Some of the French troops had returned to Liége. For almost every day
now there came to the ears of the different commanders in the vicinity
the news that the Allies were sweeping south; that town after town and
fortress after fortress was falling, and that gradually, before the
serried ranks of steel and the discharge of the heavy guns that the
huge Flanders horses dragged over muddy roads and boggy swamps, the
"Barrier" army was being driven back. To which was added now the news
that Venloo was invested by Lord Cutts--he who had gained the
sobriquet of the "Salamander" from friends and foes alike, owing to
his contempt for the enemy's fire--and the Prince of Hanover, and like
enough to fall at once.
Therefore many of the French forces were now back in the citadel and
Chartreuse at Liége, or lying out on the heights of St. Walburg; while
Tallard, who was afterwards to command the French and be defeated at
Blenheim, was now second in command in the vicinity under De
Boufflers. For the Duke of Burgundy had some time since returned to
Paris, where he received but a freezing welcome from his august
grandsire, and the Maréchal de Boufflers became first in command and
Tallard second.
These changes in both the command of the French army and in the
redistribution of the French forces, provided a sufficient number
of officers to form a Court of Inquiry on the prisoners in the
citadel--a court which, as Tallard had left orders before marching
towards the Rhine, was to be commenced at once.
Of these prisoners there were now three, since another had been added
to Bevill and Francbois, all of whom were charged with separate
offences. The charge against those two has already been told; that
against the third had still to be promulgated, though it came under
the general one of treason, and was described in the quaint wording of
the time as "_Lèse majesté_ against the King, his State, and friends."
Of Francbois short work had been made by those assembled in the old
_salle d'armes_ in the citadel. The letters he had overlooked, and
which had been found by the Comtesse de Valorme and handed to De
Violaine, were sufficient to condemn any man in a time of peace, let
alone one of war; but further inquiries, subtly made in the city by
other such spies as Sparmann had been, showed that the traitor had
made considerable sums of money by obtaining early knowledge of the
French plans and future movements, and by selling them to the Dutch
agents who were instructed by the States General to obtain all
information of a similar nature. Francbois had consequently been
condemned to death by hanging, and that death only awaited the
signature of Tallard to be immediately effected. Meanwhile, he, proved
spy and traitor as he was, was not regarded as too base and ignoble to
be allowed to testify against one of the other prisoners--namely, the
Englishman, Bracton.
Against the third prisoner, a Hollander named Hans Stuven, the charge
was that he had attempted to slay two of his own countrymen in Liége,
who were now in the service of the French King as couriers and
frequent bearers of despatches from Louis to his marshals in the
Netherlands; and that, when in drink at a tavern, he had been heard to
announce that when he came into contact with the newly-created
marshal, Montrével, he would slay him as an apostate from the reformed
faith and a persecutor of the Protestants. For this man there could be
but one hope--that he should be found to be insane.
To try these two the Court sat in the _salle d'armes_, lit now by the
morning sun, De Violaine, in his capacity of Governor, being
President. As representative of the King of France, he wore his hat
and also the _just-au-corps au brevet_, or undercoat of the _noblesse_
and those holding high office; a garment of white satin on which was
stamped in gold the _fleur-de-lys_. Among the other officers who
formed the members of that court one, a mousquetaire, alone wore his
hat also, the plumed and laced hat of that aristocratic body. This
was the young Duc de Guise, who sat thus covered because there ran in
his veins the royal blood of an almost older race than the Bourbons,
and because, as he and his called the King--and all Kings of
France--cousin, it was his privilege to do so.
In face of these officers Bevill Bracton stood in the midst of a file
of soldiers, outwardly calm and imperturbable, but inwardly wondering
what Sylvia was doing and where she was, while knowing that, no matter
where she might be, her thoughts were with him alone. But, although he
was well resigned to whatever fate might befall him--a resignation
that many nights of solemn meditation had alone been able to bring him
to--there was in his heart a sadness, a regret, that could not be
stifled.
