Story Challenge
BKWillis
sad songs on the radio, and a trip through old photo albums has served to put
adwc's most stone-hearted author in a thoroughly sentimental mood. So, to mark
this rare moment of soppy romanticism, I issue the following challenge to the
other writers on this group:
Write a story in which someone is in love. That's all. Any style, length, or
setting. Unrequited, mutual, or polygonal. Chaste, sweet, or perverted.
Whatever you want, as long as somebody gets skewered by one of Cupid's
armor-piercers.
So, any takers?
BKWillis
--
"Don't get so metaphysipsychological, dammit!"
--Excel in 'Excel Saga'
evil lord zog
>
> A most uncommon event has occurred. A combination of a rainy Sunday morning,
> sad songs on the radio, and a trip through old photo albums has served to put
> adwc's most stone-hearted author in a thoroughly sentimental mood. So, to mark
> this rare moment of soppy romanticism, I issue the following challenge to the
> other writers on this group:
>
> Write a story in which someone is in love. That's all. Any style, length, or
> setting. Unrequited, mutual, or polygonal. Chaste, sweet, or perverted.
> Whatever you want, as long as somebody gets skewered by one of Cupid's
> armor-piercers.
www.angelfire.com/ia3/aeon/ia/ia26.html
--
Jon
-----
We are the people our parents warned us about, and we're here to stay.
Molly Schlemmer
> So, any takers?
Sure. Give me a few days, a plane ticket to Colorado, and some
monkeys, and I'll answer the challenge with a smile and my lacrosse
stick.
Don't worry, even *I* didn't follow that line of thought...
Molly
--
The New Who Project
www.geocities.com/newwhoproject
Adrian Tullberg
Happy Valentines.
By Adrian Tullberg.
***
The man stood in the park. His clothes were anachronistic, his hands clasped
a single rose. His shock of long-ish brown hair couldn't mask the
unreadable, but stoic expression on his face.
He looked at the ground, and began to speak.
"Hello ... I know it's been a while, but I thought ... why not. Why not come
and see you." A grimace crossed his face. "Oh dear, that didn't come out
right at all, did it? Sounded like I was coming to see you out of
obligation, like getting that trip to the dentist out of the way." He
remained silent for a moment, then kept on speaking.
"Anyway, I thought we'd catch up on old times ... what little times we had
together. When we first met ... well, you almost killed me. Literally." A
brief laugh, and he pushed his fringe aside. "You knew it wasn't your fault
almost immediately afterwards, but you still took on the responsibility.
Wouldn't let it just go away. Not like so many people do these days. If it's
any consolation, I don't blame you for that ... I never did."
"I ended up in your lap. Knew I could ask for your help. That wasn't the
right time of course ... end of the Millennium and all that, greatest party
of all time ... still, we made sure that there were other New Years."
"Afterwards ... you wanted to ask me about your future, how you did great
things. But you were confident in yourself, your own abilities ... you
didn't need a horoscope, or the like."
"I can't tell you how proud I was of you then ... how strong you were. I
still can't ... I like using words, but they have their limitations. Or
maybe the words we use are the limitations we place on ourselves?"
The man closed his eyes briefly, expression pained, then looked up again,
expression the same as before.
"I wish you had a different future ... than the one I had to offer."
"I wish that your great destiny was that of medicine ... that cybernetic
heart design you created in medical school became reality, for example. Or
some wonderful new medicine that wiped disease from the face of this
planet."
"I wish that you served your destiny in any other way rather than dying."
"You shouldn't have crossed that road. Oh, the little green man was on ...
but that car was going too fast ... and the brakes were sub-standard. You
had to push that boy out of the way ... he couldn't see that vehicle."
"That boy became a father, his child became a great leader. That leader
saved millions after that T-Mat debacle, organising new food shipment lines,
preventing worldwide starvation. He wouldn't have done that if you hadn't
ran with all your might ... "
The man stopped, took a deep breath, and started again. "Your father took it
personally ... organised a worldwide campaign for new safety standards ...
saved more lives along the way, with the new laws he campaigned for ... and
won. Funnily enough, he became known as a great reformer in his own right.
Most industrial 'robber barons' don't get stuck with that label."
The man knelt down, on one knee, on the grass. "I also wanted you to know
... that night ... next to that tree...? When I finally remembered, and ...
well, you know what happened ... I don't think I was ever happier, in this
life, or the one before it."
"I think ... I think you helped me grow up, a little, that is. I know ...
I've got a long way to go, you're not the first to say that ... or the last,
not by a long shot. I was even proud of it once, trying to justify the need
to be childish to counterpoint adult responsibilities."
"Thank you ... thank you for being there when I took that first step."
The man lowered the rose to the ground, on the simple brass plate on the
ground.
He turned, and walked away, more quickly than what was usual for him, not
looking back.
***
Dedicated to Daphne Ashbrook because ... hell, I liked her performance.
Please send any and all feedback to adria...@urban.net.au
"BKWillis" <bradk...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20030615201531...@mb-m26.aol.com...
Igenlode Wordsmith
> A most uncommon event has occurred. A combination of a rainy Sunday
> morning, sad songs on the radio, and a trip through old photo albums
> has served to put adwc's most stone-hearted author in a thoroughly
> sentimental mood. So, to mark this rare moment of soppy romanticism,
> I issue the following challenge to the other writers on this group:
>
> Write a story in which someone is in love. That's all. Any style,
> length, or setting. Unrequited, mutual, or polygonal. Chaste,
> sweet, or perverted. Whatever you want, as long as somebody gets
> skewered by one of Cupid's armor-piercers.
>
As it happens, I've actually finished one last week (relatively
unhorrific, only a *little* bit gratuitously sadistic to the
characters, trying very hard for once to write a *requited* love
affair...) but you'll have to wait until I get my cue :-) Having been
planning this since last summer, I Can Resist The Temptation...
(anyway, my email access is shot to pieces (how else would I know it
was Hoedown time?) and I'll be surprised if this even gets out...)
--
Igenlode Wordsmith <Igen...@nym.alias.net>
Snape fiction now online - http://curry.250x.com/Tower/Fiction/waterhorse/
Helen Fayle
"evil lord zog" <evil_l...@spin.net.au> wrote in message
news:3EED70A0...@spin.net.au...
> BKWillis wrote:
> >
> > Write a story in which someone is in love. That's all. Any style,
length, or
> > setting. Unrequited, mutual, or polygonal. Chaste, sweet, or
perverted.
> > Whatever you want, as long as somebody gets skewered by one of Cupid's
> > armor-piercers.
Well, I'm up to my eyeballs, and can't really do the armour-piercing
(although being me, you'd probably get a tale about Eros' OTHER arrows...
<g>) Will an excerpt from my Anniversary story-in-progress "Paradise of
Exiles" suffice?
The place is Pisa, Italy, 1822. The dramatis personae are all known to
history, bar one, who should be immediately apparent. Byron, Shelley, the
man they call "Count Koschev" (a short, dark haired rather intense
individual with a satanic little beard greying at the sides,and a long-time
if occasional "friend" to Percy Shelley...) and the others are awaiting a
final "guest" before discussing the situation that has brought them
together, and the talk turns to the subject of "love".
As an amusing aside, Edward John Trelawny was once played in a 70's
dramatisation of Byron's life by Tony Ainley... ;-)
From: Paradise of Exiles
By Helen Fayle
(Due Nov 23, 2003)
**Evening, April 25th 1822. **
'Lively company indeed,' Byron exclaimed, looking around the room. 'I do not
believe I have ever seen a better collection of poets, princes, wastrels,
pirates, lovers, dreamers, revolutionaries and rebels in my days here.' He
raised his glass in a toast. 'Exiles one and all.' He drained the glass.
Prince Mavracordato, talking in a corner with a flustered Pietro Gamba,
returned the salute, as did Trelawny. The rest were silent.
'What - no others amongst you who will give voice to our little company of
exiles? What was it you called Italy, Shiloh - "That paradise of Exiles"?
And here we are, the living embodiment of that spirit, and none will toast
that achievement?'
'Perhaps not all of us regard that exile quite so amiably as yourself, my
lord,' Shelley chided him softly, with a guarded look at Koschev. 'To be
cast out of one's native shores, whether by choice or no, is not something
all of us relish. Take the Prince, for example - his country is in the hands
of the Turk, and he returns to us briefly for a respite from the fighting.
There are days when I would long to see England again myself...'
'Were it not for the English?' Gamba quipped. 'What of your guest - what
manner of man have we in our Russian friend? Are you exile, pirate, prince
or poet?'
'All of the above,' Byron said in low tones. 'Our friend Count Koschev is
unique even amongst this select company. And quite, quite wicked - I believe
his exploits if set down in writing would make even my own excesses pale by
comparison.'
'Albé, if you plan to play with fire, let us all have some warning - I for
one have no stomach to watch you burn.' Shelley said warningly. Koschev
shared with him a sardonic smile.
'You throw a fitting simile into the proceedings as ever, Shiloh,' Byron
said craftily. 'The triumphs and tribulations of the "Count's" race are well
known to those of us here present, and the tale of the War in Heaven could
be drawn from their ancient dilemmas, could it not?' This last was addressed
to Koschev, who smiled mirthlessly.
'As you say, Lord Byron. The ironies are not lost upon those of us who
mingle with the lesser races.' His voice was smooth, cultured, and slightly
accented. 'Those few who do so are exiles in truth, for we have no home to
return to now, even if we wished it.'
'Would you then cast yourself in the role of the Star of Morning? The
prodigal rebel who stormed the gates of Heaven and failed, cast down amongst
us mere mortals for eternity?'
'My past history is not a matter I choose to discuss with this company,'
Koschev said coldly.
'Ah, but which fall?' The Greek prince, Mavrocordato spoke. 'Whereas your
Milton speaks of his angels, led by one who railed against Heaven through
the sin of pride, the Turk have a tale which suggests that love, and not
pride, was the reason for that rebellion. Iblis, the leader of the Djinn,
refused to bow down to God not through pride but from an excess of love.'
Shelley laughed. 'I hear a more romantic version exists that draws upon the
same legends that Enoch spoke of: that the love was that of the Djinn for
mortal women, and in that sin they fell from grace. _'The sons of God took
unto themselves the daughters of men...'_ he quoted softly.
'Truly is it said, the devil can quote scripture for his own ends!' Byron
quipped, which raised a laugh from all present except for Shelley and
Koschev. 'The Liber Sanguisugae gives a fuller account, Shiloh - remind me
one day to show it to you, you might find it interesting.'
'I rather like the idea that love could cause an angel to rebel against
God,' Gamba mused. 'Passion has always driven men to excesses that mere
ambition or pride could not.'
'Nonsense, the love of good living is the greatest motivator of both
revolutionary and tyrant - which must make us - well, one or the other, at
least!' Byron's attempt to change the tenor of the subject failed dismally,
as the debate continued around him.
'Love is the single most precious gift we have,' Shelley's voice cut shrilly
into the melee as the discussion between Gamba and Mavracordato grew more
heated. 'It is the bond and the sanction which connects man with man, and
man with all of existence. It urges forth our powers to attain the faintest
shadow of that perfect harmony which it seeks. The worst tyrants are those
who cannot love.'
'"Invisible and unattainable",' Koschev said suddenly. '"Without the
possession of that harmony there can be no rest nor respite to the heart
over which it rules". Your words Shelley - how can you deny that love is the
single most destructive emotion that exists?' His voice was not raised, yet
still managed to silence the rest effortlessly. All eyes turned to him.
'Hate, desire and greed, pride and envy - they can carry a man only so far
towards his goal. But love... love, like hope, is a plague upon the world.
For love feeds upon itself, like a cancer. It leads a man to believe that
there can be greater things in life, and like hope, it can only ever lead to
bitter tears. Didn't you yourself say, Shelley, that you had never found a
mind with which you could be totally joined? And yet you continually strive
to better yourself, and your fellow man, beggaring your fortune and your
health to follow an ideal that can never be realised.'
'I also said that when the soul we seek is not to be found, love drives us
to love all that surrounds us - to find beauty in the whole of creation.'
'Drives? _Enslaves_,' Koschev scoffed.
Shelley's clear gaze and knowing smile never faltered. 'In avoiding such a
sweet master you make of yourself a worse one, I fear. To master one's own
passions to such a point is its own kind of servitude, wouldn't you agree?'
Byron alone of those in the room knew the fine line Shelley walked with
this, and he tried to catch his fellow poet's attention, raising a querying
eyebrow. Shelley shook his head slightly and his smile deepened. Byron shook
his own head in mock dismissal and sat down, sighing theatrically.
'When the capacity or want of love is dead, man becomes the living sepulchre
of himself, what survives is the mere husk of what once he was.' Shelley
continued, his eyes never leaving Koschev's.
'This takes us somewhat from our topic, Count,' Trelawny drawled, breaking
the tension so suddenly all but Byron, Shelley and Koschev reeled internally
from the release of a strain they hadn't even realised they were under. 'We
began by discussing the nature of the Fall, did we not?'
Koschev smiled. ''The subject is still relevant. I offer you one of the
greatest ironies of this "love": consider, if Milton had continued his epic
with a third poetic offering - let us call it "Paradise Destroyed". Imagine
then if his theme had been the destruction of Heaven - not by his proud,
tragically flawed and ultimately martyred Adversary, but by the Son of Man -
that after millennia of nursing a bitter hatred for all that was lost, it
was left to the one who was trusted, beloved and worshipped above all, to
achieve what pride, and hatred could not. Let us suppose that this act was
engendered not by greed, or a desire for power, or personal gain, but out of
a need to protect the rest of creation. Out of, if you will, obedience to a
greater law. But having destroyed once, where would it stop? Would love then
drive that beloved icon of all that is good to destroy the rest of creation
to save it from itself?'
'Perhaps then it would fall upon the Adversary to take up the mantle of its
protector,' Shelley said quietly from the window.
'Perhaps so.' Koschev's answer was so soft, only Shelley heard it.
~~~
H
Daibhid Ceannaideach
>Date: 16/06/03 01:15 GMT Daylight Time
>Message-id: <20030615201531...@mb-m26.aol.com>
>
>A most uncommon event has occurred. A combination of a rainy Sunday morning,
>sad songs on the radio, and a trip through old photo albums has served to put
>adwc's most stone-hearted author in a thoroughly sentimental mood. So, to
>mark
>this rare moment of soppy romanticism, I issue the following challenge to the
>other writers on this group:
>
>Write a story in which someone is in love. That's all. Any style, length,
>or
>setting. Unrequited, mutual, or polygonal. Chaste, sweet, or perverted.
>Whatever you want, as long as somebody gets skewered by one of Cupid's
>armor-piercers.
>
>So, any takers?
This is the best I could come up with. Sorry.
Incompatable
by Daibhid Ceannaideach
"It'll never work." said the Doctor. He was ignored. "I mean, you have to
admit, you don't seem to have attracted attention here, let alone interest." He
was still ignored.
The Doctor sighed and wrapped another loop of scarf around his neck. His
expression was sombre as he looked at his friend. Pining.
The Doctor was never comfortable in these situations. "Look, perhaps I'm
wrong." he said. "You just go on and start a conversation. I'll.. um.. go for a
walk, or work on the chameleon circuit, or something."
* * *
The Doctor didn't say "I told you so." That would have been unkind to a good
friend. Trying to remember what he'd heard humans say in similar situations, he
offered, "Well, you'll soon forget her."
"Negative, Master." was the response. "I do not forget anything, unless it is
deleted from my memory banks. Therefore I will not forget the Skutter. It is
unfortunate that the Jupiter Mining Corporation designed the Skutters utilising
the sotware system 'MS Robot'. Since no serious cyberneticists use this system,
Professor Marius did not program me to communicate with it. Therefore I could
not establish a connection with the Skutter."
"I am sorry, K9. Sometimes two people, or machines, are just... incompatible."
--
Dave
Now Official Absentee of EU Skiffeysoc for FOUR years
http://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/societies/sesoc
"Nanotechnology could be huge."
Lord Sainsbury, Science and Innovation Minister
Molly Schlemmer
> This is the best I could come up with. Sorry.
Don't apologize. It's cute, and original :D
And you get extra brownie points for sneaking in a jab at Microsoft.
Molly
Molly Schlemmer
Very nicely done :)
Molly
Molly Schlemmer
was trying to read it, but I kept getting distracted by thoughts of
Byron...
*ahem* Anyway, I'm still jealous of your writing ability, especially
when it comes to historical pieces. I never could break away from
writing Hornblower/Sharpe-esque pieces, and those get boring after
awhile.
Good show :)
Molly
Molly Schlemmer
> setting. Unrequited, mutual, or polygonal. Chaste, sweet, or perverted.
> Whatever you want, as long as somebody gets skewered by one of Cupid's
> armor-piercers.
After trying to answer the challenge, I've finally figured out that my
muse is a three-year-old girl, with the attention span that that
implies *sighs*
Anyway, here's a short response until I can come up with something
better.
MISSING-- A HALF-DRABBLE
What did it matter that he didn't love her back?
Good riddance, then. He was the one losing out on something that
could've been amazing. It didn't matter one iota to her.
But she couldn't escape the feeling that, when he wasn't around, some
vital part of her was missing.
Molly
Doctor Who-- Drugs would be cheaper.
Daibhid Ceannaideach
Thanks. Automatic self-depecration aside, I am actually quite pleased with it.
Especially since I wrote the first half, *then* tried to work out who the
Doctor was talking to and the object of the affection was! Even once I came up
with the "incompatible" pun, it was very nearly a story of the TARDIS trying to
start a relationship with another time machine! (Either HG Wells' Time Machine,
or Doc Browns DeLorean, since you ask).
Hey, I think that was the first actual story I've posted here. It's not as
terrifying as I thought 8-)!
J2rider
chapters chapter by chapter. In addition, the ZIP "brief" is not followed by a
download here linkage. I like this stie and the storieds but it takes forever
to get the stories to be saved and the format is lost the way I'm saving them.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. Great covers by the way
J2rider
Helen Fayle
> I'm sorry, Helen. I wasn't really paying attention to your story. I
> was trying to read it, but I kept getting distracted by thoughts of
> Byron...
