{Chapter III}

Death Deferred

The hangman stumbled backwards at the force of the priest's blow.

"Sang et tonnère!" cried Tristan, drawing his bright blade. "What is this?"

"I tell you, she shall not hang!" said the archdeacon again. With his hollow cheek, fiery eyes and hand raised like the sword of the archangel, Dom Claude cowed even the hardened head of the executioner. Henriet Cousin looked to the commander, searching for permission to carry out his office. He knew the king had ordered the death of the gypsy dancer, had ordered her to be plucked from the sacred nave of Notre-Dame to serve her final penance upon the gibbet. The officer with his weapon leveled at the man of God had told him so. But so violent was the priest's expression, so full of fury and righteous indignation, that Henriet Cousin felt impelled by a force mightier than he to relax his hold on the young girl's shoulders.

La Esmeralda sank to the foot of the gibbet upon her release, tearing the fatal loop of the noose from her fair throat as she fell. But she made no move to run; the soldiers stood in formation, encircling the Place de Grève like so many wolves around the wounded body of the poor doe they longed to devour. The gypsy-girl could feel their eyes on her, all angry, cruel and hateful; eyes that had once been so full of laughter and approval when they watched her dance in the streets now only desired her death. She shrank away from the leather-clad hangman and his foul lackey, unconscious of the fact that doing so drew her nearly into contact with the priest. Terror of the grave gave her no room to hold any feelings for the archdeacon except those the shipwrecked sailor has for the raft to which he clings, and still wondering at any moment when the tempest will swallow them together. So she stayed silent, pleading with whatever powers were in Heaven to even yet spare her from the noose.

Tristan ascended the ladder as swiftly as a tiger sets upon his prey. Dom Claude stood unfaltering before him with eyes blazing, daring the soldier to hazard his wrath and gain access to the girl crouching in his shadow. A statue of guardian angel he might have been, so unconscious he seemed of the blade in the soldier's hand. Tristan swore and spoke again.

"Priest or devil, whatever you are, I command you to step aside! You would wish to defy the orders of the king?"

Dom Claude gave no answer. He was aware of only two things in that fatal moment, in which he had suspended not only the gypsy's fate but his own. On one hand there was the man before him, a commander of the king's soldiers, a he-wolf and monster, howling for payment of the awful price of justice with the voice of a carrion-bird. On the other hand was the trembling figure of the condemned girl, placing, as it appeared, the whole of her hope in the figure of the archdeacon. And to his fevered mind, the horror of the first was more than washed away in the intoxication of the second. All the wounds La Esmeralda had caused him, all the pain and hatred she had stirred in him for himself and Phoebus and the world—all was dissolved in that one sublime moment. She had begged for his protection; he would not deny her. Indeed, he felt in an instant that he would take on the king himself and all his legions of gorgon-faced soldiers—nay, the armies of Heaven and Hell together—for the sake of the gypsy-girl, as long as he knew she was watching him with yet a grain of trust in those lovely Egyptian eyes.

Mad he had been once, and in his madness he had brought her up to the gibbet; now he would die, and gladly, if it would bring her down again.

"Ho there! You would wish to defy the orders of the king?" the king's commander said again.

The archdeacon spoke at last, his words pushed through clenched teeth. "I see no orders from the king."

Tristan narrowed his eyes, perturbed in spite of himself with the priest's unearthly air. He straightened. "Do you not know who I am, Archdeacon of Josas? I am Tristan l'Hermite! I am the king's companion! I carry his orders in the matter of this gypsy witch. And she shall hang." Satisfied with his own command he stepped around the priest, signaling for Henriet Cousin to rise from the place he had fallen. The commander reached for the young girl's arm to pull her up.

But his own was seized in a grip of iron. Yet not iron—pincers of adamant could not have tightened so cruelly around the hairy flesh of his arm as did the fingers of the priest, preventing him from so much as touching the gypsy-girl. "She will not hang," Dom Claude whispered, ignoring the curses sputtered from the mouth of the king's companion. He raised his other hand to stay the soldiers of the company who jumped forward at the sight of their commander so assaulted. Bending again to Tristan's ear, the archdeacon forced every false drop of righteous authority he possessed into his words. "You will return to the king and receive his written orders for the execution of this woman. You will allow her to return for a time to Notre-Dame, and when you have presented at the door of the cathedral the order and the seal of the king, you will have the sanction of Our Lady to remove the gypsy to this place of execution." He released him with a snarl. "But until you have done this, you are the lawbreaker. She belongs to the Church." Dom Claude stood. "Now begone, you and your mercenaries."

The commander stumbled back, cradling his arm. If the man before him had been any other, he would have run him through on the spot. But a priest... Tristan l'Hermite was not so pious as to remember if killing a man of God counted as a greater sin than killing any other, but he did not want to put it to the test. Nor, at the moment, could he remember if the law required a written declaration of Parliament to condemn those under the eaves of Notre-Dame. He knew it was what the king desired, but there was no proof here to present the unyielding man of God—a man who surely knew of such matters better than he. He-wolf and villain as he had been called, Tristan l'Hermite, the king's companion, would never be accused of sacrilege. Biting down on the growl that strangled itself in his throat, he made a motion and withdrew to the executioner's side.

"You will see me on the steps of Notre-Dame by nightfall, priest." He raised his unhurt hand to point to the young woman and met the archdeacon's eye. "But she must hang. You will deliver her to me yourself."

The two stared at each other, defiant.

"Be it so," Dom Claude replied at last.

The gypsy-girl shrank from the words that issued from the mouth of her once-defender. Hope drained from her fragile soul and she fell to the floor of the gibbet, as cold and motionless as one already dead.

The commander sneered and motioned for his men to mount their horses. Backing towards the ladder, he marked again the eye of the archdeacon. "This night she hangs, priest." And with a final survey of the gibbet, so suddenly robbed of its intended, Tristan l'Hermite descended the steps and returned to his company. Henriet Cousin and his assistant accompanied him, and in a moment the Place held only the echoes of the soldiers.