It was late evening when, riding wearily on jaded horses, they came to the outskirts of Angers, and saw before them the term of their journey. The glow of sunset had faded, but the sky was still warm with the last hues of day; and against its opal light the huge mass of the Angevin castle, which even in sunshine rises dark and forbidding above the Mayenne, stood up black and sharply defined. Below it, on both banks of the river, the towers and spires of the city soared up from a sombre huddle of ridge-roofs, broken here by a round-headed gateway, crumbling and pigeon-haunted, that dated from St. Louis, and there by the gaunt arms of a windmill.
The city lay dark under a light sky, keeping well its secrets. Thousands were out of doors enjoying the evening coolness in alley and court, yet it betrayed the life which pulsed in its arteries only by the low murmur which rose from it. Nevertheless, the Countess at sight of its roofs tasted the first moment of happiness which had been hers that day. She might suffer, but she had saved. Those roofs would thank her! In that murmur were the voices of women and children she had redeemed! At the sight and at the thought a wave of love and tenderness swept all bitterness from her breast. A profound humility, a boundless thankfulness took possession of her. Her head sank lower above her horse's mane; but it sank in reverence, not in shame.
Could she have known what was passing beneath those roofs which night was blending in a common gloom--could she have read the thoughts which at that moment paled the cheeks of many a stout burgher, whose gabled house looked on the great square, she had been still more thankful. For in attics and back rooms women were on their knees at that hour, praying with feverish eyes; and in the streets men--on whom their fellows, seeing the winding-sheet already at the chin, gazed askance--smiled, and showed brave looks abroad, while their hearts were sick with fear.
For darkly, no man knew how, the news had come to Angers. It had been known, more or less, for three days. Men had read it in other men's eyes. The tongue of a scold, the sneer of an injured woman had spread it, the birds of the air had carried it. From garret window to garret window across the narrow lanes of the old town it had been whispered at dead of night; at convent grilles, and in the timber-yards beside the river. Ten thousand, fifty thousand, a hundred thousand, it was rumoured, had perished in Paris. In Orleans, all. In Tours this man's sister; at Saumur that man's son. Through France the word had gone forth that the Huguenots must die; and in the busy town the same roof-tree sheltered fear and hate, rage and cupidity. On one side of the party-wall murder lurked fierce-eyed; on the other, the victim lay watching the latch, and shaking at a step. Strong men tasted the bitterness of death, and women clasping their babes to their breasts smiled sickly into children's eyes.
The signal only was lacking. It would come, said some, from Saumur, where Montsoreau, the Duke of Anjou's Lieutenant-Governor and a Papist, had his quarters. From Paris, said others, directly from the King. It might come at any hour now, in the day or in the night; the magistrates, it was whispered, were in continuous session, awaiting its coming. No wonder that from, lofty gable windows, and from dormers set high above the tiles, haggard faces looked northward and eastward, and ears sharpened by fear imagined above the noises of the city the ring of the iron shoes that carried doom.
Doubtless the majority desired--as the majority in France have always desired--peace. But in the purlieus about the cathedral and in the lanes where the sacristans lived, in convent parlours and college courts, among all whose livelihood the new faith threatened, was a stir as of a hive deranged. Here was grumbling against the magistrates--why wait? There, stealthy plannings and arrangements; everywhere a grinding of weapons and casting of slugs. Old grudges, new rivalries, a scholar's venom, a priest's dislike, here was final vent for all. None need leave this feast unsated!
It was a man of this class, sent out for the purpose, who first espied Count Hannibal's company approaching. He bore the news into the town, and by the time the travellers reached the city gate, the dusky street within, on which lights were beginning to twinkle from booths and casements, was alive with figures running to meet them and crying the news as they ran. The travellers, weary and road-stained, had no sooner passed under the arch than they found themselves the core of a great crowd which moved with them and pressed about them; now unbonneting, and now calling out questions, and now shouting "Vive le Roi! Vive le Roi!" Above the press, windows burst into light; and over all, the quaint leaning gables of the old timbered houses looked down on the hurry and tumult.
