Count Hannibal Part 17

"It is not for me to clear myself," he cried, shrill and violent, "but for those who are accused, for those who have belied the King's word, and set at nought his Christian orders. For you, Count Hannibal, heretic, or no better than heretic, it is easy to say 'I go.' For you go but to your own, and your own will receive you!"

"Then you will not go?" with a jeer.

"At your command? No!" the priest shrieked with pa.s.sion. "His Majesty knows whether I serve him."

"I know," Charles cried, stamping his foot in a fury, "that you all serve me when it pleases you! That you are all sticks of the same f.a.ggot, wood of the same bundle, h.e.l.l-babes in your own business, and sluggards in mine! You kill to-day and you'll lay it to me to-morrow! Ay, you will!

you will!" he repeated frantically, and drove home the a.s.severation with a fearful oath. "The dead are as good servants as you! Foucauld was better! Foucauld? Foucauld? Ah, my G.o.d!"

And abruptly in presence of them all, with the sacred name, which he so often defiled, on his lips, Charles turned, and covering his face burst into childish weeping; while a great silence fell on all--on Bussy with the blood of his cousin Resnel on his point, on Fervacques, the betrayer of his friend, on Chicot, the slayer of his rival, on Cocconnas the cruel--on men with hands unwashed from the slaughter, and on the shameless women who lined the walls; on all who used this sobbing man for their stepping-stone, and, to attain their ends and gain their purposes, trampled his dull soul in blood and mire.

One looked at another in consternation. Fear grew in eyes that a moment before were bold; cheeks turned pale that a moment before were hectic. If _he_ changed as rapidly as this, if so little dependence could be placed on his moods or his resolutions, who was safe? Whose turn might it not be to-morrow? Or who might not be held accountable for the deeds done this day? Many, from whom remorse had seemed far distant a while before, shuddered and glanced behind them. It was as if the dead who lay stark without the doors, ay, and the countless dead of Paris, with whose shrieks the air was laden, had flocked in shadowy shape into the hall; and there, standing beside their murderers, had whispered with their cold breath in the living ears, "A reckoning! A reckoning! As I am, thou shalt be!"

It was Count Hannibal who broke the spell and the silence, and with his hand on his brother's shoulder stood forward.

"Nay, sire," he cried, in a voice which rang defiant in the roof, and seemed to challenge alike the living and the dead, "if all deny the deed, yet will not I! What we have done we have done! So be it! The dead are dead! So be it! For the rest, your Majesty has still one servant who will do your will, one soldier whose life is at your disposition! I have said I will go, and I go, sire. And you, churchman," he continued, turning in bitter scorn to the priest, "do you go too--to church! To church, shaveling! Go, watch and pray for us! Fast and flog for us!

Whip those shoulders, whip them till the blood runs down! For it is all, it seems, you will do for your King!"

Charles turned. "Silence, railer!" he said in a broken voice. "Sow no more troubles! Already," a shudder shook his tall ungainly form, "I see blood, blood, blood everywhere! Blood? Ah, G.o.d, shall I from this time see anything else? But there is no turning back. There is no undoing.

So, do you go to Biron. And do you," he went on, sullenly addressing Marshal Tavannes, "take him and tell him what it is needful he should know."

"'Tis done, sire!" the Marshal cried, with a hiccough. "Come, brother!"

But when the two, the courtiers making quick way for them, had pa.s.sed down the hall to the door, the Marshal tapped Hannibal's sleeve.

"It was touch and go," he muttered; it was plain he had been more sober than he seemed. "Mind you, it does not do to thwart our little master in his fits! Remember that another time, or worse will come of it, brother.

As it is, you came out of it finely and tripped that black devil's heels to a marvel! But you won't be so mad as to go to Biron?"

"Yes," Count Hannibal answered coldly. "I shall go."

"Better not! Better not!" the Marshal answered. "'Twill be easier to go in than to come out--with a whole throat! Have you taken wild cats in the hollow of a tree? The young first, and then the she-cat? Well, it will be that! Take my advice, brother. Have after Montgomery, if you please, ride with Nancay to Chatillon--he is mounting now--go where you please out of Paris, but don't go there! Biron hates us, hates me. And for the King, if he do not see you for a few days, 'twill blow over in a week."

Count Hannibal shrugged his shoulders. "No," he said, "I shall go."

