Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France Part 48

Count Hannibal remained seated, his chin sunk on his breast, until his ear a.s.sured him that the three men had descended the stairs to the floor below. Then he rose, and, taking the lantern from the table, on which Peridol had placed it, he went softly to the door, which, like the window, stood in a recess--in this case the prolongation of the pa.s.sage. A brief scrutiny satisfied him that escape that way was impossible, and he turned, after a cursory glance at the floor and ceiling, to the dark, windy aperture which yawned at the end of the apartment. Placing the lantern on the table, and covering it with his cloak, he mounted the window recess, and, stepping to the unguarded edge, looked out.

He knew, rather than saw, that Peridol had told the truth. The smell of the aguish flats which fringed that part of Paris rose strong in his nostrils. He guessed that the sluggish arm of the Seine which divided the a.r.s.enal from the ile des Louviers crawled below; but the night was dark, and it was impossible to discern land from water. He fancied that he could trace the outline of the island--an uninhabited place, given up to wood piles; but the lights of the college quarter beyond it, which rose feebly twinkling, to the crown of St. Genevieve, confused his sight and rendered the nearer gloom more opaque. From that direction and from the Cite to his right came sounds which told of a city still heaving in its blood-stained sleep, and even in its dreams planning further excesses. Now a distant shot, and now a faint murmur on one of the bridges, or a far-off cry, raucous, sudden, curdled the blood. But even of what was pa.s.sing under cover of the darkness, he could learn little; and after standing awhile with a hand on either side of the window he found the night air chill. He stepped back, and, descending to the floor, uncovered the lantern and set it on the table. His thoughts travelled back to the preparations he had made the night before with a view to securing Mademoiselle's person, and he considered, with a grim smile, how little he had foreseen that within twenty-four hours he would himself be a prisoner. Presently, finding his mask oppressive, he removed it, and, laying it on the table before him, sat scowling at the light.

Biron had jockeyed him cleverly. Well, the worse for Armand de Gontaut de Biron if after this adventure the luck went against him! But in the meantime? In the meantime his fate was sealed if harm befell Biron.

And what the King's real mind in Biron's case was, and what the Queen-Mother's, he could not say; just as it was impossible to predict how far, when they had the Grand Master at their mercy, they would resist the temptation to add him to the victims. If Biron placed himself at once in Marshal Tavannes' hands, all might be well. But if he ventured within the long arm of the Guises, or went directly to the Louvre, the fact that with the Grand Master's fate Count Hannibal's was bound up, would not weigh a straw. In such crises the great sacrificed the less great, the less great the small, without a scruple. And the Guises did not love Count Hannibal; he was not loved by many. Even the strength of his brother the Marshal stood rather in the favour of the King's heir, for whom he had won the battle of Jarnac, than intrinsically; and, durable in ordinary times, might snap in the clash of forces and interests which the desperate madness of this day had let loose on Paris.

It was not the peril in which he stood, however--though, with the cold clear eye of the man who had often faced peril, he appreciated it to a nicety--that Count Hannibal found least bearable, but his enforced inactivity. He had thought to ride the whirlwind and direct the storm, and out of the danger of others to compact his own success. Instead he lay here, not only powerless to guide his destiny, which hung on the discretion of another, but unable to stretch forth a finger to further his plans.

As he sat looking darkly at the lantern, his mind followed Biron and his riders through the midnight streets: along St. Antoine and La Verrerie, through the gloomy narrows of the Rue la Ferronerie, and so past the house in the Rue St. Honore where Mademoiselle sat awaiting the morrow--sat awaiting Tignonville, the minister, the marriage!

