I have never ceased to count it a miracle, and a proof how, out of evil, the Almighty can bring good. But two things can stop us, Lesellè had said, wolves or accident. Of the two, I feared the last more than the first, and even as I spoke there came the howl of a wolf through the silence, a howl caught up and answered again and again from right and left till the vast wood seemed full of howls. As he heard the baying, the beast under me stopped dead still, his skin creeping with fear till the shudder shook me in the saddle; then with a scream he bolted forward, and on we dashed as if the hounds of hell were loose coursing a soul.
"Lower, stoop lower!" cried Lesellè as the horses swerved, still holding the road. "Keep a drag on the right rein, Mademoiselle!"
Instinctively, but without comprehension, I obeyed, and the rasp of a low-hung bough along my back taught me the lad's wisdom. To the left was the river, and at all hazards we must keep the road. Let such a branch catch me across the breast, and my dawn would break more redly than Gaspard's, and sooner by an hour. Such a thing as that I dreaded, but not the wolves. The wolves? Their howl was salvation, and with my face buried in the drifting mane, I thanked God for the wolves.
Jesu! what a race it was! Men have said, Were you not afraid? But with that wild rush of wind in the face, with the swelled veins throbbing under my cheek, with the sobbing catch in the breath growing hoarser almost every stride, there was no time for conscious fear. If I thought at all, it was that the pace could not last, that Poictiers was far away and the dawn near, that the sob was growing hoarser, hoarser, till the breath in the windpipes roared like the rasping of a file. Then Lesellè shouted, "Halt, halt, halt!" and straining on the bit, I pulled the staggering beast to a stand.
Behind was the howling of the wolves, but down the road ahead came the clatter of hoofs.
"Life or death," said the lad, panting in sympathy with his moaning horse, "but in another furlong or two it would have been——Halt! halt there! Horses in the King's name; horses for life or death!"
No need now to tell that it was for life. A north bound train from Poictiers saved us; but as we rode on the dawn was grey even in the thick of the wood, and on our left the east flared to a red glare as of the Last Day.
Again it was whip and spur, nor, with no more than a scant league to go, was there need to spare the horses. Spare them? We drove them along at the dagger's point. But the throbbing exultation born of that wild burst had died away, and it was a weary, trembling, white-faced woman who, leading the Scots lad by ten lengths, splashed uuhalting through the Clain and galloped up the hill to the newly opened gate, for the sun was fully risen, and down the valley of the Clain the morning mists were all a-swim with glory.
Before the gate the guard stretched themselves, yawning, and when I would have passed, one caught my bridle. But with a wrench I dragged it from his grasp.
"A pardon!" I cried, my lips dry and cracked, my woman's voice harsh and shrill by turns. "The King is dead! Long live the King! I bear a pardon from King Charles!"