that make me wish I had never been born into a world where such things are possible! In my heart I have registered a vow. I have vowed that if ever the time should come when I might save one wretched victim from my savage uncle"s power -- even at the risk of mine own life -- I would do it. I have warned men away from here. I have done a little, times and again, to save them from a snare laid for them. But never once have I had power to rescue from his relentless clutch the victim he had once enclosed in his net, for never have I had help from without. But when I heard them speak of Raymond de Brocas -- when I knew that it was he, thy brother, of whom some such things were spoken -- then I felt that I should indeed go mad could I not save him from such fate."
"What fate?" asked Gaston breathlessly; but she went on as though she had not heard.
"I thought of thee as I had seen thee in the wood. I said in my heart, "He is n.o.ble, he is brave. He will rest not night nor day whilst his brother lies a captive in these cruel hands. I have but to watch and to wait. He will surely come. And when he comes, I will show him the black hole in the wall -- the dark pa.s.sage to the moat -- and he will dare to enter where never man has entered before. He will save his brother, and my vow will be fulfilled!""
Gaston drew his breath hard, and a light leaped into his eyes.
"Thou knowest a secret way by which the Tower of Saut may be entered -- is that so, Lady?"
"I know a way by which many a wretched victim has left it," answered the girl, whose dark violet eyes were dilated by the depth of her emotion.
"I know not if any man ever entered by that way. But my heart told me that there was one who would not shrink from the task, be the peril never so great. I will see that the men-at-arms have drink enough to turn their heads. I have a concoction of herbs which if mingled with strong drink will cause such sleep to fall upon men that a thunderbolt falling at their feet would scarce awaken them. I will see that thou hast the chance thou needest. The rest wilt thou do without a thought of fear."
"Fear to go where Raymond is -- to share his fate if I may not rescue him!" cried Gaston. "Nay, sweet lady, that would be indeed a craven fear, unworthy of any true knight. But tell me more. I have many times wandered round the Tower of Saut in my boyhood, when its lord and master was away. Methinks I know every loophole and gate by heart. But the gates are so closely guarded, and the windows are so narrow and high up in the walls, that I know not how they may be entered from without."
"True: yet there is one way of which doubtless thou knowest naught, for, as I have said, men go forth that way, but enter not by it; and the trick is known only to a few chosen souls, for the victims who pa.s.s out seek not to come again. They drop with sullen plash into the black waters of the moat, and the river, which mingles its clearer water with the sluggish stream encircling the Tower, bears thence towards the hungry sea the burden thus entrusted to its care."
Gaston shivered slightly.
"Thou speakest of the victims done to death within yon gloomy walls. I have heard dark tales of such ere now."
"Thou hast heard nothing darker than the truth," said the girl, her slight frame quivering with repressed emotion and a deep and terrible sense of helpless indignation and pity. "I have heard stories that have made my blood run cold in my veins. Men have been done to death in a fashion I dare not speak of. There is a terrible room scarce raised above the level of the moat, into which I was once taken, and the memory of which has haunted me ever since. It is within the great mound upon which the Tower is built; and above it is the dungeon in which the victim is confined. There is some strange and wondrous device by which he may be carried down and raised again to his own prison house when his captor has worked his hideous will upon him. And if he dies, as many do, upon the fearful engines men have made to inflict torture upon each other, then there is this narrow stairway, and this still narrower pa.s.sage down to the sullen waters of the moat.
"The opening is just at the level of the water. It looks so small from the opposite side, that one would think it but the size to admit the pa.s.sage of a dog; you would think it was caused by the loosening of some stone in the wall -- no more. But yet it is large enough to admit the pa.s.sage of a human body; and where a body has pa.s.sed out, sure a body may pa.s.s in. There is no lock upon the door from the underground pa.s.sage to the moat; for what man would be so bold as find his way into the Castle by the grim dungeons which hold such terrible secrets? If thou hast the courage to enter thus, none will bar thy pa.s.sage --"
"If!" echoed Gaston, whose hand was clenched and his whole face quivering with emotion as he realized the fearful peril which menaced his brother. "There is no such thing as a doubt. Raymond is there. I come to save him."