The Marshal stared a moment. "Morbleu!" he said, "why? 'Tis not to please the King, I know. What do you think to find there, brother?"

"A minister," Hannibal answered gently. "I want one with life in him, and they are scarce in the open. So I must to covert after him." And, twitching his sword-belt a little nearer to his hand, he pa.s.sed across the court to the gate, and to his horses.

The Marshal went back laughing, and, slapping his thigh as he entered the hall, jostled by accident a gentleman who was pa.s.sing out.

"What is it?" the Gascon cried hotly; for it was Chicot he had jostled.

"Who touches my brother touches Tavannes!" the Marshal hiccoughed. And, smiting his thigh anew, he went off into another fit of laughter.

CHAPTER XIII. DIPLOMACY.

Where the old wall of Paris, of which no vestige remains, ran down on the east to the north bank of the river, the s.p.a.ce in the angle between the Seine and the ramparts beyond the Rue St. Pol wore at this date an aspect typical of the troubles of the time. Along the waterside the gloomy old Palace of St. Pol, once the residence of the mad King Charles the Sixth--and his wife, the abandoned Isabeau de Baviere--sprawled its maze of mouldering courts and ruined galleries; a dreary monument of the Gothic days which were pa.s.sing from France. Its s.p.a.cious curtilage and dark pleasaunces covered all the ground between the river and the Rue St.

Antoine; and north of this, under the shadow of the eight great towers of the Bastille, which looked, four outward to check the stranger, four inward to bridle the town, a second palace, beginning where St. Pol ended, carried the realm of decay to the city wall.

This second palace was the Hotel des Tournelles, a fantastic medley of turrets, spires, and gables, that equally with its neighbour recalled the days of the English domination; it had been the abode of the Regent Bedford. From his time it had remained for a hundred years the town residence of the kings of France; but the death of Henry II., slain in its lists by the lance of the same Montgomery who was this day fleeing for his life before Guise, had given his widow a distaste for it.

Catherine de Medicis, her sons, and the Court had abandoned it; already its gardens lay a tangled wilderness, its roofs let in the rain, rats played where kings had slept; and in "our palace of the Tournelles"

reigned only silence and decay. Unless, indeed, as was whispered abroad, the grim shade of the eleventh Louis sometimes walked in its desolate precincts.

In the innermost angle between the ramparts and the river, shut off from the rest of Paris by the decaying courts and enceintes of these forsaken palaces, stood the a.r.s.enal. Destroyed in great part by the explosion of a powder-mill a few years earlier, it was in the main new; and by reason of its river frontage, which terminated at the ruined tower of Billy, and its proximity to the Bastille, it was esteemed one of the keys of Paris.

It was the appanage of the Master of the Ordnance, and within its walls M. de Biron, a Huguenot in politics, if not in creed, who held the office at this time, had secured himself on the first alarm. During the day he had admitted a number of refugees, whose courage or good luck had led them to his gate; and as night fell--on such a carnage as the hapless city had not beheld since the great slaughter of the Armagnacs, one hundred and fifty-four years earlier--the glow of his matches through the dusk, and the sullen tramp of his watchmen as they paced the walls, indicated that there was still one place in Paris where the King's will did not run.

In comparison of the disorder which prevailed in the city, a deadly quiet reigned here; a stillness so chill that a timid man must have stood and hesitated to approach. But a stranger who about nightfall rode down the street towards the entrance, a single footman running at his stirrup, only nodded a stern approval of the preparations. As he drew nearer he cast an attentive eye this way and that; nor stayed until a hoa.r.s.e challenge brought him up when he had come within six horses' lengths of the a.r.s.enal gate. He reined up then, and raising his voice, asked in clear tones for M. de Biron.

"Go," he continued boldly, "tell the Grand Master that one from the King is here, and would speak with him."

"From the King of France?" the officer on the gate asked.

"Surely! Is there more than one king in France?"

A curse and a bitter cry of "King? King Herod!" were followed by a muttered discussion that, in the ears of one of the two who waited in the gloom below, boded little good. The two could descry figures moving to and fro before the faint red light of the smouldering matches; and presently a man on the gate kindled a torch, and held it so as to fling its light downward. The stranger's attendant cowered behind the horse.

"Have a care, my lord!" he whispered. "They are aiming at us!"

