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Running to him, she lifted up the head that lay over on his shoulder. She felt his pulse, she called to him. Opening his waistcoat, she put her ear to his heart; but it was still still. A mist, a blackness, came over her own eyes, and without a cry or a word, she slid to the floor unconscious, as the black thunderstorm broke upon the Place du Vier Prison.
She had not seen him once since that great day when they had visited the Ecrehos. The house of Elie Mattingley the smuggler stood in the Rue d'Egypte, not far east of the Vier Prison. It had belonged to a jurat of repute, who parted with it to Mattingley not long before he died.
The second had failed because the righteous Royal Court forbade Carterette the prison, intent that she should no longer be contaminated by so vile a wretch as her father. For years this same Christian solicitude had looked down from the windows of the Cohue Royale upon this same criminal in the Vier Marchi, with one blind eye for himself the sinner and an open one for his merchandise.
"The connetable said it was cheaper to let the chevalier go free than to feed him in the Vier Prison," dryly explained Ranulph, helping himself to roasted conger eel and eyeing hungrily the freshly-made black butter Guida was taking from a wooden trencher. "The Royal Court is stingy," he added. "'It's nearer than Jean Noe, who got married in his red queminzolle, as we say on Jersey "
Elie Mattingley, pirate, smuggler, and sometime master of a privateer, had had dealings with people high and low in the island, and they had not always, nor often, been conducted in the open Vier Marchi. Fifteen years ago he used to have his little daughter Carterette always beside him when he sold his wares. Philip wondered what had become of her.
So it chanced that soon only Maitresse Aimable came she who asked no questions, desired no secrets and Dormy Jamais. Dormy had of late haunted the precincts of the Place du Vier Prison, and was the only person besides Maitresse Aimable whom Guida welcomed. His tireless feet went clac-clac past her doorway, or halted by it, or entered in when it pleased him.
She remembered how he had kissed her, and how she had kissed him he a lad and she a little child as he left her with her mother in the watchmaker's shop in the Vier Marchi that day.... And she had never seen him again until yesterday. She looked from the rocks to the approaching frigate. Was it the Narcissus coming coming to this very island?
Elie Mattingley the popular sinner, with insolent gold rings in his ears, unchallenged as to how he came by his merchandise, was one person; Elie Mattingley, a torch for the burning, and housed amid the terrors of the Vier Prison, was another. Few people in Jersey slept the night before his execution.
"You're going to stop that? They'd put me in prison." Ranulph stooped over his father, his eyes alive with anger, his face blurred with disgust. "Go home," said he, "and never mention this again while you live, or I'll take you to prison myself." Ranulph watched his father disappear down the Rue d'Egypte, then he retraced his steps to the Vier Marchi.
But do not shout!" "Ein, zwei, drei, vier " began the German, obediently. And Fred, half choking with suppressed laughter, slipped behind the screened entrance of the secret passageway, while the soldier's back was still turned. He did not quite close the door, but waited to make sure that the German's curiosity did not get the better of his fright, which had certainly been real enough.
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