For a time he hurried on, thinking only of escape. But when he had covered a mile or two, and escape seemed probable, there began to mingle with his thankfulness a bitter — a something which grew more bitter with each moment. Why had he fled and left the work undone? Why had he given way to unworthy fear, when the letters were within his grasp? True, if he had lingered a few seconds longer, he would have failed to make good his escape; but what of that if in those seconds he had destroyed the letters, he had saved Angers, he had saved his brethren? Alas! he had played the coward. The terror of Tavannes’ voice had unmanned him. He had saved himself and left the flock to perish; he, whom God had set apart by many and great signs for this work!
He had commonly courage enough. He could have died at the stake for his convictions. But he had not the presence of mind which is proof against a shock, nor the cool judgment which, in the face of death, sees to the end of two roads. He was no coward, but now he deemed himself one, and in an agony of remorse he flung himself on his face in the long grass. He had known trials and temptations, but hitherto he had held himself erect; now, like Peter, he had betrayed his Lord.
He lay an hour groaning in the misery of his heart, and then he fell on the text “Thou art Peter, and on this rock—” and he sat up. Peter had betrayed his trust through cowardice — as he had. But Peter had not been held unworthy. Might it not be so with him? He rose to his feet, a new light in his eyes. He would return! He would return, and at all costs, even at the cost of surrendering himself, he would obtain access to the letters. And then — not the fear of Count Hannibal, not the fear of instant death, should turn him from his duty.
He had cast himself down in a woodland glade which lay near the path along which he had ridden that morning. But the mental conflict from which he rose had shaken him so violently that he could not recall the side on which he had entered the clearing, and he turned himself about, endeavouring to remember. At that moment the light jingle of a bridle struck his ear; he caught through the green bushes the flash and sparkle of harness. They had tracked him then, they were here! So had he clear proof that this second chance was to be his. In a happy fervour he stood forward where the pursuers could not fail to see him.
Or so he thought. Yet the first horseman, riding carelessly with his face averted and his feet dangling, would have gone by and seen nothing if his horse, more watchful, had not shied. The man turned then; and for a moment the two stared at one another between the pricked ears of the horse. At last —
“M. de Tignonville!” the minister ejaculated.
“La Tribe!”
“It is truly you?”
“Well — I think so,” the young man answered.
The minister lifted up his eyes and seemed to call the trees and the clouds and the birds to witness.
“Now,” he cried, “I know that I am chosen! And that we were instruments to do this thing from the day when the hen saved us in the haycart in Paris! Now I know that all is forgiven and all is ordained, and that the faithful of Angers shall to-morrow live and not die!” And with a face radiant, yet solemn, he walked to the young man’s stirrup.
An instant Tignonville looked sharply before him. “How far ahead are they?” he asked. His tone, hard and matter-of-fact, was little in harmony with the other’s enthusiasm.
“They are resting a league before you, at the ferry. You are in pursuit of them?”
“Yes.”
“Not alone?”
“No.” The young man’s look as he spoke was grim. “I have five behind me — of your kidney, M. la Tribe. They are from the Arsenal. They have lost one his wife, and one his son. The three others—”
“Yes?”
“Sweethearts,” Tignonville answered dryly. And he cast a singular look at the minister.
But La Tribe’s mind was so full of one matter, he could think only of that.
“How did you hear of the letters?” he asked.
“The letters?”
“Yes.”
“I do not know what you mean.”
La Tribe stared. “Then why are you following him?” he asked.
“Why?” Tignonville echoed, a look of hate darkening his face. “Do you ask why we follow—” But on the name he seemed to choke and was silent.
By this time his men had come up, and one answered for him.
“Why are we following Hannibal de Tavannes?” he said sternly. “To do to him as he has done to us! To rob him as he has robbed us — of more than gold! To kill him as he has killed ours, foully and by surprise! In his bed if we can! In the arms of his wife if God wills it!”
The speaker’s face was haggard from brooding and lack of sleep, but his eyes glowed and burned, as his fellows growled assent.
“’Tis simple why we follow,” a second put in. “Is there a man of our faith who will not, when he hears the tale, rise up and stab the nearest of this black brood — though it be his brother? If so, God’s curse on him!”
“Amen! Amen!”
“So, and so only,” cried the first, “shall there be faith in our land! And our children, our little maids, shall lie safe in their beds!”
“Amen! Amen!”
The speaker’s chin sank on his breast, and with his last word the light died out of his eyes. La Tribe looked at him curiously, then at the others. Last of all at Tignonville, on whose face he fancied that he surprised a faint smile. Yet Tignonville’s tone when he spoke was grave enough.
“You have heard,” he said. “Do you blame us?”
“I cannot,” the minister answered, shivering. “I cannot.” He had been for a while beyond the range of these feelings; and in the greenwood, under God’s heaven, with the sunshine about him, they jarred on him. Yet he could not blame men who had suffered as these had suffered; who were maddened, as these were maddened, by the gravest wrongs which it is possible for one man to inflict on another. “I dare not,” he continued sorrowfully. “But in God’s name I offer you a higher and a nobler errand.”