What, short fat balding grey-haired men turn you on?? <grin>
It's Shelley who distracts me, but not for his looks (in 1822 he was
grey-haired, fat and rather bug-eyed...). That *mind*. Mad as a
hatter, but still... ;-)
>
> *ahem* Anyway, I'm still jealous of your writing ability, especially
> when it comes to historical pieces.
<blush> thank 'ee kindly. It's my first stab at this period... if you
don't count the Book of the War! I'm totally hooked after all the
research I did for that. I blame Lawrence, it's all his fault...
I never could break away from
> writing Hornblower/Sharpe-esque pieces, and those get boring after
> awhile.
Oh, I dunno, I'd love to see a Peninsula war story on here. A Sharpe
crossover would make good summer reading on the group...! Needs an
early Doctor though, IMO. Never could see the 80's Docs in that
period, although the 8th Doc's a possible...
H
Igenlode Wordsmith
> A most uncommon event has occurred. A combination of a rainy Sunday
> morning, sad songs on the radio, and a trip through old photo albums
> has served to put adwc's most stone-hearted author in a thoroughly
> sentimental mood. So, to mark this rare moment of soppy romanticism,
> I issue the following challenge to the other writers on this group:
>
> Write a story in which someone is in love. That's all. Any style,
> length, or setting. Unrequited, mutual, or polygonal. Chaste,
> sweet, or perverted. Whatever you want, as long as somebody gets
> skewered by one of Cupid's armor-piercers.
>
Paul Andinach
> As it happens, I've actually finished one last week (relatively
> unhorrific, only a *little* bit gratuitously sadistic to the
> characters, trying very hard for once to write a *requited* love
> affair...) but you'll have to wait until I get my cue :-) Having
> been planning this since last summer, I Can Resist The
> Temptation...
>
> (anyway, my email access is shot to pieces (how else would I know
> it was Hoedown time?) and I'll be surprised if this even gets
> out...)
That's the second time you've said that... :)
Paul
--
The Pink Pedanther
John Elliott
: Oh, I dunno, I'd love to see a Peninsula war story on here. A Sharpe
: crossover would make good summer reading on the group...! Needs an
: early Doctor though, IMO. Never could see the 80's Docs in that
: period, although the 8th Doc's a possible...
Funny thing is, one of the real-life guerilla leaders was known as El
Medico.
--
John Elliott
BKWillis
>Hey, I think that was the first actual story I've posted here.
And very nice it was, too. This was what I was hoping for when I issued the
challenge -- new fiction and some new voices.
>It's not as
>terrifying as I thought 8-)!
>--
No need to be afraid of little old _us_. We likess newbiesss here, doesssn't
we, my preciousss...
BKWillis
--
Iwata: "Some young hero has to do it! And if my life will buy back the
peace--"
Ropponmatsu #2: "--that'd be dirt cheap!"
--from 'Excel Saga', Episode 25
Igenlode
We sailed north in uneasy peace, leaving the tall shoulders of Mont Pelee
behind and skirting island after island. Some were names I knew, with
French soil and citizens like our own. Some were little more than sandy
cays, or lush greenery atop inaccessible cliffs, that our captain chose
to circle, as if in search of some stranded mariner, before sailing on. I
did not openly question our course, at least in public. If they thought
me too much the pampered lady to understand that we were not sailing by
the direct route, I would not disillusion them just yet. But I did begin
to wonder if we were even searching for a rendezvous, or rather seeking
to shake off some unknown pursuit...
Count Danik was fretting. We had been travelling so slowly that, if all
had been well, it was already past time to send back the messenger bird.
But both of us were almost sure that all was *not* well -- yet, what use
would it be if the Avalanche were to follow and overhaul us before we
could discover the trap, wherever it might be? And worse, what if after
all, Osman could not find us, as we crept round inlet after inlet, far
from the main trading routes?
We sent off the message, at last. "Wait three days" -- and then Danik's
best estimate of our speed and position. If it reached St-Pierre in time,
Osman would wait three more days before setting out to hunt down our
ship, wherever she might be. Or it might be that the bird was too late
and that the Avalanche had set sail already. Either way, the decision was
made. Help was coming. Something here was definitely wrong.
And yet when trouble did arrive, it was not from the quarter we had
expected. Nor was it the betrayal we had foreseen. It was Danik, in fact,
who began it. It was he who urged the captain to let us land.
"There, madame -- at the cliff's foot --"
It was a hot afternoon, and the ship was creeping along the coast as ever
with barely a breath of wind in her sails. As idle passengers, we had
begged the use of the captain's spyglass. As owner of the cargo and
part-charterer of the ship herself, my whims were not refused -- though
the captain had seemed very reluctant. Perhaps he was wise.
Between us, we were scanning the deserted beaches narrowly as we passed.
We were still a long way from our destination and well off established
routes. This was old buccaneer territory -- we'd already glimpsed the
crumbling shoulders of a Spanish fort on the coast up ahead -- and
boasted a multitude of hidden coves to which ships might have been
brought, willingly, or by force, to discharge a certain portion of their
cargo...
Danik was taking his turn with the glass. He'd stiffened, training the
lenses more closely on the rippled sand. It looked as if our gamble had
paid off. Boats *had* landed here -- and recently. There might have been
an innocent explanation, but a far more likely one was the presence under
the cliff of what bore a strong resemblance to the dark mouth of a
cave... Whatever was planned for our own cargo -- the Count and I
exchanged glances as he passed the spy-glass back into my possession --
we were of one mind. This whole coast was suspicious; and it seemed we
might have found the destination of at least some of what I had lost.
I took a closer look, while my companion argued the reluctant captain
into lowering a boat to drop the two of us ashore. There was no doubt
about it. There were the marks of more than one keel hauled up on the
beach, and the churning of many footprints in the sand. Something had
been landed here; or loaded.
Oh, we thought we were very clever, Danilo and I! We thought we had
understood everything that was going on -- a little petty theft,
dishonesty among the chartered captains -- and had nipped the problem in
the bud, as my father used to say. We did not dream that in coming here
myself, I had played entirely into my adversary's desire; still less,
then, did we even suspect whom that adversary would claim to be...
I will pass lightly over our investigations on shore, for while we had
guessed aright, it proved to be of no moment. Something had been landed,
and had been dragged to the cave; but it was not there now, and it was
not hard to see why. The floor of the cave was awash with smooth sand in
which our own footmarks left dampened hollows. The base of this opening
lay lower than the other side of the beach, and at high tide it would be
flooded to a depth of almost a metre. Nothing could be stored here for
long.
Gunshots robbed us of any time for disappointment we might have felt --
gunshots, and the sound of oars. The boat that had brought us had fled
the beach, and was hastening back across the bay, her oarsmen splashing
in their panic.
For a moment, I knew only that we had been deserted. It was Count Danik's
arm that held me back in the shadows of the cave-mouth, when, furious, I
would have rushed out; and from those shadows, then, that we saw it all.
The long, low ship, a predator in every line, even as our own lumbering
merchantman was a lamb to the slaughter. The pitiful engagement, between
two foes so ill-matched in force. The moments, afterward, when we waited
for the captors to send armed men on our own behalf. And the strange
silence that lay over the bay as victor and victim set sail in convoy,
the strange ship nipping at her conquest's heels, and we were left alone
and unsuspected on the island coast.
Carelessness -- or chivalry? I still do not know. If the captain was
questioned, then I can only guess that he must have shielded my presence.
I would not have credited him with so much loyalty. Danger does not
always come from those we mistrust.
But even if we had escaped capture, our situation, as must be evident,
was far from pleasant. We had landed at the low of the tide. Already it
had begun to rise, and would ere long have reduced the golden bay to a
narrow strip of sand. Intending only a few minutes' stay, we had brought
neither meat nor drink, nor any cloak or jacket. We would not, to be
sure, drown; but by the time, sooner or later, that our presence here was
disclosed, we might well be reduced to a sufficiently miserable condition
to welcome captivity with open arms.
"I've no mind to be stranded on a beach." Danik was forthright.
He looked up at the cliff-edge above us, topped with vibrant greenery.
"Madame... do you think that with my aid you might venture...?"
I, too, had felt the lure of the moist verdure promised above. Already,
prompted by the knowledge that it could not be quenched, the first sly
torments of thirst had begun to tickle my throat. In a few hours they
would be real.
But I could not help but laugh at Danik's careful consideration for my
frailities. "You do not know me very well, /monsieur le comte/, if you
think I would not venture such a climb unaided. Did we but have the time,
I would tell you a hundred tales of my childhood upon the mountainsides
and gorges of my home--"
I broke off at his expression of absolute horror. Anyone would think that
he had never seen a lady taking off her skirts before.
"Come now, monsieur--" I confess I had thought better of him -- "surely
you do not expect me to address myself to a cliff-face in this
condition?" A gesture indicated the petticoats that were pooling around
my feet as I stepped clear.
Then it was my turn to avert my eyes instinctively with burning cheeks.
He had begun hastily to remove his own nether garments.
Only in order, it transpired, to offer them chivalrously to me. It seemed
the prospect of a lady engaging upon a climb in her under-drawers was
unthinkable while her companion could volunteer to do so in her place. To
be frank, if it were not that I am somewhat slender, I do not think that
in any case I could have fitted into his breeches, as it were -- and it
did not seem to me after my struggle that the ensuing arrangement
provided any great improvement in decency... However, having no wish to
rip my linen in the scramble, I thanked him prettily and took care to
begin my ascent with great independence at some distance from his own.
Alas for false pride! I do not consider that I have become over-soft of
recent years; but it is true that the life of a merchant is not so active
as that which I was accustomed to lead in my girlhood. I will not say
that I was reduced so far as to appeal for help -- but I will own that my
own ascent was a lumpen thing compared to the active grace displayed by
the Count, and that there were times when I would have seized upon an
offered hand with gratitude. Such a grasp being out of reach, however,
pride compelled me to make what shift I could to complete the climb
without disgrace, and even to suppress the ardours of my breathing as
best I could when I had reached the top.
If I had looked for compliment, I received none. Danik, it seemed, had
taken me at my word and accepted the same competence in me he would have
expected in any member of his own crew. I did not know whether to be
affronted or flattered. I settled upon simply envying his physique.
--------
And now, with Danilo and myself upon the verge of striking forth into our
unknown island's interior, I find I must halt my tale awhile to intimate
certain facts, with which we did not until later become acquainted but
without which these events would doubtless appear to the world as
arbitrary and nonsensical as at that time they seemed to us.
The identity and plans, then of our aggressor -- or, at least, that
identity by which I perforce knew him, for of his true birth I never
learned. Edmond, then. Edmond de la Tour... brother to my Emile, the
elder by some twenty minutes, and sometime companion of my early
childhood at Mireille. Dead these fifteen years past, as well I could
recall, having been the only comforter young Emile would permit to
witness his tears. I gave him all the childish comfort I could, in the
same spirit and accepted in the same way, I believe, as the mournful
caresses of Belle, his white hound. A proud youth does not easily permit
others to see him cry.
Edmond had drowned in the bay, in rough weather, when his skiff
overturned. The house-boy who was with him said he had seen him struck on
the head as the two of them had been flung into the water; he had tried
to catch onto Edmond's hand, but the waves had separated them. No-one saw
young de la Tour slip under. No-one ever saw him again alive.
Our western shores, in Martinique, are not gentle like those of the
Caribbean coast. The ocean breaks upon them with the full force of wind
and wave, and those who die there are seldom found.
Edmond had been eight years drowned when Emile and I were wed, and their
father dead of a fever and two years in his grave, and if Emile still
dreamed at times of his twin, only I and the walls of our chamber knew
it. But someone must have kept the elder brother in mind. Someone who had
watched with envy the growing prosperity of the House of La Tour. Someone
who learned of Emile's death, and knew that a living brother could claim
half of what I now held in Jehan's name... and knew that my word of
acceptance would carry more weight among those in St-Pierre than any
paper claim. If I did not contest this Edmond's return, then few outside
the family would take it upon themselves to give me the lie.
And, to do him justice, he had troubled to learn enough of me to judge
that I would not be easily brow-beaten or cozened on my own ground. At
some point, he had resolved to take steps to attract my personal
attention towards a location more to his advantage -- and had profited by
it meanwhile to derive some advance payments upon the estate he coveted.
When I took ship myself to investigate the losses, I had been dancing
like a puppet to his tune. It was not my goods upon which he counted to
lay hands -- it was my person, and I had delivered that precious
commodity within his grasp.
Had I been on that ship when apprehended, my destination would have been
that same ancient fort we had so lately espied. And, alone and without
prospect of release, my resolve might indeed have crumbled, to cede a
half of my son's inheritance to this man with smiling promises and
lawyers' threats...
But chance -- in the shape of Danilo -- intervened. I was not alone, and
I was not captive. And I was not, as my enemy supposed, without resort. I
had no need to recourse to his aid to leave this place where he had
trapped me. I had only to attend the coming of allies of whom he knew
nothing; of loyal Osman, and the Avalanche.
You must not suppose, of course, that I was acquainted with all this at
the time of which I write. Some I learned later, from his own lips. Some,
I confess, I have guessed at even as I set it down. But some we were to
discover soon enough, and before long; before the sun of the next morning
had cleared the trees. We were not castaways alone, but also fugitives.
On our domestic arrangements during this period, I will not dwell
over-much, save to say that chivalry soon gave place to the comradeship
of necessity, at least for warmth; and that I had never thought to miss
my petticoats so much. We must have mourned the loss of that quantity of
cloth above a dozen times in the course of those days -- to make a
shelter, to strain water, to carry burdens, bind scratches, and to dry
ourselves at need.
Such clothing as we had could be ill-spared. Danik, in his linen,
suffered the most. I offered him back his breeches, but he flushed and
would not hear of it. In his place I fear I would not have taken such a
gift either -- and not for such noble motives. We were neither of us, by
then, too savoury in our persons. Strange, how one's own dirt is so much
less offensive to the nose than that of others.
Our life in those days was a game of hide-and-seek, played out across a
ground the size of a small plantation, with parties of determined
opponents far better equipped than we; and if you find it hard to
conceive how two ragged fugitives could with ease outwit all those who
sought to find them, then I must suppose that you have never trod the
soil of Caribbean islands untended by human hand for fifty years or more.
The rocks were shattered and seamed by a thousand gorges, as if thrown up
by some titanic convulsion vast aeons before, affording a plenitude of
hiding-places for the moment's need. But above all, they were thickly
clad in such verdant greenery as is nowhere else to be found in the
world, unless it is in deepest Africa's heart. This growth took its toll,
as I have said, upon our clothing -- one would not long have credited
Danik's shirt for white, or for anything better-tailored than a dishcloth
-- but in its cover we could have lain still and watched our hunters pass
within a stone's-throw without revealing a hint of our presence. On more
than one occasion we in fact did so...
But the feat of which I admit I am most proud was that daring raid,
driven by hunger, conceived and executed almost entirely by myself
against the camp of a pursuing party when they had retired for the night.
I had intended, indeed, to undertake it alone. But Danik, discovering by
chance the course of my endeavour, chose rather to join than to dissuade
me. By that, you may judge either of the depths of our hunger or the
heights to which our mutual respect had attained -- or perchance of both.
The plan and the execution, however, were mine, with my companion taking
the part of lookout and of beast of burden as we fled, with our victims
aroused and in an uproar behind us. I had secured food, a machete, hot
coals -- and if you judge that the chance of betraying ourselves by smoke
did not warrant the risk, then I hold it clear you have never endured for
days with never a cooked meal -- and a certain garment besides on Danik's
behalf, the nature of which I believe I need not name... For all his
relief, I do not know if he has yet quite forgiven me!
But all good jests must come to an end, and our friend Edmond was the
first to tire of this merry pursuit. Why hunt the eagle on the wing, when
the unfledged chick cannot leave the nest? He had a ship now at his
disposal, known in St-Pierre and trusted. What persuasion he used I do
not know -- perhaps the same that first brought her course so aptly past
his fastness, perhaps some threat or promise more direct.
He sent our merchantman home as directly as might be, with a leavening of
his own men amongst the crew, and a false message from L'Aiglonne to
bring her son aboard on a voyage to join her. He dared to lay his hands
upon Jehan, alone with his tutor and the servants, with none there who
would even question an order from L'Aiglonne, when the ship sent to bear
it was the same that had taken their mistress on her supposed
pleasure-voyage... He had dared -- dared, in this game of wits we were
playing -- *dared* to strike at the one who had no part or blame in it.
He had laid his hands upon my son, and set a dagger to his throat to
threaten my own. And then, with the ship safely in sight, and its
precious cargo assured, he let it be known what he had done.
Danilo tells me that I swore the most original and bloody oaths he has
heard from any woman outside the pages of Euripides, and has quoted me
the Greek to prove it. Since my childhood did not, as his, include a
classical education, I will take him at his word for the
blood-thirstiness of the daughters of Ancient Greece; but if their
passion for vengeance was one-half of mine at that moment, then I will
credit them with the authorship of the most horrid threats you may care
to name, without a pause for doubt. And with the resolution to enact them
upon the instant.
But nothing was to be done; for it was all too plain that while my own
life was of far more value to this Edmond than my death, the slender life
of my son was no more than an obstacle between this man and the other
half of a fortune. His future, in this place, was measured precisely in
the balance between the gain to be made by retaining my good-will, and
the gain to be made by taking the risk of claiming all... I believe I
should have given way entirely, had it not been on that same day, in that
same hour, that the Avalanche was finally sighted.
The child's safety was paramount. On that, there could be no
disagreement. And the only safety for Jehan was to be found away from
there, on board that fortunate ship, among men loyal to Danik of
Ruritania, and to the wishes of L'Aiglonne. On that, too, Danik was only
to ready to agree.
