Roger, on the other hand, should have been content. He should have been more than satisfied, as an hour later he rode beside her down the river valley to the chapel beside the ford, and thence to the open country about Villeneuve. For if things were still dark, there was a prospect of light. A few hours earlier he had despaired; he had seen no means of saving the woman he adored, save at the expense of his own life. Now he had hope and a chance, now he had prospects, now he might look, if fortune favoured him, to be her escort into safety before the sun rose again.
Surely, then, he should have been content; yet he was not. Not even when after a journey of four hours the two, having passed Villeneuve, gained without misadventure the summit of that hill on the scarped side of which the Countess had met with her first misfortune. From that point, they and the two armed servants who followed them could look down upon the wide green valley that framed the town of Vlaye, and that, somewhat lower, opened into the wide plain of the Dronne. They could discern the bridge over the river; they could almost count the red roofs of the small town that crept up from the water to the coronet of grey walls and towers that crowned all. Those walls and towers basking in the sunshine were the eyrie that lorded it over leagues of country seen and unseen-the hawk's nest, the plebis flagellum, as the old chronicler has it. They might, in sight of those towers, count the preliminaries over and all but the supreme risk run.
For quite easily they might have fallen in with Vlaye's people on the road and been taken; or with M. de Vlaye himself, and with that there had been an end of the plan. But they had escaped these dangers. And yet Roger was not content; still he rode with a gloomy brow and pinched lips. The longer he thought of his sister's plan, the more he suspected and the less he liked it. There was in it a little which he did not understand, and more which he understood too well. His sister and M. de Vlaye! He hated the collocation; he hated to think that she must be left, willingly and by her own act, in the adventurer's power; and this at a moment when disappointment would aggravate a temper tried by the attack on him and by the part which the Vicomte had played in it. On what did she depend for her safety, for her honour, for all that she put wantonly at stake? On his respect? His friendship? Or his love?
"I will take her place," she had said. Could it be that she was willing, that she desired, to take it altogether? Was she, after the rebuffs, after the scornful and contumelious slight which M. de Vlaye had put upon her, willing still to seek him, willing still to be in his power?
It seemed so. Certainly it could not be denied that she was seeking him, and that he, her brother, was escorting her. In that light people would look upon his action.
The thought stung him, and he halted midway on the woodland track that descended the farther side of the hill. His face wore a mixture of shame and appeal-with ill-humour underlying both. "See here, Odette," he said abruptly, "I do not see the end of this."
Though she raised her eyebrows contemptuously, a faint tinge of colour crept into her face.
"I thought," she replied, "that the end was to save this little fool who is too weak to save herself!"
"But you?"
"Oh, for me?" contemptuously. "Take no heed of me. I am of other stuff, and can manage my own affairs."
"You think so," he retorted. "But the Captain of Vlaye, he, too, is of other stuff."
"Do you fancy I am afraid of M. de Vlaye?" she answered. And her eyes flashed scorn on him. "You may be! You should be!" with a glance which marked his deformity and stabbed the sense of it deep into his heart. "How should you be otherwise, seeing that in no circumstances could you be a match for him! But I? I say again that I am of other stuff."
"All the same," he muttered darkly, "I would not go on-"
"Would not go on?" she retorted in mockery. "Not with your sweet Countess in danger? Not with the dear light of your eyes in Vlaye's arms? Not go on? Oh, brave lover! Oh, brave man! Not go on, and your Countess, your pretty Countess-"
"Be silent!" he cried. She stung him to rage.
"Ah! We go back then?"
But he could not face that, he could not say yes to that; and, defeated, he turned in dumb sullen anger and resumed the road.
