Chapter 14

I darted back into the doorway beside him. His two assailants finding that they gained nothing by their joint attack, but rather hampered each other, one dropped back to watch his comrade, the cleverer swordsman. This was decidedly a man of talent, but he was shorter in the arm than my master and had the disadvantage of standing on the ground, whereas M. Étienne was up one step. He could not force home any of his shrewd-planned thrusts; nor could he drive M. Étienne out of his coign to where in the open the two could make short work of him. The rapiers clashed and parted and twisted about each other and flew apart again; and then before I could see who was touched the attacker fell to his knees, with M. Étienne's sword in his breast.

M. Étienne wrenched the blade out; the wounded man sank backward, his mask-string breaking. He was the one whom I had thought him--François de Brie.

M. Étienne was ready for the second gentleman, but neither he nor the soldier attacked. The torch-bearer in the window, with a shout, waved his arm toward the square. A mob of armed men hurled itself around the corner, a pikeman with lowered point in the van.

This was not combat; it was butchery. M. Étienne, with a little moan, lifted his eyes for the first time from his assailant to the turret window. In the same instant I felt the door behind us give. Throwing my whole weight upon it, I seized M. Étienne and pulled him over the threshold. Some one inside slammed the door to, just as the Spaniard hurled himself against it.

XX

_"On guard, monsieur."_

We found ourselves in a narrow panelled passageway, lighted by a flickering oil-lamp pendent from a bracket. Confronting us was our preserver--a little old lady in black velvet, leaning back in chuckling triumph against the shot bolts.

She was very small and very old. Her figure was bent and shrunken, a pitiful little bag of bones in a rich dress; her hair was as white as her ruff; her skin as yellow and dry as parchment, furrowed with a thousand wrinkles; but her black eyes sparkled like a girl's.

"I did not mean to let my nightingale's throat be slit," she cried in a shrill voice quavering like a young child's. "I have listened to your singing many a night, monsieur; I was glad to-night to find the nightingale back again. When I saw that crew rush at you, I said I would save you if only you would put your back to my door. Monsieur, you are a young man of intelligence."

"I am a young man of amazing good fortune, madame," M. Étienne replied, with his handsomest bow, sheathing his wet blade. "I owe you a debt of gratitude which is ill repaid in the base coin of bringing trouble to this house."

"Not at all--not at all!" she protested with animation. "No one is likely to molest this house. It is the dwelling of M. Ferou."

"Of the Sixteen?"

"Of the Sixteen," she nodded, her shrewd face agleam with mischief. "In truth, if my son were within, you were little likely to find harbourage here. But, as it is, he and his wife are supping with his Grace of Lyons. And the servants are one and all gone to mass, leaving madame grand'mère to shift for herself. No, no, my good friends; you may knock till you drop, but you won't get in."

The attacking party was indeed hammering energetically on the door, shouting to us to open, to deny them at our peril. The eyes of the old lady glittered with new delight at every rap.

"I fancy they will think twice before they batter down M. Ferou's door! Ma foi! I fancy they are a little mystified at finding you sanctuaried in this house. Was it not my Lord Mayenne's jackal, François de Brie?"

"Yes; and Marc Latour."

"I thought I knew them," she cried in evident pride at her sharpness. "It was dark, and they were masked, and my eyes are old, but I knew them! And which of the ladies is it?"

He could do no less than answer his saviour.

"Ah, well," she said, with a little sigh, "I too once--but that is a long time ago." Then her eyes twinkled again; I trow she was not much given to sighing. "That is a long time ago," she repeated briskly, "and now they think I am too old to do aught but tell my beads and wait for death. But I like to have a hand in the game."

"I will come to take a hand with you any time, madame," M. Étienne assured her. "I like the way you play."

She broke into shrill, delighted laughter.

"I'll warrant you do! And I don't mean to do the thing by halves. No; I shall save you, hide and hair. Be so kind, my lad, as to lift the lantern from the hook."

I did as she bade me, and we followed her down the passage like spaniels. She was so entirely equal to the situation that we made no protests and asked no questions. At the end of the hall she paused, opening neither the door on the right nor the door on the left, but, passing her hand up one of the panels of the wainscot, suddenly she flung it wide.

