The Cloister and the Hearth

C >> Charles Reade >> The Cloister and the Hearth


"Saints forbid! Shoot him at the door! What avails his strength against
your weapon?"

"I shall pick him out; but if it comes to hand fighting, run swiftly
under his guard, or you are a dead man. I tell thee neither of us may
stand a blow of that axe: thou never sawest such a body of a man."

Gerard was for bolting the door; but Denys with a sign showed him that
half the door-post turned outward on a hinge, and the great bolt was
little more than a blind. "I have forborne to bolt it," said he, "that
they may think us the less suspicious."

Near an hour rolled away thus. It seemed an age. Yet it was but a little
hour, and the town was a league distant. And some of the voices in the
kitchen became angry and impatient.

"They will not wait much longer," said Denys, "and we have no chance at
all unless we surprise them."

"I will do whate'er you bid," said Gerard meekly.

There was a cupboard on the same side as the door; but between it and
the window. It reached nearly to the ground, but not quite. Denys opened
the cupboard door and placed Gerard on a chair behind it. "If they
run for the bed, strike at the napes of their necks! a sword cut there
always kills or disables." He then arranged the bolsters and their shoes
in the bed so as to deceive a person peeping from a distance, and drew
the short curtains at the head.

Meantime Gerard was on his knees. Denys looked round and saw him.

"Ah!" said Denys, "above all, pray them to forgive me for bringing you
into this guet-apens!"

And now they grasped hands and looked in one another's eyes oh, such a
look! Denys's hand was cold, and Gerard's warm.

They took their posts.

Denys blew out the candle.

"We must keep silence now."

But in the terrible tension of their nerves and very souls they found
they could hear a whisper fainter than any man could catch at all
outside that door. They could hear each other's hearts thump at times.

"Good news!" breathed Denys, listening at the door. "They are casting
lots."

"Pray that it may be the Abbot."

"Yes. Why?

"If he comes alone I can make sure of him."

"Denys!"

"Ay!"

"I fear I shall go mad, if they do not come soon."

"Shall I feign sleep? Shall I snore?"

"Will that-------?

"Perhaps"

"Do then and God have mercy on us!"

Denys snored at intervals.

There was a scuffling of feet heard in the kitchen, and then all was
still.

Denys snored again. Then took up his position behind the door.

But he, or they, who had drawn the lot, seemed determined to run no
foolish risks. Nothing was attempted in a hurry.

When they were almost starved with cold, and waiting for the attack, the
door on the stairs opened softly and closed again. Nothing more.

There was another harrowing silence.

Then a single light footstep on the stair; and nothing more.

Then a light crept under the door and nothing more.

Presently there was a gentle scratching, not half so loud as a mouse's,
and the false door-post opened by degrees, and left a perpendicular
space, through which the light streamed in. The door, had it been
bolted, would now have hung by the bare tip of the bolt, which went into
the real door-post, but as it was, it swung gently open of itself. It
opened inwards, so Denys did not raise his crossbow from the ground, but
merely grasped his dagger.

The candle was held up, and shaded from behind by a man's hand.

He was inspecting the beds from the threshold, satisfied that his
victims were both in bed.

The man glided into the apartment. But at the first step something in
the position of the cupboard and chair made him uneasy. He ventured no
further, but put the candle on the floor and stooped to peer under
the chair; but as he stooped, an iron hand grasped his shoulder, and a
dagger was driven so fiercely through his neck that the point came
out at his gullet. There was a terrible hiccough, but no cry; and
half-a-dozen silent strokes followed in swift succession, each a
death-blow, and the assassin was laid noiselessly on the floor.

Denys closed the door, bolted it gently, drew the post to, and even
while he was going whispered Gerard to bring a chair. It was done.

"Help me set him up."

"Dead?"

"Parbleu."

"What for?"

"Frighten them! Gain time."

Even while saying this, Denys had whipped a piece of string round the
dead man's neck, and tied him to the chair, and there the ghastly figure
sat fronting the door.

"Denys, I can do better. Saints forgive me!"

"What? Be quick then, we have not many moments."

And Denys got his crossbow ready, and tearing off his straw mattress,
reared it before him and prepared to shoot the moment the door should
open, for he had no hope any more would come singly, when they found the
first did not return.

While thus employed, Gerard was busy about the seated corpse, and to
his amazement Denys saw a luminous glow spreading rapidly over the white
face.

Gerard blew out the candle; and on this the corpse's face shone still
more like a glowworm's head.

