WHAT MAJOLAIS SAW
IT was Majolais, the black dwarf, who first pointed it out. We, that
is, Lanoy, the Comte de Marcilly, who was known as “The Shadow of
Condé,” myself, and lastly Majolais, who had no business to be there,
were on the platform of the stone cavalier, built up against the keep
of Châtillon, where the walls fell sheer into the Indre.
A little to our right was a projecting oriel window, in the bay of
which sat the Princess, Condé’s wife, with avid eyes that looked ever
to the north. It was partly to escape those eyes, which implored and
upbraided at once, whenever they fell on us, that we had come out, and
were pacing backward and forward, trying to talk, with hearts as heavy
as lead. But we had to flog ourselves for this, the effort to speak was
so painful, and at last there was a dead silence, and we tramped up and
down, in a sullen and speechless way.
Finally Lanoy and the Comte, separating from me, leaned over the
battlements, and looked down into the town below, at the pointed
gables, the red and gray roofs, and the narrow, winding streets, where
the people were as ants moving restlessly to and fro.
And I, I was left to my thoughts, such thoughts as a man has who has
sinned and regretted, and then sinned again. They sting like an adder
now when I recall them, and they hurt even then; but I shook them from
me as a dog shakes the water from his coat, and, standing still, looked
aimlessly around.
It was winter, but the sun was out, and the air crisp. I glanced up
at the spread of the sky, half filled with a mountainous pile of soft
white clouds glistening in the light, and wondered to myself that the
sun could shine on such a hell as lay beneath it. The sky was as blue,
the clouds as silver white in the north, as in the south, the east, the
west. And yet the heavens should have been black there, above Amboise
and the Orléanais, black as a pall, and lit only by the pitying eyes of
the stars, for there the Italian woman and the Lorrainers were shedding
the best blood of France like water.
Let me stop for a moment to explain in a few words why we were as we
were. The King--he was barely sixteen, and already dying of a terrible
disease--together with Mary of Scotland, his young Queen, were in the
hands of the brothers of Guise and Catherine, and Lorrainer and Italian
were both, for the present, partners. The country was bankrupt. In
the King’s name they reduced it to beggary. The people were starving.
They let them die. They seem to have gone blood mad in their thirst
for power. It was nothing but “Kill! kill!” Add to this a religious
persecution of the most intolerable kind, and the picture of the times
is roughly outlined.
The most fiendish cruelties were inflicted in the name of the Law, and
of God, against the followers of the New Faith, or rather of the Old
Faith that was found anew. “Huguenots!” they called us in derision,
after the wretched farthing piece, or, as some say, after the goblin
King of Tours--I neither know nor care which--the name was yet to be
one of terror to the Woman of Babylon.
The chiefs of the old nobility, and Princes of the blood, found
themselves prisoners, or practically exiles. Their hereditary rights
were denied to them, they were cut off from the State. It is not
strange that all the liberalism, all the patriotism in France, saw
with horror the coming ruin of their country, and forgetting, for
the moment, differences of creed, coalesced with one accord against
the tyrants. The outcome of this was the attempt of Amboise--and its
results are known.
The Right had lost, by the will of God, and now the conquerors were
slaking their vengeance in blood, and in the name of the child King
condemning their victims to hideous tortures and to awful deaths. In
the history of my country there is but one crime darker than this,
one page more stained with sin. But the day was yet far distant when
the bells of St. Germain l’Auxerrois were to clang out the signal for
the Feast of St. Bartholomew, and we, who stood gasping with horror,
thought that the worst had befallen France.
The one hope of all Frenchmen who loved their country, Louis of Condé,
was in the hands of the Guisards. His life hung by a hair, and on
that life hung, as we thought then, the safety of France. We were
powerless to help, and here at Châtillon we, who had escaped disaster
as yet, were practically prisoners, for de Termes held us in check
from Ligueil, and the lances of Montluc gleamed from every tower from
Buzançais to St. Aignan. We were, in short, caged. We could run about
in our cage but not beyond its bars. We were in a trap--like rats in a
trap.
The Princess of Condé, Eleanore de Roye, had sunk into a speechless
grief that was terrible to witness. Every day brought danger nearer and
nearer, and yet she refused to move, refused to make any attempt at
escape; we might have twice made a dash for Poitou, where the Admiral
and the Rhinegrave were still in some force. She, however, declined
point blank, and sat like a Penelope, weaving endless plans to free her
husband, each one more hopeless than the other.
