Produced by Delphine Lettau, Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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THE WHITE PLUMES OF NAVARRE
A Romance of the Wars of Religion
BY S. R. CROCKETT
_SIXTH IMPRESSION_
LONDON
THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY
4 Bouverie Street and 65 St. Paul's Churchyard, E.C.
1917
First Edition, Oct., 1906
Second Impression, Oct., 1906
Third Impression, Oct., 1906
Fourth Impression, Dec., 1906
Fifth Impression, Jan., 1908
Sixth Impression, Aug., 1917
CONTENTS
BEFORE THE CURTAIN RISES
CHAPTER I. THE DAY OF BARRICADES
CHAPTER II. CLAIRE AGNEW
CHAPTER III. THE PROFESSOR OF ELOQUENCE
CHAPTER IV. LITTLE COLETTE OF COLLIOURE
CHAPTER V. THE SPROUTING OF CABBAGE JOCK
CHAPTER VI. THE ARCHER'S CLOAK
CHAPTER VII. THE GREAT NAME OF GUISE
CHAPTER VIII. THE GOLDEN LARK IN ORLEANS TOWN
CHAPTER IX. THE REBELLION OF HERODIAS'S DAUGHTER
CHAPTER X. THE GOLDEN DUKE
CHAPTER XI. THE BEST-KNOWN FACE IN THE WORLD
CHAPTER XII. THE WAKING OF THE BEARNAIS
CHAPTER XIII. A MIDNIGHT COUNCIL
CHAPTER XIV. EYES OF JADE
CHAPTER XV. MISTRESS CATHERINE
CHAPTER XVI. LA REINE MARGOT
CHAPTER XVII. MATE AND CHECKMATE
CHAPTER XVIII. THE APOSTLE OF PEACE
CHAPTER XIX. DEATH WARNINGS
CHAPTER XX. THE BLOOD ON THE KERCHIEF
CHAPTER XXI. THE TIGER IN THE FOX'S TRAP
CHAPTER XXII. BERAK THE LIGHTNING AND TOAH HIS DOG
CHAPTER XXIII. THE THREE SONS OF MADAME AMELIE
CHAPTER XXIV. COUSIN RAPHAEL, LORD OF COLLIOURE
CHAPTER XXV. CLAIRE'S EMBARRASSMENT OF CHOICE
CHAPTER XXVI. FIRST COUNCIL OF WAR
CHAPTER XXVII. SECOND COUNCIL OF WAR
CHAPTER XXVIII. THIRD COUNCIL OF WAR
CHAPTER XXIX. THE SHUT HOUSE IN MONEY STREET
CHAPTER XXX. JEAN-AUX-CHOUX TAKES HIS WAGES
CHAPTER XXXI. THE WAY OF THE SALT MARSHES
CHAPTER XXXII. IN THEIR CLUTCHES
CHAPTER XXXIII. AND ONE WAS NOT!
CHAPTER XXXIV. BISHOP, ARCHBISHOP, AND ANGELICAL DOCTOR
CHAPTER XXXV. THE PLACE OF EYES
CHAPTER XXXVI. VALENTINE LA NINA
CHAPTER XXXVII. THE WILD ANIMAL--WOMAN
CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE VENGEANCE OF VALENTINE LA NINA
CHAPTER XXXIX. SAVED BY SULKS
CHAPTER XL. THE MAS OF THE MOUNTAIN
CHAPTER XLI. "AND LAZARUS CAME FORTH!"
CHAPTER XLII. SECRETS OF THE PRISON HOUSE
CHAPTER XLIII. IN TARRAGONA BAY
CHAPTER XLIV. VALENTINE AND HER VENGEANCE
CHAPTER XLV. VALENTINE FINDS CLAIRE WORTHY
CHAPTER XLVI. KING AND KING'S DAUGHTER
CHAPTER XLVII. GREAT LOVE--AND GREATER
AFTER THE CURTAIN
The White Plumes of Navarre
BEFORE THE CURTAIN RISES
The night was hot in Paris. Breathless heat had brooded over the city
all Saturday, the 23rd of August, 1572. It was the eve of Saint
Bartholomew. The bell of Saint Germain l'Auxerrois had just clashed out
the signal. The Louvre was one blaze of lights. Men with lanterns and
poleaxes, as if going to the shambles to kill oxen, hurried along the
streets.
Only in the houses in which were lodged the great Huguenot gentlemen,
come to the city for the marriage of the King's sister Marguerite to the
King of Navarre, there were darkness and silence. None had warned
them--or, at least, they had taken no warning. If any suspected, the
word of a King, his sworn oaths and multitudinous safe-conducts, lulled
them back again into security.
