Part 16 (1/2)
A quick flush dyed Gaston's cheek, but he strove to laugh.
”Raymond, look not at me with eyes so full of reproach. War is a cruel game, and in some of its details I like it little better than thou. But what can we soldiers do? Nay, what can even the King do? Listen, and condemn him not too hastily. Long months ago, soon after thou hadst left us, the same thing was done. Seventeen hundred persons -- men, women, and children -- were turned out of the town, and the King heard of it and ordered some of them to be brought before him. In answer to his question they told him that they were driven from the city because they could not fight, and were only consuming the bread, of which there was none to spare for useless mouths. They had no place to go to, no food to eat, no hope for the future. Then what does our King do but give them leave to pa.s.s through his camp; and not only so, but he orders his soldiers to feed them well, and start them refreshed on their way; and before they went forth, to each of them was given, by the royal order, two sterlings of silver, so that they went forth joyously, blessing the liberality and kindness of the English and England's King. But thou must see he could not go on doing these kindly acts if men so took advantage of them. He is the soul of bravery and chivalry, but there must be reasonable limits to all such royal generosity.”
Raymond could have found in his heart to wish that the limit had not been quite so quickly reached, and that the hapless women and children had not been left to perish miserably in the sight of the warmth and plenty of the English camp; but he would not say more to damp his brother's happiness in their reunion, nor in that almost greater joy with which Roger received him back.
”In faith,” laughed Gaston, ”I believe that some of the wizard's art cleaves yet to yon boy, for he has been restless and dreamy and unlike himself these many days; and when I have asked him what ailed him, his answer was ever the same, that he knew you were drawing nigh; and verily he has proved right, little as I believed him when he spoke of it.”
Roger had so grown and improved that Raymond would scarce have recognized in him the pale shrinking boy they had borne out from the house of the sorcerer three years before. He had developed rapidly after the first year of his new life, when the shackles of his former captivity seemed finally broken; but this last year of regular soldier's employment had produced a more marked change in his outward man than those spent in the Brotherhood or at Raymond's side. His figure had widened. He carried himself well, and with an air of fearless alertness.
He was well trained in martial exercises, and the hot suns of France had bronzed his cheeks, and given them a healthy glow of life and animation.
He still retained much of his boyish beauty, but the dreaminess and far-away vacancy had almost entirely left his eyes. Now and again the old listening look would creep into them, and he would seem for a few moments to be lost to outward impressions; but if recalled at such moments from his brief lapse, and questioned as to what he was thinking, it always proved to be of Raymond, not of his old master.
Once or twice he had told Gaston that his brother was in peril -- of what kind he knew not; and Gaston had wondered if indeed this had been so. One of these occasions had been just before Christmastide, and the date being thus fixed in his mind, he asked his brother if he had been at that time exposed to any peril. Raymond could remember nothing save the vindictive threat of Peter Sanghurst, and Gaston was scarce disposed to put much faith in words, either good or bad, uttered by such a man as that.
And now things began to press towards a climax in this memorable siege.
The French King, awakened from his long and inexplicable lethargy by the entreaties of his starving subjects so bravely holding the town for a pusillanimous master, and stung by the taunts of the English King, had mustered an army, and was now marching to the relief of the town. It was upon the last day of July, when public excitement was running high, and all men were talking and thinking of an approaching battle, that word was brought into the camp, and eagerly pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth, to the effect that the King of France had despatched certain messengers to hold parley with the royal Edward, and that they were even now being admitted to the camp by the bridge of Nieulay -- the only approach to Calais through the marshes on the northeast, which had been closely guarded by the English throughout the siege.
”Hasten, Raymond, hasten!” cried Gaston, das.h.i.+ng into the small lodging he and his brother now shared together. ”There be envoys come from the French King. The Prince will be with his father to hear their message, and if we but hasten to his side, we may be admitted amongst the number who may hear what is spoken on both sides.”
Raymond lost no time in following his brother, both eager to hear and see all that went on; and they were fortunate enough to find places in the brilliant muster surrounding the King and his family, as these received with all courtesy the amba.s.sador from the French monarch.
That messenger was none other than the celebrated Eustache de Ribeaumont, one of the flower of the French chivalry, to whom, on another occasion, Edward presented the celebrated chaplet of pearls, with one of the highest compliments that one brave man could give another. The boys, and indeed the whole circle of English n.o.bility, looked with admiration at his stately form and handsome face, and though to our ears the message with which he came charged sounds infinitely strange, it raised no smile upon the faces of those who stood around the royal Edward.
”Sire,” began the messenger, ”our liege lord, the King of France, sends us before you, and would have you know that he is here, and is posted on the Sandgatte Hill to fight you; but intrenched as you are in this camp, he can see no way of getting at you, and therefore he sends us to you to say this. He has a great desire to raise the siege of Calais, and save his good city, but can see no way of doing so whilst you remain here.
But if you would come forth from your intrenchments, and appoint some spot where he could meet you in open fight, he would rejoice to do it, and this is the thing we are charged to request of you.”
A shout, led by the Prince of Wales, and taken up by all who stood by, was proof enough how acceptable such a notion was to the ardent spirits of the camp; for it was not a shout of derision, but one of eager a.s.sent. Indeed, for a moment it seemed as though the King of England were disposed to give a favourable reply to the messenger; but then he paused, and a different expression crossed his face. He sat looking thoughtfully upon the ground, whilst breathless silence reigned around him, and then he and the Queen spoke in low tones together for some few minutes.