Necessarily the danger of arrest increased as they approached the town. The last mile, which brought them to the bridge over the river, was traversed under the eyes of the castle; it would not have surprised Roger had they been met and stopped long before they came to the town gate. But the Captain of Vlaye, it seemed, held the danger still remote, and troubled his followers with few precautions. The place lay drowsing in the late heat of the summer afternoon. It was still as the dead, and though their approach was doubtless seen and noted, no one issued forth or challenged them. Even the men who lounged in the shade of the low-browed archway-that still bore the scutcheon of its ancient lords-contented themselves with a long stare and a sulky salute. The bridge passed, a narrow street paved and steep, and overhung by ancient houses of brick and timber, opened before them. It led upwards in the direction of the castle, but after pursuing it in single file some fifty paces, the Abbess turned from it into a narrow lane that brought them in a bow-shot-for the town was very small-to the wall again. This was their present destination. For crowded into an angle of the wall under the shadow of one of the old brick watch-towers stood the chapel and cell that owned the lax rule of M. de Vlaye's chaplain, Father Benet.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE CASTLE OF VLAYE
Roger had little faith in the priest's power, and less in his willingness to aid them. But at worst he was not to be kept in suspense. By good luck, Father Benet was walking at the moment of their arrival in his potherb garden. As they dismounted, they espied the Father peeping at them between the tall sunflowers and budding hollyhocks; his ruddy face something dismayed and fallen, and his mien that of a portly man caught in the act of wrong-doing. Finding himself detected, he came forward with an awkward show of joviality.
"Welcome, sister," he said. "There is naught the matter at the Abbey, I trust, that I see you thus late in the day?"
"No, the matter is here," the Abbess replied, with a look in her eyes that told him she knew all. "And we are here to see about it. Let us in, Father. The time is short, for at any moment your master" – she indicated the castle by a gesture-"may hear of our arrival and send for us."
"I am sure," the priest answered glibly, "that anything that I can do for you, sister-"
She cut him short. "No words, no words, but let us in!" she said sharply. And when with pursed lips and a shrug of resignation he had complied, and they stood in the cool stone-floored room-communicating by an open door with the chapel-in which he received his visitors, she came with the same abruptness to the point.
"At what hour are you going up to the castle?" she asked.
He tried to avoid her eyes. "To the castle?" he repeated.
"Ay," she said, watching him keenly. "To the castle. Are there more castles than one? Or first, when were you there last, Father?"
His look wandered, full of calculation. "Last?" he said. "When was I at the castle last?"
"The truth! The truth!" she cried impatiently.
He chid her, but with a propitiatory smile akin to those which the augurs exchanged. "Sister! Sister!" he said. "Nil nisi verum clericus! I was there no more than an hour back."
"And got your orders? And got your orders, I suppose?" she repeated with rude insistence. "Out with it, Father. I see that you are no more easy than I am!"
He flung out his hands in sudden abandonment. "God knows I am not!" he said. "God knows I am not! And that is the truth, and I am not hiding it. God knows I am not! But what am I to do? He is a violent man-you know him! – and I am a man of peace. I must do his will or go. And I am better than nothing! I may" – there was a whine in his voice-"I may do some good still. You know that, sister. I may do some good. I baptise. I bury. But if I go, there is no one."
"And if you go, you are no one," she answered keenly. "For your suffragan has you in no good favour, I am told. So that if you go you happen on but a sackcloth welcome. So it is said, Father. I know not if it be said truly."
"Untruly! Untruly!" he protested earnestly. "He has never found fault with me, sister, on good occasion. But I have enemies, all men have enemies-"
"You are like to make more," Roger struck in, with a dark look.
The priest wrung his hands. "I know! I know!" he said. "He carries it too highly. Too highly! They say that he has caught the King's governor now, and has him in keeping there."
"It is true."
"Well, I have warned him; he cannot say I have not!"
"And what said he to your warning?" the Abbess asked with a sneer.
"He threatened me with the stirrup leathers."
"And you are now to marry him?"
He turned a shade paler. "You know it?" he gasped.
"I know it, but not the time," she answered. And as he hesitated, silent and appalled, "Come," she continued, "the truth, Father. And then I will tell you what I am going to do."
"At sunset," he muttered, "I am to be there."
"Good," she said. "Now we know. Then you will go up an hour earlier. And I shall go with you."
He protested feebly. He knew something of that which had gone before, something of her history, something of her passion for the Captain of Vlaye; and he was sure that she was not bent on good. "I dare not!" he said, "I dare not, sister! You ask too much."
"Dare not what?" the Abbess retorted, bending her handsome brows in wrath. "Dare not go one hour earlier?"
"But you-you want to go?"
