AND ONE WAS NOT!
And this was how it chanced. All that was hidden from Serra, the
fist-faced son of a Murcian witch, from Felieu, the querulous Esplugan,
and from Andres, the little ape with the bat's ears, shall be made
clear.
With one exception, the family of La Masane was resolved to go back to
France, where, if the country was still disturbed, at least there was no
Inquisition.
"I," said the Professor, "know not whether I shall ever teach in my
class-room again--not, at least, while the Leaguers bear rule in Paris.
But I have a little money laid aside in a safe place, which will at
least buy us a vineyard----"
"And I," said the Miller-Alcalde, "have enough gold Henries, safe with
Pereira, the Jew of Bayonne, to hire a mill or two. Good bread and
well-ground wheat wherewith to make it, are the two things that man
cannot do without. I can provide these, if no better."
"And what better can there be?" cried Don Jordy. "I--I am learned in
canon law, which is the same all the world over. I grieve to leave my
good Bishop Onuphre. But since he cannot protect me--nay, goes as much
in fear of the Holy Office as I myself--Brother Anatole must e'en hire
me by the day in his vigne, or Jean-Marie there make me as dusty as
himself in his mills."
"And your mother, lads, have you forgotten her?" said Madame Amelie.
"You are coming with us, mother," they cried, in chorus, "you and
Claire. It is for you that we go!"
"And pray you, who will care for my rabbits, my poultry, and the
pigeons? All the _basse cour_ of La Masane?" cried the Senora.
"That also will be arranged, mother," said Don Jordy. "I will put in a
man who will care for all, till the better days come--a servant and
favourite of Don Raphael. This inquisitioning and denouncing cannot last
for ever--any more than Raphael our landlord or Philip our king."
"Ah," said his mother, "but both of them are like to last beyond my
time. And the fair white house to which your father brought me, a bride!
And the sea--on which, being weary, I have so often looked out and been
refreshed--the cattle and the vines and the goats I tended--am I to see
them no more?"
"Mother," said the Professor, taking her hand and drawing it away from
her face, "here are we your three sons. We can neither stay nor leave
you. They of the Inquisition would revenge on you all that we have
cheated them of--taken out of their hands."
"They are welcome to my old bones," said the Senora, with a gesture of
discouragement.
"No," interrupted Don Jordy, "listen, mother. You are none so ill off.
Here are we, three sons, hale, willing, and unwed, all ready to stand by
you, and to work for you--with our hands if need be. Are there many
mothers who can say as much?"
"Besides," added the Alcalde-Miller, "after all, it is not so far to the
frontier, and, in case of need, I have charged certain good lads I know
of--accustomed to circumvent the King's revenue--to make a clean house
of La Masane. So if aught goes awry--well, I do not promise, but it is
possible that the cattle, and your household gods, mother, with Don
Jordy's books and the Professor's green gown, may find themselves at
Narbonne ere many weeks are over!"
"And for yourself?" said Don Jordy, "your mills, your property?"
The miller laughed and patted his two brothers on the back.
"The good God, who made all, perhaps did not give me so clever a
head-piece as He gave you two. But He taught me, at least, to send every
gold 'Henry' over the frontier as soon as I had another to clink against
it. For the rest, ever as I ground the corn, I took my pay. The mills
and the machinery down there are not mine. I am worth no more this side
of the frontier than the clothes I stand up in. My ancient friend
Pereira, the Israelite of Bayonne, has the rest."
So that is the reason why, when the three familiars of the Holy Office
appeared hot on the trail, they found at La Masane nothing more human
than Don Jordy's white mule, that knew no better than to resist friendly
hands, break a head-stall, and set off after her master, to her own
present undoing.
But what happened when the family of La Masane started for the shore,
where Jean-Marie, on his way home from the Fanal Mill, had anchored the
boat? As he worked his heart was more than a little sore that he should
no more hear that musical song, the tremulous rush of the sails
overhead, or the blithe pour of the rich meal through the funnel into
the sack. Best of all he loved the Fanal Mill, both because the
sea-water lashed up blue-green beneath, and because from the door he
could see Claire's white dress moving about the garden of La Masane.
This was their plan.
To place Claire in safety was no difficulty. The light land-breezes
would carry them swiftly along the shore towards the Narbonne coast. It
was in Madame Amelie that the brothers found their stumbling-block. Not
that the good old lady, so imperious upon her own ground of La Masane,
meant in the least to be difficult. But she felt uprooted, degraded,
fallen from her high estate, divorced from her own, and she trembled
piteously as she tottered on stout Jean-Marie's arm down towards the
beach.
