Читать книгу Sword Play - Charles Billings Stilson - Страница 6

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In the moment which followed the giving of the order a strained silence gripped the members of both parties, broken only by the thudding of shifting hoofs and the champing of bits. The gay young Englishmen fell suddenly sober and looked askance at their enraged leader. The servants stared woodenly. Hatshaw, leaning on his long staff, watched the scene with an inscrutable expression in his solitary eye. The only moving figure in the tableau was that of the advancing Humphrey.

Bess Peake was first to put the general sentiment into words.

“For shame, your lordship!” she exclaimed, “and him such a proper gentleman, too!”

“Easy, Roger, easy!” cautioned the cavalier with the yellow curls, bending from his saddle to whisper in Lord Roger’s ear. “The lass is right; he is no common fellow.”

“Let be, Harry,” grumbled Roger, with an impatient twitch of his shoulders.

Humphrey, the groom was a stocky rogue, squint-eyed and otherwise ill-favored of countenance. As he urged his horse forward, his lips curled and his cheeks widened into a grin which betokened an evil relish for his commission. But when he came closer and got a square look into the face of the man whom he threatened, the groom hesitated and his whip-hand faltered.

Entirely oblivious, it seemed, of the approach of Humphrey and his whip, the young Frenchman looked not at all at the groom, but at the groom’s master, who had sent him, and with such a white and concentrated fury in his steady regard that it was small wonder that Humphrey, riding in from the side and seeing it, was seized with a sudden distaste for his business.

Lord Roger, meeting that level, baleful stare, and seeing the gray eyes turning into cold steel, himself sensed an uneasiness to which he was a stranger; for he was in nowise a coward. He noted, too, that the lad had quit caressing the nose of his horse, and that the fingers of his right hand were wrapped about the hilt of his rapier in a grip which whitened their knuckles.

At this juncture, when Humphrey, torn between two fears, but fearing his master most, was about to bring down his lash, a quiet voice with a quaint Italian accent cut in from under the oaks:

“Unless my lord would have the brains of his servant heavier by three leaden slugs than they already are, he had best recall that order.”

All eyes turned to the source of the unlooked-for interruption.

“By St. George!” cried Henry, “the villain holds us all in play!” and he laughed merrily, his apprehension lost in relief at the diversion of his friend’s design.

While the attention of the others had been riveted upon the center of the quarrel, the man Concino had been left free to act according to his own fancy, and he had done so with the promptitude of one who greets danger as an old acquaintance and who knows exceedingly well how it should be met.

He had turned in his saddle, letting his reins fall upon the pommel. His extended left hand held a pistol of formidable proportions, the barrel of which, steady as a rock, pointed at the head of the groom. In his right hand, peeping across his saddle-bow, and continually in motion, the mate to the weapon was directed in turn now at one and now at another of the men in front of him, menacing all and ready to speak with any. Hostile as was his demonstration, Concino was smiling, though a fleck of color burned dully in each of his swarthy cheeks.

Humphrey saw that dark, unwinking, unwavering muzzle staring into the middle of his ugly countenance, and he yelled in fear and let his whip fall in the roadway. Considering himself incontinently absolved of a performance for which his heart had grown small, he backed his horse in haste to a safer distance. Nor was there a man of those whom the second pistol covered who did not feel disquieting qualms in his insides each time that he became the object of the weapon’s regard—for Concino aimed low.

Stiffer stuff was in the groom’s master, and with it a wild, headstrong courage which recked little of hindrance or threat. The interference but added fuel to the fire of his rage. He caught up Humphrey’s fallen whip from the dust, flourished it with a vicious crack, and took a step toward the lad.

“By God’s thunders! I will e’en chastise you myself, as I would a stubborn hound!” he grated between clenched teeth.

That same pistol which had driven Humphrey into retirement swung into line against his broad chest. From behind the leveled weapon Concino spoke again, and this time there was a hint of metal in his soft, southern tones:

“Hold your hand, or, por Dio—be you thrice a lord, I will let the sunlight shine through your ribs! Strange manners you have here in England,” he went on. “Is it, then, your custom to raise a lash against your equal when the both of you wear good steel at your sides?”

To only one word of the speech did Lord Roger give heed.

“Equal!” he echoed with a sneer and a scornful glance at the modest garb of the youth before him. “Equal! What jape is this, varlet? Is young Sir Silence here perchance a prince of the blood? Pah!”

“Beyond the water yonder,” retorted Concino, with a shake of his head toward the tossing blue of the channel, “the young maestro, Raymond Jehan du Chêne, is the Vicomte de Mervalles—of a family which bred courtly gentlemen when this land of yours bred naught but bulls and barbarians!”

