CHAPTER XV

A Night Alarm

“Well, friend Gaspard, if these English wolves have the better of us in the open field, we are as good as they when it comes to defending towns. Six months, and better, have the rogues lain before our town, and not got it yet.”

So spoke a Breton soldier to his comrade, as they stood on the walls of Rennes on a gloomy November evening in 1353, looking down on the countless white tents that shimmered ghost-like through the deepening gloom, and the lights that spangled the blackness like huge glow-worms.

Amid the great struggle between France and England, the rival claimants of the Duchy of Brittany, Charles of Blois and Earl de Montfort, had got up a little private war of their own. Most of the leading Breton knights (including Bertrand du Guesclin) supported Charles’s cause, while England sided with the Earl; and Rennes being the most important town that held out for Charles, the English were doing their best to take it, though as yet in vain.

“They will have the town sooner or later, though, Pierre,” said the elder soldier, despondingly; “for ere long we shall have nought to eat, unless we can chew pike-staves like mutton-bones, and swallow arrow-heads for New Year cakes!”

“Well, these English have no cause to crow over us on that score,” cried his more hopeful comrade; “for, thou know’st, yon Picard who escaped from them to us yester-eve, brought word that the thieves had well-nigh spent their stores, and were at their wits’ end to replenish them.”

“It will end, then, in a match of who can starve the longest,” said Gaspard, with a grim smile; “and at that game I fear them nought, for methinks we Bretons can hold out without food as long as any man alive.”

“Ay, truly; and these cold nights that are coming will try the English rogues hard, encamped as they be in the open field.”

“I fear it will ne’er come as far as that,” put in a third man, who had just come up. “Heard ye not, lads, yon great shouting in the English camp but now? and know ye what it meant?”

“What meant it?” asked both at once.

“Marry, it meant that yon movable tower of theirs is at last ready to attack our walls, and by to-morrow’s sunrise it will be upon us. Even so said a dog of an English archer who stood nigh the wall, and called to me but now in scorn, ‘Make room in your sty, ye Breton piglings; the great sow is coming.’”

His hearers eyed each other in blank dismay, for in that age these formidable engines were the terror of every besieged garrison. The invention of gunpowder, though more than half a century old, had as yet made little difference in war; and not till a century later did the fall of Constantinople before the Turk’s breaching-cannon show the full power of the new artillery. The chief mode of attack was still with high wooden towers, which (protected from fire by a cover of raw hides, and from stones by their sloping roofs and solid build) were pushed close up to the city walls; and while the men who filled the upper story sprang on the ramparts sword in hand, the sappers in the lower one made a breach or beat in a gate, thus combining both modes of assault, mine and escalade.

“If this be so,” said Gaspard, “may God have mercy on us, for we shall find none from man.”

He spoke too truly. In that iron age, though the lives of knights and nobles might be spared for ransom, those of common soldiers were held cheap as flies; and the slaughter of the whole garrison was in such cases so completely a matter of course, that the defenders of the doomed city already counted themselves dead men.

“There is no hope for us, in truth,” growled the third man, “for five hundred men (and we number but that) cannot make good such a circuit of wall against five thousand. We are lost, unless aid come from without, and I see not how that can be.”

“It cannot,” said Pierre, whose set, grim face, lit for a moment by the glare of the watch-fires below, showed how utterly he had given himself up for lost. “There is no army of friends at hand, and, without an army to back him, there lives but one man in Brittany this day who could break through yon English host, and he is far away.”

“Thou mean’st our Bertrand du Guesclin. Would to Heaven he were here, for he alone would be worth an army.”

“Ay, that would he!” cried the third Breton, forgetting his own peril in his simple, honest exultation at his countryman’s prowess. “Well may they call him ‘The Grim Knight,’ for grim hath he truly been to his country’s foes. Heard ye what he did at the siege of Dinan, a year agone? He was returning with his men from a sally against the English camp, and was already nigh to the town gate, having broken his way through their host, and all seemed safe for him, when suddenly he missed from his neck a rosary that he ever bare, the gift, men say, of the fair lady to whom he is betrothed, Tiphaine de Raguenel, whom they call ‘the Fairy.’”

“And what did he?” asked both listeners at once.

“What did he? Why, he turned his horse, and back he dashed into the midst of the pursuing English. One of their archer-knaves had already found the chain, and snatched it up; but scarce had he touched it, when his head was swept from his shoulders, and Messire Bertrand, turning on the others, smote them down with his axe as the hail beats down the corn. But the knaves laid on load stoutly, and sore was the fray, when up came one who seemed a captain among them, and cried, ‘Shame on ye, lads! let the gallant gentleman pass free! for so good a knight deserveth all the honour we can pay him.’ So the fray was stayed, and our Bertrand came safe to the town.”

