The White Plumes of Navarre Part 35

With one exception, the family of La Masane was resolved to go back to France, where, if the country was still disturbed, at least there was no Inquisition.

"I," said the Professor, "know not whether I shall ever teach in my cla.s.s-room again--not, at least, while the Leaguers bear rule in Paris.

But I have a little money laid aside in a safe place, which will at least buy us a vineyard----"

"And I," said the Miller-Alcalde, "have enough gold Henries, safe with Pereira, the Jew of Bayonne, to hire a mill or two. Good bread and well-ground wheat wherewith to make it, are the two things that man cannot do without. I can provide these, if no better."

"And what better can there be?" cried Don Jordy. "I--I am learned in canon law, which is the same all the world over. I grieve to leave my good Bishop Onuphre. But since he cannot protect me--nay, goes as much in fear of the Holy Office as I myself--Brother Anatole must e'en hire me by the day in his vigne, or Jean-Marie there make me as dusty as himself in his mills."

"And your mother, lads, have you forgotten her?" said Madame Amelie.

"You are coming with us, mother," they cried, in chorus, "you and Claire. It is for you that we go!"

"And pray you, who will care for my rabbits, my poultry, and the pigeons? All the _ba.s.se cour_ of La Masane?" cried the Senora.

"That also will be arranged, mother," said Don Jordy. "I will put in a man who will care for all, till the better days come--a servant and favourite of Don Raphael. This inquisitioning and denouncing cannot last for ever--any more than Raphael our landlord or Philip our king."

"Ah," said his mother, "but both of them are like to last beyond my time. And the fair white house to which your father brought me, a bride!

And the sea--on which, being weary, I have so often looked out and been refreshed--the cattle and the vines and the goats I tended--am I to see them no more?"

"Mother," said the Professor, taking her hand and drawing it away from her face, "here are we your three sons. We can neither stay nor leave you. They of the Inquisition would revenge on you all that we have cheated them of--taken out of their hands."

"They are welcome to my old bones," said the Senora, with a gesture of discouragement.

"No," interrupted Don Jordy, "listen, mother. You are none so ill off.

Here are we, three sons, hale, willing, and unwed, all ready to stand by you, and to work for you--with our hands if need be. Are there many mothers who can say as much?"

"Besides," added the Alcalde-Miller, "after all, it is not so far to the frontier, and, in case of need, I have charged certain good lads I know of--accustomed to circ.u.mvent the King's revenue--to make a clean house of La Masane. So if aught goes awry--well, I do not promise, but it is possible that the cattle, and your household G.o.ds, mother, with Don Jordy's books and the Professor's green gown, may find themselves at Narbonne ere many weeks are over!"

"And for yourself?" said Don Jordy, "your mills, your property?"

The miller laughed and patted his two brothers on the back.

"The good G.o.d, who made all, perhaps did not give me so clever a head-piece as He gave you two. But He taught me, at least, to send every gold 'Henry' over the frontier as soon as I had another to clink against it. For the rest, ever as I ground the corn, I took my pay. The mills and the machinery down there are not mine. I am worth no more this side of the frontier than the clothes I stand up in. My ancient friend Pereira, the Israelite of Bayonne, has the rest."

So that is the reason why, when the three familiars of the Holy Office appeared hot on the trail, they found at La Masane nothing more human than Don Jordy's white mule, that knew no better than to resist friendly hands, break a head-stall, and set off after her master, to her own present undoing.

But what happened when the family of La Masane started for the sh.o.r.e, where Jean-Marie, on his way home from the Fa.n.a.l Mill, had anch.o.r.ed the boat? As he worked his heart was more than a little sore that he should no more hear that musical song, the tremulous rush of the sails overhead, or the blithe pour of the rich meal through the funnel into the sack. Best of all he loved the Fa.n.a.l Mill, both because the sea-water lashed up blue-green beneath, and because from the door he could see Claire's white dress moving about the garden of La Masane.

This was their plan.

To place Claire in safety was no difficulty. The light land-breezes would carry them swiftly along the sh.o.r.e towards the Narbonne coast. It was in Madame Amelie that the brothers found their stumbling-block. Not that the good old lady, so imperious upon her own ground of La Masane, meant in the least to be difficult. But she felt uprooted, degraded, fallen from her high estate, divorced from her own, and she trembled piteously as she tottered on stout Jean-Marie's arm down towards the beach.

