France -- History -- Henry II, 1547-1559 -- Fiction; Montgomery, Gabriel, comte de, 1530-1574 -- Fiction
It was Lord Wentworth, the governor, although, relying upon the
reinforcements for which he had sent to Dover as being sure to arrive on
the morrow, he had retired to his own house, hoping to obtain some rest.
He had not slept, in truth, for three days, exposing himself
continually, it must be said, at the points of greatest danger with
untiring gallantry, and was always to be found wherever his presence was
required.
On the evening of January 4 he had paid a visit to the breach of the Old
Château, had personally posted the sentinels, and had reviewed the
civic militia, who were intrusted with the simple duty of defending the
Risbank fort.
But notwithstanding his intense weariness, and although everything was
secure and quiet, he could not sleep.
A vague dread, absurd but not to be driven away, kept his eyes wide open
as he lay on his bed.
Yet all his precautions were well taken; the enemy could not possibly
venture upon a night attack, relying upon so trifling a breach as that
in the Old Château. As for the other points, they would protect
themselves with the aid of the swamp and the ocean.
Lord Wentworth said all this to himself a thousand times, and yet he
could not sleep.
He seemed to feel something floating in the night air about the city
which told him of a terrible danger from an invisible foe.
In his disordered fancy that enemy was not Maréchal Strozzi, nor the
Duc de Nevers; it was not even the great François do Guise.
What! Could it be that it was his former prisoner, whom his bitter
enmity had enabled him to recognize several times in the distance from
the summit of the fortifications? Was it really that madman. Vicomte
d'Exmès, Madame de Castro's lover?
What a ridiculous adversary for the governor of Calais in his strong
city, still so impregnably guarded!
However, Lord Wentworth, whatever the reason may have been, could
neither overcome this indefinable dread nor explain it.
But he felt its presence, and he could not sleep.
CHAPTER XVIII
BETWEEN TWO CHASMS
The Risbank fort, which on account of its eight faces was also called
the Octagonal Tower, was built, as we have said, at the entrance of
Calais Harbor, in front of the sand-dunes; and its black and frowning
mass of granite towered aloft upon another mass, as forbidding and quite
as colossal, of solid cliff.
The sea, when the tide was high, broke against the cliff, but never
touched the lowest courses of the stone walls of the fort.
Now, the sea was running very high and very threateningly on the night
of the 4th of January, 1558, and toward four o'clock in the morning of
the 5th it gave forth that resounding but mournful moaning which makes
it resemble an ever restless and despairing soul.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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