The Battle Of The Strong [A Romance of Two Kingdoms], Volume 5.

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THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG

[A ROMANCE OF TWO KINGDOMS]

By Gilbert Parker

Volume 5.

CHAPTER XXXI

When Ranulph returned to his little house at St. Aubin's Bay night had
fallen. Approaching he saw there was no light in the windows. The
blinds were not drawn, and no glimmer of fire came from the chimney. He
hesitated at the door, for he instinctively felt that something must have
happened to his father. He was just about to enter, however, when some
one came hurriedly round the corner of the house.

"Whist, boy," said a voice; "I've news for you." Ranulph recognised the
voice as that of Dormy Jamais. Dormy plucked at his sleeve. "Come with
me, boy," said he.

"Come inside if you want to tell me something," answered Ranulph.

"Ah bah, not for me! Stone walls have ears. I'll tell only you and the
wind that hears and runs away."

"I must speak to my father first," answered Ranulph.

"Come with me, I've got him safe," Dormy chuckled to himself.

Ranulph's heavy hand dropped on his shoulder. "What's that you're
saying--my father with you! What's the matter?"

As though oblivious of Ranulph's hand Dormy went on chuckling.

"Whoever burns me for a fool 'll lose their ashes. Des monz a fous--I
have a head! Come with me." Ranulph saw that he must humour the shrewd
natural, so he said:

"Et ben, put your four shirts in five bundles and come along." He was a
true Jerseyman at heart, and speaking to such as Dormy Jamais he used the
homely patois phrases. He knew there was no use hurrying the little man,
he would take his own time.

"There's been the devil to pay," said Dormy as he ran towards the shore,
his sabots going clac--clac, clac--clac. "There's been the devil to pay
in St. Heliers, boy." He spoke scarcely above a whisper.

"Tcheche--what's that?" said Ranulph. But Dormy was not to uncover his
pot of roses till his own time. "That connetable's got no more wit than
a square bladed knife," he rattled on. "But gache-a-penn, I'm hungry!"
And as he ran he began munching a lump of bread he took from his pocket.

For the next five minutes they went on in silence. It was quite dark,
and as they passed up Market Hill--called Ghost Lane because of the Good
Little People who made it their highway--Dormy caught hold of Ranulph's
coat and trotted along beside him. As they went, tokens of the life
within came out to them through doorway and window. Now it was the voice
of a laughing young mother:

"Si tu as faim
Manges ta main
Et gardes l'autre pour demain;
Et ta tete
Pour le jour de fete;
Et ton gros ortee
Pour le Jour Saint Norbe"

And again:

"Let us pluck the bill of the lark,
The lark from head to tail--"

He knew the voice. It was that of a young wife of the parish of St.
Saviour: married happily, living simply, given a frugal board, after the
manner of her kind, and a comradeship for life. For the moment he felt
little but sorrow for himself. The world seemed to be conspiring against
him: the chorus of Fate was singing behind the scenes, singing of the
happiness of others in sardonic comment on his own final unhappiness.
Yet despite the pain of finality there was on him something of the apathy
of despair.

From another doorway came fragments of a song sung at a veille. The door
was open, and he could see within the happy gathering of lads and lassies
in the light of the crasset. There was the spacious kitchen, its beams
and rafters dark with age, adorned with flitches of bacon, huge loaves
resting in the racllyi beneath the centre beam, the broad open hearth,
the flaming fire of logs, and the great brass pan shining like fresh-
coined gold, on its iron tripod over the logs. Lassies in their short
woollen petticoats, and bedgones of blue and lilac, with boisterous lads,
were stirring the contents of the vast bashin--many cabots of apples,
together with sugar, lemon-peel, and cider; the old ladies in mob-caps
tied under the chin, measuring out the nutmeg and cinnamon to complete
the making of the black butter: a jocund recreation for all, and at all
times.

In one corner was a fiddler, and on the veille, flourished for the
occasion with satinettes and fern, sat two centeniers and the prevot,
singing an old song in the patois of three parishes.

Ranulph looked at the scene lingeringly. Here he was, with mystery and
peril to hasten his steps, loitering at the spot where the light of home
streamed out upon the roadway. But though he lingered, somehow he seemed
withdrawn from all these things; they were to him now as pictures of a
distant past.

