The White Plumes of Navarre Part 32

Mariana made Jean a signal to go on with his tale. He continued:

"So being used to run on the mountains, I outstripped the crowd and came to the door of the chapel where the Other King, he in the cloak of blue and gold, was at his prayers. The crowd pressed and thronged--all looking the other way.

"And I waited. But not long. From very far away there came a crying of many people--a great soughing whisper first, then a sound like the strength of the wind among high trees, and last, loud as the roar of many waters--'The White Plume! The White Plume! Navarre! Navarre!'

"Then the Other King, whom no one cheered greatly nor took much heed of, came out from his ma.s.s and strove to meet the king of the brisk and smiling countenance. But for a long time they could not. For the crowd broke in and pressed them so tight that during a good quarter of an hour these two Kings, the White Plume, and the Man-all-covered-with-Lilies, stood within half-a-dozen paces of each other, unable to embrace or even to touch hands. Whereat the White Plume laughed and jested with those about, bidding them remember that he had come without his breakfast, and such-like. But the Man-with-the-Lilies was sullen and angry with the concourse."

"Ah, for a couple of good disciplined Leaguers with long knives!"

muttered the Chief of the Inquisitors regretfully.

"And then," continued Jean-aux-Choux, "the angry Soldier-Man, who had stood on the bridge with sword and baton, thrust back the people, speaking many words hotly, which are not fit that I should repeat in your reverend ears. So finally the two Kings met and embraced, and the people shouted, so that none might know what his neighbour said. And presently I saw these two walk arm-in-arm through the press, and so up into the chateau, out of my sight. They abode there long time talking, and then after eating they came out. For it was time that the King-covered-with-Lilies should go back to his chapel, being a man apparently very devout."

The expression on the faces of the two inquisitors was dreadful to behold in its contempt and hate. But Mariana laughed.

"So he came out again, and the King with the White Plume still with him.

Only he of the Plume entered not in to the chapel, but stayed without, playing at tennis with the strongest and bravest youths of the court, and laughing when they beat him, or when the ball took him in his face.

"And all the while the crowd cried, 'Long live the White Plume! Long live Navarre!' And sometimes from the back, one or two would raise a feeble cry 'Long live France! Long live Henry of Valois!'"

The Chief Inquisitor brought down his fist on the table with a crash, so that the wine-bottles tottered and a gla.s.s smashed.

"But he shall not--by the crucifix, he shall not!" he hissed, chill-white with anger. "He shall die--if there be poison in Italy, steel in France, or----"

"Money in Spain!" said Mariana calmly, putting his hand on the arm of his coadjutor. "Well, there is not much--but this is the Street of the Money--and I judge we shall find enough for that!"

CHAPTER x.x.x.

JEAN-AUX-CHOUX TAKES HIS WAGES

No sooner had Jean-aux-Choux departed from the terrible house in the Street of the Money at Perpignan, in which he had found the three inquisitors seated, than Mariana, with a sigh of relief, drew from his breast a doc.u.ment on cream-coloured vellum.

Before reading it he looked at the other two, and especially at Frey Tullio the Neapolitan.

"We are all good Spaniards," he was about to begin. But remembering in time the birthplace of the junior inquisitor, he altered his sentence into, "We are all good subjects of King Philip?"

Surintendant Teruel and Frey Tullio bowed their heads. They wondered what was coming, and Tullio was growing not a little sleepy. Even inquisitors must sleep. A pulley-wheel creaked overhead uneasily. Down in the Place of Pain the familiars were trying the ropes for the morrow.

There was one that had not acted satisfactorily in the case of that Valencian Jew in the afternoon. They had been ordered to mend it. King Philip did not approve of paying for new ropes too often. Besides, the old were better. They did not stretch so much. Blood and tears had dropped upon them.

So ever and anon the pulley creaked complainingly between two rafters, in the pauses of the Jesuit's soft voice, as he read the Pope's condemnation of King Henry III. of France (called of Valois)--excommunicated, outcasted, delivered to Satan that he might learn not to offend--for the sin of alliance with the heretic, for the sin of schism and witchcraft--"ordered to be read from the chair of our cathedral-church of Meaux, and of all others occupied by faithful bishops----"

The face of the peasant-ecclesiastic Teruel lighted with a fierce joy as he listened.

"We shall yet be able to send the Valois before our tribunals. The Holy Office shall be set up in France. At last the Edicts of Trent shall be obeyed. What glory! What joy--to judge a King of France, and send him to the stake as a heretic, a schismatic, a hater of Holy Church----"

"Softly--softly, Brother Teruel," said Mariana, smiling fixedly. "France is not our happy Spain. The people there are not accustomed to fires in the market-places and the smell of burned sacrifice--to the sight of their parents and children being f.a.goted for the glory of G.o.d. See what happened in England a few years ago, when our Philip's wife Mary, Queen of that country, tried to introduce a little--oh, such a very little--of her husband's methods."

"Here we have no difficulty," said Teruel, from his peasant-bigot's point of view. "It is G.o.d's good method with the world to extirpate the heretic!"

But the Jesuit answered him truly.

