In a small back room on the second floor of the inn at Angers, a mean, dingy room which looked into a narrow lane, and commanded no prospect more informing than a blind wall, two men sat, fretting; or, rather, one man sat, his chin resting on his hand, while his companion, less patient or more sanguine, strode ceaselessly to and fro. In the first despair of capture--for they were prisoners--they had made up their minds to the worst, and the slow hours of two days had passed over their heads without kindling more than a faint spark of hope in their breasts. But when they had been taken out and forced to mount and ride--at first with feet tied to the horses' girths--they had let the change, the movement, and the open air fan the flame. They had muttered a word to one another, they had wondered, they had reasoned. And though the silence of their guards--from whose sour vigilance the keenest question drew no response--seemed of ill-omen, and, taken with their knowledge of the man into whose hands they had fallen, should have quenched the spark, these two, having special reasons, the one the buoyancy of youth, the other the faith of an enthusiast, cherished the flame. In the breast of one indeed it had blazed into a confidence so arrogant that he now took all for granted, and was not content.
"It is easy for you to say, 'Patience!'" he cried, as he walked the floor in a fever. "You stand to lose no more than your life, and if you escape go free at all points! But he has robbed me of more than life! Of my love, and my self-respect, curse him! He has worsted me not once, but twice and thrice! And if he lets me go now, dismissing me with my life, I shall--I shall kill him!" he concluded, through his teeth.
"You are hard to please!"
"I shall kill him!"
"That were to fall still lower!" the minister answered, gravely regarding him. "I would, M. de Tignonville, you remembered that you are not yet out of jeopardy. Such a frame of mind as yours is no good preparation for death, let me tell you!"
"He will not kill us!" Tignonville cried. "He knows better than most men how to avenge himself!"
"Then he is above most!" La Tribe retorted. "For my part I wish I were sure of the fact, and I should sit here more at ease."
"If we could escape, now, of ourselves!" Tignonville cried. "Then we should save not only life, but honour! Man, think of it! If we could escape, not by his leave but against it! Are you sure that this is Angers!"
"As sure as a man can be who has only seen the Black Town once or twice!" La Tribe answered, moving to the casement--which was not glazed--and peering through the rough wooden lattice. "But if we could escape we are strangers here. We know not which way to go, nor where to find shelter. And for the matter of that," he continued, turning from the window with a shrug of resignation, "'tis no use to talk of it while yonder foot goes up and down the passage, and its owner bears the key in his pocket."
"If we could get out of his power as we came into it!" Tignonville cried.
"Ay, if! But it is not every floor has a trap!"
"We could take up a board."
The minister raised his eyebrows.
"We could take up a board!" the younger man repeated; and he stepped the mean chamber from end to end, his eyes on the floor. "Or--yes, mon Dieu!" with a change of attitude, "we might break through the roof!" And, throwing back his head, he scanned the cobwebbed surface of laths which rested on the unceiled joists.
"Umph!"
"Well, why not, monsieur? Why not break through the ceiling?" Tignonville repeated, and in a fit of energy he seized his companion's shoulder and shook him. "Stand on the bed, and you can reach it."
"And the floor which rests on it!"
"Par Dieu, there is no floor! 'Tis a cockloft above us! See there! And there!" And the young man sprang on the bed, and thrust the rowel of a spur through the laths.
La Tribe's expression changed. He rose slowly to his feet. "Try again!" he said.
Tignonville, his face red, drove the spur again between the laths, and worked it to and fro until he could pass his fingers into the hole he had made. Then he gripped and bent down a length of one of the laths, and, passing his arm as far as the elbow through the hole, moved it this way and that. His eyes, as he looked down at his companion through the lolling rubbish, gleamed with triumph. "Where is your floor now?" he asked.
"You can touch nothing?"
"Nothing. It's open. A little more and I might touch the tiles." And he strove to reach higher.
For answer La Tribe gripped him. "Down! Down, monsieur," he muttered. "They are bringing our dinner."
Tignonville thrust back the lath as well as he could, and slipped to the floor; and hastily the two swept the rubbish from the bed. When Badelon, attended by two men, came in with the meal he found La Tribe at the window blocking much of the light, and Tignonville laid sullenly on the bed. Even a suspicious eye must have failed to detect what had been done; the three who looked in suspected nothing and saw nothing. They went out, the key was turned again on the prisoners, and the footsteps of two of the men were heard descending the stairs.
"We have an hour, now!" Tignonville cried; and leaping, with flaming eyes, on the bed, he fell to hacking and jabbing and tearing at the laths amid a rain of dust and rubbish. Fortunately the stuff, falling on the bed, made little noise; and in five minutes, working half-choked and in a frenzy of impatience, he had made a hole through which he could thrust his arms, a hole which extended almost from one joist to its neighbour. By this time the air was thick with floating lime; the two could scarcely breathe, yet they dared not pause. Mounting on La Tribe's shoulders--who took his stand on the bed--the young man thrust his head and arms through the hole, and, resting his elbows on the joists, dragged himself up, and with a final effort of strength landed nose and knees on the timbers, which formed his supports. A moment to take breath, and press his torn and bleeding fingers to his lips; then, reaching down, he gave a hand to his companion and dragged him to the same place of vantage.
They found themselves in a long narrow cockloft, not more than six feet high at the highest, and insufferably hot. Between the tiles, which sloped steeply on either hand, a faint light filtered in, disclosing the giant rooftree running the length of the house, and at the farther end of the loft the main tie-beam, from which a network of knees and struts rose to the rooftree.