“Well answered, damme!” laughed Harry, still seeking to turn the quarrel into the ways of peaceful pleasantry. “Put up your villainous pistols, man!” he called to Concino; “and do you, Roger, drop that whip, unknit your black brows, and get to horse. Bethink you, the Lady Jean will rarely warm your ears for so delaying her coach. Come!”

But Lord Roger owned an ill-conditioned temper. Though he threw down the lash readily enough, he laid a hand on his sword.

“Have done with your quips, Harry,” he replied testily. “Am I to be belittled by an insolent springald and bullied by his groom, and have no satisfaction?”

Whereat Harry shrugged his shoulders and gestured with his hands as though he washed them of the entire matter. Roger addressed himself to the vicomte.

“Mayhap your varlet lies,” he said; “but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. It appears that you have swallowed your tongue; but I hope, sir, that your sword-arm hath not been stricken with palsy. I am Roger Marsden, Earl of Templeton. Come; out with it!” And he drew his own blade and fell into posture.

From the instant when he had heard Lord Roger set on the groom with the whip, the young Frenchman, with the exception that his hand groped and found the hilt of his sword, had stood silent and motionless as a frozen man. The muscles of his cheeks and jaw had contracted, straining his fresh young face into lines and furrows, which seemed as though wrought with a chisel on something hard and unyielding. His eyes had never left the face of his adversary; and in them glowed an anger which by comparison made the blustering wrath of the Englishman puny and futile.

His face, which had gone ghastly white at mention of the lash, had flushed again when he heard Concino speak for him. He had striven to muster words to answer for himself; but they choked him, and he could not free them. Then Marsden’s blade shone brightly in the sunshine before him.

There—and le bon Dieu be thanked for it with great praise—was something to which he could reply. His lithe body whipped forward like a released spring. The gold-hilted rapier seemed to leap from its scabbard of its own volition, and met the sword of the earl with a harsh, stern clang that struck sparks from the crossing steel.

“Roger playeth one of the shrewdest blades in England—but he is over prone to make proof of it,” muttered Harry. “Poor lad, I——” He straightened suddenly in his saddle. “St. George! Where learned the lad his tricks?” he shouted. “He swordeth like a very Bayard! Well thrust! And, oh! well parried! One second slower, and he had tickled your rib-bones that time, my Roger!”

It had seemed an hour; yet it was scarcely five minutes since Raymond Jehan du Chêne, with a laugh on his lips and peace in his heart, had paused on the hillside and tossed a coin into the beggar’s hat. He had been a boy, carefully reared, all unprepared as yet to meet the world. But strange, swift transmutations may be wrought by the alchemy of circumstance. Stirred by an anger such as he had never known, in the five minutes the boy had become a man, and was playing a man’s grim game, with a wild, fierce thrill in his blood and a song in his brain attuned to the clashing of the swords.

Never again in all his life would the Vicomte de Mervalles stand speechless in the face of insult.

What a blade he wielded!

At the quarrel’s beginning the Englishman had considered him with pity, mixed with a bit of contempt of his tongue’s failure, but pity uppermost; for Marsden was a famous swordsman. Before half a dozen thrusts had been sped and parried, they were bending breathlessly from their saddles, watching with widening eyes the play of a blade which flashed and darted like summer lightning, almost too swiftly for mortal gaze to follow.

When his rapier first left its scabbard, Raymond let his bridle rein fall from his arm. Concino, returning his pistols to their holsters, rode forward and took it. The Italian had viewed with anxiety and annoyance his comrade’s lack of initiative; but once the swords were making music, his face had cleared, and he sat nodding his head and muttering delightedly to himself.

“Santissima Madonna! Would that the Wolf were here to see this cub that he has sired! A little slow at the beginning—but then, it is his first fight. And, por Dio—he makes up for it now! Ah, young one, four of the greatest masters of the sword that the world has ever known are pointing your blade for you! Old Philibert taught me; Philibert and I taught the Wolf; and the Wolf and I taught you. Well I call to mind the Wolf’s first fight, and how he wept on my shoulder at the end of it. Ah’s me! Nigh twenty years have passed away since the night!”

So Concino dreamed aloud; and though he dreamed, his quick brown eyes lost no detail of his pupil’s performance.

For a little space the lad fought as though possessed of a devil, leaping in and out with the agility of a wild thing of the forests, and thrusting so closely and continuously that it seemed that he would, by the sheer fury and swiftness of his attack, beat down the Englishman’s guard and end the fight ere it was fairly begun.

His hat with its curling white plume flew from his head and lay upon the grass; his auburn hair streamed over his shoulders and in the sunlight seemed a floating flame. Straight-armed and with supple wrist, as a proper swordsman should, he managed his long rapier; and so marvelously swift was his fence that to the confused watchers not one but three whirling blades appeared to be held in its antique hilt of gold. Marsden thought at times that he saw even more.

