“Things go not ill, had we but hope of succour,” he said. “The Duke’s bastille is rising, indeed, and the Duke is building taudis [{37}] of oaken beams and earth, between the bastille and our boulevard. The skill is to draw nearer us, and nearer, till he can mine beneath our feet. Heard you any new noise of war this day?”
“I heard such a roar and clatter as never was in my ears, whether at Orleans or Paris.”
“And well you might! This convent is in the very line of the fire. They have four great bombards placed, every one of them with a devilish Netherland name of its own. There is Houpembière,—that means the beer-barrel, I take it,—and La Rouge Bombarde, and Remeswalle and Quincequin, every one shooting stone balls thirty inches in girth. The houses on the bridge are a heap of stones, the mills are battered down, and we must grind our meal in the city, in a cellar, for what I can tell. Nom Dieu! when they take the boulevard we lose the river, and if once they bar our gates to the east, whence shall viands come?”
“Is there no good tidings from the messenger?”
“The King answers ever like a drawer in a tavern, ‘Anon, anon, sir!’ He will come himself presently, always presently, with all his host.”
“He will never come,” I said. “He is a . . . ”
“He is my King,” said Barthélemy. “Curse your own King of Scots, if you will. Scots, by the blood of Iscariot, traitors are they; well, I crave your pardon, I spake in haste and anger. Know you Nichole Cammet?”
“I have heard of the man,” I said. “A town’s messenger, is he not?”
“The same. But a week agone, Cammet was sent on a swift horse to Château Thierry. The good town craved of Pothon de Xaintrailles, who commands there, to send them what saltpetre he could spare for making gunpowder. The saltpetre came in this day by the Pierrefonds Gate, and Cammet with it, but on another horse, a jade.”
“Well, and what have the Scots to do with that?”