Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  It drooped at each corner — it had seen much wear — and, while it almost hid his face, it revealed his grimy chin and mortar-stained shoulders. He turned to his companion.

  La Tribe’s face glowed as he looked. “It may do!” he cried. “It’s a chance! But you are right! It may do!”

  Tignonville dropped the ragged mattress, and tore off his coat; then he rent his breeches at the knee, so that they hung loose about his calves.

  “Do you the same!” he cried. “And quick, man, quick! Leave your boots! Once outside we must pass through the streets under these” — he took up his burden again and set it on his head— “until we reach a quiet part, and there we—”

  “Can hide! Or swim the river!” the minister said. He had followed his companion’s example, and now stood under a similar burden. With breeches rent and whitened, and his upper garments in no better case, he looked a sorry figure.

  Tignonville eyed him with satisfaction, and turned to the staircase.

  “Come,” he cried, “there is not a moment to be lost. At any minute they may enter our room and find it empty! You are ready? Then, not too softly, or it may rouse suspicion! And mumble something at the door.”

  He began himself to scold, and, muttering incoherently, stumbled down the staircase, the pallet on his head rustling against the wall on each side. Arrived at the door, he fumbled clumsily with the latch, and, when the door gave way, plumped out with an oath — as if the awkward burden he bore were the only thing on his mind. Badelon — he was on duty — stared at the apparition; but the next moment he sniffed the pallet, which was none of the freshest, and, turning up his nose, he retreated a pace. He had no suspicion; the men did not come from the part of the house where the prisoners lay, and he stood aside to let them pass. In a moment, staggering, and going a little unsteadily, as if they scarcely saw their way, they had passed by him, and were descending the staircase.

  So far well! Unfortunately, when they reached the foot of that flight they came on the main passage of the first-floor. It ran right and left, and Tignonville did not know which way he must turn to reach the lower staircase. Yet he dared not hesitate; in the passage, waiting about the doors, were four or five servants, and in the distance he caught sight of three men belonging to Tavannes’ company. At any moment, too, an upper servant might meet them, ask what they were doing, and detect the fraud. He turned at random, therefore — to the left as it chanced — and marched along bravely, until the very thing happened which he had feared. A man came from a room plump upon them, saw them, and held up his hands in horror.

  “What are you doing?” he cried in a rage and with an oath. “Who set you on this?”

  Tignonville’s tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. La Tribe from behind muttered something about the stable.

  “And time too!” the man said. “Faugh! But how come you this way? Are you drunk? Here!” He opened the door of a musty closet beside him, “Pitch them in here, do you hear? And take them down when it is dark. Faugh. I wonder you did not carry the things though her ladyship’s room at once! If my lord had been in and met you! Now then, do as I tell you! Are you drunk?”

  With a sullen air Tignonville threw in his mattress. La Tribe did the same. Fortunately the passage was ill-lighted, and there were many helpers and strange servants in the inn. The butler only thought them ill-looking fellows who knew no better.

  “Now be off!” he continued irascibly. “This is no place for your sort. Be off!” And, as they moved, “Coming! Coming!” he cried in answer to a distant summons; and he hurried away on the errand which their appearance had interrupted.

  Tignonville would have gone to work to recover the pallets, for the man had left the key in the door. But as he went to do so the butler looked back, and the two were obliged to make a pretence of following him. A moment, however, and he was gone; and Tignonville turned anew to regain them. A second time fortune was adverse; a door within a pace of him opened, a woman came out. She recoiled from the strange figure; her eyes met his. Unluckily the light from the room behind her fell on his face, and with a shrill cry she named him.

  One second and all had been lost, for the crowd of idlers at the other end of the passage had caught her cry, and were looking that way. With presence of mind Tignonville clapped his hand on her mouth, and, huddling her by force into the room, followed her, with La Tribe at his heels.

