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

"I shall not tell you," she answered.

"You lie," he cried, grinning like a dog. "You will tell us! Or we will kill you, too! Where is he? Where is he?"

"I shall not tell you," she repeated, standing before him in the fearlessness of scorn. "Another step and I rouse the house! M. de Tignonville, to you who know me, I swear that if this man does not retire-"

"He is in one of these rooms?" was Tignonville's answer. "In which? In which?"

"Search them!" she answered, her voice low, but biting in its contempt. "Try them. Rouse my women, alarm the house! And when you have his people at your throats-five as they will be to one of you-thank your own mad folly!"

Tuez-les-Moines' eyes glittered. "You will not tell us?" he cried.

"No!"

"Then-"

But as the fanatic sprang on her, La Tribe flung his arms round him and dragged him back. "It would be madness," he cried. "Are you mad, fool? Have done!" he panted, struggling with him. "If madame gives the alarm-and he may be in any one of these four rooms, you cannot be sure which-we are undone." He looked for support to Tignonville, whose movement to protect the girl he had anticipated, and who had since listened sullenly. "We have obtained what we need. Will you requite madame, who has gained it for us at her own risk-"

"It is monsieur I would requite," Tignonville muttered grimly.

"By using violence to her?" the minister retorted passionately. He and Tuez were still gripping one another. "I tell you, to go on is to risk what we have got! And I for one-"

"Am chicken-hearted!" the young man sneered. "Madame-" he seemed to choke on the word. "Will you swear that he is not here?"

"I swear that if you do not go I will raise the alarm!" she hissed-all their words were sunk to that stealthy note. "Go! if you have not stayed too long already. Go! Or see!" And she pointed to the trapdoor, from which the face and arms of a sixth man had that moment risen-the face dark with perturbation, so that her woman's wit told her at once that something was amiss. "See what has come of your delay already!"

"The water is rising," the man muttered earnestly. "In God's name come, whether you have done it or not, or we cannot pass out again. It is within a foot of the crown of the culvert now, and it is rising."

"Curse on the water!" Tuez-les-Moines answered in a frenzied whisper. "And on this Jezebel. Let us kill her and him! What matter afterwards?" And he tried to shake off La Tribe's grasp.

But the minister held him desperately. "Are you mad? Are you mad?" he answered. "What can we do against thirty? Let us be gone while we can. Let us be gone! Come."

"Ay, come," Perrot cried, assenting reluctantly. He had taken no side hitherto. "The luck is against us! 'Tis no use to-night, man!" And he turned with an air of sullen resignation. Letting his legs drop through the trap he followed the bearer of the tidings out of sight. Another made up his mind to go, and went. Then only Tignonville holding the lantern, and La Tribe, who feared to release Tuez-les-Moines, remained with the fanatic.

The Countess's eyes met her old lover's, and whether old memories overcame her, or, now that the danger was nearly past, she began to give way, she swayed a little on her feet. But he did not notice it. He was sunk in black rage: rage against her, rage against himself. "Take the light," she muttered unsteadily. "And-and he must follow!"

"And you?"

But she could bear it no longer. "Oh, go," she wailed. "Go! Will you never go? If you love me, if you ever loved me, I implore you to go."

He had betrayed little of a lover's feeling. But he could not resist that appeal, and he turned silently. Seizing Tuez-les-Moines by the other arm, he drew him by force to the trap. "Quiet, fool," he muttered savagely when the man would have resisted, "and go down! If we stay to kill him, we shall have no way of escape, and his life will be dearly bought. Down, man, down!" And between them, in a struggling silence, with now and then an audible rap, or a ring of metal, the two forced the desperado to descend.

La Tribe followed hastily. Tignonville was the last to go. In the act of disappearing he raised his lantern for a last glimpse of the Countess. To his astonishment the passage was empty; she was gone. Hard by him a door stood an inch or two ajar, and he guessed that it was hers, and swore under his breath, hating her at that moment. But he did not guess how nicely she had calculated her strength; how nearly exhaustion had overcome her; or that even while he paused-a fatal pause had he known it-eyeing the dark opening of the door, she lay as one dead, on the bed within. She had fallen in a swoon, from which she did not recover until the sun had risen, and marched across one quarter of the heavens.

