Читать книгу The Great White Army - Pemberton Max - Страница 9

Now this was a splendid sight; and, waving my sword and crying with all my lungs, I strove in vain to attract his attention. As for the girl at my side, she watched me in some astonishment. Presently, seeing what I was after, she asked me if it were not the young soldier on the white horse in whom I was interested.

"Mademoiselle," said I, "it is Léon, my nephew. If I can make myself known to him, I will warrant that he will be inside this house before you can count ten. A fine soldier, mademoiselle; I am very proud of him."

She nodded her head and looked at the boy with a new interest. There was such a great bivouac fire at the corner of the square that you could see him almost as if he were upon the stage of a theatre, and surely a handsomer man did not ride with the Grand Army. Well I knew what this pretty woman would think of him, and I watched her with an old man's interest.

"He does not see you," she remarked presently.

It was all too true.

"But he will not abandon me," I retorted; and, turning at the same moment, I struck with the butt of my pistol at a second face which showed itself at the window. The fellow withdrew with a curse that plainly meant mischief. I could hear other voices in the room, and by and by a stranger sound, and the smell of fire upon it.

"Good God!" I said, "they are burning the chapel!"

At that she uttered a low cry, the first of fear that I had heard escape her lips.

I opened the window and looked down into the chapel. There were but two men there, and one was firing the curtains of the altar. So little did he fear interruption that I leaped down on him while his torch was still upraised, and, running him through with my sword, I pulled the burning curtain upon him and stamped the fire out upon his body. The other assassin watched me with eyes grown wide with fear. He had a torch in his hand, but he stood there as though spellbound, and when I made at him he fell headlong upon the staircase, and man and fire went rolling over and over together.

This did not alarm me, for the stairs were all stone, and there was nothing that could be kindled. Following the fellow through the bedroom, I came again upon the great staircase, and there looked down upon as strange a spectacle as I shall ever see in all my years. It was as though all the rabble of Moscow had come together in that magnificent hall—giant Tartars, low-caste assassins from the Indies, black-browed Slavs, patriarchs with long beards and youths with none—all were filling their sacks with the spoils of the prince's house and carrying them, when full, to the garden beyond. Animals in a den never fought more fiercely than some of these rogues when their lusts had clashed. Nor might a man have found a fiercer company in all the foul havens of the East.

For myself, I watched them aghast, knowing that it were death to be discovered where I stood. So eager, however, were they that none saw me, and the pillage and the riot were still at their height when one amongst them cried "Fire!" and in an instant every man sprang to attention, and the roar of a great conflagration burst upon their astonished ears.