They passed along a narrow street in which the rabble, hurrying at Count Hannibal's bridle, and often looking back to read his face, had much ado to escape harm; along this street and before the yawning doors of a great church, whence a hot breath heavy with incense and burning wax issued to meet them. A portion of the congregation had heard the tumult and struggled out, and now stood close-packed on the steps under the double vault of the portal. Among them the Countess's eyes, as she rode by, a sturdy man-at-arms on either hand, caught and held one face. It was the face of a tall, lean man in dusty black; and though she did not know him she seemed to have an equal attraction for him; for as their eyes met he seized the shoulder of the man next him and pointed her out. And something in the energy of the gesture, or in the thin lips and malevolent eyes of the man who pointed, chilled the Countess's blood and shook her, she knew not why.
Until then, she had known no fear save of her husband. But at that a sense of the force and pressure of the crowd--as well as of the fierce passions, straining about her, which a word might unloose--broke upon her; and looking to the stern men on either side she fancied that she read anxiety in their faces.
She glanced behind. Bridle to bridle the Count's men came on, pressing round her women and shielding them from the exuberance of the throng. In their faces too she thought that she traced uneasiness.
What wonder if the scenes through which she had passed in Paris began to recur to her mind, and shook nerves already overwrought?
She began to tremble. "Is there--danger?" she muttered, speaking in a low voice to Bigot, who rode on her right hand. "Will they do anything?"
The Norman snorted. "Not while he is in the saddle," he said, nodding towards his master, who rode a pace in front of them, his reins loose. "There be some here know him!" Bigot continued, in his drawling tone. "And more will know him if they break line. Have no fear, madame, he will bring you safe to the inn. Down with the Huguenots?" he continued, turning from her and addressing a rogue who, holding his stirrup, was shouting the cry till he was crimson. "Then why not away, and----"
"The King! The King's word and leave!" the man answered.
"Ay, tell us!" shrieked another, looking upward, while he waved his cap; "have we the King's leave?"
"You'll bide his leave!" the Norman retorted, indicating the Count with his thumb. "Or 'twill be up with you--on the three-legged horse!"
"But he comes from the King!" the man panted.
"To be sure. To be sure!"
"Then----"
"You'll bide his time! That's all!" Bigot answered, rather it seemed for his own satisfaction than the other's enlightenment. "You'll all bide it, you dogs!" he continued in his beard, as he cast his eye over the weltering crowd. "Ha! so we are here, are we? And not too soon, either."
He fell silent as they entered an open space, overlooked on one side by the dark façade of the cathedral, on the other three sides by houses more or less illumined. The rabble swept into this open space with them and before them, filled much of it in an instant, and for a while eddied and swirled this way and that, thrust onward by the worshippers who had issued from the church and backwards by those who had been first in the square, and had no mind to be hustled out of hearing. A stranger, confused by the sea of excited faces, and deafened by the clamour of "Vive le Roi!" "Vive Anjou!" mingled with cries against the Huguenots, might have fancied that the whole city was arrayed before him. But he would have been wide of the mark. The scum, indeed--and a dangerous scum--frothed and foamed and spat under Tavannes' bridle-hand; and here and there among them, but not of them, the dark-robed figure of a priest moved to and fro; or a Benedictine, or some smooth-faced acolyte egged on to the work he dared not do. But the decent burghers were not there. They lay bolted in their houses; while the magistrates, with little heart to do aught except bow to the mob--or other their masters for the time being--shook in their council chamber.
There is not a city of France which has not seen it; which has not known the moment when the mass impended, and it lay with one man to start it or stay its course. Angers within its houses heard the clamour, and from the child, clinging to its mother's skirt, and wondering why she wept, to the Provost, trembled, believing that the hour had come. The Countess heard it too, and understood it. She caught the savage note in the voice of the mob--that note which means danger--and her heart beating wildly she looked to her husband. Then, fortunately for her, fortunately for Angers, it was given to all to see that in Count Hannibal's saddle sat a man.
He raised his hand for silence, and in a minute or two--not at once, for the square was dusky--it was obtained. He rose in his stirrups, and bared his head.
"I am from the King!" he cried, throwing his voice to all parts of the crowd. "And this is his Majesty's pleasure and good will! That every man hold his hand until to-morrow on pain of death, or worse! And at noon his further pleasure will be known! Vive le Roi!"
And he covered his head again.
"Vive le Roi!" cried a number of the foremost. But their shouts were feeble and half-hearted, and were quickly drowned in a rising murmur of discontent and ill-humour, which, mingled with cries of "Is that all? Is there no more? Down with the Huguenots!" rose from all parts. Presently these cries became merged in a persistent call, which had its origin, as far as could be discovered, in the darkest corner of the square. A call for "Montsoreau! Montsoreau! Give us Montsoreau!"