The girl"s eyes flashed with answering fire. She clasped her hands together, and cried, with something like a sob in her voice:
"I knew it! I knew it! I knew that thou wert a true knight that thou wouldst brave all to save him."
"I am his brother," said Gaston simply, "his twin brother. Who should save him but I? Tell me, have I come in time? Have they dared to lay a finger upon him yet?"
"Dared!" repeated the girl, with a curious inflection in her voice. "Of what should they be afraid here in this tower, which has ever withstood the attacks of foes, which no man may enter without first storming the walls and forcing the gates? Thinkest thou that they fear G.o.d or man?
Nay, they know not what such fear is; and therein lies our best hope."
"How so?" asked Gaston quickly.
"Marry, for two reasons: one being that they keep but small guard over the place, knowing its strength and remoteness; the other, that being thus secure, they are in no haste to carry out their devil"s work. They will first let their prisoner recover of his hurts, that he slip not too soon from their power, as weaklier victims ofttimes do."
"Then they have done naught to him as yet?" asked Gaston, in feverish haste. "What hurts speakest thou of? Was he wounded in the fight, or when they surrounded him and carried him off captive?"
"Not wounded, as I have heard, but sorely battered and bruised; and he was brought hither unconscious, and lay long as one dead. When he refused to do the bidding of Peter Sanghurst, they took him down to yon fearsome chamber; but, as I heard when I sat at the h.o.a.rd with mine uncle and that wicked man, they had scarce laid hands upon him, to bend his spirit to their will through their h.e.l.lish devices, before he fell into a deep swoon from which they could not rouse him; and afraid that he would escape their malice by a merciful death, and that they would lose the very vengeance they had taken such pains to win, they took him back to his cell; and there he lies, tended not unskilfully by my old nurse, who is ever brought to the side of the sick in this place. Once I made shift to slip in behind her when the warder was off his guard, and to whisper in his ear a word of hope. But we are too close watched to do aught but by stealth, and Annette is never suffered to approach the prison alone. She is conducted thither by a grim warder, who waits beside her till she has done her office, and then takes her away. They do not know how we loathe and hate their wicked, cruel deeds; but they know that women have ere this been known to pity helpless victims, and they have an eye to us ever."
Gaston drew his breath more freely. Raymond, then, was for the moment safe. No grievous bodily hurt had been done him as yet; and here outside his prison was his brother, and one as devoted as though the tie of blood bound them together, ready to dare all to save him from the hands of his cruel foes.
"They are in no great haste," said the maiden; "they feel themselves so strong. They say that no man can so much as discover where thy brother has been spirited, still less s.n.a.t.c.h him from their clasp. They know the French King will not stir to help a subject of the Roy Outremer, They know that Edward of England is far away, and that he still avoids an open breach of the truce. They are secure in the undisturbed possession of their captive. I have heard them say that had he a hundred brothers all working without to obtain his release, the walls of the Tower of Saut would defy their utmost efforts."
"That we shall see," answered Gaston, with a fierce gleam in his eye; and then his face softened as he said, "Now that we have for our ally the enchanted princess of the Castle, many things may be done that else would be hard of achievement."
His ardent look sent a flush of colour through the girl"s transparent skin, but her eyes did not waver as she looked frankly back at him.
"Nay; I am no princess, and I have no enchantments -- would that I had, if they could be used in offices of pity and mercy! I am but a portionless maiden, an orphan, an alien. Ofttimes I weep to think that I too did not die when my parents did, in that terrible scourge which has devastated the world, which I hear that you of England call the Black Death."
"Who art thou then, fair maid?" questioned Gaston, who was all this time cautiously approaching the Tower of Saut by a winding and unfrequented path well known to his companion. Roger had been told to wait till the other riders came up, and conduct them with great secrecy and caution along the same path.
