Chapter 7

Le Rossignol passed hours of that day sitting on the broad door-sill of the tower. She loved to watch the fiery rain; but she was also waiting for a lull in the cannonading that she might release her swan. He was always forbidden the rooms in the tower by her lady; for he was a pugnacious creature, quick to strike with beak or wings any one who irritated him. Especially did he seem tutored in the dwarf's dislike of Lady Dorinda. In peaceful times when she descended to the ground and took a sylvan excursion outside the fort, he ruffled all his feathers and pursued her even from the river. Le Rossignol had a forked branch with which she yoked him as soon as D'Aulnay's vessels alarmed the fort. She also tied him by one leg under his usual shelter, the pent-house of the mill. He always sulked at restraint, but Le Rossignol maintained discipline. In the destruction of the oven and the reeling of the mill, Shubenacadie leaped upward and fell back flattened upon the ground. The fragments had scarcely settled before his mistress had him in her arms. At the risk of her life she dragged him across to the entrance, and sat desolately crumbling away between her fingers such feathers as were singed upon him, and sleeking his long gasping neck. She swallowed piteously with suspense, but could not bring herself to examine his body. He had his feet; he had his wings; and finally he sat up of his own accord, and quavered some slight remark about the explosion.

"What ails thee?" exclaimed the dwarf indignantly. "Thou great coward! To lie down and gasp and sicken my heart for the singeing of a few feathers!"

She boxed the place where a swan's ear should be, and Shubenacadie bit her. It was a serene and happy moment for both of them. Le Rossignol opened the door and pushed him in. Shubenacadie stood awkwardly with his feet sprawled on the hall pavement, and looked at the scenes to which his mistress introduced him. He noticed Marguerite, and hissed at her.

"Be still, madman," admonished the dwarf. "Thou art an intruder here. The peasants will drive thee up chimney. Low-born people, when they get into good quarters, always try to put their betters out."

Shubenacadie waddled on, scarcely recovered from the prostration of his fright, and inclined to hold the inmates of the tower accountable for it. Marie had just left Pierre Doucett, and his nurses were so busy with him that the swan was not detected until he scattered the children from the stairs.

"Now, Mademoiselle Nightingale," said Zélie, coming heavily across the flags, "have we not enough strange cattle in this tower, that you must bring that creature in against my lady's orders?"

"He shall not stand out there under D'Aulnay's guns. Besides, Madame Marie hath need of him," declared Le Rossignol impudently. "She would have me ride to D'Aulnay's camp and bring her word how many men have fallen there to-day."

Zélie shivered through her indignation.

"Do you tell me such a tale, when you were shut in the turret for that very sin?"

"Sin that is sin in peace is virtue in war," responded Le Rossignol. "Mount, Shubenacadie."

"My lady will have his neck, wrung," threatened Zélie.

"She dare not. The chimney will tumble in. The fort will be taken."

"Art thou working against us?" demanded the maid wrathfully.

"Why should I work for you? You should, indeed, work for me. Pick me up this swan and carry him to the top of the stairs."

"I will not do it!" cried Zélie, revolting through every atom of her ample bulk. "Do I want to be lifted over the turret like thistledown?"

The dwarf laughed, and caught her swan by the back of his neck. With webbed toes and beating wings he fought every step; but she pulled herself up by the balustrade and dragged him along. His bristling plumage scraped the upper floor until he and his wrath were shut within the dwarf's chamber.

"Naught but muscle and bone and fire and flax went to the making of that stunted wight," mused Zélie, setting her knuckles in her hips. "What a pity that she escapes powder and ball, when poor Pierre Doucett is shot down!--a man with wife and child, and useful to my lady besides."

It was easy for Claude La Tour's widow to fill her idleness with visions of political alliance, but when D'Aulnay de Charnisay began to batter the walls round her ears, her common sense resumed sway. She could be of no use outside her apartment, so she took her meals there, trembling, but in her fashion resolute and courageous. The crash of cannon-shot was forever associated with her first reception in Acadia. Therefore this siege was a torture to her memory as well as a peril to her body. The tower had no more sheltered place, however, than Lady Dorinda's room. Zélie had orders to wait upon her with strict attention. The cannonading dying away as darkness lifted its wall between the opposed forces, she hoped for such sleep as could be had in a besieged place, and waited Zélie's knock. War, like a deluge, may drive people who detest each other into endurable contact; and when, without even a warning stroke on the panel, Le Rossignol slipped in as nimbly as a spider, Lady Dorinda felt no such indignation as she would have felt in ordinary times.