With another man, or had Tavannes turned or withdrawn, or betrayed the least anxiety, words had become actions, disorder a riot; and that in the twinkling of an eye. But Count Hannibal, sitting his horse, with his handful of riders behind him, watched the crowd, as little moved by it as the Armed Knight of Notre Dame. Only once did he say a word. Then, raising his hand as before to gain a hearing, "You ask for Montsoreau?" he thundered. "You will have Montfaucon if you do not quickly go to your homes!"
At which, and at the glare of his eye, the more timid took fright. Feeling his gaze upon them, seeing that he had no intention of withdrawing, they began to sneak away by ones and twos. Soon others missed them and took the alarm, and followed. A moment and scores were streaming away through lanes and alleys and along the main street. At last the bolder and more turbulent found themselves a remnant. They glanced uneasily at one another and at Tavannes, took fright in their turn, and plunging into the current hastened away, raising now and then as they passed through the streets a cry of "Vive Montsoreau! Montsoreau!"--which was not without its menace for the morrow.
Count Hannibal waited motionless until no more than half a dozen groups remained in the open. Then he gave the word to dismount; so far, even the Countess and her women had kept their saddles, lest the movement which their retreat into the inn must have caused should be misread by the mob. Last of all he dismounted himself, and with lights going before him and behind, and preceded by Bigot, bearing his cloak and pistols, he escorted the Countess into the house. Not many minutes had elapsed since he called for silence; but long before he reached the chamber looking over the square from the first floor, in which supper was being set for them, the news had flown through the length and breadth of Angers that for this night the danger was past. The hawk had come to Angers, and lo! it was a dove.
Count Hannibal strode to one of the open windows and looked out. In the room, which was well lighted, were people of the house, going to and fro, setting out the table; to Madame, standing beside the hearth--which held its summer dressing of green boughs--while her woman held water for her to wash, the scene recalled with painful vividness the meal at which she had been present on the morning of the St. Bartholomew--the meal which had ushered in her troubles. Naturally her eyes went to her husband, her mind to the horror in which she had held him then; and with a kind of shock, perhaps because the last few minutes had shown him in a new light, she compared her old opinion of him with that which, much as she feared him, she now entertained.
This afternoon, if ever, within the last few hours, if at all, he had acted in a way to justify that horror and that opinion. He had treated her--brutally; he had insulted and threatened her, had almost struck her. And yet--and yet Madame felt that she had moved so far from the point which she had once occupied that the old attitude was hard to understand. Hardly could she believe that it was on this man, much as she still dreaded him, that she had looked with those feelings of repulsion.
She was still gazing at him with eyes which strove to see two men in one, when he turned from the window. Absorbed in thought she had forgotten her occupation, and stood, the towel suspended in her half-dried hands. Before she knew what he was doing he was at her side; he bade the woman hold the bowl, and he rinsed his hands. Then he turned, and without looking at the Countess, he dried his hands on the farther end of the towel which she was still using.
She blushed faintly. A something in the act, more intimate and more familiar than had ever marked their intercourse, set her blood running strangely. When he turned away and bade Bigot unbuckle his spur-leathers, she stepped forward.
"I will do it!" she murmured, acting on a sudden and unaccountable impulse. And as she knelt, she shook her hair about her face to hide its colour.
"Nay, madame, but you will soil your fingers!" he said coldly.
"Permit me," she muttered half coherently. And though her fingers shook, she pursued and performed her task.
When she rose he thanked her; and then the devil in the man, or the Nemesis he had provoked when he took her by force from another--the Nemesis of jealousy, drove him to spoil all. "And for whose sake, madame?" he added with a jeer--"mine or M. de Tignonville's?" And with a glance between jest and earnest, he tried to read her thoughts.
She winced as if he had indeed struck her, and the hot colour fled her cheeks. "For his sake!" she said, with a shiver of pain. "That his life may be spared!" And she stood back humbly, like a beaten dog. Though, indeed, it was for the sake of Angers, in thankfulness for the past rather than in any desperate hope of propitiating her husband, that she had done it!