Their worst fears for Raymond partially set at rest, and the hope of a speedy rescue acting upon their minds like a charm, Gaston was able to think of other things, and was eager to know more of the lovely girl who had twice shown herself to him in such unexpected fashion.
It was a simple little story that she told, but it sounded strangely entrancing from her lips. Her name, she said, was Constanza, and her father had been one of a n.o.ble Spanish house, weakened and finally ruined by the ceaseless internal strife carried on between the proud n.o.bles of the fiery south. Her mother was the sister of the Sieur do Navailles, and he had from time to time given aid to her father in his troubles with his enemies. The pestilence which had of late devastated almost the whole of Europe, had visited the southern countries some time before it had invaded more northerly lat.i.tudes; and about a year before Gaston"s first encounter with the nymph of the wood, it had laid waste the districts round and about her home, and had carried off both her parents and her two brothers in the s.p.a.ce of a few short days.
Left alone in that terrible time of trouble, surrounded by enemies eager to pounce upon the little that remained of the wide domain which had once owned her father"s sway, Constanza, in her desperation, naturally turned to her uncle as the one protector that she knew. He had always showed himself friendly towards her father. He had from time to time lent him substantial a.s.sistance in his difficulties; and when he had visited at her home, he had shown himself kindly disposed in a rough fashion to the little maiden who flitted like a fairy about the wide marble halls. Annette, her nurse, who had come with her mother from France when she had left that country on her nuptials, was a Gascon woman, and had taught the language of the country to her young mistress.
It was natural that the woman should be disposed to return to her native land at this crisis; and for Constanza to attempt to hold her own -- a timid maiden against a score of rapacious foes -- was obviously out of the question. Together they had fled, taking with them such family jewels as could easily be carried upon their persons, and disguised as peasants they had reached and crossed the frontier, and found their way to Saut, where the Lord of Navailles generally spent such of his time as was not occupied in forays against his neighbours, or in following the fortunes either of the French or English King, as best suited the fancy of the moment.
He had received his niece not unkindly, but with complete indifference, and had soon ceased to think about her in any way. She had a home beneath his roof. She had her own apartments, and she was welcome to occupy herself as she chose. Sometimes, when he was in a better humour than usual, he would give her a rough caress. More frequently he swore at her for being a useless girl, when she might, as a boy, have been of some good in the world. He had no intention of providing her with any marriage portion, so that it was superfluous to attempt to seek out a husband for her. She and Annette were occasionally of use when there was sickness within the walls of the Castle, or when he or his followers came in weary and wounded from some hard fighting. On the whole he did not object to her presence at Saut, and her own little bower was not devoid of comfort, and even of luxury.
But for all that, the girl was often sick at heart with all that she saw and heard around her, and was unconsciously pining for some life, she scarce knew what, but a life that should be different from the one she was doomed to now.
"Sometimes I think that I will retire to a Convent and shut myself up there," she said to Gaston, her eyes looking far away over the wooded plain before them; "and yet I love my liberty. I love to roam the forest glades -- to hear the songs of the bird, and to feel the fresh winds of heaven about me. Methinks I should pine and die shut up within high walls, without the liberty to rove as I will. And then I am not /devote/. I love not to spend long hours upon my knees. I feel nearest to the Blessed Saints and the Holy Mother of G.o.d out here in these woods, where no ribald shouts of mirth or blasphemous oaths can reach me. But the Sisters live shut behind high walls, and they love best to tell their beads beside the shrine of some Saint within their dim chapels. They were good to us upon our journey. I love and reverence the holy Sisters, and yet I do not know how I could be one of them. I fear me they would soon send me forth, saying that I was not fit for their life."
"Nay, truly such a life is not for thee!" cried Gaston, with unwonted heat. "Sweet maiden, thou wert never made to pine away behind walls that shelter such as cannot stand against the trials and troubles of life.
For it is not so with thee. Thou hast courage; thou hast a n.o.ble heart and a strong will. There is other work for thee to do. Lady, thou hast this day made me thy humble slave for ever. My brother once free, as by thy aid I trust he will be ere another day has dawned, and I will repay thy service by claiming as my reward the right to call myself thine own true knight. Sweet Constanza, I will live and, if need be, die for thee.
