The Sword of Gideon
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"There are but two, 'L'Ours' and 'Le Duc de Brabant.' The first, monsieur le capitaine, is the best. The wine is-o-hé-superb, adorable. Also it is full of officers. Some mousquetaires are of them. Monsieur should go there. There are none at the other."
"I will," the captain of mousquetaires said aloud as he rode on, though to himself he muttered, "Not I. 'Le Duc de Brabant' will suffice for me."
When Bevill Bracton recognised Sparmann in the inn at Antwerp he knew, as has been told, that he already stood in deadly peril. Already, though he had scarce been ashore two hours! Nevertheless, while he recognised this and understood that at once, without wasting a moment, he must form some plans for quitting Antwerp, and also, if possible, assuming a fresh disguise, he could by no means comprehend the presence of Sparmann in the city. Nor could he conceive what this man, a Dutchman, could have to do with the French Lieutenant of Police, an official who must surely be hated by the townspeople as much as, if not more than, the rest of their conquerors.
Re-entering the passage now, and approaching the bureau with the determination of discovering something in connection with his old enemy, if it were possible to do so, Bevill observed that the landlord's eyes were fixed upon him with a glance that was half menacing and half derisive, while, as he perceived this, he reflected, "Doubtless the man is rejoiced to see one of the hated French, as he supposes me to be, outwitted by his own countryman." After which he addressed the other, saying:
"Who is that man who throws doubt upon my identity and the passport I carry, issued by the French Embassy in London?"
"He! ach he! One who is a disgrace to the country that bore him- to this city, for of Antwerp he is. He was once an officer in the Stadtholder's bodyguard, the Stadtholder who was made King of England; yet now he serves the French, your countrymen. Bah!" and the landlord spat on the floor. "Now he is a spy on his own. A-a-a mouchard."
"But why? Why?"
"He has been disgraced. He was always in trouble. A soldier-a young one, too; an English officer, as it is said-ran him through for jeering at the English soldiers; then, since he was despised by his own brother-officers for being beaten, he took to drinking. At last, he was broken. Then he joined the French, your countrymen. Only, since he had been beaten by an Englishman, they would not have him for a soldier. So he became un espion. For my part, I would that the English officer had slain him. To think of it! A Hollander to serve the French!"
"I fear you do not love the French," Bevill said quietly, a sudden thought, an inspiration, flashing to his brain even as the landlord poured out his contempt on his own compatriot. "The English appear to have your sympathy."
"Does the lamb love the tiger that crushes it between its jaws? Does the hare love the spring in which it is caught? Yet-yet they say," the landlord went on, casting a venomous glance at Bevill, "your country will not triumph over us long. Malbrouck is coming, forty thousand more English soldiers are coming; so, too, are the soldiers of every Protestant country in Europe Then, look out for yourselves, my French friends."
"So you love the English?"
"We love those who pull us out of the mire. And they have been our allies for years."
For a moment after hearing these words Bevill stood regarding this man while pondering deeply; then, making up his mind at once, he said:
"If I told you that at this present time that young English officer who ran Sparmann through-this renegade countryman of yours, this espion, this spy of the French, your conquerors-stands in imminent deadly danger in Antwerp-here, here, in your own city-would you help and succour him? Would you strive to save him-from Sparmann, the spy?"
"What!" the landlord exclaimed, his fishlike eyes extending as he stared at Bracton. "What!" while in a lower tone he repeated to himself the words Sparmann had uttered a quarter of an hour ago: "There was no secretary named André de Belleville at the French Embassy. 'The statement is false.'"
"Aye," replied Bevill Bracton, hearing his muttered words, and understanding them too, since he had learnt some Dutch when in Holland under King William. "Aye, the statement is false, but his is true. There was no secretary of that name. The passport was procured to help that young officer to reach Liége and assist a countrywoman. Also, if the day should haply come, to assist, to join Protestant Holland against Catholic France and Spain."
"And," the man said, still staring at him, "you are he? You are an Englishman-a Protestant?"
