"A diversion, ay!" he continued. "But a moment too soon or a moment too late--and where will we be?"
He spoke in vain. His words were wasted on the air. Claude, not to be restrained, had entered the staircase. Pike in hand he felt his way over the bodies that choked it; by this time he was half-way down the stairs.
Marcadel hesitated, waited a moment, listened; then, partly because success begets success, and courage courage, partly because he would not have the triumph taken from him, he too risked all. He s.n.a.t.c.hed from Gentilis" feeble hands a long pistol, part of the spoils of the staircase; and, staying only to a.s.sure himself that a portion of the priming still lay in the pan, he hurried after his leader.
By this time Claude was within four stairs of the guard-room. The low door that admitted to it stood open; and towards it a man, hearing the hasty tread of feet, had that moment turned a startled face. There was no room for anything but audacity, and Claude did not flinch. In two bounds, he hurled himself through the door on to the man, missed him with his pike--but was himself missed. In a flash the two were rolling together on the floor.
In their fall they brought down a third man, who, swearing horribly, made repeated stabs at Claude with a dagger. But the only light in the room came from the fire, the three were interlaced, and Claude was young and agile as an eel: he evaded the first thrust, and the second. The third went home in his shoulder, but desperate with pain he seized the hand that held the poniard, and clung to it; and before the man who had been the first to fall could regain his pike, or a third man who was present, but who was wounded, could drag himself, swearing horribly, to the spot, Marcadel fired from the stairs, and killed the wounded man.
The next instant with a yell of "Geneva!" he sprang on the others under cover of the smoke that filled the room.
The combat was still but of two to two; and without the guard-room but almost within arm"s length, were a dozen Savoyards, headed by Picot the engineer; any one of whom might, by entering, turn the scale. But the pistol-shot had come to the ears of the attacking party: that instant, guessing that they had allies within, they rallied and with loud cries returned to the attack. Even while Marcadel having disposed of one more, stood over the struggling pair on the floor, doubting where to strike, the burghers burst a second time into the gateway--on which the guard-room opened--struck down Picot, and, hacking and hewing, with cries of "Porte Gagnee! Porte Gagnee!" bore the Savoyards back.
For the half of a minute the low-groined archway was a whirl of arms and steel and flame. Half a dozen single combats were in progress at once; amid yells and groans, and the jar and clash of a score of weapons. But the burghers, fighting bareheaded for their wives and hearths, were not to be denied; by-and-by the Savoyards gave back, broke, and saved themselves. One fierce group cut its way out and fled into the darkness of the Corraterie. Of the others four men remained on the ground, while two turned and tried to retreat into the guard-room.
But on the threshold they met Claude, vicious and wounded, his eyes in a flame; and he struck and killed the foremost. The other fell under the blows of the pursuing burghers, and across the two bodies Claude and Marcadel met their allies, the leaders of the a.s.sault. Strange to say, the foremost and the midmost of these was a bandy-legged tailor, with a great two-handed sword, red to the hilt; to such a place can valour on such a night raise a man. On his right stood Blandano, Captain of the Guard, bareheaded and black with powder; on his left Baudichon the councillor, panting, breathless, his fat face running with sweat and blood--for he bore an ugly wound--but with unquenchable courage in his eyes. A man may be fat and yet a lion.
It was a moment in the lives of the five men who thus met which none of them ever forgot. "Was it one of you two who lowered the portcullis?"
Blandano gasped, as he leaned an instant on his sword.
"He did," Marcadel answered, laying his hand on Claude"s shoulder. "And I helped him."
"Then he has saved Geneva, and you have helped him!" Blandano rejoined bluntly. "Your name, young man."
Claude told him.
"Good!" Blandano answered. "If I live to see the morning light, it shall not be forgotten!"
Baudichon leant across the dead, and shook Claude"s hand. "For the women and children!" he said, his fat face shaking like a jelly; though no man had fought that night with a more desperate valour. "If I live to see the morning inquire for Baudichon of the council."
Jehan Brosse, the bandy-legged tailor with the huge sword--he was but five feet high and no one up to that night had known him for a hero--squared his shoulders and looked at Claude, as one who takes another under his protection. "Baudichon the councillor, whom all men know in Geneva," he said with an affectionate look at the great man--he was proud of the company to which his prowess had raised him. "You will not forget the name! no fear of that! And now on!"