"You are not so small as I," she chuckled, "yet I think you can make shift to get through. You, monsieur lantern-bearer, go first."

I doubled myself up and scrambled through. The old lady, gathering her petticoats daintily, followed me without difficulty, but M. Étienne was put to some trouble to bow his tall head low enough. We stood at the top of a flight of stone steps descending into blackness. The old lady unhesitatingly tripped down before us.

At the foot of the stairs was a vaulted stone passageway, slippery with lichen, the dampness hanging in beads on the wall. Turning two corners, we brought up at a narrow, nail-studded door.

"Here I bid you farewell," quoth the little old lady. "You have only to walk on till you get to the end. At the steps, pull the rope once and wait. When he opens to you, say, 'For the Cause,' and draw a crown with your finger in the air."

"Madame," M. Étienne cried, "I hope the day may come when I shall make you suitable acknowledgements. My name--"

"I prefer not to know it," she interrupted, glancing up at him. "I will call you M. Yeux-gris; that is enough. As for acknowledgments--pooh! I am overpaid in the sport it has been."

"But, madame, when monsieur your son discovers--"

"Mon dieu! I am not afraid of my son or of any other woman's son!" she cried, with cackling laughter. And I warrant she was not.

"Madame," M. Étienne said, "I trust we shall meet again when I shall have time to tell you what I think of you." He dropped on his knees before her, kissing both her hands.

"Yes, yes, of course you are grateful," she said, somewhat bored apparently by his demonstration. "Naturally one does not like to die at your age. I wish you a pleasant journey, M. Yeux-gris, and you too, you fresh-faced boy. Give me back my lantern and fare you well."

"You will let us see you safe back in your hall."

"I will do nothing of the sort! I am not so decrepit, thank you, that I cannot get up my own stairs. No, no; no more gallantries, but get on your way! Begone with you! I must be back in my chamber working my altar-cloth when my daughter-in-law comes home."

Crowing her elfin laugh, she pulled the door open and fairly hustled us through.

"Good-by--you are fine boys"; and she slammed the door upon us. We were in absolute darkness. As we took our first breath of the dank, foul air, we heard bolts snap into place.

"Well, since we cannot go back, let us go forward," said M. Étienne, cheerfully. "I am glad she has bolted the door; it is to throw them off the scent should they track us."

I knew very well that he was not at all glad; that the same thought which chilled my blood had come to him. This little beldam, with her beady eyes and her laughter, was the wicked witch of our childhood days; she had shut us up in a charnel-house to die.

I heard him tapping the pavement before him with his scabbard, using it as a blind man's staff. And so we advanced through the fetid gloom, the passage being only wide enough to let us walk shoulder to shoulder. There was a whirring of wings about us, and a squeaking; once something swooped square into my face, knocking a cry of terror from me, and a laugh from him.

"What was it? a bat? Cheer up, Félix; they don't bite." But I would not go on till I had made sure, as well as I could without seeing, that the cursed thing was not clinging on me somewhere.

We walked on then in silence, the stone walls vibrant with our tread. We went on till it seemed we had traversed the width of Paris; and I wondered who were sleeping and feasting and scheming and loving over our heads. M. Étienne said at length:

"Mordieu! I hope this snake-hole does not empty us out into the Seine." But I thought that as long as it emptied us out somewhere, I should not greatly mind the Seine.

At this very moment M. Étienne clutched my arm, jerking me to a halt. I bounded backward, trying in the blackness to discern a precipice yawning at my feet. "Look!" he cried in a low, tense voice. I perceived, far before us in the gloom, a point of light, which, as we watched it, grew bigger and bigger, till it became an approaching lantern.

"This is like to be awkward," murmured M. Étienne.

The man carrying the light came on with firm, heavy tread; naturally he did not see us as soon as we saw him. I thought him alone, but it was hard to tell in this dark, echoy place.

He might easily have approached within touch of my sad clothing without becoming aware of me, but M. Étienne's azure and white caught the lantern rays a rod away. The newcomer stopped short, holding up the light between us and his face. We could make nothing of him, save that he was a large man, soberly clad.