Tignonville, who seemed possessed by unnatural energy, stayed only to put off his boots. Then "Courage!" he panted, "all goes well!" and, carrying his boots in his hands, he led the way, stepping gingerly from joist to joist until he reached the tie-beam. He climbed on it, and, squeezing himself between the struts, entered a second loft similar to the first. At the farther end of this a rough wall of bricks in a timber-frame lowered his hopes; but as he approached it, joy! Low down in the corner where the roof descended, a small door, square, and not more than two feet high, disclosed itself.
The two crept to it on hands and knees and listened. "It will lead to the leads, I doubt?" La Tribe whispered. They dared not raise their voices.
"As well that way as another!" Tignonville answered recklessly. He was the more eager, for there is a fear which transcends the fear of death. His eyes shone through the mask of dust, the sweat ran down to his chin, his breath came and went noisily. "Naught matters if we can escape him!" he panted. And he pushed the door recklessly. It flew open, the two drew back their faces with a cry of alarm.
They were looking, not into the sunlight, but into a grey dingy garret open to the roof, and occupying the upper part of a gable-end somewhat higher than the wing in which they had been confined. Filthy truckle-beds and ragged pallets covered the floor, and, eked out by old saddles and threadbare horse-rugs, marked the sleeping quarters either of the servants or of travellers of the meaner sort. But the dinginess was naught to the two who knelt looking into it, afraid to move. Was the place empty? That was the point; the question which had first stayed, and then set their pulses at the gallop.
Painfully their eyes searched each huddle of clothing, scanned each dubious shape. And slowly, as the silence persisted, their heads came forward until the whole floor lay within the field of sight. And still no sound! At last Tignonville stirred, crept through the doorway, and rose up, peering round him. He nodded, and, satisfied that all was safe, the minister followed him.
They found themselves a pace or so from the head of a narrow staircase, leading downwards. Without moving they could see the door which closed it below. Tignonville signed to La Tribe to wait, and himself crept down the stairs. He reached the door, and, stooping, set his eye to the hole through which the string of the latch passed. A moment he looked, and then, turning on tiptoe, he stole up again, his face fallen.
"You may throw the handle after the hatchet!" he muttered. "The man on guard is within four yards of the door." And in the rage of disappointment he struck the air with his hand.
"Is he looking this way?"
"No. He is looking down the passage towards our room. But it is impossible to pass him."
La Tribe nodded, and moved softly to one of the lattices which lighted the room. It might be possible to escape that way, by the parapet and the tiles. But he found that the casement was set high in the roof, which sloped steeply from its sill to the eaves. He passed to the other window, in which a little wicket in the lattice stood open. He looked through it. In the giddy void white pigeons were wheeling in the dazzling sunshine, and gazing down he saw far below him, in the hot square, a row of booths, and troops of people moving to and fro like pigmies; and--and a strange thing, in the middle of all! Involuntarily, as if the persons below could have seen his face at the tiny dormer, he drew back.
He beckoned to M. Tignonville to come to him; and when the young man complied, he bade him in a whisper look down. "See!" he muttered. "There!"
The younger man saw and drew in his breath. Even under the coating of dust his face turned a shade greyer.
"You had no need to fear that he would let us go!" the minister muttered, with half-conscious irony.
"No."
"Nor I! There are two ropes." And La Tribe breathed a few words of prayer. The object which had fixed his gaze was a gibbet: the only one of the three which could be seen from their eyrie.
Tignonville, on the other hand, turned sharply away, and with haggard eyes stared about the room. "We might defend the staircase," he muttered. "Two men might hold it for a time."
"We have no food."
"No." And then he gripped La Tribe's arm. "I have it!" he cried. "And it may do! It must do!" he continued, his face working. "See!" And lifting from the floor one of the ragged pallets, from which the straw protruded in a dozen places, he set it flat on his head. It drooped at each corner--it had seen much wear--and while it almost hid his face, it revealed his grimy chin and mortar-stained shoulders. He turned to his companion.
La Tribe's face glowed as he looked. "It may do!" he cried. "It's a chance! But you are right! It may do!"
Tignonville dropped the ragged mattress, and tore off his coat; then he rent his breeches at the knee, so that they hung loose about his calves. "Do you the same!" he cried. "And quick, man, quick! Leave your boots! Once outside we must pass through the streets under these"--he took up his burden again and set it on his head--"until we reach a quiet part, and there we----"
"Can hide! Or swim the river!" the minister said. He had followed his companion's example, and now stood under a similar burden. With breeches rent and whitened, and his upper garments in no better case, he looked a sorry figure.
Tignonville eyed him with satisfaction, and turned to the staircase. "Come," he cried, "there is not a moment to be lost. At any minute they may enter our room and find it empty! You are ready? Then, not too softly, or it may rouse suspicion! And mumble something at the door."
He began himself to scold, and, muttering incoherently, stumbled down the staircase, the pallet on his head rustling against the wall on each side. Arrived at the door he fumbled clumsily with the latch, and, when the door gave way, plumped out with an oath--as if the awkward burden he bore were the only thing on his mind. Badelon--he was on duty--stared at the apparition; but the next moment he sniffed the pallet, which was none of the freshest, and, turning up his nose, he retreated a pace. He had no suspicion; the men did not come from the part of the house where the prisoners lay, and he stood aside to let them pass. In a moment, staggering, and going a little unsteadily, as if they scarcely saw their way, they had passed by him, and were descending the staircase.