Perhaps he would have withdrawn his words. But before he could answer, the host, bowing to the floor, came to announce that all was ready, and that the Provost of the City, for whom M. le Comte had sent, was in waiting below. "Let him come up!" Tavannes answered, grave and frowning. "And see you, close the room, sirrah! My people will wait on us. Ah!" as the Provost, a burly man with a face framed for jollity, but now pale and long, entered and approached him with many salutations. "How comes it, M. le Prévôt--you are the Prévôt, are you not?"
"Yes, M. le Comte."
"How comes it that so great a crowd is permitted to meet in the streets? And that at my entrance, though I come unannounced, I find half of the city gathered together?"
The Provost stared. "Respect, M. le Comte," he said, "for His Majesty's letters, of which you are the bearer, no doubt induced some to come together----"
"Who said I brought letters?"
"Who----"
"Who said I brought letters?" Count Hannibal repeated in a strenuous voice. And he ground his chair half about and faced the astonished magistrate. "Who said I brought letters?"
"Why, my lord," the Provost stammered, "it was everywhere yesterday----"
"Yesterday?"
"Last night, at latest--that letters were coming from the King."
"By my hand?"
"By your lordship's hand--whose name is so well known here," the magistrate added, in the hope of clearing the great man's brow.
Count Hannibal laughed darkly. "My hand will be better known by-and-by," he said. "See you, sirrah, there is some practice here. What is this cry of Montsoreau that I hear?"
"Your lordship knows that he is His Grace's Lieutenant-Governor in Saumur."
"I know that, man. But is he here?"
"He was at Saumur yesterday, and 'twas rumoured three days back that he was coming here to extirpate the Huguenots. Then word came of your lordship and of His Majesty's letters, and 'twas thought that M. de Montsoreau would not come, his authority being superseded."
"I see. And now your rabble think that they would prefer M. Montsoreau. That is it, is it?"
The magistrate shrugged his shoulders and opened his hands. "Pigs!" he said. And having spat on the floor he looked apologetically at the lady. "True pigs!"
"What connections has he here?" Tavannes asked.
"He is a brother of my lord the Bishop's Vicar, who arrived yesterday."
"With a rout of shaven heads who have been preaching and stirring up the town!" Count Hannibal cried, his face growing red. "Speak, man, is it so? But I'll be sworn it is!"
"There has been preaching," the Provost answered reluctantly.
"Montsoreau may count his brother, then, for one. He is a fool, but with a knave behind him, and a knave who has no cause to love us! And the Castle? 'Tis held by one of M. de Montsoreau's creatures, I take it?"
"Yes, my lord."
"With what force?"
The magistrate shrugged his shoulders, and looked doubtfully at Badelon, who was keeping the door.
Tavannes followed the glance with his usual impatience. "Mon Dieu, you need not look at him!" he cried. "He has sacked St. Peter's and singed the Pope's beard with a holy candle! He has been served on the knee by Cardinals; and is Turk or Jew, or monk or Huguenot as I please. And madame"--for the Provost's astonished eyes, after resting awhile on the old soldier's iron visage, had passed to her--"is Huguenot, so you need have no fear of her! There, speak, man," with impatience, "and cease to think of your own skin!"
The Provost drew a deep breath, and fixed his small eyes on Count Hannibal.
"If I knew, my lord, what you--why, my own sister's son"--he paused, his face began to work, his voice shook--"is a Huguenot! Ay, my lord, a Huguenot! And they know it!" he continued, a flush of rage augmenting the emotion which his countenance betrayed. "Ay, they know it! And they push me on at the Council, and grin behind my back; Lescot, who was Provost two years back and would match his son with my daughter; and Thuriot who prints for the University! They nudge one another, and egg me on, till half the city thinks it is I who would kill the Huguenots! I!" Again his voice broke. "And my own sister's son a Huguenot! And my girl at home white-faced for--for his sake."
Tavannes scanned the man shrewdly. "Perhaps she is of the same way of thinking?" he said.
The Provost started, and lost one-half of his colour. "God forbid!" he cried, "saving madame's presence! Who says so, my lord, lies!"
"Ay, lies not far from the truth."
"My lord!"
"Pish, man, Lescot has said it and will act on it. And Thuriot, who prints for the University! Would you 'scape them? You would? Then listen to me. I want but two things. First, how many men has Montsoreau's fellow in the Castle? Few, I know, for he is a niggard, and if he spends, he spends the Duke's pay."
"Twelve. But five can hold it."
