My Lady Rotha: A Romance. Weyman Stanley John

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СКАЧАТЬ permitted it. I hastened to suggest that, the castle being safe, the better plan was to wait, keeping on our guard, and see what happened; which, indeed, seemed also to be the only course open to us.

      My lady saw this and agreed; I withdrew, to spend the rest of the day in a feverish march between the one gate and the other. We could muster no more than twelve effective men, including the Waldgrave; and though these might suffice for the bare defence of the place, which had only two assailable points, the paucity of our numbers kept me in perpetual fear. I knew my lady's proud nature so well that I dreaded humiliation for her as I might have feared death for another; with a terror which made the possibility of her capture by the malcontents a misery to me, a nightmare which would neither let me rest nor sleep.

      My lord soon recovered his spirits. In an hour or two he was as buoyant and cheerful as before, dividing the blame of the contretemps between Fraulein Anna and myself, and hinting that if he had been left to manage the matter, the guilty would have suffered, and Dietz not gone scot-free. But I trembled. I did not see how we could be surprised; I thought it improbable that the townsfolk would try to effect anything against us; impossible that they should succeed. Yet, when the stern swell of one of Luther's hymns rose from the town at sunset, and I remembered how easily men's hearts were inflamed by those strains; and again, when a huge bonfire in the market-place dispelled the night, and for hours kept the town restless and waking, I shuddered, fearing I knew not what. I will answer for it, my lady, who never ceased to wear a cheerful countenance, did not sleep that night one half so ill as I.

      And yet I was caught napping. A little before daybreak, when all was quiet, I went to take an hour's rest. I had lain down, and, as far as I could judge later, had just fallen into a doze, when a tremendous shock, which made the very walls round me tremble, drew me to my feet as if a giant hand had plucked me from the bed. A crashing sound, mingled with the shiver of falling glass, filled the air. For a few seconds I stood trembling and bewildered in the middle of the room-in the state of disorder natural to a man rudely awakened. I could not on the instant collect myself or comprehend what had happened. Then, in a flash, the fears of the day returned to my mind, and springing to the door, half-dressed as I was, I ran down to the courtyard.

      Some of the servants were already there, a white-cheeked, panic-stricken group of men and women intermixed; but, for a moment, I could get no answer to my questions. All spoke at once, none knew. Then-it was just growing light-from the direction of the stable-gate a man came running out of the dusk with a half-pike on his shoulder.

      'Quick!' he cried. 'This way, give me a musket.'

      'What is it?' I answered, seizing him by the arm.

      'They have blown up the bridge-the bridge over the ravine!' he replied, panting. 'Quick, a gun! A part is left, and they are hacking it down!'

      In a moment I saw all. 'To your posts!' I shouted. 'And the women into the house! See to the wicket-gate, Jacob, and do not leave it!' Then I sprang into the guardhouse and snatched down a carbine, three or four of which hung loaded in the loops. The sentry who had brought the news seized another, and we ran together through the stable court and to the gate, four or five of the servants following us.

      Elsewhere it was growing light. Here a thick cloud of smoke and dust still hung in the air, with a stifling reek of powder. But looking through one of the loopholes in the gate, I was able to discern that the farther end of the bridge which spanned the ravine was gone-or gone in part. The right-hand wall, with three or four feet of the roadway, still hung in air, but half a dozen men, whose figures loomed indistinctly through a haze of dust and gloom, were working at it furiously, demolishing it with bars and pickaxes.

      At that sight I fell into a rage. I saw in a flash what would happen if the bridge sank and we were cut off from all exit except through the town-gate. The dastardly nature of the surprise, too, and the fiendish energy of the men combined to madden me. I gave no warning and cried out no word, but thrusting my weapon through the loophole aimed at the nearest worker, and fired.

      The man dropped his tool and threw up his arms, staggered forward a couple of paces, and fell sheer over the broken edge into the gulf. His fellows stood a moment in terror, looking after him, but the sentry who had warned me fired through the other loophole, and that started them. They flung down their tools and bolted like so many rabbits. The smoke of the carbine was scarce out of the muzzle, before the bridge, or what remained of it, was clear.

      I turned round and found the Waldgrave at my elbow. 'Well done!' he said heartily. 'That will teach the rascals a lesson!'

      I was trembling in every limb with excitement, but before I answered him, I handed my gun to one of the men who had followed me. 'Load,' I said,' and if a man comes near the bridge, shoot him down. Keep your eye on the bridge, and do nothing else until I come back.'

      Then I walked away through the stable-court with the Waldgrave; who looked at me curiously. 'You were only just in time,' he said.

      'Only just,' I muttered.

      'There is enough left for a horse to cross.'

      'Yes,' I answered, 'to-day.'

      'Why to-day?' he asked, still looking at me. I think he was surprised to see me so much moved.

      'Because the rest will be blown up to-night,' I answered bluntly. 'Or may be. How can we guard it in the dark? It is fifty paces from the gate. We cannot risk men there-with our numbers.'

      'Still it may not be,' he said. 'We must keep a sharp look-out.'

      'But if it is?' I answered, halting suddenly, and looking him full in the face. 'If it is, my lord?' I continued. 'We are provisioned for a week only. It is not autumn, you see. Then the pickle tubs would be full, the larder stocked, the rafters groaning, the still-room supplied. But it is May, and there is little left. The last three days we have been thinking of other things than provisions; and we have thirty mouths to feed.'

      The Waldgrave's face fell. 'I had not thought of that,' he said. 'The bridge gone, they may starve us, you mean?'

      'Into submission to whatever terms they please,' I answered. 'We are too few to cut our way through the town, and there would be no other way of escape.'

      'What do you advise, then?' he asked, drawing me aside with a flustered air. 'Flight?'

      'A horse might cross the bridge to-day,' I said.

      'But any terms would be better than that!' he replied with vehemence.

      'What if they demand the expulsion of the Catholic girl, my lord, whom the Countess has taken under her protection?'

      'They will not!' he said.

      'They may,' I persisted.

      'Then we will not give her up.'

      'But the alternative-starvation?'

      'Pooh! It will not come to that!' he answered lightly. 'You leap before you reach the stile.'

      'Because, my lord, there will be no leaping if we do reach it.'

      'Nonsense!' he cried masterfully. 'Something must be risked. To give up a strong place like this to a parcel of clodhoppers-it is absurd! At the worst we could parley.'

      'I do not think my lady would consent to parley.'

      'I shall say nothing to her about it,' he answered. 'She is no judge of such things.'

      I had been thinking all the while that he had that in his mind, and on the spot I answered him squarely that I would СКАЧАТЬ