Two days before Jean-aux-Choux had brought the Abbe John to La Masane.
At first no one, certainly not Claire, appeared to make him particularly
welcome. The Professor retrieved some of his old professorial authority.
Don Jordy was frankly jealous. Old Madame Amelie found him finicking and
fine. Only the burly Miller-Alcalde drew to the lad, and tried in his
gruff, semi-articulate way to make the young Gascon understand that, in
spite of his Bourbon birth and Paris manners, he had a friend in the
house of La Masane. And this the young man understood very well, and
repaid accordingly. He understood many things, the Abbe John--all,
indeed, except Claire Agnew's coldness. But even that he took
philosophically.
"He who stands below the cherry-tree with his mouth open, expecting the
wind to blow the cherries into his mouth, waits a long time hungry," he
meditated sententiously; "I will shake the trees and gather."
All the same, the rough grip and kindly "Come-and-help," or
"Stand-out-of-the-way" manner of the miller went to his heart. Indeed,
he could hardly have kept his ground at La Masane without it, and he was
grateful in proportion.
"They think little of me because I look young and my hair curls," he
muttered, as he tried in vain to smooth it out with abundant water, "but
wait--I will show them!"
And the time for showing them came when Jean-aux-Choux, carefully
scouting ahead, thrust his head over a bank of gravel and reported
several men in possession of the boat which Jean-Marie had so carefully
anchored in the little Fanal Bay just round the point out of sight of
the Castle. Worst of all, one of the captors was Don Raphael Llorient
himself.
Almost at the same moment, the last individual rear-guard of the little
party, a slim young lad called in this chronicle the Abbe John,
discovered that they were being tracked from behind. They had indeed
walked into the sack without a hole at the other end. They stood between
two fires. For they had on their hands good old Madame Amelie, ready at
the first discouragement to sink down on the sand, and give up all for
lost.
He dared not therefore speak openly. Cautiously the Abbe John called the
miller to his side, and imparted his discovery.
"A quarter of an hour at the most, and they will have us!" he whispered.
"Umm!" said the Miller-Alcalde. "I suppose we could not--eh--you and I?
What think you? I can strike a good buffet and you with your point! Are
you ready?"
"Ready enough," said the Abbe John, "but they would call out at the
first sight of us--indeed, either crack of pistol or clash of sword
would bring up Don Raphael and his folk. We must think of something
else. For men it might do, but there is your mother to consider--and
Claire!"
"I wish it had been the bare steel--or else the cudgel," said the
miller; "I am no hand at running and plotting!"
But the Abbe John was.
"Here," he said abruptly, stripping the silk-lined cloak from his
shoulders, "take that. Get me Claire's lace mantilla and her wrapper
with the capuchin hood. I have made a good enough maid before at the
revels of carnival. They always chose me to act Joan of Domremy at the
Sorbonne on Orleans Day. It is Claire they are after. Moreover, they are
in a hurry. Be quick--bid her give them to you. But tell her nothing!"
And so the blunt Alcalde-Miller went up to Claire, who was busily
supplying consolation to Madame Amelie.
"Your lace mantilla," he said, "your cloak and hood! Quick--we have need
of them!" he said abruptly. "Take this."
Now Claire had served too long an apprenticeship to dangers and strange
unexplained demands during her father's wanderings to show any surprise.
She put them on the miller's arm without a single question. It was only
when he added, "Now--put this on," and threw the silken court-cloak
belonging to the Abbe John over her shoulders, that she stammered
something.
"This--why this--is--is----"
"Never mind what it is," growled the Miller-Alcalde; "at any rate, it
will not bite you, and you may need it before the night is out!"
And so without a good-bye--only just settling the lace mantilla as
becomingly as possible upon his head and drawing the waist-ribbon of the
girl's cloak close round his middle, the Abbe John, with a wave of his
hand and a low-spoken "Take good care of her" to the miller, sauntered
carelessly back through the maze of sand-hills in the direction of these
three good and faithful bloodhounds of the Holy Inquisition, Felieu the
Esplugan, Andres the Ape, and the giant Serra of the African smile, who
loved his work for his work's sake.
And between his teeth John d'Albret muttered these words, "I will show
them."
Also once, just when he came within hearing of the stealthy creep of the
pursuers, he added, "And I will show her!"
He did. For when next Claire Agnew looked back, the One for whom she
looked was not.