As it vanished, the spell was broken, and Greenleaf and half a dozen more flew through the doorway, and up three or four steps of the winding stone stair beyond. Then they stopped short in utter bewilderment, for no one was there!
“Get ye to your prayers, lads, one and all of ye!” said Dickon, solemnly, as he crossed himself with a trembling hand, “for the foul fiend himself hath been among us in the likeness of our king!”
It was drawing toward midnight, when a long line of shadowy horsemen came gliding silently as spectres (for every hoof was muffled) over the wide waste of bare moor between Calais and St. Omer; and ever and anon a faint gleam of steel, breaking the tomb-like blackness of the gloomy winter night, showed that these ghostly riders were all armed to the teeth.
“Little dream these English hogs of the New Year pageant that we have in store for them!” muttered a stalwart figure in the front rank, no other than Alain de St. Yvon, the eldest of Bertrand du Guesclin’s swaggering cousins, who were now knights of renown, and formed part of the train with which Sir Geoffroi de Chargny, the French commandant of St. Omer, was hastening to seize (as he hoped) the great fortress, for the betrayal of which he had covenanted with a deeper traitor than himself.
“Pity our good cousin, Ugly Bertrand, were not here to-night,” said the second brother, Raoul, with a coarse sneer; “he would have a better chance to win the knightly spurs that he still lacks, than by scuffling with hired spearmen in the Breton forests.”
“And if he did get his nose chopped off, or his eye knocked out by a chance blow in the melée,” added Huon, the youngest, “it could scarce make him uglier than he is!”
“Young sirs,” broke in a deep, mellow voice just behind them, “it is ill done to speak scorn of the absent, or to vaunt when the work is but begun. Trust me, ere this night is over, ye may all have more cause to pray than to jest.”
None of the young knights made any answer to the rebuke, fiercely as they all chafed under it, for the speaker was Sir Eustace de Ribeaumont, the best knight in all France at that day.
They were now nearing the entrance of the narrow stone causeway that then formed, on that side, the only approach to Calais. Here it behoved them to ride slowly and warily; for on either side stretched, for several miles, a black and horrible morass, half swamp and half quicksand, in the fathomless depths of which death lay lurking to devour any ill-fated wretch who might fall, or be thrust, off the firm road above.
Just ere they reached this perilous isthmus, Sir Eustace halted to advise the detaching of a strong force to hold the bridge of Neuillet in their rear, and thus secure a line of retreat if anything went wrong. From any other man, the fiery De Chargny, in his overweening confidence of success, would have laughed this cautious counsel to scorn; but the advice of such a captain as De Ribeaumont was not to be slighted, and he unwillingly agreed.