He went and came again in half an hour.  Then, indeed, though she had spoken as if hope was dead in her, she was on her feet at the first sound of his tread on the stairs; her parted lips and her white face questioned him.  He shook his head.

“There is a priest,” he said in broken tones, “with them, whom God will judge.  It is his plan, and he is without mercy or pity.”

“You bring nothing from—­him?”

“They will not suffer him to write again.”

“You did not see him?”

“No.”

CHAPTER XXXV.  AGAINST THE WALL.

In a room beside the gateway, into which, as the nearest and most convenient place, Count Hannibal had been carried from his saddle, a man sat sideways in the narrow embrasure of a loophole, to which his eyes seemed glued.  The room, which formed part of the oldest block of the chateau, and was ordinarily the quarters of the Carlats, possessed two other windows, deep-set indeed, yet superior to that through which Bigot—­for he it was—­peered so persistently.  But the larger windows looked southwards, across the bay—­at this moment the noon-high sun was pouring his radiance through them; while the object which held Bigot’s gaze and fixed him to his irksome seat, lay elsewhere.  The loophole commanded the causeway leading shorewards; through it the Norman could see who came and went, and even the cross-beam of the ugly object which rose where the causeway touched the land.

On a flat truckle-bed behind the door lay Count Hannibal, his injured leg protected from the coverlid by a kind of cage.  His eyes were bright with fever, and his untended beard and straggling hair heightened the wildness of his aspect.  But he was in possession of his senses; and as his gaze passed from Bigot at the window to the old Free Companion, who sat on a stool beside him, engaged in shaping a piece of wood into a splint, an expression almost soft crept into his harsh face.

“Old fool!” he said.  And his voice, though changed, had not lost all its strength and harshness.  “Did the Constable need a splint when you laid him under the tower at Gaeta?”

The old man lifted his eyes from his task, and glanced through the nearest window.

“It is long from noon to night,” he said quietly, “and far from cup to lip, my lord!”

“It would be if I had two legs,” Tavannes answered, with a grimace, half-snarl, half-smile.  “As it is—­where is that dagger?  It leaves me every minute.”

It had slipped from the coverlid to the ground.  Badelon took it up, and set it on the bed within reach of his master’s hand.

Bigot swore fiercely.  “It would be farther still,” he growled, “if you would be guided by me, my lord.  Give me leave to bar the door, and ’twill be long before these fisher clowns force it.  Badelon and I—­”

“Being in your full strength,” Count Hannibal murmured cynically.