  It was a large room, in which seven or eight people, who had been at prayers when the cry startled them, were rising from their knees. The first thing they saw was Javette on the threshold, struggling in the grasp of a wild man, ragged and begrimed; they deemed the city risen and the massacre upon them. Carlat threw himself before his mistress, the Countess in her turn sheltered a young girl, who stood beside her and from whose face the last trace of colour had fled. Madame Carlat and a waiting-woman ran shrieking to the window; another instant and the alarm would have gone abroad.

  Tignonville’s voice stopped it. “Don’t you know me?” he cried, “Madame! you at least! Carlat! Are you all mad?”

  The words stayed them where they stood in an astonishment scarce less than their alarm. The Countess tried twice to speak; the third time —

  “Have you escaped?” she muttered.

  Tignonville nodded, his eyes bright with triumph. “So far,” he said. “But they may be on our heels at any moment! Where can we hide?”

  The Countess, her hand pressed to her side, looked at Javette.

  “The door, girl!” she whispered. “Lock it!”

  “Ay, lock it! And they can go by the back-stairs,” Madame Carlat answered, awaking suddenly to the situation. “Through my closet! Once in the yard they may pass out through the stables.”

  “Which way?” Tignonville asked impatiently. “Don’t stand looking at me, but—”

  “Through this door!” Madame Carlat answered, hurrying to it.

  He was following when the Countess stepped forward and interposed between him and the door.

  “Stay!” she cried; and there was not one who did not notice a new decision in her voice, a new dignity in her bearing. “Stay, Monsieur, we may be going too fast. To go out now and in that guise — may it not be to incur greater peril than you incur here? I feel sure that you are in no danger of your life at present. Therefore, why run the risk—”

  “In no danger, Madame!” he cried, interrupting her in astonishment. “Have you seen the gibbet in the Square? Do you call that no danger?”

  “It is not erected for you.”

  “No?”

  “No, Monsieur,” she answered firmly, “I swear it is not. And I know of reasons, urgent reasons, why you should not go. M. de Tavannes” — she named her husband nervously, as conscious of the weak spot— “before he rode abroad laid strict orders on all to keep within, since the smallest matter might kindle the city. Therefore, M. de Tignonville, I request, nay I entreat,” she continued with greater urgency, as she saw his gesture of denial, “you to stay here until he returns.”

  “And you, Madame, will answer for my life?”

  She faltered. For a moment, a moment only, her colour ebbed. What if she deceived herself? What if she surrendered her old lover to death? What if — but the doubt was of a moment only. Her duty was plain.

  “I will answer for it,” she said, with pale lips, “if you remain here. And I beg, I implore you — by the love you once had for me, M. de Tignonville,” she added desperately, seeing that he was about to refuse, “to remain here.”

  “Once!” he retorted, lashing himself into ignoble rage. “By the love I once had! Say, rather, the love I have, Madame — for I am no woman-weathercock to wed the winner, and hold or not hold, stay or go, as he commands! You, it seems,” he continued with a sneer, “have learned the wife’s lesson well! You would practise on me now, as you practised on me the other night when you stood between him and me! I yielded then, I spared him. And what did I get by it? Bonds and a prison! And what shall I get now? The same! No, Madame,” he co
ntinued bitterly, addressing himself as much to the Carlats and the others as to his old mistress. “I do not change! I loved! I love! I was going and I go! If death lay beyond that door” — and he pointed to it— “and life at his will were certain here, I would pass the threshold rather than take my life of him!” And, dragging La Tribe with him, with a passionate gesture he rushed by her, opened the door, and disappeared in the next room.

  The Countess took one pace forward, as if she would have followed him, as if she would have tried further persuasion. But as she moved a cry rooted her to the spot. A rush of feet and the babel of many voices filled the passage with a tide of sound, which drew rapidly nearer. The escape was known! Would the fugitives have time to slip out below?

  Some one knocked at the door, tried it, pushed and beat on it. But the Countess and all in the room had run to the windows and were looking out.