"Ay, but twelve dare not leave it! Let them stew in their own broth! And now for the other matter. See, man, that before daybreak three gibbets, with a ladder and two ropes apiece, are set up in the square. And let one be before this door. You understand? Then let it be done! The rest," he added with a ferocious smile, "you may leave to me."
The magistrate nodded rather feebly. "Doubtless," he said, his eye wandering here and there, "there are rogues in Angers. And for rogues the gibbet! But saving your presence, my lord, it is a question whether----"
But M. de Tavannes' patience was exhausted. "Will you do it?" he roared. "That is the question. And the only question."
The Provost jumped, he was so startled. "Certainly, my lord, certainly!" he muttered humbly. "Certainly, I will!" And bowing frequently, but saying no more, he backed himself out of the room.
Count Hannibal laughed grimly after his fashion, and doubtless thought that he had seen the last of the magistrate for that night. Great was his wrath therefore, when, less than a minute later--and before Bigot had carved for him--the door opened and the Provost appeared again. He slid in, and without giving the courage he had gained on the stairs time to cool, plunged into his trouble.
"It stands this way, M. le Comte," he bleated. "If I put up the gibbets and a man is hanged, and you have letters from the King, 'tis a rogue the less and no harm done. But if you have no letters from His Majesty, then it is on my shoulders they will put it, and 'twill be odd if they do not find a way to hang me to right him."
Count Hannibal smiled grimly. "And your sister's son?" he sneered. "And your girl who is white-faced for his sake, and may burn on the same bonfire with him? And----"
"Mercy! Mercy!" the wretched Provost cried. And he wrung his hands. "Lescot and Thuriot----"
"Perhaps we may hang Lescot and Thuriot----"
"But I see no way out," the Provost babbled. "No way! No way!"
"I am going to show you one," Tavannes retorted. "If the gibbets are not in place by sunrise, I shall hang you from this window. That is one way out; and you'll be wise to take the other! For the rest and for your comfort, if I have no letters, it is not always to paper that the King commits his inmost heart."
The magistrate bowed. He quaked, he doubted, but he had no choice. "My lord," he said, "I put myself in your hands. It shall be done, certainly it shall be done. But, but----" and shaking his head in foreboding he turned to the door.
At the last moment, when he was within a pace of it, the Countess rose impulsively to her feet. She called to him. "M. le Prévôt, a minute, if you please," she said. "There may be trouble to morrow; your daughter may be in some peril. You will do well to send her to me. My lord"--and on the word her voice, timid before, grew full and steady--"will see that I am safe. And she will be safe with me."
The Provost saw before him only a gracious lady, moved by a thoughtfulness unusual in persons of her rank. He was at no pains to explain the flame in her cheek, or the soft light which glowed in her eyes, as she looked at him, across her formidable husband. He was only profoundly grateful--moved even to tears. Humbly thanking her he accepted her offer for his child, and withdrew wiping his eyes.
When he was gone, and the door had closed behind him, Tavannes turned to the Countess, who still kept her feet. "You are very confident this evening," he sneered. "Gibbets do not frighten you, it seems, madame. Perhaps if you knew for whom the one before the door is intended?"
She met his look with a searching gaze, and spoke with a ring of defiance in her tone. "I do not believe it!" she said. "I do not believe it! You who save Angers will not destroy him!" And then her woman's mood changing, with courage and colour ebbing together, "Oh, no, you will not! You will not!" she wailed. And she dropped on her knees before him, and holding up her clasped hands, "God will put it in your heart to spare him--and me!"
He rose with a stifled oath, took two steps from her, and in a tone hoarse and constrained, "Go!" he said. "Go, or sit! Do you hear, madame? You try my patience too far!"
But when she had gone his face was radiant. He had brought her, he had brought all, to the point at which he aimed. To-morrow his triumph awaited him. To-morrow he who had cast her down would raise her up.
He did not foresee what a day would bring forth.
The sun was an hour high, and in Angers the shops and booths, after the early fashion of the day, were open or opening. Through all the gates country folk were pressing into the gloomy streets of the Black Town with milk and fruit; and at doors and windows housewives cheapened fish, or chaffered over the fowl for the pot. For men must eat, though there be gibbets in the Place Ste.-Croix: gaunt gibbets, high and black and twofold, each, with its dangling ropes, like a double note of interrogation.