So far well! Unfortunately, when they reached the foot of that flight they came on the main passage of the first-floor. It ran right and left, and Tignonville did not know which way he must turn to reach the lower staircase. Yet he dared not hesitate; in the passage, waiting about the doors, were four or five servants, and in the distance he caught sight of three men belonging to Tavannes' company. At any moment, too, an upper servant might meet them, ask what they were doing, and detect the fraud. He turned at random, therefore--to the left as it chanced--and marched along bravely, until the very thing happened which he had feared. A man came from a room plump upon them, saw them, and held up his hands in horror.
"What are you doing!" he cried in a rage and with an oath. "Who set you on this?"
Tignonville's tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. La Tribe from behind muttered something about the stable.
"And time too!" the man said. "Faugh! But how come you this way! Are you drunk? Here!" He opened the door of a musty closet beside him, "Pitch them in here, do you hear! And take them down when it is dark! Faugh! I wonder you did not carry the things through her ladyship's room at once! If my lord had been in and met you! Now then, do as I tell you! Are you drunk!"
With a sullen air Tignonville threw in his mattress. La Tribe did the same. Fortunately the passage was ill-lighted, and there were many helpers and strange servants in the inn. The butler only thought them ill-looking fellows who knew no better. "Now be off!" he continued irascibly, "This is no place for your sort. Be off!" And, as they moved, "Coming! Coming!" he cried in answer to a distant summons; and he hurried away on the errand which their appearance had interrupted.
Tignonville would have gone to work to recover the pallets, for the man had left the key in the door. But as he went to do so the butler looked back, and the two were obliged to make a pretence of following him. A moment, however, and he was gone; and Tignonville turned anew to regain them. A second time fortune was adverse; a door within a pace of him opened, a woman came out. She recoiled from the strange figure; her eyes met his. Unluckily the light from the room behind her fell on his face, and with a shrill cry she named him.
One second and all had been lost, for the crowd of idlers at the other end of the passage had caught her cry, and were looking that way. With presence of mind Tignonville clapped his hand on her mouth, and, huddling her by force into the room, followed her, with La Tribe at his heels.
It was a large room, in which seven or eight people, who had been at prayers when the cry startled them, were rising from their knees. The first thing they saw was Javette on the threshold, struggling in the grasp of a wild man, ragged and begrimed; they deemed the city risen and the massacre upon them. Carlat threw himself before his mistress, the Countess in her turn sheltered a young girl, who stood beside her and from whose face the last trace of colour had fled. Madame Carlat and a waiting-woman ran shrieking to the window; another instant and the alarm would have gone abroad.
Tignonville's voice stopped it. "Don't you know me?" he cried. "Madame! you at least! Carlat! Are you all mad?"
The words stayed them where they stood in an astonishment scarce less than their alarm. The Countess tried twice to speak; the third time, "Have you escaped?" she muttered.
Tignonville nodded, his eyes bright with triumph. "So far," he said. "But they may be on our heels at any moment! Where can we hide?"
The Countess, her hand pressed to her side, looked at Javette. "The door, girl!" she whispered. "Lock it!"
"Ay, lock it! And they can go by the backstairs," Madame Carlat answered, awaking suddenly to the situation. "Through my closet! Once in the yard they may pass out through the stables."
"Which way?" Tignonville asked impatiently. "Don't stand looking at me, but----"
"Through this door!" Madame Carlat answered, hurrying to it.
He was following when the Countess stepped forward and interposed between him and the door. "Stay!" she cried; and there was not one who did not notice a new decision in her voice, a new dignity in her bearing. "Stay, monsieur, we may be going too fast. To go out now and in that guise--may it not be to incur greater peril than you incur here? I feel sure that you are in no danger of your life at present. Therefore, why run the risk----"
"In no danger, madame!" he cried, interrupting her in astonishment. "Have you seen the gibbet in the Square? Do you call that no danger?"
"It is not erected for you."
"No?"
"No, monsieur," she answered firmly, "I swear it is not. And I know of reasons, urgent reasons, why you should not go. M. de Tavannes"--she named her husband nervously, as conscious of the weak spot--"before he rode abroad laid strict orders on all to keep within, since the smallest matter might kindle the city. Therefore, M. de Tignonville, I request, nay I entreat," she continued with greater urgency, as she saw his gesture of denial, "you to stay here until he returns."
"And you, madame, will answer for my life!"
She faltered. For a moment, a moment only, her colour ebbed. What if she deceived herself! What if she surrendered her old lover to death? What if--but the doubt was of a moment only. Her duty was plain. "I will answer for it," she said, with pale lips, "if you remain here. And I beg, I implore you--by the love you once had for me, M. Tignonville," she added desperately, seeing that he was about to refuse, "to remain here."
"Once!" he retorted, lashing himself into ignoble rage. "By the love I once had! Say, rather, the love I have, madame--for I am no woman-weathercock to wed the winner, and hold or not hold, stay or go, as he commands! You, it seems," he continued with a sneer, "have learned the wife's lesson well! You would practise on me now, as you practised on me the other night when you stood between him and me! I yielded then, I spared him. And what did I get by it? Bonds and a prison! And what shall I get now! The same! No, madame," he continued bitterly, addressing himself as much to the Carlats and the others as to his old mistress. "I do not change! I loved! I love! I was going and I go! If death lay beyond that door"--and he pointed to it--"and life at his will were certain here, I would pass the threshold rather than take my life of him!" And, dragging La Tribe with him, with a passionate gesture he rushed by her, opened the door, and disappeared in the next room.