Black Roger, with a fleck of foam on his lips and mad fury burning in his bloodshot eyes, somehow met and withstood the whirlwind; for he, too, was a splendid bladesman, and long of reach and powerful of arm. He had meant to finish the matter soon, had Roger, to run the youngster through the shoulder, or, better still, to mar his handsome face with a gash across the cheek. Instead of the rough attack which he had meditated, he found himself from the very first on the defensive, with every ounce of strength in him and all the sword wiles he knew called into service to keep his skin whole.

As he warmed into the work, Raymond’s set features relaxed, and he smiled as he fought. With the smile came a modification of his fighting. Though his attack was none the less resolute, it slackened in its intensity, and the lust of death went out of his stinging thrusts. He became more careful.

Marsden felt the change, and misread it. He thought that his antagonist was tiring. So from the defense he in turn passed to the attack with all the skill of which he was master. He rushed, and for a time by his superior strength pressed the lighter man before him. They left the roadway. Step by step Raymond gave way, until he stood by the beggar’s stone, and his blue coat rubbed elbows with Hatshaw’s faded cloak. There he elected to stand, nor could all of Roger’s heady, ruffling pressure drive him an inch farther.

With his change of mood the lad regained his speech.

“My lord earl handles his sword as his lackey does his whip,” he said tauntingly. And presently: “Monsieur would have me whipped—for which I shall nick monsieur’s ears.”

“I’ll nick your heart, sirrah!” groaned Roger, and he redoubled his efforts.

Then—and despite the warning he had had, Marsden thought it an accident; but such accidents make the glory of great swordsmen—the long blade of the rapier glided past his guard, and its keen point touched the lobe of his left ear. So steady was the hand which directed it, that it neither gashed nor scratched the flesh, but nicked it at the edge of the lobe so that scarcely a full drop of blood was drawn.

“Monsieur must wear the mate to that ruby,” said Raymond coolly. He would have made the promise good; already the invincible blade was feeling for its opening, when one of his spurs caught in a wisp of brushwood. He tripped, staggered, and his point went wild.

Perhaps a more generous opponent—Lord Harry March, for instance—had not taken full advantage of that mishap. But Roger had little chivalry in his soul. He was brave enough, but proud, unforgiving, and brutal; and to his manner of thinking he had been ill used. He saw the opening. His eyes lighted with fierce triumph. With a shout he shortened sword and sped a deadly thrust at Raymond’s unprotected throat.

Came the thwack of hard wood meeting harder steel. Marsden’s blade, deflected, passed harmlessly through the air above the head of the vicomte, who had fallen to one knee.

Mayhap, as the girl had said, Anthony Hatshaw had been a poacher among the king’s deer. Perchance his own tale was true, and he had been a soldier. He had lived years enough to have been both, and many other things beside. Be his past what it might, his aged heart had not outlived the warmth of gratitude. That Raymond had tossed him a sixpence counted little.

But the young man had interposed his body and that of his good horse to shield the beggar, and because of it the quarrel had followed. With Hatshaw that counted for much. He had watched the fighting with a kindling flame in his wicked old eye and a mumbling of his shriveled lips which a keen ear might have interpreted as applause for his champion.

When he saw that champion down and target for a foul stroke, the gaffer could contain himself no longer. He was holding his long staff in the grip of his crippled hands as quarter-stave men grasp their weapons. Without thought of consequence, he whirled it up and parried Roger’s blade so smartly that he almost struck it from the young man’s hand.

Beside himself with rage, Marsden wheeled on the meddler.

“That for your tampering, you accursed worm!” he roared, and ran the beggar through his shrunken breast.

Hatshaw let fall his lifted stave and crumpled in a choking, gasping heap across his stone. A spurt of dark blood jetted from his mouth and stained his white beard.

Hardly had he disengaged his sword when Marsden heard a cry which rang in his ears like a smitten silver bell.

“To your place in hell, my lord coward!”

A searing pain tore through his vitals. The sunlight turned into a red mist before him, in which swam a bitterly contemptuous face. He saw a hand and a sword-hilt moving away from his broad chest. Wonderingly he realized that it was his own body from which the blade was departing. All light failed. He pitched backward and lay drumming with his heels upon the sod.

For the space of a heart-beat there was silence on the hillside, the silence of staring eyes and bated breath. One of the fallen man’s comrades broke it with the cry:

“He hath slain Templeton! Take him! Take him!”

Horses and men surged forward.

Raymond, looking down at the work of his hand, became aware of a pressure against his shoulder. It was his horse. Across the saddle Concino called:

“Quick, maestro! Mount and ride! They be too many for us!”

Aroused, he swung into the saddle. It seemed for an instant he meditated cutting his way through the Englishmen who held the road and the hill; for he faced that way, and his gray eyes began to blaze. But Concino’s hand gripped his bridle and swung his horse around.