"Ay, on!" Blandano answered, looking round on his panting followers, of whom some were staunching their wounds and some, with dark faces and gleaming eyeb.a.l.l.s, were loading and priming their arms. "But I think the worst is over and we shall win through now. We have this gate safe, and it is the key, as I told you. If all be well elsewhere, and the main guards be held----"
"Ay, but are they?" Baudichon muttered nervously: he reeled a little, for the loss of blood was beginning to tell upon him. "That is the question!"
CHAPTER XXV.
BASTERGA AT ARGOS.
The fear that Blandano might postpone the night-round, to a time which would involve discovery, haunted Blondel; and late on this eventful evening he despatched Louis, as we have seen, to the Porte Neuve to remind the Captain of his orders. That done--it was all he could do--the Syndic sat down in his great chair, and prepared himself to wait. He knew that he had before him some hours of uncertainty almost intolerable; and a peril, a hundred times more hard to face, because in the pinch of it he must play two parts; he must run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, and, a traitor standing forward for the city he had betrayed, he must have an eye to his reputation as well as his life.
He had no doubt of the success of Savoy, the walls once pa.s.sed.
Moreover, the genius of Basterga had imposed itself upon him as that of a man unlikely to fail. But some resistance there must be, some bloodshed--for the town held many devoted men; one hour at least of butchery, and that followed, he shuddered to think it, by more than one hour of excess, of cruelty, of rapine. From such things the captured cities of that day rarely escaped. In all that happened, the resistance and the peril, he must, he knew, show himself; he must take his part and run his risk if he would not be known for what he was, if he would not leave a name that men would spit on!
Strangely enough it was the moment of discovery and his conduct in that moment--it was the antic.i.p.ation of this, that weighed most heavily on his guilty mind as he sat in his parlour, his hour of retiring long past, his household in bed. The city slept round him; how long would it sleep? And when it awoke, how long dared he, how long would it be natural for him to ignore the first murmur, the succeeding outcry, the rising alarm? It was not his cue to do overmuch, to precipitate discovery, or to a.s.sume at once the truth to be the truth. But on the other hand he must not be too backward.
Try as he would he could not divert his thoughts from this. He saw himself skulking in his house, listening with a white face to the rush of armed men along the street. He heard the tumult rising on all sides, and saw himself stand, guilty and irresolute, between hearth and door, uncertain if the time had come to go forth. Finally, and before he had made up his mind to go out, he fancied himself confronted by an entering face, and in an instant detected. And this it was, this initial difficulty, oddly enough--and not the subsequent hours of horror, confusion and danger, of dying men and wailing women--that rode his mind, dwelt on him and shook his nerves as the crisis approached.
One consolation he had, and one only; but a measureless one. Basterga had kept his word. He was cured. Six hours earlier he had taken the _remedium_ according to the directions, and with every hour that had elapsed since he had felt new life course through his veins. He had had no return of pain, no paroxysm; but a singular lightness of body, eloquent of the change wrought in him and the youth and strength that were to come, had done what could be done to combat the terrors of the soul, natural in his situation. Pale he was, despite the potion; in spite of it he trembled and sweated. But he knew himself changed, and sick at heart as he was, he could only guess at the depths of nervous despair to which he must have fallen had he not taken the wondrous draught.
There was that to the good. That to the good. He would live. And life was the great thing after all; life and health, and strength. If he had sold his soul, his country, his friends, at least he would live--if naught happened to him to-night. If naught--but ah, the thought pierced him to the heart. He who had proved himself in old days no mean soldier in the field, who had won honour in more than one fight, felt his brow grow damp, his knees grow flaccid, knew himself a coward. For the life which he must risk was not the old life, but the new one which he had bought so dearly; the new one for which he had given his soul, his country, and his friends. And he dared not risk that! He dared not let the winds of heaven blow too roughly on that! If aught befel him this night, the irony of it! The mockery of it! The deadly, deadly folly of it!
He sweated at the thought. He cursed, cursed frantically his folly in omitting to give himself out for worse than he was; in omitting to take to his bed early in the day! Then he might have kept it through the night, through the fight; then he might have avoided risks. Now he felt that every ball discharged at a venture must strike him; that if he showed so much as his face at a window death must find its opportunity.
