Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France

by Stanley John Weyman

  CHAPTER XXV.

  THE COMPANY OF THE BLEEDING HEART.

  "But why," Madame. St. Lo asked, sticking her arms akimbo, "why stayin this forsaken place a day and a night, when six hours in the saddlewould set us in Angers?"

  "Because," Tavannes replied coldly--he and his cousin were walkingbefore the gateway of the inn--"the Countess is not well, and will bethe better, I think, for staying a day."

  "She slept soundly enough! I'll answer for that!"

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  "She never raised her head this morning, though my women wereshrieking 'Murder!' next door, and----Name of Heaven!" madame resumed,after breaking off abruptly, and shading her eyes with her hand, "whatcomes here? Is it a funeral? Or a pilgrimage? If all the priests abouthere are as black, no wonder M. Rabelais fell out with them!"

  The inn stood without the walls for the convenience of those whowished to take the road early: a little also, perhaps, because foodand forage were cheaper, and the wine paid no town-dues. Four greatroads met before the house, along the most easterly of which thesombre company which had caught Madame St. Lo's attention could beseen approaching. At first Count Hannibal supposed with his companionthat the travellers were conveying to the grave the corpse of someperson of distinction; for the _cortege_ consisted mainly of priestsand the like mounted on mules, and clothed for the most part in black.Black also was the small banner which waved above them, and bore inplace of arms the emblem of the Bleeding Heart. But a second glancefailed to discover either litter or bier; and a nearer approach showedthat the travellers, whether they wore the tonsure or not, boreweapons of one kind or another about them.

  Suddenly Madame St. Lo clapped her hands, and proclaimed in greatastonishment that she knew them. "Why, there is Father Boucher, theCure of St.-Benoist!" she said, "and Father Pezelay of St. Magloire.And there is another I know, though I cannot remember his name! Theyare preachers from Paris! That is who they are! But what can they bedoing here? Is it a pilgrimage, think you?"

  "Ay, a pilgrimage of Blood!" Count Hannibal answered between histeeth. And, turning to him to learn what moved him, she saw the lookin his eyes which portended a storm. Before she could ask a question,however, the gloomy company, which had first appeared in the distance,moving, an inky blot, through the hot sunshine of the summer morning,had drawn near and was almost abreast of them. Stepping from her side,he raised his hand and arrested the march.

  "Who is master here?" he asked haughtily.

  "I am the leader," answered a stout pompous Churchman, whose smallmalevolent eyes belied the sallow fatuity of his face. "I, M. deTavannes, by your leave."

  "And you, by your leave," Tavannes sneered, "are----"

  "Archdeacon and Vicar of the Bishop of Angers and Prior of the LesserBrethren of St. Germain, M. le Comte. Visitor also of the Diocese ofAngers," the dignitary continued, puffing out his cheeks, "andChaplain to the Lieutenant-Governor of Saumur, whose unworthy brotherI am."

  "A handsome glove, and well embroidered!" Tavannes retorted in a toneof disdain. "The hand I see yonder!" He pointed to the lean parchmentmask of Father Pezelay, who coloured ever so faintly, but held hispeace under the sneer. "You are bound for Angers!" Count Hannibalcontinued. "For what purpose, Sir Prior!"

  "His Grace the Bishop is absent, and in his absence----"

  "You go to fill his city with strife! I know you! Not you!" hecontinued, contemptuously turning from the Prior, and regarding thethird of the principal figures of the party. "But you! You were theCure who got the mob together last All Souls'."

  "I speak the words of Him Who sent me!" answered the third Churchman,whose brooding face and dull curtained eyes gave no promise of thefits of frenzied eloquence which had made his pulpit famous in Paris.

