Clash of Arms: A Romance

by John Bloundelle-Burton

From the great door there came also two strips of light, one from beneath it, the other a bright ray that seemed to the man regarding it from afar as though proceeding from some huge keyhole.

"If," he thought, as still he watched and saw this flow of the light, "it can stream out thus, an eye placed to the orifice can see in. Mine shall be that eye. I will not return until I have observed what hall it is from which that ray proceeds," and, as he spoke, he drew from his belt a pistol, saw to its priming, and carefully shook fresh powder into the pan, then returned it to its place and made ready for his task. Yet he did not hesitate to acknowledge to himself that, if his footfall outside was heard by any who might be within--if that door should open while he was outside it--his life would possibly cease on the instant. The hall might be half full of armed men, and of them he could possibly kill two; the rest would undoubtedly kill him--bury a dozen swords or daggers in his breast.

But, even as he so reflected, he was on his way to see what was beyond that ray of light; was, under the shadow of the half-leafless trees, creeping up the copse until he stood level with the face of the house, and with its left angle to his side. Then, on tiptoe and keeping close to that bare face, he passed along it until he reached the huge door and stood on the half-moon of flagged stones before it, so that the light from underneath played on his feet, and the light from the great keyhole made a luminous star upon his breast.

He prayed his knees would not crack as he bent down to put his eye to the hole--even such a slight noise as that might suffice to betray his presence; he did not venture even to put his fingers to the door to aid his stooping position--without their support he brought his body down so that his eye was close to, and level with, the hole, and, thus, looked in.

At first his sight was blurred by gazing into the light, then, gradually, he became able to see and to distinguish clearly what was within.

In a well in the middle of a great hall, so vast that fifty men at least might have sat at table there, and fifty more have found room to walk about and wait on them, there burnt a log fire, the embers low and charred now, and lurid, as though they had not been put together for some time. Around this fire five men sat in deep wooden chairs, all of them asleep, or seeming so. One, he who had the largest and most comfortable seat, appeared by his dress to be superior to the rest, he having on a dark blue coat, passemented with galloon, a satin waistcoat, and knee breeches of the same. Also, there was a wig upon his head--thrust somewhat awry by the movement of his shoulders as he slumbered--a wig that had not been powdered nor combed for many a day, and was thus of a dirty brown and touzled. An elderly man this, with a red, blotched face, coarse thick lips, and--as he slept--of a frowning aspect; a man big and brawny, too, as Andrew could well see; one who, although no longer young, might be a difficult antagonist in an encounter.

"Doubtless the steward, Beaujos," Andrew thought; then scanned the others.

These were fellows clad half as serving and half as fighting men, it seemed, wearing leathern jerkins of a period somewhere earlier than the present; coarse, baggy breeches and rough hose, and with their own hair, matted and thick, hanging about their heads. They carried in their belts knives in wooden sheaths in contradistinction to the other, whose sword lay on the table by his hand. On that table, too, Andrew could see, was a great flagon, doubtless drained of its contents ere they slept, and some cups; also a lamp from which the light came that streamed forth into the night. And still there were two other sleepers in that great hall--though sleepers less sound than these five. They, instead of being round the fire in the well, by the side of which, indeed, no room had been left for them by the men, lay at the foot of the huge broad staircase that led up from the left of the hall, yet were still in Andrew's range of vision. And he, looking at them, knew that here was a greater danger to him than might come from the others.

They were two enormous hounds--half boarhounds, as it appeared to him gazing in through the keyhole, of the sort much used in Alsace and Lorraine, and all the region; yet, it seemed also, as though with something of the bloodhound, too, since their great heads rose conical, and their huge ears swept the ground.

"I must away," said Andrew to himself, "there is danger here. By heavens! my presence is known to them already." Yet, with that danger which now threatened him--as it had not threatened from the other sleepers--impending near, he felt himself fascinated by the monstrous creatures.