The Arm and the Darkness

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  The Cardinal was not taken aback at these manifestations of grief and hysteria and indignation. He was never more in possession of himself as when others lost self-control. He, therefore, assumed an expression of amazement and cold dignity.

  “Madame, it is evident that my enemies surround you, defame me to you. At all times, I serve the Throne. I serve France. Even my enemies cannot deny this.”

  He was delighted at the passion which enflamed the young Queen, and enhanced her beauty. He fixed his eye for a moment on her soft white breast, which appeared, in its swelling and panting upheaval, about to burst the confines of her low bodice. Never had she appeared so desirable to him, so voluptuous, and the veins in his thin and delicate temples swelled with lust.

  She cried out, striking her palms together: “Yes, Monseigneur, you have served France! But what is France to me?”

  She had hardly uttered these dangerous and impetuous words when she realized the enormity of them, and her fingers flew to her paling mouth in a gesture of complete terror. Over those fingers, her green eyes regarded him with a distended and affrighted expression.

  But he was evidently not disturbed by them. He gazed at her gravely, inclining his head as though he was considering her words. Then he said: “Your Majesty is distraught, for some mysterious reason, and not responsible for her unguarded words, which do not come from her heart. Remembering this, I have forgotten them. In the same spirit of forbearance, I receive Madame’s accusations.”

  But the young Queen was completely undone by her terror. She sank upon the divan. She shivered, pressing her fingers against each other. She was paler than her pearls. The Cardinal studied her with pleasure and satisfaction. Let her, then, fear him completely, understanding how deeply she was in his power. She would then be more amenable.

  It was only by a supreme effort that Anne was finally able to control her shiverings, her deathly fright. Praying silently and desperately, she forced herself to look upon the Cardinal with an assumption of her usual imperiousness and pride, though her lips were stiff and numb.

  “Your persecutions of me, Monseigneur, are forgiven, forgotten, for I am defenseless. I leave it to Monsieur’s conscience to punish him. However, Monsieur’s disregard of his Holiness’ desires cannot be forgiven. Monsieur’s conciliating of the vile Huguenots, his friendship for the enemies of our Church, is an offense in the face of God. Duty impelled me to ask you to this audience, in order to plead with you to consider, to reflect, before all is ruined.”

  Ah, thought the Cardinal, with contempt and cold anger, now it can be perceived.

  The young Queen’s own words had inspired her with courage. She lost her terror. She looked at him with bitter contempt and indignation.

  He seated himself calmly, without permission, and resting so, in his languid posture, one narrow white hand dangling negligently beside his knee, he was more formidable than when standing. He said, as one speaks to a child:

  “Madame must be well aware that all I do is for the good of France. The Huguenots are no less repugnant to me than they are to Madame. Nevertheless, the welfare, the unity and peace of France, depend upon a policy of—temporary—conciliation.” He paused, then added indulgently:

  “What has your Majesty to suggest?”

  When he spoke of France, a grimace of disgust and scorn, even hatred, had passed over the Queen’s lips, and she had raised her head with haughty disdain. She exclaimed: “What heed will Monsiegneur pay to my suggestions? What will he say when I urge him to ally himself with the Habsburgs, to avail himself of their pious assistance, and destroy, annihiliate, exile and burn all Protestants, which must always be the desire of a true servant of the Church? Surely,” she added, with a disdainful smile, “Monseigneur is not unaware that the policy of Rome must always be the complete destruction and extirpation of the Protestant heresy, to the last day and the last hour of the world, forever and forever, whenever or wherever it arises in the world?”

  “I am well aware of that, Madame,” he answered, gravely.

  She became increasingly excited. “How, then, can Monseigneur persist in his policy?” She smiled again, with acid scorn: “Surely Monseigneur knows that the welfare of his beloved France is jeopardized by the existence within it of this foul heresy?”

