Part 8 (1/2)
Even as he spoke Guy Tabarie puffed out the last candle left alight in the room, which was plunged instantly into almost total darkness.
Even the faint moonlight that had come through the window was swiftly veiled by Huguette, who drew the crimson curtains close together. The dim light from the fire only seemed to accentuate and intensify the darkness through which the two lanterns burned, pale planets of yellow fire, in the hands of Casin and Colin. Villon s.n.a.t.c.hed the one and Thibaut took the other. There was a moment of intense silence; then the voice of Huguette cried out of the blackness: ”Are you ready?”
Both combatants cried, ”Yes!” in the same breath, and in the next the battle began.
No stranger fight had ever been fought within those walls before, or even perhaps within the walls of Paris. In the dense obscurity the two antagonists groped for each other, alternately guided and baffled by the light of the lanterns, as their holder lifted his light suddenly in the air or dexterously concealed it under the fold of his mantle. Every now and then the swords would meet with a clash, there would be a hurried exchange of thrust and blow, and then the adversaries would drift back again to grope and gleam and seek each other anew, their lanterns flas.h.i.+ng and disappearing like accentuated glow-worms, and their blades now s.h.i.+ning in sudden illumination like streaks of blue lightning across the blackness and now invisible even to those who held them in their hands.
Tristan had in vain endeavoured to persuade the king to leave before the preliminaries for the fantastic strife had been completed, but Louis was firm in his determination to remain.
”I would not miss this for the world, man,” he had insisted. All his childlike delight in the adventurous was being sated to the full this evening, and there was no happier man at that moment in the kingdom than the man who by strange fortune was its king.
The fight persisted for some minutes that seemed like hours to more than one of the anxious spectators. Now the room would be steeped in the deepest silence, and now, as the revealed lantern glowed and the naked weapons met, some woman's scream or some man's suppressed oath would fill the place with a sense of watching, eager humanity.
Suddenly, when the tension of watcher and watched was keenest, there came a mighty cras.h.i.+ng at the door and a voice shouted loudly a summons to open in the king's name.
Tristan knew well enough what the summons meant. ”It is the watch, sire,” he whispered to the king.
Thibaut too, groping for his nimble antagonist and beginning to despair of crus.h.i.+ng the man, heard and understood the summons. He was tired of the baffling struggle.
”Open the door!” he shouted noisily, and the cry stirred Villon to a more vehement a.s.sault. He sprang like a cat at the giant, flashed the lantern dazzlingly in his eyes, and as Thibaut, furious, made a wild lunge at him, Villon dexterously swung his lantern on to his enemy's sword point and in another second had driven his own blade into Thibaut's side.
”Not so fast, rat-catcher!” he shouted exultantly, and as Thibaut fell with a heavy crash of rattling armour on the floor, the door was dashed open and the armed watch poured in with blazing torches, filling the room with light and armoured men. Francois, after a moment's glance of triumph at the fallen giant, sprang round and glanced up at the gallery.
Katherine, standing, leaned over the bal.u.s.trade and flung a knot of ribbon to her champion, who caught it as it skimmed through the air, pressed it to his lips and thrust it into the bosom of his jerkin.
In another moment Katherine had disappeared and Villon found himself roughly held in the strong grasp of two soldiers, while the captain of the watch surveyed the scene with some astonishment, and the rogues were overawed by the bills of the new-comers.
”What is this tumult?” the captain demanded. Villon answered him airily, smiling over the crossed pikes that penned him.
”A fair fight, good captain, conducted according to the honourable laws of sword and lantern.”
The captain of the watch turned his attention to Thibaut, who, a.s.sisted by one of the soldiers, had raised himself upon one elbow and was glaring vindictively at Villon.
”Who is this man?” he asked.
A desire for revenge got the better of the wounded man's discretion.
”I am Thibaut d'Aussigny,” he gasped. ”I am the Grand Constable.”
A little s.h.i.+ver of surprise and alarm ran round the room at the sound of that dreaded name. The captain of the watch kneeled in salutation.
”Monseigneur,” he said, ”how did this happen?” Thibaut's senses were running away from him with his running blood, but malignity overcrowed weakness for a moment. He pointed at Villon. ”Take that fellow and hang him on the nearest lantern,” and as he spoke he swooned. Promptly the captain turned towards his prisoner. ”Take that fellow outside and hang him,” he commanded curtly. Villon glanced wildly about for a way to escape and saw none. His friends gave a groan of sympathy, but they could do no more, for the soldiers overawed them. Huguette flung her arms about him, sobbing.
The grasp of his captors tightened and Villon s.h.i.+vered at the clasp.
Suddenly the little insignificant burgess at the table rose and advanced towards the soldier.
”Stop, sir,” he said imperatively. ”That young gentleman is my affair.” The soldier turned angrily upon the interfering citizen.