Dormy plucked at his coat. "Come, come, lift your feet, lift your feet,"
said he; "it's no time to walk in slippers. The old man will be getting
scared, oui-gia!" Ranulph roused himself. Yes, yes, he must hurry on.
He had not forgotten his father, but something held him here; as though
Fate were whispering in his ear. What does it matter now? While yet you
may, feed on the sight of happiness. So the prisoner going to execution
seizes one of the few moments left to him for prayer, to look lingeringly
upon what he leaves, as though to carry into the dark a clear remembrance
of it all.

Moving on quietly in a kind of dream, Ranulph was roused again by Dormy's
voice: "On Sunday I saw three magpies, and there was a wedding that day.
Tuesday I saw two--that's for joy--and fifty Jersey prisoners of the
French comes back on Jersey that day. This morning one I saw. One
magpie is for trouble, and trouble's here. One doesn't have eyes for
naught--no, bidemme!"

Ranulph's patience was exhausted.

"Bachouar," he exclaimed roughly, "you make elephants out of fleas!
You've got no more news than a conch-shell has music. A minute and
you'll have a back-hander that'll put you to sleep, Maitre Dormy."

If he had been asked his news politely Dormy would have been still more
cunningly reticent. To abuse him in his own argot was to make him loose
his bag of mice in a flash.

"Bachouar yourself, Maitre Ranulph! You'll find out soon. No news--no
trouble--eh! Par made, Mattingley's gone to the Vier Prison--he! The
baker's come back, and the Connetable's after Olivier Delagarde. No
trouble, pardingue, if no trouble, Dormy Jamais's a batd'lagoule and no
need for father of you to hide in a place that only Dormy knows--my
good!"

So at last the blow had fallen; after all these years of silence,
sacrifice, and misery. The futility of all that he had done and suffered
for his father's sake came home to Ranulph. Yet his brain was instantly
alive. He questioned Dormy rapidly and adroitly, and got the story from
him in patches.

The baker Carcaud, who, with Olivier Delagarde, betrayed the country into
the hands of Rullecour years ago, had, with a French confederate of
Mattingley's, been captured in attempting to steal Jean Touzel's boat,
the Hardi Biaou. At the capture the confederate had been shot. Before
dying he implicated Mattingley in several robberies, and a notorious case
of piracy of three months before, committed within gunshot of the men-of-
war lying in the tide-way. Carcaud, seriously wounded, to save his life
turned King's evidence, and disclosed to the Royal Court in private his
own guilt and Olivier Delagarde's treason.

Hidden behind the great chair of the Bailly himself, Dormy Jamais had
heard the whole business. This had brought him hot-foot to St. Aubin's
Bay, whence he had hurried Olivier Delagarde to a hiding-place in the
hills above the bay of St. Brelade. The fool had travelled more swiftly
than Jersey justice, whose feet are heavy. Elie Mattingley was now in
the Vier Prison. There was the whole story.

The mask had fallen, the game was up. Well, at least there would be no
more lying, no more brutalising inward shame. All at once it appeared to
Ranulph madness that he had not taken his father away from Jersey long
ago. Yet too he knew that as things had been with Guida he could never
have stayed away.

Nothing was left but action. He must get his father clear of the island
and that soon. But how? and where should they go? He had a boat in St.
Aubin's Bay: getting there under cover of darkness he might embark with
his father and set sail--whither? To Sark--there was no safety there.
To Guernsey--that was no better. To France--yes, that was it, to the war
of the Vendee, to join Detricand. No need to find the scrap of paper
once given him in the Vier Marchi. Wherever Detricand might be, his fame
was the highway to him. All France knew of the companion of de la
Rochejaquelein, the fearless Comte de Tournay. Ranulph made his
decision. Shamed and dishonoured in Jersey, in that holy war of the
Vendee he would find something to kill memory, to take him out of life
without disgrace. His father must go with him to France, and bide his
fate there also.

By the time his mind was thus made up, they had reached the lonely
headland dividing Portelet Bay from St. Brelade's. Dark things were said
of this spot, and the country folk of the island were wont to avoid it.
Beneath the cliffs in the sea was a rocky islet called Janvrin's Tomb.
One Janvrin, ill of a fell disease, and with his fellows forbidden by the
Royal Court to land, had taken refuge here, and died wholly neglected and
without burial. Afterwards his body lay exposed till the ravens and
vultures devoured it, and at last a great storm swept his bones off into
the sea. Strange lights were to be seen about this rock, and though wise
men guessed them mortal glimmerings, easily explained, they sufficed to
give the headland immunity from invasion.