If so the rider's bold front and unmoved demeanour gave them pause.

Presently, "I will send for the Grand Master" the man who had spoken before announced. "In whose name, monsieur?"

"No matter," the stranger answered. "Say, one from the King."

"You are alone?"

"I shall enter alone."

The a.s.surance seemed to be satisfactory, for the man answered "Good!" and after a brief delay a wicket in the gate was opened, the portcullis creaked upward, and a plank was thrust across the ditch. The horseman waited until the preparations were complete; then he slid to the ground, threw his rein to the servant, and boldly walked across. In an instant he left behind him the dark street, the river, and the sounds of outrage, which the night breeze bore from the farther bank, and found himself within the vaulted gateway, in a bright glare of light, the centre of a ring of gleaming eyes and angry faces.

The light blinded him for a few seconds; but the guards, on their side, were in no better case. For the stranger was masked; and in their ignorance who it was looked at them through the slits in the black velvet they stared, disconcerted, and at a loss. There were some there with naked weapons in their hands who would have struck him through had they known who he was; and more who would have stood aside while the deed was done. But the uncertainty--that and the masked man's tone paralyzed them. For they reflected that he might be anyone. Conde, indeed, stood too small, but Navarre, if he lived, might fill that cloak; or Guise, or Anjou, or the King himself. And while some would not have scrupled to strike the blood royal, more would have been quick to protect and avenge it. And so before the dark uncertainty of the mask, before the riddle of the smiling eyes which glittered through the slits, they stared irresolute; until a hand, the hand of one bolder than his fellows, was raised to pluck away the screen.

The unknown dealt the fellow a buffet with his fist. "Down, rascal!" he said hoa.r.s.ely. "And you"--to the officer--"show me instantly to M. de Biron!"

But the lieutenant, who stood in fear of his men, looked at him doubtfully.

"Nay," he said, "not so fast!" And one of the others, taking the lead, cried, "No! We may have no need of M. de Biron. Your name, monsieur, first."

With a quick movement the stranger gripped the officer's wrist.

"Tell your master," he said, "that he who clasped his wrist _thus_ on the night of Pentecost is here, and would speak with him! And say, mark you, that I will come to him, not he to me!"

The sign and the tone imposed upon the boldest. Two-thirds of the watch were Huguenots, who burned to avenge the blood of their fellows; and these, overriding their officer, had agreed to deal with the intruder, if a Papegot, without recourse to the Grand Master, whose moderation they dreaded. A knife-thrust in the ribs, and another body in the ditch--why not, when such things were done outside? But even these doubted now; and M. Peridol, the lieutenant, reading in the eyes of his men the suspicions which he had himself conceived, was only anxious to obey, if they would let him. So gravely was he impressed, indeed, by the bearing of the unknown that he turned when he had withdrawn, and came back to a.s.sure himself that the men meditated no harm in his absence; nor until he had exchanged a whisper with one of them would he leave them and go.

While he was gone on his errand the envoy leaned against the wall of the gateway, and, with his chin sunk on his breast and his mind fallen into reverie, seemed unconscious of the dark glances of which he was the target. He remained in this position until the officer came back, followed by a man with a lanthorn. Their coming roused the unknown, who, invited to follow Peridol, traversed two courts without remark, and in the same silence entered a building in the extreme eastern corner of the enceinte ab.u.t.ting on the ruined Tour de Billy. Here, in an upper floor, the Governor of the a.r.s.enal had established his temporary lodging.

The chamber into which the stranger was introduced betrayed the haste in which it had been prepared for its occupant. Two silver lamps which hung from the beams of the unceiled roof shed light on a medley of arms and inlaid armour, of parchments, books and steel caskets, which enc.u.mbered not the tables only, but the stools and chests that, after the fashion of that day, stood formally along the arras. In the midst of the disorder, on the bare floor, walked the man who, more than any other, had been instrumental in drawing the Huguenots to Paris--and to their doom. It was no marvel that the events of the day, the surprise and horror, still rode his mind; nor wonderful that even he, who pa.s.sed for a model of stiffness and reticence, betrayed for once the indignation which filled his breast. Until the officer had withdrawn and closed the door he did, indeed, keep silence; standing beside the table and eyeing his visitor with a lofty porte and a stern glance. But the moment he was a.s.sured that they were alone he spoke.