"If I go with you, what is that to you?"
"But-"
"But what, Father, but what?"
"You want something of me?" he faltered. He was not to be deceived. "Something dangerous, I know it!"
"I want your company to the door of the room where she lies," the Abbess replied. "That is all. You have leave to visit her? Do not" – overwhelming him with swift fierce words-"deny it. Do not tell me that you have not! Think you I do not know you, Father? Think you I do not know how well you are with him, how late you sit with him, how deep you drink with him, when he lacks better company? And that this-though you are frightened now, and would fain be clear of it, knowing who she is-is the thing which you have vowed to do for him a hundred times and a hundred times to that, if it would help him!"
"Never! Never!" he protested, paler than before.
"Father," she retorted, stooping forward and speaking low, "be warned. Be warned! Get you a foot in the other camp while you may! You are over-well fed for the dry crust and the sack bed of the bishop's prison! You drink too much red wine to take kindly to the moat puddle! And that not for months, but for years and years! Have you not heard of men who lay forgotten, ay, forgotten even by their gaoler at last, until they starved in the bishop's prison? The bishop's prison, Father!" she continued cruelly. "Who comes out thence, but the rats, and they fat? Who comes out thence-"
"Don't! Don't!" the priest cried, his complexion mottled, his flabby cheeks trembling with fear of the thing which her words called up, with fear of the thing that had often kept him quaking in the night hours. "You will not do it?"
"I?" she answered drily. "No, not I perhaps. But is a Countess of Rochechouart to be abducted so lightly, or so easily? Has she so few friends? So poor a kindred? A cousin there is, I think-my lord Bishop of Comminges-who has one of those very prisons. And, if I mistake not, she has another cousin, who is in Flanders now, but will know well how to avenge her when he returns."
"What is it you want me to do?" he faltered.
"Go with me to her door-that I may gain admission. Then, whether you go to him or not, your silence, for one half-hour."
"You will not do her any harm?" he muttered.
"Fool, it is to do her good I am here."
"And that is all? You swear it?"
"That is all."
He heaved a deep sigh. "I will do it," he said. He wiped his brow with the sleeve of his cassock. "I will do it."
"You are wise," she replied, "and wise in time, Father, for it is time we went. The sun is within an hour of setting." Then, turning to Roger, who had never ceased to watch the priest as a cat watches a mouse, "The horses may wait in the lane or where you please," she said. "They are hidden from the castle where they stand, and perhaps they are best there. In any case" – with a meaning glance-"I return to this spot. Expect me in half an hour. After that, the rest is for you to contrive. I wash my hands of it."
The words in which he would have assented stuck in the lad's throat. He could not speak. She turned again to the priest. "One moment and I am ready," she said. "Have you a mirror?"
"A mirror?" he exclaimed in astonishment.
"But of course you have not," she replied. She looked about her an instant, then with a quick step she passed through the doorway into the chapel. There her eye had caught a polished sheet of brass, recording in monkish Latin the virtues of that member of the old family who had founded this "Capella extra muros," as ancient deeds style it. She placed herself before the tablet, and paying as little heed to her brother or the priest-though they were within sight-as to the sacred emblems about her, or the scene in which she stood, she cast back her hood, and drew from her robes a small ivory case. From this she took a morsel of sponge, and a tiny comb, also of ivory; and with water taken from the stoup beside the door, she refreshed her face, and carefully recurled the short ringlets upon her forehead. With a pencil drawn from the same case, she retouched her eyelashes and the corners of her eyes, and with deft fingers she straightened and smoothed the small ruff about her neck. Finally, with no less care, she drew the hood of her habit close round her face, and after turning herself about a time or two before the mirror went back to the others. They had not taken their eyes off her.
"Come," she said. And she led the way out without a second word, passed by the waiting horses and the servants, and, attended by the reluctant Father, walked at a gentle pace along the lane towards the main street.
