Under the red robe

by Stanley John Weyman

‘Without me!’ I rejoined keenly. ‘Assuredly, so far as is possible.’

Accordingly I directed the troopers to ride before him, keeping out of earshot, while my two men followed him at a little distance with their carbines on their knees. Last of all, I rode myself with my eyes open and a pistol loose in my holster. M. de Cocheforet muttered a sneer at so many precautions and the mountain made of his request; but I had not done so much and come so far, I had not faced scorn and insults to be cheated of my prize at last; and aware that until we were beyond Auch there must be hourly and pressing danger of a rescue, I was determined that he who should wrest my prisoner from me should pay dearly for it. Only pride, and, perhaps, in a degree also, appetite for a fight, had prevented me borrowing ten troopers instead of two.

As was wont I looked with a lingering eye and many memories at the little bridge, the narrow woodland path, the first roofs of the village; all now familiar, all seen for the last time. Up the brook a party of soldiers were dragging for the captain’s body. A furlong farther on, a cottage, burned by some carelessness in the night, lay a heap of black ashes. Louis ran beside us weeping; the last brown leaves fluttered down in showers. And between my eyes and all, the slow steady rain fell and fell. And so I left Cocheforet.

Louis went with us to a point a mile beyond the village, and there stood and saw us go, cursing me furiously as I passed. Looking back when we had ridden on, I still saw him standing, and after a moment’s hesitation I rode back to him.

‘Listen, fool!’ I said, cutting him short in the midst of his mowing and snarling, ‘and give this message to your mistress. Tell her from me that it will be with her husband as it was with M. de Regnier, when he fell into the hands of his enemy—no better and no worse.’

‘You want to kill her, too, I suppose?’ he answered glowering at me.

‘No, fool, I want to save her,’ I retorted wrathfully. ‘Tell her that, just that and no more, and you will see the result.’

‘I shall not,’ he said sullenly. ‘A message from you indeed!’ And he spat on the ground.

‘Then on your head be it,’ I answered solemnly, And I turned my horse’s head and galloped fast after the others. But I felt sure that he would report what I had said, if it were only out of curiosity; and it would be strange if Madame, a gentlewoman of the south, bred among old family traditions, did not understand the reference.

And so we began our journey; sadly, under dripping trees and a leaden sky. The country we had to traverse was the same I had trodden on the last day of my march southwards, but the passage of a month had changed the face of everything. Green dells, where springs welling out of the chalk had once made of the leafy bottom a fairies’ home, strewn with delicate ferns and hung with mosses, were now swamps into which our horses sank to the fetlock. Sunny brews, whence I had viewed the champaign and traced my forward path, had become bare, wind-swept ridges. The beech woods that had glowed with ruddy light were naked now; mere black trunks and rigid arms pointing to heaven. An earthy smell filled the air; a hundred paces away a wall of mist closed the view. We plodded on sadly up hill and down hill, now fording brooks, already stained with flood-water, now crossing barren heaths. But up hill or down hill, whatever the outlook, I was never permitted to forget that I was the jailor, the ogre, the villain; that I, riding behind in my loneliness, was the blight on all—the death-spot. True, I was behind the others—I escaped their eyes. But there was not a line of Mademoiselle’s figure that did not speak scorn to me; not a turn of head that did not seem to say, ‘Oh, God, that such a thing should breathe.’