When Edward looked up again his face had changed, and was stern and set in expression.
”Tell your lord,” he said, speaking slowly and distinctly, ”that had he wished thus to fight, he should have sent his challenge before. I have been near a twelvemonth encamped before this place, and my good people of England have been sore pressed to furnish me with munitions for the siege. The town is now on the point of falling into my hands, and then will my good subjects find plunder enough to recompense them for their labour and loss. Wherefore tell your lord that where I am there will I stay; and that if he wishes to fight he must attack me in my camp, for I a.s.suredly have no intention of moving out from it.”
A slight murmur of disappointment arose from the younger and more ardent members of the crowd; but the older men saw the force of the King's words, and knew that it would be madness to throw away all the hardly-earned advantages of those long months just for a piece of chivalrous bravado. So De Ribeaumont had to ride back to the French camp with Edward's answer; and ere two more days had pa.s.sed, the astonis.h.i.+ng news was brought to the English lines that Philip had abandoned his camp, which was now in flames, and was retreating with his whole army by the way he had come.
”Was ever such a craven coward!” cried the Prince, in indignant disappointment; for all within the English camp had been hoping for battle, and had been looking to their arms, glad of any incident to vary the long monotony of the siege. ”Were I those gallant soldiers in yon fortress, I would serve no longer such a false, treacherous lord. Were my father but their king, he would not leave them in such dire strait, with an army at his back to fight for him, be the opposing force a hundredfold greater than it is!”
And indeed it seemed as though the brave but desperate garrison within those walls saw that it was hopeless to try to serve such a master. How bitter must their feelings have been when Philip turned and left them to their fate may well be imagined. Hopeless and helpless, there was nothing but surrender before them now; and to make the best terms possible was the only thing that remained for them. The day following Philip's dastardly desertion, the signal that the city was ready to treat was hung out, and brave Sir Walter Manny, whose own history and exploits during the campaigns in Brittany and Gascony would alone fill a volume either of history or romance, was sent to confer on this matter with the governor of the city, the gallant De Vienne, who had been grievously wounded during the long siege.
Raymond's sympathies had been deeply stirred by what he had heard and imagined of the sufferings of the citizens, and with the love of adventure and romance common to those days, he arrayed himself lightly in a dress that would not betray his nationality, and followed in the little train which went with Sir Walter. The conference took place without the walls, but near to one of the gates. Raymond did not press near to hear what was said, like the bulk of the men on both sides who accompanied the leaders, but he pa.s.sed through the eager crowd and made for the gate itself, the wicket of which stood open; and so calm and a.s.sured was his air, and so deeply were the minds of the porters stirred by anxiety to know the fate of the town, that the youth pa.s.sed in unheeded and unchallenged, and once within the ramparts he could go where he chose and see what he would.
But what a sight met his eyes! Out into the streets were flocking the inhabitants, all trembling with anxiety to hear their fate. Every turn brought him to fresh knots of famine-stricken wretches, who had almost lost the wish to live, or any interest in life, till just stirred to a faint and lingering hope by the news that the town was to be surrendered at last. Gaunt and hollow-eyed men, women little better than skeletons, and children scarce able to trail their feeble bodies along, were crowding out of the houses and towards the great marketplace, where the a.s.sembly to hear the conditions was likeliest to meet. The soldiers, who had been better cared for than the more useless townsfolk, were spectre-like in all conscience; but the starving children, and the desperate mothers who could only weep and wring their hands in answer to the piteous demand for bread, were the beings who most stirred Raymond's heart as he went his way amongst them.
Again that sense of horror and shrinking came upon him that he had experienced upon the field of Crecy amongst the dying and the dead. If war did indeed entail such ghastly horrors and frightful sufferings, could it be that glorious thing that all men loved to call it?
Curious glances began to be levelled at him as he pa.s.sed through the streets, sometimes pausing to soothe a wailing child, sometimes lending a hand to a.s.sist a tottering woman's steps, and speaking to all in that gentle voice of his, which with its slightly unfamiliar accent smote strangely upon the ears of the people. He wore no helmet on his head, and his curly hair floated about his grave saint-like face, catching golden lights from the glory of the August suns.h.i.+ne.
”Is it one of the blessed saints?” asked a little child of his mother, as Raymond paused in pa.s.sing by to lay a caressing hand upon his head, and speak a soft word of encouragement and hope to the weary mother.
And the innocent question was taken up and pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth, till it began to be whispered about that one of the holy saints had appeared in their midst in the hour of the city's deadly peril. As Raymond pa.s.sed on his way, many a knee was bent and many a pleading voice asked a blessing; whilst he, feeling still as one who moves in a dream, made the sign of the cross from time to time over some kneeling suppliant without understanding what was said of him or why all eyes were bent upon him.
But the great town bell was ringing now to summon the citizens to a.s.semble themselves together to hear the final terms agreed upon for the capitulation of the city, and all else was forgotten in the overwhelming anxiety of that moment; for none could form a guess what terms would be granted to a town in such sore straits as was theirs. The English King could be generous and merciful, but he could also be stern and implacable; and the long resistance made by the town was like to have stirred his wrath, as well as the fact that the sea port of Calais had done more harm to his s.h.i.+ps and committed more acts of piracy than any other port in France.