  If the two had not yet made their escape they must be taken. Yet no; as the Countess leaned from the window, first one dusty figure and then a second darted from a door below, and made for the nearest turning, out of the Place Ste.-Croix. Before they gained it, four men, of whom, Badelon, his grey locks flying, was first, dashed out in pursuit, and the street rang with cries of “Stop him! Seize him! Seize him!” Some one — one of the pursuers or another — to add to the alarm let off a musket, and in a moment, as if the report had been a signal, the Place was in a hubbub, people flocked into it with mysterious quickness, and from a neighbouring roof — whence, precisely, it was impossible to say — the crackling fire of a dozen arquebuses alarmed the city far and wide.

  Unfortunately, the fugitives had been baulked at the first turning. Making for a second, they found it choked, and, swerving, darted across the Place towards St.-Maurice, seeking to lose themselves in the gathering crowd. But the pursuers clung desperately to their skirts, overturning here a man and there a child; and then in a twinkling, Tignonville, as he ran round a booth, tripped over a peg and fell, and La Tribe stumbled over him and fell also. The four riders flung themselves fiercely on their prey, secured them, and began to drag them with oaths and curses towards the door of the inn.

  The Countess had seen all from her window; had held her breath while they ran, had drawn it sharply when they fell. Now, “They have them!” she muttered, a sob choking her, “they have them!” And she clasped her hands. If he had followed her advice! If he had only followed her advice!

  But the issue proved less certain than she deemed it. The crowd, which grew each moment, knew nothing of pursuers or pursued. On the contrary, a cry went up that the riders were Huguenots, and that the Huguenots were rising and slaying the Catholics; and as no story was too improbable for those days, and this was one constantly set about, first one stone flew, and then another, and another. A man with a staff darted forward and struck Badelon on the shoulder, two or three others pressed in and jostled the riders; and if three of Tavannes’ following had not run out on the instant and faced the mob with their pikes, and for a moment forced them to give back, the prisoners would have been rescued at the very door of the inn. As it was they were dragged in, and the gates were flung to and barred in the nick of time. Another moment, almost another second, and the mob had seized them. As it was, a hail of stones poured on the front of the inn, and amid the rising yells of the rabble there presently floated heavy and slow over the city the tolling of the great bell of St.-Maurice.

  CHAPTER XXX. SACRILEGE!

  M. de Montsoreau, Lieutenant-Governor of Saumur almost rose from his seat in his astonishment.

  “What! No letters?” he cried, a hand on either arm of the chair.

  The Magistrates stared, one and all. “No letters?” they muttered.

  And “No letters?” the Provost chimed in more faintly.

  Count Hannibal looked smiling round the Council table. He alone was unmoved.

  “No,” he said. “I bear none.”

  M. de Montsoreau, who, travel-stained and in his corselet, had the second place of honour at the foot of the table, frowned.

  “But, M. le Comte,” he said, “my instructions from Monsieur were to proceed to carry out his Majesty’s will in co-operation with you, who, I understood, would bring letters de par le Roi.”

  “I had letters,” Count Hannibal answered negligently. “But on the way I mislaid them.”

  “Mislaid them?” Montsoreau cried, unable to believe his ears; while the smaller dignitaries of the city, the magistrates and churchmen who sat on either side of the table, gaped open-mouthed. It was incredible! It was unbelievable! Mislay the King’s letters! Who had ever heard of such a thing?

  “Yes, I mislaid them. Lost them, if you like it better.”

  “But you jest!” the Lieutenant-Governor retorted, moving uneasily in his chair. He was a man more highly named for address than courage; and, like most men skilled in finesse, he was prone to suspect a trap. “You jest, surely, Monsieur! Men do not lose his Majesty’s letters, by the way.”

  “When they contain his Majesty’s will, no,” Tavannes answered, with a peculiar smile.

  “You imply, then?”

  Count Hannibal shrugged his shoulders, but had not answered when Bigot entered and handed him his sweetmeat box; he paused to open it and select a prune. He was long in selecting; but no change of countenance led any of those at the table to suspect that inside the lid of the box was a message — a scrap of paper informing him that Montsoreau had left fifty spears in the suburb without the Saumur gate, besides those whom he had brought openly into the town. Tavannes read the note slowly while he seemed to be choosing his fruit. And then —

  “Imply?” he answered. “I imply nothing, M. de Montsoreau.”