The Countess took one pace forward, as if she would have followed him, as if she would have tried farther persuasion. But as she moved a cry rooted her to the spot. A rush of feet and the babel of many voices filled the passage with a tide of sound, which drew rapidly nearer. The escape was known! Would the fugitives have time to slip out below?
Someone knocked at the door, tried it, pushed and beat on it. But the Countess and all in the room had run to the windows and were looking out.
If the two had not yet made their escape they must be taken. Yet no; as the Countess leaned from the window, first one dusty figure and then a second darted from a door below, and made for the nearest turning out of the Place Ste.-Croix. Before they gained it, four men, of whom Badelon, his grey locks flying, was first, dashed out in pursuit, and the street rang with cries of "Stop him! Seize him! Seize him!" Someone--one of the pursuers or another--to add to the alarm let off a musket, and in a moment, as if the report had been a signal, the Place was in a hubbub, people flocked into it with mysterious quickness, and from a neighbouring roof--whence, precisely, it was impossible to say--the crackling fire of a dozen arquebuses alarmed the city far and wide.
Unfortunately, the fugitives had been baulked at the first turning. Making for a second, they found it choked, and, swerving, darted across the Place towards St.-Maurice, seeking to lose themselves in the gathering crowd. But the pursuers clung desperately to their skirts, overturning here a man and there a child; and then in a twinkling, Tignonville, as he ran round a booth, tripped over a peg and fell, and La Tribe stumbled over him and fell also. The four riders flung themselves fiercely on their prey, secured them, and began to drag them with oaths and curses towards the door of the inn.
The Countess had seen all from her window; had held her breath while they ran, had drawn it sharply when they fell. Now "They have them!" she muttered, a sob choking her, "They have them!" And she clasped her hands. If he had followed her advice! If he had only followed her advice!
But the issue proved less certain than she deemed it. The crowd, which grew each moment, knew nothing of pursuers or pursued. On the contrary, a cry went up that the riders were Huguenots, and that the Huguenots were rising and slaying the Catholics; and as no story was too improbable for those days, and this was one constantly set about, first one stone flew, and then another, and another. A man with a staff darted forward and struck Badelon on the shoulder, two or three others pressed in and jostled the riders; and if three of Tavannes' following had not run out on the instant and faced the mob with their pikes, and for a moment forced them to give back, the prisoners would have been rescued at the very door of the inn. As it was they were dragged in, and the gates were flung to and barred in the nick of time. Another moment, almost another second, and the mob had seized them. As it was, a hail of stones poured on the front of the inn, and amid the rising yells of the rabble there presently floated heavy and slow over the city the tolling of the great bell of St. Maurice.
M. de Montsoreau, Lieutenant-Governor of Saumur, almost rose from his seat in his astonishment. "What! No letters?" he cried, a hand on either arm of his chair.
The Magistrates stared, one and all. "No letters?" they muttered.
And "No letters?" the Provost chimed in more faintly.
Count Hannibal looked smiling round the Council table. He alone was unmoved. "No," he said. "I bear none."
M. de Montsoreau, who, travel-stained and in his corselet, had the second place of honour at the foot of the table, frowned. "But--but, M. le Comte," he said, "my instructions from Monsieur were to proceed to carry out his Majesty's will in co-operation with you, who, I understood, would bring letters de par le Roi."
"I had letters," Count Hannibal answered, negligently. "But on the way I mislaid them."
"Mislaid them?" Montsoreau cried, unable to believe his ears; while the smaller dignitaries of the city, the magistrates and churchmen, who sat on either side of the table, gaped open-mouthed. It was incredible! It was unbelievable! Mislay the King's letters! Who had ever heard of such a thing?
"Yes, I mislaid them. Lost them, if you like it better."
"But you jest!" the Lieutenant-Governor retorted, moving uneasily in his chair. He was a man more highly named for address than courage; and, like most men skilled in finesse, he was prone to suspect a trap. "You jest, surely, monsieur! Men do not lose his Majesty's letters, by the way."
"When they contain his Majesty's will, no," Tavannes answered, with a peculiar smile.
"You imply, then?"
Count Hannibal shrugged his shoulders but had not answered when Bigot entered and handed him his sweetmeat box; he paused to open it and select a prune. He was long in selecting; but no change of countenance led any of those at the table to suspect that inside the lid of the box was a message--a scrap of paper informing him that Montsoreau had left fifty spears in the suburb without the Saumur gate, besides those whom he had brought openly into the town. Tavannes read the note slowly while he seemed to be choosing his fruit. And then, "Imply?" he answered. "I imply nothing, M. de Montsoreau."
"But----"
"But that sometimes his Majesty finds it prudent to give orders which he does not mean to be carried out. There are things which start up before the eye," Tavannes continued, negligently tapping the box on the table, "and there are things which do not; sometimes the latter are the more important. You, better than I, M. de Montsoreau, know that the King in the Gallery at the Louvre is one, and in his closet is another."
"Yes."
"And that being so----"
"You do not mean to carry the letters into effect?"
"Had I the letters, certainly, my friend. I should be bound by them. But I took good care to lose them," Tavannes added naïvely. "I am no fool."
