The Sword of Gideon. John Bloundelle-Burton
to be-and you are discovered, your life is in awful danger. If you reach Liége you will, if betrayed, never quit it alive."
"Who shall betray me to my death? Answer me. Since you have told so much, tell more. What is it you know, and who and what are you?"
"A woman," the Comtesse answered. "One who does not betray gallant men to their deaths."
"This death you speak of is certain?"
"Certain. Beyond all doubt. For you are-"
"What?"
"Listen. Bend down from your horse. Not even they," with a glance above to where the servants were, "must hear."
"Great Heaven!" Bevill exclaimed when he had done so and she had whispered in his ear.
For the words she had thus whispered were: "You are an Englishman, and your name is not Le Blond. Have I not said truly? If you are discovered your doom is certain."
CHAPTER VII
The names of some of its past rulers as well as Spanish governors have stamped themselves deeply over all Brabant; and scarcely was there an inn or wayside hostelry to be found in the towns and villages surrounding the old capital of Brussels that did not bear for sign either that of "La Duchesse de Parma," "Le Duc de Brabant," "Le Comte d'Egmont," or, greater still, "Le Prince d'Orange," it being William the Silent, the great Liberator, to whom reference was made.
These names constituted a strange mixture, and combined to form a strange gallery of reminiscences. The first recalled a stately woman of high lineage on one side and base origin on the other. She was the daughter of Charles Quint, of "Charles qui triche,"2 and the sister of Philip, the thousandfold murderer-a woman fierce as the she-wolf when robbed of its whelps, yet often merciful; one who, to her eternal glory, despised that other murderer, that persecutor of all of the Reformed Faith, the Duke of Alva, and kept him in his place, while sometimes forcing even him to cease from shedding the blood of the innocent. The second recorded those rulers of Brabant, among whose numbers had been produced holy men and scoffers, poets and tyrants; jongleurs and minstrels and buffoons; knights as brave as ever Bayard was, and cowards who shuddered and whimpered in their innumerable palaces if but a few of their subjects muttered in the streets or congregated in small knots at the street corners. The third perpetuated the name of Lamoral d'Egmont, brave, bold, and vain; one who had been shipwrecked in corners of the world that had then been hardly heard of; who had fought for the new faith like a lion, yet had almost dreaded death, but had, nevertheless, died like a hero and a martyr at the headsman's hands in the great square of Brussels. The fourth was he who crushed Philip II. and Spain and all their myrmidons under his heel, who established for ever the Reformed Faith as the recognised national religion from the German Ocean to the Ural Mountains, and who perished at the hand of an assassin bribed by Philip to do the deed.
In St. Trond, where the Comtesse de Valorme had decided to rest for the night, it was the same as at Louvain, Brussels, and all other places. Those names were still perpetuated over the doors of the inn; the lineaments of their bearers swung in the breeze or were painted on the walls.
"Another 'Duc de Brabant,'" the Comtesse said to Bevill, as now the coach passed an inn of this name. It was the first they came to, and the landlord, running out bareheaded, begged of Madame to honour his house.
"Well, so be it. It is to the former one that I owe my meeting with a gallant defender. I will rest here. And Monsieur Le Blond-where does he purpose sojourning for the night?"
Perceiving that there was probably in this question some feeling of delicacy on the part of Madame de Valorme, some sentiment of propriety as to their not entering the town in company-they who, until those whispered words of an hour ago, had been all but unknown to each other-and of afterwards staying in company in the same inn, Bevill, casting his eyes across the place, said:
"There is another inn for travellers over there, and it is called 'Le Prince d'Orange.' It has a quiet, peaceful air. It will do very well. Also, since I have constituted myself the cavalier of Madame until Liége is reached, I shall be near at hand to keep watch and ward."
"Monsieur is very good. Farewell, monsieur. Goodnight. When," she asked, as an afterthought, "does monsieur intend to set out?"
"Early, madame. Even though 'tis but little distance to my destination, yet I would fain be there and about the work I have to do."
"If," Madame de Valorme said now, after observing with one glance from her clear eyes that her servants-who had now all descended and were directing the porters of the inn what baggage was to be taken into the house and what might be left on the top of the coach for the night-were out of earshot-"if monsieur seeks for peace and repose in Liége-though in truth it is not very like that such as he will require any such things in a French garrison " – and her eyes were on Bevill, while almost seeming to smile at him and at the knowledge of his secret, which he now knew she possessed-"I go to join some kindred whose house will be open to him. Monsieur has been a gallant chevalier to me-"
"I beseech madame to forget any foolish, trifling service I have rendered her by chance."
"I shall not forget, and" – though now she paused, and said next a word, and then paused again as though in hesitation and doubt, and still, a moment later, went on again-"and it may be that all service-all mutual service-is not yet at an end between us. If, as I believe, there is some-"
"Some what, madame?"
"Nay; I will say no more. Or only this: I, too, go to Liége about a work I have to do. A work" – and now she leant forward in the coach from which she had naturally not yet descended, while continuing in a low tone-"to which I am vowed, to which my life is vowed; a task in which so long as I have life I will not falter. And I have a hope, a belief, a supposition-call it what you will-that in you I may by chance light on one who can help me at little cost to himself."
"I protest, madame," Bevill almost stammered at hearing these words, "I protest that-"
"Listen, Monsieur le Blond," the Comtesse said, speaking so low that now her voice was no more than a whisper, a murmur, yet a whisper so clear that, by bending his head, the young man could catch every syllable she uttered. "Listen. Yet, ere you do so, promise me that no word I let fall, no thought I give utterance to, shall cause you offence, or, if I may say it, fear?"
"Fear? I fear nothing on this earth. While as for the rest, I promise."
"Enough." Then in, if it could be so, a yet lower tone, the Comtesse de Valorme continued:
"As I have said, you are not what you seem to be. You are not le Capitaine le Blond for he was a kinsman of mine and I knew him well. I-I-a Frenchwoman-ah! shame on me, good as my cause is-only hope you may be-"
"What?"
"As faithful to my desire, my secret, when you learn it, as I will be to yours. If so, then all will be well!"
"What else can madame believe I shall be? Speak. I will answer truthfully."
"No; I have said enough-for to-night. Farewell. I, too, leave this place early. Farewell, or rather adieu." And the Comtesse put out her hand to Bevill.
The landlord had been standing in the great stoop of his house while this whispered colloquy had taken place; and now, while seeing with extreme regret that the handsome, well-apparelled young horseman who had escorted the lady in the coach to his door, was not himself going to patronise him, he came forward to the carriage. Wherefore, as Bevill turned the horse's head towards "Le Prince d'Orange" he murmured respectfully, "Madame la Comtesse" – since the coronet on the carriage, if not the servants' own words, had told him the personage with whom he had to deal-"the necessaries have been taken to madame's apartments. Will Madame la Comtesse please to enter?"
Meanwhile, Bevill had ridden across to the rival place of entertainment, had given La Rose into the charge of the stableman, and had chosen a front room on the first floor of that rambling but substantial house.
"There is some strange mystery in this woman," he mused, as he stood on the balcony to which the window of the room gave access, and gazed across to the opposite inn. "Something that passes comprehension. Still, no matter,
Brantôme, who lived shortly after Charles V.'s time, says all the other monarchs called him this because he never kept a treaty, and cheated everybody.