Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  “A little bird whispered to me as I came through the streets,” — it was the stranger who spoke— “that Mayenne and his riders would be in town to-morrow. Then it seems to me that our friends of the Sorbonne will not have matters altogether their own way — to wreck or to spare!”

  The Sorbonne was the Theological College of Paris; at this time it was the headquarters of the extreme Leaguers and the Sixteen. Mayenne and D’Aumale, the Guise princes, more than once found it necessary to check the excesses of the party.

  Marie Portail looked for the first time at the speaker. He sat on the edge of the chest, carelessly swinging one knee over the other; a man of middle height, neither tall nor short, with well-bronzed cheeks, a forehead broad and white, and an aquiline nose. He wore a beard and moustaches, and his chin jutted out. His eyes were keen, but good-humoured. Though spare he was sinewy; and an iron-hilted sword propped against his thigh seemed made for use rather than show. The upper part of his dress was of brown cloth, the lower of leather. A weather-stained cloak, which he had taken off, lay on the chest beside him.

  “You are a man!” cried Marie, her eyes leaving him again. “But as for these — —”

  “Stay, mistress!” the clerk broke in. “Your brother does but collect himself. If the Duke of Mayenne returns to-morrow, as our friend here says is likely — and I have heard the same myself — he will keep his men in better order. That is true. And we might risk it if the watch would leave us a clear street.”

  Felix nodded sullenly. “Shut the door,” he said to his sister, the deep gloom on his countenance in sharp contrast with the excitement she betrayed. “There is no need to let the neighbours see us.”

  This time she obeyed him. Susanne too crept from her skirts, and threw herself on her knees, hiding her face on a chair. “Ay,” said Marie, looking down at her with the first expression of tenderness the stranger had noted in her. “Let her weep. Let children weep. But let men work.”

  “We want a ladder,” the clerk said, in a low voice. “And the longest we have is full three feet short.”

  “That is just half a man,” remarked he who sat on the chest.

  “What mean you?” Felix asked wonderingly.

  “What I said.”

  “But there is nothing on which we can rest the ladder,” the clerk urged.

  “Then that is a whole man,” quoth the stranger, curtly. “Perhaps two. I told you you would have need of me.” He looked from one to the other with a smile — a careless, reckless, self-contented smile.

  “You are a soldier,” said Marie. And abruptly she fixed her eyes upon him.

  “At times,” he replied, shrugging his shoulders.

  “For which side?”

  He shook his head. “For my own,” he answered naïvely.

  “A soldier of fortune?”

  “At your service, mistress; now and ever.”

  The clerk struck in with impatience. “If we are to do this,” he said, “we had better set about it. I will fetch the ladder.”

  He went out, and the other men followed more slowly down the stairs; leaving Marie still standing gazing into the darkness of the front room — she had opened the door again — like one in a trance. Some odd trait in the soldier led him, as he passed out, to lay his hand on the hair of the kneeling child with a movement infinitely tender; infinitely at variance with the harsh clatter with which his sword next moment rang against the stairs as he descended.

  The three men were going to do that which two for certain, and all perhaps, knew to be perilous. One went to it in gloom, reluctance and anger, as well as with sorrow at his heart. One bustled about nervously, and looked often behind him as if to see Marie’s pale face at the window. And one strode out as to a ball, glancing up and down the dark lane with an air of enjoyment, which not even the grim nature of his task could suppress. The body was hanging from a bar which crossed the street at a considerable height, and served as a stay between the gables of two opposite houses, of which one was two doors only from the unhappy Portail’s. The mob, with a barbarity very common in those days, had hung him on his own threshold.

  The street, as the three moved into it, seemed empty and still. But it was impossible to say how long it would remain so. Yet the soldier loitered, staring about him, as one remembering things. “Did not the Admiral live in this street?” he inquired.

  “De Coligny? No. Round the corner in the Rue de Béthisy,” replied the clerk, brusquely. “But see! The ladder will not reach the bar — no, not by four feet.”

