Clash of Arms: A Romance

by John Bloundelle-Burton

He had the inn to himself now, as far as regarded visitors, since all of De Vaudemont's service, as well as several other Lorrainers who had returned with their masters from the campaign, had by this time gone to their respective homes. Yet, to some of them a hint had been given--a whisper sent round--that one of those who were most hated amongst the seigneurie might ere long be brought to his account, and that, if they desired to participate in the knowledge of what was happening, they should let Jean know their whereabouts.

"For," said he, over many an ale-house table in various villages around, "there may be some brave doings ere long--doings in which some of you may like to share. There are many of us who have had our noses to the grindstone a long while--many who have eaten hard bread so that those who have dominated us should feed well--some, too, whose hearths have been made desolate. Well! it may so happen now--God, He only knows!--that there will be one more hearth desolated soon. That--well!--that the oppressor shall have no hearth to warm himself at."

He had given many other hints, too--accompanied by divers winks and nods and shrugs, common to peasants of his class--hints that there might be a house to be burnt down and so forth; a fearful retaliation to be made on one whom they, in that part of Lorraine, had come to regard as a pest and curse; a man who was a traitor to all their traditions; one who--this being in the eyes of many the worst crime possible--had given in his allegiance to France.

And in the telling of all this he had so inflamed the imagination of his hearers--rude soldiers, mostly, who had been born and nurtured in the one idea that, above all other things, France was never to be permitted to enfold in her grasp their fair province of Lorraine--that, at any moment, they would be willing to rise and wreak their vengeance on the man at whom Jean hinted. And, their curiosity being also much aroused, as was natural enough, they tried hard to extract from him the name of the identical seigneur against whom such retaliation would probably be practised. This, however, he would not divulge--having been warned by Andrew and Laurent on no account to do so--and, thereby, inflamed their imagination the more! So that, when he left them, he did so knowing that they were fully primed to join at any moment in any attack to which they might be summoned, should the necessity arise; both he and Laurent believing in their own minds that that opportunity would not be long in coming.

For, though both these men considered that it was most probable Andrew would obtain the entrance to the mansion of Bois-le-Vaux which he desired, neither of them thought he would ever return or escape from that mansion alive. And, with him destroyed, there would be no further necessity for delaying the project on which they and others had long meditated--the project of destroying and razing to the ground the ancient home of the De Bois-Vallées. Therefore, the warning to those others had gone forth; they were bidden to be ready.

"So," said Laurent now, in answer to Andrew's remark, "it is to be to-night?"

"It is to-night. If all goes well I shall be in the house by ten o'clock, and out of it again an hour later with, I trust and pray, the lady safely rescued."

"I pray so," Laurent answered. But again he whispered to himself, as he had done before, that the English stranger would never return alive. He would be caught, discovered by some of the servitors--men thoroughly in their master's interests, since he at any moment could send them to the gallows-tree for past offences--and would be set upon and slain. Yet, when he told Andrew this, the other turned a deaf ear to him--refused to believe in such peril.

"There are five," he replied, "since their master is away--what devil's work is he on now, I wonder? What are five? How many times think you, my friend, have I been opposed to five men in the campaigns I have made? Why! 'twas but at Entzheim the other day that I was alone and unsupported amongst a dozen of the Duke of Holstein-Pleon's soldiers; yet, as you see, I am here, and without a scratch."

"Ay, I see," muttered Laurent, "but 'twas on an open field, your friends and comrades near you, ready at any moment to come to your assistance as, doubtless, they did. Oh! I know, I have been a soldier myself! But now, see, it is different. You will be alone in a strange house--in the dark--egress impossible during an attack on you. Mon Dieu! you will be run through and through or shot ere you can get back to the slope--with no possibility of help from friends and comrades there. Heavens!" he concluded, "the risk is fearful."