"Make no mistake," he said, tapping the Papal Bull with a plump forefinger, "you succeed here in Spain, my country and yours, because the Spaniard, ninety-nine out of a hundred, is wishful that you should succeed. Our good John Spaniard hates Jews--he despises heretics. To him they are a foolish remnant. They prosper abominably; they are patient, unwarlike, easily plundered. Yet they take it upon themselves to offend the eye by their unnecessary industry. A striped blanket in the shade, a little wine, a little gossip--and in these later times, since blessed Ferdinand, a good rollicking _auto de fe_ once a week. These suffice him when the King does not call our Spaniard to war. They are the very 'bread-and-bull-fights' for which he cried when he was yet a Roman and a citizen. But in France and in England--even in Italy we must act otherwise. We attain our end just the same, but without noise. Only one man somewhere, with a clear brain and an arm that will not fail, drives a knife--or, when all backs are turned, inverts the bottom of a poison phial. He gains the martyr's crown, skips Purgatory with a bound, and finds himself in Paradise!"

The little grey Neapolitan blinked owlishly at Mariana. He was growing sleepy, and with all his soul he wished this too-wise man would be silent. But being applied to, he thought it was safer to agree.

"Certainly--certainly," he said, "it is the same in Italy."

"In Italy--not quite, my friend," said Mariana; "your needs are scarcely the same. With you, cup-and-dagger are as common as--fleas, and as little thought of. You have means (literally) to your hand! But here we have to manufacture them, put spirit into them, send them out on their mission as only we of the Gesu can do."

The Jesuit of Toledo paused a little in his argument, turning his eyes from one to the other.

"As to this little matter," he said, again tapping the Papal Bull with his finger-nail, "I have a man who will execute His Holiness's will--in your national manner, my good Tullio. Only first, he would have a mandate from the Holy Office, a sort of safe-conduct for his soul--the promise of absolution for breaking his vow against the shedding of blood. He is, I must tell you, a little Dominican of Sens, presently misbehaving himself in the mother-college of St. Jacques at Paris. But he is good material for all that, properly handled."

Teruel spoke with the natural caution of the peasant.

"But," said he, "we will be held responsible if aught goes amiss; our duty here is difficult enough! The King----"

"The King I will take in my own hand," said Mariana. "I warrant you his fullest protection, and approval. You shall have great favour--perhaps even be moved to Seville or Granada, or some other place where Jews, Moriscos, and heretics are frequent and rich. Write me the paper and seal it with the seal official!"

So with his Papal Bull and an order from the chiefs of the Holy Office, a.s.sembled in council at the nearest accessible point, Mariana withdrew to his bed, and none in all the Street of the Money slept sounder than he that night, though when he opened the window to let in a breath of the cool, moist air off the Tet, the prayers of the prisoners could be heard coming up in moaning gusts from the dungeons beneath.

The machinery set in motion by the Jesuit Mariana revolved statedly, wheel within his wheel. The "young Dominican of Sens," delivering himself to a strange but not unusual mixture of fanaticism and debauch, misspent his days with the rabble of Paris, his evenings in listening to the fair speeches and yet fairer promises of Madame de Montpensier, the Duke of Guise's sister, while all night mysterious voices whispered in the darkness of his cell that he was the chosen of G.o.d, the approved, and that if he, Jacques Clement, would only kill the King, angels would immediately waft his body, safe and unseen, to the quiet of his convent.

Had he not heard the Bull of the Pope read by the Father Superior? Had the Holy Office not promised him immunity, nay, even canonisation--had not Madame de Montpensier----? But enough, Jacques Clement, riotous monk of Sens, sat him down and made his dagger like a needle for sharpness, like a mirror for polish. This he did when he should have been reading his breviary in the monastery of the Dominicans in the Rue Saint-Jacques.

So it came to pa.s.s that on the evening of the third day of August, 1589, Jean-aux-Choux, still wearing his great shepherd's cloak, though all Perpignan city panted in the fervent heat, and the cool water of the Tet reeked against the sun-heated banks, stood again at the door of that gloomy house in the Street of the Money.

Above, the three men waited as before. But this time there was no hesitation about admittance, not even a question asked. The three men who had done a great thing far away, without lifting one of their little fingers, now waited, tense with anxiety--not for themselves, for no one of them cared for his own safety, but to know that they had won the game for their Church and cause.

To them Jean-aux-Choux opened his mouth.

"He is dead!" he announced, solemnly--"Henry of Valois is dead! The siege of Paris is raised. Epernon and the great lords have refused to serve a Huguenot king. They have gone home----"

"And the Bearnais--the Bearnais?" interrupted Mariana hoa.r.s.ely, "what of him?"

"I saw him ride sadly away--the White Scarves only following!"

Then for once, at the crowning moment of his life, Mariana, the smiling Jesuit, leaned face-forward on the table. His strength had gone from him.

"Enough," he said, "I have done the Society's will. But so great success even I had not hoped for!"

And he rocked himself to and fro in that terrible crisis of nervous emotion which comes only to the most self-restrained, while Teruel, the Surintendant of the Holy Inquisition, and Frey Tullio his second, were prodigal of their cares, lavishing restoratives, of which (in virtue of their office) they had great store in the Street of the Money.