In one chamber, high above the courtyard, a light burned faint and
steady. It was that beside the bed of the great Admiral--Coligny. He had
been treacherously wounded by the arquebuse of one of the guard of the
King's brother--Monsieur de France, Henry Duke of Anjou, afterwards to
be known to history as Henry III., the favourite son of Catherine de
Medici, the cunningest, and the most ungrateful.
There watched by that bedside many grave men, holding grave discourse
with each other and with the sick man, concerning the high mysteries of
the religion, pure and reformed, of the state of France, and their hopes
of better days for the Faith as it had been delivered to the saints.
And at the bed-foot, with towels, bandages, and water in a silver salver
ready for service, one young lad, a student of Geneva, fresh from Calvin
and Beza, held his tongue and opened wide his ears.
"Pray, Merlin de Vaux," said the wounded Admiral to his aged pastor,
"pray for life if such be God's will, that we may use it better--for
death (the which He will give us in any case), that the messenger may
not find us unprepared."
And Merlin prayed, the rest standing up, stern, grave, prepared men,
with bowed and reverent heads. And the Genevan Scot thought most of his
dead master Calvin, whom, in the last year of his life, he had often
seen so stand, while his own power rocked under him in the city of his
adoption, and the kingdoms of the earth stormed about him like hateful
waves of the sea.
And somewhat thus-wise prayed good Merlin.
"Thou, O Lord, hast put down the mighty from their seats and has exalted
them of low degree! Clay are all men in Thy hands--potter's clay, broken
shards or vessels fit for altar-service. Yet Thou has sent us, Thy
servants, into the wild, where we have seen things, and thought things,
and given us many warnings, so that when Thou standest at the door and
knockest, we may be ready for Thy coming!"
Then at these words, prompt as an echo, the house leaped under the heavy
noise of blows delivered upon the outer door. And the Admiral of France,
sitting up in his bed, yet corpse-pale from his recent wound, lifted
his hand and said, "Hush, be still--my Lord standeth without! For dogs
and murderers, false kings and queens forsworn, are but instruments in
His hand. It is God who calls us to His holy rest. For me, I have long
been ready. I go with no more thought than if my chariot waited me at
the door."
Then he turned to the Huguenot gentlemen who were grouped about his bed.
This one and that other had tried to catch a glimpse of the assailants
from the windows. But in vain. For the door was in a recess which hid
all but the last of the guard which the King had set about the house.
"It is only Cosseins and his men," said one; "they will hold us safe. We
have the King's word. He placed the guard himself."
"The hearts of Kings are unsearchable," said the Admiral. "Put not your
trust in princes, but haste ye to the garret, where is a window that
gives upon the roof. There is no need that young and valiant men should
perish with a wounded man and an old. Go and fight for the remnant that
shall be preserved. If it be the Lord's will, He shall yet take vengence
by your arms!"
"Ay, go," said Merlin the pastor, casting back his white hair; "for me,
I am old, and I stay. Only yester-night I saw an angel stand in the sun,
crying to all souls that did fly through the midst of heaven, 'Come,
gather yourselves to the Supper of the Great God.' But when, thinking
myself called, I would have drawn nearer, lo! between me and the table
spread, on which was the wine ready poured out, I saw the Beast, the
kings of the earth, and their warriors gathered together to make war
against the Lamb. And I heard a voice that said, 'Nay, but first thou
must pass through the portal of death ere it be given thee to eat of
the marriage supper of the Lamb.' So to me it spake. The message was not
for you--ye heard not the Voice. I will stay, for I am weary, and am
minded to fall on sleep--to find rest after many years."
And to this Pare, the wise and skilled surgeon, who was ever beloved by
Admiral Coligny, likewise adhered, saying, "I have not heard the voice
of the angel. But I hear well enough that of false Cosseins who is sent
by the King to murder us. I have looked from the window, and though I
saw no vision of Beast, I saw clearly my Lord Duke of Guise stand
without calling to them to slay and make an end! So I also will remain
for the love I bear to my lord, and because it is my duty as a good
physician so to do."
And the lad John Stirling, the Scot from Geneva, the pupil of Calvin,
ventured no word, being young. But, though the others would have carried
him with them, he shook them off, and abode where he was. For his
vision, and the purpose of it, were yet to be.
And so it came to pass that this young man from Geneva saw the killing
of the great Admiral, and heard the words in which he forgave his
assassins, telling them how that he was ready to die, and that at the
most they had but shortened his life by some short count of days or
hours!
