Nevers said, quietly: "Here come the swords."

Lagardere gave a jolly laugh. "Now for a glorious scrimmage!" he said, and made his sword sing in the air.

As he spoke the words, shade after shade began to descend the steps from the bridge and to advance cautiously into the moat. Lagardere counted them as they came: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Even in the darkness he thought he could recognize certain figures: the twisted form of the hunchback, the burly body of Cocarda.s.se, the gaunt figure of the Norman, the barrel bulk of Staupitz. This barrel bulk came to the front of the shadows huddled together at the base of the hill, and spoke with the thick, Teutonic voice that Lagardere had heard so short a time before. "There they are,"

Staupitz said, and Lagardere could see a gleam in the night as the German pointed to where the two newly bound comrades stood together.

An instant answer came with the defiant cry of Nevers, "I am here!" which was immediately echoed by Lagardere. "I am here!" he shouted; and then added for himself: "Lagardere! Lagardere!"

Among the bravos a momentary note of comedy intruded upon the intended tragedy, as is often the way when humanity foregathers on sinister business. Cocarda.s.se plucked Pa.s.sepoil by the sleeve and drew him a little away from their fellow-ruffians. "We cannot fight against the Little Parisian," he whispered into the Norman's ear. "We will look on, comrade." Pa.s.sepoil nodded approval, but spoke no word. For the rest of that red adventure into the placid blackness of the night those two stood apart in the shadow, with their arms folded and their swords in their sheaths, sombrely watching the seven men that were their friends a.s.sailing the one man they loved. Such honor as they had forbade them to change sides and fight for the Little Parisian. They had been paid to range with the a.s.sailants of Nevers. But no payment could possibly prevail on them to attack Lagardere. So, according to their consciences, they split the difference and held aloof. Their abstention was not noticed by their fellows in the excitement of the time.

Numerous as they were, the bravos and their new recruits seemed unwilling to advance against two such famous swordsmen. Lagardere taunted their apathy:

"Come, you crows, the eagles wait for you." He felt that the words had a fine theatrical ring, and he enjoyed them as he flung them forth.

Nevers cried his cry, "I am here!" and Lagardere repeated it, "I am here!" He was longing to come to blows with the bandits, and to show them what two men could do against their mult.i.tude. His sword quivered like a snake in its eagerness to feel blades against its blade.

The barrel bulk of Staupitz spoke again addressing his little army. "Do you fear two men?" he asked. "Forward!"

On the word the eighteen men charged, the original seven leading; the eleven recruits, less whole-hearted in the business, came less alertly in the rear. The charge of the a.s.sa.s.sins was abruptly arrested by Lagardere's bulwark, and over that bulwark the swords of the two defenders flashed and leaped, and before every thrust a man went down. It seemed an age of battle, it seemed an instant of battle. Then the baffled a.s.sa.s.sins recoiled, leaving two of the smugglers for dead, while Saldagno and Faenza were both badly wounded, and cursing hideously in Portuguese and Italian.

Behind the intrenchments, Lagardere chuckled as he heard. He turned to Nevers. "Are you wounded?" he asked, anxiously.

And Nevers answered, quietly: "A scratch on the forehead."

As he saw Nevers lift his hand for a moment to the s.p.a.ce between his eyes, Lagardere groaned to himself, "My d.a.m.ned fencing-lesson," and mentally promised to make his enemies pay for their readiness to learn.

He had not long to wait for an opportunity.

The discomfited bravos were rapidly gathering together for a fresh attack. This time their leading spirit was no longer Staupitz, disagreeably conscious of the difficulties of the enterprise, but the hunchback aesop, who seemed to burn with a pa.s.sion for slaughter.