The priest went in fear, his stout legs trembling under him. But until the two reached a triangular open space, graced by an Italian fountain, and used, though it sloped steeply, for a market site, the street they pursued was not exposed to view from the castle. Above the marketplace, however, the road turned abruptly to the left, and, emerging from the houses, ascended between twin mounds, of which the nearer bore the castle, and the other, used on occasion as a tilt-yard, was bare. The road ascended the gorge between the two, then wound about, this time to the right, and gained the summit of the unoccupied breast; whence, leaping its own course by a drawbridge, it entered the grey stronghold that on every other side looked down from the brow of a precipice-here on the clustering roofs of the town, and there, and there again, on the wide green vale and silvery meanders of the Dronne.
Looking to the south, where the valley opened into a plain, the eye might almost discern Coutras-that famous battlefield that lies on the Dronne bank. Northward it encountered the wooded hills beyond which lay Villeneuve, and the town of Barbesieux on the great north road, and the plain towards Angoulême. Fairer eyrie, or stronger, is scarce to be found in the width of three provinces.
Until they came to the market-place the Abbess and her unwilling companion had little to fear unless they met M. de Vlaye himself. As far as others were concerned, Father Benet's coarse, plump face, albeit less ruddy than ordinary, was warrant enough to avert both suspicion and inquiry. But thence onwards they walked in full view not only of the lounge upon the ramparts which the Captain of Vlaye most affected at the cool hour, but of a dozen lofty casements from any one of which an officious sentry or a servant might mark their approach and pass word of it. Father Benet pursued this path as one under fire. The sun was low, but at its midday height it had not burned the stout priest more than the fancied fury of those eyes. The sweat poured down his face as he climbed and panted and crossed himself in a breath.
"Believe me, you are better here than in the bishop's prison," his companion said, to cheer him.
"But he will see us from the ramparts," he groaned, not daring to look up and disprove the fact. "He will see us! He will meet us at the gate."
"Then it will be my affair," the Abbess answered.
"We are mad-stark, staring mad!" he protested.
"You were madder to go back," she said.
He looked at her viciously, as if he wished her dead. Fortunately they had reached the narrow defile under the bridge, and a feverish longing to come to an end of the venture took place of all other feelings in the priest's breast. Doggedly he panted up the Tilt Mound, as it was called, and passed three or four groups of troopers, who were taking the air on their backs or playing at games of chance. Thence they crossed the drawbridge. The iron-studded doors, with their clumsy grilles, above which the arms of the old family still showed their quarterings, stood open; but in the depths of the low-browed archway, where the shadows were beginning to gather, lounged a dozen rogues whose insolent eyes the Abbess must confront.
But she judged, and rightly, that the priest's company would make that easy which she could not have compassed so well alone, though she might have won entrance. The men, indeed, were surprised to see her, and stared; some recognised her with respect, others with grins half-knowing, half-insolent. But no one stepped forward or volunteered to challenge her entrance. And although a wit, as soon as her back was turned, hummed and another muttered, "Oh, la, la, the bridesmaid!" with a wink at his fellows, they were soon clear of the gate and the starers, and crossing the wide paved court, that, bathed in quiet light, was pervaded none the less by an air of subdued expectation. Here a man cleaned a horse or his harness, there a group chatted on the curb of the well; here a white-capped cook showed himself, and there, beside the entrance, a couple teased the brown bear that inhabited the stone kennel, and on high days made sport for the Captain of Vlaye's dogs.
"Je suis amoureuse,Malheureuse,J'ai perdu mon galant!"Vlaye's quarters and those of his household and officers lay in the wing on the left, which overlooked the town; his men were barracked and the horses stabled in the opposite wing. The fourth side, facing the entrance, was open, but was occupied by a garden raised two steps above the court and separated from it, first by a tall railing of curiously wrought iron, and secondly by a row of clipped limes, whose level wall of foliage hid the pleasaunce from the come-and-go of the vulgar.
The Abbess knew the place intimately, and she felt no surprise when the Father, in place of making for the common doorway on the left, which led into M. de Vlaye's wing, bore across the open to the floriated iron gates of the garden. He passed through these and turned to the left along the cool green lime walk, which was still musical with the hum of belated bees.
"She is in the demoiselles' wing then?" the Abbess murmured. She had occupied those rooms herself on more than one occasion. They opened by a door on the garden and enjoyed a fair and airy outlook over the Dronne. As she recalled them and the memories they summoned up her features worked.
