She rushed to the iron gratings of her windows, and strove to shake them with her tender little hands. There was no escape, no hope, no succour, and as the last stroke of twelve reverberated in her heart and died away, life seemed to die with it.
Then came a sound upon the night wind. It was the clamour of voices, mingled with the clash of weapons; and next there spread upon the darkness a red and lurid light, that wavered on the gloomy walls of the Canonry, that lit up the buttresses of the Church of St. Genevieve, and the wainscoting of her room. What did all this portend? Where was Patrick Gray, her world, her all, now more than ever her Alpha and Omega? Was he beset by the Douglases? Oh, if so, she would soon learn to abhor her own name.
She muffled her face and ears in her skirt, to shut out sight and sound, for both seemed to portend but death and woe.
When she looked up again the light had disappeared, all was dark, and all was still, save the beating of her heart, and the throbbing of her temples.
Let us return to Sir Patrick Gray.
He made all his arrangements with the prudence and rapidity of a soldier. He had his horse (his favourite roan) prepared, and carefully saddled; he had procured a stout nag, with a lady's pad, for Murielle, and he acquainted himself thoroughly with the route to be pursued by Op Andel and Alm Kerque to Altena. Then he waited with impatience for midnight, the time that would give him freely and for ever his bride, his wife, his long-loved Murielle, despite the wiles, the overweening power, and the unrelenting treachery of Douglas and his adherents.
Brightly shone the moon in the clear blue sky; the church spires, snowy white, with all their carvings and tracery, their painted windows, and glittering crosses, stood sharply up from the sea of pointed roofs which covered the city of Bommel, but Gray wished for darkness and obscurity. A small cloud came from the flat horizon, and anxiously he watched its progress; but it was of fleecy whiteness, and passed over the moon's yellow disc like a gauze veil. He prayed that she would go down before the appointed time, and being on the wane, she luckily did so – at least, ere half-past eleven, fair Luna was hidden by the thick woods that grew near Ameldroyen, and by the yellow haze exhaled from the sedgy banks of the Waal.
The time was near! He could count the minutes now; before he had reckoned by hours.
His heart beat quicker; he felt athirst, and drank a last cup of wine, as he bade adieu to his hostelry for ever, and mounting his roan, took the palfrey by the bridle, and forgetting all about the closed gates of Bommel, and that he was without an order from Jacques de Lalain (unless the abbot had procured it), turned his steps towards the church of St. Genevieve.
The padlocked chains which closed the ends of the streets were a serious obstruction in the dark, but he made his horses clear them by a bound, and each time they did so, he dreaded that the patrols of the Burgher Guard, or night watch, might hurry after him, to discover what horseman was abroad so late, and on what errand. But unseen he reached the church, and securing the horses in a dark recess, between two deep buttresses, by fastening their bridles to the carving of a niche, he hastened through the north aisle, and issued by the postern into the garden of the Dyck Graf's house. Then he saw the trellised arbour, and above it the window of Murielle's apartments.
A light was burning there; a shadow crossed it – it was she, and his heart leaped! All around was still and dark and sombre as he could have wished.
As he approached the window, a female figure in a hood and veil appeared. Gray hurriedly clambered to the roof of the arbour, the trellis-work of which formed a most efficient scaling-ladder, and reached the window, which was about twelve feet from the ground.
"Murielle – your hand – we have not a moment to lose!" he whispered, and held up his arms to receive and assist her.
At that moment he felt his right hand strongly grasped and seemingly fettered, as a chain was thrown round his wrist. He attempted to withdraw, but was firmly held.
"Murielle!" he exclaimed, in astonishment. There was a mocking laugh, and as the hood fell off, his eyes met those of James Achanna, glittering far apart like those of a huge bird.
"Pray to St. Simon that he may lend you his saw, or to St. Jude for his club, to break this fetter," said Achanna, as he secured the chain to an iron staple in the window-sill; "but the flames will be here, hot and red, before either of them," he added, suddenly brandishing a lighted torch, in the bright glare of which his flushed face and protruding green eyes now resembled those of a devil. Astonishment and rage trebled the great natural strength of Gray. He grasped Achanna by the throat with his left hand, and though the would-be assassin strove to free himself, by savagely thrusting the blazing torch in the face of his victim, the latter dragged him over the window: down they came, battling together – the chain and staple parted, and the two enemies fell crash through the frail arbour, upon the heap of combustibles below. These, by their previous preparation, the torch ignited in a moment. A fiery blaze at once lit all the garden, while Sir Patrick Gray and Achanna rolled over each over, struggling to get at their daggers, each to despatch his antagonist.
Achanna was below and Gray above, and as the dagger was worn far back on the right side in those days, the first could by no means get at his weapon, as it was completely under him. Gray's strong left hand clutched his throat with deadly tenacity, and his chest was also crushed; but Gray searched in vain for his dagger. It had dropped from his belt in their fall, and his sword was broken in three places by the same circumstance, but with the heavy hilt and a fragment of the blade which adhered to it, he rained a torrent of blows upon the head and face of his adversary, whom he resolved to despatch as he would have done a snake, or a viper, for it was now a combat to the death between them.
All this terrible episode occurred in a few moments, and Gray in his fury, would inevitably have destroyed Achanna, had there not rushed from the house, the earl of Douglas, the lairds of Pompherston, Glendoning, and Cairnglas, with Sir Alan Lauder, and several other persons, some of whom were in their breeches and shirts, others in helmets and cuirasses; but all with torches or candles, and drawn swords.
Fortunately for Gray, twelve soldiers of the burgher guard, whom the uproar had alarmed, came up at the same moment, with their ponderous Flemish partizans, or our story and his life had ended there together, for the Douglases would infallibly have cut him to pieces.
Intent now on escaping, and preserving both his life and his incognito, Gray fought with the vigour of despair. Wrenching a partizan from a Waloon soldier, he struck right and left to hew a passage through his assailants. He knocked down Douglas of Pompherston, and severely wounded two of the night watch, by piercing their cuirasses of boiled bull-hide; but being pressed furiously by their comrades, he was soon beaten to the ground, disarmed, dragged away through the streets, and carried to the castle of Bommel, where he was thrust into a common dungeon and left to his own reflections, which were neither very lucid nor lively.
His horses, his leathern mail or portmanteau, and papers became the spoil of the Douglases; his rich cassock coat, the gift of Duke Arnold, and the ring which he was commissioned by Katharine, the duchess of Gueldres, to convey to the young king, her future son-in-law, became the prey of James Achanna, who openly appropriated and wore both, and whom the earl sent to Messire Jacques de Lalain, the Dyck Graf, to request that Gray, "as a notorious outlaw and consorter with Ludwig of Endhoven, should be broken alive upon the wheel, by noon next day."
All his papers were gone; thus he could afford no written or satisfactory account of himself, and obstinately refused to say what object brought him into conflict with Achanna, as he was determined that the name of Murielle – his wife – should not be compromised, even in a foreign country.