But gibbets must eat also; and between ground and noose was so small a space in those days that a man dangled almost before he knew it. The sooner, then, the paniers were empty, and the clown, who pays for all, was beyond the gates, the better he, for one, would be pleased. In the market, therefore, was hurrying. Men cried their wares in lowered voices, and tarried but a little for the oldest customer. The bargain struck, the more timid among the buyers hastened to shut themselves into their houses again; the bolder, who ventured to the Place to confirm the rumour with their eyes, talked in corners and in lanes, avoided the open, and eyed the sinister preparations from afar. The shadow of the things which stood before the cathedral affronting the sunlight with their gaunt black shapes lay across the length and breadth of Angers. Even in the corners where men whispered, even in the cloisters where men bit their nails in impotent auger, the stillness of fear ruled all. Whatever Count Hannibal had it in his mind to tell the city, it seemed unlikely--and hour by hour it seemed less likely--that any would contradict him.
He knew this as he walked in the sunlight before the inn, his spurs ringing on the stones as he made each turn, his movements watched by a hundred peering eyes. After all, it was not hard to rule, nor to have one's way in this world. But then, he went on to remember, not everyone had his self-control, or that contempt for the weak and unsuccessful which lightly took the form of mercy. He held Angers safe, curbed by his gibbets. With M. de Montsoreau he might have trouble; but the trouble would be slight, for he knew Montsoreau, and what it was the Lieutenant-Governor valued above profitless bloodshed.
He might have felt less confident had he known what was passing at that moment in a room off the small cloister of the Abbey of St. Aubin, a room known at Angers as the Little Chapter-House. It was a long chamber with a groined roof and stone walls, panelled as high as a tall man might reach with dark chestnut wood. Gloomily lighted by three grated windows, which looked on a small inner green, the last resting-place of the Benedictines, the room itself seemed at first sight no more than the last resting-place of worn-out odds and ends. Piles of thin sheepskin folios, dog's-eared and dirty, the rejected of the choir, stood against the walls; here and there among them lay a large brass-bound tome on which the chains that had fettered it to desk or lectern still rusted. A broken altar cumbered one corner: a stand bearing a curious--and rotting--map filled another. In the other two corners a medley of faded scutcheons and banners, which had seen their last Toussaint procession, mouldered slowly into dust--into much dust. The air of the room was full of it.
In spite of which the long oak table that filled the middle of the chamber shone with use: so did the great metal standish which it bore. And though the seven men who sat about the table seemed, at a first glance and in that gloomy light, as rusty and faded as the rubbish behind them, it needed but a second look at their lean jaws and hungry eyes to be sure of their vitality.
He who sat in the great chair at the end of the table was indeed rather plump than thin. His white hands, gay with rings, were well cared for; his peevish chin rested on a falling-collar of lace worthy of a Cardinal. But though the Bishop's Vicar was heard with deference, it was noticeable that when he had ceased to speak his hearers looked to the priest on his left, to Father Pezelay, and waited to hear his opinion before they gave their own. The Father's energy, indeed, had dominated the Angevins, clerks and townsfolk alike, as it had dominated the Parisian dévotes who knew him well. The vigour which hate inspires passes often for solid strength; and he who had seen with his own eyes the things done in Paris spoke with an authority to which the more timid quickly and easily succumbed.
Yet gibbets are ugly things; and Thuriot, the printer, whose pride had been tickled by a summons to the conclave, began to wonder if he had done wisely in coming. Lescot, too, who presently ventured a word. "But if M. de Tavannes' order be to do nothing," he began doubtfully, "you would not, reverend Father, have us resist His Majesty's will?"
"God forbid, my friend!" Father Pezelay answered with unction. "But His Majesty's will is to do--to do for the glory of God and the saints and His Holy Church! How? Is that which was lawful at Saumur unlawful here? Is that which was lawful at Tours unlawful here? Is that which the King did in Paris--to the utter extermination of the unbelieving and the purging of that Sacred City--against his will here? Nay, his will is to do--to do as they have done in Paris and in Tours and in Saumur! But his Minister is unfaithful! The woman whom he has taken to his bosom has bewildered him with her charms and her sorceries, and put it in his mind to deny the mission he bears."
"You are sure, beyond chance of error, that he bears letters to that effect, good Father?" the printer ventured.
"Ask my lord's Vicar! He knows the letters and the import of them!"
"They are to that effect," the Archdeacon answered, drumming on the table with his fingers and speaking somewhat sullenly. "I was in the Chancellery and I saw them. They are duplicates of those sent to Bordeaux."