“We need none,” Tignonville muttered impatiently.
“Yet many others need you,” La Tribe answered in a tone of rebuke. “You are not aware that the man you follow bears a packet from the King for the hands of the magistrates of Angers?”
“Ha! Does he?”
“Bidding them do at Angers as his Majesty has done in Paris?”
The men broke into cries of execration. “But he shall not see Angers!” they swore. “The blood that he has shed shall choke him by the way! And as he would do to others it shall be done to him.”
La Tribe shuddered as he listened, as he looked. Try as he would, the thirst of these men for vengeance appalled him.
“How?” he said. “He has a score and more with him and you are only six.”
“Seven now,” Tignonville answered with a smile.
“True, but—”
“And he lies to-night at La Flèche? That is so?”
“It was his intention this morning.”
“At the old King’s Inn at the meeting of the great roads?”
“It was mentioned,” La Tribe admitted, with a reluctance he did not comprehend. “But if the night be fair he is as like as not to lie in the fields.”
One of the men pointed to the sky. A dark bank of cloud fresh risen from the ocean, and big with tempest, hung low in the west.
“See! God will deliver him into our hands!” he cried.
Tignonville nodded. “If he lie there,” he said, “He will.” And then to one of his followers, as he dismounted, “Do you ride on,” he said, “and stand guard that we be not surprised. And do you, Perrot, tell Monsieur. Perrot here, as God wills it,” he added, with the faint smile which did not escape the minister’s eye, “married his wife from the great inn at La Flèche, and he knows the place.”
“None better,” the man growled. He was a sullen, brooding knave, whose eyes when he looked up surprised by their savage fire.
La Tribe shook his head. “I know it, too,” he said. “’Ti
s strong as a fortress, with a walled court, and all the windows look inwards. The gates are closed an hour after sunset, no matter who is without. If you think, M. de Tignonville, to take him there—”
“Patience, Monsieur, you have not heard me,” Perrot interposed. “I know it after another fashion. Do you remember a rill of water which runs through the great yard and the stables?”
La Tribe nodded.
“Grated with iron at either end and no passage for so much as a dog? You do? Well, Monsieur, I have hunted rats there, and where the water passes under the wall is a culvert, a man’s height in length. In it is a stone, one of those which frame the grating at the entrance, which a strong man can remove — and the man is in!”
“Ay, in! But where?” La Tribe asked, his eyebrows drawn together.
“Well said, Monsieur, where?” Perrot rejoined in a tone of triumph. “There lies the point. In the stables, where will be sleeping men, and a snorer on every truss? No, but in a fairway between two stables where the water at its entrance runs clear in a stone channel; a channel deepened in one place that they may draw for the chambers above with a rope and a bucket. The rooms above are the best in the house, four in one row, opening all on the gallery; which was uncovered, in the common fashion until Queen-Mother Jezebel, passing that way to Nantes, two years back, found the chambers draughty; and that end of the gallery was closed in against her return. Now, Monsieur, he and his Madame will lie there; and he will feel safe, for there is but one way to those four rooms — through the door which shuts off the covered gallery from the open part. But—” he glanced up an instant and La Tribe caught the smouldering fire in his eyes— “we shall not go in by the door.”
“The bucket rises through a trap?”
“In the gallery? To be sure, monsieur. In the corner beyond the fourth door. There shall he fall into the pit which he dug for others, and the evil that he planned rebound on his own head!”
La Tribe was silent.
“What think you of it?” Tignonville asked.
“That it is cleverly planned,” the minister answered.
“No more than that?”
“No more until I have eaten.”
“Get him something!” Tignonville replied in a surly tone. “And we may as well eat, ourselves. Lead the horses into the wood. And do you, Perrot, call Tuez-les-Moines, who is forward. Two hours’ riding should bring us to La Flèche. We need not leave here, therefore, until the sun is low. To dinner! To dinner!”
Probably he did not feel the indifference he affected, for his face as he ate grew darker, and from time to time he shot a glance, barbed with suspicion, at the minister. La Tribe on his side remained silent, although the men ate apart. He was in doubt, indeed, as to his own feelings. His instinct and his reason were at odds. Through all, however, a single purpose, the rescue of Angers, held good, and gradually other things fell into their places. When the meal was at an end, and Tignonville challenged him, he was ready.
“Your enthusiasm seems to have waned,” the younger man said with a sneer, “since we met, monsieur! May I ask now if you find any fault with the plan?”
“With the plan, none.”
“If it was Providence brought us together, was it not Providence furnished me with Perrot who knows La Flèche? If it was Providence brought the danger of the faithful in Angers to your knowledge, was it not Providence set us on the road — without whom you had been powerless?”
“I believe it!”
“Then, in His name, what is the matter?” Tignonville rejoined with a passion of which the other’s manner seemed an inadequate cause. “What will you! What is it?”
