Some distance below was the roof of a house which clung to the castle wall like a mussel to a rock. The dwarf caught Herrick to steady him as he landed on the roof, for it sloped at a sharp angle, and was dilapidated.
"Sit, and put your hand on my shoulder, and shuffle down after me," he said. "Now carefully. Catch hold of this rafter. Let yourself swing, and drop lightly. It"s barely four feet fall for your length of body."
Herrick did as he was told, and dropped into a dark attic, followed by the dwarf.
"You please me, friend Roger," said Jean, chuckling quietly. "My private road is not an easy one to travel in a hurry, and the man who takes it is not likely to wear a scared face and feel his knees tremble when danger comes."
"I like not murder, friend Jean."
"You"d like being murdered less, I warrant," was the prompt answer.
"Besides it wasn"t murder, for two reasons. Killing a man in self-defence is not murder, and you"re likely to do it yourself before many hours have pa.s.sed if you would serve Mademoiselle; and secondly, the sentry yonder isn"t dead. I had to let his strength out of an artificial hole lest it should come through his mouth in a shout which would have betrayed us. He will be well on his way to recovery before a new moon, and, if not, there are plenty more sentries in the castle to take his place. Come, you are not out of Vayenne yet, and you must be on your way to Pa.s.sey before the dawn."
The dwarf led the way down two flights of broken stairs, and through the door of the house, and pa.s.sed into a narrow, deserted street.
"We"ll go quickly," he whispered. "No one will suspect you in those garments. We shall meet few, and they will think that some one dying has need of a priest, and that I have fetched you. I have done it often before."
They pa.s.sed through a perfect labyrinth of narrow streets in silence, and the two or three night wanderers they met took no notice of them.
Vayenne was asleep under the pale moon; that temporary death called sleep was in every habitation. The dead Duke in his chamber in the castle was hardly less silent than the sleeping thousands he had ruled.
Presently the dwarf stopped before the door of a house at the end of a blind alley.
"We go in here, friend Roger," he said, "but by a window. The door is locked, because they who own the place still hope for a tenant, which is a forlorn hope. The house grows more rotten every day, water rats make a retreat of it, and some mischievous person has said it is haunted by a horrible ghost."
"You are that mischievous person, I suppose."
"Why think so ill of me?" chuckled the dwarf. "When I don"t wish to leave the city by the gates, this is the way I go."
He led the way to a room at the top of the house.
"From the roof we scramble onto the city wall, which is low here, and rough, for the river washes its base. Sometimes, I just drop into the water, and swim, but under a low arch there is an old boat, which we will use to-night. Have you money in your purse, friend Roger?"
"A little."
"You may want more. I came provided. Here is gold," he said, taking a small leathern bag from the folds of his blouse. "Put it away carefully. You can repay me another time. Remain a priest, it may serve you to get audience with Mademoiselle more easily, but although priest without, you must be soldier within."
The dwarf went to a corner of the room, and, wrenching up a board, knelt down, and thrust his long arm into the opening, from which he drew out a sword and a revolver.
"Strap this under your robe," he said, handing Herrick the sword, "and put the revolver where you may come at it easily. And listen, friend Roger. You must come at Mademoiselle de Liancourt as your wits serve you; tell her what I have told you. She will not easily believe the tale, but you must convince her; and for the rest, circ.u.mstances must guide you."
"Do you not come with me then?"
"A little way to show you the road, then I return to plot in the city.
Were I a straight man as you are, I might not have come for you to-night. That"s a dark saying--I wonder if you can read its meaning?"
"I cannot, friend Jean."
"Well, you"ll want all your wits for your enterprise; it"s a pity to waste them on riddles. But remember this, friend Roger: when I was made in this queer shape, an ordinary heart was put into me, and there was no strange twist given to my feelings. We are not so very different, you and I, after all. Come, we waste precious time."
There was no great difficulty in scrambling onto the wall from the roof of the house, and, bidding Herrick wait, the dwarf climbed down the face of the wall almost as easily as the rough stones of it had been steps. Working his way along a narrow stone course, or ledge, which was near the bottom, he reached an iron ring let into the wall, and, supporting himself by this, managed to drag out a small, flat-bottomed boat from beneath a nearly submerged archway.
Having carefully watched the descent of his companion, Herrick attempted to make as little of the matter as he had done. The descent ended in a sudden and rather unsteady jump, which almost sank the rickety old craft, and Herrick would certainly have fallen sideways into the water had not his companion caught him.
A fairly strong stream was running, and they were carried down some two hundred yards in the process of crossing. A belt of trees in a thick undergrowth screened the landing-place.
"I have a friend here," said the dwarf. "We will not wake him to-night, but we will borrow his horse. I will explain to-morrow."
There was a small house nestling under a clump of trees, and on the opposite side of a roadway a shed at the corner of a field. To this the dwarf went, and it was evident that he knew every corner of it intimately, for in a few moments he had saddled the horse there and led it out.
