Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  “How so? Is not the House of Condillac under excommunication, and every man who stays in it of his own free will? Prayers and Sacraments are alike forbidden here.”

  Garnache received a sudden inspiration. He leapt to his feet, his face convulsed as if at the horror of learning of a hitherto undreamt-of state of things. He never paused to give a moment’s consideration to the cut-throat’s mind, so wonderfully constituted as to enable him to break with impunity every one of the commandments every day of the week for the matter of a louis d’or or two, and yet be afflicted by qualms of conscience at living under a roof upon which the Church had hurled her malediction.

  “What are you saying, compatriot? What is it that you tell me?”

  “The truth,” said Arsenio, with a shrug. “Any man who wilfully abides in the services of Condillac” — and instinctively he lowered his voice lest the Captain or the Marquise should be within earshot — , “is excommunicate.”

  “By the Host!” swore the false Piedmontese. “I am a Christian man myself, Arsenio, and I have lived in ignorance of this thing?”

  “That ignorance may be your excuse. But now that you know—” Arsenio shrugged his shoulders.

  “Now that I know, I had best have a care of my soul and look about me for other employment.”

  “Alas!” sighed Arsenio; “it is none so easy to find.”

  Garnache looked at him. Garnache began to have in his luck a still greater faith than hitherto. He glanced stealthily around; then he sat down again, so that his mouth was close to Arsenio’s ear.

  “The pay is beggarly here, yet I have refused a fortune offered me by another that I might remain loyal to my masters at Condillac. But this thing that you tell me alters everything. By the Host! yes.”

  “A fortune?” sneered Arsenio.

  “Aye, a fortune — at least, fifty pistoles. That is a fortune to some of us.”

  Arsenio whistled. “Tell me more,” said he.

  Garnache rose with the air of one about to depart.

  “I must think of it,” said he, and he made shift to go. But the other’s hand fell with a clenching grip upon his arm.

  “Of what must you think, fool?” said he. “Tell me this service you have been offered. I have a conscience that upbraids me. If you refuse these fifty pistoles, why should not I profit by your folly?”

  “There would not be the need. Two men are required for the thing I speak of, and there are fifty pistoles for each. If I decide to undertake the task, I’ll speak of you as a likely second.”

  He nodded gloomily to his companion, and shaking off his hold he set out to cross the yard. But Arsenio was after him and had fastened again upon his arm, detaining him.

  “You fool!” said he; “you’d not refuse this fortune?”

  “It would mean treachery,” whispered Garnache.

  “That is bad,” the other agreed, and his face fell. But remembering what Garnache had said, he was quick to brighten again. “Is it to these folk here at Condillac?” he asked. Garnache nodded. “And they would pay — these people that seek our service would pay you fifty pistoles?”

  “They seek my service only, as yet. They might seek yours were I to speak for you.”

  “And you will, compatriot. You will, will you not? We are comrades, we are friends, and we are fellow-countrymen in a strange land. There is nothing I would not do for you, Battista. Look, I would die for you if there should come the need! Body of Bacchus! I would. I am like that when I love a man.”

  Garnache patted his shoulder. “You are a good fellow, Arsenio.”

  “And you will speak for me?”

  “But you do not know the nature of the service,” said Garnache. “You may refuse it when it is definitely offered you.”

  “Refuse fifty pistoles? I should deserve to be the pauper that I am if such had been my habits. Be the service what it may, my conscience pricks me for serving Condillac. Tell me how the fifty pistoles are to be earned, and you may count upon me to put my hand to anything.”

  Garnache was satisfied. But he told Arsenio no more that day, beyond assuring him he would speak for him and let him know upon the morrow. Nor on the morrow, when they returned to the subject at Arsenio’s eager demand, did Garnache tell him all, or even that the service was mademoiselle’s. Instead he pretended that it was some one in Grenoble who needed two such men as they.

  “Word has been brought me,” he said mysteriously. “You must not ask me how.”