“Why, then,” cried Pierre, in surprise, “there is some courtesy even among these English! But, having warred so long in France, belike they have learned good manners here.”

“Doubtless,” said Gaspard; “but we, at least, have no mercy to hope from them. Commend your souls to God, comrades, for we shall never, I trow, see another sun go down.”

The same gloomy conviction was in the mind of every man in that doomed fortress; and, even in an age when men cast away their own lives or those of others as lightly as children their broken toys, the most reckless of these rough soldiers could not be wholly unmoved by the thought that, strong and bold as they stood there, full of life and health and daring, they would all, ere another sun went down, be lying cold and dead. Many a hard hand, still red with recent slaughter, was uplifted to heaven that night in heart-felt supplication; and many a rude man-at-arms strove to call to mind some long-forgotten prayer.

Slowly and wearily the dismal night wore on, and as dawn drew nigh, the sentinels on the walls, looking toward the English camp, strained their eyes and ears for any sign of the fatal assault that was to end all. The moon had set, and the only light was from the dying watch-fires; but their faint glow sufficed to show to a keen-eyed young soldier on the tower above the Dinan Gate a strange and ghostly sight.

At the eastern angle of the enemy’s camp burned a fire larger and brighter than the rest, and as he gazed, its blaze was suddenly obscured—then left clear again—then obscured once more; and thus it kept vanishing and reappearing by turns for several minutes together, as if a long train of shadows were passing between it and himself.

At that unearthly hour, and in that superstitious age, such an apparition would have unnerved the boldest man; but even this was not all. Though these ghostly riders were numerous enough to have made their hoof-tramp on this rough and rocky ground plainly heard, even at that distance, amid the tomb-like silence of night, not a sound reached the strained ear of the sentry, who crossed himself tremulously, convinced that what he saw was not of this world.

But the next moment brought him some encouragement; for, as the shadowy train drew nearer, an English sentinel’s hoarse voice was heard challenging it, and another voice replying with the counter-sign.

This did not sound very ghostly, and the bold Breton, reflecting that a spirit would have no need of pass-words, was beginning to feel more composed, when a new and disturbing idea came to trouble him. As these strange riders were not ghosts, they must be English reinforcements coming up for the final assault; and this would make the case of the defenders more hopeless than ever.

Hardly had the thought struck him, when it was put to flight, and his superstitious terrors revived in full force, by a new and startling turn of this strange adventure.

The shadowy horsemen, dimly seen by the faint light of the dying fires, had all this while been gliding nearer and nearer to the town, noiselessly as ever. The sentry, watching them keenly, was just beginning to wonder if there could be a traitor within the fortress, and if these night-prowlers were advancing on it in the hope of having its gate opened to them, when, all at once, the foremost rider sank into the earth before the very eyes of the astounded watcher; and all the rest vanished in the same way, man by man, till not one was left—and all this without the slightest sound.

The sturdy Breton trembled like a leaf; but the man who just then came up to take his place hardly noticed how silently he slunk away, supposing him merely tired and sleepy, as was quite natural.

The new-comer, however, was fated to be as much startled in his turn.

Hardly had he begun to pace up and down, when a shadowy rider seemed to issue from the ground, silently as a dream, a little to his left; and then, one by one, the ghostly horsemen rose through the earth again as noiselessly as they had vanished into it!

For a moment, the new sentry was as much scared as his comrade; but he was a more experienced soldier, and the true explanation of this prodigy soon suggested itself to him. He called to mind that this part of the English camp was traversed by a deep and narrow ravine, through which the seeming phantoms must have made their way; and as for their silent movements, the veteran knew that horse-hoofs may sometimes be muffled!

Then came a cheering thought. Had these men belonged to the besieging host, they would have had no need for such caution; they must be friends, trying to reach the town without being detected!

Filled with joy at such unhoped-for help in their sorest need, he lost no time in announcing his discovery; and several officers hastened to the spot, just as a single form detached itself from the shadowy train, and rode close up to the gate.

“Open, I pray,” he whispered; “we bring you aid and food.”

“And perchance death too,” said a veteran officer, warily. “How know we that ye are not betraying us? The English knaves have disguised them thus ere now. Till we know more of you, ye enter not here.”

