The Story of Francis Cludde

by Stanley John Weyman

"Oh, you fool!" she screamed out loud. "Oh, you fool!" she repeated bitterly. "Now you have told him all."

I stood confounded. My cheeks burned with shame, and her look of contempt cut me like a knife. That the reproach was deserved I knew at once, for the man in my grasp gave a start, which proved that the information was not lost upon him. "Who told you?" the woman went on, clutching the child jealously to her breast, as though she saw herself menaced afresh. "Who told you about the Lion Wharf?"

"Never mind," I answered gloomily. "I have made a mistake, but it is easy to remedy it." And I took out my knife again. "Do you go on and leave us."

I hardly know whether I meant my threat or no. But my prisoner had no doubts. He shrieked out--a wild cry of fear which rang round the empty court--and by a rapid blow, despair giving him courage, he dashed the hunting-knife from my hand. This done he first flung himself on me, then tried by a sudden jerk to free himself. In a moment we were down on the stones, and tumbling over one another in the dirt, while he struggled to reach his knife, which was still in his girdle, and I strove to prevent him. The fight was sharp, but it lasted barely a minute. When the first effort of his despair was spent, I came uppermost, and he was but a child in my hands. Presently, with my knee on his chest, I looked up. The women were still there, the younger clinging to the other.

"Go! go!" I cried impatiently. Each second I expected the court to be invaded, for the man had screamed more than once.

But they hesitated. I had been forced to hurt him a little, and he was moaning piteously. "Who are you?" the elder woman asked--she who had spoken all through.

"Nay, never mind that!" I answered. "Do you go! Go, while you can. You know the way to the Wharf."

"Yes," she answered. "But I cannot go and leave him at your mercy. Remember he is a man, and has----"

"He is a treacherous scoundrel," I answered, giving his throat a squeeze. "But he shall have one more chance. Listen, sirrah!" I continued to the man, "and stop that noise or I will knock out your teeth with my dagger-hilt. Listen and be silent. I shall go with these ladies, and I promise you this: If they are stopped or hindered on their way, or if evil happen to them at that wharf, whose name you had better forget, it will be the worse for you. Do you hear? You will suffer for it, though there be a dozen guards about you! Mind you," I added, "I have nothing to lose myself, for I am desperate already."

He vowed--the poor craven--with his stuttering tongue, that he would be true, and vowed it again and again. But I saw that his eyes did not meet mine. They glanced instead at the knife-blade, and I knew, even while I pretended to trust him, that he would betray us. My real hope lay in his fears, and in this, that as the fugitives knew the way to the wharf, and it could not now be far distant, we might reach it, and go on board some vessel--I had gathered they were flying the country--before this wretch could recover himself and get together a force to stop us. That was my real hope, and in that hope only I left him.