"Who is it?" he demanded, his voice ringing out loud and steady. "Is it you, Ferou?"

M. Étienne hooked his scabbard in place, and went forward into the clear circle of light.

"No, M. de Mayenne; it is Étienne de Mar."

"Ventre bleu!" Mayenne ejaculated, changing his lantern with comical alacrity to his left hand, and whipping out his sword. My master's came bare, too, at that. They confronted each other in silence, till Mayenne's ever-increasing astonishment forced the cry from him:

"How the devil come you here?"

"Evidently by way of M. Ferou's house," M. Étienne answered. Mayenne still stared in thick amazement; after a moment my master added: "I must in justice say that M. Ferou is not aware that I am using this passage; he is, with madame his wife, supping with the Archbishop of Lyons."

M. Étienne leaned his shoulder against the wall, smiling pleasantly, and waiting for the duke to make the next move. Mayenne kept a nonplussed silence. The situation was indeed somewhat awkward. He could not come forward without encountering an agile opponent, whose exceeding skill with the sword was probably known to him. He could not turn tail, had his dignity allowed the course, without exposing himself to be spitted. He was in the predicament of the goat on the bridge. Yet was he gaping at us less in fear, I think, than in bewilderment. This Ferou, as I learned later, was one of his right-hand men, years-long supporter. Mayenne had as soon expected to meet a lion in the tunnel as to meet a foe. He cried out again upon us, with an instinctive certainty that a great prince's question must be answered:

"How came you here?"

"I don't ask," said M. Étienne, "how it happens that M. le Duc is walking through this rat-hole. Nor do I feel disposed to make any explanation to him."

"Very well, then," said Mayenne; "our swords, if you are ready, will make adequate explanation."

"Now, that is gallant of you," returned M. Étienne, "as it is evident that the closeness of these walls will inconvenience your Grace more than it will me."

The walls of the passage were roughly laid. Mayenne perched his lantern on a projecting stone.

"On guard, sir," he answered.

The silence was profound. Mayenne had no companion following him. He was alone with his sword. He was not now head of the state, but only a man with a sword, standing opposite another man with a sword. Nor was he in the pink of form. Though he gave the effect, from his clear colour and proud bearing, perhaps also from his masterful energy, of tremendous force and strength, his body was in truth but a poor machine, his great corpulence making him clumsy and scant of breath. He must have known, as he eyed his supple antagonist, what the end would be. Yet he merely said:

"On guard, monsieur."

M. Étienne did not raise his weapon. I retreated a pace, that I might not be in the way of his jump, should Mayenne spring on him. M. Étienne said slowly:

"M. de Mayenne, this encounter was none of my contriving. Nor have I any wish to cross swords with you. Family quarrels are to be deprecated. Since I still intend to become your cousin, I must respectfully beg to be released from the obligation of fighting you."

A man knowing himself overmatched cannot refuse combat. He may, even as Mayenne had done, think himself compelled to offer it. But if he insists on forcing battle with a reluctant adversary, he must be a hothead indeed. And Mayenne was no hothead. He stood hesitant, feeling that he was made ridiculous in accepting the clemency and should be still more ridiculous to refuse it. He half lifted his sword, only to lower it again, till at last his good sense came to his relief in a laugh.

"M. de Mar, it appears that, after all, some explanations are necessary. You think that in declining to fight you put me in your debt. Possibly you are right. But if you expect that in gratitude I shall hand over Lorance de Montluc, you were never more mistaken. Never, while I live, shall she marry into the king's camp. Now, monsieur, that we understand each other, I abide by your decision whether we fight or not."

For answer, M. Étienne put up his blade. The Duke of Mayenne, saluting with his, did the like. "Mar," he said, "you stood off from us, like a coquetting girl, for three years. At length, last May, you refused point-blank to join us. I do not often ask a man twice, but I ask you. Will you join the League to-night, and marry Lorance to-morrow?"

No man could have spoken with a franker grace. I believe then, I believe now, he meant it. M. Étienne believed he meant it.

"Monsieur," he answered, "I have shilly-shallied long; but I am planted squarely at last with my father on the king's side. You put your interesting nephew into my father's house to kill him; I shall not sign myself with the League."

