"This," his lordship went on, touching with his finger the second paper, "is my warrant for the execution of the Marquis de Cabrieres-as a spy; but that too shall be destroyed," and again he suited the action to the word. "Each of those men has committed the same offence-for an offence it is against the opposing forces. Only, it is war time, and, as the offence is equal, so may the pardon be. If it can be done, if Mr. Bracton has not yet paid the penalty, it may be that the Maréchal de Boufflers and I can adjust matters."
With a sob wrung from her heart by those last words as to Bevill having possibly paid the penalty, Sylvia flung herself at Marlborough's feet while uttering all that she felt at his graciousness and mercy. But, as she did so, as still she held his hand and called on heaven again and again to bless and prosper him, and while he, gallant, chivalrous as ever and always, endeavoured to raise her to her feet, he said:
"Only, above all, hope not too much. Do not allow your hopes too full a sway. England and France, Anne and Louis, De Boufflers and I are at war to the death, and war is merciless. Further defeat may drive the Marshal to desperation. Also, we know not what may be transpiring at Liége. I would not rouse more fears in your heart than it already holds. Heaven knows, I would not do so. Yet still I say again, 'Hope not, expect not, too much.'"
"I must hope," Sylvia moaned. "I must, I must. I have nought but hope left. I must hope in God's mercy first, and-under Him-in you."
It was well indeed that she should have hope to comfort her at this time-well, too, that she did not know what was doing in Liége even as she knelt at Marlborough's feet.
For had she done so she must have deemed there was no longer any hope to be expected on earth either for her lover or herself.
CHAPTER XXX
Some of the French troops had returned to Liége. For almost every day now there came to the ears of the different commanders in the vicinity the news that the Allies were sweeping south; that town after town and fortress after fortress was falling, and that gradually, before the serried ranks of steel and the discharge of the heavy guns that the huge Flanders horses dragged over muddy roads and boggy swamps, the "Barrier" army was being driven back. To which was added now the news that Venloo was invested by Lord Cutts-he who had gained the sobriquet of the "Salamander" from friends and foes alike, owing to his contempt for the enemy's fire-and the Prince of Hanover, and like enough to fall at once.
Therefore many of the French forces were now back in the citadel and Chartreuse at Liége, or lying out on the heights of St. Walburg; while Tallard, who was afterwards to command the French and be defeated at Blenheim, was now second in command in the vicinity under De Boufflers. For the Duke of Burgundy had some time since returned to Paris, where he received but a freezing welcome from his august grandsire, and the Maréchal de Boufflers became first in command and Tallard second.
These changes in both the command of the French army and in the redistribution of the French forces, provided a sufficient number of officers to form a Court of Inquiry on the prisoners in the citadel-a court which, as Tallard had left orders before marching towards the Rhine, was to be commenced at once.
Of these prisoners there were now three, since another had been added to Bevill and Francbois, all of whom were charged with separate offences. The charge against those two has already been told; that against the third had still to be promulgated, though it came under the general one of treason, and was described in the quaint wording of the time as "Lèse majesté against the King, his State, and friends."
Of Francbois short work had been made by those assembled in the old salle d'armes in the citadel. The letters he had overlooked, and which had been found by the Comtesse de Valorme and handed to De Violaine, were sufficient to condemn any man in a time of peace, let alone one of war; but further inquiries, subtly made in the city by other such spies as Sparmann had been, showed that the traitor had made considerable sums of money by obtaining early knowledge of the French plans and future movements, and by selling them to the Dutch agents who were instructed by the States General to obtain all information of a similar nature. Francbois had consequently been condemned to death by hanging, and that death only awaited the signature of Tallard to be immediately effected. Meanwhile, he, proved spy and traitor as he was, was not regarded as too base and ignoble to be allowed to testify against one of the other prisoners-namely, the Englishman, Bracton.
Against the third prisoner, a Hollander named Hans Stuven, the charge was that he had attempted to slay two of his own countrymen in Liége, who were now in the service of the French King as couriers and frequent bearers of despatches from Louis to his marshals in the Netherlands; and that, when in drink at a tavern, he had been heard to announce that when he came into contact with the newly-created marshal, Montrével, he would slay him as an apostate from the reformed faith and a persecutor of the Protestants. For this man there could be but one hope-that he should be found to be insane.