But a child is not a treasure-chest or a great diamond, to be fought over
and clawed back dyed with blood. His life is as fragile as a candle-flame
that cannot be snatched, lest it fall or be struck, and hence go out. And
Jehan was ringed around with steel. Osman could not bring the Avalanche
in to wrest him by force, even if the guns of the fort did not defend its
anchorage against all attack.
Only one thing could ensure any chance of his survival; and Danik would
not even consider it as a possibility. The only chance for Jehan's
escape, as was all too plain to see, was for his value as a hostage to be
negated. For all attention to be drawn to the successful conclusion of a
long chase. For L'Aiglonne to permit herself to be captured.
If the sacrifice had been his I do not doubt Danik would have gone to it
gladly, with a smile on his lips and daredevil mockery in his heart; but
even he must needs admit that such a course of action would be senseless
for us all. *His* sacrifice would be of no value -- his life, in Edmond's
hands, of no account. It was I who was the prize in this game of ours,
too valuable to he harmed... and my freedom alone that could buy enough
distraction for a rescuer to reach my son. And to *that* role, as we both
knew, he was far better suited than I. No woman could hope to pass
unnoticed down by that ship -- not even one clad, or ill-clad, as I was.
No woman could slip unhindered among her crew. And no-one, man or woman
alike, could bid the Avalanche sail without her master's word, if that
master faced captivity and death in my place...
"Go, /mon cher/. We have little time. Take my son to safety -- and I will
await your return in the fullest of confidence."
We were watching the ship creep into anchorage below, shadowed by the
crumbling bulk of the fort on the other point. I smiled at him. "Grant me
this once the chance to play the noble part, I beg..."
One eyebrow flew upwards at that as he grinned, somewhat ruefully. "/Eh
bien, camarade/ -- play it well. And may God go with us both."
He pressed my hand briefly and was gone, with that silent grace that was
all his own. I lingered a moment longer, gazing down at that ship below;
then parted in my turn. I had a long way to go, if I was to draw off
pursuit, and little time.
Igenlode
> Write a story in which someone is in love. That's all. Any style,
> length, or setting. Unrequited, mutual, or polygonal. Chaste,
> sweet, or perverted. Whatever you want, as long as somebody gets
> skewered by one of Cupid's armor-piercers.
>
And now here's mine... or at least the first three parts thereof...
I feel I must point out in warning that this was even more of a
challenge piece for me than last year's Hoedown: I don't have a lot of
experience with writing for women (I'm not sure I got it quite right),
and while I *used* to write first-person narrative and stories with
requited love and happy endings, it has been a very long time since I
consciously attempted either. As a result, this is distinctly
experimental.
Also, like 'Chestnuts' (which was a set-up piece for this one - yes, it
was planned that far in advance!) it has *zero* Dr Who content, and
doesn't even pretend otherwise. You Have Been Warned...
[Author's note: my thanks to Eloise, the avocado-green troll, for
providing the seed of the lady's genesis - and to Paul Andinach for
asking "what happened next", without which 'Eagle's Daughter' might
never have made it onto the page at all, let alone onto the newsgroup!
Thanks are also due to Space Camelot for providing Danik's replacement
sword - I'm afraid the narrator doesn't believe in you, but *we* all
know the truth, don't we? :-) ]
[Subnote: L'Aiglonne /literally/ means "The (female) eaglet"; like the
lady's writing style, it doesn't always translate very well :-( ]
* * * Eagle's Daughter - A Swashbuckling Romance * * *
/Mesdames -- messieurs -- pretez-moi l'oreille, je vous prie. Je
m'appelle Ernestine, et je suis nee ici a Mireille --/
Eh, and now why are you laughing, /grand malin/? I have not your skill at
tall tales; give me leave, then, to tell this in my own way, as I was
taught. This is our story, and if you will not write it then I must...
/Viens. Je t'embrasse./ So -- and now go, dear heart. Take Jeannot with
you, out into the sun... and leave me to my pen and paper, to make what
shift I may.
..And now at least I can work in peace. I have not yet found the trick
of this, I fear. Of late, it is accounts and lading bills to which my pen
has become accustomed, and I do not quite know any longer how I should
begin...
So. I will start again, as my governess taught me when I was myself but a
child, younger than my Jeannot there. And if it makes me sound a child in
your ears, then I beg pardon, and hope soon to improve... I was born,
then, here on this island of Martinique that was once the richest
territory in all of France; but in these days we are sadly declined and
are mere poor provincials, with fashions three years behind Paris, and
the plantations dwindling year by year.
Here I was born, on this same plantation of Mireille where now I sit once
more in my father's study and struggle to shape my thoughts... My father
was Thierry de Roncourt -- a name not without resonance in the history of
our island -- and my mother, his wife of many years, Adele. I was their
only child, and they wished at first, I think, for a boy, giving me this
name Ernestine which I have carried with an ill grace through the years.
It was Emile who first called me /L'Aiglonne/, the Young Eagle. It was a
joke between us at first, and a harsh one, for it played upon this great
beak-like nose I have from my father. When I was fourteen years of age, I
would bathe it in orange-water every night, and weep in the morning to
see in my glass that it had not shrunk... The Indian workers here call my
father 'Old Hawk-face' when they think he cannot hear, and imagine he
does not know of it. But in truth it is a nickname we use among ourselves
in the house, for it is given in affection, and makes him laugh. And thus
it was with Emile and me, for what had been a boy's rough humour soon
became a proud title, and at last a love-name between us. It was that
name he called on, the night he died, and I would not have wished any
other...
But I run ahead of myself. Emile is more in my thoughts now of late than
since the year of the hurricane -- the year our son was two years old...
It is no betrayal, I think, for me to love again. I have been five years
a widow, and never felt the blessing of the dead so closely upon me as
this summer. Emile himself would have opened his heart to this man, even
as my father and my son have done...
But still I am ahead of myself! Know, then, that at nineteen years of age
I was wed, to this same Emile de la Tour who had been my childhood
friend. My father, I think, had long hoped for the match; but he would
not have forced me if I was unwilling. Of that, however, there was no
question. My heart had been given without hesitation since I was ten
years old, and he a lordly fourteen.
Of happy years there is little, as ever, to tell. Emile was young, but he
had already ships and a thriving trade of his own, and though he had no
fortune by birth he had begun to build a fine inheritance for his son. We
lived in the city of St-Pierre itself, in the arms of old Mont Pelee, and
from the windows of our chamber we could glimpse the masts of our ships
coming in... Jehan was born in the first year of our marriage, to such
pride and delight one would almost have thought my father himself took
credit for the event. I confess I must have been more distraught by the
birth than I had thought, for they tell me that when the child was placed
in my arms, I thanked God on his behalf that he he had not fallen heir to
my father's nose, and then begged for him to be taken away...
It may be true. I was so tired that morning that I will take no oath on
what I may not have said or done. But if Jeannot was not at once beloved
in his first moments, then in the years that came after he was repaid
full-fold. In memory, now, every day seems gilded in sunlight, though
storms there must have been. We three were always together, save when
Emile must needs himself take some short voyage; but in his absence, the
house seemed empty and sad indeed, and Jehan and I would find a ready
welcome with my parents at Mireille, on the slopes above Sainte-Marie.
When the end came, it was without warning. That was a mercy, perhaps; but
in those first days, afterwards, I would have given ten years of my life
to have had time to prepare -- to have said goodbye...
It was a night of high wind, such as we often have here. Not quite a
hurricane as yet, although later, they say, when that same wind struck
the Americas, they reckoned it as such. Emile had gone down to the quays,
for there was a ship newly in and all not yet stored under cover. And by
God's will, if such it was, on that one night, by chance, a block came
free from the rigging of some other ship, and was dashed down by the wind
upon the quay where my husband stood, and struck him down so that the
skull was broken; and of it he died, two hours later, on that same
rain-washed quayside in my arms.
Of the grief that followed, I will not write, for some things are not to
be told. But with Emile died our world, such as it had been, and I was
left alone in the darkness of my loss, with a child barely old enough to
speak, and a merchant house whose demands could not be denied. I had
offers enough to sell, when the news became known, and some would have
taken the young widow's hand along with her ships, in perhaps unseemly
haste; but Emile's work was all that remained to me of our life together,
and I set myself to learn it in his place as quickly as might be, filling
my days with such business cares that the emptiness in my heart had no
space to overwhelm me. We had spoken more together of these matters than
many a husband and wife, for since earliest youth Emile had been
accustomed to trust my judgement, and the concerns of trade were not
altogether new. I do not think I could have done it, else. But Emile's
factor was accustomed to come to me for orders in his master's stead, and
in those first months I leaned greatly upon his knowledge and upon that
of others in the company, and was not cheated.
I make no doubt I was the talk of the Bourse, and of many ill-mannered
tongues in the town -- the Widow La Tour, deprived at once of her wits
and of her man, run wild with the dream to hold the company in her own
right! But from that, at least, I was shielded by the numbness that
shrouded me; and when at last my darkness began to lift, I was no longer
a nine-days'-wonder, but accepted as the owner of a merchant house like
any other, and the warehouses of La Tour were changed on their lips as
often as not -- by no will of my own -- to those of L'Aiglonne.
For so they called me, the men of my company, in jest and in pride -- no
longer the Widow but the She-Eagle in truth, soaring above adversity,
fierce in defence of her own. Those were not golden years that followed,
but they were good. Jehan was no child now in the arms of his nurses, but
a sturdy boy who grew monthly more like his father, though with a sadly
wilful spirit I fear was none of gentle Emile's but all my own. He was
often at Mireille, though I could seldom now spare the time, and learned
there to don the grave demeanour suited to one who was heir to two
fortunes -- that of his grandfather, such as remained, and his own.
For under my care, the company had prospered. Trade was good in that
time, and since the freedom of the slaves the merchants were kings, with
former slaves and their children among them. All the wealth of the island
flowed through St-Pierre, and some through our hands, and our quays were
as full as our counting-houses -- and all this by law would pass to Jehan
when he was of age. It was an inheritance of which his father could have
been proud. It was, in this time of which I am to write, more of a burden
than either of us had dreamed.
For I have yet to reach the true start of this tale I have set myself;
and I fear I am proving but a poor hand at such an account. In striving
to set down all that might bear upon our life from the beginning, I have
left out a part of Emile's history which was to prove the most important
of all as a pretext for all that followed... But of that in its proper
place -- which, since the timely recounting of it has been missed, must
perforce be later, when it was brought afresh to my own recall.
Picture, then, all that has passed as a prologue. The wild story that has
turned my life in its grasp began in truth on one day at the start of
this year, when a certain Danilo von Schelstein and friend came strolling
in at my door...
--------
I knew him for a foreigner by his accent before ever we met. Pure
Parisian French, floating in at the open door to my parlour, such as we
poor Creoles rarely hear -- with the faintest betraying touch of the
Balkans. His tutor had been very good, but not quite good enough. My
father used to say that nothing but trouble ever comes from the Balkans.
Perhaps I should have listened to him more closely... and then again,
perhaps I and my son would have died if I had.
From where I sat, I could hear the stranger asking for Emile. That in
itself was enough to halt my work. No-one had come to us asking for Emile
in almost three years... and he was questioning the badge there over the
door -- a foolish eagle-emblem from the years of the Empire, presented to
me as a jest by the younger clerks and accepted in the same spirit -- and
demanding if this were indeed the Maison de la Tour, or if he had found
his way to the wrong quay.
I rose to my feet, gathering my sober skirts, and went out to take a hand
in dealing with this audacious stranger. It was thus that I first set
eyes upon Danik of Ruritania.
"16, Quai Grand-Cabri," I told him sharply. "And this is the House of
L'Aiglonne, and you deal with me, monsieur. Emile de la Tour is five
years dead..."
He was tall and fair, a fairness such as we never see here in the
Windward Isles, reddened already slightly by the sun. It was a long face,
a little horse-like, with a nose to equal my own, and his mother herself
could not have called it handsome in repose; but the lines about his wide
mouth and his eyes spoke of laughter, and even when shadowed in a puzzled
frown, the clear grey eyes themselves held a disarming twinkle that was
all his own.
He was looking at me now with curiosity, and I knew well enough what he
could see. A tall, dark, hawk-faced woman, too tall and too forward for
many men's liking, lacking only six or seven centimetres of his own
height. Guarded, impatient eyes that startled me sometimes in the mirror
with the heat of their own challenge. A sober costume that might have
passed at first glance for that of a governess or lady's-maid if it were
not for the quality of the cloth -- I am not a woman who has ever
believed in peacocking her wares, though I wear the dark reds and golds
that best set off my colouring when I have occasion to wear a fine gown.
I have jewels, too, of a quality to make the Mogul stare. But I do not
wear them to the office.
He had never met Emile, it seemed. He had a letter of introduction, still
sealed, from a mutual friend in Lombardy, recommending one Count Danik of
Ruritania to my husband's attention and assuring Emile that the aforesaid
Danik was both trustworthy and diligent in any commission he might be
asked to undertake. I did not know this Lombard merchant, but I trusted
his judgement -- and Emile's. It had occurred to me that Count Danik
might be the answer to a prayer.
For some months past, our House had been losing merchandise from ships on
a certain route, trading north among the islands. Where a cargo held
goods from many merchants, it was always from ours that the losses came.
Where a vessel held only goods from our own House, on occasion she would
disappear from sight for good. The value of what was taken was not so
great, but I could sense the malice of it burning like a hot eye. Someone
wished to attract my pique. Well, he had done so, and with a vengeance.
On our last ship sailing north I had sent one of my most trusted clerks
as supercargo, with instructions to risk nothing but to ferret out what
was going on. The ship had arrived, depleted. The supercargo had not --
and nothing could be got from the crew, despite all my written
entreaties, save a sullen silence of cupidity or fear. Until they again
reached French soil, there was nothing I could do -- and I did not think
they were planning to return.
I hoped against hope that my clerk had been merely shanghaied and left
destitute on the shore of some foreign port, with no means at hand to
make his way back. But in my heart I believed I had most likely sent him
to his death. He had a wife of twenty years' standing, and three bright
young sons.
I did not as yet know my adversary; but I knew that between us it was war.
I would send no more of those faithful to me into danger. I would go
myself. And I would not go unprepared. If the crews could not be trusted,
then I would take those with me who *could*...
And it was at just such a point of resolution that I encountered Danik of
Ruritania, in search of action, and hired him to be my guard. I could not
travel on board his ship, for that would arouse suspicion. But both he
and I would take passage, as I had done before, in the vessel that was to
carry my next northward cargo... and his ship, the Avalanche, would have
another task. If aught went ill, our lives might hang on it, his as well
as mine, and for that reason I trusted the quiet man who would sail her,
and who was always at Danik's side. That bond of loyalty was plain enough
to see. If the Count's life depended on Osman's following orders, not one
hair's-breadth of doubt would he incur.
I embarked in the freshness of one morning, leaving Jehan and most of the
household asleep. Count Danik was already aboard. We had agreed to show
no signs of acquaintance until we were well away from the land; I had
begun of late to fear some spy among my own people, so remorseless and
apt were the depredations upon my stock. It was not the first time, as I
have said, that I had made such a voyage. Like Emile, I now travelled at
times to negotiate new trade, or to close a contract in person with my
Dutch or English partners; Paris frowns upon such dealings, but honest
merchants, as they say, are hard to find, and this little sea of the
Caribbean is small enough in all conscience without limiting our custom
to the mother-country alone. I would not see these Indies of ours go the
way of Spain.
For this journey, however, I had not advertised my plans. Even my own
household knew only that I was on a journey, a pleasure-trip for all that
I had said. Some of those that I trusted at the warehouse knew; and there
was a wicker cage among my boxes which carried a homing bird that would
bear a message of reassurance in case of need.
I had brought no maid. It was not only that I did not trust the girl's
wagging tongue -- every maid gossips at home, and mine are no exception
-- but that I would not expose her in ignorance to possible danger.
But danger was hard to believe in that bright and early hour, with the
sun painting colour across the wide sea to the east. If I had proof of
danger rather than misdeed, I would not have gone myself. I would have
petitioned the Governor for aid. I had no proof, and only the absence of
one humble clerk to bid me be wary. And it is hard to be wary in the
beauty of our Antilles at dawn...
Later, sheltering in the stifling heat of the great cabin, or seeking
relief in fleeting sail-shadows along the rail, it was easier to believe
in an oppressive presence. Count Danik and I leaned together and
exchanged notes; he did not care for the looks of the crew and captain,
and no more did I. They were cowed and nervous, like an over-whipped
slave, and about as safe to be trusted. I did not think they wished us
harm of their own volition; indeed, to slay L'Aiglonne would be ruin to
every man in the crew, even if their part in it were not known. But I
would not rely on them not to betray us, and I was sure they had some
fore-knowledge which they would not share.
I would not permit Danik to mount guard outside my cabin at night. But I
did not disdain the warning cord which he contrived to introduce through
a crack in the caulking, down into the narrow fastnesses of his own cabin
below. The comfort of having a practised swordsman at a moment's call was
not to be despised.
I was not, as it happened, incompetent myself with a sword, for Emile and
I had run wild as children, and as his wife I had not neglected the art.
But I did not carry weapons outside the fencing /salle/, still less on
boarding a ship in public view -- and Count Danik had no such scruple.
Indeed, I had never seen him without his intricate blade. He claimed that
it had been given to him by the court of a king alongside whom he had
fought in battle, as a reward for the loss of his own. But I had learned
already to take the Ruritanian's tales with a pinch of salt. Not one
tenth of those wild adventures could have been true, this one least of
all. Battles in our days are fought with cannon and bayonet, and kings do
not take part.
Igenlode
Of what followed, in large part, I was not myself a witness. I must beg
your indulgence, therefore, for this my story, for I can but tell it as
the tale was told to me; and hope to spare my blushes where the matter
turns upon myself, and those I love... For my trust in Danik was amply
repaid. While I drew off pursuit in manner like a mother-bird with broken
wing, feigning despair and weakness I did not feel, my comrade in arms
had made his way down to the anchorage and there bided his time until the
hue and cry had all been raised and the landing-place was all but
stripped of men, with the precious cargo still held safe aboard the ship.