"May I sit by your fire, your highness?" sweetly asked the dwarf. Lady Dorinda held out a finger to indicate the chimney-side and to stay further progress. The sallow and corpulent woman gazed at the beak-faced atom.

"It hath been repeated a thousand times, but I will say again I am no highness."

Le Rossignol took the rebuke as a bird might have taken it, her bright round eyes reflecting steadily the overblown mortal opposite. She had never called Lady Dorinda anything except "her highness." The dullest soldier grinned at the apt sarcastic title. When Marie brought her to account for this annoyance, she explained that she could not call Lady Dorinda anything else. Was a poor dwarf to be punished because people made light of every word she used? Yet this innocent creature took a pleasure of her own in laying the term like an occasional lash on the woman who so despised her. Le Rossignol sat with arms around her knees, on the hearth corner. Lady Dorinda in her cushioned chair chewed aromatic seeds.

The room, like a flower garden, exhaled all its perfumes at evening. Bottles of essences and pots of pomade and small bags of powders were set out, for the luxurious use of its inmate when Zélie prepared her for the night. Le Rossignol enjoyed these scents. The sweet-odored atmosphere which clung about Lady Dorinda was her one attribute approved by the dwarf. Madame Marie never in any way appealed to the nose. Madame Marie's garments were scentless as outdoor air, and the freshness of outdoor air seemed to belong to them. Le Rossignol liked to have her senses stimulated, and she counted it a lucky thing to sit by that deep fire and smell the heavy fragrance, of the room. A branched silver candlestick held two lighted tapers on the dressing-table. The bed curtains were parted, revealing a huge expanse of resting-place within; and heavy folds shut the starlit-world from the windows. One could here forget that the oven was blown up, and the ground of the fort plowed with shot and sown with mortar.

"Is there no fire in the hall?" inquired Lady Dorinda.

"It hath all the common herd from the barracks around it," explained Le Rossignol. "And Pierre Doucett is stretched there, groaning over the loss of half his face."

"Where is Madame La Tour?"

"She hath gone out on the walls since the firing stopped. Our gunner in the turret told me that two guns are to be moved back before moonrise into the bastions they were taken from. Madame Marie is afraid D'Aulnay will try to encompass the fort to-night."

"And what business took thee into the turret?"

"Your highness"--

"Ladyship," corrected Lady Dorinda.

--"I like to see D'Aulnay's torches," proceeded the dwarf, without accepting correction. "His soldiers are burying the dead over there. He needs a stone tower with walls seven feet thick like ours, does D'Aulnay."

Lady Dorinda put another seed in her mouth, and reflected that Zélie's attendance was tardier than usual. She inquired with shadings of disapproval,--

"Is Madame La Tour's woman also on the walls?"

"Not Zélie, your highness"--

"Ladyship," insisted Lady Dorinda.

"That heavy-foot Zélie," chuckled the dwarf, deaf to correction, "a fine bit of thistledown would she be to blow around the walls. Zélie is laying beds for the children, and she hath come to words with the cook through trying to steal eggs to roast for them. We have but few wild fowl eggs in store."

"Tell her that I require her," said Lady Dorinda, fretted by the irregularities of life in a siege. "Madame La Tour will account with her if she neglects her rightful duties."

Le Rossignol crawled reluctantly up to stand in her dots of moccasins.

"Yes, your highness"--

"Ladyship," repeated Claude La Tour's widow, to whom the sting was forever fresh, reminding her of a once possible regency.

"But have you heard about the woman that was brought into the fortress before Madame Bronck went away?"

"What of her?"

"The Swiss says she comes from D'Aulnay."

"It is Zélie that I require," said Lady Dorinda with discouraging brevity. Le Rossignol dropped her face, appearing to give round-eyed speculation to the fire.

"It is believed that D'Aulnay sent by that strange woman a box of poison into the fort to work secret mischief. But," added the dwarf, looking up in open perplexity, "that box cannot now be found."