To try these two the Court sat in the salle d'armes, lit now by the morning sun, De Violaine, in his capacity of Governor, being President. As representative of the King of France, he wore his hat and also the just-au-corps au brevet, or undercoat of the noblesse and those holding high office; a garment of white satin on which was stamped in gold the fleur-de-lys. Among the other officers who formed the members of that court one, a mousquetaire, alone wore his hat also, the plumed and laced hat of that aristocratic body. This was the young Duc de Guise, who sat thus covered because there ran in his veins the royal blood of an almost older race than the Bourbons, and because, as he and his called the King-and all Kings of France-cousin, it was his privilege to do so.
In face of these officers Bevill Bracton stood in the midst of a file of soldiers, outwardly calm and imperturbable, but inwardly wondering what Sylvia was doing and where she was, while knowing that, no matter where she might be, her thoughts were with him alone. But, although he was well resigned to whatever fate might befall him-a resignation that many nights of solemn meditation had alone been able to bring him to-there was in his heart a sadness, a regret, that could not be stifled.
"We met but to love each other," he had whispered to himself a thousand times during his incarceration in this fortress; "to love but to be parted. And though the words could never be spoken, since I scarce knew the treasure I had won ere we were torn asunder, in her heart there must have sprung to life the same hopes, the same desires that had dawned in mine. The hopes of happy years to come, to be passed always side by side; together! The dreams of a calm and peaceful end, also together. And now! Now, the thought of her sweet face, her graciousness, her love, the only flower remaining in my soon to be ended life; my memory all that can be left to brighten or to darken her existence."
For never since the night he was arrested had he dared to dream that he would leave Liége alive. His attempted escape from the city with Sylvia, his passing under the false guise of two different Frenchmen-the necessity for which he had always loathed, while understanding that in this way alone could he reach her-the testimony that Francbois would surely give against him, and the imputed murder of a man in the pay and service of France, must overwhelm and confound him.
Thinking still of the woman he had learnt to love so dearly, he let his eyes roam over that gloomy, solemn hall and observe all that it contained while heeding little. He saw the officers of his country's immemorial foe conversing together ere they should begin to question him. He saw, too, the ancient arms that hung all round the walls-pikes, swords, maces, and halbards, musketoons and muskets; also, he saw far down at the other end another man who was, undoubtedly, like himself, a prisoner. A man guarded by more soldiers and with his hands chained together; one whose face was bruised and raw, as though, in his capture, he had been badly wounded; one who, leaning forward with that face resting on his hands, and his eyes upon the ground, presented an appearance of brutish indifference to his surroundings as well as to his almost certain fate.
"The witness who will be produced before you, and the prisoner's own actions, will give you the matter," De Violaine said now, addressing the other members of the court, "upon which you have to form a conclusion. The witness is the traitor, Francbois, whom you condemned yesterday. What he knows he must tell in spite of his condemnation, or means will be used to make him do so," and he glanced towards a man leaning behind one of the great stone columns that, at regular distances, supported the heavily-traced and groined roof. For there was still another man within that hall, one on whom Bevill's eyes had not yet lighted-a man, old and grizzled, yet strong and burly and roughly clad-a man who stood by a strange-looking instrument that lay along the floor and was a complicated mass of rollers and cords and pulleys-a thing that was, in truth, the rack. Near this there stood, also, four or five great copper pots, each holding several gallons of water, and having great ladles of the same metal in each. These things stood here close to the rack and that dark, forbidding man because, as all of that Court knew well, when the rack failed to elicit the truth from prisoner or suspected witness, the question à l'eau-namely, the pouring of quart after quart of water down the throats of the wretched victims, never failed in its effect.
"Let us hear the man," an officer who was in command of the Regiment de Montemar said. "If he endeavours to lie or to deceive us the-" and he glanced towards the executioner as he leant against the column.
"Bring in the man, Francbois," De Violaine said now, addressing some of the soldiers who were near Bevill, and a few moments later the already condemned traitor stood before those who had judged him yesterday.
