The White Plumes of Navarre: A Romance of the Wars of Religion

by S. R. Crockett

  CHAPTER XIX.

  DEATH WARNINGS

  D'Epernon stood at the door.

  The splendid favourite of the King of France was attired in a plain,close-fitting black dress, while a cloak of the like material droppedfrom his shoulders. A broad-brimmed hat, high-crowned, and with asweeping black feather, was on his head. He held out both hands.

  "See, my good Professor," he began, "I am at your martial mercy. I havecome without arms, clothed only with my sole innocence, into this hauntof heretics. Let me enter. I am, at least, a well-wisher of the white_panache_, and an old friend of Monsieur Anthony Arpajon there!"

  The Professor of Eloquence, though in his heart he liked not the boldfavourite, knew him for a keeper of his word. He stood back and let himpass within. D'Epernon carefully barred the door behind him, and with agrand salute strode masterfully into the kitchen of Dame Granier, whichseemed to shrink in size at his entrance.

  "Fairer waters than those we are now crossing be to us and to France!"said the Duke, who loved a sounding phrase. There was a silence in thekitchen, all wondering what this sudden interruption might mean. "Youare all strangely speechless," continued the Duke.

  "We would be glad to know what is your Grace's will with us," saidJean-aux-Choux; "after that, we will speak as plain as men may!"

  "You are, I take it, for the King of France so long as he may live, andfor the Bearnais afterwards?"

  "We are of different schools and habits of thought," said DoctorAnatole, with a certain professional sententiousness, "but you may takeit that on these points we are agreed with my Lord Duke of Epernon!"

  "We are all against the League!" said Jean-aux-Choux brusquely.

  "I stand by my cousin Henry," said the Abbe John.

  "And I keep an open hostelry and a shut mouth!" added Anthony Arpajon.

  As for Claire, she said nothing, but only moved a little further intothe shadow. For Dame Granier had thrown a handful of resinous chips onthe fire, which blazed up brightly, at which D'Epernon muttered a curseand trampled the clear light into dim embers with the heel of hiscavalier's boot.

  "To be seen here does not mean much to most of you," he said, withsudden unexpected fierceness, "but with the city full of the spies ofGuise, it would be death and destruction to me! In a word then--for thisI have come. The King has resolved to bear no longer the insolence ofGuise and his brothers. There is to be an end. It will be a bitter dayand a worse night in Blois. Women are better out of it. I have takenmeasures to keep safely mine own wife--though there is no braver lass inFrance, as the burghers of Angouleme do know--what I have to ask is, howmany of you gentlemen I can count upon?"

  "There is a difference," said the Professor. "I am an advocate forpeace. But then Duke Guise and the Princes of Lorraine will not leave usin peace. So, against my judgment and conscience, I am with you so faras fighting goes."

  "And I," said the Abbe John eagerly; "but I will have no hand in theassassination. It smells of Saint Bartholomew!"

  "It is going to smell of that," answered D'Epernon coolly; "you are ofCrillon's party, my friend--and truly, I do not wonder. There arebutchers enough about the King to do his killings featly. Of what useelse are swaggerers like D'O, Guast, Ornano, and Lognac? For me, I amhappily supposed to be in my government of Angouleme. I am banished,disgraced, shamed, all to pleasure the League. But just the same, theKing sends me daily proof of his kindness, under his own hand and seal.So I, in turn, endeavour to serve him as best I may."

  "You can count on me, Duke d'Epernon," said Jean-aux-Choux suddenly,"aye, if it were to do again the deed of Ehud, which he did in thesummer parlour by the quarries of Gilgal, that day when the sun was hotin the sky."

  "Good," said D'Epernon, "it is a bargain. To-morrow, then, do you seekout Hamilton, a lieutenant in the Scots Guards, and say to him 'The Manin the Black Cloak sent me to you'!"

  "When--at what hour?"

  "At six--seven--as soon as may be, what care I?"