  “Set it against the wall then — thus,” said the soldier, and having done it himself, he mounted a few steps. Then he seemed to bethink himself. He jumped down again. “No,” he exclaimed, peering sharply into the faces of one and the other, “I do not know you. If any one comes, my friends, and you leave the foot of the ladder, I shall be taken like a bird on a limed twig. Do you ascend, Monsieur Felix.”

  The young man drew back. He was not without courage, or experience of rough scenes. But the Louvre was close at hand, almost within earshot on one side, the Châtelet was scarcely farther off on the other; and both swarmed with soldiers and the armed scourings of the streets. At any moment a troop of these might pass; and should they detect any one interfering with King Mob’s handiwork, he would certainly dangle in a few minutes from that same handy lamp-iron. Felix knew this, and stood at gaze. “I do not know you either,” he muttered irresolutely, his hand still on the ladder.

  A smile of surprising humour played on the soldier’s face. “Nay, but you knew him!” he retorted, pointing upwards with his hand. “Trust me, young sir,” he added significantly, “I am less inclined to mount now — than I was before.”

  The clerk intervened before Felix could resent the insult. “Steady,” he said; “I will go up and do it.”

  “Not so!” Felix rejoined, pushing him aside in turn. And he ran up the ladder. But near the top he paused, and began to descend again. “I have no knife,” he said shamefacedly.

  “Pshaw! Let me come!” cried the stranger. “I see you are both good comrades. I trust you. Besides, I am more used to this ladder work than you are, and time is everything.”

  He ran up as he spoke, and, standing on the highest round but one, he grasped the bar above his head, and swung himself lightly up, so as to gain a seat on it. With more caution he wormed himself along it until he reached the rope. Fortunately there was a long coil of this about the bar; and warning his companions in a whisper, he carefully, and with such reverence as the time and place allowed, let down the body to them. They received it in their arms; and had just loosened the noose from the neck when an outburst of voices and the tramp of footsteps at the nearer end of the street surprised them. For an instant the two stood in the gloom, breathless, stricken still, confounded. Then with a single impulse they lifted the body between them, and huddled blindly towards the door of the Portails’ house. It opened at their touch, they stumbled in, and it fell to behind them. The foremost of the armed watch had been within ten paces of them. The escape was narrow.

  Yet they had escaped. But what next? What of their comrade? The moment the door was closed behind them, one at least would have rushed out again, ay, to certain death, so strongly had the soldier’s trust appealed to his honour. But they had the body in their arms; and by the time it was laid on the stairs, a score of men had passed. The opportunity was over. They could do nothing but listen. “Heaven help him!” fell from the clerk’s quivering lips. Pulling the door close, they stood, looking each moment to hear a challenge, a shot, the clash of swords. But no. They heard the party halt under the gallows, and pass some brutal jest, and go on. And that was all.

  They could scarcely believe their ears; no, nor their eyes, when a few minutes later, the street being now quiet, they passed out, and stood in it shuddering. For there swung the corpse dimly outlined above them! There! Certainly there! The clerk seized his companion’s arm and drew him back. “It was the fiend!” he stammered. “See, your father
is still there! It was the fiend who helped us!”

  But at that the figure they were watching became agitated; an instant and it slid gently to the ground. It was the soldier. “O ye gods!” he cried, bent double with silent laughter. “Saw you ever such a trick? How I longed to kick, if it were but my toe at them, and I forbore! Fools! Did man ever see a body hung in its sword? But it was a good trick, eh?” he continued, appealing to them with a simple pride in his invention. “I had the rope loose in my hand when they came, and I drew it twice round my neck — and one arm trust me — and swung off gently. It is not every one who would have thought of that, my children!”

  It was odd. They shook with fear, and he with laughter. He did not seem to give a thought to the danger he had escaped. Pride in his readiness and a keen sense of the humorous side of the incident possessed him entirely. At the very door of the house he still chuckled from time to time; muttering between the ebullitions, “Ah, I must tell Diane! Diane will be pleased — at that! It was good! Very good!”