"Then the preparations he has made must be against the Huguenots," Lescot, the ex-Provost, said with a sigh of relief. And Thuriot's face lightened also. "He must intend to hang one or two of the ringleaders, before he deals with the herd."
"Think it not!" Father Pezelay cried in his high shrill voice. "I tell you the woman has bewitched him, and he will deny his letters!"
For a moment there was silence. Then, "But dare he do that, reverend Father?" Lescot asked slowly and incredulously. "What? Suppress the King's letters?"
"There is nothing he will not dare! There is nothing he has not dared!" the priest answered vehemently; the recollection of the scene in the great guard-room of the Louvre, when Tavannes had so skilfully turned the tables on him, instilling venom into his tone. "She who lives with him is the devil's. She has bewitched him with her spells and her Sabbaths! She bears the mark of the Beast on her bosom, and for her the fire is even now kindling!"
The laymen who were present shuddered. The two canons who faced them crossed themselves, muttering "Avaunt, Satan!"
"It is for you to decide," the priest continued, gazing on them passionately, "whether you will side with him or with the Angel of God! For I tell you it was none other executed the divine judgments at Paris! It was none other but the Angel of God held the sword at Tours! It is none other holds the sword here! Are you for him or against him? Are you for him, or for the woman with the mark of the Beast? Are you for God or against God? For the hour draws near! The time is at hand! You must choose! You must choose!" And, striking the table with his hand, he leaned forward, and with glittering eyes fixed each of them in turn, as he cried, "You must choose! You must choose!" He came to the Archdeacon last.
The Bishop's Vicar fidgeted in his chair, his face a shade more sallow, his cheeks hanging a trifle more loosely, than ordinary. "If my brother were here!" he muttered. "If M. de Montsoreau had arrived!"
But Father Pezelay knew whose will would prevail if Montsoreau met Tavannes at his leisure. To force Montsoreau's hand, to surround him on his first entrance with a howling mob already committed to violence, to set him at their head and pledge him before he knew with whom he had to do--this had been, this still was, the priest's design.
But how was he to pursue it while those gibbets stood? While their shadows lay even on the chapter table, and darkened the faces of his most forward associates? That for a moment staggered the priest; and had not private hatred, ever renewed by the touch of the scar on his brow, fed the fire of bigotry he had yielded, as the rabble of Angers were yielding, reluctant and scowling, to the hand which held the city in its grip. But to have come so far on the wings of hate, and to do nothing! To have come avowedly to preach a crusade, and to sneak away cowed! To have dragged the Bishop's Vicar hither, and fawned and cajoled and threatened by turns--and for nothing! These things were passing bitter--passing bitter, when the morsel of vengeance he had foreseen smacked so sweet on the tongue.
For it was no common vengeance, no layman's vengeance, coarse and clumsy, which the priest had imagined in the dark hours of the night, when his feverish brain kept him wakeful. To see Count Hannibal roll in the dust had gone but a little way towards satisfying him. No! But to drag from his arms the woman for whom he had sinned, to subject her to shame and torture in the depths of some convent, and finally to burn her as a witch--it was that which had seemed to the priest in the night hours a vengeance sweet in the mouth.
But the thing seemed unattainable in the circumstances. The city was cowed; the priest knew that no dependence was to be placed on Montsoreau, whose vice was avarice and whose object was plunder. To the Archdeacon's feeble words, therefore, "We must look," the priest retorted sternly, "not to M. de Montsoreau, reverend Father, but to the pious of Angers! We must cry in the streets, 'They do violence to God! They wound God and His Mother!' And so, and so only, shall the unholy thing be rooted out!"
"Amen!" the Cure of St.-Benoist muttered, lifting his head; and his dull eyes glowed awhile. "Amen! Amen!" Then his chin sank again upon his breast.
But the canons of Angers looked doubtfully at one another, and timidly at the speakers; the meat was too strong for them. And Lescot and Thuriot shuffled in their seats. At length, "I do not know," Lescot muttered timidly.
"You do not know?"
"What can be done!"
"The people will know!" Father Pezelay retorted. "Trust them!"
"But the people will not rise without a leader."
"Then will I lead them!"
"Even so, reverend Father--I doubt," Lescot faltered. And Thuriot nodded assent. Gibbets were erected in those days rather for laymen than for the Church.
