No wonder, then, that the courage on which I plumed myself sank low at sight of him; or that it was as much as I could do to mingle with the humility of my salute some touch of the SANG FROID of old acquaintanceship.
And perhaps that had been better left out. For it seemed that this man was without bowels. For a moment, while he stood looking at me, and before he spoke to me, I gave myself up for lost. There was a glint of cruel satisfaction in his eyes that warned me, before he opened his mouth, what he was going to say to me.
‘I could not have made a better catch, M. de Berault,’ he said, smiling villainously, while he gently smoothed the fur of a cat that had sprung on the table beside him. ‘An old offender, and an excellent example. I doubt it will not stop with you. But later, we will make you the warrant for flying at higher game.’
‘Monseigneur has handled a sword himself,’ I blurted out. The very room seemed to be growing darker, the air colder. I was never nearer fear in my life.
‘Yes?’ he said, smiling delicately. ‘And so — ?’
‘Will not be too hard on the failings of a poor gentleman.’
‘He shall suffer no more than a rich one,’ he replied suavely as he stroked the cat. ‘Enjoy that satisfaction, M. de Berault. Is that all?’
‘Once I was of service to your Eminence,’ I said desperately.
‘Payment has been made,’ he answered, ‘more than once. But for that I should not have seen you.’
‘The King’s face!’ I cried, snatching at the straw he seemed to hold out.
He laughed cynically, smoothly. His thin face, his dark moustache, and whitening hair, gave him an air of indescribable keenness.
‘I am not the King,’ he said. ‘Besides, I am told that you have killed as many as six men in duels. You owe the King, therefore, one life at least. You must pay it. There is no more to be said, M. de Berault,’ he continued coldly, turning away and beginning to collect some papers. ‘The law must take its course.’
I thought that he was about to nod to the lieutenant to withdraw me, and a chilling sweat broke out down my back. I saw the scaffold, I felt the cords. A moment, and it would be too late!
‘I have a favour to ask,’ I stammered desperately, ‘if your Eminence will give me a moment alone.’
‘To what end?’ he answered, turning and eyeing me with cold disfavour. ‘I know you — your past — all. It can do no good, my friend.’
‘No harm!’ I cried. ‘And I am a dying man, Monseigneur!’
‘That is true,’ he said thoughtfully. Still he seemed to hesitate; and my heart beat fast. At last he looked at the lieutenant. ‘You may leave us,’ he said shortly. ‘Now,’ he continued, when the officer had withdrawn and left us alone, ‘what is it? Say what you have to say quickly. And, above all, do not try to fool me, M. de Berault.’
But his piercing eyes so disconcerted me now that I had my chance, and was alone with him, that I could not find a word to say, and stood before him mute. I think this pleased him, for his face relaxed.
‘Well?’ he said at last. ‘Is that all?’
‘The man is not dead,’ I muttered.
He shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.
‘What of that?’ he said. ‘That was not what you wanted to say to me.’
‘Once I saved your Eminence’s life,’ I faltered miserably.
‘Admitted,’ he answered, in his thin, incisive voice. ‘You mentioned the fact before. On the other hand, you have taken six to my knowledge, M. de Berault. You have lived the life of a bully, a common bravo, a gamester. You, a man of family! For shame! Do you wonder that it has brought you to this! Yet on that one point I am willing to hear more,’ he added abruptly.
‘I might save your Eminence’s life again,’ I cried. It was a sudden inspiration.
‘You know something?’ he said quickly, fixing me with his eyes. ‘But no,’ he continued, shaking his head gently. ‘Pshaw! The trick is old. I have better spies than you, M. de Berault.’
‘But no better sword,’ I cried hoarsely. ‘No, not in all your guard!’
‘That is true,’ he said slowly. ‘That is true.’ To my surprise, he spoke in a tone of consideration; and he looked down at the floor. ‘Let me think, my friend,’ he continued.