Denys shook in his shoes, and his teeth chattered.

"What, in Heaven's name, is this?" he whispered.

"Hush! 'tis but phosphorus, but 'twill serve."

"Away! they will surprise thee."

In fact, uneasy mutterings were heard below, and at last a deep voice
said, "What makes him so long? is the drole rifling them?"

It was their comrade they suspected then, not the enemy. Soon a step
came softly but rapidly up the stairs: the door was gently tried.

When this resisted, which was clearly not expected, the sham post was
very cautiously moved, and an eye no doubt peeped through the aperture:
for there was a howl of dismay, and the man was heard to stumble back
and burst into the kitchen, here a Babel of voices rose directly on his
return.

Gerard ran to the dead thief and began to work on him again.

"Back, madman!" whispered Denys.

"Nay, nay. I know these ignorant brutes; they will not venture here
awhile. I can make him ten times more fearful."

"At least close that opening! Let them not see you at your devilish
work."

Gerard closed the sham post, and in half a minute his brush gave the
dead head a sight to strike any man with dismay. He put his art to a
strange use, and one unparalleled perhaps in the history of mankind.
He illuminated his dead enemy's face to frighten his living foe: the
staring eyeballs he made globes of fire; the teeth he left white, for
so they were more terrible by the contrast; but the palate and tongue
he tipped with fire, and made one lurid cavern of the red depths the
chapfallen jaw revealed: and on the brow he wrote in burning letters
"La Mort." And, while he was doing it, the stout Denys was quaking, and
fearing the vengeance of Heaven; for one mans courage is not another's;
and the band of miscreants below were quarrelling and disputing loudly,
and now without disguise.

The steps that led down to the kitchen were fifteen, but they were
nearly perpendicular: there was therefore in point of fact no distance
between the besiegers and besieged, and the latter now caught almost
every word. At last one was heard to cry out, "I tell ye the devil has
got him and branded him with hellfire. I am more like to leave this
cursed house than go again into a room that is full of fiends."

"Art drunk? or mad? or a coward?" said another.

"Call me a coward, I'll give thee my dagger's point, and send thee where
Pierre sits o' fire for ever.

"Come, no quarrelling when work is afoot," roared a tremendous diapason,
"or I'll brain ye both with my fist, and send ye where we shall all go
soon or late."

"The Abbot," whispered Denys gravely.

He felt the voice he had just heard could belong to no man but the
colossus he had seen in passing through the kitchen. It made the place
vibrate. The quarrelling continued some time, and then there was a dead
silence.

"Look out, Gerard."

"Ay. What will they do next?"

"We shall soon know."

"Shall I wait for you, or cut down the first that opens the door?"

"Wait for me, lest we strike the same and waste a blow. Alas! we cannot
afford that."

Dead silence.

Sudden came into the room a thing that made them start and their hearts
quiver.

And what was it? A moonbeam.

Even so can this machine, the body, by the soul's action, be strung
up to start and quiver. The sudden ray shot keen and pure into that
shamble.

Its calm, cold, silvery soul traversed the apartment in a stream of no
great volume, for the window was narrow.

After the first tremor Gerard whispered, "Courage, Denys! God's eye
is on us even here." And he fell upon his knees with his face turned
towards the window.

Ay it was like a holy eye opening suddenly on human crime and human
passions. Many a scene of blood and crime that pure cold eye had rested
on; but on few more ghastly than this, where two men, with a lighted
corpse between them, waited panting, to kill and be killed. Nor did the
moonlight deaden that horrible corpse-light. If anything it added to
its ghastliness: for the body sat at the edge of the moonbeam, which cut
sharp across the shoulder and the ear, and seemed blue and ghastly and
unnatural by the side of that lurid glow in which the face and eyes and
teeth shone horribly. But Denys dared not look that way.

The moon drew a broad stripe of light across the door, and on that his
eyes were glued. Presently he whispered, "Gerard!"

Gerard looked and raised his sword.

Acutely as they had listened, they had heard of late no sound on
the stair. Yet therein the door-post, at the edge of the stream of
moonlight, were the tips of the fingers of a hand.

The nails glistened.

Presently they began to crawl and crawl down towards the bolt, but
with infinite slowness and caution. In so doing they crept into the
moonlight. The actual motion was imperceptible, but slowly, slowly,
the fingers came out whiter and whiter; but the hand between the main
knuckles and the wrist remained dark.

Denys slowly raised his crossbow.

He levelled it. He took a long steady aim.

