"Now, steady!" Badelon cried again, seeing that the enemy were beginning
to move. "Steady! Ha! Thank God, my lord! My lord is coming! Stand!
Stand!" The distant sound of galloping hoofs had reached his ear in the
nick of time. He stood in his stirrups and looked back. Yes, Count
Hannibal was coming, riding a dozen paces in front of his men. The odds
were still desperate--for he brought but six--the enemy were still three
to one. But the thunder of his hoofs as he came up checked for a moment
the enemy's onset; and before Montsoreau's people got started again Count
Hannibal had ridden up abreast of the women, and the Countess, looking at
him, knew that, desperate as was their strait, she had not looked behind
in vain. The glow of battle, the stress of the moment, had displaced the
cloud from his face; the joy of the born fighter lightened in his eye.
His voice rang clear and loud above the press.
"Badelon! wait you and two with Madame!" he cried. "Follow at fifty
paces' distance, and, when we have broken them, ride through! The others
with me! Now forward, men, and show your teeth! A Tavannes! A
Tavannes! A Tavannes! We carry it yet!"
And he dashed forward, leading them on, leaving the women behind; and
down the sward to meet him, thundering in double line, came Montsoreau's
men-at-arms, and with the men-at-arms, a dozen pale, fierce-eyed men in
the Church's black, yelling the Church's curses. Madame's heart grew
sick as she heard, as she waited, as she judged him by the fast-failing
light a horse's length before his men--with only Tignonville beside him.
She held her breath--would the shock never come? If Badelon had not
seized her rein and forced her forward, she would not have moved. And
then, even as she moved, they met! With yells and wild cries and a
mare's savage scream, the two bands crashed together in a huddle of
fallen or rearing horses, of flickering weapons, of thrusting men, of
grapples hand-to-hand. What happened, what was happening to any one, who
it was fell, stabbed through and through by four, or who were those who
still fought single combats, twisting round one another's horses, those
on her right and on her left, she could not tell. For Badelon dragged
her on with whip and spur, and two horsemen--who obscured her
view--galloped in front of her, and rode down bodily the only man who
undertook to bar her passage. She had a glimpse of that man's face, as
his horse, struck in the act of turning, fell sideways on him; and she
knew it, in its agony of terror, though she had seen it but once. It was
the face of the man whose eyes had sought hers from the steps of the
church in Angers; the lean man in black, who had turned soldier of the
Church--to his misfortune.