He walked two or three times up and down the room, while I stood trembling. I confess it, trembling. The man whose pulses danger has no power to quicken, is seldom proof against suspense; and the sudden hope his words awakened in me so shook me that his figure as he trod lightly to and fro with the cat rubbing against his robe and turning time for time with him, wavered before my eyes. I grasped the table to steady myself. I had not admitted even in my own mind how darkly the shadow of Montfaucon and the gallows had fallen across me.
I had leisure to recover myself, for it was some time before he spoke. When he did, it was in a voice harsh, changed, imperative. ‘You have the reputation of a man faithful, at least, to his employer,’ he said. ‘Do not answer me. I say it is so. Well, I will trust you. I will give you one more chance — though it is a desperate one. Woe to you if you fail me! Do you know Cocheforet in Bearn? It is not far from Auch.’
‘No, your Eminence.’
‘Nor M. de Cocheforet?’
‘No, your Eminence.’
‘So much the better,’ he replied. ‘But you have heard of him. He has been engaged in every Gascon plot since the late King’s death, and gave more trouble last year in the Vivarais than any man twice his years. At present he is at Bosost in Spain, with other refugees, but I have learned that at frequent intervals he visits his wife at Cocheforet which is six leagues within the border. On one of these visits he must be arrested.’
‘That should be easy,’ I said.
The Cardinal looked at me. ‘Chut, man! what do you know about it?’ he answered bluntly. ‘It is whispered at Cocheforet if a soldier crosses the street at Auch. In the house are only two or three servants, but they have the countryside with them to a man, and they are a dangerous breed. A spark might kindle a fresh rising. The arrest, therefore, must be made secretly.’
I bowed.
‘One resolute man inside the house,’ the Cardinal continued, thoughtfully glancing at a paper which lay on the table, ‘with the help of two or three servants whom he could summon to his aid at will, might effect it. The question is, Will you be the man, my friend?’
I hesitated; then I bowed. What choice had I?
‘Nay, nay, speak out!’ he said sharply. ‘Yes or no, M. de Berault?’
‘Yes, your Eminence,’ I said reluctantly. Again, I say, what choice had I?
‘You will bring him to Paris, and alive. He knows things, and that is why I want him. You understand?’
‘I understand, Monseigneur,’ I answered.
‘You will get into the house as you can,’ he continued with energy. ‘For that you will need strategy, and good strategy. They suspect everybody. You must deceive them. If you fail to deceive them, or, deceiving them, are found out later, I do not think that you will trouble me again, or break the edict a second time. On the other hand, should you deceive me’ — he smiled still more subtly, but his voice sank to a purring note— ‘I will break you on the wheel like the ruined gamester you are!’
I met his look without quailing. ‘So be it!’ I said recklessly. ‘If I do not bring M. de Cocheforet to Paris, you may do that to me, and more also!’
‘It is a bargain!’ he answered slowly. ‘I think that you will be faithful. For money, here are a hundred crowns. That sum should suffice; but if you succeed you shall have twice as much more. That is all, I think. You understand?’
‘Yes, Monseigneur.’
‘Then why do you wait?’
‘The lieutenant?’ I said modestly.
The Cardinal laughed to himself, and sitting down wrote a word or two on a slip of paper. ‘Give him that,’ he said in high good-humour. ‘I fear, M. de Berault, you will never get your deserts — in this world!’
CHAPTER II. AT THE
GREEN PILLAR
Cocheforet lies in a billowy land of oak and beech and chestnuts — a land of deep, leafy bottoms and hills clothed with forest. Ridge and valley, glen and knoll, the woodland, sparsely peopled and more sparsely tilled, stretches away to the great snow mountains that here limit France. It swarms with game — with wolves and bears, deer and boars. To the end of his life I have heard that the great king loved this district, and would sigh, when years and State fell heavily on him, for the beech groves and box-covered hills of South Bearn. From the terraced steps of Auch you can see the forest roll away in light and shadow, vale and upland, to the base of the snow peaks; and, though I come from Brittany and love the smell of the salt wind, I have seen few sights that outdo this.
