Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  Count Hannibal watched them a moment, his harsh face bent down to them, his features plain in the glare of the torches. But when the cripple, raised on the others’ shoulders, and emboldened by his adversary’s inactivity, began to squeeze himself through the bars, Tavannes raised a pistol, which he had held unseen behind him, cocked it at leisure, and levelled it at the foul face which leered close to his. The dwarf saw the weapon and tried to retreat; but it was too late. A flash, a scream, and the wretch, shot through the throat, flung up his hands, and fell back into the arms of a lean man in black who had lent him his shoulder to ascend.

  For a few seconds the smoke of the pistol filled the window and the room. There was a cry that the Huguenots were escaping, that the Huguenots were resisting, that it was a plot; and some shouted to guard the back and some to watch the roof, and some to be gone. But when the fumes cleared away, the mob saw, with stupor, that all was as it had been. Count Hannibal stood where he had stood before, a grim smile on his lips.

  “Who comes next?” he cried in a tone of mockery. “I have more pistols!” And then with a sudden change to ferocity, “You dogs!” he went on. “You scum of a filthy city, sweepings of the Halles! Do you think to beard me? Do you think to frighten me or murder me? I am Tavannes, and this is my house, and were there a score of Huguenots in it, you should not touch one, nor harm a hair of his head! Begone, I say again, while you may! Seek women and children, and kill them. But not here!”

  For an instant the mingled scorn and brutality of his words silenced them. Then from the rear of the crowd came an answer — the roar of an arquebuse. The ball whizzed past Count Hannibal’s head, and, splashing the plaster from the wall within a pace of Tignonville, dropped to the ground.

  Tavannes laughed. “Bungler!” he cried. “Were you in my troop I would dip your trigger-finger in boiling oil to teach you to shoot! But you weary me, dogs. I must teach you a lesson, must I?” And he lifted a pistol and levelled it. The crowd did not know whether it was the one he had discharged or another, but they gave back with a sharp gasp. “I must teach you, must I?” he continued with scorn. “Here, Bigot, Badelon, drive me these blusterers! Rid the street of them! A Tavannes! A Tavannes!”

  Not by word or look had he before this betrayed that he had supports. But as he cried the name, a dozen men armed to the teeth, who had stood motionless under the Croix du Tiroir, fell in a line on the right flank of the crowd. The surprise for those nearest them was complete. With the flash of the pikes before their eyes, with the cold steel in fancy between their ribs, they fled every way, uncertain how many pursued, or if any pursuit there was. For a moment the mob, which a few minutes before had seemed so formidable that a regiment might have quailed before it, bade fair to be routed by a dozen pikes.

  And so, had all in the crowd been what he termed them, the rabble and sweepings of the streets, it would have been. But in the heart of it, and felt rather than seen, were a handful of another kidney; Sorbonne students and fierce-eyed priests, with three or four mounted archers, the nucleus that, moving through the streets, had drawn together this concourse. And these with threats and curse and gleaming eyes stood fast, even Tavannes’ dare-devils recoiling before the tonsure. The check thus caused allowed those who had budged a breathing space. They rallied behind the black robes, and began to stone the pikes; who in their turn withdrew until they formed two groups, standing on their defence, the one before the window, the other before the door.

  Count Hannibal had watched the attack and the check, as a man watches a play; with smiling interest. In the panic, the torches had been dropped or extinguished, and now between the house and the sullen crowd which hung back, yet grew moment by moment more dangerous, the daylight fell cold on the littered street and the cripple’s huddled form prone in the gutter. A priest raised on the shoulders of the lean man in black began to harangue the mob, and the dull roar of assent, the brandished arms which greeted his appeal, had their effect on Tavannes’ men. They looked to the window, and muttered among themselves. It was plain that they had no stomach for a fight with the Church, and were anxious for the order to withdraw.

  But Count Hannibal gave no order, and, much as his people feared the cowls, they feared him more. Meanwhile the speaker’s eloquence rose higher; he pointed with frenzied gestures to the house. The mob groaned, and suddenly a volley of stones fell among the pikemen, whose corselets rattled under the shower. The priest seized that moment. He sprang to the ground, and to the front. He caught up his robe and waved his hand, and the rabble, as if impelled by a single will, rolled forward in a huge one-fronted thundering wave, before which the two handfuls of pikemen — afraid to strike, yet afraid to fly — were swept away like straws upon the tide.