Nor did he see another thing, or he might have hastened his steps. Before the yellow light of his lantern faded from the ceiling of the passage, the door of the room farthest from the trap slid open. A man, whose eyes, until darkness swallowed him, shone strangely in a face extraordinarily softened, came out on tip-toe. This man stood awhile, listening. At length, hearing those below utter a cry of dismay, he awoke to sudden activity. He opened with a turn of the key the door which stood at his elbow, the door which led to the other part of the house. He vanished through it. A second later a sharp whistle pierced the darkness of the courtyard and brought a dozen sleepers to their senses and their feet. A moment, and the courtyard hummed with voices, above which one voice rang clear and insistent. With a startled cry the inn awoke.

CHAPTER XXV
THE COMPANY OF THE BLEEDING HEART

"But why," Madame. St. Lo asked, sticking her arms akimbo, "why stay in this forsaken place a day and a night, when six hours in the saddle would set us in Angers?"

"Because," Tavannes replied coldly-he and his cousin were walking before the gateway of the inn-"the Countess is not well, and will be the better, I think, for staying a day."

"She slept soundly enough! I'll answer for that!"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"She never raised her head this morning, though my women were shrieking 'Murder!' next door, and-Name of Heaven!" madame resumed, after breaking off abruptly, and shading her eyes with her hand, "what comes here? Is it a funeral? Or a pilgrimage? If all the priests about here are as black, no wonder M. Rabelais fell out with them!"

The inn stood without the walls for the convenience of those who wished to take the road early: a little also, perhaps, because food and forage were cheaper, and the wine paid no town-dues. Four great roads met before the house, along the most easterly of which the sombre company which had caught Madame St. Lo's attention could be seen approaching. At first Count Hannibal supposed with his companion that the travellers were conveying to the grave the corpse of some person of distinction; for the cortége consisted mainly of priests and the like mounted on mules, and clothed for the most part in black. Black also was the small banner which waved above them, and bore in place of arms the emblem of the Bleeding Heart. But a second glance failed to discover either litter or bier; and a nearer approach showed that the travellers, whether they wore the tonsure or not, bore weapons of one kind or another about them.

Suddenly Madame St. Lo clapped her hands, and proclaimed in great astonishment that she knew them. "Why, there is Father Boucher, the Curé of St. – Benoist!" she said, "and Father Pezelay of St. Magloire. And there is another I know, though I cannot remember his name! They are preachers from Paris! That is who they are! But what can they be doing here? Is it a pilgrimage, think you?"

"Ay, a pilgrimage of Blood!" Count Hannibal answered between his teeth. And, turning to him to learn what moved him, she saw the look in his eyes which portended a storm. Before she could ask a question, however, the gloomy company, which had first appeared in the distance, moving, an inky blot, through the hot sunshine of the summer morning, had drawn near and was almost abreast of them. Stepping from her side, he raised his hand and arrested the march.

"Who is master here?" he asked haughtily.

"I am the leader," answered a stout pompous Churchman, whose small malevolent eyes belied the sallow fatuity of his face. "I, M. de Tavannes, by your leave."

"And you, by your leave," Tavannes sneered, "are-"

"Archdeacon and Vicar of the Bishop of Angers and Prior of the Lesser Brethren of St. Germain, M. le Comte. Visitor also of the Diocese of Angers," the dignitary continued, puffing out his cheeks, "and Chaplain to the Lieutenant-Governor of Saumur, whose unworthy brother I am."

"A handsome glove, and well embroidered!" Tavannes retorted in a tone of disdain. "The hand I see yonder!" He pointed to the lean parchment mask of Father Pezelay, who coloured ever so faintly, but held his peace under the sneer. "You are bound for Angers!" Count Hannibal continued. "For what purpose, Sir Prior!"

"His Grace the Bishop is absent, and in his absence-"

"You go to fill his city with strife! I know you! Not you!" he continued, contemptuously turning from the Prior, and regarding the third of the principal figures of the party. "But you! You were the Curé who got the mob together last All Souls'."

"I speak the words of Him Who sent me!" answered the third Churchman, whose brooding face and dull curtained eyes gave no promise of the fits of frenzied eloquence which had made his pulpit famous in Paris.

