The Sword of Gideon
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Now, however, he had no further time for reflection. Sylvia, hearing of their nearness to the one man who, in their minds, could by any possibility save her lover, was imploring both captain and lieutenant to either conduct them to where the great English commander was, or at least to direct them on the way to him.
"We can escort you," Captain Barringer now said, forcing himself to drive the above thoughts away and answer her, "since we are even now on our way to Asch. There is little more to be learnt here; for the moment the ground is clear of Frenchmen and Spaniards. Though, doubtless, ladies, you will scarcely believe," he went on in a purposely assumed lighter vein, hoping thereby to banish the agony of mind in which both the Comtesse and Sylvia were, "what excellent neighbours, warm and close, we have been sometimes with those Frenchmen and Spaniards. A hedge, a little copse, has sometimes only divided our pickets and outposts from theirs; the very tables on which we have broken our fast at some tavern have been used by them for the same purpose but an hour before; and sometimes, too, we have courteously exchanged a few volleys of musket balls with each other, but that is all! The great battle that must come soon is not yet; not yet. Still, it will come," he added more gravely.
And now they set forth for Asch, though but slowly and with difficulty, since the wheels of the carriage (which was only a coarse country thing, large and cumbersome and roughly made) had by now sunk deep into the oozy morass, and required not only the efforts of the driver, but also those of the troopers, to force it on its way. Nevertheless, Sylvia and her companion were soon on their road towards the goal of their hopes, but, although such was the case, Captain Barringer deemed it necessary to say that it was by no means certain that, even when they had reached the end of their journey, they would be able to see and speak with Marlborough.
"For his secretary, Mr. Cardonnel, guards him like a fiery dragon," the captain said; "and he is surrounded by his staff, who are also veritable watch-dogs; notwithstanding which we will hope for the best. While, since my Lord Marlborough is a very gallant gentleman, he will surely turn no deaf ear to ladies who desire to ask his services?"
With which, and many other courteous as well as hope-inspiring phrases, not only Captain Barringer but also Sir George Saxby endeavoured to cheer the way for these who were now under their protection.
It was as the sun set that, from the windows of the rough carriage, Sylvia and the Comtesse gazed out upon the lines of the English army upon which were fixed the hopes of all who still trembled in fear of the powerful and arrogant monarch who from Versailles sent out his orders for wholesale spoliation and aggrandisement. He was the hope of Protestants in the sunny south of France, as well as of those in the more temperate land of Prussia and of those who dwelt all along the fair banks of the Rhine; the hope of all those who inhabited that vast district which stretched from the German ocean to the north of France on one side, and to Hanover another. While-bitter mockery when it is remembered what the origin of the present war was! – the same hopes for the downfall of this Grand Monarque-this prince termed the "God-sent" – were felt in far-off Spain by Roman Catholic hidalgos who loathed the thought that a French king should sit upon the throne once owned by those in whose veins ran the blood of Castile, of Aragon, the Asturias, and Trastamara. Hopes shared, too, though silently, by the rude fishermen of Biscay and Galicia as well as by the outlaws and brigands of Traz os Montes and Cantabria, who, while they bowed the knee to Romish emblems and statues, cursed in their lawless hearts the monarch who would endeavour to obtain for himself the throne that they and their forerunners of centuries had fought for, while putting aside temporarily their existence of plunder and brigandage.
Beneath a blood-red sun setting behind purple clouds that told of further storms and downpours still to come, the Comtesse de Valorme and Sylvia saw the long English line stretching from village to village; from the hamlet of Asch on the right to that of Ghenck on the left, and with Recken and Grimi on either flank. Also, they saw that with which both were well acquainted-the banner of England flying from a large tent in the middle of the camp, as well as the colours of regiments which, in that day, young in service, have since transmitted and gloriously maintained the reputation then acquired.
"Here, if nowhere else," the Comtesse said, "one should feel safe; yet, oh!" she whispered half to herself, "that I, a Frenchwoman, should have to seek double succour from my country's enemies! Simply because the ambition, the fanaticism of one man bears heavily on thousands of lives. Double succour! On one side for my own people; on the other for one, also my country's foeman, whom I have learned-to pity."