  “But—”

  “But that sometimes his Majesty finds it prudent to give orders which he does not mean to be carried out. There are things which start up before the eye,” Tavannes continued, negligently tapping the box on the table, “and there are things which do not; sometimes the latter are the more important. You, better than I, M. de Montsoreau, know that the King in the Gallery at the Louvre is one, and in his closet is another.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that being so—”

  “You do not mean to carry the letters into effect?”

  “Had I the letters, certainly, my friend. I should be bound by them. But I took good care to lose them,” Tavannes added naïvely. “I am no fool.”

  “Umph!”

  “However,” Count Hannibal continued, with an airy gesture, “that is my affair. If you, M. de Montsoreau, feel inclined, in spite of the absence of my letters, to carry yours into effect, by all means do so — after midnight of to-day.”

  M. de Montsoreau breathed hard. “And why,” he asked, half sulkily and half ponderously, “after midnight only, M. le Comte?”

  “Merely that I may be clear of all suspicion of having lot or part in the matter,” Count Hannibal answered pleasantly. “After midnight of to-night by all means do as you please. Until midnight, by your leave, we will be quiet.”

  The Lieutenant-Governor moved doubtfully in his chair, the fear — which Tavannes had shrewdly instilled into his mind — that he might be disowned if he carried out his instructions, struggling with his avarice and his self-importance. He was rather crafty than bold; and such things had been, he knew. Little by little, and while he sat gloomily debating, the notion of dealing with one or two and holding the body of the Huguenots to ransom — a notion which, in spite of everything, was to bear good fruit for Angers — began to form in his mind. The plan suited him: it left him free to face either way, and it would fill his pockets more genteelly than would open robbery. On the other hand, he would offend his brother and the fanatical party, with whom he commonly acted. They were looking to see him assert himself. They were looking to hear him declare himself. And —

  Harshly Count Hannibal’s voice broke in on his thoughts; harshly, a something sinister in its tone.

  “Where is your brother?” he said. And it was evide
nt that he had not noted his absence until then. “My lord’s Vicar of all people should be here!” he continued, leaning forward and looking round the table. His brow was stormy.

  Lescot squirmed under his eye; Thuriot turned pale and trembled. It was one of the canons of St.-Maurice, who at length took on himself to answer.

  “His lordship requested, M. le Comte,” he ventured, “that you would excuse him. His duties—”

  “Is he ill?”

  “He—”

  “Is he ill, sirrah?” Tavannes roared. And while all bowed before the lightning of his eye, no man at the table knew what had roused the sudden tempest. But Bigot knew, who stood by the door, and whose ear, keen as his master’s, had caught the distant report of a musket shot. “If he be not ill,” Tavannes continued, rising and looking round the table in search of signs of guilt, “and there be foul play here, and he the player, the Bishop’s own hand shall not save him! By Heaven it shall not! Nor yours!” he continued, looking fiercely at Montsoreau. “Nor your master’s!”

  The Lieutenant-Governor sprang to his feet. “M. le Comte,” he stammered, “I do not understand this language! Nor this heat, which may be real or not! All I say is, if there be foul play here—”

  “If!” Tavannes retorted. “At least, if there be, there be gibbets too! And I see necks!” he added, leaning forward. “Necks!” And then, with a look of flame, “Let no man leave this table until I return,” he cried, “or he will have to deal with me. Nay,” he continued, changing his tone abruptly, as the prudence, which never entirely left him — and perhaps the remembrance of the other’s fifty spearmen — sobered him in the midst of his rage, “I am hasty. I mean not you, M. de Montsoreau! Ride where you will; ride with me, if you will, and I will thank you. Only remember, until midnight Angers is mine!”

  He was still speaking when he moved from the table, and, leaving all staring after him, strode down the room. An instant he paused on the threshold and looked back; then he passed out, and clattered down the stone stairs. His horse and riders were waiting, but, his foot in the stirrup, he stayed for a word with Bigot.