  "Then Kill and Burn are His alphabet!" Tavannes retorted, and heedlessof the start of horror which a saying so near blasphemy excited amongthe Churchmen, he turned to Father Pezelay. "And you! You, too, Iknow!" he continued. "And you know me! And take this from me. Turn,father! Turn! Or worse than a broken head--you bear the scar Isee--will befall you. These good persons, whom you have moved, unlessI am in error, to take this journey, may not know me; but you do, andcan tell them. If they will to Angers, they must to Angers. But if Ifind trouble in Angers when I come, I will hang some one high. Don'tscowl at me, man!"--in truth, the look of hate in Father Pezelay'seyes was enough to provoke the exclamation. "Some one, and it shallnot be a bare patch on the crown will save his windpipe fromsqueezing!"

  A murmur of indignation broke from the preachers' attendants; one ortwo made a show of drawing their weapons. But Count Hannibal paid noheed to them, and had already turned on his heel when Father Pezelayspurred his mule a pace or two forward. Snatching a heavy brass crossfrom one of the acolytes, he raised it aloft, and in the voice whichhad often thrilled the heated congregation of St. Magloire, he calledon Tavannes to pause.

  "Stand, my lord!" he cried. "And take warning! Stand, reckless andprofane, whose face is set hard as a stone, and his heart as a flint,against High Heaven and Holy Church! Stand and hear! Behold the wordof the Lord is gone out against this city, even against Angers, forthe unbelief thereof! Her place shall be left unto her desolate, andher children shall be dashed against the stones! Woe unto you,therefore, if you gainsay it, or fall short of that which iscommanded! You shall perish as Achan, the son of Charmi, and as Saul!The curse that has gone out against you shall not tarry, nor your dayscontinue! For the Canaanitish woman that is in your house, and for thethought that is in your heart, the place that was yours is given toanother! Yea, the sword is even now drawn that shall pierce yourside!"

  "You are more like to split my ears!" Count Hannibal answered sternly."And now mark me! Preach as you please here. But a word in Angers, andthough you be shaven twice over, I will have you silenced after afashion which will not please you! If you value your tongue therefore,father----oh, you shake off the dust, do you? Well, pass on! 'Tiswise, perhaps."

  And undismayed by the scowling brows, and the cross ostentatiouslylifted to heaven, he gazed after the procession as it moved on underits swaying banner, now one and now another of the acolytes lookingback and raising his hands to invoke the bolt of Heaven on theblasphemer. As the _cortege_ passed the huge watering-troughs, and theopen gateway of the inn, the knot of persons congregated there fell ontheir knees. In answer the Churchmen raised their banner higher, andbegan to sing the _Eripe me, Domine!_ and to its strains, nowvengeful, now despairing, now rising on a wave of menace, they passedslowly into the distance, slowly towards Angers and the Loire.

  Suddenly Madame St. Lo twitched his sleeve. "Enough for me!" she criedpassionately. "I go no farther with you!"

  "Ah?"

  "No farther!" she repeated. She was pale, she shivered. "Many thanks,my cousin, but we part company here. I do not go to Angers. I haveseen horrors enough. I will take my people, and go to my aunt by Toursand the east road. For you, I foresee what will happen. You willperish between the hammer and the anvil."

  "Ah?"

  "You play too fine a game," she continued, her face quivering. "Giveover the girl to her lover, and send away her people with her. Andwash your hands of her and hers. Or you will see her fall, and fallbeside her! Give her to him, I say--give her to him!"

  "My wife?"

  "Wife?" she echoed, for, fickle, and at all times swept away by theemotions of the moment, she was in earnest now. "Is there a tie," andshe pointed after the vanishing procession, "that they cannot unloose?That they will not unloose? Is there a life which escapes if they doomit? Did the Admiral escape? Or Rochefoucauld? Or Madame de Luns in olddays? I tell you they go to rouse Angers against you, and I seebeforehand what will happen. She will perish, and you with her. Wife?A pretty wife, at whose door you took her lover last night."

  "And at your door!" he answered quietly, unmoved by the gibe.

  But she did not heed. "I warned you of that!" she cried. "And youwould not believe me.
I told you he was following. And I warn you ofthis. You are between the hammer and the anvil, M. le Comte! IfTignonville does not murder you in your bed----"

  "'Tis not likely while I hold him in my power."

