He turned toward the White Tower. He could see it dimly between two nearer buildings.... He rose from the bench. Figures were approaching, two or three. They also were mantled, face and form. Two stopped a few steps away, the third came on. He advanced to meet it. He could only tell that it was slender, somewhat less tall than himself. The mantle enveloped, the cowl-like hood enveloped. A hand held out a purse which he took. It felt heavy; he put it within the breast of his robe.
“Saint Martin’s summer,” said a voice.
He answered. “Dreams may come true.” His heart beat violently, his senses swam. The stars overhead seemed to grow larger, to become vast, throbbing, living jewels. It appeared that the world slightly trembled....
The mantled form turned head, motioned to those who had stopped short. These came up, then after a word all moved to the rock-gate. To right and left of this now stood the men who had waited by the turret. The night had grown still. Montmaure, busy with changes of position, let night and day go by without attack. Roche-de-Frêne kept watch and ward, but likewise, as far as might be, sank to needed sleep. The investing host, the great dragon that lay upon the plain, seemed, too, to sleep. The castle up against the stars slept or held its breath. The small rock-gate opened. Garin and that one who had given him the purse and changed with him the countersign passed through. After them came the two who had accompanied that one. Garin now saw that the taller of these was Stephen the Marshal. The gate closed behind them.
They stood upon a shelf of rock. Below them they saw the stars mirrored in the castle moat. One of the accompanying men now passed in front and led the way. They were in a downward-sloping, tunnel-like passage. It wound and doubled upon itself; for a time they descended, then trod a level, then felt that they were upon a climbing path. At last came again descent. At intervals they had seen through the crevices overhead the stars of heaven; now the passage ended with the stars at their feet, dim light points in the still water of the moat, stretching immediately before them, closing their path. A boat, oared by one man, lay upon it. The four from the castle towering overhead stepped into this; it was pushed from the sheer rock. In a moment there showed no sign of the road by which they had come. The boat went some way, then turned its prow to the opposing bank. It rose above them dark and sheer. No lasting stairway was here, but as the boat touched the masonry, a hand came over the coping above, and there dropped one end of a ladder of rope. The man who had led the way through the tunnel caught it and fastened it to a stanchion at the water’s edge.
“Go first,” said Stephen the Marshal to Garin.
The latter obeyed, went lightly up the ladder, and upon the moat’s rugged bank found himself among two or three men, kneeling, peering down upon the boat and its occupants. That one who had said “Saint Martin’s summer” came next, light and lithe as a boy. Last of the four mounted the one who had fastened the ladder and gone ahead in the tunnel. Garin thought him that engineer whom the princess highly paid and highly trusted.
They were now between the moat and the wall of the town, rising, upon this northern face, in the very shadow of the castle rock. About them were roofs of houses. They went down a staircase of stone and came into a lane-like space. Before them sprang, huge and high, the burghers’ wall, with, on this side, no apparent gate, but a blankness of stone. On the parapet above, a sentinel went by, larger than life against the sky that was paling before the approach of the moon. Some sound perhaps had been made, at the moat or upon the stair between the houses; for now a guard with halberds, a dozen or more, came athwart their road with a peremptory challenge to halt.
A word was given, the guard fell back. The four from the castle, followed by those who had met them at the moat, went on, walking in the shadow of the wall that seemed unbroken, a blank, unpierced solid. They had moved away from the most precipitous point of the hill of Roche-de-Frêne, but now they were bearing back. High above them, almost directly overhead, hung that part of the castle wall where was set the rock-gate.