"Umph!"
"However," Count Hannibal continued, with an airy gesture, "that is my affair. If you, M. de Montsoreau, feel inclined, in spite of the absence of my letters, to carry yours into effect, by all means do so--after midnight of to-day."
M. de Montsoreau breathed hard. "And why," he asked, half sulkily and half ponderously, "after midnight only, M. le Comte?"
"Merely that I may be clear of all suspicion of having lot or part in the matter," Count Hannibal answered pleasantly. "After midnight of to-night by all means, do as you please. Until midnight, by your leave, we will be quiet."
The Lieutenant-Governor moved doubtfully in his chair, the fear--which Tavannes had shrewdly instilled into his mind--that he might be disowned if he carried out his instructions, struggling with his avarice and his self-importance. He was rather crafty than bold; and such things had been, he knew. Little by little, and while he sat gloomily debating, the notion of dealing with one or two and holding the body of the Huguenots to ransom--a notion which, in spite of everything, was to bear good fruit for Angers--began to form in his mind. The plan suited him: it left him free to face either way, and it would fill his pockets more genteelly than would open robbery. On the other hand, he would offend his brother and the fanatical party, with whom he commonly acted. They were looking to see him assert himself. They were looking to hear him declare himself. And----
Harshly Count Hannibal's voice broke in on his thoughts; harshly, a something sinister in its tone. "Where is your brother?" he said. And it was evident that he had not noted his absence until then. "My lord's Vicar of all people should be here!" he continued, leaning forward and looking round the table. His brow was stormy.
Lescot squirmed under his eye, Thuriot turned pale and trembled. It was one of the canons of St.-Maurice who at length took on himself to answer. "His Lordship requested, M. le Comte," he ventured, "that you would excuse him. His duties----"
"Is he ill?"
"He----"
"Is he ill, sirrah?" Tavannes roared. And while all bowed before the lightning of his eye, no man at the table knew what had roused the sudden tempest. But Bigot knew, who stood by the door, and whose ear, keen as his master's, had caught the distant report of a musket shot. "If he be not ill," Tavannes continued, rising and looking round the table in search of signs of guilt, "and there be foul play here, and he the player, the Bishop's own hand shall not save him! By heaven it shall not! Nor yours!" he continued, looking fiercely at Montsoreau. "Nor your master's!"
The Lieutenant-Governor sprang to his feet. "M. le Comte," he stammered, "I do not understand this language! Nor this heat, which may be real or not! All I say is, if there be foul play here----"
"If!" Tavannes retorted. "At least, if there be, there be gibbets too! And I see necks!" he added, leaning forward. "Necks!" And then, with a look of flame, "Let no man leave this table until I return," he cried, "or he will have to deal with me. Nay," he continued, changing his tone abruptly, as the prudence which never entirely left him--and perhaps the remembrance of the other's fifty spearmen--sobered him in the midst of his rage, "I am hasty. I mean not you, M. de Montsoreau! Ride where you will, ride with me if you will--and I will thank you. Only remember, until midnight Angers is mine!"
He was still speaking when he moved from the table, and, leaving all staring after him, strode down the room. An instant he paused on the threshold and looked back; then he passed out, and clattered down the stone stairs. His horse and riders were waiting, but, his foot in the stirrup, he stayed for a word with Bigot. "Is it so?" he growled.
The Norman did not speak, but pointed towards the Place Ste.-Croix, whence an occasional shot made answer for him.
In those days the streets of the Black City were narrow and crooked, overhung by timber houses and hampered by booths; nor could Tavannes from the old Town Hall--now abandoned--see the Place Ste.-Croix. But that he could cure. He struck spurs to his horse, and, followed by his ten horsemen, he clattered noisily down the paved street. A dozen groups hurrying the same way sprang panic-stricken to the walls, or saved themselves in doorways. He was up with them, he was beyond them! Another hundred yards, and he would see the Place.
And then, with a cry of rage, he drew rein a little, discovering what was before him. In the narrow gut of the way a great black banner, borne on two poles, was lurching towards him. It was moving in the van of a dark procession of priests, who, with their attendants and a crowd of devout, filled the street from wall to wall. They were chanting one of the penitential psalms, but not so loudly as to drown the uproar in the Place beyond them.
They made no way, and Count Hannibal swore furiously, suspecting treachery. But he was no madman, and at the moment the least reflection would have sent him about to seek another road. Unfortunately, as he hesitated a man sprang with a gesture of warning to his horse's head and seized it; and Tavannes, mistaking the motive of the act, lost his self-control. He struck the fellow down, and with a reckless word rode headlong into the procession, shouting to the black robes to make way, make way! A cry, nay, a very shriek of horror, answered him and rent the air. And in a minute the thing was done. Too late, as the Bishop's Vicar, struck by his horse, fell screaming under its hoofs--too late, as the consecrated vessels which he had been bearing rolled in the mud, Tavannes saw that they bore the canopy and the Host!
He knew what he had done, then. Before his horse's iron shoes struck the ground again, his face--even his face--had lost its colour. But he knew also that to hesitate now, to pause now, was to be torn in pieces; for his riders, seeing that which the banner had veiled from him, had not followed him, and he was alone, in the middle of brandished fists and weapons. He hesitated not a moment. Drawing a pistol he spurred onwards, his horse plunging wildly among the shrieking priests; and though a hundred hands, hands of acolytes, hands of shaven monks, clutched at his bridle or gripped his boot, he got clear of them. Clear, carrying with him the memory of one face seen an instant amid the crowd, one face seen, to be ever remembered--the face of Father Pezelay, white, evil, scarred, distorted by wicked triumph.