Whether it was the horror of that condemnation which now sat heavily on his soul, or whether it was the fear of what might be the outcome of any evidence he should soon give-he had glanced affrightedly at the rack and the great water-pots and the grim attendant of both as he was brought in-he presented now a pitiable aspect. His face was colourless, or almost ashy grey, and resembled more the appearance of a terrified Asiatic, or an Asiatic whose blood was mixed with that of some white race, than the appearance of a European. His eyes had in them the terrified look of the hare as it glances back, only to see the hound that courses it upon its flank; his whole frame, in its tremblings and flaccidity, bespoke the awful terror that possessed him.
"Pasquedieu!" the young Duc de Guise muttered, as his eyes glanced from the shivering object to the tall, sturdy form and calm, unruffled, though solemn, countenance of the man against whom the other was to testify. "Pasquedieu! that this one should have his life in the hand of such as that." And, though those by his side did not hear the words muttered beneath the Duke's slight moustache, it may well be that their thoughts kept company with his.
"Tell your tale again as you told it to me when you came here to inform against this Englishman," De Violaine said now in an icy tone; "and tell it truthfully, remembering that-" but he, too, paused in his words, the sentence being finished by the one glance he cast towards the column down the hall.
Then, in a voice that trembled in unison with the tremors of his frame, though it gained strength-or was it audacity? – as he proceeded without interruption from any of those listeners seated before him, Francbois told the same story he had told at first to the Governor, Only, if he were to die, as die he now knew he must, he was resolved that he would leave no loophole through which this other-this accursed, contemptuous Englishman who stood by his side so calmly, as though he, too, were a judge and not a prisoner-should escape and live.
He pictured him as a browbeating, turbulent Briton even in those far-off days in Paris when both he and Bracton were schoolmates; he told how he was ever filled with hatred of France and Frenchmen; and how, even here in Liége, Bracton had boasted that he would outwit any Frenchman in and around it, and slay all who attempted to thwart him. And, next, he told how he and Sparmann, going to the Weiss Haus to arrest this man, had been set upon in the dark by him; how Bracton had stabbed Sparmann through the breast and disarmed him, Francbois, so that he was unable to succour his companion.
But now he was forced to stop in the unfolding of his narrative.
Bracton, who until this moment had uttered no word but had contented himself with standing calmly before his judges, spoke now.
"Messieurs," he said, very calmly, "this story is false. It may be that in my attempt to save a woman I have learnt to love, a woman whom I loved with my whole heart and soul even ere I went to the Weiss Haus that night, I have put myself in the grasp of your military laws. But be that so or not," and now his voice was more firm, even perhaps stronger, "I will not be saddled with a false accusation and hold my peace. Sparmann was already wounded to the death, as I know now, though I knew it not when he passed me, touched me, in the dark and then fled down the stairs from me, deeming me most probably the man from whose hands a moment before he had received his death-wound. But it was not from my hand he received it. I am no murderer, no midnight assassin. I had fought once with Sparmann in England, and vanquished him in fair fight. Messieurs, you know well enough that the man who vanquishes another in the open does not murder him afterwards in the dark. Had I found him in the Weiss Haus that night, I should have seized on him, it may be I should have forced him to fight with me again, but I should not have done that of which this traitor accuses me."
These words had made a good impression on those to whom they were addressed-so good a one, indeed, that, had there been no other charge against Bevill, he might possibly have gone free at that moment. Unhappily, however, there did remain the other charges that stood so black against him, and those charges required neither the assertion nor the corroboration of Francbois. They proved themselves.
But whatever impression his words may have made on those who were now the arbiters of life and death to him, a far deeper impression-a palpable one-had been produced on the man who sat with his head buried in his hands close by that column against which the doomsman leaned.
At the first sound of Bevill's voice this man, this fanatic who appeared to have vowed himself to the slaughter of renegades and apostates, had lifted his bloodstained and bruised face from his hands, and had stared amazed as though a spectre had suddenly appeared before him; yet even this expression of open-eyed astonishment gave way to a still deeper appearance of bewilderment as now Francbois, in answer to Bevill's words, repeated again his assertions while asking if he who now stood on the threshold of his grave had any reason to lie?