  “But how the devil are we to reach Grenoble? The Captain will never let us go,” said Arsenio, in an ill-humour.

  “On the night that you are of the watch, Arsenio, we will depart together without asking the Captain’s leave. You shall open the postern when I come to join you here in the courtyard.”

  “But what of the man at the door yonder?” And he jerked his thumb towards the tower where mademoiselle was a captive, and where at night “Battista” was locked in with her. At the door leading to the courtyard a sentry was always posted for greater security. That door and that sentry were obstacles which Garnache saw the futility of attempting to overcome without aid. That was why he had been forced to enlist Arsenio’s assistance.

  “You must account for him, Arsenio,” said he.

  “Thus?” inquired Arsenio coolly, and he passed the edge of his hand significantly across his throat. Garnache shook his head.

  “No,” said he; “there will be no need for that. A blow over the head will suffice. Besides, it may be quieter. You will find the key of the tower in his belt. When you have felled him, get it and unlock the door; then whistle for me. The rest will be easy.”

  “You are sure he has the key?”

  “I have it from madame herself. They were forced to leave it with him to provide for emergencies. Mademoiselle’s attempted escape by the window showed them the necessity for it.” He did not add that it was the implicit confidence they reposed in “Battista” himself that had overcome their reluctance to leave the key with the sentry.

  To seal the bargain, and in earnest of all the gold to come, Garnache gave Arsenio a couple of gold louis as a loan to be repaid him when their nameless employer should pay him his fifty pistoles in Grenoble.

  The sight and touch of the gold convinced Arsenio that the thing was no dream. He told Garnache that he believed he would be on guard-duty on the night of the following Wednesday — this was Friday — and so for Wednesday next they left the execution of their plans unless, meantime, a change should be effected in the disposition of the sentries.

  CHAPTER XIII. THE COURIER

  Monsieur de Garnache was pleased with the issue of his little affair with Arsenio.

  “Mademoiselle,” he told Valerie that evening, “I was right to have faith in my luck, right to believe that the tide of it is flowing. All we need now is a little patience; everything has become easy.”

  It was the hour of supper. Valerie was at table in her anteroom, and “Battista” was in attendance. It was an added duty they had imposed upon him, for, since her attempt to escape, mademoiselle’s imprisonment had been rendered more rigorous than ever. No servant of the chateau was allowed past the door of the outer anteroom, now commonly spoken of as the guardroom of the tower. Valerie dined daily in the salon with Madame de Condillac and Marius, but her other meals were served her in her own apartments. The servants who brought the meals from the kitchen delivered them to “Battista” in the guardroom, and he it was who laid the cloth and waited upon mademoiselle. At first this added duty had irritated him more than all that he had so far endured. Had he Martin Marie Rigobert de Garnache lived to discharge the duties of a lackey, to bear dishes to a lady’s table and to remain at hand to serve her? The very thought had all but set him in a rage. But presently he grew reconciled to it. It afforded him particular opportunities of being in mademoiselle’s presence and of conferring with her; and for the sake of such an advantage he might well belittle the unsavoury part of the affair.

  A half-dozen candles b
urned in two gleaming silver sconces on the table; in her tall-backed leather chair mademoiselle sat, and ate and drank but little, while Garnache told her of the preparations he had made.

  “If my luck but holds until Wednesday next,” he concluded, “you may count upon being well out of Condillac. Arsenio does not dream that you come with us, so that even should he change his mind, at least we have no cause to fear a betrayal. But he will not change his mind. The prospect of fifty pistoles has rendered it immutable.”

  She looked up at him with eyes brightened by hope and by the encouragement to count upon success which she gathered from his optimism.

  “You have contrived it marvellously well,” she praised him. “If we succeed—”

  “Say when we succeed, mademoiselle,” he laughingly corrected her.

  “Very well, then — when we shall have succeeded in leaving Condillac, whither am I to go?”

