Chapter XXXIV

As the night fell over Liége, a night sombre and dark, and with no stars beginning to twinkle above, Bevill Bracton turned away from his accustomed place at the embrasure of the room that was his prison, while wondering how many more days and nights would pass over his head ere he left this place for freedom--of one kind or another. For the days had followed each other in weary rotation--he had, indeed, lost count of them now, and, except for the continuous clanging of all the bells on Sundays, and a question sometimes asked of the warder who brought his meals, he scarce recollected what period of each week he had arrived at. Nay, more, except that he had rigorously forced himself to scratch a mark each day with his nail on the rough, whitewashed wall, he could not have told whether he had been there a month or two months. There was nothing but the absence of the swallows that had built under the eaves, the deepening of the russet on the leaves of the trees outside, and then the fall of the leaves, the increasing chill of the room in which he had been so long incarcerated and the shortening of the days, to tell him of the progress of time.

De Violaine had come to him no more. He had been left entirely to himself, except for the visits of that one man, the soldier, who acted as his gaoler.

Nor did he see or hear aught outside that could relieve the weariness of his existence. Alone, morning after morning, he observed the soldiers driving up the mules laden with bread and vegetables for the supply of all in the Citadel, while, also, morning after morning, he perceived that the loads on the backs of the animals became more scanty and that the peasants, who came with their baskets when he was first brought here, came no more now. Whereby he knew that, gradually, the provisions of the locality were giving out, or that--and each morning and night he prayed it might be so--the Allies must be drawing closer and closer round the French lines, and that either they or his own countrymen were approaching. For a week now he had also noticed that the rations brought to him had become more and more scanty, and that, when his gaoler had placed them before him he had done so with a surly look which might have been intended for an apology for their meagreness, or, on the other hand, as one intended to suggest that, at this time, the fewer unnecessary mouths there were to feed the better for the others. Not knowing, however, what the man's looks might truly mean, he made no observation on the sparseness of the meals now supplied him, to which, in absolute fact, he was utterly indifferent.

As, however, on this dark, early autumn night Bevill turned away from the deep window to cast himself on his pallet, neither bedclothes nor light having ever been supplied him since his detention, he heard voices speaking below on the stone courtyard which was between the wall of the fortress itself and the gate known as the Porte de la Ville. And not only did he hear those voices, but, on turning his eyes back towards the window, he saw the reflection of some light cast upon the upper part of the embrasure. A moment later, and even before he could return to the window to glance below, he heard the sound of planks and boards being cast down upon the stones.

"The Allies must be near," he whispered to himself, "very near. And their presence is known. Some further protection against them is about to be undertaken, something is to be erected, perhaps to shield or obscure the defenders. Some mantlets, it may be."

Then, his heart stirred, his pulses beating at the hopes that had sprung to his breast; the hopes that even now, at the eleventh hour, the chance of escape, of rescue, was at hand, Bevill glanced towards the stone courtyard again.

The soldiers below were, he saw, undoubtedly about to raise some erection with the planks and boards they had brought into the courtyard. Yet, to the mind of the prisoner above, who, in his time, had not only taken part in sieges but had himself on more than one occasion been besieged in some strong fortress or town of the Netherlands, it did not appear that either mantlet or temporary shield against sharpshooters of the enemy was about to be erected.

Instead, four large stones, each forming the corner of a square, had been removed from the earth below, and easily removed, too, as though this was not the first time they had been subjected to the process.

A moment later, in the spots those stones had occupied four short posts had taken their place, while, next, two other stones were removed in the middle of the square space. A second later a platform, itself a square of about eight feet, had been lifted on to the top of those posts and was being nailed down to them at each corner.

"I misdoubt me of what it is they do," Bevill murmured to himself as he saw this, while now the warm glow, the throb, the tremor of happy anticipation that had sprung to his heart but a few moments ago ebbed from it, leaving in its place a chill as of ice, one that he thought must be as the chill of death.

"Ah!" he gasped now. "Ah! It is so. That tells all."

For the soldiers, still working steadily below, had lifted first one piece of framework and then another--two long posts that, in their way, resembled signal posts at crossroads--on to the wooden platform, had thrust the lower ends through it into the two holes last left empty, and had gradually fitted them into the vacant spaces.