So deep an appearance, indeed, had that man's bewilderment assumed that, at last, he appeared unable to support it further, and let his face fall once more into its previous position. And in all that great hall there was not one, or only one-the dreadful creature who stood near Stuven-who had witnessed the man's astonishment and the lifting of his face out of his hands.
"You say," De Violaine said now to Francbois, "that you have no reason to lie since your grave already awaits you. Yet death is but the last resource, and even that impending death shall not shield falsehood. If you have lied to us-"
But he paused, astonished by what he now not only saw but also heard.
For at this moment the prisoner Stuven had sprung to his feet and was gesticulating wildly, even as he struggled in the hands of the men who guarded him-gesticulating wildly as he cried:
"He lies. He does lie! 'Twas I who slew Sparmann that night-Sparmann, the Hollander, who sold himself to your country. I-I-alone did it-but he, this false witness, was there too. Not to slay Sparmann, but that man before you. I lost my hat there in the struggle with him whom I slew; it may be in that deserted house now. But no matter whether it be or not, I demand that you listen to me. I, at least, will speak the truth, since I neither heed nor fear what my fate may be."
CHAPTER XXXI
Half an hour later Stuven's tale had been told; the Court knew that, no matter what else might weigh heavily against the Englishman, at least the murder of the Dutch spy in the pay of the French did not do so.
At once, after startling all in the salle d'armes by his frenzied outcry, Stuven had been bidden to narrate all the incidents of the night in question, while warned that it would be well to speak the absolute truth, since, though nothing could save him from his fate, that might at least save him from torture, from those awful instruments which lay upon the stone floor of the great hall.
But the warning had been received by the man with such scorn and contemptuous utterance that all present recognised that it might well have remained unuttered.
"The truth! My fate!" Stuven had cried from the spot to which he had now been dragged by the soldiers, a spot immediately facing his judges and near to Bevill. "Why should I lie? You have enough against this man already," glancing at Bevill, "to hang him; while, for that thing there," with a second glance at Francbois, "who would lie to save him? And, for my fate-bah! I regret it only that it will prevent me from slaying more renegades whom you and your country buy with your accursed gold."
"Tell what you know," De Violaine said sternly, "and make no reflections on us who hold you in our hands. We can do worse than slay you, should you merit it. Proceed."
Yet as the gallant Frenchman spoke, the loyalist who, in spite of his ruler's own evil-doing and tyranny, served that ruler as he had sworn to do long ere Louis had become the bitter oppressor of those of his own faith, knew that, in his heart, this fellow's rude, stern hatred of traitors and renegades, and those who employed them, was not amazing. Stuven might be, might have become almost, a demoniac in his patriotism and loyalty to the land that bare him, but at least he was noble in comparison with such as Francbois and, perhaps, with such as the dead traitor, Sparmann.
But now Stuven was speaking, partly in his Walloon patois, partly in some sort of French he had acquired-Heaven knew the opportunities had not been wanting during the last cycles of oppression and invasion of the Netherlands by France! – he was telling what he knew, what he had done in Holland's cause.
"It was," Stuven said now, his raw, bruised face bent forward towards the members of the Court, his eyes gleaming red as he spoke, his raucous voice made almost impressive by the intensity of his passion, "at St. Trond I first attempted to slay the spy-ach!" and he spat on the ground-"the traitor. At St. Trond where I learned who and what he was, by overhearing this man, this Englishman, tell another. And-and-I swore to kill him then-or later; some day, for sure. That night I failed, even though waiting for him, having him in my hand. I struck not deep enough, and, ere I could strike again, the patrol came by. I missed his heart by an inch or so; I-I had done no more than wound him in the shoulder. No matter, I told myself; I would not fail next time.
"Some of the patrol carried him to the Lutheran Spital; some chased me; one came so near that, with his pike, he tore my face, as your men have torn it again in capturing me," and Stuven laughed horribly. "But I knew the streets and alleys better than they-I was no stranger, no invader, so I escaped them.