Gerard palpitated. At last the crossbow twanged. The hand was instantly
nailed, with a stern jar, to the quivering door-post. There was a scream
of anguish. "Cut," whispered Denys eagerly, and Gerard's uplifted sword
descended and severed the wrist with two swift blows. A body sank down
moaning outside.

The hand remained inside, immovable, with blood trickling from it down
the wall. The fierce bolt, slightly barbed, had gone through it and deep
into the real door-post.

"Two," said Denys, with terrible cynicism.

He strung his crossbow, and kneeled behind his cover again.

"The next will be the Abbot."

The wounded man moved, and presently crawled down to his companions on
the stairs, and the kitchen door was shut.

There nothing was heard now but low muttering. The last incident had
revealed the mortal character of the weapons used by the besieged.

"I begin to think the Abbot's stomach is not so great as his body," said
Denys.

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the following events
happened all in a couple of seconds. The kitchen door was opened
roughly, a heavy but active man darted up the stairs without any manner
of disguise, and a single ponderous blow sent the door not only off its
hinges, but right across the room on to Denys's fortification, which it
struck so rudely as nearly to lay him flat. And in the doorway stood a
colossus with a glittering axe.

He saw the dead man with the moon's blue light on half his face, and the
red light on the other half and inside his chapfallen jaws: he stared,
his arms fell, his knees knocked together, and he crouched with terror.

"LA MORT!" he cried, in tones of terror, and turned and fled. In which
act Denys started up and shot him through both jaws. He sprang with one
bound into the kitchen, and there leaned on his axe, spitting blood and
teeth and curses.

Denys strung his bow and put his hand into his breast.

He drew it out dismayed.

"My last bolt is gone," he groaned.

"But we have our swords, and you have slain the giant."

"No, Gerard," said Denys gravely, "I have not. And the worst is I have
wounded him. Fool! to shoot at a retreating lion. He had never faced thy
handiwork again, but for my meddling."

"Ha! to your guard! I hear them open the door."

Then Denys, depressed by the one error he had committed in all this
fearful night, felt convinced his last hour had come. He drew his sword,
but like one doomed. But what is this? a red light flickers on the
ceiling. Gerard flew to the window and looked out. There were men with
torches, and breastplates gleaming red. "We are saved! Armed men!" And
he dashed his sword through the window shouting, "Quick! quick! we are
sore pressed."

"Back!" yelled Denys; "they come! strike none but him!"

That very moment the Abbot and two men with naked weapons rushed into
the room. Even as they came, the outer door was hammered fiercely, and
the Abbot's comrades hearing it, and seeing the torchlight, turned and
fled. Not so the terrible Abbot: wild with rage and pain, he spurned his
dead comrade, chair and all, across the room, then, as the men faced him
on each side with kindling eyeballs, he waved his tremendous axe like a
feather right and left, and cleared a space, then lifted it to hew them
both in pieces.

His antagonists were inferior in strength, but not in swiftness and
daring, and above all they had settled how to attack him. The moment
he reared his axe, they flew at him like cats, and both together. If he
struck a full blow with his weapon he would most likely kill one, but
the other would certainly kill him: he saw this, and intelligent as
well as powerful, he thrust the handle fiercely in Denys's face, and,
turning, jobbed with the steel at Gerard. Denys went staggering back
covered with blood. Gerard had rushed in like lightning, and, just as
the axe turned to descend on him, drove his sword so fiercely through
the giant's body, that the very hilt sounded on his ribs like the blow
of a pugilist, and Denys, staggering back to help his friend, saw a
steel point come out of the Abbot behind.

The stricken giant bellowed like a bull, dropped his axe, and clutching
Gerard's throat tremendously, shook him like a child. Then Denys with
a fierce snarl drove his sword into the giant's back. "Stand firm now!"
and he pushed the cold steel through and through the giant and out at
his breast.

Thus horribly spitted on both sides, the Abbot gave a violent shudder,
and his heels hammered the ground convulsively. His lips, fast turning
blue, opened wide and deep, and he cried, "LA MORT!-LA MORT!-LA MORT!!"
the first time in a roar of despair, and then twice in a horror-stricken
whisper, never to be forgotten.

Just then the street door was forced.

Suddenly the Abbot's arms whirled like windmills, and his huge body
wrenched wildly and carried them to the doorway, twisting their wrists
and nearly throwing them off their legs.

"He'll win clear yet," cried Denys: "out steel! and in again!"

