THE LAST STAND
Below the attack halted, but up the stairway came the noise of rough
laughter and rougher words, words which made Stephen La Mothe's blood
grow hot and his nerves tingle as, gritting his teeth, he stamped his
feet so that the girl might not hear them also. Resolute? Desperate?
Yes, much more than resolute, much more than desperate, and with much
more than a man's life to be lost. And all were of one mind. Follette
he was sure of, and at his right Blaise, the stable-lad, panted in
short breaths, swinging his unaccustomed weapon softly. "Damn them!"
La Mothe heard him say. "Will they never come?" and when the nine
minutes had crawled to twelve they came.
But not with a rush, not as those above had reckoned. The siege had
grown cautious. This time there was a system. Up, on the very edge of
the steps, broad, wide, and shallow for the easier carrying of heavy
loads upon the back, came the two with the palisades, up, until the
pickets were a full yard through the well-hole, but with those who held
them out of reach, and with a shout, the wood rasping the ancient
flagging, each swept a quarter circle. It was the work of an instant.
As the pickets crashed against the wall the voice from behind cried,
"Now lads!" and the rush came. There was the clang of iron-shod feet
on the stones, a glimmer in the half obscurity, and behind the pickets
the stairway bristled with steel.
"Praises be!" cried Blaise, and crouched on his heels. Down he leaned,
down, forward, and lunged clumsily. That, too, was the work of an
instant, an act concurrent with his cry, but when he straightened
himself a picket had dropped into the gloom, and he who held it lay
upon it, coughing and choking. "Rats!" said Blaise, slashing viciously
at the blade nearest him. "Dieu! but the rat bit the cur dog that
time! Come on, you curs."
And the rats had need to bite. The well-hole was double-lined; those
in front fought upward, while those behind protected them and stole a
step higher if the defence slackened. Nice play of fence there was
none. In such a packed confusion the brute strength of Blaise the
stableman counted for more than the finest skill of fence in the world.
And with the brute's strength he seemed to have the brute's
indifference to pain. Twice, stooping low, he parried with his arm,
taking the slash with a gasp but thrusting as he took it, and each
thrust struck home. But those behind filled the gaps, those below
pressed upward stair by stair, and La Mothe, breathless, but without a
scratch, knew what it was to be blood-drunken as the din of steel
filled his ears and he saw the flushed and staring faces opposite rise
minute by minute more level with his own. The three were doing all men
could dare or do, but the end was nearer and nearer with every breath.
The end! God in heaven! No! not that--not that; and in his
drunkenness he dashed a thrust aside as Blaise had done, stabbed as
Blaise had stabbed, and laughed drunkenly that he had sent a soul to
its Maker with all the passions of lust and murder hot upon it; but
happier than Blaise he took no hurt.
"Mademoiselle," said La Follette without turning his head, and speaking
softly to save his breath, "go you and Monseigneur to the corner behind
me," and La Mothe knew that he too saw the coming of the end. There in
the corner, with Love and France behind them, they would make their
last stand.
"I have Monseigneur's dagger," she answered. Again La Mothe understood
the inference left unspoken, understood that she as well as he had
heard the brutal jests which had set his blood boiling. That she had
the dagger was a comfort; but what a splendid courage was hers. Marcel
had even ceased to pray.
For very life's sake La Mothe dared abate the vigilance of neither eye
nor hand, and yet by instinct--there was no sound--he knew they had
risen to obey. By instinct, too, he knew that Ursula de Vesc had drawn
nearer, and it was no surprise to hear her voice behind him. But it
was not to him she spoke.
"Now, Blaise, thrust, thrust!"
There was a rip of torn cloth, a flutter in the air--the flutter as of
a bird on the wing--an upturned point was caught in a tangle of white
linen, and through the tangle Blaise rammed his sword-blade almost to
the hilt and laughed, panting.
"Rats!" he cried, tugging his arm backwards with a horrible jerk. "Go
to your hole, cur!" and more blood-drunken even than La Mothe he broke
into a village song.
"'Rosalie was soft and sweet;
Sweet to kiss, sweet to kiss:
Hair and month and cheek and feet,
Sweet to kiss, sweet to kiss.'
"Mademoiselle, fling in that praying lout from the corner and make some
use of him; it's all he's fit for."
But the gap was filled; there were two on the top-most step, and La
Follette, not only wounded in the thigh but slashed across the ribs,
was giving ground.
