It was bitter to draw back; but it was madness to remain. Nigel looked round and saw that half his men were down. At the same moment Raoul sank with a gasp at his feet, a bolt driven to its socket through the links of the camail which guarded his neck. Some of the archers, seeing that certain death awaited them, were already running back to escape from the fatal passage.
“By Saint Paul!” cried Nigel hotly. “Would you leave our wounded where this butcher may lay his hands upon them? Let the archers shoot inwards and hold them back from the slits. Now let each man raise one of our comrades, lest we leave our honour in the gate of this castle.”
With a mighty effort he had raised Raoul upon his shoulders and staggered with him to the edge of the ditch. Several men were waiting below where the steep bank shielded them from the arrows, and to them Nigel handed down his wounded friend, and each archer in turn did the same. Again and again Nigel went back until no one lay in the tunnel save seven who had died there. Thirteen wounded were laid in the shelter of the ditch, and there they must remain until night came to cover them. Meanwhile the bowmen on the farther side protected them from attack, and also prevented the enemy from all attempts to build up the outer gate. The gaping smoke-blackened arch was all that they could show for a loss of thirty men, but that at least Knolles was determined to keep.
Burned and bruised, but unconscious of either pain or fatigue for the turmoil of his spirit within him, Nigel knelt by the Frenchman and loosened his helmet. The girlish face of the young squire was white as chalk, and the haze of death was gathering over his violet eyes, but a faint smile played round his lips as he looked up at his English comrade.
“I shall never see Beatrice again,” he whispered. “I pray you, Nigel, that when there is a truce you will journey as far as my father’s château and tell him how his son died. Young Gaston will rejoice, for to him come the land and the coat, the war-cry and the profit. See them, Nigel, and tell them that I was as forward as the others.”
“Indeed, Raoul, no man could have carried himself with more honour or won more worship than you have done this day. I will do your behest when the time comes.”
“Surely you are happy, Nigel,” the dying squire murmured, “for this day has given you one more deed which you may lay at the feet of your ladylove.”
“It might have been so had we carried the gate,” Nigel answered sadly; “but, by Saint Paul! I cannot count it a deed where I have come back with my purpose unfulfilled. But this is no time, Raoul, to talk of my small affairs. If we take the castle, and I bear a good part in it, then perchance all this may indeed avail.”
The Frenchman sat up with that strange energy which comes often as the harbinger of death.
“You will win your Lady Mary, Nigel, and your great deeds will be not three but a score, so that in all Christendom there shall be no man of blood and coat-armour who has not heard your name and your fame. This I tell you—I, Raoul de la Roche Pierre de Bras, dying upon the field of honour. And now kiss me, sweet friend, and lay me back, for the mists close round me and I am gone!”
With tender hands the squire lowered his comrade’s head, but even as he did so there came a choking rush of blood, and the soul had passed. So died a gallant cavalier of France, and Nigel as he knelt in the ditch beside him, prayed that his own end might be as noble and as debonair.
XXI
How the Second Messenger Went to Cosford
Under cover of night the wounded men were lifted from the ditch and carried back, while pickets of archers were advanced to the very gate so that none should rebuild it. Nigel, sick at heart over his own failure, the death of his prisoner, and his fears for Aylward, crept back into the camp, but his cup was not yet full, for Knolles was waiting for him with a tongue which cut like a whiplash. Who was he, a raw squire, that he should lead an attack without orders? See what his crazy knight-errantry had brought about. Twenty men had been destroyed by it and nothing gained. Their blood was on his head. Chandos should hear of his conduct. He should be sent back to England when the castle had fallen.
Such were the bitter words of Knolles, the more bitter because Nigel felt in his heart that he had indeed done wrong, and that Chandos would have said the same, though, perchance, in kinder words. He listened in silent respect, as his duty was, and then, having saluted his leader, he withdrew apart, threw himself down among the bushes, and wept the hottest tears of his life, sobbing bitterly, with his face between his hands. He had striven hard, and yet everything had gone wrong with him. He was bruised, burned, and aching from head to foot. Yet so high is the