  But against the solid walls and oak-barred door of the house the wave beat, only to fall back again, a broken, seething mass of brandished arms and ravening faces. One point alone was vulnerable, the window, and there in the gap stood Tavannes. Quick as thought he fired two pistols into the crowd; then, while the smoke for a moment hid all, he whistled.

  Whether the signal was a summons to his men to fight their way back — as they were doing to the best of their power — or he had resources still unseen, was not to be known. For as the smoke began to rise, and while the rabble before the window, cowed by the fall of two of their number, were still pushing backward instead of forward, there rose behind them strange sounds — yells, and the clatter of hoofs, mingled with screams of alarm. A second, and into the loose skirts of the crowd came charging helter-skelter, pell-mell, a score of galloping, shrieking, cursing horsemen, attended by twice as many footmen, who clung to their stirrups or to the tails of the horses, and yelled and whooped, and struck in unison with the maddened riders.

  “On! on!” the foremost shrieked, rolling in his saddle, and foaming at the mouth. “Bleed in August, bleed in May! Kill!” And he fired a pistol among the rabble, who fled every way to escape his rearing, plunging charger.

  “Kill! Kill!” cried his followers, cutting the air with their swords, and rolling to and fro on their horses in drunken emulation. “Bleed in August, bleed in May!”

  “On! On!” cried the leader, as the crowd which beset the house fled every way before his reckless onset. “Bleed in August, bleed in May!”

  The rabble fled, but not so quickly but that one or two were ridden down, and this for an instant checked the riders. Before they could pass on —

  “Ohé!” cried Count Hannibal from his window. “Ohé!” with a shout of laughter, “ride over them, dear brother! Make me a clean street for my wedding!”

  Marshal Tavannes — for he, the hero of Jarnac, was the leader of this wild orgy — turned that way, and strove to rein in his horse.

  “What ails them?” he cried, as the maddened animal reared upright, its iron hoofs striking fire from the slippery pavement.

  “They are rearing like thy Bayard!” Count Hannibal answered. “Whip them, whip them for me! Tavannes! Tavannes!”

  “What? This canaille?”

  “Ay, that canaille!”

  “Who touches my brother, touches Tavannes!” the Marshal replied, and spurred his horse among the rabble, who had fled to the sides of the street and now strove hard to efface themselves against the walls. “Begone, dogs; begone!” he cried, still hunting them. And then, “You would bite, would you?” And snatching another pistol from his boot, he fired it among them, careless whom he hit. “Ha! ha! That stirs you, does it!” he continued, as the wretches fled headlong. “Who touches my brother, touches Tavannes! On! On!”

  Suddenly, from a doorway near at hand, a sombre figure darted into the roadway, caught the Marshal’s rein, and for a second checked his course. The priest — for a priest it was, Father Pezelay, the same who had addressed the mob — held up a warning hand.

  “Halt!” he cried, with burning eyes. “Halt, my lord! It is written, thou shalt not spare the Canaanitish woman. ’Tis not to spare the King has given command and a sword, but to kill! ’
Tis not to harbour, but to smite! To smite!”

  “Then smite I will!” the Marshal retorted, and with the butt of his pistol struck the zealot down. Then, with as much indifference as he would have treated a Huguenot, he spurred his horse over him, with a mad laugh at his jest. “Who touches my brother, touches Tavannes!” he yelled. “Touches Tavannes! On! On! Bleed in August, bleed in May!”

  “On!” shouted his followers, striking about them in the same desperate fashion. They were young nobles who had spent the night feasting at the Palace, and, drunk with wine and mad with excitement, had left the Louvre at daybreak to rouse the city. “A Jarnac! A Jarnac!” they cried, and some saluted Count Hannibal as they passed. And so, shouting and spurring and following their leader, they swept away down the now empty street, carrying terror and a flame wherever their horses bore them that morning.

