The Great White Army Part 5

So you will understand why he did not suspect anything--even when they drove through the wood and came to the drawbridge. She would desire secrecy, of course, and this place appeared to be a very citadel of love. Leon merely remarked that aspect of it when he crossed the bridge and the great gate which Ivan the Terrible had built was shut upon him.

She would be alone, and he would find her complacent. The words were hardly said when he found himself face to face with Nicholas, the princely a.s.sa.s.sin, whose name had struck terror to the heart of many a French prisoner. Now a man trained to the surprises of war has some command of himself whatever the circ.u.mstances.

Leon was such a man, and you may be sure he did not betray himself.

Though the peril of the situation was now fully revealed, and he understood the trap into which he had fallen, what should he do but bow in a grand manner to his Highness, and declare his pleasure at that _rencontre_? The prince in his turn affected to be as agreeably surprised. He apologised for the absence of Mademoiselle Valerie, whom he declared to be confined to her room with an indisposition; and upon that he led the way immediately to the great apartment in which the supper was to be served.

This was nothing else than the round tower which Ivan had built, and a strange place it was, surely, for the entertainment of a man's friends.

Leon observed that the walls of the apartment were hung entirely in black velvet, while at the northern arch there was a platform similarly draped in black, but with its plain boards strewn with rushes, as they strew a scaffold in my own country. So ominous was this that even my nephew's sang-froid was hard put to it to forbear a remark; but the prince smiled affably all the time, and appeared to be quite unaware that there was anything extraordinary about this habitation. Leon admitted that he spoke French like a fellow-countryman, and his first act was to introduce my nephew to some dozen officers of the Russian Guard who had come to the house to make merry with him.

These were fine fellows, clad, as he, in the splendid white and gold uniform of the Tsar's cuira.s.siers. They welcomed a brother officer with professed cordiality, and the prince commanding that supper should be served, they turned with one accord to the table and began to fall upon the viands as though ravenous with hunger. Will you be surprised to hear that Leon did not imitate them in this? I shall tell you why in a word: he had seen a dead body in the straw upon the platform, and, looking at it a second time, he perceived that it was a trunk without a head.

You may imagine what this discovery meant--even to a man of Leon's disposition. At first he would have it that the whole thing was one of Nicholas's jokes--the draping of the room, the straw upon the mock scaffold, and the ghastly figure which the rushes tried to hide. Then he remembered the prince's evil reputation and the stories of his savagery, which had been told at many a bivouac. Here was one of those fanatics who believed that Moscow was the holy city, and that we, the French, were so many barbarians who had profaned the sacred shrine of Russia. No trick was too treacherous to be employed against us, no trap was not justified which had Frenchmen for its object. Again and again, as we had marched across Russia, the throats of our fellows had been cut in many a lonely farmhouse, and many a courtesan had lured honest men to their destruction.

So Leon sat there with his eyes fixed upon the body and the secret words of warning drumming in his ears. What hope had he of escape from such a place? He remembered the moat and the drawbridge, the lonely wood and the dark groves about it, and despair fell upon him. It remained but to die as the Guards know how; and, believing that his death was imminent, he refused no longer the goblets of wine which were offered to him, and affected a merriment as loud as that of the n.o.ble a.s.sa.s.sins who had entrapped him.

A remarkable feast, truly, as you shall: judge by his own account of it. The meats! were served on dishes of solid gold; the goblets were of the same precious metal. They drank champagne from our own kingdom of France; the rich red wines of Italy, while the joyous fruits of the Rhineland vineyards were not lacking. The food itself had an Eastern flavour, and many of the dishes were highly spiced and Eastern. For music there were fiddles in a gallery above, and even the distant voices of women singing a light chanson at the back of the stage.

Leon raised his eyes to the musicians' gallery from time to time, and fell to wondering if Valerie were among the singers. Surely she had never written the letter which brought him to this house--she, a Frenchwoman! He could not believe it; and yet the note had been in a woman's handwriting. Possibly the writer was one of those who now sang disreputable songs behind the curtains of the gallery. Leon pitied rather than condemned the poor wretch who had been the prince's instrument. When he remembered that Valerie loved this man he could have taken a knife from the table and killed him where he sat.

His Highness may have guessed what was in the young man's mind, but if he did so, a courtly art concealed it. Never was there a gayer companion. He told stories of all the cities to which peace or war had carried him--of our own Paris and gloomy Petersburg, of gay Vienna and that monstrously dull town of London, of which the English boast.

Nearly all concerned the women of these places and the successes he had had among them.

His companions meanwhile listened with a deference which so high a personage commanded. Their jokes were often _sotto voce_, and when the prince laughed they laughed in sycophantine imitation. With all this Leon plainly perceived that the feast was but a preparation for some greater scene to come. His eyes went often now to the curtain above the gallery, as though he would read a secret there. I do not think he was astonished when for one brief instant the same curtain trembled and was drawn a little way back, to disclose the face of Valerie. She was in the house, then, after all! He began to believe that she had written the letter, and for that he would have strangled her willingly.

Then he heard the prince speaking to him, and, the curtain being dropped back, he turned to listen to a disquisition upon French politics.

"Your Revolution," said his Highness, "was the greatest event in history. I have just been telling my friend, Count Rafalovitch here, that my father was in Paris in the year 1794, and that his dearest friend, the Chevalier Constantini, was executed by the miscreants on the Place de la Greve. He brought with him to Russia a model of the guillotine, by which so many of your great men perished. I have it here in this house, if you are curious to see it. It was made by the great Dr. Guillotin himself, one of the first to fall by his own invention, as you know. Shall we have it built up on yonder platform, M. le Capitaine? It will help us to pa.s.s the time until the musicians have refreshed themselves."