Behind him, the thunder of "Sacrilege! Sacrilege!" rose to heaven, and men were gathering. In front the crowd which skirmished about the inn was less dense, and, ignorant of the thing that had happened in the narrow street, made ready way for him, the boldest recoiling before the look on his face. Some who stood nearest to the inn, and had begun to hurl stones at the window and to beat on the doors--which had only the minute before closed on Badelon and his prisoners--supposed that he had his riders behind him; and these fled apace. But he knew better even than they the value of time; he pushed his horse up to the gates, and hammered them with his boot while he kept his pistol-hand towards the Place and the cathedral, watching for the transformation which he knew would come!
And come it did; on a sudden, in a twinkling! A white-faced monk, frenzy in his eyes, appeared in the midst of the crowd. He stood and tore his garments before the people, and, stooping, threw dust on his head. A second and a third followed his example; then from a thousand throats the cry of "Sacrilege! Sacrilege!" rolled up, while clerks flew wildly hither and thither shrieking the tale, and priests denied the Sacraments to Angers until it should purge itself of the evil thing.
By that time Count Hannibal had saved himself behind the great gates, by the skin of his teeth. The gates had opened to him in time. But none knew better than he that Angers had no gates thick enough, nor walls of a height, to save him for many hours from the storm he had let loose!
But that only the more roused the devil in the man; that, and the knowledge that he had his own headstrong act to thank for the position. He looked on the panic-stricken people who, scared by the turmoil without, had come together in the courtyard, wringing their hands and chattering; and his face was so dark and forbidding that fear of him took the place of all other fear, and the nearest shrank from contact with him. On any other entering as he had entered, they would have hailed questions; they would have asked what was amiss and if the city were rising, and where were Bigot and his men. But Count Hannibal's eye struck curiosity dumb. When he cried from his saddle, "Bring me the landlord!" the trembling man was found, and brought, and thrust forward almost without a word.
"You have a back gate?" Tavannes said, while the crowd leaned forward to catch his words.
"Yes, my lord," the man faltered.
"Into the street which leads to the ramparts?"
"Ye--yes, my lord."
"Then"--to Badelon--"saddle! You have five minutes. Saddle as you never saddled before," he continued in a low tone, "or----" His tongue did not finish the threat, but his hand waved the man away. "For you," he held Tignonville an instant with his lowering eye, "and the preaching fool with you, get arms and mount! You have never played aught but the woman yet; but play me false now, or look aside but a foot from the path I bid you take, and you thwart me no more, monsieur! And you, madame," he continued, turning to the Countess, who stood bewildered at one of the doors, the Provost's daughter clinging and weeping about her, "you have three minutes to get your women to horse! See you, if you please, that they take no longer!"
She found her voice with difficulty. "And this child?" she said. "She is in my care."
"Bring her," he muttered with a scowl of impatience. And then, raising his voice as he turned on the terrified gang of hostlers and inn servants who stood gaping round him, "Go help!" he thundered. "Go help! And quickly!" he added, his face growing a shade darker as a second bell began to toll from a neighbouring tower, and the confused babel in the Place Ste.-Croix settled into a dull roar of "Sacrilege! sacrilege!"--"Hasten!"
Fortunately it had been his first intention to go to the Council attended by the whole of his troop; and eight horses stood saddled in the stalls. Others were hastily pulled out and bridled, and the women were mounted. La Tribe, at a look from Tavannes, took behind him the Provost's daughter, who was helpless with terror. Between the suddenness of the alarm, the uproar without, and the panic within, none but a man whose people served him at a nod and dreaded his very gesture could have got his party mounted in time. Javette would fain have swooned, but she dared not. Tignonville would fain have questioned, but he shrank from the venture. The Countess would fain have said something, but she forced herself to obey and no more. Even so the confusion in the courtyard, the mingling of horses and men and trappings and saddle-bags, would have made another despair; but wherever Count Hannibal, seated in his saddle in the middle, turned his face, chaos settled into a kind of order, servants, ceasing to listen to the yells and cries outside, ran to fetch, women dropped cloaks from the gallery, and men loaded muskets and strapped on bandoliers.
Until at last--but none knew what those minutes of suspense cost him--he saw all mounted, and, pistol in hand, shepherded them to the back gates. As he did so he stooped for a few scowling words with Badelon, whom he sent to the van of the party: then he gave the word to open. It was done; and even as Montsoreau's horsemen, borne on the bosom of a second and more formidable throng, swept raging into the already crowded square, and the cry went up for "a ram! a ram!" to batter in the gates, Tavannes, hurling his little party before him, dashed out at the back, and putting to flight a handful of rascals who had wandered to that side, cantered unmolested down the lane to the ramparts. Turning eastward at the foot of the frowning Castle, he followed the inner side of the wall in the direction of the gate by which he had entered the preceding evening.
To gain this his party had to pass the end of the Rue Toussaint, which issues from the Place Ste.-Croix and runs so straight that the mob seething in front of the inn had only to turn their heads to see them. The danger incurred at this point was great; for a party as small as Tavannes' and encumbered with women would have had no chance if attacked within the walls.