As now those things stood there towering some eight feet above the platform, he almost reeled back into the embrasure. For it needed nothing more, it needed no rope thrown over the cross-beams that, illumined alone in the dusky light by the flare of the torches which burnt flickeringly in the night air, seemed like some ghastly hands pointing the sombre road to death--to tell him that they were gibbets awaiting their victims.

"The hour is at hand," he whispered. "At dawn to-morrow if not now, I--" then suddenly he paused. "No, no," he exclaimed a moment later. "Not I! Neither of them is for me. My hour is not yet. They are for those others--Francbois, Stuven. My death is to be more noble or, at least, less ignominious. 'Tis true. There is still a chance for me--a chance for life. For her. For our love and happiness together."

Yet in an instant Bevill knew that he had spoken too soon.

As still he gazed below, fascinated by the sight of those awful, hideous things, he saw the man who was in command of this party, a sergeant of the dragoons of Risbourg, look round the courtyard as though in search of something. Next, he saw him advance towards the farther wall, while evidently counting his footsteps as he did so. Then, having touched the wall, he recounted them backwards, stopped two paces short of the spot whence he had before started, and, taking a chisel out of the hand of one of the others, stooped down and scratched a long line on the stones. After which he returned to the wall, made some other rough scratchings on it at about the height of a man's head, and, pointing his hand at the mark on the stones and afterwards at that on the wall, said something to the soldier which, naturally, Bevill could not hear.

Not hear! Nay, what hearing was necessary--to him, a soldier; to him who had ere now seen the place marked out where a condemned man was to stand while, at another place, the spot was marked where the platoon that should despatch him was to be drawn up! A million words uttered trumpet-tongued could have told him no more than those significant actions of the dragoon had done.

Now that Bevill knew the worst all tremors, all trepidations were gone, even as every warm glow of hope was gone too. The end was close at hand, and he knew it. Therefore, all bitterness was past. He was a soldier, he told himself, an Englishman who had faced thousands of bullets: a dozen could not fright him now.

Calmly, as though watching curiously the actions of strangers who interested him but disturbed him not at all, he leant against the window frame looking down at the preparations for his death and that of the others. Counting indifferently, too, the distance between the scratches on the stones and those on the wall, and endeavouring to decide whether the muzzles of the muskets would be fourteen or sixteen paces from his heart as the soldiers presented them!

Then, suddenly, he saw the men below draw themselves up stiffly to an attitude of attention, and perceived that De Violaine, enveloped in a long blue cavalry cloak, had entered the courtyard, and was regarding the scaffold. Also, he appeared to be giving some directions about one of the gallows supports, judging by the manner in which he pointed with his gloved hand to it and by the fact that, a moment later, one of the men mounted the scaffold and began to make the post more firm in the socket below it. Next, De Violaine gazed at the marks on the stones and on the wall, after which he shrugged his shoulders, said a word to the sergeant, and turned away and left the place. The moment he was gone Bevill saw that the soldiers had gathered round the sergeant and seemed to be asking him questions, and that they all gesticulated earnestly.

"It will be to-morrow, at dawn," he said to himself as he saw the men retiring with the almost burnt-out torches in their hands, leaving the courtyard in darkness. "To-morrow. Ah! I have still six hours or so left," as now he heard the clock of St. Lambert boom out ten over the city--the clock he had grown so accustomed to listening to--and listening for--during his long period of imprisonment. "Six hours in which to make my peace with God, to humbly fit myself to go before Him. Hours in which to pray for her who sits at home wondering what may have befallen me and whether I live or am dead and gone before her."

For now, as his hour of death drew near, his thoughts turned not to the girl whom he had but lately known and learnt to love, but to his grey-haired mother whose love had been his from the moment of his birth; at whose knees he had learned to lisp his first prayer.

Yet still there was not absent from his mind the stately form, the beautiful face of Sylvia--the latter ever present to him as he had seen it last--bedashed with tears and piteous in its sorrow. Of her he could think, too, and would think as the order to the platoon was given, as the flints fell, and, a second later, the bullets found his heart.