"In that case," returned Mayenne, "perhaps we might each continue on his way."

"With all my heart, monsieur."

Each drew back against the wall to let the other pass, with a wary eye for daggers. Then M. Étienne, laughing a little, but watching Mayenne like a lynx, started to go by. The duke, seeing the look, suddenly raised his hands over his head, holding them there while both of us squeezed past him.

"Cousin Charles," said M. Étienne, "I see that when I have married Lorance you and I shall get on capitally. Till then, God have you ever in guard."

"I thank you, monsieur. You make me immortal."

"I have no need to make you witty. M. de Mayenne, when you have submitted to the king, as you will one of these days, I shall have as delightful a kinsman as heart of man could wish. You and I will yet drink a loving-cup together. Till that happy hour, I am your good enemy. Fare you well, monsieur."

He bowed; the duke, half laughing despite a considerable ire, returned the obeisance with all pomp. M. Étienne took me by the arm and departed. Mayenne stood still for a space; then we heard his retreating footsteps, and the glimmer of his light slowly faded away.

"It wasn't necessary to tell him the door is bolted," M. Étienne muttered.

We hurried along now without precaution, knowing that the floor which had supported Mayenne would support us. The consequence was that we stumbled abruptly against a step, and fell with a force like to break our kneecaps. I picked myself up at once, and ran headlong up the stairs, to hit my crown on the ceiling and reel back on M. Étienne, sweeping him off his feet, so that we rolled in a struggling heap on the stones of the passage. And for the minute the place was no longer dark; I saw more lightning than even flashed in the Rue Coupejarrets.

"Are you hurt, Félix?" cried M. Étienne, the first to disentangle himself.

"No," I said, groaning; "but I banged my head. She did not say it was a trap-door."

We ascended the stairs a second time--this time most cautiously on our hands and knees. Above us, at the end, we could feel, with upleaping of spirit, a wooden ceiling.

"Ah, I have the cord!" he exclaimed.

The next instant we heard a faint but most comforting tinkle somewhere above us. Before we had time to wonder whether any marked it but us, we heard steps overhead, and a noise as of a chest being pulled about, and then the trap lifted. We climbed out into a silk-mercer's shop.

"Faith, my man," said M. Étienne to the little bourgeois who had opened to us, "I am glad to see you appear so promptly."

He looked at us, somewhat troubled or alarmed.

"You must have met--" he suggested with hesitancy.

"Yes," said M. Étienne; "but he did not object. We are, of course, of the initiated."

"Of course, of course," the little fellow assented, with a funny assumption of knowing all about it. "Not every one has the secret of the passage. Well, I can call myself a lucky man. 'Tis mighty few mercers have a duke in their shop as often as I."

We looked curiously about us. The shop was low and dim, with piles of stuff in rolls on the shelves, and other stuffs lying loose on the counter before us, as if the man had just been measuring them--gorgeous brocades and satins. Above us, a bell on the rafter still quivered.

"Yes, that is the bell of the trap," the proprietor said, following our glance. "Customers do not know where it rings from. And if I am not at liberty to open, I drop my brass yardstick on the floor--But they told you that, doubtless, monsieur?" he added, regarding M. Étienne again a little uneasily.

"They told me something else I had near forgotten," M. Étienne answered, and, drawing a crown in the air, gave the password, "For the Cause."

"For the King," the shopkeeper made instant rejoinder, drawing in the air in his turn a letter C and the numeral X.

M. Étienne laid a gold piece on the counter, and if the shopkeeper had felt any doubts of this well-dressed gallant who wore no hat, they vanished in its radiance.

"And now, my friend, let us out into the street and forget our faces."

The man took up his candle to light us to the door.

"Perhaps it would not trouble monsieur to say a word for me over there?" he suggested, pointing in the direction of the tunnel. "M. le Duc has every confidence in me. Still, it would do no harm if monsieur should mention how quickly I let him out."

"When I see him, I will surely mention it," M. Étienne promised him. "Continue to be vigilant to-night, my friend. There is another man to come."