To a cave at this point Dormy Jamais had brought the trembling Olivier
Delagarde, unrepenting and peevish, but with a craven fear of the Royal
Court and a furious populace quickening his footsteps. This hiding-place
was entered at low tide by a passage from a larger cave. It was like a
little vaulted chapel floored with sand and shingle. A crevice through
rock and earth to the world above let in the light and out the smoke.

Here Olivier Delagarde sat crouched over a tiny fire, with some bread and
a jar of water at his hand, gesticulating and talking to himself. The
long white hair and beard, with the benevolent forehead, gave him the
look of some latter-day St. Helier, grieving for the sins and praying for
the sorrows of mankind; but from the hateful mouth came profanity fit
only for the dreadful communion of a Witches' Sabbath.

Hearing the footsteps of Ranulph and Dormy, he crouched and shivered in
terror, but Ranulph, who knew too well his revolting cowardice, called to
him reassuringly. On their approach he stretched out his talon-like
fingers in a gesture of entreaty.

"You'll not let them hang me, Ranulph--you'll save me," he whimpered.

"Don't be afraid, they shall not hang you," Ranulph replied quietly, and
began warming his hands at the fire. "You'll swear it, Ranulph--on the
Bible?"

"I've told you they shall not hang you. You ought to know by now whether
I mean what I say," his son answered more sharply.

Assuredly Ranulph meant that his father should not be hanged. Whatever
the law was, whatever wrong the old man had done, it had been atoned for;
the price had been paid by both. He himself had drunk the cup of shame
to the dregs, but now he would not swallow the dregs. An iron
determination entered into him. He had endured all that he would endure
from man. He had set out to defend Olivier Delagarde from the worst that
might happen, and he was ready to do so to the bitter end. His scheme of
justice might not be that of the Royal Court, but he would defend it with
his life. He had suddenly grown hard--and dangerous.

CHAPTER XXXII

The Royal Court was sitting late. Candles had been brought to light
the long desk or dais where sat the Bailly in his great chair, and the
twelve scarlet-robed jurats. The Attorney-General stood at his desk,
mechanically scanning the indictment read against prisoners charged with
capital crimes. His work was over, and according to his lights he had
done it well. Not even the Undertaker's Apprentice could have been less
sensitive to the struggles of humanity under the heel of fate and death.
A plaintive complacency, a little righteous austerity, and an agreeable
expression of hunger made the Attorney-General a figure in godly contrast
to the prisoner awaiting his doom in the iron cage opposite.

There was a singular stillness in this sombre Royal Court, where only a
tallow candle or two and a dim lanthorn near the door filled the room
with flickering shadows-great heads upon the wall drawing close together,
and vast lips murmuring awful secrets. Low whisperings came through the
dusk like mournful nightwinds carrying tales of awe through a heavy
forest. Once in the long silence a figure rose up silently, and stealing
across the room to a door near the jury box, tapped upon it with a
pencil. A moment's pause, the door opened slightly, and another shadowy
figure appeared, whispered, and vanished. Then the first figure closed
the door again silently, and came and spoke softly up to the Bailly, who
yawned in his hand, sat back in his chair, and drummed his fingers upon
the arm. Thereupon the other--the greffier of the court--settled down at
his desk beneath the jurats, and peered into an open book before him, his
eyes close to the page, reading silently by the meagre light of a candle
from the great desk behind him.

Now a fat and ponderous avocat rose up and was about to speak, but the
Bailly, with a peevish gesture, waved him down, and he settled heavily
into place again.

At last the door at which the greffier had tapped opened, and a gaunt
figure in a red robe came out. Standing in the middle of the room he
motioned towards the great pew opposite the Attorney-General. Slowly the
twenty-four men of the grand jury following him filed into place and sat
themselves down in the shadows. Then the gaunt figure--the Vicomte or
high sheriff--bowing to the Bailly and the jurats, went over and took his
seat beside the Attorney-General. Whereupon the Bailly leaned forward
and droned a question to the Grand Enquete in the shadow. One rose up
from among the twenty-four, and out of the dusk there came in reply to
the Judge a squeaking voice:

"We find the Prisoner at the Bar more Guilty than Innocent."

A shudder ran through the court. But some one not in the room shuddered
still more violently. From the gable window of a house in the Rue des
Tres Pigeons, a girl had sat the livelong day, looking, looking into the
court-room. She had watched the day decline, the evening come, and the
lighting of the crassets and the candles, and had waited to hear the
words that meant more to her than her own life. At last the great moment
came, and she could hear the foreman's voice whining the fateful words,
"More Guilty than Innocent."