They tore out their smoking swords, but ere they could stab again,
the Abbot leaped full five feet high, and fell with a tremendous crash
against the door below, carrying it away with him like a sheet of paper,
and through the aperture the glare of torches burst on the awe-struck
faces above, half blinding them.

The thieves at the first alarm had made for the back door, but driven
thence by a strong guard ran back to the kitchen, just in time to see
the lock forced out of the socket, and half-a-dozen mailed archers burst
in upon them. On these in pure despair they drew their swords.

But ere a blow was struck on either side, the staircase door behind them
was battered into their midst with one ponderous blow, and with it the
Abbot's body came flying, hurled as they thought by no mortal hand, and
rolled on the floor spouting blood from back and bosom in two furious
jets, and quivered, but breathed no more.

The thieves smitten with dismay fell on their knees directly, and the
archers bound them, while, above, the rescued ones still stood like
statues rooted to the spot, their dripping swords extended in the red
torchlight, expecting their indomitable enemy to leap back on them as
wonderfully as he had gone.



CHAPTER XXXIV

"Where be the true men?"

"Here be we. God bless you all! God bless you!"

There was a rush to the stairs, and half-a-dozen hard but friendly hands
were held out and grasped them warmly.

"Y'have saved our lives, lads," cried Denys, "y'have saved our lives
this night."

A wild sight met the eyes of the rescued pair. The room flaring with
torches, the glittering breastplates of the archers, their bronzed
faces, the white cheeks of the bound thieves, and the bleeding giant,
whose dead body these hard men left lying there in its own gore.

Gerard went round the archers and took them each by the hand with
glistening eyes, and on this they all kissed him; and this time he
kissed them in return. Then he said to one handsome archer of his own
age, "Prithee, good soldier, have an eye to me. A strange drowsiness
overcomes me. Let no one cut my throat while I sleep--for pity's sake."

The archer promised with a laugh; for he thought Gerard was jesting: and
the latter went off into a deep sleep almost immediately.

Denys was surprised at this: but did not interfere; for it suited his
immediate purpose. A couple of archers were inspecting the Abbot's body,
turning it half over with their feet, and inquiring, "Which of the two
had flung this enormous rogue down from an upper storey like that; they
would fain have the trick of his arm."

Denys at first pished and pshawed, but dared not play the braggart, for
he said to himself, "That young vagabond will break in and say 'twas
the finger of Heaven, and no mortal arm, or some such stuff, and make me
look like a fool." But now, seeing Gerard unconscious, he suddenly gave
this required information.

"Well, then, you see, comrades, I had run my sword through this one up
to the hilt, and one or two more of 'em came buzzing about me; so it
behoved me have my sword or die: so I just put my foot against his
stomach, gave a tug with my hand and a spring with my foot, and sent him
flying to kingdom come! He died in the air, and his carrion rolled
in amongst you without ceremony: made you jump, I warrant me. But
pikestaves and pillage! what avails prattling of, these trifles once
they are gone by? buvons, camarades, buvons."

The archers remarked that it was easy to say "buvons" where no liquor
was, but not so easy to do it.

"Nay, I'll soon find you liquor. My nose hath a natural alacrity at
scenting out the wine. You follow me: and I my nose: bring a torch!" And
they left the room, and finding a short flight of stone steps, descended
them and entered a large, low, damp cellar.

It smelt close and dank: and the walls were encrusted here and there
with what seemed cobwebs; but proved to be saltpetre that had oozed out
of the damp stones and crystallized.

"Oh! the fine mouldy smell," said Denys; "in such places still lurks the
good wine; advance thy torch. Diable! what is that in the corner? A pile
of rags? No: 'tis a man."

They gathered round with the torch, and lo! a figure crouched on a heap
in the corner, pale as ashes and shivering.

"Why, it is the landlord," said Denys.

"Get up, thou craven heart!" shouted one of the archers.

"Why, man, the thieves are bound, and we are dry that bound them. Up!
and show us thy wine; for no bottles see here."

"What, be the rascals bound?" stammered the pale landlord; "good news.
W-w-wine? that will I, honest sirs."

And he rose with unsure joints and offered to lead the way to the wine
cellar. But Denys interposed. "You are all in the dark, comrades. He is
in league with the thieves."

"Alack, good soldier, me in league with the accursed robbers! Is that
reasonable?"

"The girl said so anyway."

"The girl! What girl? Ah! Curse her, traitress!"

"Well," interposed the other archer; "the girl is not here, but gone on
to the bailiff. So let the burghers settle whether this craven be guilty
or no: for we caught him not in the act: and let him draw us our wine."