Followed by the little bourgeois's thanks and adieus, we walked out into the sweet open air. As soon as his door was shut again, we took to our heels, nor stopped running till we had put half a dozen streets between us and the mouth of the tunnel. Then we walked along in breathless silence.

Presently M. Étienne cried out:

"Death of my life! Had I fought there in the burrow, I should have changed the history of France!"

XXI

_A chance encounter._

The street before us was as orderly as the aisle of Notre Dame. Few way-farers passed us; those there were talked together as placidly as if love-trysts and mêlées existed not, and tunnels and countersigns were but the smoke of a dream. It was a street of shops, all shuttered, while, above, the burghers' families went respectably to bed.

"This is the Rue de la Ferronnerie," my master said, pausing a moment to take his bearings. "See, under the lantern, the sign of the Pierced Heart. The little shop is in the Rue de la Soierie. We are close by the Halles--we must have come half a mile underground. Well, we'll swing about in a circle to get home. For this night I've had enough of the Hôtel de Lorraine."

And I. But I held my tongue about it, as became me.

"They were wider awake than I thought--those Lorrainers. Pardieu! Féix, you and I came closer quarters with death than is entirely amusing."

"If that door had not opened-" I shuddered.

"A new saint in the calendar--la Sainte Ferou! But what a madcap of a saint, then! My faith, she must have led them a dance when Francis I was king!

"Natheless it galls me," he went on, half to himself, "to know that I was lost by my own folly, saved by pure chance. I underrated the enemy--worst mistake in the book of strategy. I came near flinging away two lives and making a most unsightly mess under a lady's window."

"Monsieur made somewhat of a mess as it was."

"Aye. I would I knew whether I killed Brie. We'll go round in the morning and find out."

"I am thankful that monsieur does not mean to go to-night."

"Not to-night, Félix; I've had enough. No; we'll get home without passing near the Hôtel de Lorraine, if we go outside the walls to do it. To-night I draw my sword no more."

To this day I have no quite clear idea of how we went. A strange city at night--Paris of all cities--is a labyrinth. I know that after a time we came out in some meadows along the river-bank, traversed them, and plunged once more into narrow, high-walled streets. It was very late, and lights were few. We had started in clear starlight, but now a rack of clouds hid even their pale shine.

"The snake-hole over again," said M. Étienne. "But we are almost at our own gates."

But, as in the snake-hole, came light. Turning a sharp corner, we ran straight into a gentleman and his porte-flambeau, swinging along at as smart a pace as we.

"A thousand pardons," M. Étienne cried to his encounterer, the possessor of years and gravity but of no great size, whom he had almost knocked down. "I heard you, but knew not you were so close. We were speeding to get home."

The personage was also of a portliness, and the collision had knocked the wind out of him. He leaned panting against the wall. As he scanned M. Étienne's open countenance and princely dress his alarm vanished.

"It is unseemly to go about on a night like this without a lantern," he said with asperity. "The municipality should forbid it. I shall certainly bring the matter up at the next sitting."

"Monsieur is a member of the Parliament?" M. Étienne asked with immense respect.

"I have that honour, monsieur," the little man replied, delighted to impress us, as he himself was impressed, by the sense of his importance.

"Oh," said M. Étienne, with increasing solemnity, "perhaps monsieur had a hand in a certain decree of the 28th June?"

The little man began to look uneasy.

"There was, as monsieur says, a measure passed that day," he stammered.

"A rebellious and contumacious decree," M. Étienne rejoined, "most offensive to the general-duke." Whereupon he fingered his sword.

"Monsieur," the little deputy cried, "we meant no offence to his Grace, or to any true Frenchman. We but desire peace after all these years of blood. We were informed that his Grace was angry; yet we believed that even he will come to see the matter in a different light--"

"You have acted in a manner insulting to his Grace of Mayenne," M. Étienne repeated inexorably, and he glanced up the street and down the street to make sure the coast was clear. The wretched little deputy's teeth chattered.

The linkman had retreated to the other side of the way, where he seemed on the point of fleeing, leaving his master to his fate. I thought it would be a shame if the badgered deputy had to stumble home in the dark, so I growled out to the fellow:

"Stir one step at your peril!"