The Long Night Part 51

"Do not harm her."

"We come to do harm neither to you nor to her," a voice replied. And the foremost of the troop, a thick dwarfish man with a huge two-handed sword, stood aside. "Messer Baudichon," he said to one behind him, "this is the daughter."

She knew the fat, st.u.r.dy councillor--who in Geneva did not?--and through her stupor she recognised him, although a great bandage swathed half his head, and he was pale. And, beginning to have an inkling that things were well, she began also to tremble. By his side stood Messer Pet.i.tot--she knew him, too, he had been Syndic the year before--and a man in hacked and blood-stained armour with his arm in a sling and his face black with powder. These three, and behind them a dozen others--men whom she had seen on high days robed in velvet, but who now wore, one and all, the ugly marks of that night's work--looked on her with a strange benevolence. And Baudichon took her hand.

"We do not come to harm you," he said. "On the contrary we come to thank you and yours. In the name of the city of Geneva, and of all those here with me----"

"Ay! Ay!" shouted Jehan Brosse, the tailor. And he rang his sword on the doorstep. "Ay! Ay!"

"We come to thank you for the blow struck this night from this house!

That it rid us of one of our worst foes was a small thing, girl. But that it put heart into our burghers and strength into their arms at a critical moment was another and a greater thing. Which shall not, if Geneva stand--as stand by G.o.d's pleasure she shall, the stronger for this night's work--be forgotten! The name of Mere Royaume will at the next meeting of the Greater Council be inscribed among the names of those whom the Free City thanks for their services this night!"

A murmur of stern approval that began with those in the house rolled through the doorway and was echoed by the waiting throng that filled the street.

She was weeping. All it meant, all it might mean, what warranty of powerful friends, what fame beyond the reach of dark stories, or a woman's spite, she could not yet understand, she could not yet appreciate. But something, the city's safety, the city's grat.i.tude, the countenance of these men who came to her door blood-stained, dark with smoke, reeling with fatigue--came that they might thank her mother and do her honour--something of this she did grasp as she wept before them.

She had but one thing to ask, to desire; and in a moment it was given her.

"Nor is that all!" The voice that broke in was harsher and blunter than Baudichon's. "If it be true, as I am told, that a young man of the name of Mercier lives here? He does, does he? Ay, he lives, my girl. He is safe, have no fear. For the matter of that he has nine lives, and"--Captain Blandano continued with an oath--"he has had need of all this night, G.o.d forgive me for the word! But, as I said, that is not all. For if there is any one man who has saved Geneva, it is he, the man who let down the portcullis. And if the city does not dower you, my girl----"

"The city shall dower her!" The speaker's voice came from somewhere in the neighbourhood of the doorway, and was something tremulous and uncertain. But what it lacked in strength it made up in haste and eagerness. "The city shall dower her! If not, I will!"

"Good, Messer Blondel, and spoken like you!" Blandano answered heartily.

And though one or two of the foremost, on hearing Blondel's voice, looked askance at one another, and here and there a whisper pa.s.sed of "The Syndic of the guard? How came----" the majority drowned such murmurings under a chorus of applause.

"We are of one mind, I think!" Baudichon said. And with that he turned to the door. "Now, good friends," he continued, "it wants but little of daylight, and some of us were best in our beds. Let us go. That we lie down in peace and honour"--he went on, solemnly raising his hand over the happy weeping girl beside him, as if he blessed her--"that our wives and children lie safe within our walls is due, under G.o.d, to this roof.

And I call all here to witness that while I live the city of Geneva shall never forget the debt that is due to this house and to the name of Royaume!"

"Ay, ay!" cried the bandy-legged tailor. "I too! The small with the great, the rich with the poor, as we have fought this night!"

"Ay! Ay!"

Some shook her by the hand, and some called Heaven to bless her, and some with tears running down their faces--for no man there was his common everyday self--did naught but look on her with kindness. And so, each having done after his fas.h.i.+on, they trooped out again into the street. A moment later, as the winter sun began to colour the distant snows, and the second Sunday in December of the year 1602 broke on Geneva, the voices of the mult.i.tude rose in the one hundred and twenty-fourth psalm; to the solemn thunder of which, poured from thankful hearts, the a.s.sembly accompanied Baudichon to his home a little farther down the Corraterie.