Lagardere likened him in his mind to some ungainly, obscene bird of prey, as he loomed out of the mirk waving his gaunt arms and shrieking in his rage and hate. "Kill them! kill them!" he screamed, as he rushed across the intervening s.p.a.ce, and the bravos, heartened by his frenzy of fight, streamed after him, flinging themselves desperately against the piled-up hay, only to meet again the irresistible weapons of the friends, and again to recoil before them. Nevers held his own on one side; Lagardere held his own on the other. Nevers delivered his thrust at aesop, and for the second time that day the hunchback felt the p.r.i.c.k of steel between his eyes and saved himself by springing backward, his blood's fire suddenly turned to ice. Lagardere's sword was like a living fire. "Look out, Staupitz! Take that, Pepe!" he cried, and wounded both men. Then, while the German and the Spaniard fell back swearing, he turned joyously to Nevers, for his quick ear caught the sound of galloping on the distant highway.

"Good cheer, brother! I hear horses. My men are coming. Lagardere!

Lagardere!"

Nevers responded joyously, "I am here! Victory!"

By this time the ground was strewn with the dead and wounded of their a.s.sailants, and, save for the slight scratch on Nevers's forehead, the defenders were unhurt. The galloping of horses was now distinctly heard, and the sound was as displeasing to the bravos as it was delightful to Lagardere.

Delightful, indeed, for the sake of his companion, whom he was so hot to save. Otherwise, Lagardere, so far as he had clearness enough to think coherently at all, thought that he had never lived, had never hoped to live, through moments so delightful. To be in the thick of such a brawl, to be fighting side by side with the best swordsman in all France against what might well be considered overwhelming odds, and to be working havoc and disaster among his antagonists, stirred Lagardere's blood more blithely than ripe wine. He had fought good fights before now, but never such a fight as this, in the black and dark night, with the dim air thick with hostile swords, and the night wind singing songs of battle in his ears. To live like this was to be very much alive; this had a zest denied to any calmly planned duello; this had a poetry fiercer and finer than the shock of action in the daylit lanes of war.

He called merrily to the bravos to renew their a.s.sault, but the bravos hung back discouraged; even the murder-zeal of aesop had flagged. Then, in an instant, the attacked became the attackers, on the impulse of Nevers.

Shouting anew the motto of his house, "I am here!" he leaped lightly over the rampart of hay, soliciting the swords of his foemen. Lagardere followed his example in an instant, and the pair now carried the war into the enemies' country, charging the staggered a.s.sa.s.sins, who scattered before them. Lagardere drove some half a dozen of the rogues, including Staupitz and the discomfited aesop, towards the bridge. Nevers, nearer to the castle, struck down in quick succession two of the ruffians that were rash enough to stand their ground, and stood for the moment alone and una.s.sailed, the master of his part of the field.

Noiselessly behind him the little postern of Caylus opened. Noiselessly two shadows emerged, both masked and both holding drawn swords. Though it was still all blackness under the walls of the castle, there was now a little light in the sky, where a pale moon swam like a golden ship through wave after wave of engulfing cloud. The pair paused for a moment, as if to make sure that indeed their auxiliaries were being routed. Then the foremost shadow glided quietly close to Nevers, where he stood flushed with victory.

"I am here!" Nevers cried, exulting, as he waved his conquering sword and looked in vain for an antagonist.

"I am here!" repeated the shadow behind him, mockingly, and thrust his weapon deep into the victor's side. Nevers reeled before the suddenness and sureness of the stroke, and fell on his knees to the ground with a great cry that startled Lagardere and stayed him in his triumph. Nevers, striving to rise, turned his face against his treacherous enemy, and seemed to recognize the shadow in spite of its masked visage.

"You!" he gasped--"you, for whom I would have given my life!"

"Well, I take it," the shadow whispered, grimly, and stabbed him again.

Nevers fell in a huddle to the earth, but he raised his dying breath in a cry.

"Help, Lagardere! help! Save the child! Avenge me!"