"Then for three weeks I waited. I worked no more; I watched only. None came out of the Spital, none went in, but I saw them. I begged at the gate-it was a good vantage place-I tried to get into the Spital to wait on the sick, to help bury, carry out the dead. Had I not failed in my desire I need not have waited so long."
At this the young Duc de Guise muttered to his neighbour, "This fellow should have lived in earlier days. For one's rival now-an enemy-our dearest foe-he would have been the man."
"Nay," that neighbour, an older, grey-headed officer, muttered back, "he would have been useless. His fire was for his country's enemy, for his own. As a hired bravado, a paid assassin, he would have lacked the necessary spark. A handful of crowns would have awakened nothing in him."
"He came out at last," Stuven went on, even as those two whispered together, "three weeks later. He found his horse at the inn where he had left it; he rode slowly, a wounded man-wounded by me-to Liége. But he never rode from me, out of my sight. We entered the gates close together; he found a lodging, I slept in the street outside it. Then-then-after I had tracked him for some days I knew that he was tracking another. And at last I knew it was this man here," and again Stuven's eyes were turned on Bevill. "If I could have warned you," he said now to the latter, "I would have done so, but I could not leave him and I never saw you except when he drew near to you.
"So it went on. Had he had time, I think he would have come to you and denounced him," and now the man looked at De Violaine, "but he had not. He rose early, went to his bed late; and he was wary. In dark streets at night he had his sword drawn beneath his cloak; once, too, he noticed me, and from that time he feared for his own life. I think he understood that I was the man who fell on him at St. Trond.
"But now the night was come, the night of the storm. We-it was always we-he intent on following this man, and I on following him-were on our road to that great white house. Since dark I had been near the Gouden Leeuw, and I saw this Englishman come forth, mount his horse and ride to the house. I saw him enter a postern gate, opening it with a key; it took him some time to help his horse through it. Then the gate was shut again.
"A few moments later Sparmann went round to the wall on the other side, and, finding another postern gate in that, took from his pocket a key and entered; but he did not shut the gate, desiring doubtless to leave the way clear to escape quickly if he needed to. Then I knew he had been there before, or had been well directed how to gain entrance. Also, I remembered that more than once I had seen him with a man who on one occasion handed him something. I thought then that it was money; now, on this night, I understood that it was the key that he was using. And the man was this-" Stuven added, his eyes on Francbois, the contempt of his voice as biting, as burning as the bite of vitriol on live flesh; the very gesture of his hand, as he indicated the other, blighting, withering, in its disdainful scorn.
And Francbois, trembling before his late judges and present warders, and white, too, as the dead within their shrouds, could only mutter "False, false, false-all false!"
"Since Sparmann had left the door open behind him, my way was clear," Stuven went on, ignoring Francbois' feeble moan. "Five minutes later I knew that he was creeping slowly up the back stairs, and I, my knife in hand, was near him. The storm was at its height; now and again the great hall was lit by the lightning, so, too, was the whole house; it penetrated even to where he was, where I was, too. And now I knew that he feared something. The lightning showed me his backward glance, the glare of fear in his eyes, the look of the rat hunted through the streets by dogs. I guessed that he knew there was someone-something-near him that threatened danger. It may be that he thought it was this Englishman; or, also, he may have feared that it was I, the man who had failed once, but would never fail again."
"It will be bad," the Duc de Guise muttered, brushing his jewelled fingers across his forehead, "if all Louis' enemies are like this, all who are opposed to us!"
And again the old grey-haired soldier answered him, saying, "Be at peace, monseigneur. The man he tracked was his country's betrayer; he is not the enemy of Louis or of us."
"Sparmann," Stuven continued, "had reached a room at the end of the corridor; I was behind its open door, observing him through the chink beneath its hinges. And again the lightning played, and I saw that he was standing at the open window regarding something outside the balcony of that window. It was the head of a ladder that rose above the ledge some foot or more. And I heard him whisper to himself 'Can it be Bracton has come this way; I do fear he lurks near. I-I-ah! he will slay me.' While saying this he turned and made for the door to flee the room. As he so left, I, from my place behind that door, drove my knife deep into his breast, even as I whispered in his ear 'Traitor; renegade, foul, apostate!' and slashed at him again, missing him, but striking, I think, his arm or hand. Then, as he staggered down a great balcony round the hall, I knew that it was time for me to go, and that the ladder outside was my road.