  "Aye," said Jean-aux-Choux, "that is good speaking. Is it not written,'What thou doest, do quickly'?"

  "It is indeed so written," said the Professor of Eloquence gravely, "butnot of the Duke of Guise."

  "Fear not," said Jean-aux-Choux, taking the reference, "I shall meet himface to face. There shall be no Judas kiss betwixt me and Henry ofGuise."

  "No," murmured the Professor, "there is more likely to be a goodhalf-dozen of your countrymen of the Scottish Guard, each with a daggerin his right hand."

  As it happened, there was a round dozen, but not of the Scottisharchers.

  D'Epernon--than whom no one could be more courteous, in a large, deft,half-scornful way--stooped to kiss Claire's hand under the spittinganger of the Abbe John's eyes.

  "A good evening and a better daybreak," said D'Epernon. "I would escortyou to Angouleme, my pretty maiden, to bide under the care of my wife,were it not that you might be worse off there. The last time my LadyDuchess went for a walk, our good Leaguers of the town held a knife toher throat under the battlements for half-a-day, bidding her call uponme to surrender the castle on pain of instant death. What, think you,said Margaret of Foix? 'Kill me if you like,' says she, 'and much goodmay it do you and your League. But tell Jean Louis, my husband, that ifhe yields one jot to such rascals as you, to save my life twenty timesover--I--will never kiss him again'!"

  "I should like to know your wife, my lord," said Claire; "she must be abrave woman."

  "I know another!" D'Epernon answered, bowing courteously.

  Then, after the great man was gone, the party about Dame Granier's firesat silent, looking uncertainly at one another in the dull red glow,which gave the strange face of Jean-aux-Choux, bordered by its tussockof orange-saffron hair, the look of having been dipped in blood.

  Then, without a word, the Fool of the Three Henries took down hiswallet, stuck the long sheath of a dagger under his black-and-whitebaldrick, and strode out into the night.

  His vow was upon him.

  "I will betake me to my chamber," said the Professor of Eloquence, "andpray to be forgiven for the thought of blood which leaped up in my heartwhen this proud man came to the door."

  "And I," said Claire, "because I am very sleepy."

  She said good-night a little coldly to John d'Albret. At least, so hethought, and was indeed ill-content thereat.

  "I am not permitted to fight in a good hard-stricken battle," hemurmured. "I cannot bring my mind to rank assassination--for this,however my Lord of Epernon may wrap it up, means no less. And yondervixen of a girl will not even let me hold her coloured threads when shebroiders a petticoat!"

  But without a doubt or a qualm Jean-aux-Choux went to find Hamilton ofthe Scots Guard and to perform his vow.

  * * * * *

  As for the Duke, he spent his days with the Queen-Mother, and his nightsat the lodgings of Monsieur de Noirmoutiers. Catherine de Medici was illand old, but she kept all her charm of manner, her Italian courtesy.Personally she liked Guise, and he had a soft side to the wizened oldwoman who had done and plotted so many things--among others the night ofSaint Bartholomew. When Guise came to any town where Catherine was, healways rode directly to her quarters. There she sermonised him on hislatest sins, representing how unseemly these were in the avowed championof the Church.

  "But they make the people love me," he would cry, with a careless laugh.And perhaps also, who knows, the perverse indurated heart of the ancientQueen! For the Queen-Mother, though relentless to all heretics andrebels, was kindly within doors and to those she loved--who indeedgenerally repaid her with the blackest ingratitude.

  But at Blois Guise had a new reason for frequenting his old ally.Valentine la Nina had become indispensable to Catherine. She was, itseemed, far more to her than her own daughter. The Queen-Mother wouldspend long days of convalescence--as often, indeed, as she was fairlyfree from pain--in devising and arranging robes for her favourite.