Then he died. Though the a.s.sa.s.sin stabbed again, he only stabbed a corpse. Lagardere, who was brooming his foes before him as a gardener brooms autumnal leaves from gra.s.s, had been arrested in his course by the first cry of the wounded Nevers. While he paused, his antagonists, rallying a little and heartened by their numbers, made ready for a fresh attack. Then, swiftly, came Nevers's last wild call for help, and Lagardere, with a great fear and a great fury in his heart, turned from the steps leading to the bridge and made to join his comrade. But the cl.u.s.tering swordsmen heard that cry, too, and found new courage in the sound. It meant that one of the demi-G.o.ds with whom, as it seemed, they were warring, was now no more than common clay, and that there was good hope of ending the other. They came together; they came upon Lagardere; they strove to stay him in his way. They might as well have tried to stay a hurricane. Lagardere beat them back, cut them down, and swept through their reeling line to the spot where Nevers was lying.

"I am here!" he shouted, and faced the masked shadow. "Murderer, you hide your face, but you shall bear my mark, that I may know you when we meet again."

The slayer of Nevers had stood on guard by the side of his victim when Lagardere came towards him. By his side the masked companion extended a cautious blade. In one wild second Lagardere beat down the slayer's sword and wounded the unknown man deeply on the wrist. The a.s.sa.s.sin's sword fell from his hand, and the a.s.sa.s.sin, with a cry of rage, retreated into the darkness. Lagardere had only time to brand the traitor; he had not the time to kill him. Looking swiftly about him, he saw that his vengeance must be patient if he were to save his skin from that shambles.

The sword of the satellite defended the master; other swords began to gleam anew. From all the quarters of that field of fight the bravos were gathering again, all there were left of them, and Lagardere was now alone. With the activity of the skilled acrobat he leaped backward to the cart, and, while he still faced his enemies and while his terrible sword glittered in ceaseless movement, he s.n.a.t.c.hed the child from the sheltering hay with his left hand, and, turning, began to run at his full speed towards the bridge. There were bravos in his path that thought to stay him, but they gave way before the headlong fury of his rush as if they believed him to be irresistible, and he reached the steps in safety.

Once there he turned again and raised his sword in triumph, while he cried, fiercely: "Nevers is dead! Long live Nevers!"

By now the galloping of horses sounded loud as immediate thunder, and even as Lagardere spoke a number of shadowy hors.e.m.e.n had occupied the bridge behind him, and those in the moat could see above them the glint of levelled muskets. The servant shadow held the postern open with a trembling hand to harbor the survivors of the strife. But the man that had killed Nevers, the man that Lagardere had branded, had still a hate to satisfy.

"A thousand crowns," he cried, "to the man who gets the child!"

Not a man of all the baffled a.s.sa.s.sins answered to that challenge.

Standing upon the steps of the bridge, Lagardere caught it up.

"Seek her behind my sword, a.s.sa.s.sin! You wear my mark, and I will find you out! You shall all suffer! After the lackeys, the master! Sooner or later Lagardere will come to you!"

IX

THE SCYTHE OF TIME

The years came and the years went, as had been their way since the fall of Troy and earlier. To the philosophic eye, surveying existence with the supreme wisdom of the initiate into mysteries, things changed but little through eons on the surface of the world, where men loved and hated, bred and slew, triumphed and failed, lorded and cringed as had been the way since the beginning, when the cave man that handled the heavier knuckle-bone ruled the roost. But to the unphilosophic eye of the majority of mankind things seemed to change greatly in a very little while; and it seemed, therefore, to the superficial, that many things had happened in France and in Paris during the seventeen years that had elapsed since the fight in the moat of Caylus.

To begin with, the great cardinal, the Red Man, the master of France, had dipped from his dusk to his setting, and was inurned, with much pomp and solemnity, as a great prince of the church should be, and the planet wheeled on its indifferent way, though Armand du Plessis, Cardinal de Richelieu, was no more. His Gracious Majesty Louis the Thirteenth, self-named Louis the Just, found himself, for the first time in his futile career, his own master, and did not know quite what to make of the privilege. He mourned the deceased statesman with one eye, as it were, while he ogled his belated G.o.ddess of freedom with the other. It might well be that she had paid too tardy a visit, but at least he would essay to trifle with her charms.