"Where else should she be-short of this evening?" Father Benet answered, with full knowledge of the sting he inflicted. Her secret was no secret from him. "But I need come no farther," he added, pausing awkwardly.
"To the door," she answered firmly. "To the door! That is the bargain."
"Well, we are there," he said, halting when he had taken another dozen paces, which brought them to the door in the garden end of the left wing. "Now, I will retire by your leave, sister."
"Knock!"
He complied with a faltering hand, and the moment he had done so he turned to flee, as if the sound terrified him. But with an unexpected movement she seized his wrist in her strong grasp, and though he stammered a remonstrance, and even resisted her weakly, she held him until the opening door surprised them.
A grim-faced woman looked out at them. "To see the Countess," the Abbess muttered. Then to the priest, as she released him, "I shall not be more than ten minutes, Father," she continued. "You will wait for me, perhaps. Until then!"
She nodded to him after a careless, easy fashion, and the door closed on her. In the half-light of the passage within, which faded tapestry and a stand of arms relieved from utter bareness, the woman who had admitted her faced her sourly. "You have my lord's leave?" she asked suspiciously.
"Should I be here without it?" the Abbess retorted in her proudest manner. "Be speedy, and let me to her. My lord will not be best pleased if the priest be kept waiting."
"No great matter that," the woman muttered rebelliously. But having said it she led the visitor up the stairs and ushered her into the well-remembered room. It was a spacious, pleasant chamber, with a view of the garden, and beyond the garden of the widening valley spread far beneath. Nothing of the prison-house hung about it, nor was it bare or coldly furnished.
The woman did not enter with her, but the gain was not much. For the Abbess had no sooner crossed the threshold than she discovered a second gaoler. This was a young waiting-woman, who, perched on a stool within the door, sat eyeing her prisoner with something of pity and more of ill-humour. The little Countess, indeed, was a pitiful sight. She lay, half-crouching, half-huddled together, in the recess of the farther window, on the seat of which she hid her face in the abandonment of despair. Her loosened hair flowed dishevelled upon her neck and shoulders; and from minute to minute a dry, painful sob-for she was not weeping-shook the poor child from head to foot.
The Abbess, after one keen glance, which took in every particular, from the waiting-woman's expression to the attitude of the captive, nodded to the attendant. Then for a moment she did not speak. At last, "She takes it ill?" she muttered under her breath.
The other slightly shrugged her shoulders. "She has been like that since he left her," she whispered. Whether the words and the movement expressed more pity, or more contempt, or more envy, it was hard to determine; for all seemed to meet in them. "She could not take it worse."
"I am here to mend that," the Abbess rejoined. And she moved a short way into the room. But there she came to a stand. Her eyes had fallen on a pile of laces and dainty fabrics arranged upon one of the seats of the nearer window. Her face underwent a sudden change; she seemed about to speak, but the words stuck in her throat. At last "Those are for her?" she said.
"Ay, but God knows how I am to get them on," the girl answered in a low tone. "She is such a baby! But there it is! Whatever she is now, she'll be mistress to-morrow, and I-I am loath to use force."
"I will contrive it," the Abbess replied, a light in her averted eyes. "Do you leave us. Come back in a quarter of an hour, and if I have succeeded take no notice. Take no heed, do you hear," she continued, turning to the girl, "if you find her dressed. Say nothing to her, but let her be until she is sent for."
"I am only too glad to let her be."
"That is enough," the Abbess rejoined sternly. "You can go now. Already the time is short for what I have to do."
"You will find it too short, my lady, unless I am mistaken," the waiting-woman answered under her breath. But she went. She was glad to escape; glad to get rid of the difficulty. And she went without suspicion. How the other came to be there, or how her interest lay in arraying this child for a marriage with her lover-these were questions which the girl proposed to put to her gossips at a proper opportunity; for they were puzzling questions. But that the Abbess was there without leave-the Abbess who not a month before had been frequently in Vlaye's company, hawking and hunting, and even supping-to the scandal of the convent, albeit no strait-laced one nor unwont to make allowance for its noble mistresses-that the Abbess was there without the knowledge of her master she never suspected. It never for an instant entered the woman's mind.