And ever through the brief turmoil of the killing, the voice of the Duke
of Guise mounted impatiently up the stairway asking if the Admiral were
not yet dead, and hounding on his dogs to make an end of that noble
quarry.
And even when they assured him he would not believe, but desired to look
on the face of his own and his father's enemy.
"Open the window and throw him down!" he cried.
So they cast him out. But the aged prince, with the life still in his
body, clutched by instinct at the sill of the window as he fell. The
young Duke, first ordering up a couple of flambeaux, deliberately wiped
the blood from the face of his enemy with his kerchief, and cried out,
"It is even he--I know him well. So perish all the enemies of the King
and of the Catholic League!"
Then, as his men still called from the window, the Duke looked up, angry
to be disturbed in his gloating over his arch-foe.
"There is also a lad here," they cried, "one from Geneva, who says he is
of the Admiral's opinion. What shall we do with him?"
"What is that to me?" said the Duke of Guise haughtily; "throw him after
his master."
And that is the reason why a certain John Stirling, a Scot of Geneva,
went through life lame, wearing a countenance twisted like a mask at a
fair, and--loved not the Duke Henry of Guise.
Moreover, though he saw the Duke spurn his dead enemy with his foot, the
boy felt not at the time the kicks with which the scullions imitated
their master, but lay in a swoon on the body of Coligny. He came to
himself, however, being cast aside as of no account, when they came to
drag the Admiral's body to the gallows. After a while the spray of a
fountain that played in the courtyard roused him. The lad washed his
hands and crawled forth. He had lain all the terrible Sunday in the
bloody court of Coligny's lodgings, under the shadow of the trembling
acacias, which cast flecks of light and dark on the broad irregular
stains of the pavement. But when the evening had come again, and the
angry voices shouting "Kill! kill!" had died away, the lame boy hobbled
painfully out. Somehow or other he passed through an unguarded gate, to
find himself sustained by a fellow-countryman carrying a child, a little
maid of four years. He must have been a strong man, that chance-met
Scot, for he had an arm to spare for John Stirling. He spoke, also,
words of hope and comfort to the boy. But these fell on deaf ears. For
through the dull ache of his bones and the sharp nip of his wounds,
undressed save for the blood that had dried upon them, the heart of the
cripple remained with Henry of Guise.
"No," he said over and over to himself, repeating the Duke's words, "the
work is not yet finished!" It had, indeed, scarce begun.
And he registered a vow.
CHAPTER I.
THE DAY OF BARRICADES
"_The good Duke! The sweet Prince! The Church's pillar! Guise! The good
Guise!_"
Through the open window the shouts, near and far, invaded the quiet
class-room of the Sorbonne. It was empty, save for the Professor of
Eloquence, one Dr. Anatole Long, and a certain vagrant bluebottle which,
with the native perversity of its tribe, sought out the only shut square
of glass (bottle-green, by way of distinction) and buzzed loudly all
over it.
The Professor thumbed the discourse of the day on "Peace as the
Characteristic Virtue of the Christian Faith." It was a favourite
lecture with him. He had used it as exposition, homily, exhortation; and
had even on one occasion ventured to deliver it before the Venerable the
Conclave of the Sorbonne itself.
Professor Anatole sighed as he listened to the ringing shouts outside,
the clatter of steel on peaceful educational stairways, and when through
the open windows, by which the early roses ought to have been sending up
their good smell, there came a whiff of the reek of gunpowder, the
excellent Anatole felt that the devil was loose indeed.
It was the great Day of Barricades, and all Paris was in arms against
the King, royal, long-descended, legitimate--and worthless.
"Rebellion--rank rebellion," groaned the Professor; "no good will come
of it. Balafre, the Scarred One, will get a dagger in his throat one
day. And then--then--there will be a great killing! The King is too
ignorant to forgive!"
"Ah, what is that?"
A noise of guns crashed, spat, and roared beneath the window which gave
on to the narrow street. Professor Anatole rose hastily and went to the
casement, worried a moment with the bar-fastening (for the window on
that side was never unhasped), opened it, and looked forth. Little
darting, shifting groups of lads in their dingy student cloaks, were
defending themselves as best they might against a detachment of the
King's Royal Swiss, who, on the march from one part of the city to
another, had been surprised at the head of the narrow Street of the
University.
An old man had somehow been knocked down. His companion, a slim youth in
a long, black cape, knelt and tried to hold up the failing head. The
white beard, streaked with dark stains, lay across his knees. Now the
Professor of Eloquence, though he lectured by preference concerning the
virtues of peace, thought that there were limits even to these; so,
grasping his staff, which had a sword concealed in the handle, of
cunning Venice work, ran downstairs, and so found himself out on the
street.