"We met but to love each other," he had whispered to himself a
thousand times during his incarceration in this fortress; "to love but
to be parted. And though the words could never be spoken, since I
scarce knew the treasure I had won ere we were torn asunder, in her
heart there must have sprung to life the same hopes, the same desires
that had dawned in mine. The hopes of happy years to come, to be
passed always side by side; together! The dreams of a calm and
peaceful end, also together. And now! Now, the thought of her sweet
face, her graciousness, her love, the only flower remaining in my soon
to be ended life; my memory all that can be left to brighten or to
darken her existence."
For never since the night he was arrested had he dared to dream
that he would leave Liége alive. His attempted escape from the city
with Sylvia, his passing under the false guise of two different
Frenchmen--the necessity for which he had always loathed, while
understanding that in this way alone could he reach her--the testimony
that Francbois would surely give against him, and the imputed murder
of a man in the pay and service of France, must overwhelm and confound
him.
Thinking still of the woman he had learnt to love so dearly, he
let his eyes roam over that gloomy, solemn hall and observe all that
it contained while heeding little. He saw the officers of his
country's immemorial foe conversing together ere they should begin to
question him. He saw, too, the ancient arms that hung all round the
walls--pikes, swords, maces, and halbards, musketoons and muskets;
also, he saw far down at the other end another man who was,
undoubtedly, like himself, a prisoner. A man guarded by more soldiers
and with his hands chained together; one whose face was bruised and
raw, as though, in his capture, he had been badly wounded; one who,
leaning forward with that face resting on his hands, and his eyes upon
the ground, presented an appearance of brutish indifference to his
surroundings as well as to his almost certain fate.
"The witness who will be produced before you, and the prisoner's own
actions, will give you the matter," De Violaine said now, addressing
the other members of the court, "upon which you have to form a
conclusion. The witness is the traitor, Francbois, whom you condemned
yesterday. What he knows he must tell in spite of his condemnation, or
means will be used to make him do so," and he glanced towards a man
leaning behind one of the great stone columns that, at regular
distances, supported the heavily-traced and groined roof. For there
was still another man within that hall, one on whom Bevill's eyes had
not yet lighted--a man, old and grizzled, yet strong and burly and
roughly clad--a man who stood by a strange-looking instrument that lay
along the floor and was a complicated mass of rollers and cords and
pulleys--a thing that was, in truth, the rack. Near this there stood,
also, four or five great copper pots, each holding several gallons of
water, and having great ladles of the same metal in each. These things
stood here close to the rack and that dark, forbidding man because, as
all of that Court knew well, when the rack failed to elicit the truth
from prisoner or suspected witness, the _question à l'eau_--namely,
the pouring of quart after quart of water down the throats of the
wretched victims, never failed in its effect.
"Let us hear the man," an officer who was in command of the Regiment
de Montemar said. "If he endeavours to lie or to deceive us the----"
and he glanced towards the executioner as he leant against the column.
"Bring in the man, Francbois," De Violaine said now, addressing some
of the soldiers who were near Bevill, and a few moments later the
already condemned traitor stood before those who had judged him
yesterday.
Whether it was the horror of that condemnation which now sat heavily
on his soul, or whether it was the fear of what might be the outcome
of any evidence he should soon give--he had glanced affrightedly at
the rack and the great water-pots and the grim attendant of both as he
was brought in--he presented now a pitiable aspect. His face was
colourless, or almost ashy grey, and resembled more the appearance of
a terrified Asiatic, or an Asiatic whose blood was mixed with that of
some white race, than the appearance of a European. His eyes had in
them the terrified look of the hare as it glances back, only to see
the hound that courses it upon its flank; his whole frame, in its
tremblings and flaccidity, bespoke the awful terror that possessed
him.
"_Pasquedieu!_" the young Duc de Guise muttered, as his eyes glanced
from the shivering object to the tall, sturdy form and calm,
unruffled, though solemn, countenance of the man against whom the
other was to testify. "_Pasquedieu!_ that this one should have his
life in the hand of such as that." And, though those by his side did
not hear the words muttered beneath the Duke's slight moustache, it
may well be that their thoughts kept company with his.
"Tell your tale again as you told it to me when you came here to
inform against this Englishman," De Violaine said now in an icy tone;
"and tell it truthfully, remembering that----" but he, too, paused in
his words, the sentence being finished by the one glance he cast
towards the column down the hall.