"Then Kill and Burn are His alphabet!" Tavannes retorted, and heedless of the start of horror which a saying so near blasphemy excited among the Churchmen, he turned to Father Pezelay. "And you! You, too, I know!" he continued. "And you know me! And take this from me. Turn, father! Turn! Or worse than a broken head-you bear the scar I see-will befall you. These good persons, whom you have moved, unless I am in error, to take this journey, may not know me; but you do, and can tell them. If they will to Angers, they must to Angers. But if I find trouble in Angers when I come, I will hang some one high. Don't scowl at me, man!" – in truth, the look of hate in Father Pezelay's eyes was enough to provoke the exclamation. "Some one, and it shall not be a bare patch on the crown will save his windpipe from squeezing!"

A murmur of indignation broke from the preachers' attendants; one or two made a show of drawing their weapons. But Count Hannibal paid no heed to them, and had already turned on his heel when Father Pezelay spurred his mule a pace or two forward. Snatching a heavy brass cross from one of the acolytes, he raised it aloft, and in the voice which had often thrilled the heated congregation of St. Magloire, he called on Tavannes to pause.

"Stand, my lord!" he cried. "And take warning! Stand, reckless and profane, whose face is set hard as a stone, and his heart as a flint, against High Heaven and Holy Church! Stand and hear! Behold the word of the Lord is gone out against this city, even against Angers, for the unbelief thereof! Her place shall be left unto her desolate, and her children shall be dashed against the stones! Woe unto you, therefore, if you gainsay it, or fall short of that which is commanded! You shall perish as Achan, the son of Charmi, and as Saul! The curse that has gone out against you shall not tarry, nor your days continue! For the Canaanitish woman that is in your house, and for the thought that is in your heart, the place that was yours is given to another! Yea, the sword is even now drawn that shall pierce your side!"

"You are more like to split my ears!" Count Hannibal answered sternly. "And now mark me! Preach as you please here. But a word in Angers, and though you be shaven twice over, I will have you silenced after a fashion which will not please you! If you value your tongue therefore, father-oh, you shake off the dust, do you? Well, pass on! 'Tis wise, perhaps."

And undismayed by the scowling brows, and the cross ostentatiously lifted to heaven, he gazed after the procession as it moved on under its swaying banner, now one and now another of the acolytes looking back and raising his hands to invoke the bolt of Heaven on the blasphemer. As the cortége passed the huge watering-troughs, and the open gateway of the inn, the knot of persons congregated there fell on their knees. In answer the Churchmen raised their banner higher, and began to sing the Eripe me, Domine! and to its strains, now vengeful, now despairing, now rising on a wave of menace, they passed slowly into the distance, slowly towards Angers and the Loire.

Suddenly Madame St. Lo twitched his sleeve. "Enough for me!" she cried passionately. "I go no farther with you!"

"Ah?"

"No farther!" she repeated. She was pale, she shivered. "Many thanks, my cousin, but we part company here. I do not go to Angers. I have seen horrors enough. I will take my people, and go to my aunt by Tours and the east road. For you, I foresee what will happen. You will perish between the hammer and the anvil."

"Ah?"

"You play too fine a game," she continued, her face quivering. "Give over the girl to her lover, and send away her people with her. And wash your hands of her and hers. Or you will see her fall, and fall beside her! Give her to him, I say-give her to him!"

"My wife?"

"Wife?" she echoed, for, fickle, and at all times swept away by the emotions of the moment, she was in earnest now. "Is there a tie," and she pointed after the vanishing procession, "that they cannot unloose? That they will not unloose? Is there a life which escapes if they doom it? Did the Admiral escape? Or Rochefoucauld? Or Madame de Luns in old days? I tell you they go to rouse Angers against you, and I see beforehand what will happen. She will perish, and you with her. Wife? A pretty wife, at whose door you took her lover last night."

"And at your door!" he answered quietly, unmoved by the gibe.

But she did not heed. "I warned you of that!" she cried. "And you would not believe me. I told you he was following. And I warn you of this. You are between the hammer and the anvil, M. le Comte! If Tignonville does not murder you in your bed-"

"'Tis not likely while I hold him in my power."

"Then Holy Church will fall on you and crush you. For me, I have seen enough and more than enough. I go to Tours by the east road."

He shrugged his shoulders. "As you please," he said.