Doubtless there were still bands of plunderers roaming to and fro; at the barriers troops of archers stopping the suspected; at the windows pale faces gazing down; at the gates of the Temple, and of the walled enclosures which largely made up the city, strong guards set to prevent invasion. Biron would go with sufficient to secure himself; and unless he encountered with the bodyguard of Guise his pa.s.sage would quiet the town. But was it so certain that _she_ was safe? He knew his men, and while he had been free he had not hesitated to leave her in their care. But now that he could not go, now that he could not raise a hand to help, the confidence which had not failed him in straits more dangerous grew weak. He pictured the things which might happen, at which, in his normal frame of mind, he would have laughed.

Now they troubled him so that he started at a shadow, so that he quailed at a thought. He, who last night, when free to act, had timed his coming and her rescue to a minute! Who had rejoiced in the peril, since with the glamour of such things foolish women were taken! Who had not flinched when the crowd roared most fiercely for her blood!

Why had he suffered himself to be trapped! Why indeed? And thrice in pa.s.sion he paced the room. Long ago the famous Nostradamus had told him that he would live to be a king, but of the smallest kingdom in the world. "Every man is a king in his coffin," he had answered. "The grave is cold and your kingdom shall be warm," the wizard had rejoined. On which the courtiers had laughed, promising him a Moorish island and a black queen. And he had gibed with the rest, but secretly had taken note of the sovereign counties of France, their rulers and their heirs. Now he held the thought in horror, foreseeing no county, but the cage under the stifling tiles at Loches, in which Cardinal Balue and many another had worn out their hearts.

He came to that thought not by way of his own peril, but of Mademoiselle's; which affected him in so novel a fashion that he wondered at his folly. At last, tired of watching the shadows which the draught set dancing on the wall, he drew his cloak about him and lay down on the straw. He had kept vigil the previous night, and in a few minutes, with a campaigner's ease, he was asleep.

Midnight had struck. About two the light in the lantern burned low in the socket, and with a soft sputtering went out. For an hour after that the room lay still, silent, dark; then slowly the grey dawn, the greyer for the river mist which wrapped the neighbourhood in a clammy shroud, began to creep into the room and discover the vague shapes of things. Again an hour pa.s.sed, and the sun was rising above Montreuil, and here and there the river began to shimmer through the fog. But in the room it was barely daylight when the sleeper awoke, and sat up, his face expectant. Something had roused him. He listened.

His ear, and the habit of vigilance which a life of danger instils, had not deceived him. There were men moving in the pa.s.sage; men who shuffled their feet impatiently. Had Biron returned! Or had aught happened to him, and were these men come to avenge him? Count Hannibal rose and stole across the boards to the door, and, setting his ear to it, listened.

He listened while a man might count a hundred and fifty, counting slowly. Then, for the third part of a second, he turned his head, and his eyes travelled the room. He stooped again and listened more closely, scarcely breathing. There were voices as well as feet to be heard now; one voice--he thought it was Peridol's--which held on long, now low, now rising into violence. Others were audible at intervals, but only in a growl or a bitter exclamation, that told of minds made up and hands which would not be restrained. He caught his own name, Tavannes--the mask was useless then! And once a noisy movement which came to nothing, foiled, he fancied, by Peridol.

He knew enough. He rose to his full height, and his eyes seemed a little closer together; an ugly smile curved his lips. His gaze travelled over the objects in the room, the bare stools and table, the lantern, the wine pitcher; beyond these, in a corner, the cloak and straw on the low bed. The light, cold and grey, fell cheerlessly on the dull chamber, and showed it in harmony with the ominous whisper which grew in the gallery; with the stern-faced listener who stood, his one hand on the door. He looked, but he found nothing to his purpose, nothing to serve his end, whatever his end was; and with a quick light step he left the door, mounted the window recess, and, poised on the very edge, looked down.

If he thought to escape that way his hope was desperate. The depth to the water-level was not, he judged, twelve feet. But Peridol had told the truth. Below lay not water, but a smooth surface of viscid slime, here luminous with the florescence of rottenness, there furrowed by a tiny runnel of moisture which sluggishly crept across it to the slow stream beyond. This quicksand, vile and treacherous, lapped the wall below the window, and more than accounted for the absence of bars or fastenings. But, leaning far out, he saw that it ended at the angle of the building, at a point twenty feet or so to the right of his position.

