"That is not true!" Roger protested hotly. "In the belief that I was not of noble blood, he refused my challenge. I had no alternative other than to force a fight upon him at a place of my own choosing. But it was a fair fight. In fact he was reputed the finest swordsman in all France while I was still a stripling novice; so the odds were all against me."
"Lies! Lies! Lies! Without warning or witnesses you set upon and killed him."
"Comte Lucien de Rochambeau was in his coach, and present throughout the whole affair. M. le Vicomte de la Tour d'Auvergne and the Abbé de Talleyrand-Perigord were also in the immediate neighbourhood. They were aware of all that took place at the encounter from start to finish. Both afterwards vouched for it that I did nothing unfitting in a man of honour."
"You had no seconds; no doctor was present. You contravened every established rule of duelling. By the law of France that makes you an assassin."
"So thought her Majesty Queen Marie Antoinette until she learned the truth. She then secured me a pardon, and honoured me with her friendship."
"Lies! More lies! You had abused your position in M. de Rochambeau's household to seduce his daughter. Then, when in ignorance of the fact, my good uncle was about to marry her, rather than lose your mistress you murdered him."
"Athenais de Rochambeau was not my mistress," shouted Roger, now almost as angry as de Senlac
"I care not!" the Vicomte yelled back. "The Comte was a father to me! The best man that ever lived! And it was you who took his life. Heaven be praised for having sent me this chance to revenge his death. Mort de Dieu, you shall suffer as few men have! Philo! Cyrano! Seize him!"
Springing aside from his place, Roger grasped the back of his chair and swung it aloft. As Philo ran in he brought its legs crashing down on the pirate's shoulders and their cross-bar struck his head. With a moan, he went down in a heap. But before Roger could raise the chair again the two negro footmen flung themselves on him from behind. As they grabbed his arms Cyrano seized the chair and wrenched it from him. He landed a violent kick on the Frenchman's knee, and received in return a blow beneath the jaw. It was not a knock-out but temporarily deprived him of his powers of resistance. A minute later, while Cyrano limped away cursing with pain, the two powerful negroes secured their grip and held Roger rigid between them.
Everyone had risen from the table and, thrusting his way between the women, de Senlac strode up to his now helpless prisoner. His slightly hooded eyes blazing with rage, he struck Roger across the mouth with the back of his open hand.
"For that," cried Roger, "unless you are prepared to disgrace your ancestry, you will give me satisfaction."
Even as he uttered the words he knew that his chances of goading the Vicomte into a duel were exceedingly slender; and he proved right, for de Senlac sneered: "Are you half-witted? Is it likely that I would afford you a chance to kill me! No, you scum. I mean to stand by and watch you die horribly. Yes, and all shall witness the way in which I avenge my poor uncle. My crews, your women, the other prisoners, even the kitchen hands and slaves—everyone."
Turning away he shot a malevolent glance round the company and said: "Come, let me have your suggestions for the most painful way in which we can send this assassin screaming down to hell."
Now that they could get a word in, Amanda, Georgina and Clarissa all began to plead or attempt to reason with him; but he silenced them with a furious shout.
Cyrano was still cursing as he massaged his injured knee. With a malicious leer at Roger, he said: "I'd like to see him keelhauled. He'd not be so handsome after the barnacles on the ship's bottom had scraped half the flesh off his face."
The Vicomte shook his head. "Nay, we can do better than that. You know how the rope that draws them under is apt to get fouled. He might even drown during the very first trip."
"Why not have him flayed?" suggested the elder Herault laconically.
"No, no!" cried the younger. "Have him die the death the Caribs used to inflict on their enemies. It was yourself who told me of it. I mean that where they stuck them full of thorns, each thorn having been slit to hold a piece of wadding soaked in oil, so that when these were lit the victim danced a death jig clothed in a garment of tiny torches."
Nodding in turn to father and son, de Senlac muttered: "Both ideas have possibilities; but I somewhat favour smearing his stomach with honey and setting the fire-ants to eat their way into him."
Amanda's eyes fluttered up and she fainted.
As Georgina caught and lowered her to a chair Clarissa shrilled at de Senlac: "You cannot do such things! You cannot! Even the Fiend himself would baulk at inflicting such torment."
"I can, Mademoiselle, and I will," came the harsh retort. "More; it now occurs to me to combine these punishments. I'll have my pet crocodiles snap off his feet, make thorn-stuck torches of his arms, flay his back and let the ants have his innards."
Clarissa snatched up a glass from the table and flung it at de Senlac's face.
He dodged the glass but some drops of wine sprayed over his coat. As he flicked at them with his lace handkerchief, he snarled: "The use to which you put that wine shall cost you dear. I'll make you weep a bucket of tears for every drop that splashed me. Aye, you shall slobber and gibber till the colour is washed from those blue eyes of yours."
Facing about, he cried to Roger: "You have heard the sentence I impose. Tomorrow at sundown the first part of it shall be carried out. I'll have you swung out over the pool where I keep my caymens, and they shall battle for which of them gets your toes."
Amanda raised her head from her lap, then flung herself forward, clasped the Vicomte round the knees, and sobbed: "I implore you to have mercy. The affair that so distresses you is long past. Whatever the rights of it leave Our Father in Heaven, who is aware of all, to pass judgment. Oh I beg, I implore you, not to do this terrible thing."
Still seething with almost apoplectic fury, de Senlac kicked her away from him, and shouted: "God can do as He will, Madame, but I am master here. For the murder of my uncle there is nothing that I would not make your husband suffer—nothing! Aye, and as I think on it I've the power to make him squirm mentally as well as physically."
Again he swung on Roger, and with dilated eyes screamed like one possessed. "Since Madame la Comtesse could find fifty thousand pounds to ransom you all, she can find it to save herself. As you die by stages these next few days you may contemplate all that is in store for Madame your wife, and her young spitfire of a cousin. On the night of your death I'll have them stripped of their clothes and flung to my men to make what sport they will with in the moonlight."
Roger, goaded beyond endurance, hurled back insults, imprecations and defiance, but he might just as well have held his tongue. At an abrupt order from de Senlac the negro footmen dragged him from the room and through the hall to the back quarters of the premises. Herault pere had accompanied them and produced a big key. With it he unlocked a massive door studded with iron nails. Through it Roger was thrust into pitch darkness. He stumbled down a few steps, then fell heavily, measuring his length on a stone-flagged floor. A moment later the heavy door clanged-to behind him.
The breath driven from his body, distraught with rage, misery and the bitter knowledge of his helplessness, he would have remained where he lay, had not there come a quick mutter of voices and groping hands that raised him until he was sitting up.
During the past two days the wound in his head had been mending nicely and he had not suffered greatly from it; but now, with every beat of his pulse, pain seared through it again. Temporarily, shock, agony, and the almost unbelievable change in his circumstances which had occurred in less than ten minutes bemused his mind.