Count Hannibal knew it. But he knew also that the act which he had committed rendered the north bank of the Loire impossible for him. Neither King nor Marshal, neither Charles of Valois nor Gaspard of Tavannes, would dare to shield him from an infuriated Church, a Church too wise to forgive certain offences. His one chance lay in reaching the southern bank of the Loire--roughly speaking, the Huguenot bank--and taking refuge in some town, Rochelle or St. Jean d'Angely, where the Huguenots were strong, and whence he might take steps to set himself right with his own side.
But to cross the great river which divides France into two lands widely differing he must leave the city by the east gate; for the only bridge over the Loire within forty miles of Angers lay eastward from the town, at Ponts de Cé, four miles away. To this gate, therefore, past the Rue Toussaint, he whirled his party daringly; and though the women grew pale as the sounds of riot broke louder on the ear, and they discovered that they were approaching instead of leaving the danger--and though Tignonville for an instant thought him mad, and snatched at the Countess's rein--his men-at-arms, who knew him, galloped stolidly on, passed like clockwork the end of the street, and, reckless of the stream of persons hurrying in the direction of the alarm, heedless of the fright and anger their passage excited, pressed steadily on. A moment and the gate through which they had entered the previous evening appeared before them. And--a sight welcome to one of them--it was open.
They were fortunate indeed, for a few seconds later they had been too late. The alarm had preceded them; as they dashed up, a man ran to the chains of the portcullis and tried to lower it. He failed to do so at the first touch, and quailing, fled from Badelon's levelled pistol. A watchman on one of the bastions of the wall shouted to them to halt or he would fire: but the riders yelled in derision, and thundering through the echoing archway, emerged into the open, and saw, extended before them, in place of the gloomy vistas of the Black Town, the glory of the open country and the vine-clad hills, and the fields about the Loire yellow with late harvest.
The women gasped their relief, and one or two who were most out of breath would have pulled up their horses and let them trot, thinking the danger at an end. But a curt savage word from the rear set them flying again, and down and up and on again they galloped, driven forward by the iron hand which never relaxed its grip of them. Silent and pitiless he whirled them before him until they were within a mile of the long Ponts de Cé--a series of bridges rather than one bridge--and the broad shallow Loire lay plain before them, its sandbanks grilling in the sun, and grey lines of willows marking its eyots. By this time some of the women, white with fatigue, could only cling to their saddles with their hands; while others were red-hot, their hair unrolled, and the perspiration mingled with the dust on their faces. But he who drove them had no pity for weakness in an emergency. He looked back and saw, a half-mile behind them, the glitter of steel following hard on their heels: and "Faster! faster!" he cried, regardless of their prayers: and he beat the rearmost of the horses with his scabbard. A waiting-woman shrieked that she should fall, but he answered ruthlessly, "Fall then, fool!" and the instinct of self-preservation coming to her aid, she clung and bumped and toiled on with the rest until they reached the first houses of the town about the bridges, and Badelon raised his hand as a signal that they might slacken speed.
The bewilderment of the start had been so great that it was then only, when they found their feet on the first link of the bridge, that two of the party, the Countess and Tignonville, awoke to the fact that their faces were set southwards. To cross the Loire in those days meant much to all: to a Huguenot very much. It chanced that these two rode on to the bridge side by side, and the memory of their last crossing--the remembrance that, on their journey north a month before, they had crossed it hand-in-hand with the prospect of passing their lives together, and with no faintest thought of the events which were to ensue, flashed into the mind of each of them. It deepened the flush which exertion had brought to the woman's cheek, then left it paler than before. A minute earlier she had been wroth with her old lover; she had held him accountable for the outbreak in the town and this hasty retreat; now her anger died as she looked and she remembered. In the man, shallower of feeling and more alive to present contingencies, the uppermost emotion as he trod the bridge was one of surprise and congratulation.
He could not at first believe in their good fortune. "Mon Dieu!" he cried, "we are crossing!" And then again in a lower tone, "We are crossing! We are crossing!" And he looked at her.
It was impossible that she should not look back; that she who had ceased to be angry should not feel and remember; impossible that her answering glance should not speak to his heart. Below them, as on that day a month earlier, when they had crossed the bridges going northward, the broad shallow river ran its course in the sunshine, its turbid currents gleaming and flashing about the sandbanks and osier-beds. To the eye, the landscape, save that the vintage was farther advanced and the harvest in part gathered in, was the same. But how changed were their relations, their prospects, their hopes, who had then crossed the river hand-in-hand, planning a life to be passed together.
The young man's rage boiled up at the thought. Too vividly, too sharply it showed him the wrongs which he had suffered at the hands of the man who rode behind him, the man who even now drove him on and ordered him and insulted him. He forgot that he might have perished in the general massacre if Count Hannibal had not intervened. He forgot that Count Hannibal had spared him once and twice. He laid on his enemy's shoulders the guilt of all, the blood of all: and as, quick on the thought of his wrongs and his fellows' wrongs followed the reflection that with every league they rode southwards the chance of requital grew, he cried again, and this time joyously, "We are crossing! A little, and we shall be in our own land!"
The tears filled the Countess's eyes as she looked westwards and southwards. "Vrillac is there!" she cried; and she pointed. "I smell the sea!"
"Ay!" he answered, almost under his breath. "It lies there! And no more than thirty leagues from us! With fresh horses we might see it in two days!"
