The red cockade

by Stanley John Weyman

"It will help us much," St. Alais said with a sneer, "if he does. If I were once at home----"

"Ay, but how are we to get there?" Du Marc cried. He could not hide his terror. "Do you understand," he continued querulously, addressing me, "that we shall be murdered? Is there no other door? Speak, some one. Speak!"

His fears appealed to me in vain. I would scarcely have stirred a finger to save him. But the sight of the two St. Alais standing there pale and irresolute, while that roar of voices grew each moment louder and nearer, moved me. A moment, and the mob would break in; perhaps finding us by Hugues' side, it might in its fury sacrifice all indifferently. It might; and then I heard, to give point to the thought, the crash of one of the doors of the garden as it gave way; and I cried out almost involuntarily that there was another door--another door, if it was open. I did not look to see if they followed, but, leaving the dead, I took the lead, and ran across the sward towards the wall of the Cathedral.

The crowd were already pouring into the garden, but a clump of shrubs hid us from them as we fled; and we gained unseen a little door, a low-browed postern in the wall of the apse, that led, I knew--for not long before I had conducted an English visitor over the Cathedral--to a sacristy connected with the crypt. My hope of finding the door open was slight; if I had stayed to weigh the chances I should have thought them desperate. But to my joy as I came up to it, closely followed by the others, it opened of itself, and a priest, showing his tonsured head in the aperture, beckoned to us to hasten. He had little need to do so; in a moment we had obeyed, were by his side, and panting, heard the bolts shoot home behind us. For the moment we were safe.

Then we breathed again. We stood in the twilight of a long narrow room with walls and roof of stone, and three loopholes for windows. Du Marc was the first to speak. "Mon Dieu, that was close," he said, wiping his brow, which in the cold light wore an ugly pallor. "We are----"

"Not out of the wood yet," the surgeon answered gravely, "though we have good grounds for thanking M. le Vicomte. They have discovered us! Yes, they are coming!"

Probably the people on the roof had watched us enter and denounced our place of refuge; for as he spoke, we heard a rush of feet, the door shook under a storm of blows, and a score of grimy savage faces showed at the slender arrow-slits, and glaring down, howled and spat curses upon us. Luckily the door was of oak, studded and plated with iron, fashioned in old, rough days for such an emergency, and we stood comparatively safe. Yet it was terrible to hear the cries of the mob, to feel them so close, to gauge their hatred, and know while they beat on the stone as though they would tear the walls with their naked hands, what it would be to fall into their power!

We looked at one another, and--but it may have been the dim light--I saw no face that was not pale. Fortunately the pause was short. The Curé who had admitted us, unlocked as quickly as he could an inner door. "This way," he said--but the snarling of the beasts outside almost drowned his voice--"if you will follow me, I will let you out by the south entrance. But, be quick, gentlemen, be quick," he continued, pushing us out before him, "or they may guess what we are about, and be there before us."

It may be imagined that after that we lost no time. We followed him as quickly as we could along a narrow subterranean passage, very dimly lit, at the end of which a flight of six steps brought us into a second passage. We almost ran along this, and though a locked door delayed us a moment--which seemed a minute, and a long one--the key was found and the door opened. We passed through it, and found ourselves in a long narrow room, the counterpart of that we had first entered. The curé opened the farther door of this; I looked out. The alley outside, the same which led beside the Cathedral to the Chapter House, was empty.

"We are in time," I said, with a sigh of relief; it was pleasant to breathe the fresh air again. And I turned, still panting with the haste we had made, to thank the good Curé who had saved us.