"Be ready, La Mothe," he said. His teeth were clenched and his chest
laboured heavily. "Be ready, Blaise."
"Ready," answered La Mothe, saving his breath. His heart was very
bitter. The twelve minutes were seventeen, succour could not be far
off, but the end had come. "Do you hear, Blaise?"
But Blaise was past hearing. While he fought with his right his maimed
left hand, cut to the bones, had torn his smock open from the throat,
and the hairy chest, smeared with his blood, glistened in broad drops
from the sweat of his labours. In such a hilt-to-hilt struggle his
ignorance was almost an advantage. He had nothing to unlearn, no rules
of fence to disregard, and his peasant's strength of arm whirled aside
an attack with a paralyzing power impossible to any skill. Right,
left, downward swept the blade, his knees and hips half bent as he
leaned forward, crouching, his left arm swinging as he swayed. Right,
left, downward, his blood-drunkenness growing in savage abandonment
with every minute. Yes, he was ready--ready in his own way--but past
hearing.
"Damn the English," was his answer to La Mothe, his mind back in the
fifty-year-old tragedy. The play was no make-believe, and he was
Michel Calvet, son to Jean the sixth, the Michel whose elder brother
had been coursed like a hare and killed in the open. Then his song
rose afresh, but gaspingly, raucously, as if the notes tore his chest.
"'Rosalie, I love you true;
Kiss me, sweet, kiss me, sweet.
Lov'st thou me as I love you?
Kiss me, sweet, kiss me, sweet.'
"Rats," said he! "Come up, y' cur dogs, come up."
"La Mothe," breathed La Follette, "when I say Now!"
Yes, the end had come.
"Damn the English," cried Blaise hoarsely. With a mighty stroke he
swept aside the opposing points, drew a choking breath, crouched lower,
and, with the Dauphin's sword at the charge, he flung himself into the
gap breast-forward, missed his thrust, splintered the blade against the
wall, and with a wild clutch drew all within reach into his grip. For
an instant they hung upon a stair-edge, then, in a writhing,
floundering mass, breast to breast, breathless, half dead or dying,
they rolled to the floor. From behind La Mothe heard Ursula de Vesc
cry, "Oh God! pity him!" in a sob. But he dared not turn, his own
blood-drunkenness fired him to the finger-tips and he lunged furiously,
getting home a stroke above a point lowered in the surprise. Again
there was a rush of iron-shod feet upon the stones, but a rush
downward, a moment's pause below, a crossing babel of passionate,
clamouring voices, insistence, denial, and yet more denial, then a
silence--or what seemed a silence--a few hoarse whispers and a cry or
two of pain. Yes, the end had come. In the corner stood the Dauphin
and, half in front, Ursula de Vesc, her arm stretched out across his
breast in the old attitude of protection. Marcel lay beside them in a
faint.
"Hugues?" There was a question and a cry in the boy's one word.
"Charles, Charles, have you nothing to say to the brave men who almost
died for you?"
"Hugues loved me," he answered, and at the bitter pathos of the reply
La Mothe forgot the ingratitude. There were so few who loved him. But
the girl could not forget.
"Monsieur La Follette, Monsieur La Mothe," she began, but broke off
with a cry. "Oh, Monsieur La Follette, you are wounded? What can I
do? Words can come afterwards, and all my life I will remember, all my
life. Are you dreadfully hurt? Can I not do something?" But though
she spoke to La Follette her eyes, after the first glance, were busy
searching Stephen La Mothe for just such an ominous stain as showed in
brown patches upon La Follette. But there was none. Breathless,
dishevelled, his clothing slashed, he was without a scratch, and the
strained anxiety faded from her face.
"I can wait," answered La Follette, "we must get the Dauphin to the
Château. La Mothe, see if they are gone," and he glanced significantly
down the stairway. La Follette knew something of war, and there must
be sights below it were better Ursula de Vesc should not see lest they
haunt her all her life, sleeping or waking.
But the Dauphin, his nerves strained and raw, had grown petulant.
"It is safe enough. I heard them ride off. I want Hugues. I want
Hugues."
"And Blaise?"
"Oh! Blaise!" He broke into a discordant laugh. "I told him to be a
man and, my faith! he was one. Do you think, Ursula, that Father John
will ask my thoughts a second time?"