“Dally not, in Heaven’s name! life and death are on every moment!” said the other vehemently, though still in a subdued tone. “I speak truth, I vow it by St. Anne of Auray! Call quickly your commandant, Sir Godefroi de Kerimel, if ye will not believe me.”

But there was no need, for the commandant was already on the spot.

“Who art thou who wouldst speak with me?” he cried, looking keenly over the ramparts at the dim form below.

“Yvon de Laconnet,” said the stranger; “thou hast heard of me, belike. Our captain bade me tell thee, as a token that we be true men, that we have with us ‘Ar fol goët.’”

Most men would have seen no meaning in these Breton words, which imply merely “The fool of the forest;” but to De Kerimel and his men the strange phrase was like an electric shock.

“Open the gate!” he cried, “and praised be God, who hath sent such aid in our need!”

The gate was opened, and in filed a hundred and fifty stout men-at-arms, each with a bag of meal at his saddle-bow, a welcome sight to the famished garrison.

De Laconnet told in few words how he and his men, on their way to the town, had met an English raiding party a hundred strong, and, falling on them by surprise, had cut them off to a man. Assuming as a disguise the red crosses of their slain foes, and getting the pass-word from one of their number, who had stolen in among the English after dark to learn it, they had come safe through the besieging army with their precious burden.

“But where is _he_, then?” asked Sir Godefroi, keenly scanning the long file of riders as they passed.

De Laconnet replied in a whisper so low as to be barely audible; but it seemed to startle the other like a thunder-clap.

“Now, may God guard him!” cried De Kerimel, crossing himself, “for never was such peril dared by mortal man!”

In truth, great as were the dangers that this chosen band had braved, they were nothing to the terrific peril which their leader was then facing. For that leader was one who thought nothing done while anything remained to do; and, where others would have been content to bring food and help to the hard-pressed fortress, he aimed at nothing less than the destruction of the formidable engine before which it was about to fall.

Tall, gaunt, black, loomed against the star-lit sky (the golden spangles of which were just paling at the approach of dawn), the huge movable tower, so much dreaded by the defenders. At each corner of the platform on which it stood, the wary English leader had planted a sentinel; for he knew to his cost the daring of the besieged, and fully expected a desperate sally that night to attack the fatal engine.

But no sally came; and the four guards, drowsy with cold and watching, were yawning and rubbing their numbed hands, and doing their best to keep awake, when a hoof-tramp was heard, and up rode a single horseman, wearing the red cross of England.

“Hold, and give the word!” cried the foremost sentry, on the alert in a moment, while his comrade drew up to him, all ready for action.

“St. George for Guienne!” replied the new-comer at once. “Ye keep good watch, lads; but methinks there is little need of it now.”

“Why so?” asked both at once, while the other two guards came round from the farther side of the tower to listen.

“Marry, the only foe within reach is already overthrown. Ye know we went forth on a foray yester-morn; and our hap was to light on a whole troop of these dainty Frenchmen, riding in hot haste toward the town, and every man with a bag of meal slung to his saddle, thinking belike to catch us napping, and get through to the hungry town with their baker’s ware!”

The listening Englishmen gave an angry growl.

“But they reckoned without their host, for we fell upon them in right English fashion, and when we got among these meal-carriers, St. George! but we baked them a cake that they little relished! None escaped save the few we spared for ransom; and I have here two good war-steeds sent by our captain as a gift to stout Sir Nicholas, whom Heaven long preserve to command us!”

The narrator spoke loudly and rapidly, almost as if trying to drown some tell-tale sound; and so he was, though it would have needed a very quick ear to catch, amid the timbers that supported the formidable tower, a faint scraping, like the working of a well-oiled saw!

But even had they heard it, the English would hardly have heeded it, so taken up were they with the news of the supposed victory, and the noble horses that were its trophies, around which they pressed with a true English interest in a horse.

“They be goodly beasts, in truth,” said one; “but I trow we have many a better nag in merry Yorkshire.”

“Nay, there thou speak’st without warrant, Hal,” cried a second. “See this black, what bone and sinew he hath! and what breadth too! Marry, he might bear Guy of Warwick, or Bevis of Hampton, armed at all points!”

Just then a faint clink, as of metal, was heard from the engine; and the strange horseman started slightly, and shot a nervous glance at it, unseen by the rest.

“Hark! what sound was that?” cried an archer.

“A screw started in the framework, belike,” said another. “It will make more noise ere long, when set against yon walls.”

All laughed hoarsely at the grim jest; but the laughers little dreamed what was going on within a few feet of where they stood!