  “Why, with me, to Paris, as was determined. My man awaits me at Voiron with money and horses. No further obstacle shall rise to hamper us once our backs are turned upon the ugly walls of Condillac. The Queen shall make you welcome and keep you safe until Monsieur Florimond comes to claim his bride.”

  She sipped her wine, then set down the glass and leaned her elbow on the table, taking her chin in her fine white hand. “Madame tells me that he is dead,” said she, and Garnache was shocked at the comparative calmness with which she said it. He looked at her sharply from under his sooted brows. Was she, after all, he wondered, no different from other women? Was she cold and calculating, and had she as little heart as he had come to believe was usual with her sex, that she could contemplate so calmly the possibility of her lover being dead? He had thought her better, more natural, more large-hearted and more pure. That had encouraged him to stand by her in these straits of hers, no matter at what loss of dignity to himself. It began to seem that his conclusions had been wrong.

  His silence caused her to look up, and in his face she read something of what was passing in his thoughts. She smiled rather wanly.

  “You are thinking me heartless, Monsieur de Garnache?”

  “I am thinking you — womanly.”

  “The same thing, then, to your mind. Tell me, monsieur, do you know much of women?”

  “God forbid! I have found trouble enough in my life.”

  “And you pass judgment thus upon a sex with which you have no acquaintance?”

  “Not by acquaintance only is it that we come to knowledge. There are ways of learning other than by the road of experience. One may learn of dangers by watching others perish. It is the fool who will be satisfied alone with the knowledge that comes to him from what he undergoes himself.”

  “You are very wise, monsieur,” said she demurely, so demurely that he suspected her of laughing at him. “You were never wed?”

  “Never, mademoiselle,” he answered stiffly, “nor ever in any danger of it.”

  “Must you, indeed, account it a danger?”

  “A deadly peril, mademoiselle,” said he; whereupon they both laughed.

  She pushed back her chair and rose slowly. Slowly she passed from the table and stepped towards the window. Turning she set her back to it, and faced him.

  “Monsieur de Garnache,” said she, “you are a good man, a true and noble gentleman. I would that you thought a little better of us. All women are not contemptible, believe me. I will pray that you may yet mate with one who will prove to you the truth of what I say.”

  He smiled gently, and shook his head.

  “My child,” said he, “I am not half the noble fellow you account me. I have a stubborn pride that stands me at times in the stead of virtue. It was pride brought me back here, for instance. I could not brook the laughter that would greet me in Paris did I confess that I was beaten by the Dowager of Condillac. I tell you this to the end that, thinking less well of me, you may spare me prayers which I should dread to see fulfilled. I have told you before, mademoiselle, Heaven is likely to answer the prayers of such a heart as yours.”

  “Yet but a moment back you deemed me heartless,” she reminded him.

  “You seemed so indifferent to the fate of Florimond de Condillac.”

  “I must have seemed, then, what I am not,” she told him, “for I am far from indifferent to Florimond’s fate. The truth is, monsieur, I do not believe Madame de Condillac. Knowing me to be under a promise that naught can prevail upon me to break, she would have me believe that nature has dissolved the obligation for me. She thinks that were I persuaded of Florimond’s death, I might turn an ear to the wooing of Marius. But she is mistaken, utterly mistaken; and so I sought to convince her. My father willed that I should wed Florimond. Florimond’s father had been his dearest friend. I promised him that I would do his will, and by that promise I am bound. But were Florimond indeed dead, and were I free to choose, I should not choose Marius were he the only man in all the world.”

  Garnache moved nearer to her.

  “You speak,” said he, “as if you were indifferent in the matter of wedding Florimond, whilst I understand that your letter to the Queen professed you eager for the alliance. I may be impertinent, but, frankly, your attitude puzzles me.”

  “I am not indifferent,” she answered him, but calmly, without enthusiasm. “Florimond and I were playmates, and as a little child I loved him and admired him as I might have loved and admired a brother perhaps. He is comely, honourable, and true. I believe he would be the kindest husband ever woman had, and so I am content to give my life into his keeping. What more can be needed?”