He sprang to the floor again, and listened an instant; then, with guarded movements--for there was fear in the air, fear in the silent room, and at any moment the rush might be made, the door burst in--he set the lantern and wine pitcher on the floor, and took up the table in his arms. He began to carry it to the window, but, halfway thither, his eye told him that it would not pa.s.s through the opening, and he set it down again and glided to the bed. Again he was thwarted; the bed was screwed to the floor. Another might have despaired at that, but he rose with no sign of dismay, and listening, always listening, he spread his cloak on the floor, and deftly, with as little noise and rustling as might be, he piled the straw in it, compressed the bundle, and, cutting the bed-cords with his dagger, bound all together with them. In three steps he was in the embrasure of the window, and, even as the men in the pa.s.sage thrust the lieutenant aside and with a sudden uproar came down to the door, he flung the bundle lightly and carefully to the right--so lightly and carefully, and with so nice and deliberate a calculation, that it seemed odd it fell beyond the reach of an ordinary leap.

An instant and he was on the floor again. The men had to unlock, to draw back the bolts, to draw back the door which opened outwards; their numbers, as well as their savage haste, impeded them. When they burst in at last, with a roar of "To the river! To the river!"--burst in a rush of struggling shoulders and lowered pikes, they found him standing, a solitary figure, on the further side of the table, his arms folded. And the sight of the pa.s.sive figure for a moment stayed them.

"Say your prayers, child of Satan!" cried the leader, waving his weapon. "We give you one minute!"

"Ay, one minute!" his followers chimed in. "Be ready!"

"You would murder me?" he said with dignity. And when they shouted a.s.sent, "Good!" he answered. "It is between you and M. de Biron, whose guest I am. But"--with a glance which pa.s.sed round the ring of glaring eyes and working features--"I would leave a last word for some one. Is there any one here who values a safe-conduct from the King? 'Tis for two men coming and going for a fortnight." And he held up a slip of paper.

The leader cried "To h.e.l.l with his safe-conduct! Say your prayers!"

But all were not of his mind; on one or two of the crimson savage faces--the faces, for the most part, of honest men maddened by their wrongs--flashed an avaricious gleam. A safe-conduct? To avenge, to slay, to kill--and to go safe! For some minds such a thing has an invincible fascination. A man thrust himself forward. "Ay, I'll have it!" he cried. "Give it here!"

"It is yours," Count Hannibal answered, "if you will carry ten words to Marshal Tavannes--when I am gone."

The man's neighbour laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. "And Marshal Tavannes will pay you finely," he said.

But Maudron, the man who had offered, shook off the hand. "If I take the message!" he muttered in a grim aside. "Do you think me mad?" And then aloud he cried, "Ay, I'll take your message! Give me the paper."

"You swear you will take it?"

The man had no intention of taking it, but he perjured himself and went forward. The others would have pressed round too, half in envy, half in scorn; but Tavannes by a gesture stayed them. "Gentlemen, I ask a minute only," he said. "A minute for a dying man is not much.

Your friends had as much." And the fellows, acknowledging the claim and a.s.sured that their victim could not escape, let Maudron go round the table to him.

The man was in haste and ill at ease, conscious of his evil intentions and the fraud he was practising; and at once greedy to have, yet ashamed of the bargain he was making. His attention was divided between the slip of paper, on which his eyes fixed themselves, and the att.i.tude of his comrades; he paid little heed to Count Hannibal, whom he knew to be unarmed. Only when Tavannes seemed to ponder on his message, and to be fain to delay, "Go on," he muttered with brutal frankness; "your time is up!"

