Clementina could read in his face that something was amiss, but she had
a great gift of silence. She waited for him to speak. Wogan unwound the
coil of rope from his body.
"Your Highness laughed at me for that I would not part with my rope. I
have a fear this night will prove my wisdom." And with that he began
deliberately to break up the chairs in the room. Clementina asked no
questions; she watched him take the rungs and bars of the chairs and
test their strength. Then he cut the coil of rope in half and tied loops
at intervals; into the loops he fitted the wooden rungs. Wogan worked
expeditiously for an hour without opening his mouth. In an hour he had
fashioned a rope-ladder. He went to the window which looked out on the
back of the wing, upon the little thicket of fir-trees. He opened the
window cautiously and dropped the ladder down the wall.
"Your Highness has courage," said he. "The ladder does not touch the
ground, but it will not be far to drop, should there be need."
The window of Clementina's bedroom was next to that of the parlour and
looked out in the same direction. Wogan fixed the rope-ladder securely
to the foot of the bed and drew the bed close to the window. He left the
lamp upon a chair and went back to the parlour and explained.
"Your Highness," he added, "there may be no cause for any alarm. On the
other hand, the Governor of Trent may have taken a leaf from my own
book. He may have it in mind to snatch your Highness out of Italy even
as I did out of Austria; and of a truth it would be the easier
undertaking. Here are we five miles from the border and in a small
tavern set apart from a small village, instead of in the thick of an
armed town."
"But we might start now," she said. "We might leave a message behind for
Mrs. Misset and wait for her in Verona."
"I had thought of that. But if my mere suspicion is the truth, the six
men will not be so far from their six horses that we could drive away
unnoticed by any one of them. Nor could we hope to outpace them and six
men upon an open road; indeed, I would sooner face them at the head of
my staircase here. And while I hold them back your Highness can creep
down that ladder."