It was Carterette Mattingley, and the prisoner at the bar was her father.

CHAPTER XXXIII

Mattingley's dungeon was infested with rats and other vermin, he had only
straw for his bed, and his food and drink were bread and water. The
walls were damp with moisture from the Fauxbie running beneath, and a
mere glimmer of light came through a small barred window. Superstition
had surrounded the Vier Prison with horrors. As carts passed under the
great archway, its depth multiplied the sounds so powerfully, the echoes
were so fantastic, that folk believed them the roarings of fiendish
spirits. If a mounted guard hurried through, the reverberation of the
drum-beats and the clatter of hoofs were so uncouth that children stopped
their ears and fled in terror. To the ignorant populace the Vier Prison
was the home of noisome serpents and the rendezvous of the devil and his
witches of Rocbert.

When therefore the seafaring merchant of the Vier Marchi, whose massive,
brass-studded bahue had been as a gay bazaar where the gentry of Jersey
refreshed their wardrobes, with one eye closed--when he was transferred
to the Vier Prison, little wonder he should become a dreadful being round
whom played the lightnings of dark fancy. Elie Mattingley the popular
sinner, with insolent gold rings in his ears, unchallenged as to how he
came by his merchandise, was one person; Elie Mattingley, a torch for the
burning, and housed amid the terrors of the Vier Prison, was another.

Few people in Jersey slept the night before his execution. Here and
there kind-hearted women or unimportant men lay awake through pity, and a
few through a vague sense of loss; for, henceforth, the Vier Marchi would
lack a familiar interest; but mostly the people of Mattingley's world
were wakeful through curiosity. Morbid expectation of the hanging had
for them a gruesome diversion. The thing itself would break the daily
monotony of life and provide hushed gossip for vraic gatherings and
veilles for a long time to come. Thus Elie Mattingley would not die in
vain!

Here was one sensation, but there was still another. Olivier Delagarde
had been unmasked, and the whole island had gone tracking him down. No
aged toothless tiger was ever sported through the jungle by an army of
shikarris with hungrier malice than was this broken traitor by the people
he had betrayed. Ensued, therefore, a commingling of patriotism with
lust of man-hunting and eager expectation of to-morrow's sacrifice.

Nothing of this excitement disturbed Mattingley. He did not sleep, but
that was because he was still watching for a means of escape. He felt
his chances diminish, however, when about midnight an extra guard was put
round the prison. Something had gone amiss in the matter of his rescue.

Three things had been planned.

Firstly, he was to try escape by the small window of the dungeon.

Secondly, Carterette was to bring Sebastian Alixandre to the prison
disguised as a sorrowing aunt of the condemned. Alixandre was suddenly
to overpower the jailer, Mattingley was to make a rush for freedom, and a
few bold spirits without would second his efforts and smuggle him to the
sea. The directing mind and hand in the business were Ranulph
Delagarde's. He was to have his boat waiting to respond to a signal from
the shore, and to make sail for France, where he and his father were to
be landed. There he was to give Mattingley, Alixandre, and Carterette
his craft to fare across the seas to the great fishing-ground of Gaspe in
Canada.

Lastly, if these plans failed, the executioner was to be drugged with
liquor, his besetting weakness, on the eve of the hanging.

The first plan had been found impossible, the window being too small for
even Mattingley's head to get through. The second had failed because the
righteous Royal Court forbade Carterette the prison, intent that she
should no longer be contaminated by so vile a wretch as her father. For
years this same Christian solicitude had looked down from the windows of
the Cohue Royale upon this same criminal in the Vier Marchi, with one
blind eye for himself the sinner and an open one for his merchandise.

Mattingley could hear the hollow sound of the sentinels' steps under the
archway of the Vier Prison. He was quite stoical. If he had to die,
then he had to die. Death could only be a little minute of agony; and
for what came after--well, he had not thought fearfully of that, and he
had no wish to think of it at all. The visiting chaplain had talked, and
he had not listened. He had his own ideas about life, and death, and the
beyond, and they were not ungenerous. The chaplain had found him patient
but impossible, kindly but unresponsive, sometimes even curious, but
without remorse.

"You should repent with sorrow and a contrite heart," said the clergyman.
"You have done many evil things in your life, Mattingley."