But Sylvia heard her words, low as the murmur was in which they were spoken, and answered gently:
"You are but one of all those thousands whose hearts he-this splendid bigot-is turning from him; but one alone of those who, throwing off their allegiance to him for ever, are peopling lands strange to them. Regret it not, reproach not yourself for that. Better die an outcast, yet free; a voluntary exile than an ill-treated subject, a slave. While as for Bevill-but ah! I dare not speak, not think of him. Beyond Heaven, in whose hands we all are, his-our-hopes are in him whom now we go to seek."
The carriage, escorted by the two dragoon officers who rode ahead of it, and by their handful of troopers behind, was now nearing that great tent over which streamed in the light of the setting sun the flag of England, and also passing through lines of English soldiers. Past the Cuirassiers, or Fourth Horse, it went-Sylvia's hand to her heart as she recognised that this was the regiment to which he had once belonged, from which he, wickedly, unjustly, had been cast out. Past, too, the gallant Scots Regiment of White Horses, as well as "Coy's Horse," or 2nd Irish Horse, the King's Carabineers, and many others of the cavalry, as well as several infantry regiments, including fourteen companies of the Grenadiers. And, at last, they were outside Marlborough's tent: the moment to which both had looked forward, from which they hoped so much, was at hand.
"I will enter to my lord's staff," Captain Barringer said, "and state your desires. Meanwhile, something of your names and condition I must know. What shall I tell him, whom announce?" and his eyes fell on the Comtesse, perhaps because she was the elder. Upon which she answered:
"Tell him," she said, "that a Protestant Frenchwoman from Languedoc seeks assistance from him on two matters-both grave, and one vital. A Frenchwoman whose name is Radegonde, Comtesse de Valorme."
The captain bowed, while repeating the words to himself as though to impress them thoroughly in his mind; then he looked at Sylvia.
"Tell him," she said in turn, "that an Englishwoman, one Sylvia Thorne, is here to seek succour from him for the man she loves-the man who, if God so wills it, is to be her husband. And that man is a countryman to both my lord and her. Also he has been an English soldier. But this you know."
It was half an hour later that the captain came back, and, speaking in a low voice, said that the Earl of Marlborough would receive the ladies who desired to speak with him. After which he handed them out of the carriage, and, taking them to the opening of the tent, passed them through the sentries on either side. From there he confided them to a man who had the appearance of being a body-servant, one who bade them respectfully follow him.
But as they left the captain he whispered in their ears:
"Have no fear, no trepidation; and tell him all-all! You are about to see the most brilliant soldier, the most courtly gentleman, in Europe."
A moment later the man had held a curtain aside and had retired after letting it drop behind them again, and they were face to face with the greatest captain of the age.
He was standing in front of a brazier in which burned some logs, for the evenings were growing colder now and the damp was over all, and as the women's eyes fell on that handsome presence and noted the wonderful serenity of the features, any trepidation they might have felt vanished.
Clad in his dark blue coat-he was Colonel of the Blues-with, beneath it, the ribbon of the Garter across his breast, he stood facing the curtain until they appeared, and then, advancing towards them, lifted the hand of each to his lips, while murmuring some courteous phrase, immediately after which he placed two rough chairs before them and begged them to be seated.
"Madame la Comtesse," he said now, and they noticed the refined, courtly tones of a voice that, though soft and even, was a little shrill. "I have heard your tale briefly from Captain Barringer. If help can come from me it shall. Yet am I vastly concerned to know how I can offer aid."
"My lord," said Sylvia, lifting her eyes to his, while little knowing how he had noticed her beauty in one swift glance, "it is said in Liége that you will be soon there; and then-then-then the French will be no longer in possession of that city."
His lordship smiled slightly as she said this and seemed to muse an instant, after which he said:
"It may be so; but ere that can be, I must clear my way to Liége. There are towns and fortresses upon the road. Venloo is one, and time is necessary."