  And amid the flurry Guise came and went with the familiarity of a
housefriend. His scarred face shone with pleasure as he picked a way to hisold ally's bedside. Arrived there, after steering his course through thewilderness of silks and chiffons which cumbered the chairs and made evensitting down a matter of warlike strategy, Guise would remain and watchthe busy maids bending over their needlework, and especially Valentinela Nina seated at the other side of the great state bed, which had beenspecially brought from Paris for the Queen to die upon. There was aquaint delight in his eyes, not unmingled with amusement, but now andthen a flush would mount to his face and the great scar on his cheekwould glow scarlet.

  Once he betrayed himself.

  "What a queen--what a queen she would have made!"

  But the sharp-witted old woman on the bed, catching the murmured words,turned them off with Italian quickness.

  "Too late, my good Henry," she said, reaching out her hand; "you wereborn quite thirty years too late. Had you been King and I Queen--well,the world would have had news!"

  She thought a little while, and then added:

  "For one thing all men would have known--how stupid a man is the Flemingwho calls himself King of Spain. We should have avenged Pavia, you andI, my Balafre, and Philip's ransom would have bought the children each agown!"

  But Valentine la Nina knew well of what the Duke of Guise had beenthinking. She understood his words, but she gave him no chance ofprivate speech. Nor did she send him any further warning. Once at Parisshe had warned him fully, and he had chosen to disobey her. It was athis peril. And now, in Blois itself, she treated the popular idol andall-powerful captain with a chilling disdain that secretly stung him.

  Only once did they exchange words. It was on the stairway, as Valentinegathered her riding-skirt in her fingers in order to mount to theQueen-Mother's room. The Duke was coming down slowly, a disappointedlook on his face, but he brightened at sight of her, and taking hergloved hand quickly, he put it to his lips.

  "Now I have lived to-day!" he said gently.

  "If you do not get hence," she answered him with bitterness, "it is oneof the last days that you will!"

  "Then I would spend these last here in Blois," he said, smiling at her.

  "You would do better for the Cause you pretend to serve if you took mygrey alezan out there, and rode him at gallop through the North Gate. Igive him to you if you will!"

  "I should only bring him back by the South Gate," he said, smiling."While you remain here, I am no better than a poor moth fluttering aboutthe candle!"

  "But the Cause?" she cried, with an angry clap of her hands.

  "That for the Cause!" said Guise, snapping his fingers lightly; "a manhas but one life to live, and few privileges therein. But surely he maybe allowed to lay that one at a fair lady's feet!"

  Without answering, Valentine la Nina swept up the stairs of the Queen'slodging, her heart within her like lead.

  "After all," she murmured, as she shut herself in her room, "I have donemy best. I have warned him time and again. I cannot save a man againsthis will. Paugh!" (she turned hastily from the window), "there he isagain on the other side of the way, pacing the street as if it were thepoop of an amiral!"

  The little walled garden at Madame Granier's, with its trellised vines,the wind-swept wintry shore of the Loire, and the bleached shell-pink ofthe shingle, all went back to their ancient quiet. The whole world wasin, at, and about the Chateau. Men, women, and both sorts of angels werebusy around the Castle of Blois in these short grey days of mid-mostwinter.

  Now and then, however, would come a heavenly morning, when Claire, leftalone, looked out upon the clear, clean, zenith-blue sweep of the river,and on the misty opal and ultramarine ash of the distance, ridge fadingbehind ridge as drowsy thought fades into sleep.

  "It is a Paradise of beauty, but"--here she hesitated a while--"there isno Adam, that I can see!"

  In spite of the winter day she opened her window to the slightlysun-warmed air.

  "I declare I am somewhat in Eve's mood to-day," she continued, smilingto herself as she laid down her embroidery; "even an affable serpentwould be better than nothing."

  But it could not be. For all the powers of good and evil--the OldSerpent among them--were full of business in the Chateau of Blois duringthese days of the King's last parliament. And so, while Claire read herAmyot's _Plutarch_ and John Knox's _Reformation_, the single strokewhich changed all history hung unseen in the blue.