The Tavern Knight Part 22

"G.o.d's curse on you," he burst out. "You have tricked me, you have cheated me."

"Bear your oath in mind," was the cold answer. "If you deem yourself wronged by me, hereafter you shall have what satisfaction you demand.

But first fulfil me what you have sworn. Out with your blade, man."

Still Kenneth hesitated, and but for Gregory's rash action at that critical juncture, it is possible that he would have elected to break his plighted word. But Gregory fearing that he might determine otherwise, resolved there and then to remove the chance of it. Whipping out his sword, he made a vicious pa.s.s at the lad's breast. Kenneth avoided it by leaping backwards, but in an instant Gregory had sprung after him, and seeing himself thus beset, Kenneth was forced to draw that he might protect himself.

They stood in the s.p.a.ce between the table and that part of the hall that ab.u.t.ted on to the terrace; opposite to them, by the door which he had closed, stood Crispin. At the table-head Joseph still sat cool, self-contained, even amused.

He realized the rashness of Gregory's attack upon one that might yet have been won over to their side; but he never doubted that a few pa.s.ses would dispose of the lad's opposition, and he sought not to interfere.

Then he saw Crispin advancing towards him slowly, his rapier naked in his hand, and he was forced to look to himself. He caught at the sword that stood behind him, and leaping to his feet he sprang forward to meet his grim antagonist. Galliard's eyes flashed out a look of joy, he raised his rapier, and their blades met.

To the clash of their meeting came an echoing clash from beyond the table.

"Hold, sir!" Kenneth had cried, as Gregory bore down upon him. But Gregory's answer had been a lunge which the boy had been forced to parry. Taking that crossing of blades for a sign of opposition, Gregory thrust again more viciously. Kenneth parried narrowly, his blade pointing straight at his aggressor. He saw the opening, and both instinct and the desire to repel Gregory's onslaught drew him into attempting a riposte, which drove Gregory back until his shoulders touched the panels of the wall. Simultaneously the boy's foot struck the back of the chair which in rising Crispin had overset, and he stumbled.

How it happened he scarcely knew, but as he hurtled forward his blade slid along his opponent's, and entering Gregory's right shoulder pinned him to the wainscot.

Joseph heard the tinkle of a falling blade, and a.s.sumed it to be Kenneth's. For the rest he was just then too busy to dare withdraw for a second his eyes from Crispin's. Until that hour Joseph Ashburn had accounted himself something of a swordsman, and more than a match for most masters of the weapon. But in Crispin he found a fencer of a quality such as he had never yet encountered. Every feint, every botte in his catalogue had he paraded in quick succession, yet ever with the same result--his point was foiled and put aside with ease.

Desperately he fought now, darting that point of his. .h.i.ther and thither in and out whenever the slightest opening offered; yet ever did it meet the gentle averting pressure of Crispin's blade. He fought on and marvelled as the seconds went by that Gregory came not to his aid. Then the sickening thought that perhaps Gregory was overcome occurred to him. In such a case he must reckon upon himself alone. He cursed the over-confidence that had led him into that ever-fatal error of underestimating his adversary. He might have known that one who had acquired Sir Crispin's fame was no ordinary man, but one accustomed to face great odds and master them. He might call for help.

He marvelled as the thought occurred to him that the clatter of their blades had not drawn his servants from their quarters. Fencing still, he raised his voice:

"Ho, there! John, Stephen!"

"Spare your breath," growled the knight. "I dare swear you'll have need of it. None will hear you, call as you will. I gave your four henchmen a flagon of wine wherein to drink to my safe journey hence. They have emptied it ere this, I make no doubt, and a single gla.s.s of it would set the hardest toper asleep for the round of the clock."

An oath was Joseph's only answer--a curse it was upon his own folly and a.s.surance. A little while ago he had thought to have drawn so tight a net about this ruler, and here was he now taken in its very toils, well-nigh exhausted and in his enemy's power.

It occurred to him then that Crispin stayed his hand. That he fenced only on the defensive, and he wondered what might his motive be. He realized that he was mastered, and that at any moment Galliard might send home his blade. He was bathed from head to foot in a sweat that was at once of exertion and despair. A frenzy seized him. Might he not yet turn to advantage this hesitancy of Crispin's to strike the final blow?

He braced himself for a supreme effort, and turning his wrist from a simulated thrust in the first position, he doubled, and stretching out, lunged vigorously in quarte. As he lengthened his arm in the stroke there came a sudden twitch at his wrist; the weapon was twisted from his grasp, and he stood disarmed at Crispin's mercy.

A gurgling cry broke despite him from his lips, and his eyes grew wide in a sickly terror as they encountered the knight's sinister glance. Not three paces behind him was the wall, and on it, within the hand's easy reach, hung many a trophied weapon that might have served him then. But the fascination of fear was upon him, benumbing his wits and paralysing his limbs, with the thought that the next pulsation of his tumultuous heart would prove its last. The calm, unflinching courage that had been Joseph's only virtue was shattered, and his iron will that had unscrupulously held hitherto his very conscience in bondage was turned to water now that he stood face to face with death.

Eons of time it seemed to him were sped since the sword was wrenched from his hand, and still the stroke he awaited came not; still Crispin stood, sinister and silent before him, watching him with magnetic, fascinating eyes--as the snake watches the bird--eyes from which Joseph could not withdraw his own, and yet before which it seemed to him that he quaked and shrivelled.

The candles were burning low in their sconces, and the corners of that ample, gloomy hall were filled with mysterious shadows that formed a setting well attuned to the grim picture made by those two figures--the one towering stern and vengeful, the other crouching palsied and livid.

Beyond the table, and with the wounded Gregory--lying unconscious and bleeding--at his feet, stood Kenneth looking on in silence, in wonder and in some horror too.