Mattingley had replied: "Ma fuifre, I can't remember them! I know I
never done them, for I never done anything but good all my life--so much
for so much." He had argued it out with himself and he believed he was a
good man. He had been open-handed, had stood by his friends, and, up to
a few days ago, was counted a good citizen; for many had come to profit
through him. His trade--a little smuggling, a little piracy? Was not
the former hallowed by distinguished patronage, and had it not existed
from immemorial time? It was fair fight for gain, an eye for an eye and
a tooth for a tooth. If he hadn't robbed others on the high seas, they
would probably have robbed him--and sometimes they did. His spirit was
that of the Elizabethan admirals; he belonged to a century not his own.
As for the crime for which he was to suffer, it had been the work of
another hand, and very bad work it was, to try and steal Jean Touzel's
Hardi Biaou, and then bungle it. He had had nothing to do with it, for
he and Jean Touzel were the best of friends, as was proved by the fact
that while he lay in his dungeon, Jean wandered the shore sorrowing for
his fate.

Thinking now of the whole business and of his past life, Mattingley
suddenly had a pang. Yes, remorse smote him at last. There was one
thing on his conscience--only one. He had respect for the feelings of
others, and where the Church was concerned this was mingled with a droll
sort of pity, as of the greater for the lesser, the wise for the
helpless. For clergymen he had a half-affectionate contempt.
He remembered now that when, five years ago, his confederate who had
turned out so badly--he had trusted him, too! had robbed the church of
St. Michael's, carrying off the great chest of communion plate,
offertories, and rents, he had piously left behind in Mattingley's house
the vestry-books and parish-register; a nice definition in rogues'
ethics. Awaiting his end now, it smote Mattingley's soul that these
stolen records had not been returned to St. Michael's. Next morning he
must send word to Carterette to restore the books. Then his conscience
would be clear once more. With this resolve quieting his mind, he turned
over on his straw and went peacefully to sleep.

Hours afterwards he waked with a yawn. There was no start, no terror,
but the appearance of the jailer with the chaplain roused in him disgust
for the coming function at the Mont es Pendus. Disgust was his chief
feeling. This was no way for a man to die! With a choice of evils he
should have preferred walking the plank, or even dying quietly in his
bed, to being stifled by a rope. To dangle from a cross-tree like a
half-filled bag offended all instincts of picturesqueness, and first and
last he had been picturesque.

He asked at once for pencil and paper. His wishes were obeyed with
deference. On the whole he realised by the attentions paid him--the
brandy and the food offered by the jailer, the fluttering kindness of
the chaplain--that in the life of a criminal there is one moment when
he commands the situation. He refused the brandy, for he was strongly
against spirits in the early morning, but asked for coffee. Eating
seemed superfluous--and a man might die more gaily on an empty stomach.
He assured the chaplain that he had come to terms with his conscience and
was now about to perform the last act of a well-intentioned life.

There and then he wrote to Carterette, telling her about the vestry-books
of St. Michael's, and begging that she should restore them secretly.
There were no affecting messages; they understood each other. He knew
that when it was possible she would never fail to come to the mark where
he was concerned, and she had equal faith in him. So the letter was
sealed, addressed with flourishes, he was proud of his handwriting, and
handed to the chaplain for Carterette.

He had scarcely drunk his coffee when there was a roll of drums outside.
Mattingley knew that his hour was come, and yet to his own surprise he
had no violent sensations. He had a shock presently, however, for on the
jailer announcing the executioner, who should be there before him but the
Undertaker's Apprentice! In politeness to the chaplain Mattingley
forbore profanity. This was the one Jerseyman for whom he had a profound
hatred, this youth with the slow, cold, watery blue eye, a face that
never wrinkled either with mirth or misery, the square-set teeth always
showing a little--an involuntary grimace of cruelty. Here was insult.

"Devil below us, so you're going to do it--you!" broke out Mattingley.

"The other man was drunk," said the Undertaker's Apprentice. "He's been
full as a jug three days. He got drunk too soon." The grimace seemed to
widen. "O my good!" said Mattingley, and he would say no more. To him
words were like nails--of no use unless they were to be driven home by
acts.

To Mattingley the procession of death was stupidly slow. As it issued
from the archway of the Vier Prison between mounted guards, and passed
through a long lane of moving spectators, he looked round coolly. One
or two bold spirits cried out: "Head up to the wind, Maitre Elie!"

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