My lady of Cleeve

by Percy John Hartley

Throughout the foregoing scene my lady had remained standing in the same spot, as if doubtful what course to take.

“Go, madam,” I said quietly, unsheathing my sword and placing myself to cover her retreat, though without daring to take my eyes from the man before me.

As the latter rose slowly to his feet I heard my lady’s receding footsteps cross the bridge and die away upon the woodland path, and in another minute I had need of all my skill to meet the attack of the man before me, for with a furious oath he drew his sword and flung himself upon me, and our blades met to the sound of the music that I loved so well.

From the first I read murder in his eyes, and so fierce, indeed, was his attack that I was driven back to the bank of the stream; and it was only when I felt myself upon the very edge of this that I realised my danger. I dared not turn my head, but instinctively I knew that one step backwards and I should fall some four feet to the bed of the stream, where, penned between its narrow banks, I was practically at my opponent’s mercy, and what form this latter would take I read all too clearly in his blood-shot eyes. He saw his advantage, too, for with a short cry of triumph he redoubled his efforts, so that I tottered on the very brink. But his very confidence of success was like to have been his undoing, for rallying myself with the courage of despair, I parried his furious lunges and thrust so shrewdly in return that I laid his cheek open from brow to chin.

Startled for a moment by the suddenness of the attack, and blinded by the blood that sprang freely from the wound, he threw himself violently backward, thus narrowly escaping the second thrust with which I followed up my advantage.

But the respite thus afforded me was sufficient. I sprang lightly aside and renewed the fight upon more equal terms. Once, indeed, we paused as if by mutual consent, and faced each other with dripping brows and labouring breath. But in a few moments’ time we fell to it again, and the glade resounded to the rasping of our blades, that thrust and parried, twined and clicked together like sentient things of evil; whilst the sun lay hot upon the clearing and the birds flew chattering from the surrounding woods. And once again I narrowly escaped with my life, for as we circled round each other I stumbled over the very root that had previously caused his downfall, and though I sprang instantly aside, so near was the fierce thrust that he aimed at me that his point shredded the cambric at my throat.

Up till now I had been acting mostly on the defensive, but roused by this last attack to sudden passion, and conscious of a thin trickle of blood upon my breast that warned me how near had been my peril, I called all my skill to my aid and began to press him in my turn.

And from that moment the aspect of the fight altered, for good sword though the man was, his intemperate habits were against him, and whereas, minute by minute, as the fight proceeded I felt myself growing cooler and settled more steadily to my work, the sweat gathered thicker on his brow and his chest heaved in panting breaths to his exertions. Thickset as the man was, and like a bull for strength, I felt his thrusts momentarily grow weaker, and foot by foot I pressed him backwards across the open space—back until he could retreat no further by reason of the encircling trees; and then, as I felt his pressure on my blade diminish, twice I drove him round the little clearing. Nor for all his renewed efforts could he make headway against me or even hold his ground.

Once he rallied, twice he rallied, but my wrist was iron and I would not be denied. And with my glittering point ever at his breast, looking into my grim face, I think he tasted then the bitterness of death. Think? Nay, I know. I could read in his dilated eyes, in the snarling, blood-streaked lips, that reminded me of naught so much as of a trapped wolf, that he realised that he was mastered. The man was no coward, as I knew, but reading my purpose by his own, small blame to him that the shadow of doom gathered upon his face, or that as for a third time I drove him before me, a low groan escaped his lips.

“Curse you!” he gasped hoarsely, parrying wildly; “finish it, and be——”