He slipped away into the long grass, and Martin knew that all that he held most dear hung on the good faith of Peter Swartz.
Chapter XXX
Martin Valliant did not tarry long under the thorn tree. He knelt for a moment to listen, and then started on his way around the mere, crawling on hands and knees through the rich rank grass that grew near the water. It was wet with dew, and the brown sorrel and the great white daisies brushed against his face. The smell of the green growth touched him like a subtle, clinging memory. He did not think of death or wounds, but only of Mellis and what might happen to her if he failed.
Skirting the mere, he came to the sluice ditch, all choked with shrubs and brambles. The ditch was less than two hundred paces from the causeway, and about the same distance from the shelter of leaves, and Martin scrambled down and took cover in spite of the thorns and brambles. He half stood and half lay, with his head and shoulders above the bank, and a stunted thorn stretching a canopy above him. He could see the two fires, and Fulk de Lisle’s red figure. Mellis’s bower lay between the sluice ditch and the camp fires; Martin could not pick it out of the darkness, though he strained his eyes till the lids began to flicker.
Still, he knew where she lay, and there was nothing for him to do but to lie still and wait for Swartz’s horn. He could feel his heart beating as he leaned against the grassy bank. Every nerve and muscle in him seemed a-quiver. He fingered the point and edge of his knife, and smiled.
Then a strange thought came to him. What if he failed—what if he found the adventure hopeless?
He would die—he meant to die in such a case—but Mellis would be living. He would go out into the great darkness leaving her alone. Rough hands might do what they pleased with her. Fulk de Lisle would come down full of his wine, violent and inflamed.
Martin fondled his knife. One blow, and all that would be saved. And yet he recoiled from the thought with a spasm of tenderness and horror. To strike that white body of hers, to hear her cry out, to know that her blood was flowing! The passion in him hardened to an iron frenzy. He would not fail; no strength should master him; nothing should say him nay.
Martin Valliant had fought through those moments of a man’s strong anguish when Swartz’s horn brayed in the deeps of the beech wood. Martin did not wait to see what would happen. He was out of the ditch and running through the long grass like a greyhound loosed after a hare. He knew where the shelter of leaves should be; that was all that mattered.
And yet his senses were dimly aware of other things that were happening. Swartz was shouting like a madman, “At them! At them! Cut the swine to pieces!” Fulk de Lisle had sprung to his feet and was facing toward the beech wood; his men were rushing to arms. The fellows on the causeway had left their post and were trailing across the grass to join their comrades by the fires.