"The wind of the storm had closed the door noisily, heavily, as he passed out; the noise reverberated through the empty house; opening the door now, I rushed to the window. As I did so I saw the ladder head slowly sliding to one side, and I knew that it was being removed from its position against the balcony. And I leant over the ledge to see who was this third man who had been in the room, believing I should see this Englishman. But it was not he, but that other one, that traitor to you and your country," and again Stuven's finger pointed with scorn at Francbois. "And he saw me, but, in his turn, since the night was black and dark, thought I was the Englishman. Whereon he hissed, addressing me by some name I did not comprehend, 'So, so! English spy, English brigand, you add midnight murder to other things, here in the house of the woman you and I both love, the woman who-malediction on her! – loves you. I have you now-you! you! – the murderer of those in the service of France. You will never leave Liége alive!"
As Stuven reached this portion of his narrative, which was in absolute fact the end of it, since none cared to hear, or he to tell, of how he had left the house on the other side of it, losing his hat in the hurry of his flight, there came to his ears the sound of a thud, a heavy fall. Looking round, as did also Bevill, while the members of the Court of Inquiry and the soldiers could see what had happened, he perceived that Francbois had fallen in a swoon to the floor. What he had heard from this man's lips was, in truth, sufficient to cause him to swoon, since it was now proved that one of his principal charges against Bracton was false; though, had he known that against his enemy there still remained a graver charge than all-namely, of being in correspondence with one of the most bitter enemies of France-his agony of mind might not have been so great. For though Francbois could not hope that there remained the thousandth portion of a chance for his own life, the rendering up of that life might have been less bitter had he been certain that, with his existence, his enemy's would likewise be forfeited. Also, the sweetness of vengeance was lost to Francbois if, in death, that enemy should fail to recognise that it was to him he owed it.
Had the wretch but retained his faculties some moments longer, or, instead of being borne out of the salle d'armes by the men in whose custody he was, had he been allowed to lie until he regained his senses-as he shortly did when removed-some of the wild delirium of fulfilled revenge would have been his.
Now that Stuven had told his story, of the truth of which no person present had entertained a doubt, De Violaine addressed Bevill, saying:
"That you are innocent of the murder of that wretched man who was in the service of France, of the King," and he and the Duke touched their hats while the others bowed as he mentioned their august ruler, "the Court allows. But of the other charges it is not easy to acquit you. You entered a city invested by us under false names, bearing false papers; you endeavoured to leave the city, while also endeavouring to remove from it a woman who by our orders-orders common in war-was not to quit it. Also a letter has been found on you from your countryman, Lord Peterborough, in which he tells you he hopes soon to take part in this war against us, and bids you, at the same time, observe carefully our strength and the disposition of our forces, and to communicate with him thereupon. You have been a soldier in your own country's service, you have fought against France in the time of your late King, therefore you know the laws of war. You know, too, what action the present commander of the English forces would take if he discovered a Frenchman in the position in which you have placed yourself."
As De Violaine ceased his eyes were not removed from Bevill's face, wherefore the latter, taking this as an intimation that if he desired to speak this was the time, said:
"To what you say, Monsieur le Gouverneur, my answer must be brief, since, in truth, I have but little answer to make. Yet I crave hearing for my words. I am one who was cast out of his country's service because he avenged the insults uttered against it by that dead spy, Sparmann. When once more your country and mine were at war, I sought fresh service in the field, yet, being but a broken man, it needed to obtain that employment that I should bring myself before the eyes of those who might bestow it on me. A chance arose; I deemed it Heaven-sent. The woman whom now I love with my whole heart and soul, whose image is enshrined in my heart, and will be ever there till my last hour is told, was here. I thought I saw the chance, and snatched at it as one that might make me a soldier again. You, to whom I speak, are all soldiers; had your case been mine, had the chance come to you to reinstate yourselves, would you have refused to do so? Enough of this.