She flung away in disgust with him. She could not understand a man who played fast and loose at such a time. The game was too fine for her, its danger too apparent, the gain too small. She had, too, a woman's dread of the Church, a woman's belief in the power of the dead hand to punish. And in half an hour her orders were given. In two hours her people were gathered, and she departed by the eastward road, three of Tavannes' riders reinforcing her servants for a part of the way. Count Hannibal stood to watch them start, and noticed Bigot riding by the side of Suzanne's mule. He smiled; and presently, as he turned away, he did a thing rare with him-he laughed outright.

A laugh which reflected a mood rare as itself. Few had seen Count Hannibal's eye sparkle as it sparkled now; few had seen him laugh as he laughed, walking to and fro in the sunshine before the inn. His men watched him, and wondered, and liked it little, for one or two who had overheard his altercation with the Churchmen had reported it, and there was shaking of heads over it. The man who had singed the Pope's beard and chucked Cardinals under the chin was growing old, and the most daring of the others had no mind to fight with foes whose weapons were not of this world.

Count Hannibal's gaiety, however, was well grounded, had they known it. He was gay, not because he foresaw peril, and it was his nature to love peril; nor-in the main, though a little, perhaps-because he knew that the woman whose heart he desired to win had that night stood between him and death; nor, though again a little, perhaps, because she had confirmed his choice by conduct which a small man might have deprecated, but which a great man loved; but chiefly, because the events of the night had placed in his grasp two weapons by the aid of which he looked to recover all the ground he had lost-lost by his impulsive departure from the path of conduct on which he had started.

Those weapons were Tignonville, taken like a rat in a trap by the rising of the water; and the knowledge that the Countess had stolen the precious packet from his pillow. The knowledge-for he had lain and felt her breath upon his cheek, he had lain and felt her hand beneath his pillow, he had lain while the impulse to fling his arms about her had been almost more than he could tame! He had lain and suffered her to go, to pass out safely as she had passed in. And then he had received his reward in the knowledge that, if she robbed him, she robbed him not for herself; and that where it was a question of his life she did not fear to risk her own.

When he came, indeed, to that point, he trembled. How narrowly had he been saved from misjudging her! Had he not lain and waited, had he not possessed himself in patience, he might have been led to think her in collusion with the old lover whom he found at her door, and with those who came to slay him. Either he might have perished unwarned; or escaping that danger, he might have detected her with Tignonville and lost for all time the ideal of a noble woman.

He had escaped that peril. More, he had gained the weapons we have indicated; and the sense of power, in regard to her, almost intoxicated him. Surely if he wielded those weapons to the best advantage, if he strained generosity to the uttermost, the citadel of her heart must yield at last.

He had the defect of his courage and his nature, a tendency to do things after a flamboyant fashion. He knew that her act would plunge him in perils which he had not foreseen. If the preachers roused the Papists of Angers, if he arrived to find men's swords whetted for the massacre and the men themselves awaiting the signal, then if he did not give that signal there would be trouble. There would be trouble of the kind in which the soul of Hannibal de Tavannes revelled, trouble about the ancient cathedral and under the black walls of the Angevin castle, trouble amid which the hearts of common men would be as water.

Then, when things seemed at their worst, he would reveal his knowledge. Then, when forgiveness must seem impossible, he would forgive. With the flood of peril which she had unloosed rising round them, he would say, "Go!" to the man who had aimed at his life; he would say to her, "I know, and I forgive!" That, that only, would fitly crown the policy on which he had decided from the first, though he had not hoped to conduct it on lines so splendid as those which now dazzled him.

CHAPTER XXVI
TEMPER

It was his gaiety, that strange unusual gaiety, still continuing, which on the following day began by perplexing and ended by terrifying the Countess. She could not doubt that he had missed the packet on which so much hung and of which he had indicated the importance. But if he had missed it, why, she asked herself, did he not speak? Why did he not cry the alarm, search and question and pursue? Why did he not give her the opening to tell the truth, without which even her courage failed, her resolution died within her?

Above all, what was the secret of his strange merriment? Of the snatches of song which broke from him, only to be hushed by her look of astonishment? Of the parades which his horse, catching the infection, made under him, as he tossed his riding-cane high in the air and caught it?