"I am, God be praised. I trust in you. It is in your power to help me to escape, or you can give me up to the Lieutenant. It is in your power to enable me to quit Antwerp ere the alarm is given at the gates. If it be already given, my chance is gone! You hate France; you look to England for rescue and preservation. Speak. What will you do?"
"The spy saw," the landlord said, still muttering to himself, "that you had bought the black horse. Therefore you cannot ride that, though it is the best. But in my stable is a bay-"
"Ah!"
"A bay! Ja wohl, a bay! Tricky, ill-tempered, but swift as the wind. Once outside the city-"
"Heaven above bless you!"
" – You are safe. You speak French like a Frenchman. You have passed before as one, it seems; you can do so again. The bay belonged to a mousquetaire who died here of a fever when first the accursed French seized on the city. I would not give it up since his bill was large."
"One thing only! My passport will betray, ruin me."
"Nein. I have the mousquetaire's papers; his French pass. He was a captain named Le Blond. With those, and with that thing off your head," nodding at the peruke Bevill wore, "you will surely pass the gate. But you must be quick. Quick! Time is money, as you English say. With you it may be more. It may be life or death."
Even as the landlord spoke Bevill had torn off his wig and shaken out his own dark hair, after which the former said:
"I will go get the papers. Then will I saddle the bay myself. She is in the stable in the back of the garden. You can pass out that way and through a back street. If you have luck, you are saved. If not-"
"I shall be saved. I know it-feel it. But you-you-he warned you of what might befall-"
"Bah! You will have escaped unknown to me. For proof, I can show that you even left the black horse behind in your haste. How shall they know that I gave you another in its place?" And the landlord left his bureau and ran up the stairs, saying he would be back with the papers of Captain Le Blond ere many moments had passed.
Thus it was that the supposed captain of mousquetaires escaped the first peril he encountered on the road towards Liége, towards assisting Sylvia Thorne to quit that city. He had escaped, yet he had done so by means that were abhorrent to him-by a false passport, the papers of a man now in his grave. He who-Heaven pardon him! – could he have had matters as he desired, would have ridden boldly and openly to every barrier, have faced every soldier of the enemy, and, announcing himself as what he was, have got through or finished his mission almost ere it was begun.
Yet that escape was indeed perilous, and, though Bevill Bracton knew it not, he had, even with the aid of the landlord, only missed discovery by a hair's breadth.
For, but a quarter of an hour before he rode towards the city barrier, the guard had been changed; a troop of the Régiment d'Orléans had relieved a troop of the Mousquetaires Gris. Had Bevill, therefore, arrived before this took place, he would at once have been discovered and his fate sealed, since all would have known that le Capitaine Le Blond had been dead for months. But with the men of the Régiment d'Orléans it was different, since they had but marched in a week or so before, and probably-though it need by no means have been so-knew not the name or appearance of the officers of the mousquetaires.
Bevill soon learnt, however, that Sparmann had wasted no time. Had he not acquired those papers, his undertaking must have ended here. The sergeant at the barrier, who came forward to inspect the paper he presented, carried in his hand another, which he read as Bevill rode up; and the latter divined, by the swift glance the trooper cast at his horse, and divined it with a feeling of actual certainty, that on that paper was a description of the black horse and his own appearance. But the horse was not the same, the peruke was wanting, and his riding cloak hid all that was beneath. Consequently, with a muttered "Bon voyage, M. le capitaine," and a salute, the sergeant stood back as Bevill rode through on the bay mare, who justified the character her recent owner had given her by lashing out with her hind legs and prancing from one side of the road to the other in her endeavour to unseat her rider. Soon finding, however, that she had her master on her back, she settled down into a swinging stride and bore him swiftly along the great, white east road.
And now he was in Louvain, after having passed by numberless implements of warfare collected by the roadside and watched over by French soldiery, as well as having passed also two French regiments marching swiftly towards Antwerp, there to reinforce the garrison, since, as war was declared, none knew how soon the forces of the redoubtable Marlborough, or Malbrouck, as they called him, might appear.