I stood, as I have said, on the cavalier, looking aimlessly at the sky,
and then made a half movement to join my friends, when I was arrested
by a cry, such a cry as might come from the throat of a tongueless man,
and, turning round, saw Majolais on the carriage of a brass carronade,
pointing eagerly at something. The wind had caught his short red
cloak, blowing it out like a banner, and the hooded falcon he held in
leash was screaming and fluttering overhead, the full length of his
tether. There the creature stood, distorted and misshapen, uttering his
strange cries, now looking at me, then turning his yellow eyes down the
St. Aignan road, and swinging his arms wildly.
I hastened toward him, Lanoy and Marcilly after me, and we three tried
to follow the Moor’s glance, but could make out nothing, although
Majolais, in his eagerness to show us what he saw, now plucked at our
sleeves, now leaned half out of the embrasure, his arm stretched out
toward the plain beneath him, the falcon screaming overhead, and he
gibbering the whole time like the wild thing he was.
At last I saw it--I, the youngest of the three. Running my eyes along
the white, glistening road I made out a small speck. Seizing the
dwarf’s hand I held it out in that direction and, nodding assent, he
fairly danced with joy.
“There!” I cried, “that little speck beyond the wood there! ’Tis that
the imp means.”
Then they saw too, and shading his eyes with his hands Lanoy looked
hard and earnestly.
“Some one rides there for his life,” he said. “I would we had the tube
Cortoni made for the King. We would see him then as close as my hand.”
“Perhaps he comes from Orleans. He may be for us,” I hazarded.
They did not answer, but we craned our necks and strained our eyes,
whilst the spot flew faster and faster, and grew bigger and bigger,
until at last we all saw clearly that it was a man on horseback,
and that he was heading straight for Châtillon, for he passed the
cross-road to Tours.
The Princess and her ladies, observing the dwarf’s gestures and our
movements, came out to join us, and we all watched in an excited but
silent group. It was not a wonderful thing, this sight of a man riding
at full speed; but somehow we all felt, though we did not say so, that
he was riding for us.
She, the Princess of Condé, stood with her hands on the brass gun,
leaning slightly forward, her lips parted, her cheeks flushed, and her
eyes straining. It was as if she was striving to read on the rider’s
face the message he bore.
On a sudden Mademoiselle de Mailly, who was next to her, called out:
“See! He wears a white scarf! Look, madame! Look!”
True enough. Across his left shoulder, and streaming a yard behind him,
was a white scarf, the emblem of our party.
“He is for us,” the girl called out shrilly; “he must be from Orleans,
madame. Ah, madame!” and she turned half round with clasped hands; but
the Princess made no answer, staring straight at the coming man with
hot eyes, eyes that burned with eagerness, eyes that blazed with a
hundred questions at once.
“The fool!” muttered Lanoy. “The idiot! To wear that scarf now! If any
of Montluc’s troopers are skulking in that wood he is lost.”
Jean de Marcilly touched me softly on the shoulder, and our glances
met. I knew what he meant, and answered with the positive assurance of
youth.
“It is needless. He is perfectly safe, and we will have only our labor
for our pains. I rode through the wood but two hours ago. There was no
one there, and Coqueville tells me Montluc’s bees are hiving elsewhere
to-day.”
“That is my latest news. It would almost seem that we have yet another
chance to go if we wanted,” said a quiet voice, and the Captain of
Châtillon joined us.
It was as if Lanoy was about to speak, when Marcilly cut in impatiently.
“Bees or no bees, I go!” And he looked at me again. I made a step
forward, and then, in a flash, there came a strange and wicked whisper
to my soul.
“Let him go. He may die--may get killed, and you and she will be free.”
It was almost as if a living voice hissed this into my ear, and I clung
to the thought. I would not meet Marcilly’s eyes, though I watched him
beneath my glance, and with a laugh and a lifting of his brows he was
gone.
“Take Badehorn and Schoner, the German reiter, with you,” called
Coqueville after him, and we heard him halloo back as he sped down
the winding stair. I was glad of this. It removed attention from me.
Although I was aware that no one had noticed us, I felt as if all eyes
were on me when Marcilly spoke. I found myself near Majolais, and the
dwarf winked at me as if he knew. I turned with a muttered curse, and
sought refuge next to Yvonne de Mailly. I do not know how it was, but
in her eagerness perhaps to see, she leaned forward, and her hand
rested lightly on my arm. I caught the dwarf’s glance again, and he
laughed to himself. I could have flung him from the battlements.
In a moment more we saw Marcilly crossing the bridge. Neither Badehorn
nor Schoner were with him. He was alone, and I waited and watched.
Now the wood mentioned above was a part of the forest of Châtillon
that stretched eastward, extending an arm, as it were, to the St.
Aignan road, a bit of which it hid from our view. As Marcilly crossed
the bridge the stranger passed behind the trees, and then we heard
the distant crack of an arquebus, and a suppressed cry burst from the
Princess.