  The Cardinal was silent. His attitude, as he surveyed the Queen intently, was languid and negligent. But in those mysterious tigerish eyes a baleful glare was mounting. The Queen, caught up in her raptures of hatred and venom, did not see this.

  He thought to himself: In the hands of such dangerous fools, such weak soft creatures, such meddlers and haters, is the fate of the world often laid.

  All at once he despised himself. He, the uncrowned ruler of France, the most feared and hated man in Europe, beguiled his time in the perfumed chamber of a stupid and foolish woman, listening to her imbecilities, her treacherous, her malevolent plottings—a god pausing in his concerns in the affairs of men to listen to the shrewish chatterings of a sparrow! Yet, with an interested detachment, despite his self-detestations, he observed the light of fury and cruelty in those beautiful green eyes. He experienced that old thrill of mingled pain and loathing which always assailed him when discovering the meannesses and malices and foul hatreds of mankind.

  Then he said to himself: I must forget that she is a plotter, a tool of the Habsburgs. I am here because she is a woman, and I desire her, and dream of her naked in my arms.

  He smiled. “Madame’s concern for France touches a heart that has dedicated itself to the life of its country.”

  Her fierce look wavered, fell. She moistened lips suddenly dry. He remembered a letter he had intercepted, a letter she had written to her brother, that Catholic monster, Philip of Spain, in which she had urged him, in concert with the Habsburgs, to attack France, in order to exterminate the Protestants therein. And he knew that she was remembering, also.

  He spoke gently: “I am not yet convinced that the extirpation of the Protestants in France is necessary to the consolidation of Europe, to the safety of Holy Mother Church. I think, on the contrary, that an attack on the Huguenots at this time would precipitate an attack on France, by England. That must be avoided. Consider what would happen if we attacked La Rochelle: de Buckingham would send the promised aid to the rebels, and would precipitate civil war again.”

  As he said this, in the mildest of all voices, he watched her with rapier sharpness. She looked up eagerly, her eyes flashing with malicious triumph. She laughed aloud, and leaned towards him.

  “But Monsieur le Duc de Buckingham has promised me that no English aid shall go to the Rochellais in the event the heretics are attacked!”

  The blood rushed into the Cardinal’s head. So! the wanton was in truth in communication with her English lover, as he, the Cardinal, suspected! He was caught up in sheets of frustrated and jealous fire, in which he felt an impulse to seize her by the throat and strangle her. And then, in the midst of his almost insane fury, his diabolic jealousy, he felt an impulse to laugh aloud, derisively. This miserable woman, with the weapons of her shoulders, arms, hands, white breast and red lips, could seduce so easily a powerful Protestant Englishman, and make him forget his racial and religious allegiances! More worlds have been lost in a woman’s body than historians dream of, thought the Cardinal, and again experienced that pang of contempt and hatred which followed every fresh discovery of the venality and littleness of mankind.

  Nevertheless, through his cold politician’s mind ran an exultation. He had no longer to fear de Buckingham, and his English men-of-war. This Spanish harlot had rendered France a mighty service, unknown to herself, and one which would have filled her with wild grief and rage. At every time he had moved cautiously, because of de Buckingham, fearing the icy English eyes across the channel. Now, the Queen had rendered the English impotent, kept the fleet immobile in their harbors. And all this because her flesh was warm and snowy, and her lips sweet as a morning rose.

  He, the Cardinal, would move now, bo
ldly, knowing that England would not interfere, as usual, in the affairs of Europe. His terrible eye flamed with his exultation.

  But the Queen was again overcome by the most abysmal terror. She had again betrayed herself. She knew that the Cardinal had accused her, throughout all of France, of being the mistress of de Buckingham. For months she had defended herself desperately and valiantly, maintaining that she had never communicated with de Buckingham since his flight from France, that the relationship between them was only that of a courteous ambassador and a royal personage. Now, in her rashness, she had openly confessed her associations with the Englishman. She started to her feet with a faint cry, and her visage was that of one who is dying of terror.