He was in Louvain, riding up an old, quiet street full of Spanish houses with pointed roofs that almost touched those of the opposite side, and allowed only a glimpse of the roseate hue of the early summer sunset to be seen between them. And soon, following the directions given him by the soldier at the gate, he reached the hostelry "Le Duc de Brabant," a house that looked almost as old as Time itself. One that, to each of its numerous windows, had huge projecting balconies of dark discoloured stone, of which the house itself was composed; an old, dark mansion, on whose walls were painted innumerable frescoes, most of which represented sacred subjects but some of which also depicted arrogantly the great deeds and triumphs of the Dukes of Brabant. A house having, too, a huge pointed gateway, the summit of which extended higher than the top of the windows of the first floor, and down one side of which there trailed a coiled rope carved in the stone, while, on the other side, was carved in the same way an axe, a block, and a miniature gibbet.
"Ominous signs for those who enter here," Bevill thought to himself, while the mare's hoofs clattered on the cobblestones as he rode under the archway. "Ominous once in far-off days for those who entered here, if this was some hall of justice, or the residence of their, doubtless, tyrannical rulers. Yet will I not believe that they are ominous for me. I have no superstitions, and, I thank Heaven devoutly, I have no fear. Yet," he muttered to himself as he prepared to dismount, "I would I had not to resort to so many subterfuges. Rather would I be passing for what I should be-a soldier belonging to those who have sworn to break down the power of this great ambitious king, this champion of the bigotry that we despise." Then, in an easier vein he added, as though to console himself, "No matter! What I do I do to help, perhaps to save, a helpless woman; to reinstate myself in the calling I love, the calling from which I was unjustly cast forth. And," he concluded, as he cast the reins to the servitors who had run into the courtyard at the clatter made by the mare's hoofs, "it is war time, and so-à la guerre, comme à la guerre!"
CHAPTER V
As Bevill dismounted in the great courtyard, and, addressing a man who was evidently the innkeeper, told him that he desired accommodation for the night, he recognised that, whatever might be the inferiority of this house to its rival, "L'Ours," it had at least some traveller, or travellers, of importance staying in it.
In one corner of the yard, round which ran a railed platform level with the ground floor and having four openings with steps leading up to that floor, there stood, horseless now, a large travelling coach, of the kind which, later, came to be called a berline. This construction was a massive one, since inside it were to be seen not only the front and back seats-the latter so deep and vast that one person might have made a bed of it by lying crosswise-but also a small table, which was firmly fixed into the floor in the middle of the vehicle. The body of the coach was slung on to huge leathern braces, which also served as springs, and was a considerable height from the ground-so high, indeed, that the steps outside the doors were four in number, though, when the vehicle was in progress, they were folded into one. On the panels were a count's coronet, a coat-of-arms beneath it, and above it the word and letter "De V." On the roof, and fitted into the grooves constructed for them, were some travelling boxes of black leather, with others piled on top of them. For the rest, there were on each side of the coach, in front, and at the back, long receptacles for musketoons as well as another for a horn, the weapons and instrument being visible.
"A fine carriage," Bevill said to the landlord, who seemed equally as surly and ungracious, if not more so, than the man at Antwerp had been while he supposed that the traveller was a Frenchman. "Some great personage, I should suppose."
"A compatriot of yours," the man said. "Mein Gott! Who travels thus in our land but your countrymen-and women? Yet," he added still more morosely, "it may not be ever thus."
Ignoring this remark, which naturally did not arouse Bevill's ire, since he imagined that the state of things the man suggested might most probably come to pass, he exclaimed:
"And women, you say? Pardie! Are ladies travelling about during such times as these, when war is in the air?"
"Aye, war is in the air," the landlord said, ignoring the first part of the other's remark. "In the air, and more than in the air. Soon it will be in the land and on the sea." After which, a waiting woman having arrived to conduct Bevill to his room, and a stableman having led the horse to a stall, the man turned away. Yet, as he went, he muttered, "Then we shall see. England and Holland are stronger than France on the sea, and on the land they are as good as France."
It was no part of Bevill's to assume indignation, even if he could have done so successfully, at these contemptuous remarks about his supposed country and countrymen; therefore he followed the woman to the room to which she led him. On this occasion, doubtless because he possessed a horse, and that horse was at the present moment in the landlord's custody, no demand was made for payment in advance.
