. Slay you as I have sworn a thousand times to do if ever by
God's grace I had you in my hands again."
At the feet of the soldiers there was a clang--the clang of Martin's
sword as he flung it on the paved stable-yard.
"Bid your bravoes pick it up," he said. "For yourself, do with me what
you choose. It will never be sheathed by me again till you have heard
my story before the Court you speak of. Packed as it may be, packed as
all the courts of Languedoc have been by Monsieur l'Intendant from the
beginning, packed by every one of your creatures whom you can gather
round you, they shall all hear to-morrow morning my story, if I am not
done to death ere I can tell it."
"Lies, bravado, will avail you nothing. Le Baron Montglas is witness
against you. Come," he said, turning to that person. "Come."
And he strode from out the stable-yard after bidding the Cravates to
follow with their prisoner.
Yet when he was alone in the house which he occupied at Nîmes his mind
was ill at ease. Ill at ease because, in the calm bearing of this
prisoner, in the contempt which that prisoner had shown for him and
his authority as he flung his sword at his feet, he saw something
which was neither guilt nor fear. Instead, contempt and scorn.
Also he had said "Urbaine Ducaire lives, is well, happy," and in
saying it had spoken as one speaks who utters truth.
Yet how could he believe that such as this could be possible?
Montglas, whose life had been at this man's mercy as he entered the
stable-yard, had seen the other in the _mêlée_, had seen him tear
Urbaine from the coach, lift her on to his horse, ride off with her.
To what, to where? To death, to the mountains where the Protestants
sheltered. And, if further confirmation was needed, had he not caused
to be brought before him one who had escaped from the massacre of the
Château St. Servas, one who plainly told how ere the Camisards
attacked the castle disguised as royalists, this man, the Englishman
as he now knew him to be, had brought Urbaine there, to wait doubtless
for his accomplices? Also that very day he had heard, had been told by
some who had returned from Cette, that among the Cévenoles who had
been on the beach waiting for the landing of the English, this man had
been recognised. His own spies had seen him; there could be no
possibility of doubt.
"Yet if, after all, they should be wrong," he mused to himself; "if,
after all, Montglas, the escaped one from St. Servas, the spy, should
be deceived! Or, not being deceived, Urbaine should still live! What
then? What if in truth he has in some manner managed to protect her,
to save her! What then?"
Even as he muttered these words, these surmises, he wiped the heat
drops from his brow. For--and now almost he prayed that this man might
be lying--if all were wrong in what they accused him of, if instead of
leading Urbaine to her death he had saved, protected her, all the same
he was doomed. Doomed beyond hope!
He had communicated with Paris, with Chamillart, with the woman who
ruled the King, had asked for information about this stranger who
stated that he was a kinsman of the de Rochebazons in search for one
who was the De Rochebazon himself, and not a week since had received
in return his orders from Paris. Orders written by De Maintenon's own
private secretary to arrest the man, to put him on trial as an English
spy found in France during a time of war, orders to have him condemned
and executed without appeal--his nationality, which was undoubted, to
be the justification for that execution.
And again, as he remembered this, Baville almost prayed that Martin's
words might not be true, prayed that, if they were true and Urbaine
still lived and was safe, _he_ at least might not prove to be her
saviour.
Her saviour! Yet doomed to lose his life at the hands of the man who
worshipped the girl, the man who, instead of doing that saviour to
death, should, instead, have poured out at his feet all that would
have gone to make his life happy, prosperous, and contented.