To him also, as he watched, the seconds seemed minutes from the time when Crispin had disarmed his opponent until with a laugh--short and sudden as a stab--he dropped his sword and caught his victim by the throat.

However fierce the pa.s.sion that had actuated Crispin, it had been held hitherto in strong subjection. But now at last it suddenly welled up and mastered him, causing him to cast all restraint to the winds, to abandon reason, and to give way to the l.u.s.t of rage that rendered ungovernable his mood.

Like a burst of flame from embers that have been smouldering was the upleaping of his madness, transfiguring his face and transforming his whole being. A new, unconquerable strength possessed him; his pulses throbbed swiftly and madly with the quickened coursing of his blood, and his soul was filled with the cruel elation that attends a l.u.s.t about to be indulged the elation of the beast about to rend its prey.

He was pervaded by the desire to wreak slowly and with his hands the destruction of his broken enemy. To have pa.s.sed his sword through him would have been too swiftly done; the man would have died, and Crispin would have known nothing of his sufferings. But to take him thus by the throat; slowly to choke the life's breath out of him; to feel his desperate, writhing struggles; to be conscious of every agonized twitch of his sinews, to watch the purpling face, the swelling veins, the protruding eyes filled with the dumb horror of his agony; to hold him thus--each second becoming a distinct, appreciable division of time--and thus to take what payment he could for all the blighted years that lay behind him--this he felt would be something like revenge.

Meanwhile the shock of surprise at the unlooked-for movement had awakened again the man in Joseph. For a second even Hope knocked at his heart. He was sinewy and active, and perchance he might yet make Galliard repent that he had discarded his rapier. The knight's reason for doing so he thought he had in Crispin's contemptuous words:

"Good steel were too great an honour for you, Mr. Ashburn."

And as he spoke, his lean, nervous fingers tightened about Joseph's throat in a grip that crushed the breath from him, and with it the new-born hope of proving master in his fresh combat. He had not reckoned with this galley-weaned strength of Crispin's, a strength that was a revelation to Joseph as he felt himself almost lifted from the ground, and swung this way and that, like a babe in the hands of a grown man.

Vain were his struggles. His strength ebbed fast; the blood, held overlong in his head, was already obscuring his vision, when at last the grip relaxed, and his breathing was freed. As his sight cleared again he found himself back in his chair at the table-head, and beside him Sir Crispin, his left hand resting upon the board, his right grasping once more the sword, and his eyes bent mockingly and evilly upon his victim.

Kenneth, looking on, could not repress a shudder. He had known Crispin for a tempestuous man quickly moved to wrath, and he had oftentimes seen anger make terrible his face and glance. But never had he seen aught in him to rival this present frenzy; it rendered satanical the baleful glance of his eyes and the awful smile of hate and mockery with which he gazed at last upon the helpless quarry that he had waited eighteen years to bring to earth. "I would," said Crispin, in a harsh, deliberate voice, "that you had a score of lives, Master Joseph. As it is I have done what I could. Two agonies have you undergone already, and I am inclined to mercy. The end is at hand. If you have prayers to say, say them, Master Ashburn, though I doubt me it will be wasted breath--you are over-ripe for h.e.l.l."

"You mean to kill me," he gasped, growing yet a shade more livid.

"Does the suspicion of it but occur to you?" laughed Crispin, "and yet twice already have I given you a foretaste of death. Think you I but jested?"

Joseph's teeth clicked together in a snap of determination. That sneer of Crispin's acted upon him as a blow--but as a blow that arouses the desire to retaliate rather than lays low. He braced himself for fresh resistance; not of action, for that he realized was futile, but of argument.

"It is murder that you do," he cried.

"No; it is justice. It has been long on the way, but it has come at last."

"Bethink you, Mr. Marleigh--"

"Call me not by that name," cried the other harshly, fearfully. "I have not borne it these eighteen years, and thanks to what you have made me, it is not meet that I should bear it now." There was a pause. Then Joseph spoke again with great calm and earnestness.

"Bethink you, Sir Crispin, of what you are about to do. It can benefit you in naught."

"Oddslife, think you it cannot? Think you it will benefit me naught to see you earn at last your reward?"

"You may have dearly to pay for what at best must prove a fleeting satisfaction."

"Not a fleeting one, Joseph," he laughed. "But one the memory of which shall send me rejoicing through what years or days of life be left me. A satisfaction that for eighteen years I have been waiting to experience; though the moment after it be mine find me stark and cold."

"Sir Crispin, you are in enmity with the Parliament--an outlaw almost. I have some influence much influence. By exerting it--"

"Have done, sir!" cried Crispin angrily. "You talk in vain. What to me is life, or aught that life can give? If I have so long endured the burden of it, it has been so that I might draw from it this hour. Do you think there is any bribe you could offer would turn me from my purpose?"

A groan from Gregory, who was regaining consciousness, drew his attention aside.

"Truss him up, Kenneth," he commanded, pointing to the rec.u.mbent figure. "How? Do you hesitate? Now, as G.o.d lives, I'll be obeyed; or you shall have an unpleasant reminder of the oath you swore me!"

With a look of loathing the lad dropped on his knees to do as he was bidden. Then of a sudden:

"I have not the means," he announced.

"Fool, does he not wear a sword-belt and a sash? Come, attend to it!"

"Why do you force me to do this?" the lad still protested pa.s.sionately.

"You have tricked and cheated me, yet I have kept my oath and rendered you the a.s.sistance you required. They are in your power now, can you not do the rest yourself?"

"On my soul, Master Stewart, I am over-patient with you! Are we to wrangle at every step before you'll take it? I will have your a.s.sistance through this matter as you swore to give it. Come, truss me that fellow, and have done with words."