"Time! Oh!" the girl almost gasped. "Time! And in that time they may have tried Mr. Bracton and-ah! I cannot utter it!"
"It may indeed be so," he murmured, seeing the look on Sylvia's face. "I would not say a word to alarm you; but courts-martial, trials in war time, are apt to be swift. And the condition of Mr. Bracton is perilous; he has placed himself in a dangerous position."
"My lord," the Comtesse said, "we have heard but lately that in your hands is one, the Marquis de Cabrieres, who lies under sentence of death for a similar offence against you and a town in your possession. Yet he still lives. May it not be the same, may we not hope the same respite, for Mr. Bracton?"
As she spoke, not only she, but Sylvia too, saw that her words had had some strange effect on the Earl. They observed a light come in his eyes, a little more colour mount to his cheeks-evidences that those words had produced in his mind some striking effect. That effect they were soon to learn.
He went to a coarse, wooden table, covered with papers-a table that had, doubtless, been purchased with many others for a few gulden at some town through which the army passed, and, taking from off it two of those papers, said, as he held them in his hand:
"Here is a letter to M. de Boufflers which I have caused to be written-such things are usual enough between the conflicting armies-suggesting an exchange of prisoners-"
"Ah!" exclaimed Sylvia. "I understand."
"Yet, see," Marlborough went on imperturbably, "I destroy it," and he suited the action to the word. Then observing, as he observed everything, the look of horror, of broken-hearted grief, on the faces of the others at his action, he added, "Because Mr. Bracton's name is not in it; because I was ignorant of him, though now I remember his name and the circumstances of his removal from the Cuirassiers. Yet, I beseech you, be easy in your minds. Another letter shall be written; it shall contain his name."
"God in heaven bless you!" Sylvia murmured.
"This," his lordship went on, touching with his finger the second paper, "is my warrant for the execution of the Marquis de Cabrieres-as a spy; but that too shall be destroyed," and again he suited the action to the word. "Each of those men has committed the same offence-for an offence it is against the opposing forces. Only, it is war time, and, as the offence is equal, so may the pardon be. If it can be done, if Mr. Bracton has not yet paid the penalty, it may be that the Maréchal de Boufflers and I can adjust matters."
With a sob wrung from her heart by those last words as to Bevill having possibly paid the penalty, Sylvia flung herself at Marlborough's feet while uttering all that she felt at his graciousness and mercy. But, as she did so, as still she held his hand and called on heaven again and again to bless and prosper him, and while he, gallant, chivalrous as ever and always, endeavoured to raise her to her feet, he said:
"Only, above all, hope not too much. Do not allow your hopes too full a sway. England and France, Anne and Louis, De Boufflers and I are at war to the death, and war is merciless. Further defeat may drive the Marshal to desperation. Also, we know not what may be transpiring at Liége. I would not rouse more fears in your heart than it already holds. Heaven knows, I would not do so. Yet still I say again, 'Hope not, expect not, too much.'"
"I must hope," Sylvia moaned. "I must, I must. I have nought but hope left. I must hope in God's mercy first, and-under Him-in you."
It was well indeed that she should have hope to comfort her at this time-well, too, that she did not know what was doing in Liége even as she knelt at Marlborough's feet.
For had she done so she must have deemed there was no longer any hope to be expected on earth either for her lover or herself.
CHAPTER XXX
Some of the French troops had returned to Liége. For almost every day now there came to the ears of the different commanders in the vicinity the news that the Allies were sweeping south; that town after town and fortress after fortress was falling, and that gradually, before the serried ranks of steel and the discharge of the heavy guns that the huge Flanders horses dragged over muddy roads and boggy swamps, the "Barrier" army was being driven back. To which was added now the news that Venloo was invested by Lord Cutts-he who had gained the sobriquet of the "Salamander" from friends and foes alike, owing to his contempt for the enemy's fire-and the Prince of Hanover, and like enough to fall at once.