Anne was about to close the door and secure it after them--with feelings how different from those with which she had opened that door!--when it resisted her shaking hands. She did not on the instant understand the reason or what was the matter. She pushed more strongly, still it came back on her, it opened widely and more widely. And then one who had heard all, yet had not shown himself, one who had entered with Baudichon's company, but had held himself hidden in the background, pushed in, uninvited.

Uninvited? The rushlight still burned low and smokily, and she had not relighted the lamp. The corners were dark with shadows, the hearth was cold and empty and ugly, the shutters still blinded the windows. But the coming of this uninvited one--love comes ever unexpected and uninvited--how strangely, how marvellously, how beautifully did it change all for her, light all, fill all.

As she felt his arms about her, as she clung to him, and sobbed on his shoulder, as she strove for words and could not utter them for the happiness of her heart, as she felt his kisses rain on her face in joy and safety, who had not left her in sorrow, no, nor in the shadow of death, nor for any fears of what man could do to him--let it be said that her reward was as her trial.

Madame Royaume lived four years after that famous attack on the Free City of Geneva which is called the Escalade; and during that time she experienced no return of the mysterious malady that came with one shock, and pa.s.sed from her with another. Nor, so far as can be ascertained at the distant time at which I write, did the suspicions which the night of the Escalade found in the bud survive it. Probably the Corraterie and the neighbouring quarter, ay, and the whole city of Geneva, had for many a week to come matter for gossip and to spare. It is certain, at any rate, that whatever whispers were current in this house or that, no tongue wagged openly against the favourites of the council, who were also the favourites of the crowd. For Mere Royaume's act hit marvellously the public fancy, and, pa.s.sing from mouth to mouth, and from generation to generation, is still the first, the best loved, and the most picturesque of the legends of Geneva.

And Messer Blondel? Did he evade the penalty of his act? Ask any man in the streets of Geneva, even to-day, and he will tell you the fate of Philibert Blondel, Fourth Syndic. He will tell you how the magistrate triumphed for a time, as he had triumphed in the council before, how he closed the mouths of his accusers, how not once, but twice and thrice, by the sheer force and skill of a man working in a medium which he understood, he won his acquittal from his compeers. But though punishment be slow to overtake, it does overtake at last; nor has the world witnessed many instances more pertinent or more famous than that of Messer Blondel. Strive as he might, tongues would wag within the council, and without. Silence as he might Baudichon and Pet.i.tot, smaller men would talk; and their talk persisted and grew, and was vigorous when months and even years had pa.s.sed. What the great did not know the small knew or guessed, and fixed greedy eyes on the head of the man who had dared to sell Geneva. The end came four years after the Escalade. To conceal the old negotiation he committed a further crime, and being betrayed by the tool he employed was seized and convicted. On the 1st September, 1606, he lost his head on a scaffold erected before his own house in the Bourg du Four.

The Merciers had at least one son--probably he was the eldest, for he bore his father's name--who lived into middle life, and proved himself their worthy descendant. For precisely fifty years after the date of these events a poor woman of the name of Michee Chauderon was put to death in Geneva, on a charge of sorcery; and among those--and they were not few--who strove most manfully and most obstinately to save her, we find the name of a physician of great note in the Canton at that time--one Claude Mercier. He did not prevail, though he struggled bravely; the long night of superst.i.tion, though nearing its close, still reigned; that woman suffered. But he carried it so far and so boldly that from that day to this--and the city may be proud of the fact--no person has suffered death in Geneva on that dreadful charge.

THE END.

WORKS BY STANLEY WEYMAN.

The House of the Wolf.

The New Rector.

The Story of Francis Cludde.

A Gentleman of France.

The Man in Black.

Under the Red Robe.

My Lady Rotha.

The Red c.o.c.kade.

Shrewsbury.

Sophia.

The Castle Inn.

From the Memoirs of a Minister of France.

Count Hannibal.

In Kings' Byways.

The Long Night.