"Perhaps you can tell what manner of box it was," said Lady Dorinda with irony, though a dull red was startled into her cheeks.

"Madame Marie says it was a tiny box of oak, thick set with nails. She would not alarm the fort, so she had search made for it in Madame Bronck's name."

Lady Dorinda, incredulous, but trembling, divined at once that the dwarf had hid that coffer in her chest. Perhaps the dwarf had procured the hand and replaced some valuable of Madame Bronck's with it. She longed to have the little beast shaken and made to confess. While she was considering what she could do with dignity, Zélie rapped and was admitted, and Le Rossignol escaped into outside darkness.

Hours passed, however, before Shubenacadie's mistress sought his society. She undressed in her black cell which had but one loophole looking toward the north, and taking the swan upon her bed tried to reconcile him to blankets. But Shubenacadie protested with both wings against a woolly covering which was not in his experience. The times were disjointed for him. He took no interest in Lady Dorinda and the box of Madame Bronck, and scratched the pallet with his toes and the nail at the end of his bill. But Le Rossignol pushed him down and pressed her confidences upon this familiar.

"So her highness threw that box out into the fort. I had to shiver and wait until Zélie left her, but I knew she would choose to rid herself of it through a window, for she would scarce burn it, she hath not adroitness to drop it in the hall, show it to Madame Marie she would not, and keep it longer to poison her court gowns she dare not. She hath found it before this. Her looking-glass was the only place apter than that chest. I would give much to know what her yellow highness thought of that hand. Here, mine own Shubenacadie, I have brought thee this sweet biscuit moistened with water. Eat, and scratch me not.

"And little did its studding of nails avail the box, for the fall split it in three pieces; and I hid them under rubbish, for mortar and stones are plentiful down there. You should have seen my shade stretch under the moon like a tall hobgoblin. The nearest sentinel on the wall challenges me. 'Who is there?' 'Le Rossignol.' 'What are you doing?' 'Looking: for my swan's yoke.' Then he laughs--little knowing how I meant to serve his officer. The Hollandais mummy hath been of more use to me than trinkets. I frightened her highness with it, and now it is set to torment the Swiss. Let me tell thee, Shubenacadie: punishment comes even on a swan who would stretch up his neck and stand taller than his mistress. Wert thou not blown up with the oven? Hide thy head and take warning."

XIV.

THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN POWERS.

The dwarf's report about Klussman forced Madame La Tour to watch the strange girl; but Marguerite seemed to take no notice of any soldier who came and went in the hall. As for the Swiss, he carried trouble on his self-revealing face, but not treachery. Klussman camped at night on the floor with other soldiers off guard; screens and the tall settles being placed in a row between this military bivouac and women and children of the household protected near the stairs. He awoke as often as the guard was changed, and when dawn-light instead of moonlight appeared with the last relief, he sprang up, and took the breastplate which had been laid aside for his better rest. Out of its hollow fell Jonas Bronck's hand, bare and crouching with stiff fingers on the pavement. The soldiers about to lie down laughed at themselves and Klussman for recoiling from it, and fury succeeded pallor in his blond face.

"Did you do that?" he demanded of the men, but before they could utter denials, his suspicion leaped the settles. Spurning Jonas Bronck's treasured fragment with his boot in a manner which Antonia could never have forgiven, Klussman sent it to the hearth and strode after it. He had not far to look for Marguerite. As his eye traveled recklessly into the women's camp, he encountered her beside him, sitting on the floor behind a settle and matching the red of a burning tree trunk with the red of her bruised eyelids.

"Did you put that in my breastplate?" said Klussman, pointing to the hand as it lay palm upwards. Marguerite shuddered and burst out crying. This had been her employment much of the night, but the nervous fit of childish weeping swept away all of Klussman's self-control.

"No; no;" she repeated. "You think I do everything that is horrible." And she sobbed upon her hands.

Klussman stooped down and tossed the hand like an escaped coal behind the log. As he stooped he said,--

"I don't think that. Don't cry. If you cry I will shoot myself."