Now, all this was said pleasantly enough, as though it were the merriest of jests, and yet to Leon it was not without significance.

The cat-like manner of the speaker; the sudden l.u.s.t of blood which came into his eyes as he leaned over the table and addressed my nephew; the restless movements of the others round about; all betrayed a design so dastardly that no pretence could conceal it. Instantly it dawned upon Leon that the man whose body lay in the rushes had been murdered by that very instrument. Death no Guardsman fears, but the humiliation of such a death as this might have appalled the stoutest heart; and Leon believed now that they meant to kill him. He drained the heavy goblet of its wine to hide his face from those who watched him so curiously, and when he had set the goblet down there was a smile upon his lips.

"I should like to see it, by all means," he said to the prince. "It is odd that I, a Frenchman, am so ignorant, but, upon my word of honour, I have never met 'Dr. Guillotine' in all my life."

"Then you shall meet him now," said his Highness, and touching a bell upon the table, he summoned his servants to the room.

V

Sergeant Bardot and myself, meanwhile, had crossed the river, as you may well have guessed. We found the tub old and crazy, and were but poor watermen. Yet we reached the parapet upon the farther side, and clambering up, we stood and listened if any had discovered us. The sentry, however, made no motion, and perceiving that he was drunk, as we had imagined, we crept towards him and were upon him before he could utter a sound. A moment later he went, a cloth about his mouth, headlong into the moat below us, and we stood there watching his struggles, his musket in Bardot's hands.

It had been a swift coup, and some have complained of what we did. But remember that this was a Russian stronghold, and that it imprisoned a good comrade, and few will condemn us. It was our life or his, and we did not hesitate for Leon's sake. I would do the same to-morrow for the meanest trooper in the Emperor's army.

I say that we killed the man, and yet for the moment the deed did not help us. There was the great gate, shut and barred against the stranger, and twenty men might not have opened it. If we beat upon it and they answered us, what then? The house would be full of Russians, and we were but two against them. By a stratagem alone could we save Leon's life, and calling upon our wits, we began to make a tour of the house to spy out its weaknesses if we could.

These were not readily apparent. Even to an old soldier like Bardot the place seemed impregnable. Everywhere the rugged stone walls confronted us. There was no door other than that which the sentry had guarded. The windows were so many slits in those ramparts of stone.

There was not even a water-pipe upon which a man could have got a foothold. We could but stand there and gaze impotently upon that prison which had defied the centuries. It was a torture to me to remember that these impregnable walls answered for the liberty of one so dear to me as my nephew.

VI

I have told you that there had been a glimmer of light s.h.i.+ning from a loop-hole in the tower when first we drove up to the place. It was beneath this we came to a halt and stood to reckon with the situation.

Bardot's eyes were quick as an animal's, and it was he who perceived a second opening in the wall, but not so high as the other, and without a light beyond to disclose it. When he suggested that he should climb up on my shoulders and get a footing at this spot, I could but ask him what he hoped to effect thereby.

"Had you a rope," said I, "perchance we could look through the window, but since you have not a rope----"

He interrupted me with a little cry. "Major," says he, "there was a rope in the boat."

I retorted that we had used it to make the s.h.i.+p fast, but he laughed at that.

"We shall return by the drawbridge," says he. "Do you stand sentinel here, and I will get what we want." And with that he was off like a shot, and for some minutes I saw him no more.

The interval was spent in listening to a sound of distant music, which I could not hear very plainly. There were women's voices and the music of fiddles, and it seemed to me that I had heard some of their songs in the casinos of my own Paris. Such a surprise was very welcome and put heart into me. Leon could hardly be in peril while women were singing to him. I told Bardot as much when he returned, and his curiosity concerning the voices was not less than my own.

"Let us have a look at them," says he. And with that he climbed upon my shoulders, and throwing the rope he had brought from the boat deftly about the iron bar of the window he pulled himself up like a monkey, and so gained a foothold on the ledge.

For a long time now he did not utter a word. I thought that I heard him laughing softly, and then, of a sudden, he appeared to grow deeply interested in what was happening in the room.

"What do you see, Bardot?" I asked him, anxiety getting the better of me.

He did not reply, but peered the closer betwixt the bars.

"Oh!" cried I impatiently, "there will be some woman for a certainty."

His answer was to take a pistol from his belt and to look to the priming. I could see him quite clearly, one arm being about the iron bar and the other upon the trigger, which he had c.o.c.ked.

"Good G.o.d!" I cried. "You will bring them out on us."

He did not heed me, but throwing his head back, he said in a loud whisper: "They are going to butcher your nephew." At the same moment I heard a dreadful scream from the tower itself.

"Help me up!" cried I, gone mad at my own impotence. "Why do you not fire at them?"

He nodded his head, and thrusting his pistol through the bars, he snapped at an unseen enemy. The weapon did not fire, and he threw it down to me angrily. "Your own," he cried, and came a little way down the rope to reach it.

The next minute there was a loud report, and upon that a hollow sound, as though a great bell had been struck a heavy blow by a hammer.

"Now," cried Bardot quickly, "to the bridge!"

I did not question him, and we ran round together to fling down the bridge, the windla.s.s running out with the sound of a great s.h.i.+p's cable. It seemed inconceivable that the Russians in the place did not attack us. This, however, did not happen.

We ran across the bridge and there crouched as two hunters who themselves were hunted.

"Listen!" says Bardot, bending his ear to the earth.

I imitated him, and heard a strange sound. It was the thunder of cavalry through the wood.

"The Cossacks!" cried I. It seemed to me then that I should never see poor Leon again.

VII