In that short period all was changed. The Royal Swiss had moved on. The
battling clerks had also vanished. The narrow Street of the University
was blank save for the old man who lay there wounded on the little,
knobbed cobble-stones, and the slim, cloaked youth bending over him.
Professor Anatole does not remember clearly what followed. Certain it
is that he and the lad must have carried the wounded man up the narrow
stair. For when Anatole came a little to himself they were, all the
three of them, in his wide, bare attiring-chamber, from which it was his
custom to issue forth, gowned and solemn, in the midst of an admiring
hush, with the roll of his daily lecture clasped in his right hand,
while he upheld the long and troublesome academic skirts with the other.
But now, all suddenly, among these familiar cupboards and books of
reference, he found himself with a dying man--or rather, as it seemed, a
man already dead. And, what troubled him far more, with a lad whose long
hair, becoming loosened, floated down upon his shoulders, while he wept
long and continuously, "Oh--oh--oh--my father!" sobbing from the top of
his throat.
Now Professor Anatole was a wise man, a philosopher even. It was the day
of _mignons_. The word was invented then. King Henry III. had always
half-a-dozen or so, not counting D'Epernon and La Joyeuse. That might
account for the long hair. But even a _mignon_ would not have cried
"Ah--ah--ah!" in quick, rending sobs from the chest and diaphragm.
He, Anatole Long, Professor of Eloquence at the Sorbonne, was in
presence of a great difficulty--the greatest of his life. There was a
dead man in his robing-room, and a girl with long hair, who wept in
tremulous contralto.
What if some of his students were minded to come back! A terrible
thought! But there was small fear of that. The rascals were all out
shouting for the Duke of Guise and helping to build the great barricades
which shut in the Swiss like rats in a trap. They were Leaguers to a
man, these Sorbonne students--for fun, however, not from devotion.
Yet when he went back to the big empty class-room to bethink himself a
little (it was a good twenty years since he had been accustomed to this
sort of thing), lo! there were two young fellows rooting about among the
coats and cloaks, from the midst of which he had taken his sword-cane
when he ran downstairs.
"What are you doing there?" he cried, with a sudden quick anger, as if
students of eloquence had no right in the class-room of their own
Professor. "Answer me, you, Guy Launay, and you, John d'Albret!"
"We are looking for----" began Guy Launay, the son of the ex-provost of
the merchants, a dour, dark clod of a lad, with the fingers of a
swordsman and the muscles of a wrestler. He was going to say (what was
the truth) that they had come up to look for the Professor's sword-cane,
which they judged might be useful against the King's folk, when, of
instinct far more fine, his companion, called the Abbe John, nephew of
the great Leaguer Cardinal, stopped him with a swift sidelong drive of
the elbow in the ribs, which winded him completely.
"We have come to listen to your lecture, master!" he said, bowing low.
"We are sorry indeed to be a little late. But getting entangled in the
press, it was impossible for us to arrive sooner. We ask your pardon,
dear master!"
Under his breath the Abbe John confided to his companion, "Evidently old
Blessings-of-Peace has carried that sword-stick off into his
retiring-room for safety. Let him begin his lecture. Then in five
minutes he will forget about everything else, and you or I will sneak in
and bag it!"
"You--you mean," said Launay; "I should move about as silently as a
bullock on a pontoon bridge!"
With his eye ever on the carefully-shut door of his private chamber,
and his ear cocked for the sound of sobbing, the Professor moved slowly
to his reading-desk. For the first time in his life he regretted the
presence of students in the class-room. Why--why could they not have
stayed away and dethroned anointed kings, and set up most Catholic
princes, and fought for the Holy League and the pleasure of clouting
heads? That was what students of the Sorbonne seemed to be for in these
latter days. But to come here, at the proper hour, to take notes of a
lecture on the Blessings of Peace, with the gun-shots popping outside,
and dead men--no, somehow he did not care to think of dead men, nor of
weeping girls either! So at this point he walked solemnly across the
uneven floor and turned the key in the door of his robing-room.
Instantly the elbow of Guy Launay sought the side of the Abbe John,
called alternatively the Spaniard, and made him gasp.
"D'ye see that?" whispered Guy, "the old rascal has locked the door. He
suspects. Come, we may as well trip it. We shan't get either the
sword-cane nor yet the pistols and bullets on the top of the guard-robe.