"Sylvia! Mother!" he murmured. "The two I had in the world to love me and to love; the two who will mourn my end. The one but for a short time, since now she is grown old and feeble; but the other--ah! God, it may be for years."

In the darkness he had reached his pallet, intent on casting himself on his knees by it and so passing his last few hours--later, there would be a long sleep!--when he heard a sound he had grown well accustomed to in the last few weeks--the sound of a soldier's tread, of the keys jangling in his hand as he came on.

"Is it now?" Bevill whispered. "Now? At once? If so, be brave. A soldier. And--remember. Their names the last upon your lips, their memories the last in your thoughts."

A moment later the key grated in the lock, the door was opened, and a soldier bearing a flambeau came in accompanied by De Violaine.

"Set down the light," the latter said, "place it in the socket and leave us." After which, and when the man was gone, De Violaine advanced towards where Bevill stood and said quietly, yet while seeming to brace himself to speak:

"Means were found to communicate with M. Tallard."

"Ah!"

"To summon him to our assistance. He has not come, but----"

"I understand," Bevill said, instantly, divining the remainder of what the other would say; "I have seen the preparations made below. The warrants are signed. Is it?" he asked calmly, "to be now or at dawn?"

"It had to be done, no matter what pity, what sympathy you aroused. In the position that all who judged you stood, they had to be inflexible in their honour, in their duty."

"I need hear no more. Yet, my time is short. I would spend it alone."

"Do not misunderstand me. The warrants are signed but a message has come from--from De Boufflers--that overrides those warrants. A message has been brought by a swift, a willing messenger--one who would speak with you."

Utterly bewildered, yet with once more that mad rush of joy to his heart as he comprehended that the Marshal's message nullified the signed warrant of his subordinate; that, for a time at least, his life was safe, Bevill could scarcely understand clearly De Violaine's latter words, nor, as a matter of fact, his halting manner and strange agitation. Yet one thing alone he did understand, namely, that De Violaine seemed to suppose some self-extenuation to be necessary in regard to the inflexibility of which he had spoken--an extenuation for which, in truth, Bevill himself saw no occasion, remembering De Violaine's position and the position in which he, by his own actions, had placed himself.

But now he found his voice; his words fell pell-mell over each other as he said:

"I am bewildered. I--I--the suddenness of this reprieve, even though it be no more, has dulled my senses. I cannot understand. A messenger here from Le Maréchal de Boufflers--to me--a condemned spy! Brought by a swift, a willing messenger."

"A messenger, now a prisoner like yourself!"

"In mercy, I beseech you explain--" But he stopped. For, even as De Violaine uttered these last words, he went towards the door and returned a moment later, leading a woman by the hand--a woman who was wrapped in a long _houppelande_, or lady's riding cloak, but who, since the furred hood was thrown back from her face, was a moment later clasped to Bevill's heart.

* * * * * * *

"I am in time. Thank God, thank God," Sylvia had said again and again after that fond embrace, and when now they were alone, or comparatively alone, since De Violaine had departed as those two met, though leaving the turnkey outside in the corridor and also leaving the door open--open because, it may be, of what he knew was now going on outside the city. Because, if all happened as he feared, those locked within the cells or rooms of that Citadel would soon have very little chance of leaving them alive. Marlborough was within three miles of Liége; already the magistracy and the commissioners of the Cathedral chapter were arranging to deliver up the city to him, and St. Walburgh had been set on fire by the French garrison. Already, too, De Violaine had been summoned by the advance portion of Marlborough's army to surrender, but had replied that "it would be time enough to consider that when their provisions were exhausted, six weeks hence."

"My love, my love," Sylvia murmured. "I have saved you--you who would have died to save me--you who strove so valiantly."

"And failed! Yet did not fail either, since are not you, my sweet, the gain of a loss?"

"Also another reward is yours. Lord Marlborough restores you to the life you covet, the life that I would have you lead, except only for one thing."

"One thing. What, Sylvia?"

"That, following this life, I must part from you; must let you go from my side. You whom I would have ever near to me, you from whom I would never part more, you whom I love with my whole heart and soul."