"We don"t want to wake the good man, so we"ll walk the animal along the gra.s.s for a little way," he said. "There is a gate higher up. You follow this road, friend Roger; it runs without interruption for many miles. At a wayside Calvary it forks; take the right-hand road. Five miles will bring you to a deep wood, and I have heard of thieves there, so it would be well to have your revolver ready. Once out of the wood keep the lefthand road, and to your left you will presently see the Chateau of Pa.s.sey on high ground. Perhaps it would be well to let your horse go free then, and enter the village on foot. A mounted priest might cause wonder, and the horse may find his way home. Here is the gate. Mount, friend Roger. Use your horse well, and you will be in Pa.s.sey before noon."
"I may overtake Mademoiselle and her escort."
"You will be clever if you do, since they have gone by a different and a shorter road, one which might not be safe for you to travel. They will be in Pa.s.sey by dawn."
"And how shall I let you know how I fare and where fortune may take me?"
"Success or failure, I shall hear soon enough," the dwarf answered.
"Remember only that you serve Mademoiselle de Liancourt, and that all prison windows have not bars which may be lifted out. Farewell!" And without another word, he turned, and hurried back to the river-bank, where his boat lay.
So it happened that as Father Bertrand went back to the Rue St.
Romain, and the alarm given by the jailer presently resulted in the finding of the wounded sentry, Roger Herrick was galloping through the night toward Pa.s.sey and the woman he was destined to serve.
CHAPTER V
THE SCHOLAR
The village of Pa.s.sey, nestling in the shadow of its chateau, looked secure, had indeed been well protected in past times, but to-day little real resistance could have been offered to a determined enemy.
The outer wall of the chateau had crumbled and fallen in pieces, no vigilant eyes kept ward and watch from its battlements, and the serving-men in its old guard-rooms and courts were not of the kind out of which stout soldiers are made. It had been in the hands of the Dupres for three centuries or more, given originally to an ancestor in return for good service, for the family had bred many a gallant warrior in the past; but in recent years misfortune and poverty had come, and the Dupres were too proud to make pet.i.tions in the Castle of Vayenne. Nothing is easier to forget than past service if there is no present need of favors, and the Dukes of Montvilliers had practically forgotten their once powerful subject of Pa.s.sey. More and more the family had lived a retired life, and the last two heads of it had been confirmed invalids. The present owner was a man of weak physique also, barred from a life in the open and all manly sports. Thrown in upon himself he had found consolation in books and in study, and had little care how the world went so it left him in peace. The late Duke, a man of warlike character and iron will, had thoroughly despised the old man at Pa.s.sey, and when his son evinced a love for dreaming over books, his father sent him to Viscount Dupre. The chateau would serve as a convenient place of isolation, the Duke argued, and the old fool might well be made useful as a jailer to the young one.
"I hold you responsible for him," the Duke had said to Dupre. "Teach him to hate the books you love and I will find means to thank you; let him become such a one as yourself, and rest a.s.sured the reins of government will never fall into his hands when they drop from mine.
The good of Montvilliers is far more to me than any son."
The Duke rode away, hoping perhaps that banishment from Vayenne would cure his son, but the lad had been at Pa.s.sey ever since. How far the old Viscount attempted to turn the boy from his studies, who can say?
The fact remained that he did not succeed, and Maurice de Broux--now a youth of eighteen--had found peace and contentment in the crumbling old chateau and was as little concerned about the world as old Dupre himself.
To-day the quiet life had suddenly been broken in upon. With early dawn a company of hors.e.m.e.n, a woman riding in their midst, had clattered through the village street and in at the chateau gates. "The Duke is dead," one serving-man presently told another, and the news spread rapidly through the village, and out into the fields beyond, where bent-backed men and women hoed. One old man there looked toward the chateau, and pulling off a ragged cap cried feebly, "Long live the Duke!"
In a room in the chateau, a room of books and students" comforts, such a room as could not have been found in the length and breadth of the Castle of Vayenne, Maurice and Mademoiselle de Liancourt had been closeted for hours. There was no more important person in Montvilliers that day than the pale scholar of Pa.s.sey, yet there was no excitement in his face. That he should mourn for a father who had been little more than a stranger to him was hardly to be expected. From time to time he moved restlessly about the room, letting his companion talk, and now and again her words brought a flush to his cheek. To no one would he have listened as quietly as he did to her, for, scholar though he was by nature, he had yet something of his father in him, a temper that might burst into fury were it pressed too far. No one knew this better than Christine de Liancourt, and if any words of hers would sting him into action she would certainly speak them. For this very purpose had she come in haste to Pa.s.sey. In old days she had often stood between Maurice and his father"s wrath. She had prophesied that when the hour came Maurice would rise to the occasion and make a wise ruler. He was, besides, the heir, nothing could alter that, and justice, coupled with her half-formed fear of Count Felix, drove her to espouse the young Duke"s cause with all the strength that was in her.
"My dear Christine, you easily get angry with me," he said presently.
"Try and see the whole matter through my eyes. I am eighteen, and I have never done a single thing to fit myself for ruling Montvilliers; more shame to me, you may say, but we are not all born with a desire to rule. Ever since I came to Pa.s.sey I have practically been a prisoner--a happy prisoner. I have easily forgotten how near I stood to a dukedom, and, I warrant, have been as easily forgotten. Why remember me now when I only desire to be left in peace? Believe me, as a duke I should be an utter failure, a breeder of dissension and revolution, no blessing to the land, but a curse. Let the power fall as my father wished it. Cousin Felix will make a much better duke than I."
"Have you no sense of duty?" she asked.