Thou wilt henceforth be the light of my path, the star of my life. Lady, thy face hath haunted me ever since that day, so long gone by, when I saw thee first, scarce knowing if thou wert a creature of flesh and blood or a sprite of the woodland and water. Fair women have I looked upon ere now, but none so fair as thee. Let me but call myself thy true and faithful knight, and the day will come when I will stand boldly forth and make thee mine before all the world!"
Gaston had never meant to speak thus when he and his companion first began this walk through the winding woodland path. Then his thoughts had been filled with his brother and him alone, and there had been no s.p.a.ce for other matters to intrude upon him. But with a mind more at rest as to Raymond"s immediate fate, he could not but be aware of the intense fascination exercised upon him by his companion; and before he well knew what he was saying, he was pouring into her ears these ardent protestations of devotion.
Her fair face flushed, and the liquid eyes, so full of softness and fire, fell before his ardent gaze. The little hand he had taken in his own quivered in his strong clasp, and Gaston felt with a thrill of ecstatic joy that it faintly returned the pressure of his fingers.
"Lady, sweetest Lady!" he repeated, his words growing more and more rapid as his emotion deepened, "let me hear thee say that thou wilt grant me leave to call myself thy true knight! Let me hear from those sweet lips that there is none before me who has won the love of this generous heart!"
The maid was quivering from head to foot. Such words were like a new language to her, and yet her heart gave a ready and sweet response. Had she not sung of knightly wooers in the soft songs of her childhood, and had she not dreamed her own innocent dreams of him who would one day come to seek her? And had not that dream lover always worn the knightly mien, the proud and handsome face, of him she had seen but once, and that for one brief hour alone? Was it hard to give to him the answer he asked? And yet how could she frame her lips aright to tell him she had loved him ere he had asked her love?
"Fair Sir, how should a lonely maid dwelling in these wild woods know aught of that knightly love of which our troubadours so sweetly sing? I have scarce seen the face of any since I have come to these solitudes; only the rough and terrible faces of those wild soldiers and savages who follow mine uncle when he rideth forth on his forays."
Gaston"s heart gave a throb of joy; but it was scarce the moment to press his suit farther. Who could tell what the next few hours might bring forth? He might himself fall a victim, ere another day had pa.s.sed, to the ancient foe of his house. It was enough for the present to know that the fair girl"s heart was free.
He raised the hand he held and pressed his lips upon it, saying in tenderest tones:
"From henceforth -- my brother once standing free without these walls -- I am thy true knight and champion, Lady. Give me, I pray thee, that knot of ribbon at thy neck. Let me place it in my head piece, and feel that I am thine indeed for life or death."
With a hand that trembled, but not from hesitation, Constanza unfastened the simple little knot she wore as her sole ornament, and gave it to Gaston. They exchanged one speaking glance, but no word pa.s.sed their lips.
By this time they had approached very near to the Tower, although the thick growth of the trees hindered them from seeing it, as it also concealed them from the eyes of any persons who might be upon the walls.
The evening light was now fast waning. Upon the tops of the heights the sun still shone, but here in the wooded hollow, beside the sullen waters of the moat, twilight had already fallen, and soon it would be dark as night itself. The moon rose late, and for a s.p.a.ce there would be no light save that of the stars.
Constanza laid her finger upon her lips, and made a sign demanding caution. Gaston understood that he was warned not to speak, and to tread cautiously, which he did, stealing along after his fairy-like companion, and striving to emulate her dainty, bird-like motions. He could see by the glint of water that they were skirting along beside the moat, but he had never approached so near to it before, and he knew not where they were going.
Some men might have feared treachery, but such an idea never entered Gaston"s head. Little as he knew of his companion, he knew that she was true and loyal, that she was beloved by him, and that her heart was already almost won.
Presently the girl stopped and laid her hand upon his arm.