"And now," he said to himself, "a supper, the purchase of a few necessaries in this town, and to bed. To-morrow I must be off and away again. The sooner I am in Liége the better."
In the old streets of that old city, Bevill found a shop in which he was able to provide himself with the few requisites that travellers carried with them in such distracted times. Amongst the accoutrements of the late Captain Le Blond's charger was his wallet-haversack for fastening behind the cantle, or in front of the pommel; but it required filling, and this was soon done. A change of linen was easily procured, which, with a comb, generally completed a horseman's outfit, and then Bevill set out on his return to "Le Duc de Brabant." But as he passed along the street he came across an armourer's shop, and, glancing into it, was thereby reminded that he was without pistols.
"And," he thought to himself, "good as my blade is, a firearm is no bad accessory to a sword. It may chance, and well it may, that ere I reach Liége, as in God's grace I hope to do, I may have need of such a thing. So be it. Cousin Mordaunt has well replenished my purse; I will enter and see if the armourer has any such toys."
Suiting the action to the thought, Bevill entered the shop, and, seeing an elderly man engaged on polishing up a breastplate, asked him if he had any pistols to dispose of.
"Ja!" the man replied. "And some good ones, too. Only they are dear. Also the mynheer may not like them. Most of them were taken from the French after Namur, and sold to me by an English soldier."
"Bah! What matters how I come by them so that 'tis honestly, and that they will serve their purpose? Produce them."
Upon this the armourer dragged forth a drawer in which were several weapons of the kind, some lying loose and some folded in the leather or buckskin wrappings in which the man had enveloped them. At first, those which met Bevill's eyes did not commend themselves much to him; some were too old, some too clumsy, and some too rusty.
"Mynheer is difficult to please," the armourer remarked with a grunt; "perhaps these will suit him better. Only they are dear," while, as he spoke, he unfolded two of the buckskin wrappers and exhibited a pair of pistols of a totally different nature from the others. These weapons were indeed handsome ones, well mounted on ivory and with long, unbrowned barrels worked with filigree. The triggers sprang easily back and fell equally as easily to the light touch of a finger, the flints flashing sparks bravely as they did so. On one was engraved "Dernier espoir," on the other "Mon meilleur ami."
"How much for these?" Bevill asked, looking at the armourer.
"Two pistoles, with powder flask and bullet-box. Also the flask well filled and two score balls."
"So be it. They are mine." And Bevill dropped one into each of the great pockets of his riding-coat. "Now for the flask and bullets."
"With these," he said to himself, as he walked back to the inn, "my sword, and the swift heels of the mare, I can give a good account of myself if danger threatens."
The supper for the guests was prepared when he reached "Le Duc de Brabant," and Bevill, taking his place at the table, glanced round to see who his fellow-travellers might be, yet soon observed that, for the present at least, there were none.
"So," he thought to himself, "the fellow at the gate spoke truly. 'Tis very apparent that 'The Duke' is not in such high favour as his rival, 'The Bear.' However, the eating proves the pudding and the drinking proves the wine. Let us see to it."
Whereupon he bade the drawer bring him a flask of good Coindrieux-the list of wines hanging on a wall so that all the guests might see and read. Then, ere the wine came, Bevill commenced to attack the course set before him, though before he had eaten two mouthfuls an interruption occurred.
Preceded by a servitor, whom Bevill supposed-and supposed truly, as he eventually knew-to be a private servant and not one attached to the inn, a lady came down the room towards the table at which the Englishman sat: a lady still young, of about thirty years of age, tall, and delicate-looking. Also she was extremely well favoured, her blue-grey eyes being shielded by long dark lashes, and her features refined and well cut. As for her hair, Bevill, who on her approach had risen from his seat and bowed gravely, and then remained standing till she was seated, could form no opinion, since it was disguised by her wig. But he observed that she was clad all in black, even to her lace; while, thrown over her wig, was the small coif, or hood, which widows wore. Therefore he understood the solemnity of her attire-a solemnity still more enhanced and typified by the look of sadness which her face wore.
