Bardelys the Magnificent by Rafael Sabatini (best ebook reader under 100 .txt) đź“–
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before God that you shall not go unpunished.”
“I think, monsieur, that you run a grave risk of perjuring yourself!”
I laughed.
“You shall render me satisfaction ere we part!” he cried.
“If you do not deem that paper satisfaction enough, then, monsieur,
forgive me, but your greed transcends all possibility of being ever
satisfied.”
“The devil take your paper and your estates! What shall they
profit me when I am dead?”
“They may profit your heirs,” I suggested.
“How shall that profit me?”
“That is a riddle that I cannot pretend to elucidate.”
“You laugh, you knave!” he snorted. Then, with an abrupt change of
manner, “You do not lack for friends,” said he. “Beg one of these
gentlemen to act for you, and if you are a man of honour let us step
out into the yard and settle the matter.”
I shook my head.
“I am so much a man of honour as to be careful with whom I cross
steel. I prefer to leave you to His Majesty’s vengeance; his
headsman may be less particular than am I. No, monsieur, on the
whole, I do not think that I can fight you.”
His face grew a shade paler. It became grey; the jaw was set, and
the eyes were more out of symmetry than I had ever seen them. Their
glance approached what is known in Italy as the mal’occhio, and to
protect themselves against the baneful influences of which men carry
charms. A moment he stood so, eyeing me. Then, coming a step
nearer—
“You do not think that you can fight me, eh? You do not think it?
Pardieu! How shall I make you change your mind? To the insult of
words you appear impervious. You imagine your courage above dispute
because by a lucky accident you killed La Vertoile some years ago
and the fame of it has attached to you.” In the intensity of his
anger he was breathing heavily, like a man overburdened. “You have
been living ever since by the reputation which that accident gave
you. Let us see if you can die by it, Monsieur de Bardelys.” And,
leaning forward, he struck me on the breast, so suddenly and so
powerfully - for he was a man of abnormal strength - that I must
have fallen but that La Fosse caught me in his arms.
“Kill him!” lisped the classic-minded fool. “Play Theseus to this
bull of Marathon.”
Chatellerault stood back, his hands on his hips, his head inclined
towards his right shoulder, and an insolent leer of expectancy upon
his face.
“Will that resolve you?” he sneered.
“I will meet you,” I answered, when I had recovered breath. “But I
swear that I shall not help you to escape the headsman.”
He laughed harshly.
“Do I not know it?” he mocked. “How shall killing you help me to
escape? Come, messieurs, sortons. At once!”
“Sor,” I answered shortly; and thereupon we crowded from the room,
and went pele-mele down the passage to the courtyard at the back.
SWORDS!
La Fosse led the way with me, his arm through mine, swearing that
he would be my second. He had such a stomach for a fight, had this
irresponsible, irrepressible rhymester, that it mounted to the
heights of passion with him, and when I mentioned, in answer to a
hint dropped in connection with the edict, that I had the King’s
sanction for this combat, he was nearly mad with joy.
“Blood of La Fosse!” was his oath. “The honour to stand by you
shall be mine, my Bardelys! You owe it me, for am I not in part to
blame for all this ado? Nay, you’ll not deny me. That gentleman
yonder, with the wild-cat moustaches and a name like a Gascon oath
—that cousin of Mironsac’s, I mean - has the flair of a fight in
his nostrils, and a craving to be in it. But you’ll grant me the
honour, will you not? Pardieu! It will earn me a place in history.”
“Or the graveyard,” quoth I, by way of cooling his ardour.
“Peste! What an augury!” Then, with a laugh: “But,” he added,
indicating Saint-Eustache, “that long, lean saint - I forget of what
he is patron - hardly wears a murderous air.”
To win peace from him, I promised that he should stand by me. But
the favour lost much of its value in his eyes when presently I added
that I did not wish the seconds to engage, since the matter was of
so very personal a character.
Mironsac and Castelroux, assisted by Saint-Eustache, closed the
heavy portecochere, and so shut us in from the observation of
passers-by. The clanging of those gates brought the landlord and a
couple of his knaves, and we were subjected to the prayers and
intercessions, to the stormings and ravings that are ever the prelude
of a stable-yard fight, but which invariably end, as these ended, in
the landlord’s withdrawal to run for help to the nearest
corps-de-garde.
“Now, my myrmillones,” cried La Fosse in bloodthirsty jubilation, “to
work before the host returns.”
“Po’ Cap de Dieu!” growled Castelroux, “is this a time for jests,
master joker?”
“Jests?” I heard him retorting, as he assisted me to doff my doublet.