  The Cardinal saw this. He rose, and approached the Queen. He took her cold and trembling hand. The hand twitched involuntarily in instinctive repulsion.

  “Madame,” he murmured, his eye falling to the swelling whiteness of her breast, “I cannot express my gratitude to you in adequate words. By your Majesty’s faith and devotion, by her dedication to the cause of France and the Church, she has paralyzed our greatest enemy. I am humble before this confidence; I cannot give word to my joy. I can only stand amazed before such sacrifice, such wisdom, such noble immolation.”

  She listened to these amazing words, her golden lashes lifting and falling rapidly, her senses swimming. Her heart was beating with agonized fear. She could hardly comprehend what she was hearing. But slowly, she perceived the fact that the Cardinal was not threatening her, not exulting over her, but was expressing gratitude, joy and triumph, and drawing her, with him, into a conspiracy. And she was assured, in her foolishness, that the conspiracy was against all Protestantism.

  The faintest smile of vanity, of uncertainty, of pride, crept across her pallid lips, which began to resume their usual bloom. She tilted her head, pursed her mouth, gave him a knowing and smirking glance. He watched these manifestations with inward derision.

  His lust for her increased. He knew that in his pleasure with her there would be an acrid mental satisfaction. There would be his triumph over a plotting fool. In conquering her, he would conquer, in symbolism, all those miserable creatures he hated and despised, all his intriguing enemies, all the squawling impotent wretches whom he detested, and who threatened France.

  He pressed closer to her, and now his senses became heated. He forgot everything in the nearness of her body, in the fragrance of her breath, in the warmness of her mouth. Still engrossed with her piteous conceit, she did not recoil from him. Her eyes were bemused in a reflective and triumphant mist.

  “Madame’s lightest wish is sacred to me,” he murmured. Between her breasts, he observed, was a small area of warm white satin, glistening tenderly. In the hollow of her throat was a delicate translucence, like mother-of-pearl. Her mouth was so near his own that their breath mingled.

  Some awareness of all this finally permeated the silly and helpless consciousness of that foolish woman. She became aware of his look, of the sweat upon his pale brow, of his closeness. She tried to recoil, paling again. But he held her by his eye and his hand.

  “Madame has only to command,” he whispered.

  She cried out, through trembling lips, her eyes dilating: “His Eminence is well aware of my desires!” But the cry was mechanical. She twisted her hand in his in a desperate effort to escape.

  “Madame’s desires shall be accomplished,” he said, with the utmost solemnity.

  At these words, she was still. She ceased her stragglings. She gazed at him in disbelief, as though she had not heard aright.

  “God will reward you, Monsieur,” she murmured.

  He sighed, deeply, still gazing into her flickering eyes.

  “And Madame?” he whispered.

  There was a silence in the room. The hand he held grew cold again. The lovely young cheeks paled, and blue lines sprang about the lips.

  For the first time, then, the poor indiscreet creature became aware of the enormity of the circumstances in which she was caught, into which she had been forced by her own shrill hatreds, unhappiness, frustrations, and despairs, and the machinations of priests who ignored the fragile sensibilities of a woman for the bloody end for which they indefatigably lived and worked.

  But she had been too long the feeble slave of an implacable organization, which sacrificed the heart’s blood of its victims with cold precision whenever those victims advanced its long and sinister designs. She could not revolt. In the very thought was mortal sin, and even while she quaked before the Cardinal, sought to escape from him, she was conscious of her guilt.

  Nevertheless, she made one final effort at pathetic escape.

  “The reward of God is not enough for Monsieur le Duc?” she said, in a dying voice, piteous in its fright and dread.

  He sighed again, profoundly.

  “Alas, Madame,” he said.

  He watched her inner struggles with a grave countenance but inward amusement. He saw how she quaked, how her white lids fell over her fluttering eyes.

  Her voice was fainting, hardly audible.

  “Monsieur will find I am not ungrateful.”