This lady, who had returned Bevill's courtesy by a slight inclination of her head, was now served by the elderly manservant, who took the dishes from the ordinary inn server, and, placing each before her who was undoubtedly his mistress, then retired behind her chair until the next dish was ready. But, as would indeed have been contrary to all etiquette, neither Bevill nor the lady addressed a word to the other.
When, however, the drawer returned with the flask of Coindrieux, and Bevill spoke some word to the man on the subject of not filling his glass too full, he observed for one moment that the lady lifted her eyes and looked at him somewhat curiously, and as though some tone or intonation of his had attracted her attention. A moment later her eyes were dropped to her plate again, though more than once during the serving of the next dish he observed that she was again regarding him.
"Has my accent betrayed me?" Bevill mused. "When I spoke to the man, did she recognise that I am no Frenchman? Has my tongue grown rusty?"
Yet, even as he so pondered, he told himself that there was no reason that such should be the case. The lady might herself be no Frenchwoman, but, instead, one belonging to this war-worn land.
"She may not be capable of judging who or what I am," he reflected.
Yet in another moment he had learnt that her powers of judging whether he was a Frenchman or not were undoubtedly sufficient.
In a voice, an accent, which no other than a Frenchman or Frenchwoman ever possessed, an intonation which none but those who had learnt to lisp that language at their mother's knee could have acquired, the lady spoke now to her elderly servant, saying:
"Ambroise, retire, and bid Jeanne prepare the valises. I have resolved to go forward an hour after dawn."
The manservant bowed, then said:
"But the supper, Madame la Comtesse? Who shall serve, madame? The remainder is not-"
"The server will do very well. Go and commence to assist Jeanne."
"Madame la Comtesse," Bevill thought to himself when the man had departed. "So this is doubtless the owner of the grand coach. And she is a Frenchwoman. It may well be that she understands I am no countryman of hers, though I know not, in solemn truth, why she should suppose I pretend to be one-unless the landlord or servants have told her, or she has looked in the register of guests." For here, as everywhere, all travellers had to give their names to the landlords, and Bevill was now registered as "Le Capitaine Le Blond, of the Mousquetaires Gris."
The supper went on still in silence, however, and the server attended both to the lady who had been styled "La Comtesse" and to Bevill. But he was nothing more than a raw Flemish boor, little accustomed to waiting on ladies and gentlemen, and gave Bevill the idea that he was not occupied in his usual vocations. Once he dropped a dish with such a clatter that the lady started, and once he handed another to Bevill before offering it to the countess.
"Serve madame!" Bevill said sternly, looking at the hobbledehoy and covering him with confusion, while, as he did so, the lady lifted her eyes to him and bowed stiffly, though graciously. Then, as if feeling it necessary that some word of acknowledgment, some small token of his civility, should be testified, the lady said:
"Monsieur is extremely polite. He is doubtless not native here?"
"No, madame. I am a stranger passing through the land on my way towards the Rhine," while, as Bevill spoke, he was glad that, in this case, there was no need for deception, since Liége was truly on the road towards the Rhine.
"As am I. I set out to-morrow for Liége."
"For Liége? Madame will scarcely find that town a pleasant place of sojourn. Yet I do forget-madame is French."
"As is monsieur," the Countess said, with a swift glance at her companion, speaking more as though stating a fact than asking a question.
Bevill shrugged his shoulders ever so slightly, but as much as good breeding would allow. Then he said:
"Monsieur de Boufflers commands there. Madame will be at perfect ease."
"Doubtless," the other said, with a slight shrug on her part now. "Doubtless. Yet," and again she shrugged her shoulders, "war is declared. The English and the Dutch will soon be near these barrier towns. They say that the Earl of Marlborough will come himself in person, that he will command all the armies directed against us. Would it be possible that monsieur should know-that he might by chance have heard-when the Earl will be in this neighbourhood?"
"I know nothing, madame," Bevill replied, while as he did so two thoughts forced themselves into his mind. One was that this lady had discovered easily enough that he was no Frenchman; the other, that she was endeavouring to extract some of the forthcoming movements of the enemy-the enemy of France-from him.