Marguerite looked up and saw his helplessness in his face. He had sought her before, but only with reproaches. Now his resentment was broken. Twice had the dwarfs mischief thrown Marguerite on his compassion, and thereby diminished his resistance to her. Jonas Bronck's hand, in its red-hot seclusion behind the log, writhed and smoked, discharging its grosser parts up the chimney's shaft. Unseen, it lay a wire-like outline of bone; unseen, it became a hand of fairy ashes, trembling in every filmy atom; finally an ember fell upon it, and where a hand had been some bits of lime lay in a white glow.

Klussman went out and mounted one of the bastions, where the gunners were already preparing for work. The weather had changed in the night, and the sky seemed immeasurably lifted while yet filled with the uncertainties of dawn. Fundy Bay revealed more and more of its clean blue-emerald level, and far eastward the glassy water shaded up to a flushing of pink. Smoke rose from the mess fires in D'Aulnay's camp. The first light puff of burnt powder sprung from his batteries, and the artillery duel again began.

"If we had but enough soldiers to make a sally," said Madame La Tour to her officer, as she also came for an instant to the bastion, "we might take his batteries. Oh, for monsieur to appear on the bay with a stout shipload of men."

"It is time he came," said the Swiss.

"Yes, we shall see him or have news of him soon."

In the tumult of Klussman's mind Jonas Bronck's hand never again came uppermost. He cared nothing and thought nothing about that weird fragment, in the midst of living disaster. It had merely been the occasion of his surrendering to Marguerite. He determined that when La Tour returned and the siege was raised, if he survived he would take his wife and go to some new colony. Live without her he could not. Yet neither could he reëspouse her in Fort St. John, where he had himself openly denounced her.

Spring that day leaped forward to a semblance of June. The sun poured warmth; the very air renewed life. But to Klussman it was the brilliancy of passing delirium. He did not feel when gun-metal touched his hands. The sound of the incoming tide, which could be heard betwixt artillery boomings, and the hint of birds which that sky gave, were mute against his thoughts.

Though D'Aulnay's loss was visibly heavy, it proved also an ill day for the fort. The southeast bastion was raked by a fire which disabled the guns and killed three men. Five others were wounded at various posts. The long spring twilight sunk through an orange horizon rim and filled up the measure which makes night, before firing reluctantly stopped. Marie had ground opened near the powder magazine to make a temporary grave for her three dead. They had no families. She held a taper in her hand and read a service over them. One bastion and so many men being disabled, a sentinel was posted in the turret after the gunners descended. The Swiss took this duty on himself, and felt his way up the pitch-black stairs. He had not seen Marguerite in the hall when he hurriedly took food, but she was safe in the tower. No woman ventured out in the storm of shot. The barracks were charred and battered.

As Klussman reached the turret door he exclaimed against some human touch, but caught his breath and surrendered himself to Marguerite's arms, holding her soft body and smoothing her silk-stranded hair.

"I heard you say you would come up here," murmured Marguerite. "And the door was unlocked."

"Where have you been since morning?"

"Behind a screen in the great hall. The women are cruel."

Klussman hated the women. He kissed his wife with the first kiss since their separation, and all the toils of war failed to unman him like that kiss.

"But there was that child!" he groaned.

"That was not my child," said Marguerite.

"The baby brought here with you!"

"It was not mine."

"Whose was it?"

"It was a drunken soldier's. His wife died. They made me take care of it," said Marguerite resentfully.

"Why didn't you tell me that?" exclaimed Klussman. "You made me lie to my lady!"

Marguerite had no answer. He understood her reticence, and the degradation which could not be excused.

"Who made you take care of it?"

"He did."

"D'Aulnay?" Klussman uttered through his teeth.

"Yes; I don't like him."

"_I_ like him!" said the savage Swiss.

"He is cruel," complained Marguerite, "and selfish."

The Swiss pressed his cheek to her soft cheek.

"I never was selfish and cruel to thee," he said, weakly.

"No, you never were."

"Then why," burst out the husband afresh, "did you leave me to follow that beast of prey?"

Marguerite brought a sob from her breast which was like a sword through Klussman. He smoothed and smoothed her hair.

"But what did I ever do to thee, Marguerite?"

"I always liked you best," she said. "But he was a great lord. The women in barracks are so hateful, and a common soldier is naught."

