Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France

by Stanley John Weyman

He came to that thought not by way of his own peril, but of Mademoiselle's; which affected him in so novel a fashion that he wondered at his folly. At last, tired of watching the shadows which the draught set dancing on the wall, he drew his cloak about him and lay down on the straw. He had kept vigil the previous night, and in a few minutes, with a campaigner's ease, he was asleep.

Midnight had struck. About two the light in the lantern burned low in the socket, and with a soft sputtering went out. For an hour after that the room lay still, silent, dark; then slowly the grey dawn, the greyer for the river mist which wrapped the neighbourhood in a clammy shroud, began to creep into the room and discover the vague shapes of things. Again an hour passed, and the sun was rising above Montreuil, and here and there the river began to shimmer through the fog. But in the room it was barely daylight when the sleeper awoke, and sat up, his face expectant. Something had roused him. He listened.

His ear, and the habit of vigilance which a life of danger instils, had not deceived him. There were men moving in the passage; men who shuffled their feet impatiently. Had Biron returned! Or had aught happened to him, and were these men come to avenge him? Count Hannibal rose and stole across the boards to the door, and, setting his ear to it, listened.

He listened while a man might count a hundred and fifty, counting slowly. Then, for the third part of a second, he turned his head, and his eyes travelled the room. He stooped again and listened more closely, scarcely breathing. There were voices as well as feet to be heard now; one voice--he thought it was Peridol's--which held on long, now low, now rising into violence. Others were audible at intervals, but only in a growl or a bitter exclamation, that told of minds made up and hands which would not be restrained. He caught his own name, Tavannes--the mask was useless then! And once a noisy movement which came to nothing, foiled, he fancied, by Peridol.

He knew enough. He rose to his full height, and his eyes seemed a little closer together; an ugly smile curved his lips. His gaze travelled over the objects in the room, the bare stools and table, the lantern, the wine pitcher; beyond these, in a corner, the cloak and straw on the low bed. The light, cold and grey, fell cheerlessly on the dull chamber, and showed it in harmony with the ominous whisper which grew in the gallery; with the stern-faced listener who stood, his one hand on the door. He looked, but he found nothing to his purpose, nothing to serve his end, whatever his end was; and with a quick light step he left the door, mounted the window recess, and, poised on the very edge, looked down.

If he thought to escape that way his hope was desperate. The depth to the water-level was not, he judged, twelve feet. But Peridol had told the truth. Below lay not water, but a smooth surface of viscid slime, here luminous with the florescence of rottenness, there furrowed by a tiny runnel of moisture which sluggishly crept across it to the slow stream beyond. This quicksand, vile and treacherous, lapped the wall below the window, and more than accounted for the absence of bars or fastenings. But, leaning far out, he saw that it ended at the angle of the building, at a point twenty feet or so to the right of his position.

He sprang to the floor again, and listened an instant; then, with guarded movements--for there was fear in the air, fear in the silent room, and at any moment the rush might be made, the door burst in--he set the lantern and wine pitcher on the floor, and took up the table in his arms. He began to carry it to the window, but, halfway thither, his eye told him that it would not pass through the opening, and he set it down again and glided to the bed. Again he was thwarted; the bed was screwed to the floor. Another might have despaired at that, but he rose with no sign of dismay, and listening, always listening, he spread his cloak on the floor, and deftly, with as little noise and rustling as might be, he piled the straw in it, compressed the bundle, and, cutting the bed-cords with his dagger, bound all together with them. In three steps he was in the embrasure of the window, and, even as the men in the passage thrust the lieutenant aside and with a sudden uproar came down to the door, he flung the bundle lightly and carefully to the right--so lightly and carefully, and with so nice and deliberate a calculation, that it seemed odd it fell beyond the reach of an ordinary leap.

An instant and he was on the floor again. The men had to unlock, to draw back the bolts, to draw back the door which opened outwards; their numbers, as well as their savage haste, impeded them. When they burst in at last, with a roar of "To the river! To the river!"--burst in a rush of struggling shoulders and lowered pikes, they found him standing, a solitary figure, on the further side of the table, his arms folded. And the sight of the passive figure for a moment stayed them.

"Say your prayers, child of Satan!" cried the leader, waving his weapon. "We give you one minute!"

"Ay, one minute!" his followers chimed in. "Be ready!"