Marguerite would have given much even now to look back once more at the dense black mass, blacker and denser than any shadow that had ever descended before on God’s earth, which held between its cold, cruel walls all that she loved in the world.
But her wrists were fettered by the irons, which cut into her flesh when she moved. She could no longer lean out of the window, and she could not even hear. The whole forest was hushed, the wind was lulled to rest; wild beasts and night-birds were silent and still. And the wheels of the coach creaked in the ruts, bearing Marguerite with every turn further and further away from the man who lay helpless in the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre.
CHAPTER XLVIII. THE WANING MOON
Armand had wakened from his attack of faintness, and brother and sister sat close to one another, shoulder touching shoulder. That sense of nearness was the one tiny spark of comfort to both of them on this dreary, dreary way.
The coach had lumbered on unceasingly since all eternity—so it seemed to them both. Once there had been a brief halt, when Heron’s rough voice had ordered the soldier at the horses’ heads to climb on the box beside him, and once—it had been a very little while ago—a terrible cry of pain and terror had rung through the stillness of the night. Immediately after that the horses had been put at a more rapid pace, but it had seemed to Marguerite as if that one cry of pain had been repeated by several others which sounded more feeble and soon appeared to be dying away in the distance behind.
The soldier who sat opposite to them must have heard the cry too, for he jumped up, as if wakened from sleep, and put his head out of the window.
“Did you hear that cry, citizen?” he asked.
But only a curse answered him, and a peremptory command not to lose sight of the prisoners by poking his head out of the window.
“Did you hear the cry?” asked the soldier of Marguerite as he made haste to obey.