  He lifted her hand to his lips. It was like dead flesh, stony cold and rigid. Still bent over her hand, he whispered:

  “Madame will give the humblest of her servants some token, some remembrance?”

  “What do you wish?” she muttered.

  On her silver bodice, between her breasts, was a knot of blue ribbon, sewed with pearls. When she saw his fixed gaze upon this, she unfastened it with fingers that felt stiff and numb. She gave it to him. He pressed it ardently to his lips. Over its gleaming substance his eyes transfixed her with an evil and smiling look. “Tonight?” he breathed.

  When he had gone at last, she stood in the center of the chamber, too filled with horror to move. Finally, with a cry, she threw herself upon her divan and burst into the most dreadful sobs and tears.

  After a long while, her face drenched and discolored, she fell upon her knees, her lips moving in a soundless incantation of terror and despair. But slowly, as she prayed, her agony lessened. She began to smile, whitely. Before her dim eyes a vision opened: the streets of Paris, of every city in the world, running red with Protestant blood, and over these cities the shadowy figure of an avenging archangel, holding high a glittering and gigantic Cross.

  CHAPTER XX

  It seemed to Louis de Richepin, upon entering the Bois de Boulogne, that he had descended into a luminous world floating soundlessly under green still seas. Here the sunlight entered only as a circumambient emerald light, and the aisles formed by the trees were caverns brimming with dim translucent water. It was a hushed world, unreal, profoundly motionless, where strange creatures might be expected to swim out with long graceful movements from hidden caves, posturing a moment in half-unseen attitudes, then gliding away with a flash of a fin, a sparkle of gleaming scales, or only a faint movement that melted into the all-pervading green silence. The thick vegetation resembled undersea growths, so heavily weighted was it with cool watery immobility. Even the birds were still. No warm breath came from the earth, and when a sound did penetrate the smothering silence, it came as a muffled murmur like that made by a swimmer, who moved in a dream.

  As Louis penetrated deeper through the ocean-like caverns and passageways of the Bois, he slowly and completely lost his sense of identity. The coolness and heaviness, the radiant but subdued greenish light, the mysterious stillness, engulfed him. He did not feel the moist and spongy earth under his feet. He lost the imminence of his flesh, the pressure of his weariness, the lonely ache which haunted his every thought. The pathway he traversed descended deeper and deeper into the jade gloom, and the shadows blended into one dusky sanctuary of trance-like peace. His thoughts became diffused, formless, so that they floated away from him as upon the breast of a breathing pool, and he felt them go with a dreaming sense of release, as a drowning man releases his last feverish hold on a straw, and struggles no more.

  Now,
in the green mist, he saw a mermaid’s figure, whose flowing and voluminous garments were the same tint as the pervading light, poised lightly on a heap of black wide rocks. Her hair was golden in the floating gloom, streaming upon her delicate shoulders, and her face, neck and arms were white marble wavering in water, struck with feathers of drowned sunlight.

  A hundred times, since he had left the noisy and turbulent purlieus of the Palais-Cardinal, he had anticipated this moment when he would see Marguerite de Tremblant again, and pain, ecstasy, fear and dread had halted him as though he had been struck in the breast. A dozen times he had actually turned and retreated, before proceeding on his way. When he had gone on, he had been like a man, drugged and helpless, forced to move his body under the compulsion of a stronger force. He had even dumbly prayed that she would not be there, that in these long days she had become weary of waiting for him, that he would find nothing but emptiness and loneliness waiting for him on the great flat rocks. So, at last, it was with the passionate hope that she had not come that he had finally allowed himself to enter the Bois.

  But when he saw her upon those rocks, motionless, glimmering in the green and watery light of a world beneath the sea, he felt no shock of joy or dread. He moved towards her on an irresistible current, and there was nothing in him but the sweetest peace and the most exquisite rapture. Something whispered in his ear, hot and exigent, but he closed his hearing against it.