  “Never ask me, mademoiselle; I am by no means an authority,” said he. “But you appear to have been well schooled in a most excellent philosophy.” And he laughed outright. She reddened under his amusement.

  “It was thus my father taught me,” said she, in quieter tones; “and he was the wisest man I ever knew, just as he was the noblest and the bravest.”

  Garnache bowed his head. “God rest his soul!” said he with respectful fervour.

  “Amen,” the girl replied, and they fell silent.

  Presently she returned to the subject of her betrothed.

  “If Florimond is living, this prolonged absence, this lack of news is very strange. It is three months since last we heard of him — four months, indeed. Yet he must have been apprised of his father’s death, and that should have occasioned his return.”

  “Was he indeed apprised of it?” inquired Garnache. “Did you, yourself, communicate the news to him?”

  “I?” she cried. “But no, monsieur. We do not correspond.”

  “That is a pity,” said Garnache, “for I believe that the knowledge of the Marquis’s death was kept from him by his stepmother.”

  “Mon Dieu!” she exclaimed, in horror. “Do you mean that he may still be in ignorance of it?”

  “Not that. A month ago a courier was dispatched to him by the Queen-Mother. The last news of him some four months old, as you have said — reported him at Milan in the service of Spain. Thither was the courier sent to find him and to deliver him letters setting forth what was toward at Condillac.”

  “A month ago?” she said. “And still we have no word. I am full of fears for him, monsieur.”

  “And I,” said Garnache, “am full of hope that we shall have news of him at any moment.”

  That he was well justified of his hope was to be proven before they were many days older. Meanwhile Garnache continued to play his part of gaoler to the entire satisfaction and increased confidence of the Condillacs, what time he waited patiently for the appointed night when it should be his friend Arsenio’s turn to take the guard.

  On that fateful Wednesday “Battista” sought out — as had now become his invariable custom — his compatriot as soon as the time of his noontide rest was come, the hour at which they dined at Condillac. He found Arsenio sunning himself in the outer courtyard, for it seemed that year that as the winter approached the warmth increased. Never could man remember such a Saint Martin’s S
ummer as was this.

  In so far as the matter of their impending flight was concerned, “Battista” was as brief as he could be.

  “Is all well?” he asked. “Shall you be on guard to-night?”

  “Yes. It is my watch from sunset till dawn. At what hour shall we be stirring?”

  Garnache pondered a moment, stroking that firm chin of his, on which the erstwhile stubble had now grown into a straggling, unkempt beard — and it plagued him not a little, for a close observer might have discovered that it was of a lighter colour at the roots. His hair, too, was beginning to lose its glossy blackness. It was turning dull, and presently, no doubt, it would begin to pale, so that it was high time he spread his wings and took flight from Condillac.

  “We had best wait until midnight. It will give them time to be soundly in their slumbers. Though, should there be signs of any one stirring even then, you had better wait till later. It were foolish to risk having our going prevented for the sake of leaving a half-hour earlier.”

  “Depend upon me,” Arsenio answered him. “When I open the door of your tower I shall whistle to you. The key of the postern hangs on the guardroom wall. I shall possess myself of that before I come.”

  “Good,” said Garnache, “we understand each other.”

  And on that they might have parted there and then, but that there happened in that moment a commotion at the gate. Men hurried from the guardhouse, and Fortunio’s voice sounded loud in command. A horseman had galloped up to Condillac, walked his horse across the bridge — which was raised only at night — and was knocking with the butt of his whip an imperative summons upon the timbers of the gate.

  By Fortunio’s orders it was opened, and a man covered with dust, astride a weary, foam-flecked horse, rode under the archway of the keep into the first courtyard of the chateau.

  Garnache eyed him in surprise and inquiry, and he read in the man’s appearance that he was a courier. The horseman had halted within a few paces of the spot where “Battista” and his companion stood, and seeing in the vilely clad Garnache a member of the Condillac household, he flung him his reins, then got down stiffly from his horse.