Mercedes could not hear amid the din of the battle. Indeed, she did not choose to hear: she was thinking of her child and nothing else. She was literally passing through fire and steel; she would have passed through granite.
The marquis and Aristandre, being gallantly supported, were soon masters of the field, and began to force the gypsies back; a part toward the ruins of the barn, a part toward the tower of the huis. Those who passed the high wall of the barn, heedless of its impending fall, were greeted with pikes and clubs by the vassals of Bois-Doré, who had begun to cross that dreaded strip of territory.
They killed and captured several of them. The others turned back, and the whole band, now numbering no more than a score, retreated along the wall and entered the archway of the huis.
"Put out the fire!" cried Bois-Doré, seeing that it was spreading to the other farm buildings, "and leave us to complete the rout of these curs!"
He addressed the peasants and the women and children who had ventured forth from the château; then hurried away with his servants to the vaulted archway, where a strange battle was in progress between the fleeing bandits and Sancho, the sole guardian of the exit.
Sancho was guided by a single implacable idea. He had seen the marquis place Mario, with an escort, out of range behind a house in the village. The child was well sheltered and well guarded. But it was impossible that he would not, sooner or later, leave that shelter and come within range of an arquebus.
Sancho was standing there on the watch, his gun-barrel resting on one of the crenellations of the moucharabi, his body well hidden, his eye fixed on the corner of the wall at which his prey would appear sooner or later. The dark-browed Spaniard had the incalculable advantage that no anxiety concerning his own life could turn him aside from his purpose. He had no thought of the morrow in his mind, nor even of the passing moment, pregnant with perils. He asked of heaven but a single moment to gloat over and accomplish his revenge.
And so, when the routed gypsies came and threw themselves, howling with fear, against the heavy stakes of the sarrasine, Sancho moved no more than the stones of the arch. In vain did frantic, desperate voices shout to him:
"The bridge! the portcullis! the bridge!"
He was deaf; of what consequence were his confederates in his eyes?