My milk-brother, Stephen, saw them there when he took his week of
chamber-valeting Old Peace-with-Honour!"
"Screw up your mouth--tight!" said the Abbe John politely; "a deal of
nonsense will get spread about otherwise. I will attend to everything in
the room of Old Blessings-of-Peace!"
"You!"
"Yes, I--wait and see. Get out your tablets and take notes--spread your
elbows, man! Do as I do, and the blessing of Saint Nicholas of Padua be
upon all thieves and rascals--of whom we are two choice specimens!"
"Speak for yourself, Spaniard!" spluttered the other, having
accidentally sucked the wrong end of his pen; "my uncle is not a
cardinal, and as to my father----"
"He sells hanks of yarn, and cheats in the measurement!"
"I dare you to say so, you left-hand prince, you grease-spot on the
cardinal's purple--you----"
"That will do," said the Abbe John calmly; "to-morrow I will give you
thwacks when and where you like. But now listen, mark, learn, and in any
case keep our good Master Anatole from so frequently glancing at that
door. One would think he had the devil shut up within!"
"Impossible--quite impossible; he is loose and exceedingly busy outside
there! Listen to the shots," said Guy, inclining an ear to the window.
_Crack--crack! Bang!_
The windows rattled.
"Hurrah for the People's Duke! Down with the King! Death to the
Huguenots!--to the Barbets!--to the English! Death! Death! Death!"
"Lively down there--I wish we were up and away!" mourned the son of the
ex-provost of the merchants, "but without arms and ammunition, what can
fellows do?"
"As sayeth the Wise Man"--the voice of the Professor of Eloquence began
to quicken into its stride--"'all her main roads are pleasant roads; and
her very by-paths, her _sentiers_, lead to peace!'"
"If we could only get at those pistols and things!" murmured Guy Launay.
"I wager you a groat that the old man is mistaken! Oh, just hearken to
them outside there, will you? Peace is a chafing-dish. War is the great
sport!"
"Down with the King! Bring along those chains for the barricade!
Students to the rescue!"
Then came up to their ears the blithe marching song, the time strongly
marked:
"The Guises are good men, good men,
The Cardinal, and Henry, and Mayenne, Mayenne!
And we'll fight till all be grey--
The Valois at our feet to-day,
And in his grave the Bearnais--
Our chief has come--the Balafre!"
"Keys of Sainted Peter!" moaned Guy Launay, "I cannot stand this. I am
going down, though I have no better weapon than a barrel-stave."
And he hummed, rapping on the inscribed and whittled bench with his
fingers, the refrain of the famous League song:
"For we'll fight till all be grey--
The Valois at our feet to-day,
In his deep grave the Bearnais--
Our chief has come--the Balafre!"
But Professor Anatole did not hear. He was in the whirl of his
exposition of the blessings of universal peace. The Church had always
brought a sword, and would to the end. But Philosophy, Divine
Philosophy, which was what Solomon meant--peace was within her walls,
prosperity, etc.
And by this time the Spaniard, otherwise the Abbe John, was crawling
stealthily towards the locked door. Guy Launay, on the contrary, was
breathing hard, rustling leaves, taking notes for two, both elbows
working. The Master was in the full rush of his discourse. He saw
nothing, knew nothing. He had forgotten the robing-room in the
affirmation that, "In the midst of turmoil, the truly philosophic may,
and often does, preserve the true peace--the truest of all, peace of
mind, peace of conscience."
_Bang!_
There was a tremendous explosion immediately under the window.
"The King's men blowing up a barricade!" thought the Abbe John, with his
hand on the great flat key, but drawing back a little. "If that does not
wake him up, nothing will."
But the gentle, even voice went on, triumphing--the periods so familiar
to the lecturer ringing out more clearly than ever. "Wars shall cease
only when Wisdom, which is God, shall prevail. Philosophy is at one with
Religion. The Thousand Years shall come a thousand times over and on the
earth shall reign----"
The key gritted in the lock. The Abbe John disappeared behind the heavy
curtain which hid the door of the robing-room.
The next moment he found himself in the presence of a man, lying rigidly
on the Professor's table, all among the books and papers, and of the
fairest young girl the Abbe John had ever seen, gently closing eyes
which would never more look out upon the world.
Within, the Professor's voice droned on, discoursing of peace,
righteousness, and eternal law. The great Day of the Barricades rattled
and thundered without. Acrid blasts of sulphurous reek drove into the
quiet room, and the Abbe John, speechless with amazement, looked into
the wet eyes of this wonderful vision--the purest, the loveliest, the
most forlorn maid in France.