Tavannes started, the paper slipped from his fingers. Maudron saw a chance of getting it without committing himself, and quick as the thought leapt up in his mind he stooped, and grasped the paper, and would have leapt back with it! But quick as he, and quicker, Tavannes too stooped, gripped him by the waist, and with a prodigious effort, and a yell in which all the man's stormy nature, restrained to a part during the last few minutes, broke forth, he flung the ill-fated wretch head first through the window.

The movement carried Tavannes himself--even while his victim's scream rang through the chamber--into the embrasure. An instant he hung on the verge; then, as the men, a moment thunderstruck, sprang forward to avenge their comrade, he leapt out, jumping for the struggling body that had struck the mud, and now lay in it face downwards.

He alighted on it, and drove it deep into the quaking slime; but he himself bounded off right-handed. The peril was appalling, the possibility untried, the chance one which only a doomed man would have taken. But he reached the straw-bale, and it gave him a momentary, a precarious footing. He could not regain his balance, he could not even for an instant stand upright on it. But from its support he leapt on convulsively, and as a pike, flung from above, wounded him in the shoulder, he fell his length in the slough--but forward, with his outstretched hands resting on soil of a harder nature. They sank, it is true, to the elbow, but he dragged his body forward on them, and forward, and freeing one by a last effort of strength--he could not free both, and, as it was, half his face was submerged--he reached out another yard, and gripped a balk of wood, which projected from the corner of the building for the purpose of fending off the stream in flood-time.

The men at the window shrieked with rage as he slowly drew himself from the slough, and stood from head to foot a pillar of mud. Shout as they might, they had no firearms, and, crowded together in the narrow embrasure, they could take no aim with their pikes. They could only look on in furious impotence, flinging curses at him until he pa.s.sed from their view, behind the angle of the building.

Here for a score of yards a strip of hard foresh.o.r.e ran between mud and wall. He struggled along it until he reached the end of the wall; then with a shuddering glance at the black heaving pit from which he had escaped, and which yet gurgled above the body of the hapless Maudron--a tribute to horror which even his fierce nature could not withhold--he turned and painfully climbed the river-bank. The pike-wound in his shoulder was slight, but the effort had been supreme; the sweat poured from his brow, his visage was grey and drawn. Nevertheless, when he had put fifty paces between himself and the buildings of the a.r.s.enal he paused, and turned. He saw that the men had run to other windows which looked that way; and his face lightened and his form dilated with triumph.

He shook his fist at them. "Ho, fools!" he cried, "you kill not Tavannes so! Till our next meeting at Montfaucon, fare you well!"

CHAPTER XV.

THE BROTHER OF ST. MAGLOIRE.

As the exertion of power is for the most part pleasing, so the exercise of that which a woman possesses over a man is especially pleasant. When in addition a risk of no ordinary kind has been run, and the happy issue has been barely expected--above all when the momentary gain seems an augury of final victory--it is impossible that a feeling akin to exultation should not arise in the mind, however black the horizon, and however distant the fair haven.

The situation in which Count Hannibal left Mademoiselle de Vrillac will be remembered. She had prevailed on him; but in return he had bowed her to the earth, partly by subtle threats, and partly by sheer savagery. He had left her weeping, with the words "Madame de Tavannes"

ringing doom in her ears, and the dark phantom of his will pointing onward to an inevitable future. Had she abandoned hope, it would have been natural.

But the girl was of a spirit not long nor easily cowed; and Tavannes had not left her half an hour before the reflection, that so far the honours of the day were hers, rose up to console her. In spite of his power and her impotence, she had imposed her will upon his; she had established an influence over him, she had discovered a scruple which stayed him, and a limit beyond which he would not pa.s.s. In the result she might escape; for the conditions which he had accepted with an ill grace, might prove beyond his fulfilling. She might escape! True, many in her place would have feared a worse fate and harsher handling. But there lay half the merit of her victory. It had left her not only in a better position, but with a new confidence in her power over her adversary. He would insist on the bargain struck between them; within its four corners she could look for no indulgence. But if the conditions proved to be beyond his power, she believed that he would spare her: with an ill grace, indeed, with such ferocity and coa.r.s.e reviling as her woman's pride might scarcely support. But he would spare her.