Badelon's voice broke in on them. "Forward!" he cried as they reached the southern bank. "En avant!" And, obedient to the word, the little party, refreshed by the short respite, took the road out of Ponts de Cé at a steady trot. Nor was the Countess the only one whose face glowed, being set southwards, or whose heart pulsed to the rhythm of the horses' hoofs that beat out "Home!" Carlat's and Madame Carlat's also. Javette even, hearing from her neighbour that they were over the Loire, plucked up courage; while La Tribe, gazing before him with moistened eyes, cried "Comfort" to the scared and weeping girl who clung to his belt. It was singular to see how all sniffed the air as if already it smacked of the sea and of the south; and how they of Poitou sat their horses as if they asked nothing better than to ride on and on and on until the scenes of home arose about them. For them the sky had already a deeper blue, the air a softer fragrance, the sunshine a purity long unknown!
Was it wonderful, when they had suffered so much on that northern bank? When their experience during the month had been comparable only with the direst nightmare? Yet one among them, after the first impulse of relief and satisfaction, felt differently. Tignonville's gorge rose against the sense of compulsion, of inferiority. To be driven forward after this fashion, whether he would or no, to be placed at the beck of every base-born man-at-arms, to have no clearer knowledge of what had happened or of what was passing, or of the peril from which they fled, than the women among whom he rode--these things kindled anew the sullen fire of hate. North of the Loire there had been some excuse for his inaction under insult; he had been in the man's country and power. But south of the Loire, within forty leagues of Huguenot Niort, must he still suffer, still be supine?
His rage was inflamed by a disappointment he presently underwent. Looking back as they rode clear of the wooden houses of Ponts de Cé, he missed Tavannes and several of his men; and he wondered if Count Hannibal had remained on his own side of the river. It seemed possible; and in that event La Tribe and he and Carlat might deal with Badelon and the four who still escorted them. But when he looked back a minute later, Tavannes was within sight, following the party with a stern face; and not Tavannes only. Bigot, with two of the ten men who hitherto had been missing, was with him.
It was clear, however, that they brought no good news, for they had scarcely ridden up before Count Hannibal cried "Faster! faster!" in his harshest voice, and Bigot urged the horses to a quicker trot. Their course lay almost parallel with the Loire in the direction of Beaupréau; and Tignonville began to fear that Count Hannibal intended to recross the river at Nantes, where the only bridge below Angers spanned the stream. With this in view it was easy to comprehend his wish to distance his pursuers before he recrossed.
The Countess had no such thought. "They must be close upon us!" she murmured, as she urged her horse in obedience to the order.
"Whoever they are!" Tignonville muttered bitterly. "If we knew what had happened, or who followed, we should know more about it, madame. For that matter, I know what I wish he would do. And our heads are set for it."
"What?"
"Make for Vrillac!" he answered, a savage gleam in his eyes.
"For Vrillac?"
"Yes."
"Ah, if he would!" she cried, her face turning pale. "If he would. He would be safe there!"
"Ay, quite safe!" he answered with a peculiar intonation. And he looked at her askance.
He fancied that his thought, the thought which had just flashed into his brain, was her thought; that she had the same notion in reserve, and that they were in sympathy. And Tavannes, seeing them talking together, and noting her look and the fervour of her gesture, formed the same opinion, and retired more darkly into himself. The downfall of his plan for dazzling her by a magnanimity unparalleled and beyond compare, a plan dependent on the submission of Angers--his disappointment in this might have roused the worst passions of a better man. But there was in this man a pride on a level at least with his other passions: and to bear himself in this hour of defeat and flight so that if she could not love him she must admire him, checked in a strange degree the current of his rage. When Tignonville presently looked back he found that Count Hannibal and six of his riders had pulled up and were walking their horses far in the rear. On which he would have done the same himself; but Badelon called over his shoulder the eternal "Forward, monsieur, en avant!" and sullenly, hating the man and his master more deeply every hour, Tignonville was forced to push on, with thoughts of vengeance in his heart.
Trot, trot! Trot, trot! Through a country which had lost its smiling wooded character and grew more sombre and less fertile the farther they left the Loire behind them. Trot, trot! Trot, trot!--for ever, it seemed to some. Javette wept with fatigue, and the other women were little better. The Countess herself spoke seldom except to cheer the Provost's daughter; who, poor girl, flung suddenly out of the round of her life and cast among strangers, showed a better spirit than might have been expected. At length, on the slopes of some low hills, which they had long seen before them, a cluster of houses and a church appeared; and Badelon, drawing rein, cried, "Beaupréau, madame! We stay an hour!"
It was six o'clock. They had ridden some hours without a break. With sighs and cries of pain the women dropped from their clumsy saddles, while the men laid out such food--it was little--as had been brought, and hobbled the horses that they might feed. The hour passed rapidly, and when it had passed Badelon was inexorable. There was wailing when he gave the word to mount again; and Tignonville, fiercely resenting this dumb, reasonless flight, was at heart one of the mutineers. But Badelon said grimly that they might go on and live, or stay and die, as it pleased them; and once more they climbed painfully to their saddles, and jogged steadily on through the sunset, through the gloaming, through the darkness, across a weird, mysterious country of low hills and narrow plains which grew more wild and less cultivated as they advanced. Fortunately the horses had been well saved during the long leisurely journey to Angers, and now went well and strongly. When they at last unsaddled for the night in a little dismal wood within a mile of Clisson, they had placed some forty miles between themselves and Angers.