Then, leaving off his borrowed clothing and bearing only that sword which
he had carried with him all this time, he slipped into the water and swam
out boldly to the vessel as she lay at anchor, raising himself eel-like
through the great stern window and into that same cabin where I had once
been a guest. And there, locked away among my garments and my boxes, he
found my son -- indignant, afraid, but in no way a disgrace to his name.
I had not thought to give Danik any token by which it might be known that
he came from me; but I had spoken often enough of Jehan and of our
parting that he had no ado in convincing the boy of phrases we two alone
could have recalled. If truth be told, I fear my son would have followed
him in any case. He was enchanted with this merry stranger almost from
the moment that they met -- and even now can be brought to talk of little
else.
It was as well; for it took some courage to put himself entirely in
Danik's hands and let himself down into the water with only Danik's arm
for support, and so be towed out around the point, without the least cry
or sound. But they came safe to land at last, and there Danik left him
hid, brave child that he was, while he himself must needs find some
signal to bring in the Avalanche at a spot where none could reach them
from the fort until it was too late.
And so they were brought safely off, as Jehan tells it, and he had the
run of the ship and made many friends, while the Avalanche made sail with
all speed she could manage back to Martinique. Not to St-Pierre, for we
did not know how many accomplices in the city might not already be in the
pay of this Edmond. It is all too simple for a child alone in a household
there to be once again 'lost'.
I had bade Danik take him, if he could, to the household of his
grandfather at Mireille above Sainte-Marie, by which formidable gentleman
he could be no better defended anywhere else on the Windward Isles. No
strangers could enter on our land that Thierry did not know it, and none
lived on Mireille who did not know and love the child since his birth. He
could be no safer were he guarded day and night in Fort St-Louis.
Of the war-councils that ensued upon their arrival at Mireille, I know
little, save that it seems Danik won my father's trust in no short order,
and my mother's liking besides -- a feat, if it be possible, of even more
acclaim, for my mother has small patience for strangers, and for
foreigners less.
Words cannot describe the fury with which my father learned of the
outrage planned upon his daughter and on her son; yet for once, as it
fell out, Thierry de Roncourt proved the wiser head in such an
enterprise, for he counselled against applying publicly to the Governor
for troops to raze that whole kidnapper's nest to the ground, as Danik
had been hot to do. Such an expedition might wipe out one humiliation --
but unless the name of La Tour was to become the talk of the islands,
better by far to obtain my freedom as quickly and quietly as might be,
and take such measures afterwards as might be more discreetly achieved.
With this Danik was brought to concur, though instinct cried out against
so tame an outcome; but he felt himself in some measure under an
obligation to ensure my safety, having been engaged to accompany me with
that very object, and having, as he saw it, failed. Despite my assurances
that I should not be harmed, he condemned himself in thought for leaving
me to take that risk while he sailed free. Having pledged to return and
secure my liberty, he grudged all obstacles that promised delay, from
temptations of hospitality to Jehan's own determination to come. The boy
had conceived an adoration of the Count and a fierce desire to be part of
the adventure that danced before his eyes.
But while Danik has a great love of children, as they for him, and had
taken the fatherless boy almost at once under his wing, neither he nor my
parents would countenance for one moment taking a seven-year-old into
battle. It would be purest folly.
And so Jehan sulked, my mother fussed and my father fumed, while Danik of
Ruritania was straining at the leash, with he and loyal Osman eager to
set sail to retrieve their employer -- namely myself -- from durance
vile. Though they could not have known it, Danik's instincts had not
played him false. When the Avalanche again sighted the coasts of that
ill-omened isle, it was not one moment too soon.
For that, I fear, my own unruly tongue must bear the blame, though Danilo
will not have it so. I had resolved to hold myself meek and biddable, as
a lady should; to arouse no suspicion and make no resistance, until the
time should come. But for too long now I have done as I pleased and
spoken as I thought, and taken no heed to placate the pompous or submit
myself to rule... and I had not reckoned on how hard it would be to play
the helpless captive's role.
To explain, then, how it came to pass that when Danik returned I was not
mewed safely in dull captivity as I had thought to be, but trapped in
panic beyond any I had known, I must take up my own tale once more, from
that day when Edmond and I first came face to face.
I had the disadvantage of it, being, in addition to my island dirt,
somewhat dishevelled by the rough nature of my capture. After days spent
in futile chase, I do not doubt my pursuers had been somewhat less gentle
with me than their leader had at first commanded; so much, at least, he
gave me urbanely to understand, while scanning me with narrowed eyes as
if to ascertain what manner of lady might emerge, chrysalis-like, from
this shabby cocoon.
As for myself, I stared quite as much, laying eyes for the first time
upon my adversary. Above all, I think, I had feared to recognise in him
some trace of the boy I had known. I did not wish to believe that the
true Edmond de la Tour would resort to any such stratagem to claim his
birth-right. He had always been the bolder of the two, where Emile was
sweet-tempered and wise, a steadying hand on his brother's rash starts;
but, at least as the child I had been had understood it, there had not
been one selfish bone in his body. If some mocking fate had in truth
saved his life only to carry him far from family and home, I could not
believe he had become such a man as this.
But from that at least I was spared. From the moment I was brought into
his presence, I knew my enemy for the imposter he was.
Edmond and Emile were fraternal twins, as we say it; brothers of one
birth, but no more. Of the two, Edmond had ever been the taller, even as
his hair was nearer to black than Emile's warmer brown. In manhood, Emile
had overtopped me by an eye's-breadth or more, though I am a tall woman.
This man, strong and broad of shoulder though he might be, lacked a
centimetre at least of my own height, and his hair was burnished brown.
And there was not one trace in his lineaments of my husband's features.
He was no more Emile's twin than he was my sister.
He must have seen my face soften with the relief of it, for he smiled.
"You see, I am not such an ogre after all..."
I gave him a speaking look. "No ogre, monsieur, to be sure -- and no
/beau-frere/ of mine, that is plain to see! If you thought to find me apt
to your purpose, 'Brother Edmond', then you mistook your aim. I am not so
easily bullied or bought --"
Too late, I bit my lip in consternation, watching his eyes change in
swift appraisal. He had underestimated my mettle; he would not do so
again. This man was no fool, and I had shown him more than I intended.
"Very well," he said softly. He nodded to his two bully-boys holding my
arms, and they released me and withdrew. The door closed behind them with
a very definite sound. I was alone with him in his office, a cramped
chamber in the fort's outer walls. I was not sure this development was to
my liking.
I massaged my wrists, pointedly, watching him smile, and raised my chin.
"Well, monsieur?"
"Oh, let us not pretend to one another, Ernestine." The clumsy name on
his caressing lips made me shudder. "You are a very wealthy woman. I am a
man in need of funds. I had hoped we might come to some amicable
agreement..."
I regret to confess that I employed the retort of Cambronne.
"A lady of refinement, I perceive!" He had cultivated a fine ironical
air. "I can see that we shall deal excellently together, my dear. For
why, I ask myself, should I set my sights on but the half of dear Emile's
possessions which he derived from his father? Why not claim his future
prospects too, when they fall in so delectable a form? Why not join my
hand to the heiress of Mireille?"
Mireille... Until that moment I do not think I had truly known what it
was to wish to claw out the eyes of another being. Mireille was *mine*.
It was no part of the de la Tour inheritance. Edmond himself, had he
lived, would have had no shred of claim on it. It was my childhood home,
my father's pride -- and on Thierry de Roncourt's death, the man to whom
I was wed would in law hold it all.
Emile and I had been of one heart. What was his was mine -- and Mireille
had been the setting for our golden years. But this man would rape it for
what little it was worth, strip the heart from the land, and sell it away
from my children. Emile's inheritance I held for Jehan. Mireille was
*mine*.
I do not know what incoherent words escaped me, but their general tenor
can scarcely have been to be mistaken. He shrugged it off.
"Of course, my dear, I would not expect an answer quite at once. In the
coming weeks we shall have time enough and to spare in which to further
our acquaintance... and I am persuaded that the merits of the arguments
in my favour will present themselves quite forcefully to your mind." His
smile was quite charming. "Especially in the presence of your son."
"That you shall *not* have!" I could contain myself no longer. "Look to
your shameful hostage, monsieur, and you shall find him flown! Did you
dream any mother would not trade her liberty to keep her child from such
as you? You hold me alone -- and you had best gloat on that while you
may, for you will find I have friends even in such a place as this!"
I cannot tell how much of that last he heard, for he had gone very pale,
staring down at the deserted anchorage with the face of one who
perceives, too late, his mistake. "/Femme de diable.../"
In the next minute he had raised his voice in a volley of orders that
brought men running from all quarters and roused the fort like a stick
plunged into an ants'-nest. For my own part, it seemed, I was to be kept
secure in an upper room under lock and key, and thither I was rapidly
conducted with the minimum of courtesy, and left alone.
And there I was to remain for the next several days, with only a glimpse
of the blue sea through the window to enliven my dull captivity. At long
intervals a distant sail might be seen, and I would picture to myself my
Jeannot, borne safely away now to Martinique, on the decks of the little
Avalanche...
I was not ill-treated by any means. The room had been prepared for my
coming, and was clean and well-kept; and for the use of soap and water,
and of my own gowns and linen from the ship, I was grateful above all
things. Danik would scarce have recognised that wild vagabond of his time
on the island in the decorous prisoner who now sat by the window, hands
folded, or made meek conversation with her captor.
For I did my best to curb my tongue at last, and temporise in lieu of
saying nay, and give him to understand that I might see a way to come to
some arrangement with regards to Emile's property that should act to our
mutual benefit. He knew me in the character of a merchant queen -- why,
then, let him believe me ready to bargain for profit.
I fear the essay was but a short-lived one. They became stormy interviews
indeed, for with my son out of danger, he had little hold over me save
threats to my person and to my good name, and to neither of these was I
disposed to submit in silence. He held over me the spectre of forced
marriage, or of worse; I refused all the more absolutely to consider any
of his demands.
At length, at the end of one weary afternoon, when the air was hot and
stale enough to choke a man who breathed too deep, and tempers were as
frayed as the sunlight, I threw caution to the wind. I swore on my
husband's name that I would never wed Edmond; that he would have none of
my lands, and nothing of Emile's, and that sooner than see him lay claim
to the name of La Tour, I would drag my own through the dust; and that if
he took me by force, he could never set foot in St-Pierre to claim the
inheritance he craved, for I would expose him to the whole of Martinique
society for the impostor he was so soon as we should reach dry land, were
it to mean my own ruin and my utter disgrace.
A queer little silence fell between us as my outburst died away, and we
stared at one another. "I believe you mean that," he said slowly at last.
"Why, monsieur --" bravado still carried me on -- "I believe I do!"
"What a great pity." And it was the true regret in his eyes then that
touched my blood for the first time with ice. "For you know far too much,
dear Ernestine, and your silence is worth more to me than Mireille."
There was no compassion in his gaze; only the disappointment of the
gourmand who finds he must toss aside the dainty he has so long coveted
before he has had the chance to savour its taste. Like a foolish gambler,
I had destroyed my own last chance at bluff. I had made myself more of a
threat to him alive than a loss if I were dead, and I was about to reap
the price.
I must have gone ashen-white, for there was cruelty in his smile.
"With you at my side I could have had it all -- but if, as it seems, no
threat will leash your tongue, then with your demise all that you own
will pass to your son." One hand glided along my arm, in the mockery of a
caress. "And do you not think that kind Uncle Edmond might prove a
suitable guardian to dispose of that fortune as he thought best... until,
of course, the young man should reach his majority. If that happy event
should ever occur..."
His hand clamped suddenly on my forearm. But it was too late.
Perhaps he had not thought me bold enough. Perhaps he had not reckoned on
the strength of desperation. Perhaps he had been made over-sure by the
strength of the walls, and the blank sea that surrounded us. Perhaps he
had simply wished for no witnesses of his planned sport... but he had set
no guard within the chamber when we had speech together, and sent away
the sentry who always stood without, and now as we struggled together
hand to hand it was my bare strength against his, and it was my strength
that prevailed.
Only for the first few seconds of surprise; but it was enough. I had
drawn the pistol from his belt, pinned him against the wall, and pressed
the muzzle to his throat. It was loaded. I could tell by the waxen hue of
his face as the hammer clicked.
We stared at each other, breathing hard. I cannot say what I saw in his
eyes. I believe that death was mirrored in mine.
"You won't be able to do it, you know." His tongue flickered nervously to
touch his upper lip; but his voice was commendably steady. He managed a
slight smile. "You won't be able to pull the trigger. You can't kill a
man in cold blood. If you haven't done it yet, you'll never do it now..."
A spasm passed across his face as my hand clenched around the weapon. For
a moment I saw myself fire the shot. Saw the blood. Saw the death at my
feet. The safety of all that I loved. Felt the strain of the trigger as
my finger tensed.
Saw the life pulsing at his temples beneath the skin, the living,
thinking mind behind the eyes that could not hide their fear -- and found
that, to my fury, he was right. I could not -- could not, even if I
willed it, even if survival demanded it -- kill in cold blood. I told
myself that was the difference between us. My heart whispered that I was
afraid.
"And now that we've both had that point proved to our satisfaction, what
do you plan to do next?" Edmond's voice had gained in confidence. "I take
it you had not planned for us to stand here like this indefinitely?"
He reached up as if to brush the beads of sweat free from his jaw, only
to desist as I pressed the muzzle harder against his throat in warning. A
pained look crossed his features. "Come now, my dear, we both know
there's very little use in a threat that can't be carried out --"
"In that case, monsieur, you might be well-advised not to rile me
over-much. I do not know how much it might take to heat my blood to the
point of murder. I am certain you would not care to find out."
For the moment, I could not see a future beyond the gates of the fort. I
had to get out. Out onto the island, to survive somehow till Danik should
come...
"Move!" I told my prisoner. "To the door -- so -- turn round-- Now down
the passage. Slowly, monsieur. We would not wish for accidents..."
I walked behind him, close enough to touch. The gun in my hand was
pressed hard against the back of his next, its grip sweat-slick against
my fingers. How far could we get unquestioned? What value did these men
place on their leader's life?
"You realise this is madness, of course." His words echoed all too aptly
with my own thoughts. "The moment you fire that shot you've lost all
bargaining power -- you don't want me with you, and yet you dare not let
me go. What are you planning -- to take us down to the main gate and have
me order my men to let us both out onto the island? And then how would we
sleep, do you think? How would we wash -- how would we eat? Do you really
think one woman can hold an unwilling hostage under guard in the most
intimate of conditions day and night, with no more than a single
pistol-shot at her disposal?"
"Keep walking -- and keep quiet!" I thrust him forward, down the stairs,
hard enough to keep him off-balance so that he stumbled and almost fell
as we reached the foot. Further down the passage there came a pale flash
of movement, as a face turned towards us at the sound.
The guard, then, outside his office. /Eh bien/, sooner or later the
gauntlet must be run... and here it began. If we could pass this man, we
could pass others. Only I would to God that my hand were not trembling so
much...
Igenlode
decision once taken, it had proved an easy matter to pass across the
island and achieve the walls of the stronghold unseen, when the greater
part of those who might have contested the passage were even at that
moment assembling and converging upon the cove they had so lately left.
The steep gully upon the fort's landward side in which so many search
parties had milled on the previous night was deserted, although the
once-lush vegetation was sadly crushed and torn aside, and there could be
no doubt at all as to where the secret gate now stood.
The one question Danik had not been able to determine was as to whether
the entrance could be opened from the outside, or whether it was intended
only for egress and must needs be forced. In the event, by his telling,
it was almost childishly simple. The concealments which had been meant to
hide the catch from unwelcome eyes had been moved aside and not replaced,
and the door grated stiffly open with no more ado than any balky lock. He
made no doubt that the upper end of the passage was guarded; but the
black and lofty chamber that now opened out before them had not entered
at any time into his reckoning. This was no sallyport, but something else
entirely.
Osman, at his side, had quietly unslung the lantern he'd been carrying.
The light caught and flared, and shadowed walls receded. For a moment, in
the half-light, the carvings seemed to move.
"Holy Mother of God!" The exclamation was jerked out of Danik
unthinkingly but with an almost uncanny accuracy. On the far side of the
vault, the robed statue gazed down on them from her niche with the calm
of two hundred years of wisdom. The Child in her arms seemed to be
smiling directly into the interloper's eyes.
"A catacomb." Osman sounded shaken, as well he might. Beneath the carved
walls, haphazard rows of tombs lay before them, featureless in the dark.
"No." Danik shook his head, instinctively keeping his own voice to the
same hushed whisper. "A crypt."
The very air seemed heavy with the presence of the forgotten dead. The
signs of the passage of Edmond's men were everywhere and out of place --
scuffed marks in the dust, fresh chips on the stone, chalked indecency
upon the frieze in low-relief that ran the length of one wall, from the
smoothed panel at his left-hand side to the half-seen stairway in the
deep shadow beyond. Some of the coffins had been left open, the dry
remnants within mute evidence of the hasty search that had disturbed
their rest.
The dead did not walk. But if the proud founders of this fort could rise
to bear witness against the rag-tag successors who stood now masters in
their place, then surely their silent jaws would cry out to Heaven. The
air was chill, as if with the breath of the grave.
At his back, the men were muttering. Danik took a grip on himself and led
the way forward, the lantern at his shoulder held high in Osman's grasp
as the shadows flickered and swung. Somewhere above them, surmounting
that great weight of rock, their shipmates waited, held wounded and
prisoner at their enemy's mercy. He had no intention of turning tail and
leaving them there...
Something moved.
For a moment, he thought it was only a trick of the light. Then, from
behind an open coffin, something was rising, voiceless and unshapen-- The
light rocked wildly as Osman caught his breath, sending plunging shadows
across the room that broke up everything into chaos. As if by
lightning-flashes, Danik saw the dusty shape emerge, arms outstretched
and groping towards him.