Then, in a voice that trembled in unison with the tremors of his
frame, though it gained strength--or was it audacity?--as he proceeded
without interruption from any of those listeners seated before him,
Francbois told the same story he had told at first to the Governor,
Only, if he were to die, as die he now knew he must, he was resolved
that he would leave no loophole through which this other--this
accursed, contemptuous Englishman who stood by his side so calmly, as
though he, too, were a judge and not a prisoner--should escape and
live.
He pictured him as a browbeating, turbulent Briton even in those
far-off days in Paris when both he and Bracton were schoolmates; he
told how he was ever filled with hatred of France and Frenchmen; and
how, even here in Liége, Bracton had boasted that he would outwit any
Frenchman in and around it, and slay all who attempted to thwart him.
And, next, he told how he and Sparmann, going to the Weiss Haus to
arrest this man, had been set upon in the dark by him; how Bracton had
stabbed Sparmann through the breast and disarmed him, Francbois, so
that he was unable to succour his companion.
But now he was forced to stop in the unfolding of his narrative.
Bracton, who until this moment had uttered no word but had contented
himself with standing calmly before his judges, spoke now.
[Illustration: "'Messiers--this story is false.'"]
"Messieurs," he said, very calmly, "this story is false. It may be
that in my attempt to save a woman I have learnt to love, a woman whom
I loved with my whole heart and soul even ere I went to the Weiss Haus
that night, I have put myself in the grasp of your military laws. But
be that so or not," and now his voice was more firm, even perhaps
stronger, "I will not be saddled with a false accusation and hold my
peace. Sparmann was already wounded to the death, as I know now,
though I knew it not when he passed me, touched me, in the dark and
then fled down the stairs from me, deeming me most probably the man
from whose hands a moment before he had received his death-wound. But
it was not from my hand he received it. I am no murderer, no midnight
assassin. I had fought once with Sparmann in England, and vanquished
him in fair fight. Messieurs, you know well enough that the man who
vanquishes another in the open does not murder him afterwards in the
dark. Had I found him in the Weiss Haus that night, I should have
seized on him, it may be I should have forced him to fight with me
again, but I should not have done that of which this traitor accuses
me."
These words had made a good impression on those to whom they were
addressed--so good a one, indeed, that, had there been no other charge
against Bevill, he might possibly have gone free at that moment.
Unhappily, however, there did remain the other charges that stood so
black against him, and those charges required neither the assertion
nor the corroboration of Francbois. They proved themselves.
But whatever impression his words may have made on those who were now
the arbiters of life and death to him, a far deeper impression--a
palpable one--had been produced on the man who sat with his head
buried in his hands close by that column against which the doomsman
leaned.
At the first sound of Bevill's voice this man, this fanatic who
appeared to have vowed himself to the slaughter of renegades and
apostates, had lifted his bloodstained and bruised face from his
hands, and had stared amazed as though a spectre had suddenly appeared
before him; yet even this expression of open-eyed astonishment gave
way to a still deeper appearance of bewilderment as now Francbois, in
answer to Bevill's words, repeated again his assertions while asking
if he who now stood on the threshold of his grave had any reason to
lie?
So deep an appearance, indeed, had that man's bewilderment assumed
that, at last, he appeared unable to support it further, and let his
face fall once more into its previous position. And in all that great
hall there was not one, or only one--the dreadful creature who stood
near Stuven--who had witnessed the man's astonishment and the lifting
of his face out of his hands.
"You say," De Violaine said now to Francbois, "that you have no reason
to lie since your grave already awaits you. Yet death is but the last
resource, and even that impending death shall not shield falsehood. If
you have lied to us----"
But he paused, astonished by what he now not only saw but also heard.
For at this moment the prisoner Stuven had sprung to his feet and was
gesticulating wildly, even as he struggled in the hands of the men who
guarded him--gesticulating wildly as he cried:
"He lies. He does lie! 'Twas I who slew Sparmann that night--Sparmann,
the Hollander, who sold himself to your country. I--I--alone did
it--but he, this false witness, was there too. Not to slay Sparmann,
but that man before you. I lost my hat there in the struggle with him
whom I slew; it may be in that deserted house now. But no matter
whether it be or not, I demand that you listen to me. I, at least,
will speak the truth, since I neither heed nor fear what my fate may
be."