He would not have dared to pa.s.s through a street on a windy day now--for if a tile fell it must fall on him. And he must fight! He must fight!
His manhood shrivelled within him at the thought. He shuddered. He was still shuddering, when on the shutter which masked the cas.e.m.e.nt came a knock, thrice repeated. A cautious knock of which the mere sound implied an understanding.
The Syndic remained motionless, glaring at the window. Everything on a night like this, and to an uneasy conscience, menaced danger. At length it occurred to him that the applicant might be Louis, whom he had sent with the message to the Porte Neuve: and he took the lamp and went to admit him, albeit reluctantly, for what did the b.o.o.by mean by returning?
It was late, and only to open at this hour might, in the light cast by after events, raise suspicions.
But it was not Louis. The lamp flickering in the draught of the doorway disclosed a huge dusky form, glimmering metallic here and there, that in a trice pushed him back, pa.s.sed by him, entered. It was Basterga. The Syndic shut the door, and staggered rather than walked after him to the parlour. There the Syndic set down the lamp, and turned to the scholar, his face a picture of guilty terror. "What is it?" he muttered. "What has happened? Is--the thing put off?"
The other"s aspect answered his question. A black corselet with shoulder pieces, and a feathered steel cap raised Basterga"s huge stature almost to the gigantic. Nor did it need this to render him singular; to draw the eye to him a second time and a third. The man himself in this hour of his success, this moment of conscious daring, of reliance on his star and his strength, towered in the room like a demi-G.o.d. "No," he answered, with a ponderous, exultant smile, slow to come, slow to go.
"No, Messer Blondel. Far from it. It has not been put off."
"Something has been discovered?"
"No. We are here. That is all."
The Syndic supported himself by a hand pressed hard against the table behind him. "Here?" he gasped. "You are here? You have the town already?
It is impossible."
"We have three hundred men in the Corraterie," Basterga answered. "We hold the Terta.s.se Gate, and the Monnaye. The Porte Neuve is cut off, and at our mercy; it will be taken when we give the signal. Beyond it four thousand men are waiting to enter. We hold Geneva in our grip at last--at last!" And in an accent half tragic, half ironic, he declaimed:--
"Venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus Dardaniae! Fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium et ingens Gloria Teucrorum! Ferus omnia Jupiter Argos Transtulit!"
And then more lightly, "If you doubt me, how am I here?" he asked. And he extended his huge arms in the pride of his strength. "Exercise your warrant now--if you can, Messer Syndic. Syndic," he continued in a tone of mockery, "where is your warrant now? I have but this moment," he pointed to wet stains on his corselet, "slain one of your guards. Do justice, Syndic! I have seized one of your gates by force. Avenge it, Syndic! Syndic? ha! ha! Here is an end of Syndics."
The Syndic gasped. He was a hard man, not to say an arrogant one, little used to opposition; one who, times and again, had ridden rough-shod over the views of his fellows. To be jeered at, after this fashion, to be scorned and mocked by this man who in the beginning had talked so silkily, moved so humbly, evinced so much respect, played the poor scholar so well, was a bitter pill. He asked himself if it was for this he had betrayed his city; if it was for this he had sold his friends.
And then--then he remembered that it was not for this--not for this, but for life, dear life, warm life, that he had done this thing. And, swallowing the rage that was rising within him, he calmed himself.
"It is better to cease to be Syndic than cease to live," he said coldly.
But the other had no mind to return to their former relations. "True, O sage!" he answered contemptuously. "But why not both? Because--shall I tell you?"
"I hear----"
"Yes, and I hear too! The city is rising!" Basterga listened a moment.
"Presently they will ring the alarm-bell, and----"
"If you stay here some one may find you!"
"And find me with you?" Basterga rejoined. He knew that he ought to go, for his own sake as well as the Syndic"s. He knew that nothing was to be made and much might be lost by the disclosure that was on his tongue.
But he was intoxicated with the success which he had gained; with the clang of arms, and the glitter of his armed presence. The true spirit of the man, as happens in intoxication of another kind, rose to the surface, cruel, waggish, insolent--of an insolence long restrained, the insolence of the scholar, who always in secret, now in the light, panted to repay the slights he had suffered, the patronage of leaders, the scoffs of power. "Ay," he continued, "they may find me with you! But if you do not mind, I need not. And I was just asking you--why not both?
Life and power, my friend?"