"One moment," said Denys shrewdly. "Why cursed he the girl? If he be a
true man, he should bless her as we do."

"Alas, sir!" said the landlord, "I have but my good name to live by, and
I cursed her to you, because you said she had belied me."

"Humph! I trow thou art a thief, and where is the thief that cannot lie
with a smooth face? Therefore hold him, comrades: a prisoner can draw
wine an if his hands be not bound."

The landlord offered no objection; but on the contrary said he would
with pleasure show them where his little stock of wine was, but hoped
they would pay for what they should drink, for his rent was due this two
months.

The archers smiled grimly at his simplicity, as they thought it; one of
them laid a hand quietly but firmly on his shoulder, the other led on
with the torch.

They had reached the threshold when Denys cried "Halt!"

"What is't?"

"Here be bottles in this corner; advance thy light."

The torch-bearer went towards him. He had just taken off his scabbard
and was probing the heap the landlord had just been crouched upon.

"Nay, nay," cried the landlord, "the wine is in the next cellar. There
is nothing there."

"Nothing is mighty hard, then," said Denys, and drew out something with
his hand from the heap.

It proved to be only a bone.

Denys threw it on the floor: it rattled.

"There is nought there but the bones of the house," said the landlord.

"Just now 'twas nothing. Now that we have found something 'tis nothing
but bones. Here's another. Humph? look at this one, comrade; and you
come too and look at it, and bring you smooth knave along."

The archer with the torch, whose name was Philippe, held the bone to the
light and turned it round and round.

"Well?" said Denys.

"Well, if this was a field of battle, I should say 'twas the shankbone
of a man; no more, no less. But 'tisn't a battlefield, nor a churchyard;
'tis an inn."

"True, mate; but yon knave's ashy face is as good a light to me as a
field of battle. I read the bone by it, Bring yon face nearer, I say.
When the chine is amissing, and the house dog can't look at you without
his tail creeping between his legs, who was the thief? Good brothers
mine, my mind it doth misgive me. The deeper I thrust the more there be.
Mayhap if these bones could tell their tale they would make true men's
flesh creep that heard it."

"Alas! young man, what hideous fancies are these! The bones are bones
of beeves, and sheep, and kids, and not, as you think, of men and women.
Holy saints preserve us!"

"Hold thy peace! thy words are air. Thou hast not got burghers by the
ear, that know not a veal knuckle from their grandsire's ribs; but
soldiers-men that have gone to look for their dear comrades, and found
their bones picked as clean by the crows as these I doubt have been by
thee and thy mates. Men and women, saidst thou? And prithee, when spake
I a word of women's bones? Wouldst make a child suspect thee. Field
of battle, comrade! Was not this house a field of battle half an hour
agone? Drag him close to me, let me read his face: now then, what is
this, thou knave?" and he thrust a small object suddenly in his face.

"Alas! I know not."

"Well, I would not swear neither: but it is too like the thumb bone of
a man's hand; mates, my flesh it creeps. Churchyard! how know I this is
not one?"

And he now drew his sword out of the scabbard and began to rake the heap
of earth and broken crockery and bones out on the floor.

The landlord assured him he but wasted his time. "We poor innkeepers are
sinners," said he; "we give short measure and baptize the wine: we are
fain to do these things; the laws are so unjust to us; but we are not
assassins. How could we afford to kill our customers? May Heaven's
lightning strike me dead if there be any bones there but such as have
been used for meat. 'Tis the kitchen wench flings them here: I swear by
God's holy mother, by holy Paul, by holy Dominic, and Denys my patron
saint--ah!"

Denys held out a bone under his eye in dead silence. It was a bone no
man, however ignorant, however lying, could confound with those of sheep
or oxen. The sight of it shut the lying lips, and palsied the heartless
heart.

The landlord's hair rose visibly on his head like spikes, and his knees
gave way as if his limbs had been struck from under him. But the archers
dragged him fiercely up, and kept him erect under the torch, staring
fascinated at the dead skull which, white as the living cheek opposed,
but no whiter, glared back again at its murderer, whose pale lip now
opened and opened, but could utter no sound.

"Ah!" said Denys solemnly, and trembling now with rage, "look on the
sockets out of which thou hast picked the eyes, and let them blast thine
eyes, that crows shall pick out ere this week shall end. Now, hold thou
that while I search on. Hold it, I say, or here I rob the gallows--" and
he threatened the quaking wretch with his naked sword, till with a groan
he took the skull and held it, almost fainting.