“I would take your place,” La Tribe answered quietly.
“My place?”
“Yes.”
“What, are we too many?”
“We are enough without you, M. Tignonville,” the minister answered. “These men, who have wrongs to avenge, God will justify them.”
Tignonville’s eyes sparkled with anger. “And have I no wrongs to avenge?” he cried. “Is it nothing to lose my mistress, to be robbed of my wife, to see the woman I love dragged off to be a slave and a toy? Are these no wrongs?”
“He spared your life, if he did not save it,” the minister said solemnly. “And hers. And her servants.”
“To suit himself.”
La Tribe spread out his hands.
“To suit himself! And for that you wish him to go free?” Tignonville cried in a voice half-choked with rage. “Do you know that this man, and this man alone, stood forth in the great Hall of the Louvre, and when even the King flinched, justified the murder of our people? After that is he to go free?”
“At your hands,” La Tribe answered quietly. “You alone of our people must not pursue him.” He would have added more, but Tignonville would not listen.
Brooding on his wrongs behind the wall of the Arsenal, he had let hatred eat away his more generous instincts. Vain and conceited, he fancied that the world laughed at the poor figure he had cut; and the wound in his vanity festered until nothing would serve but to see the downfall of his enemy. Instant pursuit, instant vengeance — only these, he fancied, could restore him in his fellows’ eyes.
In his heart he knew what would become him better. But vanity is a potent motive: and his conscience, even when supported by La Tribe, struggled but weakly. From neither would he hear more.
“You have travelled with him, until you side with him!” he cried violently. “Have a care, monsieur, have a care, lest we think you papist!” And walking over to the men, he bade them saddle; adding a sour word which turned their eyes, in no friendly gaze, on the minister.
After that La Tribe said no more. Of what use would it have been?
But as darkness came on and cloaked the little troop, and the storm which the men had foreseen began to rumble in the west, his distaste for the business waxed. The summer lightning which presently began to play across the sky revealed not only the broad gleaming stream, between which and a wooded hill their road ran, but the faces of his companions; and these, in their turn, shed a grisly light on the bloody enterprise towards which they were set. Nervous and ill at ease, the minister’s mind dwelt on the stages of that enterprise: the stealthy entrance through the waterway, the ascent through the trap, the surprise, the slaughter in the sleeping-chamber. And either because he had lived for days in the victim’s company, or was swayed by the arguments he had addressed to another, the prospect shook his soul.
In vain he told himself that this was the oppressor; he saw only the man, fresh roused from sleep, with the horror of impending dissolution in his eyes. And when the rider, behind whom he sat, pointed to a faint spark of light, at no great distance before them, and whispered that it was St. Agnes’s Chapel, hard by the inn, he could have cried with the best Catholic of them all, “Inter pontem et fontem, Domine!” Nay, some such words did pass his lips.
For the man before him turned halfway in his saddle. “What?” he asked.
But the Huguenot did not explain.
CHAPTER XXIV. AT THE KING’S INN.
The Countess sat up in the darkness of the chamber. She had writhed since noon under the stings of remorse; she could bear them no longer. The slow declension of the day, the evening light, the signs of coming tempest which had driven her company to the shelter of the inn at the crossroads, all had racked her, by reminding her that the hours were flying, and that soon the fault she had committed would be irreparable. One impulsive attempt to redeem it she had made; but it had failed, and, by rendering her suspect, had made reparation more difficult. Still, by daylight it had seemed possible to rest content with the trial made; not so now, when night had fallen, and the cries of little children and the haggard eyes of mothers peopled the darkness of her chamber. She sat up, and listened with throbbing temples.
To shut out the lightning which played at intervals across the heavens, Madame St. Lo, who shared the room, had covered the window with a cloak; and the place was dark. To ex
clude the dull roll of the thunder was less easy, for the night was oppressively hot, and behind the cloak the casement was open. Gradually, too, another sound, the hissing fall of heavy rain, began to make itself heard, and to mingle with the regular breathing which proved that Madame St. Lo slept.
Assured of this fact, the Countess presently heaved a sigh, and slipped from the bed. She groped in the darkness for her cloak, found it, and donned it over her night gear. Then, taking her bearings by her bed, which stood with its head to the window and its foot to the entrance, she felt her way across the floor to the door, and after passing her hands a dozen times over every part of it, she found the latch, and raised it. The door creaked, as she pulled it open, and she stood arrested; but the sound went no farther, for the roofed gallery outside, which looked by two windows on the courtyard, was full of outdoor noises, the rushing of rain and the running of spouts and eaves. One of the windows stood wide, admitting the rain and wind, and as she paused, holding the door open, the draught blew the cloak from her. She stepped out quickly and shut the door behind her. On her left was the blind end of the passage; she turned to the right. She took one step into the darkness and stood motionless. Beside her, within a few feet of her, some one had moved, with a dull sound as of a boot on wood; a sound so near her that she held her breath, and pressed herself against the wall.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 388