His hand had gone, unthinking, to the little gold cross on its chain at
his throat, holding it out in front of him like a barrier. The moulded
edges bit into his flesh. And then a slash of light rocked past her face,
and he *saw*.
"Sweet Jesu... /Madame -- L'Aiglonne -- oh, ma mie --/"
--------
Heart pounding, against his. Warm, living flesh, in the dust that cloaked
both of us now. I tried to whisper his name in answer to the words
pouring over me, but my dry throat could do no more than shape the sound.
His cheek was against mine and the warmth of his arms about me, in a
heart-felt prison that would never let us go. I could hear the others
moving around us, voices distant to my ears as the mute evidence of my
imprisonment came to light; but nothing mattered. Nothing mattered, save
the sudden thunder that leapt from his blood to mine, and the aching
closeness of his hold, that took back my weakness and gave me strength.
"Some water --" The words seemed to come from far away. It was a moment
before I knew them to be his, and not my own. I was floating, and the
world was growing dark...
When next I came fully to myself, I was seated upon a stone, with the
taste of warm water in my mouth, and Danilo von Schelstein looking down
on me in concern. Our eyes met. I could not hide the smile in mine; there
was nothing in his face that was not proper, but the laughter that awoke
at the back of his gaze in answer set my pulses to a sudden, joyful leap.
I had seen his eyes dancing just so in battle. I had never thought to see
them dance for me.
It was only for an instant. In the next moment, he had turned to signal
to one of his men, who came forward to hold the canteen again to my lips.
The water was warm, and stale, and tasted of metal; but it could not have
been sweeter to my throat had it come fresh from the spring at Mireille.
I tried to work the withered cords of my voice, smiling round at the
circle of faces, the Ruritanians of his crew whom I had hardly met, and
yet who had come all the way to this unknown isle for my sake. But my
thanks came forth as nothing but a croak, and were speedily disclaimed
with answering smiles; for as I afterwards learned, they had come to this
underground way almost by chance, with no thought of my presence there.
Some, like Osman, were deft and dark -- some shared the Count's fair
colouring and his height -- and others spanned the whole gamut of Europe
in between, from the broad-cheeked Slav to the Northman with eyes like
summer sky. Their mountains had been the crossroads of the continent
since the days of Carthage and Rome, and for the most part they could
make shift as well in my own French as in the dialect of their birth.
Above all, they held a fierce loyalty to one of their own -- and some two
or three of their number, as I now heard, were held prisoner here after a
fight that had all but cost them their ship. (Of Jehan's presence -- and
of his part in the recapture -- I was not, mercifully, to learn until
later, when all was done and the danger far enough distant to forgive.)
Life was flooding back into my limbs. I essayed to rise, with a dozen
hands ready to assist, and found myself cramped but whole. The
Avalanche's crew were going up into the fort, to make a long nose, as we
say, at M. Edmond -- and I had every intent of aiding them to do it. I
had a score or two I would have given something to be able to settle with
Edmond myself. I had kept pace with their leader though long days of
outlawry and privation on this same island, while we awaited their
coming. I did not think they would refuse me now.
I watched him in the lantern-light that touched his fair hair with gold;
watched every play of muscle as he moved, every shade of expression as he
spoke. One eyebrow soared upward, briefly, at something Osman had said,
and I could not forebear to smile. I had known Count Danik these few
short weeks, that seemed an age -- and yet, somehow, I had never *seen*.
Never seen him as I saw him now, as if he were someone else, the secret
knowledge of his blood still rushing through me...
"Danilo von Schelstein," I said softly, discovering the name; and
flushed. I had not known I was speaking aloud. Those near me gave no sign
that they had heard, and Danilo himself did not break off in giving his
orders; but a faint answering bronze had mounted in his cheek.
No word was spoken. But when the little company moved out once more to
the dark mouth of the stairs that awaited, I was among them as of right.
Without any conscious intention on my part -- nor, as I believe, on his
-- I found myself in the vanguard, close at their leader's side. It
seemed the warmth of his presence streamed out over us all, like the
light from the lantern... My breath quivered on a laugh at my own
fancies; but his shoulder brushed mine, and I was content.
Indeed, for all of us the ascent of the staircase itself perforce
commanded much of our attention. Now that I saw it for the first time in
the lantern-light, I shuddered to think of the breakneck speed with which
I had fled down these same battered steps, my ignorance itself giving me
courage. It was not the wear of long use, of hollowed treads and rounded
edges, for that hidden chapel below could have seen little traffic, save
when the /vomito negro/ or some such other pestilence took its yearly
teind from the flesh of those who would be masters here. No, it was the
wear of long neglect, where dry-cut stone had fractured, and the living
cliff had stirred in its slumber.
The workmen had wrought well; but no work of human hands will stand
untended for a hundred years in these our climes. Indeed, halfway up, a
seaman close at my heels stumbled with a curse and a clatter of falling
stone as a sliver flaked off from beneath his very foot, and barely
caught onto my proffered hand in time. I had acted unthinking, reaching
for his outflung arm as his oath reached my ear, but it was as well that
I did. Packed so eagerly as we ere in that narrow space, a headlong fall
would doubtless have sent half of those below toppling like ninepins, to
their great hurt and (though we did not know it) to the forewarning of
those above.
For an instant, as his full weight came upon my grasp, it seemed we might
both go tumbling; but in the next moment I had braced myself, and
Tancredi -- for such, incongruous on that rough-hewn face, I learned
later was his name -- had his footing once more, and all passed off with
little more than a shame-faced shrug for the curseword his friends
supposed to have offended my hearing. As to that latter, I fear, they
were most rapidly disabused -- for, glancing back to reassure them, I all
but missed my own balance, and the expression which passed my lips was
more suited to the dockside where I had learned it than to a lady's
boudoir. In the ripple of laughter that followed, I could feel the very
nape of my neck turn scarlet, as it had not before... but it was from
that moment that I felt myself truly accepted, no longer interloper or
even employer, but one of them, a comrade in their midst.
--------
The ruse that gained us access to the fort was my idea, and the risk was
mine and mine alone; but not a man among them essayed to gainsay it. In
truth, it was a part that only I could play, and without my presence it
might have gone hard with them to force an entry -- but I had not
expected Danilo to assent without question when first I broached the
scheme, still less to draw his own treasured blade and press it into my
grasp in lieu of the cutlass for which I had asked. At his nod, a sailor
on my far side furnished me with a pistol.
I protested, staring down at the sword. "I cannot --"
We were standing in the shadows, close by the head of the stair, where
the passage ended in the blank stones I knew to conceal a door. One man
alone could have guarded that opening against a horde pouring upward from
the stair as the door swung inward, and by Osman's reckoning there were
the sounds of three at least standing guard over the passageway's entry
in the room beyond. Unsuspecting, no doubt -- made unwary by tedium --
but no invaders could open the wall and hope to take them by surprise.
Only the lure of something of value could do that. The lure of a
helpless, weak prisoner, trapped in the passageway all this time and
begging for escape...
The lantern-light flickered on the sword in my hand, running like fire
across the damascened braiding of the metal and awakening answering flame
from the heart of the blade. It was as light as a fencing foil, the hilt
still carrying the warmth of his grasp. It was a sword fit for kings,
worthy of Arthur of Camelot himself --
"I cannot. Your sword --"
He could have ordered me to stay back; trusted in my voice alone to decoy
the guards into his grasp. Instead he had entrusted me with the weapon he
treasured, the one possession that had never left him for a moment when
we lacked even food and clothing. Not one man in a hundred I had ever
known would have done such a thing -- not even Emile.
In the darkness, his mouth brushed mine softly for the first time; then
again, briefly, in a promise. "Go then, /ma mie/ --" I could not see his
eyes, but I could hear their lilt dancing in his smile --" "lead on. We
await your signal..."
His words were the merest breath, for we stood on the very threshold of
the room beyond, and all depended upon surprise. I did not trust my own
voice; but I set my cheek against his in silence, and felt his lips for a
moment against my hair before he stepped back a pace, melting back into
the shadows with the rest. A soft word from Osman, and the light from the
lantern dimmed and then went out.
I drew a deep breath, summoning to my mind the ghost of that terror and
desperation which had gripped me a few short hours -- and yet how long!
-- before. If I had judged the temper of Edmond's men aright, they would
be too eager by far, vying one with another to take the credit for my
recapture, to send word to Edmond before opening the passage -- let alone
to have any suspicion of our plans.
Nor did they, indeed. We had them entirely by surprise; and Danilo
informs me, with the utmost gravity, that the piratical spectacle I
presented alone, flourishing naked steel with grave-dust in my hair and
skirts tattered and scandalous about my knees, was more than enough to
terrify any poor soldier into submission without any aid from the armed
intruders who followed. I fear, alas, that it is not only ungallant but
untrue. For if our captives had been in such awe of my person, then the
last of their number, a grizzled veteran of some forty summers or more,
would not have seized upon a momentary lapse of my attention to make a
bolt for the door that was to cost us dear, and Danilo most of all...
Some three or four of us sprang after him; too late.
"He'll warn the rest!" Broad Tancredi had hewn at the fugitive's heels
with a blow that would have felled an ox; but his blade sparked uselessly
across the stones as its target jinked with a turn of speed that would
not have shamed a hare, and in the next moment he had been out of reach
and beyond recall.
One man had levelled the barrel of his pistol, but Osman had struck it
down, with a swift aside in a dialect I could not follow. "We'll have the
whole hornet's nest about our ears soon enough, Madame --" as his eye
caught mine -- "no need to give them warning before we must."
"I would that we could raze this fortress to the ground!" I had sought to
reawaken memories of captivity and fear; they were only too vivid in me
now. In this small room I had been brought to bay, barricaded and
desperate. Within these same ancient walls of stone, Edmond had held me
in his power; had laid greedy claim not merely to my possessions and my
person, but to the precious life of my son...
Danilo had ben questioning the two younger guards, a pair of strapping
bravos who had not been quick enough of wit to join in their companion's
dash; but at my hot words he glanced up with a laugh. "Not until I have
my men free, I trust! And even at that I fear we are sadly ill-equipped
for such a task... I had made sure to find the prisoners in the dungeons
-- and now I learn the place has none, and we must climb to the uppermost
rooms --"
"With one of *these* as guide?"
Osman had frowned, looking askance at the new-made prisoners, and for a
moment, in sore straits as we were, I could almost have laughed at the
twists of fate. I broke in, laying one hand on his arm. "Nay, monsieur --
for I have the strangest feeling that I know the way..."
When Edmond had me haled up from his sanctum to weary imprisonment above,
neither he nor I had any thought that I should soon retrace those steps
with my captor held at pistol-point before me, still less that I should
one day of my own will mount up into the upper fastnesses of his domain
with a cut-throat crew of foreigners at my call. But mount we did, with
an urgency that almost robbed me of breath -- Danilo knew, far better
then than I, how precious each second might prove when once the alarm had
been raised. We heard nothing of Edmond's force along the passageways as
we went, and I ventured to hope that we might yet escape unassailed, and
even to remonstrate a little at the hurried handling of the wounded men.
They were a pitiful few. We found them not in that room beneath the
battlements which had been my own prison, but in a wider chamber
adjoining, that had been fitted out with a few straw pallets as a gesture
to the sick, and I saw Count Danik's brow darken as he counted those
missing from among that meagre number. One he greeted by name --
Reinhardt, a dark-haired youth scarce old enough to know the razor's kiss
-- and I saw his mouth tighten as he slid his arm around the boy, aiding
him to his feet. The youngster could hardly stand.
Others were in like case, and I could not help but protest as they were
lifted from their sorry beds and hastened to the door. But Osman caught
at my arm, shaking his head. "Madame -- L'Aiglonne, *listen*..."
For a moment I did not comprehend him. Then, as those around us fell
silent, I too heard it; the sound of voices raised below, angry and
indistinct. Our respite had come to an end. The fortress was raised
against us.
Igenlode
brave handful observing the fort and all who came or left, at first from
a distance, and later, as dusk fell, creeping forward to lie hidden
beneath the gates themselves. Every scrap of shadow was pressed into
service as they sought to learn what they could, both of my fate and of
the plans of their adversaries; and, since the very presence of others on
the island was as yet unsuspected, let alone the existence of alert ears
within a stone's-throw of the walls, Osman contrived to learn a great
deal, though little that seemed of immediate import.
Of myself, he could establish almost nothing beyond doubt, for so far as
he could tell I had slipped through their fingers entirely, and none who
spoke had any real knowledge of my whereabouts, or even if I were still
within the fort. The manner, however, of my presumed escape was of a
nature calculated to interest Danik exceedingly, if events should lead
the company of the Avalanche to seek entrance by a secret stair; the more
so as it seemed successive search parties, starting from that point, had
trampled up the ground to such a degree that what had once been secret
was now known to every man in the fort, and by daylight would no doubt be
plain for any stranger's eye to read.
Nothing, however, could be done at night, not even after moonrise. It was
not, therefore, until the following day, at nine or ten of the clock,
when the two parties met again for their appointed rendezvous, that Danik
learned of the news -- and under circumstances calculated to drive it
instantly from his mind.
"What was that?" He'd broken off his sentence in mid-word, and Osman,
likewise arrested by the distant sound, was looking very grim. A glance
between them confirmed Danik's worst fears.
"Small-arms fire --" he listened a moment longer -- "and from the
Avalanche!" They looked at each other again, and then at those around
them; in the next instant, the whole shore party had begun to run.
--------
Left on board a vessel at anchor, together with a skeleton crew, while
the most part of the ship's company had taken the boats ashore and gone
to search for /Maman/, Jehan had not yet found time to become tired of
this new adventure. With the ship lying idle between the cliffs there was
little work to do, and those crewmen left aboard were only too glad to
amuse the child with tales, or let him watch the crafts taking place
between their own skilled hands. In the placid waters of the bay, he'd
been permitted to explore places within the ship that had always been
forbidden before -- the close-packed casks within the hold and the
massive, treacherous coils of the anchor-chain within the chain-locker,
whose shifting coils at sea could break a man's limb with ease or crush
his lungs if he slipped and fell. He'd even been allowed to climb the
masts, with young Reinhardt at his side to aid him if he froze, and to
thrust him upwards where the rungs of the rigging were stretched too far
apart for his childish reach.
It was from the lookout's lofty perch that he'd first seen the strange
men coming down to the cove. He'd pointed them out to Reinhardt, who'd
gone very quiet, and seemed in a great hurry to get them both down to the
deck as quickly as might be. But by the time he'd struggled down the last
taut-braced stretch of rope, the visitors were quite clearly visible even
from the deck and didn't seem very friendly; and it occurred to him for
the first time that the people on this island might think that the
Avalanche had no right to be here...
"Get below!" The big sailor pulled at his arm, roughly. He'd never seemed
to like Jehan very much; his name was Pawitsch, the boy remembered... and
looking at him now, he understood for the first time what it was he'd
seen on every face on the deck. The men were afraid -- afraid not only
because there were far more men on the shore than there were here, but
afraid because of him, Jehan. Because he was here, and they'd been told
to look after him, and they weren't going to be able to...
"Go on -- get down. Get out of sight!" Pawitsch shoved him again. "Don't
come out. No matter what happens, whatever you hear, whatever they say --
don't come out. Do you understand?"
Jehan nodded and swallowed hard, not comprehending the look in the big
man's eyes. Then he turned and ran, trying not to cry. Even as he left
the deck, he heard the first gun-shots from the shore.
Of the capture of the Avalanche -- how her tiny band of defenders fought
and fell, how her own boats were used to board her, and how the last
resistance was hunted down below-decks -- Jehan knew mercifully little
and remembered less. The picture that overwhelmed all the others, so that
it was all he could see even when he had forgotten that day save in his
dreams, was the moment when, darting from his hiding-place aghast, he had
stumbled upon big Pawitsch lying face-up on the lower deck, most horribly
and definitely dead. A cutlass-slash had opened his throat from ear to
ear.
When all on board was finally quiet, and every hiding-place scoured to
check for missing crew, and those who were found still living had been
shipped ashore and carried up to to the fort, Jehan de la Tour was still
crouched in a tiny corner behind the anchor-chain, shivering, not daring
even to sob. Barely a hundred metres away across the bay, the shore held
Danik, and Maman, and everyone from the ship who was still alive. But
without help he had no way to warn them, or even to escape. Even if he
could have reached the water, unaided he could not swim.
"Don't come out," Pawitsch had warned him, "don't come out." Danik would
come back soon. He had to believe that. Danik, who had saved him from
those men who'd stolen him away from home with lies -- who was even now
rescuing Maman --
But seven years old though he might be, Jehan was no fool. Even Danik of
Ruritania could not lead his men in an attack across a hundred metres of
open water under fire. The men who were up on deck now were shooting at
every movement on the shore, be it bird or beast or wind, their nerves
constantly on the alert. Danik wouldn't stand a chance... unless somehow
the invaders could be got to look the other way, even for a minute or
two...
By Danilo's telling, my Jeannot saved dozens of lives; indeed, by his
account, without the child it might have proved impossible to retake the
ship, to our great loss and perchance to our utter ruin. As to whether
that be truth, I cannot say; for he had Jehan by him at the time, and the
light in the boy's eyes at the praise was such that neither he nor I
could have borne to quench it by a shadow of doubt.
It was bravely done, without question. Jehan contrived to creep down onto
the anchor chain and there signal to the shore, being in such a place
that Danik and those ashore could see him and those aboard could not.
Then, trusting that Danik had guessed his intention, he slipped on deck
and ran out shouting, in childish defiance.
It could not last long. It did not; although, being both small and quick
and his presence unsuspected in the least, he profited by his pursuers'
surprise to evade their grasp and stage a merry chase around the deck. He
could do them no harm, and in all justice they would not have drawn steel
upon a child -- but it was within his power to draw all eyes towards the
pursuit, and this he did. To such success, indeed, that the swimmers from
the shore gained the ship's side entirely unnoticed, even by those posted
to guard against just such an event; and the brief battle for recapture
which followed was all but decided before it began.