Ay, what? Why, when he had suffered so great a loss, when he had been robbed of that of which he must give account-why did he cast off his melancholy and ride like the youngest? She wondered what the men thought, and looking, saw them stare, saw that they watched him stealthily, saw that they laid their heads together. What were they thinking of it? She could not tell; and slowly a terror, more insistent than any to which the extremity of violence would have reduced her, began to grip her heart.

Twenty hours of rest had lifted her from the state of collapse into which the events of the night had cast her; still her limbs at starting had shaken under her. But the cool freshness of the early summer morning, and the sight of the green landscape and the winding Loir, beside which their road ran, had not failed to revive her spirits; and if he had shown himself merely gloomy, merely sunk in revengeful thoughts, or darting hither and thither the glance of suspicion, she felt that she could have faced him, and on the first opportunity could have told him the truth.

But this strange mood veiled she knew not what. It seemed, if she comprehended it at all, the herald of some bizarre, some dreadful vengeance, in harmony with his fierce and mocking spirit. Before it her heart became as water. Even her colour little by little left her cheeks. She knew that he had only to look at her now to read the truth; that it was written in her face, in her shrinking figure, in the eyes which now guiltily sought and now avoided his. And feeling sure that he did read it and know it, she fancied that he licked his lips, as the cat which plays with the mouse; she fancied that he gloated on her terror and her perplexity.

This, though the day and the road were warrants for all cheerful thoughts. On one side vineyards clothed the warm red slopes, and rose in steps from the river to the white buildings of a convent. On the other the stream wound through green flats where the black cattle stood knee-deep in grass, watched by wild-eyed and half-naked youths. Again the travellers lost sight of the Loir, and crossing a shoulder, rode through the dim aisles of a beech-forest, through deep rustling drifts of last year's leaves. And out again and down again they passed, and turning aside from the gateway, trailed along beneath the brown machicolated wall of an old town, from the crumbling battlements of which faces half-sleepy, half-suspicious, watched them as they moved below through the glare and heat. Down to the river-level again, where a squalid anchorite, seated at the mouth of a cave dug in the bank, begged of them, and the bell of a monastery on the farther bank tolled slumberously the hour of Nones.

And still he said nothing, and she, cowed by his mysterious gaiety, yet spurning herself for her cowardice, was silent also. He hoped to arrive at Angers before nightfall. What, she wondered, shivering, would happen there? What was he planning to do to her? How would he punish her? Brave as she was, she was a woman, with a woman's nerves; and fear and anticipation got upon them; and his silence-his silence which must mean a thing worse than words!

And then on a sudden, piercing all, a new thought. Was it possible that he had other letters? If his bearing were consistent with anything, it was consistent with that. Had he other genuine letters, or had he duplicate letters, so that he had lost nothing, but instead had gained the right to rack and torture her, to taunt and despise her?

That thought stung her into sudden self-betrayal. They were riding along a broad dusty track which bordered a stone causey raised above the level of winter floods; impulsively she turned to him. "You have other letters!" she cried. "You have other letters!" And freed for the moment from her terror, she fixed her eyes on his and strove to read his face.

He looked at her, his mouth grown hard. "What do you mean, madame?" he asked.

"You have other letters?"

"For whom?"

"From the King, for Angers!"

He saw that she was going to confess, that she was going to derange his cherished plan; and unreasonable anger awoke in the man who had been more than willing to forgive a real injury. "Will you explain?" he said between his teeth. And his eyes glittered unpleasantly. "What do you mean?"

"You have other letters," she persisted, "besides those which I stole."

"Which you stole?" He repeated the words without passion. Enraged by this unexpected turn, he hardly knew how to take it.

"Yes, I!" she cried. "I! I took them from under your pillow!"

He was silent a minute. Then he laughed and shook his head. "It will not do, madame," he said, his lip curling. "You are clever, but you do not deceive me."

"Deceive you?"

"Yes."

"You do not believe that I took the letters?" she cried in great amazement.

"No," he answered; "and for a good reason." He had hardened his heart now. He had chosen his line, and he would not spare her.

"Why, then?" she cried. "Why?"

"For the best of all reasons," he answered. "Because the person who stole the letters was seized in the act of making his escape, and is now in my power."

"The person-who stole the letters?" she faltered.

"Yes, madame."

"Do you mean M. de Tignonville?"

"You have said it."