As he turned, Raymond had a confused glimpse of plunging horses, the big green coach beyond, and midway between, a small young woman with the upper part of her face concealed by a mask, who stood in the road and stamped her foot and shouted angrily. He caught the gleam of indignant eyes through the slits in the silken screen. What she said, he could not understand, and none of those to whom she shouted paid any heed. It was only a fleeting picture that Raymond saw; but it stayed in his memory long afterward, and often he wondered who the small, imperious lady might be.

Again Concino shouted to haste. Raymond clapped spurs to his steed and rode down the hill beside the Italian in a swirl of yellow dust. Behind them thundered and shouted the pursuit. Pistols began to crack. A ball hissed over the vicomte’s shoulder and shore away a lock of his tossing hair.

Concino turned as he galloped and let fly with one of his miniature cannon. One of the pursuers—it chanced to be Humphrey the groom—tumbled, bawling, from his saddle with a broken elbow.

Most mightily surprised were the good folk of Portsmouth town when the mad steeplechase from the hill tore through their streets, crowded with the market-day gathering. Across the main square raced pursued and pursuers, shouting and shooting, and the townspeople scattered and scuttled like scared rabbits to make way for the pounding hoofs. Some of them in their panic scrambled and clawed their way into the stalls which lined the marketplace, and made sorry wrecks of the carefully piled early garden goods which were on display.

One red-faced burgher’s lady of great weight and thickness dived head first into the center of a pyramid of fall cabbages and brought down upon herself an avalanche which covered her wriggling body so that she stuck fast with a brave show of waving red woolen hosiery. Despite the seriousness of his predicament, Raymond must needs shout with laughter as he rode past that ludicrous salad. A moment later he ducked to his horse’s mane and shrieked again.

A monger of dairy products, seeing that the fleeing horsemen evidently were foreigners, and wishing to do his part for England, no matter what the quarrel might be, poised and cast a ripe cheese with such vigor and good aim that it struck Concino’s saddle-bow and shattered there, to the detriment of the rider’s small-clothes, and his temper as well. It was one of those hard-shelled affairs with a soft and stickly center, and of a composition which, as soon as it is cracked, sends silent news of the event to every nose within a furlong.

“Mother of God!” cried the Italian; “let us out of this, and quickly!” And he rode with averted face.

Both of the fugitives knew Portsmouth well from former visits; but the Englishmen behind them rode good horseflesh and pressed them so hardly that there was no opportunity to double and throw them off the trail. They left the market-square by a short, straight street which led to the quays.

Ahead of him Raymond saw the stone stretch of the mole which jutted into the harbor, and at its end a long dark ship with brown sails. The gang-plank of the ship already was in the air. She was departing.

It came to the mind of the lad that even if they should succeed in distancing their pursuers, which seemed a matter for doubt, England was no longer a safe place for him, now that he had slain a British earl.

With a shout: “The ship! The ship!” he spurred his horse down the sloping street, and its steel-shod hoofs rang loudly on the stone flagging of the mole, from where there was no retreat. Muttering an appeal to the saints, Concino followed.

Ten feet of water lay between the brink of the stonework and the low decking of the ship’s waist when the daring young rider reached the end of the mole. Well for him that the courage of his steed matched his own. Gathering its legs under it and neighing wildly, it took the leap. A thousand eyes on ships and shore saw its dark bulk silhouetted against the sky. A gasp of wonder went up from half a thousand throats when the watchers heard the hollow shock of hoofs on the decking that told that the perilous feat was accomplished and the first rider was safe on the ship. But what of the second?

Concino’s mount was faint-hearted. Snorting with affright, it shortened stride when it was still a dozen yards from the end of the mole, set its feet stubbornly and slid to a stop on the flagstones. The Italian slipped, cursing, from his saddle. Along the mole galloped his enemies, shouting triumphantly and sure now that one of their quarry could not escape them. On the deck of the ship the vicomte cried loudly in consternation, sprang from his horse and ran toward the rail, determined to rejoin his comrade.

In the wink of an eye Concino saw these things—and more. At his feet lay a pole nearly fifteen feet in length, the unstepped mast of a dory, light and slender. To see was to act. He caught up the pole and ran forward.

Where a rough, shallow crevice marked the junction of four of the flagstones, he set the end of his shaft and vaulted high in the air. For an instant he paused at the height of his arc, and the prodigious leap seemed a failure. Then, while the sailors still stared open-mouthed at the advent of Raymond among them, Concino crossed the gap and alighted beside him.

Vainly the baffled Englishmen shouted from the end of the mole, demanding that the master of the ship put back and render them the fugitives. The only answer to their angry cries was an ironic: “Bon jour” from Raymond, accompanied by a wave of his hand.

The land breeze filled the big brown sail. The ship wore on, out of the harbor.