Many things had happened to the kingdom over which, for the first time, his Majesty the King held undivided authority since the night of Caylus fight. For one thing, by the cardinal's order, all the fortified castles in France had been dismantled, and many of them reduced to ruins, owl-haunted, lizard-haunted, ivy-curtained. This decree did not especially affect Caylus, which had long ceased to be a possible menace to the state, and, after the death of the grim old marquis, was rapidly falling into decay on its own account without aid from the ministers of Richelieu's will. For another thing, two very well-esteemed gentlemen of his Majesty's Musketeers, having been provoked by two other very well-esteemed gentlemen of his Eminence's Musketeers, had responded to the challenge with the habitual alacrity of that distinguished body, and had vindicated its superiority in swordcraft by despatching their antagonists. After this victory the gentlemen of the Musketeers, remembering the rigor of the cardinal's antipathy to duelling, made a vain effort to put some distance between them and the king's justice.

They were arrested in their flight, brought back to Paris, and perished miserably on the scaffold by the pointless sword of the executioner. Each of these events proved in its degree that Monsieur de Richelieu had very little respect for tradition, and that if he disliked an inst.i.tution, no matter how time-hallowed and admired by gentlemen, he did away with it in the most uncompromising and arbitrary manner. There were many other doings during the days of the cardinal's glory that are of no account in this chronicle, though they were vastly of importance to the people of France. But many things had happened that are of moment to this chronicle, and these, therefore, shall be set down as briefly as may be.

News did not travel, when the seventeenth century was still young, from one end of the kingdom to the other with any desperate rapidity. Even when the posts rode at a hand gallop, the long leagues took their long time to cover, and, after all, of most of the news that came to the capital from abroad and afar it was generally safe to disbelieve a full half, to discredit the third quarter, and to be justifiably sceptical as to the remaining portion. But, credible or incredible, all news is blown to Paris, as all roads lead to Rome, and in the fulness of time it got to be known in Paris that the Duke Louis de Nevers, the young, the beautiful, the brilliant, had come to his death in an extraordinary and horrible manner hard by the Spanish frontier, having been, as it seemed, deliberately butchered by a party of a.s.sa.s.sins employed, so it was said, by his father-in-law, the old Count of Caylus.

It was not difficult for the well-informed in Paris to credit the ign.o.ble rumor. The old feud between the house of Caylus, on the one hand, and the house of Nevers on the other, was familiar to those who made it their business to be familiar with the movements of high persons in high places; and when on the top of this inherited feud you had the secret marriage between the son of the house of Nevers and the daughter of the house of Caylus, there was every reason, at least, to believe in a b.l.o.o.d.y end to the business. There was, however, no jot of definite proof against the marquis. Nevers's dead body was found, indeed, in the neighborhood of the castle, with three sword wounds on it, one inflicted from the back and two from the front, but who inflicted or caused to be inflicted those wounds it was impossible to a.s.sert with knowledge, though it was easy enough to hazard a conjecture.

Anyway, Louis de Nevers was dead. It was amazing news enough for Paris, but there was more amazing news to follow. To begin with, Louis de Nevers's young wife was now formally recognized even by the old marquis as Louis de Nevers's young widow. It was true that there was no doc.u.mentary evidence of the marriage, but Prince Louis de Gonzague, who happened to be a guest of the Marquis de Caylus at the time of the murder, and who seemed little less than inconsolable for the death of his friend, came forward in the handsomest, gallantest fashion to give his evidence. He told how he and his faithful henchman Peyrolles had been the witnesses of the secret wedding. He succeeded in placating the wrath of the Marquis of Caylus. He succeeded in obtaining the sanction of the king, and, which was more important, the sanction of the cardinal, to the recognition of the marriage of Mademoiselle de Caylus with the late Duke Louis de Nevers. All this was thrilling news enough, but news more thrilling was to follow. The newly recognized d.u.c.h.ess of Nevers soon, to the astonishment and, at first, the blank incredulity of all hearers, took to herself a third name, and became Madame la Princesse de Gonzague.