Therefore many of the French forces were now back in the citadel and Chartreuse at Liége, or lying out on the heights of St. Walburg; while Tallard, who was afterwards to command the French and be defeated at Blenheim, was now second in command in the vicinity under De Boufflers. For the Duke of Burgundy had some time since returned to Paris, where he received but a freezing welcome from his august grandsire, and the Maréchal de Boufflers became first in command and Tallard second.
These changes in both the command of the French army and in the redistribution of the French forces, provided a sufficient number of officers to form a Court of Inquiry on the prisoners in the citadel-a court which, as Tallard had left orders before marching towards the Rhine, was to be commenced at once.
Of these prisoners there were now three, since another had been added to Bevill and Francbois, all of whom were charged with separate offences. The charge against those two has already been told; that against the third had still to be promulgated, though it came under the general one of treason, and was described in the quaint wording of the time as "Lèse majesté against the King, his State, and friends."
Of Francbois short work had been made by those assembled in the old salle d'armes in the citadel. The letters he had overlooked, and which had been found by the Comtesse de Valorme and handed to De Violaine, were sufficient to condemn any man in a time of peace, let alone one of war; but further inquiries, subtly made in the city by other such spies as Sparmann had been, showed that the traitor had made considerable sums of money by obtaining early knowledge of the French plans and future movements, and by selling them to the Dutch agents who were instructed by the States General to obtain all information of a similar nature. Francbois had consequently been condemned to death by hanging, and that death only awaited the signature of Tallard to be immediately effected. Meanwhile, he, proved spy and traitor as he was, was not regarded as too base and ignoble to be allowed to testify against one of the other prisoners-namely, the Englishman, Bracton.
Against the third prisoner, a Hollander named Hans Stuven, the charge was that he had attempted to slay two of his own countrymen in Liége, who were now in the service of the French King as couriers and frequent bearers of despatches from Louis to his marshals in the Netherlands; and that, when in drink at a tavern, he had been heard to announce that when he came into contact with the newly-created marshal, Montrével, he would slay him as an apostate from the reformed faith and a persecutor of the Protestants. For this man there could be but one hope-that he should be found to be insane.
To try these two the Court sat in the salle d'armes, lit now by the morning sun, De Violaine, in his capacity of Governor, being President. As representative of the King of France, he wore his hat and also the just-au-corps au brevet, or undercoat of the noblesse and those holding high office; a garment of white satin on which was stamped in gold the fleur-de-lys. Among the other officers who formed the members of that court one, a mousquetaire, alone wore his hat also, the plumed and laced hat of that aristocratic body. This was the young Duc de Guise, who sat thus covered because there ran in his veins the royal blood of an almost older race than the Bourbons, and because, as he and his called the King-and all Kings of France-cousin, it was his privilege to do so.
In face of these officers Bevill Bracton stood in the midst of a file of soldiers, outwardly calm and imperturbable, but inwardly wondering what Sylvia was doing and where she was, while knowing that, no matter where she might be, her thoughts were with him alone. But, although he was well resigned to whatever fate might befall him-a resignation that many nights of solemn meditation had alone been able to bring him to-there was in his heart a sadness, a regret, that could not be stifled.
"We met but to love each other," he had whispered to himself a thousand times during his incarceration in this fortress; "to love but to be parted. And though the words could never be spoken, since I scarce knew the treasure I had won ere we were torn asunder, in her heart there must have sprung to life the same hopes, the same desires that had dawned in mine. The hopes of happy years to come, to be passed always side by side; together! The dreams of a calm and peaceful end, also together. And now! Now, the thought of her sweet face, her graciousness, her love, the only flower remaining in my soon to be ended life; my memory all that can be left to brighten or to darken her existence."
For never since the night he was arrested had he dared to dream that he would leave Liége alive. His attempted escape from the city with Sylvia, his passing under the false guise of two different Frenchmen-the necessity for which he had always loathed, while understanding that in this way alone could he reach her-the testimony that Francbois would surely give against him, and the imputed murder of a man in the pay and service of France, must overwhelm and confound him.