It was the second week of October, when I came to Cocheforet, and, dropping down from the last wooded brow, rode quietly into the place at evening. I was alone, and had ridden all day in a glory of ruddy beech leaves, through the silence of forest roads, across clear brooks and glades still green. I had seen more of the quiet and peace of the country than had been my share since boyhood, and for that reason, or because I had no great taste for the task before me — the task now so imminent — I felt a little hipped. In good faith, it was not a gentleman’s work that I was come to do, look at it how you might.
But beggars must not be choosers, and I knew that this feeling would not last. At the inn, in the presence of others, under the spur of necessity, or in the excitement of the chase, were that once begun, I should lose the feeling. When a man is young he seeks solitude, when he is middle-aged, he flies it and his thoughts. I made therefore for the ‘Green Pillar,’ a little inn in the village street, to which I had been directed at Auch, and, thundering on the door with the knob of my riding switch, railed at the man for keeping me waiting.
Here and there at hovel doors in the street — which was a mean, poor place, not worthy of the name — men and women looked out at me suspiciously. But I affected to ignore them; and at last the host came. He was a fair-haired man, half-Basque, half-Frenchman, and had scanned me well, I was sure, through some window or peephole; for when he came out he betrayed no surprise at the sight of a well-dressed stranger — a portent in that out-of-the-way village — but eyed me with a kind of sullen reserve.
‘I can lie here to-night, I suppose?’ I said, dropping the reins on the sorrel’s neck. The horse hung its head.
‘I don’t know,’ he answered stupidly.
I pointed to the green bough which topped a post that stood opposite the door.
‘This is an inn, is it not?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he answered slowly. ‘It is an inn. But—’
‘But you are full, or you are out of food, or your wife is ill, or something else is amiss,’ I answered peevishly. ‘All the same, I am going to lie here. So you must make the best of it, and your wife too — if you have one.’
He scratched his head, looking at me with an ugly glitter in his eyes. But he said nothing, and I dismounted.
‘Where can I stable my horse?’ I asked.
‘I’ll put it up,’ he answered sullenly, stepping forward and taking the reins in his hand.
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘But I go with you. A merciful man is merciful to his beast, and wherever I go I see my horse fed.’
‘It will be fed,’ he said shortly. And then he waited for me to go into the house. ‘The wife is in there,’ he continued, looking at me stubbornly.
‘IMPRIMIS — if you understand Latin, my friend,’ I answered, ‘the horse in the stall.’
He saw that it was no good, turned the sorrel slowly round, and began to lead it across the village street. There was a shed behind the inn, which I had already marked, and taken for the stable, I was surprised when I found that he was not going there, but I made no remark, and in a few minutes saw the horse made comfortable in a hovel which seemed to belong to a neighbour.
This done, the man led the way back to the inn, carrying my valise.
‘You have no other guests?’ I said, with a casual air. I knew that he was watching me closely.
‘No,’ he answered.
‘This is not much in the way to anywhere, I suppose?’
‘No.’
That was so evident, that I never saw a more retired place. The hanging woods, rising steeply to a great height, so shut the valley in that I was puzzled to think how a man could leave it save by the road I had come. The cottages, which were no more than mean, small huts, ran in a straggling double line, with many gaps — through fallen trees and ill-cleared meadows. Among them a noisy brook ran in and out, and the inhabitants — charcoal-burners, or swine-herds, or poor devils of the like class, were no better than their dwellings. I looked in vain for the Chateau. It was not to be seen, and I dared not ask for it.
The man led me into the common room of the tavern — a low-roofed, poor place, lacking a chimney or glazed windows, and grimy with smoke and use. The fire — a great half-burned tree — smouldered on a stone hearth, raised a foot from the floor. A huge black pot simmered over it, and beside one window lounged a country fellow talking with the goodwife. In the dusk I could not see his face, but I gave the woman a word, and sat down to wait for my supper.