  Once in the house, however, he acted with more delicacy than might have been imagined. He stood aside while the other two carried the body upstairs; and while they were absent, he waited patiently in the bare room below, which showed signs of occasional use as a stable. Here the clerk Adrian presently found him, and murmured some apology. Mistress Marie, he said, had fainted.

  “A matter which afflicts you, my friend,” the soldier replied with a grimace, “about as much as your master’s death. Pooh, man, do not look fierce! Good luck to you and your suit. Only if — but this is no house for gallantry to-night — I had spruced myself and taken a part, you had had to look to your one ewe lamb, I warrant you!”

  The clerk turned pale and red by turns. This man seemed to read his thoughts as if he had indeed been the fiend. “What do you wish?” he stammered.

  “Only shelter until the early morning when the streets are most quiet; and a direction to the Rue des Lombards.”

  “The Rue des Lombards?”

  “Yes, why not?” But though the soldier still smiled, the lines of his mouth hardened suddenly. “Why not to the Rue des Lombards?”

  “I know no reason why you should not be going there,” the clerk replied boldly. “It was only that the street is near; and a friend of my late master’s lives in it.”

  “His name?”

  The clerk started; the question was put so abruptly, and in a tone so imperious, it struck him as it were a blow. “Nicholas Toussaint,” he answered involuntarily.

  “Ay?” replied the other, raising his hand to his chin and glancing at Adrian with a look that for all the world reminded him of an old print of the eleventh Louis, which hung in a room at the Hotel de Ville — so keen and astute was it. “Your master, young man, was of the moderate party — a Politique?”

  “He was.”

  “A good man and a Catholic? one who loved France? A Leaguer only in name?” the other continued with vividness.

  “Yes, that is so.”

  “But his son? He is a Leaguer out and out — one who would rise to fortune on the flood tide of the mob? A Sorbonnist? The priests have got hold of him? He would do to others as they have done to his father? A friend of Le Clerc and Boucher? That is all so, is it not?”

  Adrian nodded reluctantly. This strange man confounded and yet fascinated him: this man so reckless and gay one moment, so wary the next; exchanging in an instant the hail of a boon companion for the tone of a noble.

  “And is your young master also a friend of this Nicholas Toussaint?” was the next question, slowly put.

  “No,” said Adrian, “he has been forbidden the house. M. Toussaint does not approve of his opinions.”

  “That is so, is it?” the stranger rejoined with his former gaiety. “And now enough: where will you lodge me until morning?”

  “If my closet will serve you,” Felix answered with a hesitation he would not have felt a few minutes before, “it is at your will. I will bring some food there at once, and will let you out if you please at five.” And Adrian added some simple directions, by following which his guest might reach the Rue des Lombards without difficulty.

  An hour later if the thoughts of those who lay sleepless under that roof could have been traced, strange contrasts would have appeared. Was Felix Portail thinking of his dead father, or of his sweetheart in the Rue des Lombards, or of his schemes of ambition? Was he blaming the crew of whom until to-day he had been one, or sullenly cursing those factious Huguenots as the root of the mischief? Was Adrian thinking of his kind master, or of his master’s daughter? Was the guest dreaming of his narrow escape? or revolving plans beside which Felix’s were but the schemes of a rat in a drain? Perhaps Marie alone — for Susanne slept a child’s sleep of exhaustion — had her thoughts fixed on him, who only a few hours before had been the centre of the household.

  But such is life in troubled times. Pleasure and pain come mingled, and men snatch the former from the midst of the latter with a trembling joy, a fierce eagerness: knowing that if they wait to go a pleasuring until the sky be clear, they may wait until nightfall.

  When Adrian called his guest at cock-crow the latter rose briskly and followed him down to the door. “Well, young sir,” he said, pausing an instant on the threshold, as he wrapped his cloak round him and took his sheathed sword in his hand, “I am obliged to you. When I can do you a service, I will.”