One thing, however, was beyond doubt. The presence of the Avalanche, and
that of her crew, could no longer be assumed to be unknown. Even if the
initial capture of the ship had been mischance, with a search party
happening upon the cove where she lay -- a guess later confirmed -- by
now, news of the interlopers would have reached the fort, together with
those prisoners who had survived. Danik could no longer keep his small
force in reserve. He must act openly -- or retreat; and for the
Ruritanians, the second of those alternatives was not even to be
considered...
It was at this moment, when questioning Jehan as to the fate of his
missing crew, that Danik remembered again Osman's discoveries of the
previous night; and they served only to cement his resolve. The prisoners
lay within the fort. L'Aiglonne too might lie concealed there, for all
its inhabitants knew -- and, it seemed, there was another entrance, which
might prove easier of access than the guarded gate.
His orders were simple. The Avalanche would set sail, for some closer
cove. Danik, Osman, and all those who could be spared, would make a
direct raid upon their enemy's stronghold. Their missing shipmates would
be found -- and if L'Aiglonne were still on the island, they should make
her such a signal as none could overlook.
--------
Nor would our enemies have overlooked it -- though, as ever, Danilo
doubtless spared scant thought for that! But what would have quenched
even his spirit, had he known, was that not one whisper of the bright
defiance he planned could have reached me, were he to set the whole fort
by the ears. I remained upon the island indeed; but entombed so fast
within the stone that he could have passed within an arm's-length of my
prison and never known. When I had awoken, in the hours before dawn, it
had been to despair.
Yet when the first paroxysm of my tears had passed, and I lay
half-fainting in the depths of that stone box which seemed to bid fair to
become my own tomb, a strange clarity came over my thoughts even as I
resigned myself to my fate. Providence had not seen fit to deliver me in
my sleep, despite the struggles that had all but stifled me with foul
air. Even as the cracks had admitted indirectly the soldiers' light, so,
during the hours of my oblivion, must they have replenished the
atmosphere in which I lay. If I had lived this long, then I need have no
fear of suffocation, unless by some violent act.
Thirst was another matter. Already my throat was parched and aching, as
much from the frantic cries to which I had given vent as from lack of
water, and I found myself begrudging the very tears which were drying
upon my cheeks. Thirst would rob me of what strength I had, and with it,
all chance of escape. If anything was to be done, then I must act
quickly, while force still remained to my limbs.
I set myself first of all to take stock of my situation, reckoning up
what resources lay within my grasp. Lapse of time -- I will not say
*custom* -- had served to deaden the abhorrent nature of my couch, and I
felt about now with my hands among the bones to learn what sort of burial
this had been, with scarce a thought for the corruption and decay to
which they had been subject.
Too much, perhaps to hope for a crowbar among the grave-goods; but by the
end of my explorations I had been brought almost to wish that our
Christian dead were interred like the ancient Egyptians, with the tools
of their household around them. The woman of times past with whom I
shared my confinement -- I divined her sex not so much from the
slenderness of her bones, which I fear had become sadly splintered in my
earlier struggles, but from the nature of those few ornaments I found --
this woman, then, who had first been buried in this casket had taken
nothing with her to the grave save the fragments of her shroud and a
tangle of delicate chain I guessed to have been a necklace. A plain band
might have been a wedding-ring; two rounded loops were earrings in the
Spanish style.
My heart leapt when I felt a sturdy hilt of metal under my hand; but ere
my surmise as to the reason for the presence of such a weapon in a lady's
tomb could venture beyond its wild beginning, the truth of the matter was
borne in upon me, almost with a smile. It was that same broken blade with
which I had prised at the secret doorway that led me here, and had
carried unthinking with me into the cliff and concealment, only to let
fall, forgotten, in the frenzy of my first attempts to escape. I myself
had brought it to this place.
Yet however it came so aptly to my hand, the stout metal of my new-found
tool offered the first hope that I had yet encountered, and I began to
set my mind in earnest towards devising some escape. The lid of my coffin
was not by any means close-fitting; yet the centre was of
double-thickness, such that it bedded down securely between the walls,
while its weight rested upon the slender lip of the outer rim, and could
not be slid sideways, but only raised upward by steady pressure or by
some sharp shock akin to that which I had first delivered when I stumbled
and fell.
It was this circumstance which had trapped me. While it lay within my
power to raise the weight of the lid and swing it aside, the double
burden of the second slab, cast carelessly down atop my refuge, proved
more than I could lift. As I had learned to my cost in the choking terror
of that first hour, were I to pit the utmost of my strength against that
stone it would yield to me but a crack. I could stir the slab, but not
enough to lift it free.
I tried my powers once more against my prison, and heard the dull sound
as the weight dropped home as if it were a sudden groan. I could not do
it -- not in desperation, nor even yet in cool-headed striving. If the
lid was to be raised, it must be by some other means... or -- the idea
sprang to life like Minerva from the head of Jove, full-born -- or
else... by slow degrees. If I could but keep that great mass from falling
back, when once I had begun to raise it --
My breast was beating wildly in this access of sudden hope. All at once,
I forgot my thirst and my foul state, in my eagerness to put it to trial.
Setting the broken blade-end of my knife against the join above my head,
I summoned all my strength braced against that cramped space in which I
lay, and heaved. The stone yielded; and the knife-blade slid into the
crack. Give me but a lever, and I will move the world... I had my lever
-- yet, as the first few moments told me, it was scarcely sufficient to
the task.
I will not dwell in over-great length upon the hours that followed,
though they are branded on my heart with letters of flame. Hours of hope,
and despair, and aching toil, as one sliver of steel after another
shattered in the grip of that terrible vice, until it came to me at last
to use the only material I had to hand -- those poor fragments of
shattered bone... I pray God may forgive me. As to that long-gone lady,
she at least has no more need of her earthly housing where she is now;
and I trust she will look down on me with indulgence for my need. I can
touch her chain now, here about my neck, where I set it that day for
safe-keeping. I wear it in memory of her, and of what I owe, and hope
some day to find her name.
When I began upon that dreadful labour, I had woken restored to all but
my full strength. For all that, I knew full well it could not last, and
indeed so it proved as thirst and close confinement took their toll. The
hours blurred into spasms of exertion separated only by eternities of
gasping rest, as the blood beat in my ears and the air seemed to thicken
around me, and day and night were swallowed up in the endless, ageless
blackness all around. My voice was long since parched, and when I sought
to urge myself to greater efforts, it was in a death-like croak. In
raising up the coffin-lid upon a bed of the very grave-dust around me, I
was perforce sealing off the better part of those cracks which supplied
me with life-giving air, yet I dared not halt, for I knew that delay
could only weaken what endurance remained.
Every time I forced myself up from exhausted drowsing, my strength seemed
to have ebbed a little further. If I could not win my way to freedom ere
it was all spent, I would remain here, helpless, until my bloated tongue
should choke me and my eye-sockets shrivel... I have seen men dying of
thirst. Life in these our islands is counted cheap; but it is an end I
would not wish upon a dog.
I would not let myself think of it. The great stone was packed up now,
grain by grain, upon the lip of freedom. Five or six more thrusts, and
the recess would no longer hold it, and I could swing the weight aside. I
judged that to remain within my powers -- barely.
J2rider
Igenlode
leave this tale awhile upon the very cusp of hubris and disaster, while I
recount events that earlier passed elsewhere.
For Danik had had his way, and the Avalanche had set sail to my aid with
all possible dispatch, and indeed in some confusion by reason of that
haste. Or so, at least, Danilo would have me tell it -- being the only
means to justify the discovery that then befell, when the shop was
already some half-day's sailing from Sainte-Marie, with a fair wind
behind and hearts high in the hope of action.
With the Avalanche, then, in some disarray, by good fortune Danik chanced
to descend into his cabin in search of some small item required on deck.
To his alarm, however, the haste of his entry set up an answering barrage
of blows and cries that seemed to come from his sea-chest itself, as
though some evil spirit were trapped within. And there -- when the catch
was triggered and the lid was flung back -- there, among the captain's
linen and his shirts, as if in a crumpled nest or padded cell, the
culprit was unearthed. Bruised and tear-stained at seven years old, yet
victorious over all prohibitions, Jehan de la Tour emerged into the
light.
To be trapped within the chest, of course, had formed no part of the
young stowaway's plan. Otherwise, as he explained with pride, it had been
simplicity itself. His only mistake -- in panic at footsteps outside the
door -- had been to latch home the lid.
If he had expected an adoring reception, he was sadly mistaken. Had the
child not already been sufficiently punished by his hours of terrified
imprisonment, Danik would have been sorely tempted to have him beaten
soundly. It should not have been possible for him to slip on board --
and, moreover, the Avalanche was now well into the Martinique Passage,
having long since passed the northern point of the island, and to return
the boy to his grandfather would entail many hours of working to
windward, and the loss, perhaps, of a whole day.
L'Aiglonne had bid him keep her son out of danger -- and yet every
instinct told him now that every hour might count in coming to her
rescue. Should he endanger that for the prank of one unruly small boy?
And yet it was for the sake of Jeannot's safety that she herself was now
at risk...
"You can whip me if you like." The child's voice was very small, viewing
his hero's thunderous expression. "I don't mind --" A slight wobble gave
this brave statement the lie, but he rushed on. "I just want to help
Maman --"
"And what do you imagine a child your age can do to aid her, save
endanger others?" Danik sighed, and gave him a shake. "We have no time to
take you back, Jehan, so you must sail with us perforce. But you'll see
no fighting, and you'll not leave the ship when we land -- is that
understood? If one hair of your head comes to harm, your /Maman/ will
have me whipped from yardarm to yardarm --"
The child's laugh was a little uncertain, until it was joined by Danik's
own chuckle. "I left a letter in my room," Jehan confided. "So they will
not worry for me, back at Mireille."
One of Danik's eyebrows flew upward ruefully above the boy's head,
unseen. "I'll let your grandfather deal with you himself when we get
back," he promised cheerfully, kneeling to put an arm around Jehan's
shoulders. "*Then* we'll see just how much worry you have made..."
The boy returned an unrepentant grin, secure in the knowledge that his
idol was no longer angry, and followed him up the steps and out into the
sunlight and the explanations that must be faced. He would be sailing to
adventure after all; and the wrath awaiting his homecoming seemed very
far away.
'A fair wind, and a fast passage' is the toast to which the sailors
drink; and the saints must have interceded for her errand, for the
Avalanche was gifted with both. Not until that same sultry afternoon that
plagued us in the fort did the wind leave her sails at last, dropping to
no more than a breath of air to send her drifting in across a glassy sea,
hour by hour, as the coast crept slowly into sight, and all aboard her
fretting lest some lookout on the shore should raise the alarm.
Danik's intent had been to skirt the island and sail in boldly beneath
the fort; but that was madness in this airless heat. He altered course,
therefore, to make the swiftest landfall that he could. It was barely an
hour before sunset when the Avalanche at last came gliding in beneath the
cliffs, to a sheltered cove where she could lie unseen while those aboard
her made a swifter passage on foot. It was not long, however, before the
shore party discovered they were not alone.
"Search parties, I'd say." Osman took the spyglass Danik handed him, with
a word of thanks, and focussed it more closely on the moving specks
beyond the ridge. "Three or four of them, without a doubt, and maybe
more..."
He glanced back, as if to assure himself his vessel's masts were out of
sight, and then over at the sinking sun behind the fort. "They cannot
have seen us, /Herr Graf/ -- I'll lay a Spanish dollar on that. It's the
far end of the island they're searching, and turning over every bush --"
"L'Aiglonne." Danik's heart had taken a queer little leap of pride. "The
lady made her own escape. That one has the hawk's blood of her father,
and a spirit to match..."
He turned on his heel, laying a hand on Osman's arm. "We must let her
know we're here -- and if possible without raising the alarm. Take five
men and make your way to the fort to find out all you can. I'll take the
rest. If she's here, she'll not be easy to find... but I think I know
where she may be..."
Osman nodded and vanished into the growing shadows with a handful of men,
as Danik sighed and set himself to the task of contacting a fugitive with
every reason to be lying low. The search-parties were out in force at the
far end of the island, close to the fort. If she were there, she would be
found -- and Osman would doubtless learn of it. But if, as he hoped, she
had slipped the cordon, L'Aiglonne would surely head for the haunts that
had served the two of them so well in those days on the run. He knew --
none better -- how easy it was to lie still and silent in this place, and
be passed unseen; but surely, if she heard Ruritanian accents, she would
make herself known?
Danik sighed again, watching the sun's steady descent into the ocean. It
would soon be dark, and they could not risk lanterns that might bring the
lady's pursuers after them in turn. Best, perhaps, to make their way to
that great stone under whose shelter L'Aiglonne had once slept, and hope
to meet her there...
But when, stumbling in the dusk, they had found the weathered outcrop,
there was no sign that anyone had been there. The earth in the little
hollow under the overhang bore no hasty imprint where a sleeper might
have sprung up, and the telltale tracks of bird-prints untouched seamed
the dust.
Danik halted, dismayed. "/Madame? L'Aiglonne?/"
No answer, save the night-wind stirring in the trees. The emptiness was
almost strong enough to touch. For a moment he could feel it closing in,
nullity all around in a strangling, enfolding grip...
That way lay madness. Danik, who had never thought himself an
over-imaginative man, took a grip on his own emotions and considered the
situation. She might still come.
"We'll sleep here -- no, wait. *I'll* sleep here; do the rest of you
spread out among the trees and lie in cover within my call. We've no wish
to scare the lady off -- and if she sees our numbers I doubt she'll wait
to see if we be friend or foe."
Nods of agreement, all around, as the men began to separate, moving off
in ones and twos. Danik raised his voice, grinning. "And if you snore --
be sure to snore /auf Deutsch!/"
He wrapped himself in his own cloak and slid in under the rock, listening
to the ebbing ripple of laughter that had marked that last sally as his
crewmen spread out all around. His shoulders found the familiar hollow; a
darker shadow overhead was another friend, that obstinate lump of rock on
which he'd cracked his skull upon rising, two mornings out of every
three. He could almost hear her breathing there beside him... almost
imagine, if he reached out, that she had slid in under the outcrop in the
dark into her accustomed place. But it was only the breeze, rising.
He shivered, feeling a little eddy of wind brush down his spine. No
familiar long-boned shape, tonight, to lie warm against his back. She was
out there somewhere, alone and hunted.
"/L'Aiglonne...?/" It was barely a whisper, expecting no answer. "Where
are you, /camarade?/"
The hours wore on in restless silence, and sleep came in snatches, the
air seeming to press in upon him close and oppressive until he could not
breathe. Half a dozen times he started awake, sweating, only to find the
mass of rock looming above his face, crushing him downwards with its
implacable weight... The sound of his own voice, crying out, jerked him
into full wakefulness at last.
The clearing was bathed in moonlight beyond the shadows in which he lay,
far from the foul air that filled his dreams, and he could bear it no
longer. Almost without thinking he rolled over and out into the open,
springing to his feet and drawing in deep breaths.
The moon was high, and it lacked some few hours before dawn. She had not
come. She would not come, now. She needed his aid -- and he did not know
where to find her-- He had begun to thrust his way through the bushes,
along paths that in a scant few days had already become overgrown.
She was not here. She had not been here. Stumbling through the moonlight,
Danik of Ruritania wandered the haunts they'd known, calling, driven by
an urgency even he did not understand. No-one answered. All around was as
silent as the grave.
--------
And in that same hour, so far as ever, later, I could judge, I too woke
in terror from exhausted sleep, and fought to free myself, and then at
last remembered where I lay; and in that dreadful waking wept. For such a
weakness I could claim the privilege of my sex -- but in truth no
prisoner situated as then I was need have thought it shame to give way to
his tears, and God will forgive me if in that darkness I cursed his name.
Better to have cursed that of Edmond -- or better still, my own. For my
adversary, being, as I have said, no fool -- nor over-burdened with
scruples either -- knew well enough that all the while we marched, with
him at pistol-point, any power that lay between us was slipping away,
from my hands back into his. And did not scruple to tell me so.
With every step we took, more men lay within his call... and I had but
one shot as threat, and all too little willingness to use it. To have
carried off successfully such a scheme, I must needs have been at once as
daring as Danilo, as ruthless as Edmond -- and as lucky ten times over as
the Avalanche herself.
You will gather, then, that my plan failed; that we did not reach the
gates, nor anywhere even close, and that Edmond proved to have the
whip-hand after all. To my shame, we did not even pass that first guarded
door.
It was simply done, after all. Seeing me walking free, the guard had
already laid his hand upon his weapon. I ordered Edmond, under the
pistol's threat, to bid him lay it down if he valued his master's life --
and Edmond, perceiving the tremor I could not entirely hide and judging
the moment to be ripe, chose instead to call for aid, and jumped aside as
the man rushed forward, grappling for my wrist.
I fired. I could not help myself, in that sudden rush; doubtless that was
the chance he took, and even what he had counted upon. The shot went
wild. Edmond was not touched -- it was the other man who lay groaning at
my feet, when the sudden, shocking sound was done.
For a moment I was deafened and choked alike, smoke and shot both more
overpowering by far between those solid walls than in the open air, and
Edmond profited by it to pluck the empty pistol from my hand and aim such
a blow at my head as might have put paid to all my earthly woes, or at
least stretched me senseless on the ground beside that other poor wretch.
But some instinct bade me move, almost in the last second; and the blow
that should have struck me down crashed instead full-strength against the
empty wall.
The pain of it, to the hand that held the pistol-grip, must have been
immense. I think Edmond's grasp must have been for a moment numbed, for
the weapon clattered to the floor, and he doubled over with a cry of pain
almost as piteous as the moans of his erstwhile henchman upon the floor.
The which, I may add, inspired in me far more pity; for I had not meant
to harm the man, and yet so far as I had time to judge, he was dying, and
dying in agony.
