The Long Night

by Stanley John Weyman

Two women and some children came out of a house not far from the bastion. They passed towards the Tertasse Gate, and he watched them. Before they came to the Royaumes' house, the children paused, flung their cloaks over their heads, and, thus protected, ran past the house. The women followed, more slowly, but gave the house a wide berth, and each passed with a flap of her hood held between her face and the windows; when they had gone by they exchanged signals of abhorrence. The sight was no more than of a piece with the outrage on Anne; but, coming when it did, coming when he was beginning to think that he had been mistaken, when he was beginning to hope, it depressed Claude dismally.

For comfort he looked forward to the hour when it would be dark. "By hook or by crook," he muttered, "I shall enter then."

He had barely finished the sentence, when he observed moving along the ramparts towards him a figure he knew. It was Grio. There was nothing strange in the man's presence in that place, for he was an idler and a sot; but Claude did not wish to meet him, and debated in his mind whether he should retreat before the other came up. Pride said one thing, discretion another. He wanted no fracas, and he was still hanging doubtful, measuring the distance between them, when—away went his thoughts. What was Grio doing?

The Spaniard had come to a stand, and was leaning on the wall, looking idly into the fosse. The posture would have been the most natural in the world on a warm day. On that day it caught Claude's attention; and—was he mistaken, or were the hands that, under cover of Grio's cloak, rested on the wall busy about something?

In any case he must make up his mind whether he moved or stayed. For Grio was coming on again. Claude hesitated a moment. Then he determined to stay. The next he was glad he had so determined, for Grio after strolling on in seeming carelessness to a point not twenty yards from him, and well commanded from his seat, leant again on the wall, and seemed to be enjoying the view. This time Claude was sure, from the movement of his shoulders, that his hands were employed.

"In what?" The young man asked himself the question; and noted that beside Grio's left heel lay a piece of broken tile of a peculiar colour. The next moment he had an inspiration. He drew up his feet on the seat, drew his cloak over his head and affected to be asleep. What Grio, when he came upon him, thought of a man who chose to sleep in the open in such weather he did not learn, for after standing a while—as Claude's ears told him—opposite the sleeper, the Spaniard turned and walked back the way he had come. This time, and though he now had the wind at his back, he walked briskly; as a man would walk in such weather, or as a man might walk who had done his business.

Claude waited until his coarse, heavy figure had disappeared through the Porte Tertasse; nay, he waited until the light began to fail. Then, while he could still pick out the red potsherd, he approached the wall, leant over it, and, failing to detect anything with his eyes, passed his fingers down the stones.

They alighted on a nail; a nail thrust lightly into the mortar below the coping stone. For what purpose? His blood beginning to move more quickly Claude asked himself the question. To support a rope? And so to enable some one to leave the town? The nail, barely pushed into the mortar, would hardly support the weight of a dozen yards of twine.

Perhaps the nail was there by chance, and Grio had naught to do with it. He could settle that doubt. In a few moments he had settled it. Under cover of the growing darkness, he walked to the place at which he had seen Grio pause for the first time. A short search discovered a second nail as lightly secured as the other. Had he not been careful it would have fallen beneath his touch.

What did the nails there? Claude was not stupid, yet he was long in hitting on an explanation. It was a fanciful, extravagant notion when he got it, but one that set his chilled blood running, and his hands tingling, one that might mean much to himself and to others. It was unlikely, it was improbable, it was out of the common; but it was an explanation. It was a mighty thing to hang upon two weak nails; but such as it was—and he turned it over and over in his mind before he dared entertain it—he could find no other. And presently, his eyes alight, his pulses riotous, his foot dancing, he walked down the Corraterie—with scarce a look at the house which had held his thoughts all day—and passed into the town. As he passed through the gateway he hung an instant and cast an inquisitive eye into the guard-room of the Tertasse. It was nearly empty. Two men sat drowsing before the fire, their boot-heels among the embers, a black jack between them.