And if the worst befell her? She would still have the consolation of knowing that from the cataclysm which had overwhelmed her friends she had ransomed those most dear to her. Owing to the position of her chamber, she saw nothing of the excesses to which Paris gave itself up during the remainder of that day, and to which it returned with unabated zest on the following morning. But the Carlats and her women learned from the guards below what was pa.s.sing; and quaking and cowering in their corners fixed frightened eyes on her, who was their stay and hope. How could she prove false to them? How doom them to perish, had there been no question of her lover?

Of him she sat thinking by the hour together. She recalled with solemn tenderness the moment in which he had devoted himself to the death which came but halfway to seize them; nor was she slow to forgive his subsequent withdrawal, and his attempt to rescue her in spite of herself. She found the impulse to die glorious; the withdrawal--for the actor was her lover--a thing done for her, which he would not have done for himself, and which she quickly forgave him. The revulsion of feeling which had conquered her at the time, and led her to tear herself from him, no longer moved her much; while all in his action that might have seemed in other eyes less than heroic, all in his conduct--in a crisis demanding the highest--that smacked of common or mean, vanished, for she still clung to him. Clung to him, not so much with the pa.s.sion of the mature woman, as with the maiden and sentimental affection of one who has now no hope of possessing, and for whom love no longer spells life but sacrifice.

She had leisure for these musings, for she was left to herself all that day, and until late on the following day. Her own servants waited on her, and it was known that below stairs Count Hannibal's riders kept sullen ward behind barred doors and shuttered windows, refusing admission to all who came. Now and again echoes of the riot which filled the streets with bloodshed reached her ears: or word of the more striking occurrences was brought to her by Madame Carlat. And early on this second day, Monday, it was whispered that M. de Tavannes had not returned, and that the men below were growing uneasy.

At last, when the suspense below and above was growing tense, it was broken. Footsteps and voices were heard ascending the stairs, the trampling and hubbub were followed by a heavy knock; perforce the door was opened. While Mademoiselle, who had risen, awaited with a beating heart she knew not what, a cowled father, in the dress of the monks of St. Magloire, stood on the threshold, and, crossing himself, muttered the words of benediction. He entered slowly.

No sight could have been more dreadful to Mademoiselle; for it set at naught the conditions which she had so hardly exacted. What if Count Hannibal were behind, were even now mounting the stairs, prepared to force her to a marriage before this shaveling? Or ready to proceed, if she refused, to the last extremity? Sudden terror taking her by the throat choked her; her colour fled, her hand flew to her breast. Yet, before the door had closed on Bigot, she had recovered herself.

"This intrusion is not by M. de Tavannes' orders!" she cried, stepping forward haughtily. "This person has no business here. How dare you admit him?"

The Norman showed his bearded visage a moment at the door. "My lord's orders," he muttered sullenly. And he closed the door on them.

She had a Huguenot's hatred of a cowl; and, in this crisis, her reasons for fearing it. Her eyes blazed with indignation. "Enough!"

she cried, pointing with a gesture of dismissal to the door. "Go back to him who sent you! If he will insult me, let him do it to my face!

If he will perjure himself, let him forswear himself in person. Or, if you come on your own account," she continued, flinging prudence to the winds, "as your brethren came to Philippa de Luns, to offer me the choice you offered her, I give you her answer! If I had thought of myself only, I had not lived so long! And rather than bear your presence or hear your arguments----"

She came to a sudden, odd, quavering pause on the word; her lips remained parted, she swayed an instant on her feet. The next moment Madame Carlat, to whom the visitor had turned his shoulder, doubted her eyes, for Mademoiselle was in the monk's arms!