"You would be the lady of a seignior," hissed Klussman.

"Thou knowest I was fit for that," retorted Marguerite with spirit.

"I know thou wert. It is marrying me that has been thy ruin." He groaned with his head hanging.

"We are not ruined yet," she said, "if you care for me."

"That was a stranger child?" he repeated.

"All the train knew it to be a motherless child. He had no right to thrust it on me."

"I demand no testimony of D'Aulnay's followers," said Klussman roughly.

He let her go from his arms, and stepped to the battlements. His gaze moved over the square of the fortress, and eastward to that blur of whiteness which hinted the enemy's tents, the hint being verified by a light or two.

"I have a word to tell you," said Marguerite, leaning beside her husband.

"I have this to tell thee," said the Swiss. "We must leave Acadia." His arm again fondled her, and he comforted his sore spirit with an instant's thought of home and peace somewhere.

"Yes. We can go to Penobscot," she said.

"Penobscot?" he repeated with suspicion.

"The king will give you a grant of Penobscot."

"The king will give it to--me?"

"Yes. And it is a great seigniory."

"How do you know the king will do that?"

"He told me to tell you; he promised it."

"The king? You never saw the king."

"No."

"D'Aulnay?"

"Yes."

"I would I had him by the throat!" burst out Klussman. Marguerite leaned her cheek on the stone and sighed. The bay seemed full of salty spice. It was a night in which the human soul must beat against casements to break free and roam the blessed dark. All of spring was in the air. Directly overhead stood the north star, with slow constellations wheeling in review before him.

"So D'Aulnay sent you to spy on my lord, as my lord believed?"

"You shall not call me a spy. I came to my husband. I hate him," she added in a resentful burst. "He made me walk the marshes, miles and miles alone, carrying that child."

"Why the child?"

"Because the people from St. John would be sure to pity it."

"And what word did he send you to tell me?" demanded Klussman. "Give me that word."

Marguerite waited with her face downcast.

"It was kind of him to think of me," said the Swiss; "and to send you with the message!"

She felt mocked, and drooped against the wall. And in the midst of his scorn he took her face in his hands with a softness he could not master.

"Give me the word," he repeated. Marguerite drew his neck down and whispered, but before she finished whispering Klussman flung her against the cannon with an oath.

"I thought it would be, betray my lord's fortress to D'Aulnay de Charnisay! Go down stairs, Marguerite Klussman. When I have less matter in hand, I will flog thee! Hast thou no wit at all? To come from a man who broke faith with thee, and offer his faith to me! Bribe me with Penobscot to betray St. John to him!"

Marguerite sat on the floor. She whispered, gasping,--

"Tell not the whole fortress."

Klussman ceased to talk, but his heels rung on the stone as he paced the turret. He felt himself grow old as silence became massive betwixt his wife and him. The moon rose, piercing the cannon embrasure, and showed Marguerite weeping against the wall. The mass of silence drove him resistless before her will. That soft and childlike shape did not propose treason to him. He understood that she thought only of herself and him. It was her method of bringing profit out of the times. He heard his relief stumble at the foot of the turret stairs, and went down the winding darkness to stop and send the soldier back to bed.

"I am not sleepy," said Klussman. "I slept last night. Go and rest till daybreak." And the man willingly went. Marguerite had not moved a fold of her gown when her husband again came into the lighted tower. The Swiss lifted her up and made her stand beside him while he stanched her tears.

"You hurt me when you threw me against the cannon," she said.

"I was rough. But I am too foolish fond to hold anger. It has worn me out to be hard on thee. I am not the man I was."

Marguerite clung around him. He dumbly felt his misfortune in being thralled by a nature of greater moral crudity than his own. But she was his portion in the world.

"You flung me against the cannon because I wanted you made a seignior."

"It was because D'Aulnay wanted me made a traitor."

"What is there to do, indeed?" murmured Marguerite. "He said if you would take the sentinels off the wall on the entrance side of the fort, at daybreak any morning, he will be ready to scale that wall."

"But how will he know I have taken the sentinels off?"

"You must hold up a ladder in your hands."

"The tower is between that side of the fort and D'Aulnay's camp. No one would see me standing with a ladder in my hands."