There was soon no doubt about it. She had consented to marry, and had married, Prince Louis de Gonzague, who, as all the world knew, had been the closest friend of the dead Louis of Nevers with one exception, and that was Louis of Bourbon, that was King of France. People who talked of such things said, and in this they were generally inspired in some way, directly or indirectly, by friends of Prince Louis de Gonzague, that the Duke de Nevers had been murdered by an exiled captain of Light-Horse, who was little else than a professional bully, and who for some purpose or purposes of his own had, at the same time, succeeded in stealing the duke's infant daughter. What the reasons might be for this mysterious act of kidnapping they either were not able or did not choose always to explain. It was an undoubted fact that the late duke's daughter had disappeared, for the grief of the whilom d.u.c.h.ess de Nevers and present Princess de Gonzague was excessive for the loss of her child, and the efforts she made and the money she spent in the hope of finding some trace of her daughter were as useless as they were unavailing. It was also certain that on or about the time of the late duke's death a certain captain of Light-Horse, whose name some believed to be Henri de Lagardere, had fled in hot haste from Paris to save his audacious head from the outraged justice of the king for fighting a duel with a certain truculent Baron de Brissac and incontinently killing his man.

What connection there might be between these two events those that busied themselves in the matter left to the imagination and intelligence of their hearers, but after awhile few continued to busy themselves in the matter at all. Nevers was dead and forgotten. The fact that Nevers's daughter had been stolen was soon forgotten likewise by all save the man and the woman whom it most immediately concerned. Few troubled themselves to remember that the Princess de Gonzague had been for a brief season the d.u.c.h.ess de Nevers, and if Louis de Gonzague, whenever the tragic episode was spoken of, expressed the deepest regret for his lost heart's brother and the fiercest desire for vengeance upon his murderer or murderers, the occasions on which the tragic episode was referred to grew less year by year. Louis de Gonzague flourished; Louis de Gonzague lived in Paris in great state; Louis de Gonzague was the intimate, almost the bosom friend, of the king; for Louis of Bourbon, having lost one of the two Louis whom he loved, seemed to have a double portion of affection to bestow upon the survivor. If Louis de Gonzague did not himself forget any of the events connected with a certain night in the moat of Caylus; if he kept emissaries employed in researches in Spain, emissaries whose numbers dwindled dismally and mysteriously enough in the course of those researches, he spoke of his recollections to no one, save perhaps occasionally to that distinguished individual, Monsieur Peyrolles, who shared his master's confidences as he shared his master's rise in fortunes. For Monsieur Peyrolles knew as well as his master all about that night at Caylus seventeen years before, and could, if he chose--but he never did choose--have told exactly how the Duke de Nevers came to his death, and how the child of Nevers disappeared, and how it was that the battered survivors of a little army of bravos had been overawed by the muskets of a company of Free Companions. He could have told how seven gentlemen that were named Staupitz, Faenza, Saldagno, Pepe, Pinto, Joel, and aesop had been sent to dwell and travel in Spain at the free charges of Prince Louis de Gonzague, with the sole purpose of finding a man and a child who so far had not been found, though it was now seventeen years since the hounds had been sent a-hunting.

But though a year may seem long in running, it runs to its end, and seventeen years, as any school-boy will prove to you, take only seventeen times the length of one year to wheel into chaos. So these seventeen years had been and had ceased to be, and it was again summer-time, when many people travelled from many parts of the world for the pleasure of visiting Paris, and some of those travellers happened to come from Spain.