She turned white to the lips, and trembling could with difficulty sit her horse. With an effort she pulled it up, and he stopped also. Their attendants were some way ahead. "And you have the letters?" she whispered, her eyes meeting his. "You have the letters?"

"No, but I have the thief!" Count Hannibal answered with sinister meaning. "As I think you knew, madame," he continued ironically, "a while back before you spoke."

"I? Oh, no, no!" and she swayed in her saddle. "What-what are you-going to do?" she muttered after a moment's stricken silence.

"To him?"

"Yes."

"The magistrates will decide, at Angers."

"But he did not do it! I swear he did not."

Count Hannibal shook his head coldly.

"I swear, monsieur, I took the letters!" she repeated piteously. "Punish me!" Her figure, bowed like an old woman's over the neck of her horse, seemed to crave his mercy.

Count Hannibal smiled.

"You do not believe me?"

"No," he said. And then, in a tone which chilled her, "If I did believe you," he continued, "I should still punish him!" She was broken; but he would see if he could not break her further. He would try if there were no weak spot in her armour. He would rack her now, since in the end she must go free. "Understand, madame," he continued in his harshest tone, "I have had enough of your lover. He has crossed my path too often. You are my wife, I am your husband. In a day or two there shall be an end of this farce and of him."

"He did not take them!" she wailed, her face sinking lower on her breast. "He did not take them! Have mercy!"

"Any way, madame, they are gone!" Tavannes answered. "You have taken them between you; and as I do not choose that you should pay, he will pay the price."

If the discovery that Tignonville had fallen into her husband's hands had not sufficed to crush her, Count Hannibal's tone must have done so. The shoot of new life which had raised its head after those dreadful days in Paris, and-for she was young-had supported her under the weight which the peril of Angers had cast on her shoulders, died, bruised under the heel of his brutality. The pride which had supported her, which had won Tavannes' admiration and exacted his respect, sank, as she sank herself, bowed to her horse's neck, weeping bitter tears before him. She abandoned herself to her misery, as she had once abandoned herself in the upper room in Paris.

And he looked at her. He had willed to crush her; he had his will, and he was not satisfied. He had bowed her so low that his magnanimity would now have its full effect, would shine as the sun into a dark world; and yet he was not happy. He could look forward to the morrow, and say, "She will understand me, she will know me!" and lo, the thought that she wept for her lover stabbed him, and stabbed him anew; and he thought, "Rather would she death from him, than life from me! Though I give her creation, it will not alter her! Though I strike the stars with my head, it is he who fills her world."

The thought spurred him to farther cruelty, impelled him to try if, prostrate as she was, he could not draw a prayer from her? "You don't ask after him?" he scoffed. "He may be before or behind? Or wounded or well? Would you not know, madame? And what message he sent you? And what he fears, and what hope he has? And his last wishes? And-for while there is life there is hope-would you not learn where the key of his prison lies to-night? How much for the key to-night, madame?"

Each question fell on her like the lash of a whip; but as one who has been flogged into insensibility, she did not wince. That drove him on: he felt a mad desire to hear her prayers, to force her lower, to bring her to her knees. And he sought about for a keener taunt. Their attendants were almost out of sight before them; the sun, declining apace, was in their eyes. "In two hours we shall be in Angers," he said. "Mon Dieu, madame, it was a pity, when you two were taking letters, you did not go a step farther. You were surprised, or I doubt if I should be alive to-day!"

Then she did look up. She raised her head and met his gaze with such wonder in her eyes, such reproach in her tear-stained face, that his voice sank on the last word. "You mean-that I would have murdered you?" she said. "I would have cut off my hand first. What I did" – and now her voice was as firm as it was low-"what I did, I did to save my people. And if it were to be done again, I would do it again!"

"You dare to tell me that to my face?" he cried, hiding feelings which almost choked him. "You would do it again, would you? Mon Dieu, madame, you need to be taught a lesson!"

And by chance, meaning only to make the horses move on again, he raised his whip. She thought that he was going to strike her, and she flinched at last. The whip fell smartly on her horse's quarters, and it sprang forward. Count Hannibal swore between his teeth.

He had turned pale, she red as fire. "Get on! Get on!" he cried harshly. "We are falling behind!" And riding at her heels, flipping her horse now and then, he forced her to trot on until they overtook the servants.