Clash of Arms: A Romance

by John Bloundelle-Burton

The advice was good, and Andrew lost no time in following it. Ere a quarter of an hour had passed, Clemence and Marion had been brought down from the roof, and were with him in the room. But, almost he feared that ere they should be rescued Marion would be a dead woman. She was nearly helpless now--nay, quite so, and half insensible; it was in those great, untiring arms that she had to be carried from the roof below.

And behind them had followed Clemence, muttering:

"She will die. She will die." While as she so said she wept.

That she would die, Andrew could not doubt; this last shock, following on the long detention she had been subjected to by her deceiver, De Bois-Vallée; following on, too, the agony of mind she must have suffered in musing on what those at home would feel at her disappearance; had brought her to her end. He could not doubt it.

"And still," he murmured to himself, "Philip is unavenged. Soon there will be two victims of his villainy. God! how I have failed. Failed to avenge him, to save her--failed even to learn how the evil was wrought. And if she dies now--to-day--to-night--I shall never know."

Yet, even as he so spoke, there came into his face a look which would have told plainly enough to anyone observing it, that, in one thing, at least, he would not fail. If ever De Bois-Vallée stood face to face with Andrew Vause again, he would escape no more with life--the hour when he did so would be his last. Only--would he ever so stand? Might he not by now have put leagues between them; might he not ere long put the mountains, the seas, between him and the avenger who sought for him!

As Andrew gazed below from the window of the room in which they were now, he learnt that no ladder was to be found, either in outhouse or elsewhere. If there had ever been one it had been removed, probably by the Lorrainers; had possibly been used by them to furnish fresh fuel for the flames inside. But, even as the men who returned from the search told the Marquis De La Fare of their failure, from another group who had wandered further into the woods around the house there came a shout--it seemed of triumph and rejoicing. Then, quickly, one came running back, breathless, and soon the story was told of what they had lit upon.

A shed not far from the mansion, hidden in one of the copses of Bois-le-Vaux; a house used by the woodmen for storing the felled logs of trees--a house piled full of what was, doubtless, the winter store of fuel--doubtless, also, overlooked by and unknown to the besiegers. Otherwise, for sure, all in that but would have gone to swell the flames--the attackers would not have laboured to hew down saplings and branches had they known of that store so near to their hands.

Now, it was to be directed to a vastly different purpose--to save instead of to destroy. By twos and threes, by squads as well, those men who, for nights, had scarce rested during that weary and rough passage of the mountains, set to work once more, bringing one by one, or half a dozen at a time between them, the logs to the spot beneath where those three prisoners were; untiringly they worked. And so they placed them against the window from which Andrew gazed, making first a deep base of the larger billets, edged round and secured by fallen masses of stone and beams from the old house, and then building others above, pyramid-wise, until, at last, the work was done.

Until, at last, the stage was erected on to which those three could step forth to safety and salvation. To which two of them, at least, could step forth, but on to which the other, the dying woman, had to be lifted.