  Tavannes, his hands on the ledge of the shattered window, leaned out laughing, and followed them with his eyes. A moment, and the mob was gone, the street was empty; and one by one, with sheepish faces, his pikemen emerged from the doorways and alleys in which they had taken refuge. They gathered about the three huddled forms which lay prone and still in the gutter: or, not three — two. For even as they approached them, one, the priest, rose slowly and giddily to his feet. He turned a face bleeding, lean, and relentless towards the window at which Tavannes stood. Solemnly, with the sign of the cross, and with uplifted hands, he cursed him in bed and at board, by day and by night, in walking, in riding, in standing, in the day of battle, and at the hour of death. The pikemen fell back appalled, and hid their eyes; and those who were of the north crossed themselves, and those who came from the south bent two fingers horse-shoe fashion. But Hannibal de Tavannes laughed; laughed in his moustache, his teeth showing, and bade them move that carrion to a distance, for it would smell when the sun was high. Then he turned his back on the street, and looked into the room.

  CHAPTER VII. IN THE AMPHITHEATRE.

  The movements of the women had overturned two of the candles; a third had guttered out. The three which still burned, contending pallidly with the daylight that each moment grew stronger, imparted to the scene the air of a debauch too long sustained. The disordered board, the wan faces of the servants cowering in their corner, Mademoiselle’s frozen look of misery, all increased the likeness; which a common exhaustion so far strengthened that when Tavannes turned from the window, and, flushed with his triumph, met the others’ eyes, his seemed the only vigour, and he the only man in the company. True, beneath the exhaustion, beneath the collapse of his victims, there burned passions, hatreds, repulsions, as fierce as the hidden fires of the volcano; but for the time they smouldered ash-choked and inert.

  He flung the discharged pistols on the table. “If yonder raven speak truth,” he said, “I am like to pay dearly for my wife, and have short time to call her wife. The more need, Mademoiselle, for speed, therefore. You know the old saying, ‘Short signing, long seisin’? Shall it be my priest, or your minister?”

  M. de Tignonville started forward. “She promised nothing!” he cried. And he struck his hand on the table.

  Count Hannibal smiled, his lip curling. “That,” he replied, “is for Mademoiselle to say.”

  “But if she says it? If she says it, Monsieur? What then?”

  Tavannes drew forth a comfit-box, such as it was the fashion of the day to carry, as men of a later time carried a snuff-box. He slowly chose a prune.

  “If she says it?” he answered. “Then M. de Tignonville has regained his sweetheart. And M. de Tavannes has lost his bride.”

  “You say so?”

  “Yes. But—”

  “But what?”

  “But she will not say it,” Tavannes replied coolly.

  “Why not?”

  “Why not?”

  “Yes, Monsieur, why not?” the younger man repeated, trembling.

  “Because, M. de Tignonville, it is not true.”

  “But she did not speak!” Tignonville retorted, with passion — the futile passion of the bird which beats its wings against a cage. “She did not speak. She could not promise, therefore.”

  Tavannes ate the prune slowly, seemed to give a little thought to its flavour, approved it a true Agen plum, and at last spoke.

  “It is not for you to say whether she promised,” he returned dryly, “nor for me. It is for Mademoiselle.”

  “You leave it to her?”

  “I leave it to her to say whether she promised.”

  “Then she must say No!” Tignonville cried in a tone of triumph and relief. “For she did not speak. Mademoiselle, listen!” he continued, turning with outstretched hands and appealing to her with passion. “Do you hear? Do you understand? You have but to speak to be free! You have but to say the word, and Monsieur lets you go! In God’s name, speak! Speak then, Clotilde! Oh!” with a gesture of despair, as she did not answer, but continued to sit stony and hopeless, looking straight before her, her hands picking convulsively at the fringe of her girdle. “She does not understand! Fright has stunned her! Be merciful, Monsieur. Give her time to recover, to know what she does. Fright has turned her brain.”

  Count Hannibal smiled. “I knew her father and her uncle,” he said, “and in their time the Vrillacs were not wont to be cowards. Monsieur forgets, too,” he continued with fine irony, “that he speaks of my betrothed.”

