The Abbess Of Vlaye

"Ah! We go back then?"

But he could not face that, he could not say yes to that; and, defeated, he turned in dumb sullen anger and resumed the road.

Necessarily the danger of arrest increased as they approached the town. The last mile, which brought them to the bridge over the river, was traversed under the eyes of the castle; it would not have surprised Roger had they been met and stopped long before they came to the town gate. But the Captain of Vlaye, it seemed, held the danger still remote, and troubled his followers with few precautions. The place lay drowsing in the late heat of the summer afternoon. It was still as the dead, and though their approach was doubtless seen and noted, no one issued forth or challenged them. Even the men who lounged in the shade of the low-browed archway-that still bore the scutcheon of its ancient lords-contented themselves with a long stare and a sulky salute. The bridge passed, a narrow street paved and steep, and overhung by ancient houses of brick and timber, opened before them. It led upwards in the direction of the castle, but after pursuing it in single file some fifty paces, the Abbess turned from it into a narrow lane that brought them in a bow-shot-for the town was very small-to the wall again. This was their present destination. For crowded into an angle of the wall under the shadow of one of the old brick watch-towers stood the chapel and cell that owned the lax rule of M. de Vlaye's chaplain, Father Benet.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE CASTLE OF VLAYE

Roger had little faith in the priest's power, and less in his willingness to aid them. But at worst he was not to be kept in suspense. By good luck, Father Benet was walking at the moment of their arrival in his potherb garden. As they dismounted, they espied the Father peeping at them between the tall sunflowers and budding hollyhocks; his ruddy face something dismayed and fallen, and his mien that of a portly man caught in the act of wrong-doing. Finding himself detected, he came forward with an awkward show of joviality.

"Welcome, sister," he said. "There is naught the matter at the Abbey, I trust, that I see you thus late in the day?"

"No, the matter is here," the Abbess replied, with a look in her eyes that told him she knew all. "And we are here to see about it. Let us in, Father. The time is short, for at any moment your master" – she indicated the castle by a gesture-"may hear of our arrival and send for us."

"I am sure," the priest answered glibly, "that anything that I can do for you, sister-"

She cut him short. "No words, no words, but let us in!" she said sharply. And when with pursed lips and a shrug of resignation he had complied, and they stood in the cool stone-floored room-communicating by an open door with the chapel-in which he received his visitors, she came with the same abruptness to the point.

"At what hour are you going up to the castle?" she asked.

He tried to avoid her eyes. "To the castle?" he repeated.

"Ay," she said, watching him keenly. "To the castle. Are there more castles than one? Or first, when were you there last, Father?"

His look wandered, full of calculation. "Last?" he said. "When was I at the castle last?"

"The truth! The truth!" she cried impatiently.

He chid her, but with a propitiatory smile akin to those which the augurs exchanged. "Sister! Sister!" he said. "Nil nisi verum clericus! I was there no more than an hour back."

"And got your orders? And got your orders, I suppose?" she repeated with rude insistence. "Out with it, Father. I see that you are no more easy than I am!"

He flung out his hands in sudden abandonment. "God knows I am not!" he said. "God knows I am not! And that is the truth, and I am not hiding it. God knows I am not! But what am I to do? He is a violent man-you know him! – and I am a man of peace. I must do his will or go. And I am better than nothing! I may" – there was a whine in his voice-"I may do some good still. You know that, sister. I may do some good. I baptise. I bury. But if I go, there is no one."

"And if you go, you are no one," she answered keenly. "For your suffragan has you in no good favour, I am told. So that if you go you happen on but a sackcloth welcome. So it is said, Father. I know not if it be said truly."

"Untruly! Untruly!" he protested earnestly. "He has never found fault with me, sister, on good occasion. But I have enemies, all men have enemies-"

"You are like to make more," Roger struck in, with a dark look.

The priest wrung his hands. "I know! I know!" he said. "He carries it too highly. Too highly! They say that he has caught the King's governor now, and has him in keeping there."

"It is true."

"Well, I have warned him; he cannot say I have not!"

"And what said he to your warning?" the Abbess asked with a sneer.

"He threatened me with the stirrup leathers."

"And you are now to marry him?"

He turned a shade paler. "You know it?" he gasped.

"I know it, but not the time," she answered. And as he hesitated, silent and appalled, "Come," she continued, "the truth, Father. And then I will tell you what I am going to do."

"At sunset," he muttered, "I am to be there."

"Good," she said. "Now we know. Then you will go up an hour earlier. And I shall go with you."

He protested feebly. He knew something of that which had gone before, something of her history, something of her passion for the Captain of Vlaye; and he was sure that she was not bent on good. "I dare not!" he said, "I dare not, sister! You ask too much."

"Dare not what?" the Abbess retorted, bending her handsome brows in wrath. "Dare not go one hour earlier?"

"But you-you want to go?"

"If I go with you, what is that to you?"

"But-"

"But what, Father, but what?"

"You want something of me?" he faltered. He was not to be deceived. "Something dangerous, I know it!"

"I want your company to the door of the room where she lies," the Abbess replied. "That is all. You have leave to visit her? Do not" – overwhelming him with swift fierce words-"deny it. Do not tell me that you have not! Think you I do not know you, Father? Think you I do not know how well you are with him, how late you sit with him, how deep you drink with him, when he lacks better company? And that this-though you are frightened now, and would fain be clear of it, knowing who she is-is the thing which you have vowed to do for him a hundred times and a hundred times to that, if it would help him!"

"Never! Never!" he protested, paler than before.

"Father," she retorted, stooping forward and speaking low, "be warned. Be warned! Get you a foot in the other camp while you may! You are over-well fed for the dry crust and the sack bed of the bishop's prison! You drink too much red wine to take kindly to the moat puddle! And that not for months, but for years and years! Have you not heard of men who lay forgotten, ay, forgotten even by their gaoler at last, until they starved in the bishop's prison? The bishop's prison, Father!" she continued cruelly. "Who comes out thence, but the rats, and they fat? Who comes out thence-"

"Don't! Don't!" the priest cried, his complexion mottled, his flabby cheeks trembling with fear of the thing which her words called up, with fear of the thing that had often kept him quaking in the night hours. "You will not do it?"

"I?" she answered drily. "No, not I perhaps. But is a Countess of Rochechouart to be abducted so lightly, or so easily? Has she so few friends? So poor a kindred? A cousin there is, I think-my lord Bishop of Comminges-who has one of those very prisons. And, if I mistake not, she has another cousin, who is in Flanders now, but will know well how to avenge her when he returns."

"What is it you want me to do?" he faltered.

"Go with me to her door-that I may gain admission. Then, whether you go to him or not, your silence, for one half-hour."

"You will not do her any harm?" he muttered.

"Fool, it is to do her good I am here."

"And that is all? You swear it?"

"That is all."

He heaved a deep sigh. "I will do it," he said. He wiped his brow with the sleeve of his cassock. "I will do it."