Johnson had not seen him, for his head was turned the other way and his sight and hearing were dimmed by his fury. The man in underclothes danced round the wrestlers, babbling strangely. “Hold him!” he cried. “Hold him, and I’ll finish him!” His blade was shortened for a thrust, but the movement of the wrestlers frustrated him. He made a pass, but it only grazed the collar of Alastair’s coat.
Then he found a better chance, and again his arm was shortened. A hot quiver went through Alastair’s shoulder, for a rapier had pinked the flesh and had cut into the flapping pouch of Johnson’s coat.
It may have been Alastair’s cry, or the fierce shout of the man in underclothes, but Johnson awoke suddenly to what was happening. He saw a white face with fiery eyes, he saw the rapier drawn back for a new thrust with blood on its point. … With a shudder he loosened his grip and let Alastair go free.
“I have done murder,” he cried, and staggered across the floor till he fell against the dresser. His hands were at his eyes and he was shaken with a passion of sobbing.
The two remaining faced each other, one in his stocking-soles, dancing like a crazy thing in the glow of the wood-fire, triumph in his small eyes. Alastair, dazed and shaken, was striving to draw his blade, which, owing to the struggle, had become entangled in the skirts of his riding-coat. The other, awaking to the new position of affairs, pressed on him wildly till he gave ground. … And then he halted, for a blade had crossed his.
Both men had light travelling-swords, which in a well-matched duello should have met with the tinkle of thin ice in a glass. But now there was the jar and whine of metal harshly used, for the one lunged recklessly, and the other stood on a grim defensive, parrying with a straight arm a point as disorderly as wildfire. Sir John Norreys had the skill in fence of an ordinary English squire, learned from an Oxford maître d’escrime and polished by a lesson or two in Covent Garden—an art no better than ignorance when faced with one perfected by Gérard and d’Aubigny, and tested in twenty affairs against the best blades of France.
Alastair’s wound was a mere scratch, and at this clearing of issues his wits had recovered and his strength returned. As he fought, his eyes did not leave the other’s face. He saw its chalky pallor, where the freckles showed like the scars of smallpox, the sharp arrogant nose, the weak mouth with the mean lines around it, the quick, hard eyes now beginning to waver from their first fury. The man meant to kill him, and as he realised this, the atmosphere of the duello fled, and it was again the old combat à outrance of his clan—his left hand reached instinctively for the auxiliary dagger which should have hung at his belt. And then he laughed, for whatever his enemy’s purposes, success was not likely to follow them.
The scene had to Alastair the spectral unreality of a dream. The kitchen was hushed save for the fall of ashes on the hearth, the strained sobbing of Johnson, and the rasp of the blades. The face of Sir John Norreys was a mirror in which he read his own predominance. The eyes lost their heat, the pupils contracted till they were two shining beads in the dead white of the skin, the wild lunging grew wilder, the breath came in short gasps. But the face was a mirror, too, in which he read something of the future. If his resolution to spare the man had not been already taken, it must now have become irrevocable. This was a child, a stripling, who confronted him, a mere amateur of vice, a thing which to slay would have been no better than common murder. Pity for the man, even a strange kindness stole into Alastair’s soul. He wondered how he could ever have hated anything so crude and weak.
He smiled again, and at that smile all the terrors of death crowded into the other’s face. He seemed to nerve himself for a last effort, steadied the fury of his lunges and aimed a more skilful thrust in tierce. Alastair had a mind to end the farce. His parry beat up the other’s blade, and by an easy device of the schools he twitched the sword from his hand so that it clattered at Johnson’s feet.
Sir John Norreys stood stock-still for an instant, his mouth working like a child about to weep. Then some share of manhood returned to him. He drew himself straight, swallowed what may have been a sob, and let his arms drop by his side.
“I am at your mercy,” he stammered. “What do you purpose with me?”
Alastair returned his sword to its sheath. “I purpose to save your life,” he said, “and if God be merciful, your soul.”
He stripped off his riding-coat. “Take this,” he said. “It is wintry weather, and may serve till your own garments are dry. It is ill talking unclad, Sir John, and we have much to say to each other.”
Johnson had risen, and his face was heavy with an emotion which might have been sorrow or joy. He stood with arm upraised like a priest blessing his flock. “Now to Angels and Archangels and all the Company of Heaven,” he cried, and then he stopped, for the door opened softly and closed again.
It was Midwinter that entered. His shoulders filled the doorway, and his eyes constrained all three to a tense silence. He walked to the fireplace, picking up Norreys’s sword, which he bent into a half hoop against the jamb of the chimney. As his