But I had no time for pity, or regret, nor indeed for thought, beyond the
animal instinct of any hunted thing. The shouts and shot had been enough
to rouse the whole fort on my heels, and indeed the first of those new
pursuers were already coming into sight, both at the foot of the stair
down which we had lately come, and around the far corner of that corridor
down which we had, so short a time ago, been proceeding; that is to say,
I was surrounded, or would imminently be so.
I did not pause to think upon my likely fate should I be recaptured, nor
even upon the probable fate of my son were I to die here, alone and
friendless upon an unknown isle. Like the smaller fish before the
greater, I fled, taking the only route of escape still open to me,
however brief the recourse it might offer. I darted in through that door
which had stood all the while at my back, the presence of a guard on
which had been Edmond's pretext to make his move -- the door to the room
where we two first had met, and seemed now likely to bid our unloving
farewells. The door to Edmond's office.
Small enough a chamber it seemed for a man to pick as his sanctum, with
the whole of the fort, such as it was, to choose from; but it boasted one
convenience essential to all leaders and commanders, namely a stout bolt
on the inner door. Of this, as you can imagine, I swiftly availed myself,
and then began to thrust every item of the furnishings in the room across
to bar the door, upon which the fists and swordhilts of my pursuers were
already furiously beating. The gesture was instinctive to one in my
position, and yet but a futile ploy, as I well knew -- for it could hope
to delay the inevitable entry by no more than half a minute at the most.
I had trapped myself, weaponless, in this cramped room, and could not
hope to hold out long.
The window, unbarred, offered a moment's promise of escape. The opening
was wide enough to take a cannon's muzzle, or for a man to climb... but
the only possible egress was upward, out onto a tiny enclosed space where
two walls met and merged, eighty metres above the fangs of rock below.
Downward from the window, the walls fell sheer and without compromise,
angled over the cliff and down to the hungry sea.
I shrank back from that dizzying sight, and saw my barricade shudder
under the blows now rained on it from behind. The seams of the door were
beginning to gape. Minutes, at most, remained... Unthinking, I caught up
a stout paper-knife from the desk, taking reassurance from the hilt in my
hand, though I knew full well that the blade could no more be used to
defend myself than could a silver platter in the grasp of a child.
All around the room, under my uncomprehending eye, were pale patches
where furnishings against the walls had been moved or overturned. I
backed towards the window. If all else failed, I might yet find the
courage to essay that dreadful climb...
But it was in that moment of all-encompassing despair, with forbidden
thoughts of self-destruction all but acknowledged in my mind, that the
dark lines running four-square down the wall first came to my attention,
and began all at once to make a kind of sense. There -- a paler patch,
where the largest cupboard had once stood. There -- an outline, traced
among the stones, that could be, that looked very much like... a door. A
door! A passage -- a secret way, such as the old Spaniards who had built
this place were said to have loved--
I had flung myself across the room toward the tell-tale stones, pulling,
levering and thrusting with the knife-hilt in my hand, heedless as the
blade snapped half-way in my grasp. Something gave. I tumbled almost
headlong down the shadowed steps revealed, as the door behind me yielded
with a final, rending crash.
There was no time to seek for a hidden catch to close the door, even if
such a device should indeed exist. There was time only to flee downward
in the dark, skirts dragging at my heels, trusting in the workmanship
that built the stair that there would be no missing step on which to
break my neck.
Shouts, behind me, as my pursuers discovered my flight. My hearing
strained for the clattering upon the stairs that would signal their
onslaught; but instead muffled voices rose again, fainter now and further
back with the speed of my descent. Light, I guessed at hazard; they were
waiting for a light to be fetched before venturing into the bowels of the
rock. Would that I had that choice... but necessity drove at my heels,
and I stumbled on, into darkest night.
The stairs ended, abruptly, and I fell, crashing downward onto my hands
with a cry that I could not repress. Blackness in front of me. Open space
-- and behind me, the first dim and distant yelping of the renewed
hue-and-cry. This was what I had feared, left wandering blindly at the
foot of the secret stair, unable to flee, unable even to find an entrance
to the outer world, if such there should be...
I should know when they were coming by the light. Light, that alone could
save me now, and yet instead would signal the end of all my hope... More
sound upon the stairs. It would not be long now. I groped forward,
reaching for a wall and finding only blank space all around.
They say that the senses of the blind are keener than those of other men;
that scent and sound in some measure come to take the place of sight. To
the truth of that I have no means to attest -- for it was by accident
alone that I stumbled upon the only shelter that cavern could afford.
'Stumbled', indeed; for I caught my foot against some great mass in the
dark, and fell, measuring my length against a slab of stone raised a good
metre from the ground... and felt it shift beneath my weight, grating
loose.
Half-sobbing from the sudden bruising pain, I found that I was in a
veritable maze of these stone cists or caskets, as hasty fingers revealed
them seemingly to be. The force of my fall had driven the lid half-off
the nearest; it was heavy, but not more than I could move. I raised the
lid a little more, and slipped swiftly into the sanctuary within, drawing
the cover back over myself with such care as I could manage in the time.
The sunken centre of the slab bedded home with a dull sound, the very
finality of which was unpleasant to hear. I thrust my strength again
upward upon the stone above my head, and assured myself once more that I
could lift it sufficiently to slide it free; then let it fall as softly
as I could, and crouched in cover like a hunted hare. At every movement,
a fragile splintering gave way beneath my weight, and I dared not stir
for fear of betraying my presence by the sound.
The voices came nearer; and then, the first flickers of light, glimmering
faintly along the cracks as I held my breath. The interior of my refuge
was almost, but not quite, black. I could make out nothing save that
slight tracery of light along the rim.
Exclamations close at hand, and hammering footsteps pounding past, ten or
twenty at least. Then the barnyard din of many angry voices raised at
once, as the footsteps became confused mlee all around -- searching for
their vanished prisoner, at a guess. They had counted on finding me here,
that was clear enough.
"Two of you -- check that entrance!" The speaker held some authority of
command, and the others fell silent as I strained my sense to make out
the direction of which he spoke.
"Open it -- she may have found her way outside. Not the larger lever,
imbecile -- to the left --" Every word was manna to my ears; and most of
all, that sweet song of grating rock resounding through the chamber as
the unseen door was opened. Now, if they would just go out to search and
leave it open in their wake --
"And if she is still here?" Another voice, tinged with a low cunning for
which I could not at once understand the reason. "Do you want us to open
up the coffins, /mon lieutenant?/ Check for our pretty quarry down among
the bones?"
But I scarcely heard the last words. It was all I could do to keep myself
from leaping up in sudden horror to escape the confinement in which I
lay. I knew now why the chest in which I crouched was not empty; I knew,
too late, the horrid meaning of the dry-sticks crackling that splintered
as I moved. Beneath my knee, perhaps, lay shattered ribs -- that rounded
weight against my hand could be a grinning skull -- and I was trapped,
trapped with the dead in a desecrated grave...
You will take me for a fool, perhaps, not to have guessed the manner of
casket in which I lay. But I defy any man, finding unhoped-for sanctuary
in the dark, not then to have his reason all but overturned by the sudden
knowledge that he has thrust his limbs, unknowing, into the shattered
remnants of the dead; that he lies cheek by jowl with a corpse,
imprisoned in a tomb, and *dare not move*!
Only the dryness of my mouth saved me from a strangulated scream. I
believe that in another moment I should have been on my feet, all thought
of escape, of concealment flung away in my horror at the company in which
I lay -- but I must have made some sound, for the lieutenant shifted
sharply and gave a sudden bark of consent. "Go to it, then, /mes gars/...
let's have them open, these two first..."
How fickle we women are! Our sensibilities, so easily offended, are as
easily discarded, it seems -- for as the stone lids came grating off, to
be cast with a crash upon the nearby slabs, and their contents ransacked
with greedy fingers and coarse jokes, I found myself cowering in the
shelter of that same confinement I had moments earlier believed myself to
be ready to risk anything to flee, frozen to the spot.
The sounds came nearer and nearer. Then -- just as the neighbouring
coffin-lid crashed down upon my own -- blessed reprieve.
"/Search/, I said, not smash -- that's someone's ancestor you've got
there, Maglorre, put her down--"
Ribald comment, that brought a snarl from the lieutenant. "Eh, and you
too, Beaupre. Put those trinkets down! Did I order stealing from the
dead? /Nom de Dieu/, what have I done to be thrown among grave-robbers
and scum?-- leave that. Leave them all. There's nothing here. She must
have slipped past us in the dark.
"Two of you, back up the stairs, at the double. The rest, follow me. You
know Monsieur's orders--"
But whatever Edmond's orders concerning myself had been -- and I confess
I was much concerned to find out -- they were clearly known already to
all those present, for I heard nothing further save a low rumble of
voices as if in assent, and the fading sound of footsteps. The tracery of
light above my head flickered, and ebbed to nothing. They were gone; and
a final, echoing thud showed that the exit itself, too, was shut. They
would not be coming back.
For a minute I hardly dared to breathe, lest it should be some trick. But
all around was darkness, and the silence of the crypt. I was unsuspected
and alone. In effect, I was free.
Free -- but not free from the companionship of the ancient corpse on
which I lay. The needs of the moment now passed, I had once again
conceived a strong distaste for my situation.
I thrust upwards to free the covering slab from the recess in which it
lay, meaning to heave it aside; thrust again, surprised, as my first
effort yielded only the slightest movement; then flung all my strength
against it in panic, crying out and beating frantically upon the
unresponsive stone. Too late, I recalled the massive weight that had
descended overhead, as an open coffin-lid was flung aside carelessly atop
my own. The blade of the guillotine would have been more merciful by far.
They had trapped me here beneath a double weight of stone, in an
unwitting sentence for which there could be no repeal and no reprieve --
walled me up to die in a sealed cave behind a secret door, until my own
bony jaws should scream in silence alongside that grinning skull with
whom I shared my tomb -- to die in choking horror in the dark--
I screamed; but there were none to hear me. I clawed at my imprisoning
walls until my nails were splintered and my finger-ends scored with
blood; had Edmond come towards me in that minute and pressed a pistol to
my temple, I would have blessed the hand that brought oblivion even as he
made the shot. I wept, and shrieked, and called on God, and all the
saints, and offered my soul, I think, to the very Devil himself, if he
could but save me now.
But Lucifer did not answer, having perhaps no use for such a weakened
vessel as I; and Our Lord granted me only the mercy of unconsciousness,
when the frenzy of my terror had overthrown my senses, and all but
exhausted the air within which I lay. While my captors and my rescuers
alike combed the island for me by the light of the setting sun, I lay hid
where none of them could ever find me, helpless even to call for aid.
Buried beneath that cliff, I would live or die by my own efforts; for no
man knew I was there.
Paul Andinach
> I"m confused. Is this DOCTOR WHO???
Did you read the author's note at the beginning of the story?
Lorrill Buyens
rock and hollered:
>I"m confused. Is this DOCTOR WHO???
You got as far as Part Two without noticing the bit in the intro
to Part One which stated that no, this isn't DW-related?
--
"No collection of individuals is less vindictive than
an audience at amateur theatricals."
- P. G. Wodehouse, _The Intrusion of Jimmy_
Igenlode
No effort was made to verify the identity of the sender.
--------------------------------------------------------
On 26 Jun 2003 J2rider wrote:
> I"m confused. Is this DOCTOR WHO???
The initial statement
> it has *zero* Dr Who content, and
> doesn't even pretend otherwise. You Have Been Warned...
would tend to suggest that it isn't :-)
I *could* set it in an anime world where the narrator's elder sister was
once the Muse of a man who ran dancing-classes attended by all eight
alternate versions of the Doctor - concurrently - but frankly, I don't
consider that sort of thing Doctor Who, so I haven't. Think of it as a
historical serial like The Romans, with the Doctor arriving just after
the end of the last paragraph; the level of research and accuracy is
about the same...
--
Igenlode Wordsmith
The Gentleman's guide to Usenet - see http://curry.250x.com/Tower/GENTLE.TXT
Igenlode
approaches those to whom we are closest. Yet if such warnings do in truth
exist, I at least have never known their touch. I had no more prescience
of my Emile's death than in our childhood days, when I had glimpsed,
unknowing, the skiff in the bay on the day that Edmond was to drown. Nor
had I foreknowledge of Jehan's peril at the false Edmond's hand or in the
boarding of the Avalanche -- and if, as some would have it, I am revealed
thereby as bad mother and unfeeling bride, then so be it; I cannot, alas,
pretend to a sensitivity it seems I lack.
And so it was that when Danilo set himself upon impulse alone to defend
the rear, I knew no more of it than any newborn babe. Osman, I think, who
had known the Count far longer than I, was prey to some such feeling of
disquiet; though when I sought to tax him with it afterward, he turned my
questions aside, with all courtesy but with a final air.
/I would not open windows into men's souls/, quoth Elizabeth of England;
and though I have no especial love for the English or their prim-lipped
Queen, it seems to me her ancestor was wiser in this matter than she
knew. So I will set down now in this account simply that with Osman at
our head, the advance-guard of the Avalanche party swept down through the
fortress towards the gates at great speed, overcoming such resistance as
interposed itself but pursuing no further those who fled, and that Osman
at first seemed as merry as any of that crew, but grew silent as time
wore on and betrayed at last some disquiet.
We had bid fair to outdistance the rearguard entirely in our haste, and
at times he would call a halt until the first of those who followed could
be seen. But the latest of these halts was longer than any had lasted
before; and when the stragglers hastened into view, it was with a tale of
events that drove the colour from every cheek present.
Danilo was trapped -- and trapped together with a foe whose lack of pity
I for one knew only too well. And the blade that should be rights have
served for his defence had been given instead for mine... It was in that
moment that Osman's glance happened to cross my own. The same impulse in
both was clear to read; but he had a score of lives besides entrusted to
his care, where I had only one. Of Danilo's explicit order he did not
then speak, nor would I have heeded if he had.
We shared but a single glance before the choice was made, but that was
enough. What I intended was only what he would dearly loved to attempt
himself, had he been free to follow where his wishes led. His eyes held
mine a moment longer, dark with disquiet yet wishing me Godspeed; and
then he was turning to give swift orders to his men, feigning not to see
me as I slipped aside and fled.
I could guess well enough where Danilo must be and even how I might reach
him, by that same upward route I had once seen from the window of my
captor's room. Fear for myself alone had not been enough to drive me to
attempt that climb. Anguish for the life of another now lent me wings.
I was in time, or so it seemed -- but barely. I glimpsed Danilo,
stretched ashen on the stones, move slightly, as if to ward off a final
blow, and the sight woke in me a fury that carried me over the last lip
of the ascent and to within a metre's space of Edmond before he knew
himself no longer alone. With the blade bared in my hand, I could have
killed him then, save that he would never have known whose hand had
struck him down. It was the desire of my heart in that moment above all
that he should *know*; that he should taste in some small measure the
bitterness he gave so freely to others to drink.
Of honour I did not think. One does not concern oneself with honour when
seeking how best to extinguish such vermin from life.
I bade him turn, in such biting terms as my father himself might have
used if he thought me out of earshot, and saw with pleasure the
unbelieving look upon his face. For a moment he merely stared at me, as
if at a performing bear, until I made a thrust that was like to run him
through, had he not darted back.
"Better to fight even a woman than an unarmed man, monsieur -- or does
your courage extend only to those who cannot fight back?" And I regret to
say that I spat at his feet.
Whatever else he was -- and as to that, none now will ever know -- I will
do Edmond the justice at least to say that he was no coward, nor even a
bragging fool. When once he perceived me to be in earnest, he joined his
blade unhesitatingly with mine, and pressed forward in combat with a
force that reserved no false humility for my sex, but sought to bring the
match to an end as quickly as might be.
But the force of my anger was at least the equal of his -- there would be
no question, for me, of killing in cold blood, not this time -- and I was
not, as the reader may recall, unprepared. Danilo's sword, supple and
light, might almost have been a fencing foil, and made to suit a woman's
hand... It was not at all like fencing Emile; but not in the way I had
imagined.
Emile had been a master of the blade, taller than I and swift on his
feet, and it was rare indeed in the /salle/ that I could do better than
force him to a draw. He had praised my skill; but in my heart I had
always set my talents against his measure, and judged them wanting. Now,
for the first time, I found myself matched against an opponent who lacked
both my reach and speed, powerful though he might be -- who, it became
apparent, lacked over me a vital edge. I had almost never been able to
defeat Emile. For all his striving, Edmond managed to touch me with but
one glancing thrust, a stinging slice along one arm, before I lodged my
point through his guard and squarely against his body. And failed to pull
the thrust.
The look in his eyes as the steel sank home was all the repayment I had
desired... No, cold blood didn't even come into it. It was not even hard,
in the end, to drag the blade free as he sagged, and to ram it a second
time through his throat.
--------
I had thought to end my story there, with the death of Edmond; but
Danilo, leaning now upon my shoulder to read what I have set down, on his
part as on my own, assures me that no lady-novelist would leave her story
hanging open thus, and that I must perforce append a conclusion to my
account in proper form, recounting the fates of all who figured therein
-- or at least of those two of whose strange meeting and courtship this
has been the tale...
I see now that I left off with Danilo hanging seemingly upon the cusp of
life and death; though you will have gathered now that he lived indeed,
and was able even to whisper a few words in answer to my pleas in that
moment when I flung myself down at his side, heedless of the
blood-streaked stone. Of what was said between us in that heartfelt hour
I will not write, for that memory belongs to us two alone and is not
lightly to be disclosed. Suffice it to say that the tenderest passages in
the annals of the poets are not more close to my heart, nor more
cherished in memory than those dear halting phrases murmured there
between his lips and mine... He is often in jest; on that day we spoke
only truth, and trembled to know it possible so openly to confide.
/Eh, mon cher amour,/ do not smile -- you know full well I have not the
skill to set down truly what I mean! Feel here, my heart beneath your
hand -- it beats for you, as yours, beneath that laughing cloak, for me.
You could not deny it, even if you would.
/Ah non, Danilo, laisse-moi.../
Enough of embraces now, /mon cher amour turbulent/. I have still some
pages left to write, and Jeannot there on the terrace is in search of you
-- for some wild scheme, I make no doubt. I know not sometimes which of
you two is the greater child at heart.
