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It was from the Chevalier's lips he had learned the whole course of Guida's life during the four years of his absence from the island. It was the Chevalier who drew for him pictures of Guida in her new home, none other than the house of Elie Mattingley, which the Royal Court having confiscated now handed over to her as an act of homage.
She had watched the day decline, the evening come, and the lighting of the crassets and the candles, and had waited to hear the words that meant more to her than her own life. At last the great moment came, and she could hear the foreman's voice whining the fateful words, "More Guilty than Innocent." It was Carterette Mattingley, and the prisoner at the bar was her father.
At that moment, Mattingley now issued from a wooden fishing-shed with Sebastian Alixandre and three others armed with muskets, and passed to the little fort on which flew the British and Jersey flags. Ranulph heard a guffaw behind. Richambeau, the captain, confronted him. "That's a big splutter in a little pot, gunner," said he. He put his telescope to his eye.
As the procession started back with the Undertaker's Apprentice now following after Mattingley, not going before, Mattingley turned to him, and with a smile of malice said: "Ch'est tres ship-shape, Maitre-eh!" and he jerked his head back towards the inadequate rope. He was not greatly troubled about the rest of this grisly farce.
He turned on the crowd fiercely. "Have you nothing to say to this butchery?" he cried. "For the love of God, haven't you anything to say?" Half the crowd shouted "Let him go free!" and the other half, disappointed in the working out of the gruesome melodrama, groaned and hooted. Meanwhile Mattingley stood as still as ever he had stood by his bahue in the Vier Marchi, watching waiting.
He had his own ideas about life, and death, and the beyond, and they were not ungenerous. The chaplain had found him patient but impossible, kindly but unresponsive, sometimes even curious, but without remorse. "You should repent with sorrow and a contrite heart," said the clergyman. "You have done many evil things in your life, Mattingley."
In this latter way did she seem to lay her hand upon the lives of Philip d'Avranche and Guida Landresse. At the time that Elie Mattingley, in Jersey, was awaiting hanging on the Mont es Pendus, and writing his letter to Carterette concerning the stolen book of church records, in a town of Brittany the Reverend Lorenzo Dow lay dying.
If he only had as good a marksman as Ranulph himself, the deserter should drop at the first shot "death and the devil take his impudent face!" He was just about to give the order when Mattingley was brought to him. The old man's story amazed him beyond measure. "It is no man, then!" said Richambeau, when Mattingley had done. "He must be a damned fly to do it.
Before dying he implicated Mattingley in several robberies, and a notorious case of piracy of three months before, committed within gunshot of the men-of-war lying in the tide-way. Carcaud, seriously wounded, to save his life turned King's evidence, and disclosed to the Royal Court in private his own guilt and Olivier Delagarde's treason.
You see that 12-pounder yonder to the right? Very well, dismount it. Then we'll send in a flag of truce, and parley with this Mattingley, for his jests are worth attention and politeness. There's a fellow at the gun no, he has gone. Dismount the right-hand gun at one shot. Ready now. Get a good range." The whole matter went through Ranulph's mind as the captain spoke.
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