She seemed more silent than the common run of her kind; but this might be because her husband was present. While she moved about getting my meal, he took his place against the door-post and fell to staring at me so persistently that I felt by no means at my ease. He was a tall, strong fellow, with a shaggy moustache and brown beard, cut in the mode Henri Quatre; and on the subject of that king — a safe one, I knew, with a Bearnais — and on that alone, I found it possible to make him talk. Even then there was a suspicious gleam in his eyes that bade me abstain from questions; so that as the darkness deepened behind him, and the firelight played more and more strongly on his features, and I thought of the leagues of woodland that lay between this remote valley and Auch, I recalled the Cardinal’s warning that if I failed in my attempt I should be little likely to trouble Paris again.
The lout by the window paid no attention to me; nor I to him, when I had once satisfied myself that he was really what he seemed to be. But by-and-by two or three men — rough, uncouth fellows — dropped in to reinforce the landlord, and they, too seemed to have no other business than to sit in silence looking at me, or now and again to exchange a word in a PATOIS of their own. By the time my supper was ready, the knaves numbered six in all; and, as they were armed to a man with huge Spanish knives, and made it clear that they resented my presence in their dull rustic fashion — every rustic is suspicious — I began to think that, unwittingly, I had put my head into a wasps’ nest.
Nevertheless, I ate and drank with apparent appetite; but little that passed within the circle of light cast by the smoky lamp escaped me. I watched the men’s looks and gestures at least as sharply as they watched mine; and all the time I was racking my wits for some mode of disarming their suspicions, or failing that, of learning something more of the position, which far exceeded in difficulty and danger anything that I had expected. The whole valley, it would seem, was on the look-out to protect my man!
I had purposely brought with me from Auch a couple of bottles of choice Armagnac; and these had been carried into the house with my saddle bags. I took one out now and opened it and carelessly offered a dram of the spirit to the landlord. He took it. As he drank it, I saw his face flush; he handed back the cup reluctantly, and on that hint I offered him another, The strong spirit was already beginning to work, and he accepted, and in a few minutes began to talk more freely and with less of the constraint which had before marked us all. Still, his tongue ran chiefly on questions — he would know this, he would learn that; but even this was a welcome change. I told him openly whence I had come, by what road, how long I had stayed in Auch, and where; and so far I satisfied his curiosity. Only, when I came to the subject of my visit to Cocheforet I kept a mysterious silence, hinting darkly at business in Spain and friends across the borde
r, and this and that; in this way giving the peasants to understand, if they pleased, that I was in the same interest as their exiled master.
They took the bait, winked at one another, and began to look at me in a more friendly way — the landlord foremost. But when I had led them so far, I dared go no farther, lest I should commit myself and be found out. I stopped, therefore, and, harking back to general subjects, chanced to compare my province with theirs. The landlord, now become almost talkative, was not slow to take up this challenge; and it presently led to my acquiring a curious piece of knowledge. He was boasting of his great snow mountains, the forests that propped them, the bears that roamed in them, the izards that loved the ice, and the boars that fed on the oak mast.
‘Well,’ I said, quite by chance, ‘we have not these things, it is true. But we have things in the north you have not. We have tens of thousands of good horses — not such ponies as you breed here. At the horse fair at Fecamp my sorrel would be lost in the crowd. Here in the south you will not meet his match in a long day’s journey.’
‘Do not make too sure of that,’ the man replied, his eyes bright with triumph and the dram. ‘What would you say if I showed you a better — in my own stable?’
I saw that his words sent a kind of thrill through his other hearers, and that such of them as understood for two or three of them talked their PATOIS only — looked at him angrily; and in a twinkling I began to comprehend. But I affected dullness, and laughed in scorn.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 166