  “You can do me one now,” the clerk replied bluntly. “It is ill work having to do with strangers in these days. You can tell me who you are, and to which side you belong.”

  “Which side? I have told you — my own. And for the rest,” the soldier continued, “I will give you a hint.” He brought his lips near to the other’s ear, and whispered, “Kiss Marie — for me!”

  The clerk looked up aflame with anger and surprise; but the other was far gone striding down the street. Yet Adrian received an answer to his question. For as the stranger disappeared in the gloom, he turned his head and broke with an audacity that took away the listener’s breath into a well-known air,

  “Hau! Hau! Papegots!

  Faites place aux Huguenots!”

  and trilled it as merrily as if he had been in the streets of Rochelle.

  “Death!” the clerk exclaimed, getting back into the house, and barring the door in a panic. “I thought so. He is a Huguenot. But if he take his neck out of Paris unstretched, he will have the fiend’s own luck, and the Béarnais’ to boot!”

  II

  When the clerk had re-mounted the stairs, he heard voices in the back room. Felix and Marie were in consultation. The girl was a different being this morning. The fire and fury of the night had sunk to a still misery; and even to her, for his sister’s sake, it seemed over-dangerous to stay in the house and confront the rage of the mob. Mayenne might not after all return: and in that case the Sixteen would assuredly wreak their spite on all, however young or helpless, who might have had to do with the removal of the body. “You must seek shelter with some friend,” Felix urged, “before the city is astir. I can go to the University. I shall be safe there.”

  “Could you not take us with you?” Marie suggested meekly.

  He shook his head, his face flushing. It was hard to confess that he had power to destroy, but none to protect. “You had better go to Nicholas Toussaint’s,” he said. “You will be safe there, and he will take you in, though he will have naught to do with me.”

  Marie assented with a sigh, and rose to make ready. Some few valuables were hidden or secured, some clothes taken; and then the little party of four passed out into the street, leaving but one solemn tenant in their home. The cold light of a November morning gave to the lane an air, even in their eyes, of squalor and misery. The kennel running down the middle was choked with nastiness, while here and there the upper stories leaned forward so far as to obscure the light.

  The fugitives regarded these things little after the first shivering glance, but hurried on their road; Felix with his sword march
ing on one side of the girls, and Adrian with his club walking on the other. A skulking dog got out of their way. The song of a belated reveller drove them for a time under an arch. But they fell in with nothing more formidable, and in five minutes came safely to the high wooden gates of the courtyard in front of Nicholas Toussaint’s house.

  To arouse him or his servants without disturbing the neighbourhood was another matter. There was no bell; only a heavy iron clapper. Adrian tried this cautiously, with little hope of being heard. To his joy the hollow sound had scarcely ceased when footsteps were heard crossing the court, and a small trap in one of the gates was opened. An elderly man with high cheek bones and curly grey hair looked out. His eyes lighting on the girls lost their harshness. “Marie Portail!” he exclaimed. “Ah! poor thing, I pity you. I have heard all. I returned to the city last night only, or I should have been with you. And Adrian?”

  “We have come,” said the young man, respectfully, “to beg shelter for Mistress Marie and her sister. It is no longer safe for them to remain in the Rue de Tirchape.”

  “I can well believe it,” cried Toussaint, vigorously. “I do not know where we are safe nowadays. But there,” he added in a different tone, “no doubt the Sixteen are acting for the best.”

  “You will take them in then?” said Adrian with gratitude.

  But to his astonishment the citizen shook his head, while an awkward embarrassment twisted his features. “It is impossible!” he said.

  Adrian doubted if he had heard aright. Nicholas Toussaint was known for a bold man; one whom the Sixteen disliked, and even suspected of Huguenot leanings, but one too whom they had not yet dared to attack. He was a dealer in Norman horses, and this both led him to employ many men, reckless daring fellows, and made him in some degree necessary to the army. Adrian had never doubted that he would shelter the daughter of his old friend; and his surprise on receiving this rebuff was extreme.