So... and now what still remains for me to tell? We escaped, with the
fortress defence thrown into disarray, and had boarded the Avalanche
before Danilo's weakness overmastered him at last. He lay as one dead to
the world for some three nights and days, while the surgeon gave what
care he could, and the little Avalanche laboured back towards
Saint-Pierre against an adverse wind. There was a time, when wound-fever
had set in, that we feared he might lose altogether the use of his arm.
But before we sighted Martinique at last the fever broke, and a cheerful
patient was making light of all the surgeon's past prophecies of doom,
being much more concerned -- or so it seemed to me -- for the welfare of
my own shallow scratch, where the sword-blade had glanced briefly along
my arm. I had paid but little heed to the dressing of this wound, which
had already all but dried to a dry and jagged mark; but Danilo must needs
have the surgeon treat it with all his skill, so that for my sake there
should be no hint of a scar. He would have been better employed, as I
told him, in giving thanks that he bade fair to escape with no worse than
scars on his part -- but he retorted, with a ghost of his laugh, that he
had rather give thanks that Paris fashions were never like to dictate
that he appear in a puff-sleeved ballgown. The which, being both very
true and a sign of returning light-heartedness, had us both in rather
more merriment than it might seem to warrant.
We landed at St-Pierre, and called upon the physician there; but the
patient was by that time so much better, having been subjected perforce
without doctor's orders to a simple diet and sea air, and all the talk of
the town was running so high at the tales of our return, that the great
man readily allowed himself to be persuaded to prescribe a sojourn at
Mireille for the convalescent months... And so here then, at last, it
seems my story is come to its end.
Danilo is well again, save only that he still sports a sling upon the
injured arm -- which, I may add, does not seem of late to discommode him
in the least from taking me into his embrace, or teaching Jeannot to
carve out wooden boats, or from anything that he wishes to do... There is
a month or more before he must needs leave before the hurricanes begin;
but when he leaves, I will go with him as his wife.
We shall see Paris, and Vienna, and Strelsau, and little Bad Hortig on
the Schelstein estate itself, where his widowed mother and Osman's family
await. My home is here, at Mireille where I was born and where first I
loved Emile, and here at last I will always return, with Jehan who is its
heir. But Danilo's heart is in Ruritania still, in the distant land of
his own birth, and for his sake I will learn to love it as my own and
take his people for my kin, as he has taken mine.
I had not known that Jehan had stood in such need to a father -- or my
father Thierry in need of a son. I can see them now through the open
window even as I write, coming along the terrace arm in arm, with the
child running behind. The westering sun catches the grey in my father's
hair and burnishes Danilo's in gold...
Alas, I am no better hand, it seems, at ending a story than at laying out
its commencement in proper form. But such as it is, my tale is done; and
the blank leaves that remain in this old journal-book of mine may serve
as witness to the long golden days to come, in those pages of our lives
that are yet to be written. From all my heart I wish to you such
happiness as I have found -- and ask you to wish me well. /Adieu./
--------
[With grateful thanks to Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne and
Sergeanne Golon, who taught me that there was more to French than
schoolbooks :-) I.W.]
Igenlode
himself, but the other man's grasp tightened, draping the boy's arm
across his own shoulders for support.
"We'll get out of this, /alter Junge/ -- all of us, mark you. I've come
far enough to get you out of this place; fine fools we'd be to leave you
behind..."
Danik of Ruritania glanced around his men, the able and the wounded,
taking stock almost without thinking of who should lead the forefront of
a righting retreat and who should aid the wounded at the rear. Swordless,
he had already mentally assigned himself to the latter. L'Aiglonne should
bear his blade to any glory that might be won--
He caught sight of her at Osman's side, poised in mid-movement as if on
the verge of flight, and thought for the first time how like a sword
herself she was; and as unwitting of her own grace. High-tempered,
blade-supple and proud -- as dusky and fierce as a panther of far Cathay,
and as lovely as she moved -- and all the more so because she knew
nothing of it and put on no airs.
She thought of herself as harsh-featured and plain: she had the
brightness and beauty of a leaping blade. One day he would tell her so,
watch the colour rise in her cheeks in a moment she would never forget,
show her to herself as he saw her in truth-- Their eyes met; and for a
moment, his own breath unsteady, he could have crushed her in his arms.
But Reinhardt's limping weight was dragging at his side, and time was
pressing heavy upon them; and eyes must suffice. "/Eagle's-daughter/," he
said, softly, in his own tongue.
Reinhardt stirred suddenly at that, looking up. "Danik -- her son -- I
could not--"
"Jeannot's safe," Danik assured him swiftly. "He had the wit to hide --
and the courage to save the ship; it was his tale that led me to you
here. And the best gift you can give him is to let him see you again,
safe and sound..."
He glanced round again. "Osman!"
They had sailed together for so long that the briefest of exchanges
served to outline their plan of retreat. He would have trusted Osman with
the most precious thing he had without a moment's qualm; he did so now.
It was Osman, who knew him best, who put the final question.
"And if aught goes amiss?"
Danik drew a breath, met the calm, shrewd eyes of the friend he'd known
since boyhood, and looked away. "No. Get L'Aiglonne out -- at all costs.
I'll take care of the rest. No heroics, /alter Freund/. Not this time."
"You gave your word as Schelstein to see her safe when all this first
began," Osman prompted softly after a moment, with a glance at Reinhardt.
"One word from her in Martinique, and Edmond can never show his face..."
Their eyes met again, Danik with one eyebrow raised, Osman's gaze steady
as ever. It was Danik who smiled first. "Exactly..."
He reached out with his left hand to grip the other man's shoulder for an
instant, and felt Osman's own hand come up briefly to cover his, before
he turned to give the orders that would clear the room. A handful to the
rear, to shield and help the wounded; the rest to form a fighting screen
ahead and clear the way. "Go -- go!"
The passage was still clear when he reached it, last of them to leave;
but even as he sent a quick glance round to check, the first clash of
arms sounded from ahead. Wizened little Dietrich, half-hanging on his
companion's arm for support, pulled a mock-grimace that had nothing to do
with his bandaged side. "Just for once, /Herr Graf/, it would be a fine
thing to leave a castle in the usual way, with no-one chasing us -- don't
you think?"
"Just for you, Dietrich, I'll bear it in mind..." Danik returned the
general grin. "Come now, boys -- no glory for us, worse luck. Keep your
powder dry for next time, and let's move out before those fire-eaters up
in front leave us standing. And if you can't milk those little scratches
of yours to the tune of a round of drinks apiece the next time we make
port, then you're not the shameless rogues I take you for..."
He did not doubt that, when all was done, Osman would win them through.
For himself, he had kept the more thankless task; to chivvy the
struggling few along faster than they could well manage, with insult and
jest and all that he could spare of his own strength. Reinhardt made no
complaint, but the young man's ashen face bore token to the effort that
was draining him, and his weight bore more and more heavily on his
captain's arm.
Two passageways and a laborious stair brought them out on a lower parapet
into unexpected sunlight that took them for a moment off guard. A bare
half-minute later, that same sudden brightness was to prove their
salvation.
Hot light on white summer-baked stone, after the darkness of the
stairwell. The pistol-shot was a flat crack of sound in the open air. It
missed Danik's cheek by the measure of a sun-dazzled hair's-breadth, and
set a shallow scar into the door-jamb beyond.
All of them had swung round instinctively. At their backs, in the face of
the tower, lay the shadowed opening of a second stair and the promise of
escape; in the doorway they had just left, unforeseen pursuers were
spilling out onto the few yards of walkway that separated them,
half-blinded on the sun-drenched wall-top. A second shot cracked out, and
Danik felt a stinging trickle of blood at his throat as the stone
splintered.
"Get back--" His left hand -- his sword-hand -- was free; he sought the
single pistol at his belt, drew and cocked it in one motion. At his side
the others were doing likewise, turning at bay.
"Get back!" He thrust Reinhardt behind him, towards the stair, as the
youngster staggered. "Dietrich--" the old sailor had perhaps the
steadiest head among them -- "the command is yours. Get this door bolted.
I'll hold them off as best I may, and join you after--"
Barely half a dozen men, opposite, and one who seemed their leader. They
had come down from above to take the intruders from behind; no picked
sortie, this, but a chance handful put together by a leader who had not
lost his head. Danik had never set eyes on the man -- but the cool
resource had a very familiar taste.
Audacity was his only hope. He stepped forward, sketching a low salute.
Behind him, the door's dull echo told him that his men were safe, and his
eyes began to dance. "Monsieur Edmond, I take it? My congratulations -- I
believe you almost won..."
The merest flicker of uncertainty; but it was enough. Danik had him.
"You play a losing hand well, monsieur." Edmond's deep voice almost
achieved a drawl. "Your ship, I presume? I should have known I had a
worthier opponent than dear Ernestine..."
Danik of Ruritania looked at him blankly for a moment; then laughed.
"L'Aiglonne? You underestimate her, /mon brave/ -- you always have. I
would that I might be present on the day when you taste her true
steel..."
Losing hand it might be -- but while he kept his nerve Edmond could not
know that for sure. And every moment that his adversary hesitated to
attack was another moment snatched for Dietrich and the rest.
Danik slipped his right hand down to his belt-dagger, taking a lazy
side-step closer to the parapet under the guise of a confident swagger.
He'd chanced to catch a glimpse of a sloping roof below, built against
the wall; but he did not now permit his glance to stray even for an
instant in that direction.
"If your intrusion was in quest of this so-redoubtable lady, monsieur, I
fear you are sadly behind the times." Edmond's eyes were narrowed against
the glare, and his temples bore a faint sheen from the heat, but the beat
of the vein there was steady and untroubled. "You would have done well to
be better-informed ere thus venturing within my grasp; for I give you
fair warning that incompetence in no way justifies this incursion--"
He was good. Very good, Danik acknowledged ruefully. The signal, when it
came, was almost too subtle to see. Almost.
Danik had the merest hint of warning, as Edmond's stance shifted a
fraction before he broke off. In the next moment they were upon him, a
concerted rush to pull down the lone defender, and the pistol kicked in
his hand as he let off his single shot.
Perchance it struck home as he had hoped -- if so, he never saw. A heroic
last stand had formed no part of his intent from the start; he was moving
even as he fired, his free hand reaching for the wall to his right, and
the warm stone slammed home against his palm as he flung himself up...
over... And then it was at this moment that a heavy body grappled for
his, striking him almost in mid-air as if fore-warned of his leap, and
Danik lost his balance and fell.
A hard arm was clamped about his throat, and they fell together with
bruising force, Danik undermost, his arched body crashing brutally back
against the parapet as his vault was cut short. Spreadeagled across the
wall, he clawed for breath, unsure for a moment if his limbs would still
function. Edmond's face was very close to his own, distorted now in
triumph as he held him pinned, and for a moment the pressure at his
throat slackened.
Empty space was yawning beneath his shoulders, sole remnant now of a
failed escape... Danik of Ruritania took a deep breath, let his weight
shift, and, with the spasmodic violence of a drowning man, launched them
both over the edge.
He felt cracked rafters yield under them as they struck, with a force
that tore loose the death-like grip of his opponent and sent them sliding
faster and faster down a sagging roof in a shower of tiles. A dozen yards
away, the cliff-edge beckoned, in a dizzying void filled only by the
distant hiss of the sea -- sun-drenched walls stretched upwards above
them at ever-increasing speed, as the tower window he'd once hoped to
attain from the refuge of this roof dwindled inexorably out of reach--
Abruptly, he was falling through empty space. Danik twisted desperately
as his shoulders left the roof, clawing to gain one final purchase as the
tiles slid away, felt his fingers for a moment catch on the gutter and
hold... and then, as his body swung inward, torn loose by the speed of
his own descent, fell heavily for a yawning second of despair. An instant
later, the breath was knocked out of him by the blessed solidity of
stone.
The sky was very blue above. It was hard to remember that there was
something he must do... something so easy he had done it all his life,
almost without thinking, and yet just now seeming an all but insuperable
burden... Above the roaring in his ears, he could hear the thin piping of
voices overhead and see the gesticulations on the parapet, outlined
against the blue. He wondered, vaguely, what they were shouting about...
tiny black specks were starting to dance before his eyes...
His chest heaved suddenly, with a jolt, as air-starved lungs took over,
and Danik found himself breathing again in great gasps that racked
injured ribs and brought consciousness flooding back. He rolled over,
gasping, and struggled to his feet. Barely ten feet away, his opponent
had his pistol drawn and reloaded.
The space in which the adversaries were thus confronted was the merest
pocket-handkerchief of stone upon the thickness of the outer wall, a
lengthwise wedge where two higher fortifications merged and met, like
some hidden courtyard in a tenement square, where crowded, leaning slopes
afford a sudden glimpse of the open street beyond. Save that here the
open street was open cliff that bordered on the sky, with a token
guardian rim, and the enclosing walls that yawned above were no
gap-toothed hutches, balcony-festooned, but massive and windowless works
of stone. There was no escape -- but one, and that lay over the edge of
the rim, down through one of the windows that pierced the outer
fortification itself.
All this, Danik perceived in an instant; and perceived likewise that the
chances of their bruising descent had placed Edmond between himself and
that vertiginous exit, and that the other man not only held a loaded
firearm but had contrived to retain his sword, while he, Danik, had
neither. The empty pistol lay barely a yard from his feet, its dulled
metal bent and scarred from the rigours of the fall. He stooped,
mechanically, to pick it up, and watched as his opponent brought his
weapon to bear, smiling.
And then a shot cracked past from above, with a ricochet whine that sent
them both flinching, and Edmond snapped out a single, graphic, phrase on
the probable parentage and destination of the over-enthusiastic marksman
that had Danik's brows soaring in eloquent admiration.
"Get that door down -- get after the rest of the interlopers, you --" A
further choice epithet blistered the air. "I'll take some pleasure in
dealing with this annoyance myself... in *person*."
From which, and by a certain stiffness in his movements, Danik deduced
with unconcealed satisfaction that he himself had not been the only one
to suffer in their mutual downfall.
"Your vocabulary is very eloquent, monsieur," he observed with meaning,
risking a swift upward glance. There were no longer any figures to be
seen on the parapet above. "One might almost suppose your formative years
had been spent in the slums of Saint'Antoine..."
But his opponent failed to rise to the suggestion. He was regarding him
with a form of abstract distaste which was not at all to Danik's liking,
as if the Ruritanian were no more than a troublesome fly. "I fail to see
that my lineage comes into the question... and as for yours, the sole
interest would lie therein if you should find yourself in sudden need of
a tombstone..."
Danik weighed the battered mass of the pistol in his left hand, the
barrel warm to his touch. He was watching the little black mouth that was
rising steadily in his adversary's grasp to take an unwavering aim, and
the calm, emotionless gaze beyond it. His own eyes, alive as ever with
laughter, had begun once more to dance. "M. Edmond, there remain to me
two things in this world of which I would make you a gift without regret:
the name, as it happens, that I bear with honour -- Danilo Ilitsch von
Schelstein-Hortig zu Metterschau -- and *this*!"
In the instant before the other man fired, the useless weapon had left
Danik's hand, flung sidelong with all the strength he could muster. It
struck true.
The weight of it alone would have been enough. Edmond's pistol, smashed
loose from a numbed grasp, flew sidelong against the slope of the wall
behind him, discharging its load, and span off at a low angle that barely
grazed upon the parapet-rim to his right. For a moment, absurdly, Danik
found himself counting seconds. But if the weapon struck rock or water at
the foot of the cliff, then the sound of it was swallowed by the constant
wash of the sea.
He had little enough attention to spare for such niceties. Edmond,
enraged, had disregarded stinging fingers and drawn his blade in a fury,
and Danik, driven backwards, must perforce snatch out his belt-dagger;
and then it was knife against sword, left hand against right, with the
odds -- he had to own it -- immeasurably in favour of the swordsman.
Few men had experience in countering a left-handed blade. That
happenstance had served him well in the past, but now it was not enough.
In closer quarters he might have had a chance; but for all the cramped
footing, there was enough space here to accommodate Edmond's most savage
blows and to spare, and for all his reach he could not get close enough
to score upon the shorter man save by the most prodigious feat of luck.
In the first flurries of their exchange, Danik of Ruritania had retained
the hope that he might somehow prevail. In the moments that followed, he
acknowledged, discarding his pride, that the best he could hope for was
to come off with his life intact. And even that was beginning to seem an
increasingly open question.
Intent upon that wedge of blue sky beyond his opponent which signalled
salvation, he feinted backward, exposing his side to the inevitable
stroke... and dodged swiftly to the left, diving forward, dagger-hand
leading, darting for the momentary gap--
Fire seared along his forearm, numbing wrist and hand, and the blade bit
home deep into his flesh. The agony of it harsh in his throat, Danik fell
back with slackened fingers, helpless to cling to the hilt as it fell
away. The dagger clattered on the ground, ringing dully on rough stone as
Edmond thrust it aside, and came to a halt.
Out of reach.
For an instant both men stared at it as Danik fell back another pace,
blood running down across his hand. Then Edmond smiled, and began to
advance. Danik's grey gaze met that of his opponent, steady to the last;
and read death there.
Not for the first time in his life; but, so far as it was in his power to
presume, for the last. He was losing blood, he found... a great deal of
blood. He took a final step back, eyes fixed on that remorseless face,
and found himself, unaccountably, falling as the world blurred around
him. The stone came up to hit him from behind, jolting him half-upright
as the blade came down.
It hurt, as he'd known it would. Hurt him more than he'd realised he
could bear, and not cry out. More than he'd known he could live through.
Edmond's smile had widened.
"Damn you --" the words escaped him between clenched teeth -- "at least
have the honour to make it clean--"
Agony. Mother Church, receive my soul and aid me to endure until the
end...
Half-dreaming, he saw her face, L'Aiglonne, haloed with sunlight, as he
would always see it; blazing with furious beauty and with pride.