“Do I jest? Diable! you Gascons are a slow-witted folk! I have a
taste for allegory, my friend, but that never yet was accounted so
low a thing as jesting.”
At last we were ready, and I shifted the whole of my attention to
the short, powerful figure of Chatellerault as he advanced upon me,
stripped to the waist, his face set and his eyes full of stern
resolve. Despite his low stature, and the breadth of frame which
argue sluggish motion, there was something very formidable about the
Count. His bared arms were great masses of muscular flesh, and if
his wrist were but half as supple as it looked powerful, that alone
should render him a dangerous antagonist.
Yet I had no qualm of fear, no doubt, even, touching the issue. Not
that I was an habitual ferrailleur. As I have indicated, I had
fought but one man in all my life. Nor yet am I of those who are
said to know no fear under any circumstances. Such men are not
truly brave; they are stupid and unimaginative, in proof of which I
will advance the fact that you may incite a timid man to deeds of
reckless valour by drugging him with wine. But this is by the way.
It may be that the very regular fencing practice that in Paris I was
wont to take may so have ordered my mind that the fact of meeting
unbaited steel had little power to move me.
Be that as it may, I engaged the Count without a tremor either of
the flesh or of the spirit. I was resolved to wait and let him open
the play, that I might have an opportunity of measuring his power
and seeing how best I might dispose of him. I was determined to do
him no hurt, and to leave him, as I had sworn, to the headsman; and
so, either by pressure or by seizure, it was my aim to disarm him.
But on his side also he entered upon the duel with all caution and
wariness. From his rage I had hoped for a wild, angry rush that
should afford me an easy opportunity of gaining my ends with him.
Not so, however. Now that he came with steel to defend his life and
to seek mine, he appeared to have realized the importance of having
keen wits to guide his hand; and so he put his anger from him, and
emerged calm and determined from his whilom disorder.
Some preliminary passes we made from the first engagement in the
lines of tierce, each playing warily for an opening, yet neither of
us giving ground or betraying haste or excitement. Now his blade
slithered on mine with a ceaseless tremor; his eyes watched mine
from under lowering brows, and with knees bent he crouched like a
cat making ready for a spring. Then it came. Sudden as lightning
was his disengage; he darted under my guard, then over it, then
back and under it again, and stretching out in the lunge - his
double-feint completed - he straightened his arm to drive home the
botte.
But with a flying point I cleared his blade out of the line of my
body. There had been two sharp tinkles of our meeting swords, and
now Chatellerault stood at his fullest stretch, the half of his
steel past and behind me, for just a fraction of time completely
at my mercy. Yet I was content to stand, and never move my blade
from his until he had recovered and we were back in our first
position once again.
I heard the deep bass of Castelroux’s “Mordieux!” the sharp gasp of
fear from Saint-Eustache, who already in imagination beheld his
friend stretched lifeless on the ground, and the cry of mortification
from La Fosse as the Count recovered. But I heeded these things
little. As I have said, to kill the Count was not my object. It
had been wise, perhaps, in Chatellerault to have appreciated that
fact; but he did not. From the manner in which he now proceeded to
press me, I was assured that he set his having recovered guard to
slowness on my part, never thinking of the speed that had been
necessary to win myself such an opening as I had obtained.
My failure to run him through in that moment of jeopardy inspired
him with a contempt of my swordplay. This he now made plain by the
recklessness with which he fenced, in his haste to have done ere we
might chance to be interrupted. Of this recklessness I suddenly
availed myself to make an attempt at disarming him. I turned aside
a vicious thrust by a close - a dangerously close - parry, and
whilst in the act of encircling his blade I sought by pressure to
carry it out of his hand. I was within an ace of succeeding, yet
he avoided me, and doubled back.
He realized then, perhaps, that I was not quite so contemptible an
antagonist as he had been imagining, and he went back to his earlier
and more cautious tactics. Then I changed my plans. I simulated
an attack, and drove him hard for some moments. Strong he was, but
there were advantages of reach and suppleness with me, and even
these advantages apart, had I aimed at his life, I could have made
short work of him. But the game I played was fraught with perils
to myself, and once I was in deadly danger, and as near death from
the sword as a man may go and live. My attack had lured him, as I
desired that it should, into making a riposte. He did so, and as
his blade twisted round mine and came slithering at me, I again
carried it off by encircling it, and again I exerted pressure to
deprive him of it. But this time I was farther from success than
before. He laughed at the attempt, as with a suddenness that I had
been far from expecting he disengaged again, and his point darted
like a snake upwards at my throat.
I parried that thrust, but I only parried it when it was within
some three inches of my neck, and even as I turned it aside it
missed me as narrowly as it might without tearing my
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