  "Then Holy Church will fall on you and crush you. For me, I have seenenough and more than enough. I go to Tours by the east road."

  He shrugged his shoulders. "As you please," he said.

  She flung away in disgust with him. She could not understand a man whoplayed fast and loose at such a time. The game was too fine for her,its danger too apparent, the gain too small. She had, too, a woman'sdread of the Church, a woman's belief in the power of the dead hand topunish. And in half an hour her orders were given. In two hours herpeople were gathered, and she departed by the eastward road, three ofTavannes' riders reinforcing her servants for a part of the way. CountHannibal stood to watch them start, and noticed Bigot riding by theside of Suzanne's mule. He smiled; and presently, as he turned away,he did a thing rare with him--he laughed outright.

  A laugh which reflected a mood rare as itself. Few had seen CountHannibal's eye sparkle as it sparkled now; few had seen him laugh ashe laughed, walking to and fro in the sunshine before the inn. His menwatched him, and wondered, and liked it little, for one or two who hadoverheard his altercation with the Churchmen had reported it, andthere was shaking of heads over it. The man who had singed the Pope'sbeard and chucked Cardinals under the chin was growing old, and themost daring of the others had no mind to fight with foes whose weaponswere not of this world.

  Count Hannibal's gaiety, however, was well grounded, had they knownit. He was gay, not because he foresaw peril, and it was his nature tolove peril; nor--in the main, though a little, perhaps--because heknew that the woman whose heart he desired to win had that night stoodbetween him and death; nor, though again a little, perhaps, becauseshe had confirmed his choice by conduct which a small man might havedeprecated, but which a great man loved; but chiefly, because theevents of the night had placed in his grasp two weapons by the aid ofwhich he looked to recover all the ground he had lost--lost by hisimpulsive departure from the path of conduct on which he had started.

  Those weapons were Tignonville, taken like a rat in a trap by therising of the water; and the knowledge that the Countess had stolenthe precious packet from his pillow. The knowledge--for he had lainand felt her breath upon his cheek, he had lain and felt her handbeneath his pillow, he had lain while the impulse to fling his armsabout her had been almost more than he could tame! He had lain andsuffered her to go, to pass out safely as she had passed in. And thenhe had received his reward in the knowledge that, if she robbed him,she robbed him not for herself; and that where it was a question ofhis life she did not fear to risk her own.

  When he came, indeed, to that point, he trembled. How narrowly had hebeen saved from misjudging her! Had he not lain and waited, had he notpossessed himself in patience, he might have been led to think her incollusion with the old lover whom he found at her door, and with thosewho came to slay him. Either he might have perished unwarned; orescaping that danger, he might have detected her with Tignonville andlost for all time the ideal of a noble woman.

  He had escaped that peril. More, he had gained the weapons we haveindicated; and the sense of power, in regard to her, almostintoxicated him. Surely if he wielded those weapons to the bestadvantage, if he strained generosity to the uttermost, the citadel ofher heart must yield at last.

  He had the defect of his courage and his nature, a tendency to dothings after a flamboyant fashion. He knew that her act would plungehim in perils which he had not foreseen. If the preachers roused thePapists of Angers, if he arrived to find men's swords whetted for themassacre and the men themselves awaiting the signal, then if he didnot give that signal there would be trouble. There would be trouble ofthe kind in which the soul of Hannibal de Tavannes revelled, troubleabout the ancient cathedral and under the black walls of the Angevincastle, trouble amid which the hearts of common men would be as water.

  Then, when things seemed at their worst, he would reveal hisknowledge. Then, when forgiveness must seem impossible, he wouldforgive. With the flood of peril which she had unloosed rising roundthem, he would say, "Go!" to the man who had aimed at his life; hewould say to her, "I know, and I forgive!" That, that only, wouldfitly crown the policy on which he had decided from the first, thoughhe had not hoped to conduct it on lines so splendid as those which nowdazzled him.