In Kings' Byways

by Stanley John Weyman

Now in the room which was then the King's Chamber at Montauban, is a window, at a great height from the ground, a very deep ravine, which is one of the main defences of the city, lying below it. In the adjoining ante-chamber is a similar window, and between the two is a projecting buttress, and outside the sill of each is a stone ledge a foot wide, which runs round the buttress. I do not know who first thought of it, but one day when the King was absent and we pages were lounging in the room—which was against the rules, since we should have been in the ante-chamber—some one challenged Antoine to walk on the ledge round the buttress, going out by the one window and returning by the other. I have said that the ledge was but a foot wide, the depth below infinite. It turned me sick only to look down and see the hawks hang and circle in the gulf. Nevertheless, before any could speak, Antoine was outside the casement poising himself on the airy ledge; a moment, and with his face turned inwards to the wall, his slight figure outlined against the sky, he began to edge his way round the buttress.

I called to him to come back; I expected each moment to see him reel and fall; the others, too, stood staring with uneasy faces; for they had not thought that he would do it. But he did not heed; an instant, and he vanished round the buttress, and still we stood, and no one moved; no one moved, until with a shout he showed himself at the other window, and sprang down into the ante-chamber. His eyes were bright with the triumph of it; his hair waved back from his brow as if the breeze from the gulf still stirred it. He cried to me to do the feat in my turn, he pointed his finger at me, dared me, and before them all he called me "Coward! Coward!"

But I am not ashamed to confess a weakness I share with many men of undoubted courage—I could never face a great height; and though I burned with wrath and shame, and raged under his taunts, though I could have confronted any other form of death, at his instigation, or I thought I could, though I even went so far as to leap on the seat within the window and stand—and stand irresolute—I stopped there. My head turned, my skin crept. I could not do it. The victory was with Antoine; he whom I had thrashed for some impertinence only the night before, now held me up to scorn and drove me from the room with jeers and laughter.

None of the others had greater courage; none dared do the feat; but I was the eldest and the biggest, and the iron entered into my heart. Day after day for a week, whenever the chamber was empty, I crept to the window and looked down and watched the kites hover and drop, and plumbed the depth with my eyes. But only, to turn away—sick. I could not do it. Resolve as I might at night, in the morning, on the window ledge, with the giddy deep below me, I was a coward.

One evening, however, when the King was supping with M. de Roquelaure, and I believed the chamber to be deserted, I chanced to go to the window of the ante-chamber after nightfall. I stepped on the seat—that I had done often before; but this time, looking down, I found that I no longer quailed. The darkness veiled the ravine; to my astonishment I felt no qualms. Moreover, I had had supper, my heart was high; and in a moment it occurred to me that now—now in the dark I could do it, and regain my pride.

I did not give myself time to think, but went straight out to the gallery, where I found Antoine and two or three others teasing Mathurine the woman-fool. My entrance was the signal for a taunt. "Ho, Miss White Face! Come to borrow Mathurine's petticoats?" Antoine cried, standing out and confronting me. "It is you, is it?"

"Yes," I answered sharply, meeting his eyes and speaking in a tone I had not used for a week. "And if you do not mend your manners, Master Antoine——"

"Go round the buttress!" he retorted with a grimace.

"I will!" I answered. "I will! And then——"

"You dare not!"