Thinking still of the woman he had learnt to love so dearly, he let his eyes roam over that gloomy, solemn hall and observe all that it contained while heeding little. He saw the officers of his country's immemorial foe conversing together ere they should begin to question him. He saw, too, the ancient arms that hung all round the walls-pikes, swords, maces, and halbards, musketoons and muskets; also, he saw far down at the other end another man who was, undoubtedly, like himself, a prisoner. A man guarded by more soldiers and with his hands chained together; one whose face was bruised and raw, as though, in his capture, he had been badly wounded; one who, leaning forward with that face resting on his hands, and his eyes upon the ground, presented an appearance of brutish indifference to his surroundings as well as to his almost certain fate.
"The witness who will be produced before you, and the prisoner's own actions, will give you the matter," De Violaine said now, addressing the other members of the court, "upon which you have to form a conclusion. The witness is the traitor, Francbois, whom you condemned yesterday. What he knows he must tell in spite of his condemnation, or means will be used to make him do so," and he glanced towards a man leaning behind one of the great stone columns that, at regular distances, supported the heavily-traced and groined roof. For there was still another man within that hall, one on whom Bevill's eyes had not yet lighted-a man, old and grizzled, yet strong and burly and roughly clad-a man who stood by a strange-looking instrument that lay along the floor and was a complicated mass of rollers and cords and pulleys-a thing that was, in truth, the rack. Near this there stood, also, four or five great copper pots, each holding several gallons of water, and having great ladles of the same metal in each. These things stood here close to the rack and that dark, forbidding man because, as all of that Court knew well, when the rack failed to elicit the truth from prisoner or suspected witness, the question à l'eau-namely, the pouring of quart after quart of water down the throats of the wretched victims, never failed in its effect.
"Let us hear the man," an officer who was in command of the Regiment de Montemar said. "If he endeavours to lie or to deceive us the-" and he glanced towards the executioner as he leant against the column.
"Bring in the man, Francbois," De Violaine said now, addressing some of the soldiers who were near Bevill, and a few moments later the already condemned traitor stood before those who had judged him yesterday.
Whether it was the horror of that condemnation which now sat heavily on his soul, or whether it was the fear of what might be the outcome of any evidence he should soon give-he had glanced affrightedly at the rack and the great water-pots and the grim attendant of both as he was brought in-he presented now a pitiable aspect. His face was colourless, or almost ashy grey, and resembled more the appearance of a terrified Asiatic, or an Asiatic whose blood was mixed with that of some white race, than the appearance of a European. His eyes had in them the terrified look of the hare as it glances back, only to see the hound that courses it upon its flank; his whole frame, in its tremblings and flaccidity, bespoke the awful terror that possessed him.
"Pasquedieu!" the young Duc de Guise muttered, as his eyes glanced from the shivering object to the tall, sturdy form and calm, unruffled, though solemn, countenance of the man against whom the other was to testify. "Pasquedieu! that this one should have his life in the hand of such as that." And, though those by his side did not hear the words muttered beneath the Duke's slight moustache, it may well be that their thoughts kept company with his.
"Tell your tale again as you told it to me when you came here to inform against this Englishman," De Violaine said now in an icy tone; "and tell it truthfully, remembering that-" but he, too, paused in his words, the sentence being finished by the one glance he cast towards the column down the hall.
Then, in a voice that trembled in unison with the tremors of his frame, though it gained strength-or was it audacity? – as he proceeded without interruption from any of those listeners seated before him, Francbois told the same story he had told at first to the Governor, Only, if he were to die, as die he now knew he must, he was resolved that he would leave no loophole through which this other-this accursed, contemptuous Englishman who stood by his side so calmly, as though he, too, were a judge and not a prisoner-should escape and live.
He pictured him as a browbeating, turbulent Briton even in those far-off days in Paris when both he and Bracton were schoolmates; he told how he was ever filled with hatred of France and Frenchmen; and how, even here in Liége, Bracton had boasted that he would outwit any Frenchman in and around it, and slay all who attempted to thwart him. And, next, he told how he and Sparmann, going to the Weiss Haus to arrest this man, had been set upon in the dark by him; how Bracton had stabbed Sparmann through the breast and disarmed him, Francbois, so that he was unable to succour his companion.