"You doubt!" the priest cried. "You doubt!" His baleful eyes passed from one to the other; from them to the rest of the company. He saw that with the exception of the Curé of St.-Benoist all were of a mind. "You doubt! Nay, but I see what it is! It is this," he continued slowly and in a different tone, "the King's will goes for nothing in Angers! His writ runs not here. And Holy Church cries in vain for help against the oppressor. I tell you, the sorceress who has bewitched him has bewitched you also. Beware! beware, therefore, lest it be with you as with him! And the fire that shall consume her, spare not your houses!"
The two citizens crossed themselves, grew pale and shuddered. The fear of witchcraft was great in Angers, the peril, if accused of it, enormous. Even the canons looked startled. "If--if my brother were here," the Archdeacon repeated feebly, "something might be done!"
"Vain is the help of man!" the priest retorted sternly, and with a gesture of sublime dismissal. "I turn from you to a mightier than you!" And, leaning his head on his hands, he covered his face.
The Archdeacon and the churchmen looked at him, and from him their scared eyes passed to one another. Their one desire now was to be quit of the matter, to have done with it, to escape; and one by one with the air of whipped curs they rose to their feet, and in a hurry to be gone muttered a word of excuse shamefacedly and got themselves out of the room. Lescot and the printer were not slow to follow, and in less than a minute the two strange preachers, the men from Paris, remained the only occupants of the chamber; save, to be precise, a lean official in rusty black, who throughout the conference had sat by the door.
Until the last shuffling footstep had ceased to sound in the still cloister no one spoke. Then Father Pezelay looked up, and the eyes of the two priests met in a long gaze. "What think you?" Pezelay muttered at last.
"Wet hay," the other answered dreamily, "is slow to kindle, yet burns if the fire be big enough. At what hour does he state his will?"
"At noon."
"In the Council Chamber!"
"It is so given out."
"It is three hundred yards from the Place Ste.-Croix and he must go guarded," the Curé of St.-Benoist continued in the same dull fashion. "He cannot leave many in the house with the woman. If it were attacked in his absence----"
"He would return, and----" Father Pezelay shook his head, his cheek turned a shade paler. Clearly, he saw with his mind's eye more than he expressed.
"Hoc est corpus," the other muttered, his dreamy gaze on the table. "If he met us then, on his way to the house, and we had bell, book, and candle, would he stop?"
"He would not stop!" Father Pezelay rejoined.
"He would not?"
"I know the man!"
"Then----" but the rest St.-Beuoist whispered, his head drooping forward; whispered so low that even the lean man behind him, listening with greedy ears, failed to follow the meaning of his superior's words. But that he spoke plainly enough for his hearer Father Pezelay's face was witness. Astonishment, fear, hope, triumph, the lean pale face reflected all in turn; and, underlying all, a subtle malignant mischief, as if a devil's eyes peeped through the holes in an opera mask.
When the other was at last silent Pezelay drew a deep breath. "'Tis bold! Bold! Bold!" he muttered. "But have you thought? He who bears the----"
"Brunt?" the other whispered with a chuckle. "He may suffer? Yes, but it will not be you or I! No, he who was last here shall be first there! The Archdeacon-Vicar--if we can persuade him--who knows but that even for him the crown of martyrdom is reserved?" The dull eyes flickered with unholy amusement.
"And the alarm that brings him from the Council Chamber?"
"Need not of necessity be real. The pinch will be to make use of it. Make use of it--and the hay will burn!"
"You think it will?"
"What can one man do against a thousand? His own people dare not support him."
Father Pezelay turned to the lean man who kept the door, and, beckoning to him, conferred a while with him in a low voice.
"A score or so I might get," the man answered presently after some debate. "And well posted, something might be done. But we are not in Paris, good father, where the Quarter of the Butchers is to be counted on, and men know that to kill Huguenots is to do God service! Here"--he shrugged his shoulders contemptuously--"they are sheep."
"It is the King's will," the priest answered, frowning on him darkly.
"Ay, but it is not Tavannes," the man in black answered with a grimace. "And he rules here today."
"Fool!" Pezelay retorted. "He has not twenty with him. Do you do as I say, and leave the rest to heaven!"
"And to you, good master?" the other answered. "For it is not all you are going to do," he continued with a grin, "that you have told me. Well, so be it! I'll do my part, but I wish we were in Paris. Ste. Genevieve is ever kind to her servants."