Nigel nodded, and strode over the stones, and the sheet-lead, and the broken images of stone and of human flesh that lay in his path. But for the loss of its church-tower the street was still passably whole. Clambering over the barrier of ruins, a half company of musketeers followed in loose order, expectant of more plunder. All day they had spent in camp, and were now let out for their share in the ruthless harvesting. There was method too in their captain's gleaning.
He halted his men, and addressed Sergeant Blick in the tone of a man used to command and accustomed to be obeyed.
"Now, Sergeant, you and two men come with me. The rest may help themselves in this street. It is now seven o'clock. At nine they will fall in, and march back to camp. No throat-cutting! No drunkenness! And no mishandling of women!"
Sergeant Blick wheeled about, marched three paces to the front, and repeated the orders in a fine sonorous voice. By way of making them more intelligible, he called his men "drunken pigs" and "little calves" and "blunderheads," and added a few very personal admonitions to the more wilfully or weakly inclined of the flock. Then he wheeled about again, his two picked men followed, and Nigel, in front of the three, marched up the street till he came to a tall house which stood with projecting upper storeys and an almost magisterial aspect amid its smaller fellows.
The massive door yielded to a push, admitting them to a stone-paved hall, on either side of which there were some very meagrely furnished rooms, and behind it kitchens, larders, and servants' quarters equally bare. Nothing of potable or eatable was to be seen. Nor was there a single kitchen wench.
Having made this reconnaissance, Nigel mounted the wide open staircase with Sergeant Blick at his heels, and the two musketeers, two steps behind, to preserve the distance prescribed by the sergeant's rank.
They halted at the first landing. From behind the first door came the stifled cry of a woman, and a dull sound of a fall. Sergeant Blick essayed to open it in vain.
Nigel Charteris rapped upon it with the hilt of his sword.
"Open in the name of the Emperor!" he demanded.
A key turned in the lock.