  “It is a lie!”

  Tavannes raised his eyebrows. “You are in my power,” he said. “For the rest, if it be a lie, Mademoiselle has but to say so.”

  “You hear him?” Tignonville cried. “Then speak, Mademoiselle! Clotilde, speak! Say you never spoke, you never promised him!”

  The young man’s voice quivered with indignation, with rage, with pain; but most, if the truth be told, with shame — the shame of a position strange and unparalleled. For in proportion as the fear of death instant and violent was lifted from him, reflection awoke, and the situation in which he stood took uglier shape. It was not so much love that cried to her, love that suffered, anguished by the prospect of love lost; as in the highest natures it might have been. Rather it was the man’s pride which suffered: the pride of a high spirit which found itself helpless between the hammer and the anvil, in a position so false that hereafter men might say of the unfortunate that he had bartered his mistress for his life. He had not! But he had perforce to stand by; he had to be passive under stress of circumstances, and by the sacrifice, if she consummated it, he would in fact be saved.

  There was the pinch. No wonder that he cried to her in a voice which roused even the servants from their lethargy of fear.

  “Say it!” he cried. “Say it, before it be too late. Say, you did not promise!”

  Slowly she turned her face to him. “I cannot,” she whispered; “I cannot. Go,” she continued, a spasm distorting her features. “Go, Monsieur. Leave me. It is over.”

  “What?” he exclaimed. “You promised him?”

  She bowed her head.

  “Then,” the young man cried, in a transport of resentment, “I will be no part of the price. See! There! And there!” He tore the white sleeve wholly from his arm, and, rending it in twain, flung it on the floor and trampled on it. “It shall never be said that I stood by and let you buy my life! I go into the street and I take my chance.” And he turned to the door.

  But Tavannes was before him. “No!” he said; “you will stay here, M. de Tignonville!” And he set his back against the door.

  The young man looked at him, his face convulsed with passion.

  “I shall stay here?” he cried. “And why, Monsieur? What is it to you if I choose to perish?”

  “Only this,” Tavannes retorted. “I am answerable to Mademoiselle now, in an hour I shall be answerable to my wife — for your life. Live, then, Monsieur; you have no choice. In a month you will thank me — and her.”

  “I am your prisoner?”

  “Precisely.”

  “And I must stay here — to be tortured?” Tigno
nville cried.

  Count Hannibal’s eyes sparkled. Sudden stormy changes, from indifference to ferocity, from irony to invective, were characteristic of the man.

  “Tortured!” he repeated grimly. “You talk of torture while Piles and Pardaillan, Teligny and Rochefoucauld lie dead in the street! While your cause sinks withered in a night, like a gourd! While your servants fall butchered, and France rises round you in a tide of blood! Bah!” — with a gesture of disdain— “you make me also talk, and I have no love for talk, and small time. Mademoiselle, you at least act and do not talk. By your leave I return in an hour, and I bring with me — shall it be my priest, or your minister?”

  She looked at him with the face of one who awakes slowly to the full horror, the full dread, of her position. For a moment she did not answer. Then —

  “A minister,” she muttered, her voice scarcely audible.

  He nodded. “A minister,” he said lightly. “Very well, if I can find one.” And walking to the shattered, gaping casement — through which the cool morning air blew into the room and gently stirred the hair of the unhappy girl — he said some words to the man on guard outside. Then he turned to the door, but on the threshold he paused, looked with a strange expression at the pair, and signed to Carlat and the servants to go out before him.

  “Up, and lie close above!” he growled. “Open a window or look out, and you will pay dearly for it! Do you hear? Up! Up! You, too, old crop-ears. What! would you?” — with a sudden glare as Carlat hesitated— “that is better! Mademoiselle, until my return.”

  He saw them all out, followed them, and closed the door on the two; who, left together, alone with the gaping window and the disordered feast, maintained a strange silence. The girl, gripping one hand in the other as if to quell her rising horror, sat looking before her, and seemed barely to breathe. The man, leaning against the wall at a little distance, bent his eyes, not on her, but on the floor, his face gloomy and distorted.