Chapter 61
LXI
The scratching of the bailiff’s quill stopped abruptly.
There was no hymn song or scandalized muttering. Even Lorette was silent. The expectant eyes shifted slowly from me to the bishop.
“A threat?” asked Fontaine, his voice full of condescension. “This is your response to the clemency we have shown?” He shook his head in pity. “Offered a chance to redeem yourself, you answer with the promise of violence. Truly, I had not expected such depravity, even from one such as you.”
“It was not a threat and I do not speak idly. If you would live through the night, get these chains off me right now,” I said. I turned to the noble family. “Antoine—Lord Ocerne—look at me, for God’s sake! Do you believe I am lying?”
“You have abused the grace offered to you, and I will hear no more,” announced the bishop. He nodded to the Mende guardsman standing over me.
“Wait—!”
The room somersaulted around me as the man delivered an armored knee to the side of my head.
Did that hurt? asked Sarmodel dryly as I hit the floor. Sebastian, they’re not listening to you.
I know. I know.
I lay there on the marble, waiting for the spinning to stop. It took me a few moments to realize that the roaring I heard was not all in my head.
The sounds of some loud commotion intruded on the parlor from outside in the courtyard. The faint voices I had heard before were now crying out in alarm, and a series of deep shocks kicked through the floor beneath me.
I raised myself slowly back to my knees.
“I warned you; it is already beginning,” I said.
Nobles, o?cials, clergy, soldiers—they were all afraid now. They looked to the bishop and then back to the doors. They started as one as the unmistakable sounds of gunfire reached us.
“No! No! The witch has called the Beast to his side!” stammered Père Arnaud suddenly, his eyes wide in (entirely mistaken) revelation. “Monseigneur, we must—”
“No, you cretin, I have not called the Beast,” I snapped. “The death you can hear coming for us walked straight up the high road, just as we did.”
“My lord!” shouted a new voice.
The main doors were suddenly thrown open and Dimitri the butler burst in. His waistcoat was splashed with blood and his powdered wig sat askew on his scalp. The old man slammed the doors closed behind him and fumbled desperately at the keys on his belt.
“Don’t let them in!” he screamed, violently thrusting a key into the lock. He turned it so hard that the stem broke.
“Who?” demanded Antoine, rising to his feet. “Dimitri, who is there?!”
The old butler turned around to face us. His eyes were wild. “Everyone, my lord! Everyone! They’ve gone mad!”
“Everyone? Everyone what? I don’t understand!” Antoine shouted over the confusion. “Dimitri?”
Outside, the great cacophony grew suddenly louder. The butler fled to the back of the chamber with a whimper.
“Soldiers of Mende, make sure nobody else comes through the doors—we are under attack!” barked Fontaine. The bishop wasn’t taking any chances.
Everyone was suddenly on their feet. There were three entrances into the parlor in grand baroque style, and in minutes there were about a half dozen soldiers at each, methodically stacking furniture in front of the doors.
I predicted they would buy us ten minutes at most.
Lorette and I were not left unattended; Antoine stood over us and took the ends of my chains in one fist, his dueling sword in the other.
The girl sat up slowly, a red boot print standing out on the skin of her neck.
Like everyone else, she was watching the doors.
But unlike the others, she did not look afraid.
She was no longer crying, either. If anything, she seemed positively breathless with expectation.
“But we will be trapped in here!” said Lady Ocerne, watching the soldiers slide a heavy sideboard across the northern entrance. “Antoine, what is happening?”
The bishop raised his crosier and called again for calm, but there were too many people trying to speak at once.
“My lord Ocerne!”
“Is it the Beast?”
“Monseigneur!”
They all subsided into silence as the hubbub outside grew closer and louder—the unmistakable song of a mob in a killing rage. Then the doors to the grand salon suddenly boomed.
Inside, the bailiff and the pastor cried out in unison. Their immaculate harmony would have been comedic in other circumstances.
The doors shook again.
“Soldiers of Mende—brace those doors! Everyone else, get back!” called Antoine.
Half of the soldiers began desperately loading their pistols; the rest stood ready with their military blades.
The nobles and o?cials gathered in a terrified knot behind the bishop.
Behind them, the great western windows with their beautiful English glass showed only darkness outside.
Antoine looked down at me suspiciously, his fist around the bishop’s pectoral cross. “What is going on, Sebastian? What have you done?!”
“Me? You think this is my doing?” I protested.
“He does!” interjected Lorette. She was looking at Antoine incredulously. “My lord Ocerne, if you have not foreseen what is coming for you, then you deserve it all the more.”
“Foreseen what? Tell me what you mean!” Antoine almost screamed.
“War, my lord,” she replied bleakly.