Two days before Jean-aux-Choux had brought the Abbe John to La Masane.

At first no one, certainly not Claire, appeared to make him particularly welcome. The Professor retrieved some of his old professorial authority.

Don Jordy was frankly jealous. Old Madame Amelie found him finicking and fine. Only the burly Miller-Alcalde drew to the lad, and tried in his gruff, semi-articulate way to make the young Gascon understand that, in spite of his Bourbon birth and Paris manners, he had a friend in the house of La Masane. And this the young man understood very well, and repaid accordingly. He understood many things, the Abbe John--all, indeed, except Claire Agnew's coldness. But even that he took philosophically.

"He who stands below the cherry-tree with his mouth open, expecting the wind to blow the cherries into his mouth, waits a long time hungry," he meditated sententiously; "I will shake the trees and gather."

All the same, the rough grip and kindly "Come-and-help," or "Stand-out-of-the-way" manner of the miller went to his heart. Indeed, he could hardly have kept his ground at La Masane without it, and he was grateful in proportion.

"They think little of me because I look young and my hair curls," he muttered, as he tried in vain to smooth it out with abundant water, "but wait--I will show them!"

And the time for showing them came when Jean-aux-Choux, carefully scouting ahead, thrust his head over a bank of gravel and reported several men in possession of the boat which Jean-Marie had so carefully anch.o.r.ed in the little Fa.n.a.l Bay just round the point out of sight of the Castle. Worst of all, one of the captors was Don Raphael Llorient himself.

Almost at the same moment, the last individual rear-guard of the little party, a slim young lad called in this chronicle the Abbe John, discovered that they were being tracked from behind. They had indeed walked into the sack without a hole at the other end. They stood between two fires. For they had on their hands good old Madame Amelie, ready at the first discouragement to sink down on the sand, and give up all for lost.

He dared not therefore speak openly. Cautiously the Abbe John called the miller to his side, and imparted his discovery.

"A quarter of an hour at the most, and they will have us!" he whispered.

"Umm!" said the Miller-Alcalde. "I suppose we could not--eh--you and I?

What think you? I can strike a good buffet and you with your point! Are you ready?"

"Ready enough," said the Abbe John, "but they would call out at the first sight of us--indeed, either crack of pistol or clash of sword would bring up Don Raphael and his folk. We must think of something else. For men it might do, but there is your mother to consider--and Claire!"

"I wish it had been the bare steel--or else the cudgel," said the miller; "I am no hand at running and plotting!"

But the Abbe John was.

"Here," he said abruptly, stripping the silk-lined cloak from his shoulders, "take that. Get me Claire's lace mantilla and her wrapper with the capuchin hood. I have made a good enough maid before at the revels of carnival. They always chose me to act Joan of Domremy at the Sorbonne on Orleans Day. It is Claire they are after. Moreover, they are in a hurry. Be quick--bid her give them to you. But tell her nothing!"

And so the blunt Alcalde-Miller went up to Claire, who was busily supplying consolation to Madame Amelie.

"Your lace mantilla," he said, "your cloak and hood! Quick--we have need of them!" he said abruptly. "Take this."

Now Claire had served too long an apprenticeship to dangers and strange unexplained demands during her father's wanderings to show any surprise.

She put them on the miller's arm without a single question. It was only when he added, "Now--put this on," and threw the silken court-cloak belonging to the Abbe John over her shoulders, that she stammered something.

"This--why this--is--is----"

"Never mind what it is," growled the Miller-Alcalde; "at any rate, it will not bite you, and you may need it before the night is out!"

And so without a good-bye--only just settling the lace mantilla as becomingly as possible upon his head and drawing the waist-ribbon of the girl's cloak close round his middle, the Abbe John, with a wave of his hand and a low-spoken "Take good care of her" to the miller, sauntered carelessly back through the maze of sand-hills in the direction of these three good and faithful bloodhounds of the Holy Inquisition, Felieu the Esplugan, Andres the Ape, and the giant Serra of the African smile, who loved his work for his work's sake.

And between his teeth John d'Albret muttered these words, "I will show them."

Also once, just when he came within hearing of the stealthy creep of the pursuers, he added, "And I will show her!"

He did. For when next Claire Agnew looked back, the One for whom she looked was not.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

BISHOP, ARCHBISHOP, AND ANGELICAL DOCTOR