A PRIEST OF BAAL
“So you think your plans well laid?”
“YES, and well thought out, Gaspard. The idea has been working in my
head for some little time, and what happened to-day has convinced me it
is feasible.”
“I do not follow.”
“I will explain. I owed my life to-day to my likeness to the Prince.
When I was at that man’s mercy you saw him throw up his sword and pass
me?”
“Yes, yes. I remember. Who was he?”
“I know not, but he wore the sash of the King’s Carabiniers, and he
knew Condé, and mistook me for him. It was astonishing to see the
change in his face. ‘The Prince! _Mille démons!_’ he exclaimed, and
went by me like a flash. Now it is this lucky resemblance which I mean
to use to effect Condé’s release. But it is necessary to play a bold
game, and we will go straight to Catherine and offer our swords to the
King.”
“Ah yes! And if Madame does not need us, we find ourselves laid by the
heels, and have a fair chance of our heads shrivelling on the spikes of
The Gate of Good Men.”
“My friend! There are wheels within wheels here. Catherine is in sore
straits now, and will extend the amnesty to us, I assure you. Even you,
Huguenot though you are, can count on her protection if you be for her,
as you will be, for the present. When it suits her purpose, she is as
much Calvinist as you other heretics. What bee got into your head and
made you change your faith I know not. Was it not enough for you to
live and die as your forefathers?”
“Let that sleep, Marcilly. A man’s conscience is his conscience. It
lies between him and his God.”
“But if his conscience leads him to heresy it leads him to the stake.
However, I say no more, Gaspard. Heretic or true believer, we have
shed blood for each other, and we will die, if need be, to keep the
foreigner out of France. Let me continue. You know that Marie is with
the Medicis. In one sense a prisoner, in the other as free as air.
Strange as it may seem, Catherine loves her, despite her rebel husband,
as she calls me.”
“In other words, madame is a hostage.”
“But Catherine has never used her power. A threat of harm to Marie
would have paralyzed me at once. But, instead of threats, offers of
protection have come for me and my friends.”
“Punic Faith! The Prince trusted the Florentine. Where is he?”
“But that faith will be kept to us--to all who aid her now. She now
sees her danger, and the road open to the Guise if Condé were to die.
She would make another Amboise of the Lorrainers if she could.”
“You count, then, on the help of that tigress! You deceive yourself.”
“No! I do not count on active help, but passive help. Consider for a
moment! Madame plays to keep the waning power of the Valois. She knows
well enough that if either the Huguenots--forgive the word--or the
Guise destroy each other, they will eat up the Valois. The Huguenots,
with Condé, made head. She used the Guise to crush them, but events
have proved too much for her, and the dragon’s teeth she sowed have
sprung up against her in full crop. She lends a willing ear to the
Chancellor, who has declined to affix the Seal to the warrant. Sancerre
has flatly refused to give his assent to the verdict, and Cipierre, the
Governor of Orleans, who, as you know, is my uncle, is a deadly foe of
the Guise. Fear not! We will keep our heads and succeed.”
“And the Guise? You have left out that weight in the scale.”
“Well! We shall see which weighs heavier, Italian craft or the sword of
Lorraine. But, to go on, the Prince is permitted to see a few friends.
The plan is that I will obtain an interview with him, and when I,
or rather the Prince comes out, it win be your business to get him
to Poitou, and it is for this that I wanted a true friend, Gaspard,
and who more true than you! Think you I have forgotten Renty or the
Escaillon?”
I could hardly bear his praise; the words seemed to sting like a lash;
but I brought myself together and asked: “And you, Marcilly? Do you
know what this means for you?”
“I,” he laughed, “I will join you in Poitou later on. But we waste time
in chattering. Let us hasten!”
He knew as well as I did that he never would see Poitou, and that he
was laying down his life for another as cheerfully as if he were going
to a minuet. And I rode in bitterness by the side of this man who could
be so great while I was so small. Shame, black shame, filled my heart,
for I was bridle to bridle with one whom I called friend with my lips,
but to whom in my soul I was a traitor. I felt that I hated him--hated
him who had done me no wrong all the more because I sought to injure
him. I linked him unreasonably with the moral degradation into which I
had fallen; and the more I recognized the depth to which I had sunk,
the hotter grew the fires of my anger. Why did he not die before
Châtillon? There would have been nothing then to stand between Marie
and myself. Yet with this thought there flashed upon me her own appeal
on the night when last we met. She had given me strength then, and I
resisted. There came a glow with the memory of that one good deed, a
glow of generous impulse that made me feel for a moment again a man.
I bent my head to the saddle and prayed for help, a voiceless prayer.
Alas! It never got beyond the gray darkness of that night.
To my mind there is no condition more awful than that of the man who is
dragged, as it were, to the commission of a crime by an irresistible
power, a terrible unseen force that laps round him like a hungry tide,
that drives him onward through mist and fog, despite his struggles, and
leaves him at last on the shores of the lost, there to await the last
call, there to rot amidst the maddening phantoms of the past, there to
repent, if there be aught of advantage in repentance. I have fought
with the fiend, struggled at the foot of the cross, prayed, with tears,
for strength that danced before me to vanish like the elf-light on a
marsh, and then--came back to my sin like a hog to his wallow.
And so it was with me now. At the very moment when I thought I was
gaining strength, when I had gone to God with my heart, I fell again.
We had come to the Loup Garou, that little stream which, rising in the
forest of Villedomain, steals slowly toward the Indre, as treacherous
in its crafty strength as the beast from which it takes its name.
As we approached the streamlet the sky darkened, the wind rose, the
birch-trees shook and crackled their dry arms, and the snow began to
fall in soft white flakes. It was then, in crossing the lonely forest
bridge, that ran on wooden piles from bank to bank, that the evil came
to me, like a shadow of the approaching night. Marcilly was in front.
One shot from my pistol, and Marie and I were free. She would never
know--the trees around us were blind and dumb. They would tell no
story, and I would lock the secret in my heart. My hand stole toward
my holster-flap, and, with a shiver and a start, I drew it back--I had
forgotten. It was not only God’s eye that saw me. Scarce a hundred
paces behind rode Badehorn, and I feared him more than my God. The
chance saved me--simple chance, or I had fallen utterly. And yet but a
half-hour back I had prayed for help, I had asked the Most High to give
His creature a little strength--and here I was but a hand’s breadth
from a mortal sin. There are those who will tell me that I was guilty
of that crime--that I am guilty now--for I had sinned in my soul if not
in deed.
Away in the deep of the forest a dog-wolf howled, a single, long-drawn
note of baffled vengeance, of quivering, savage despair. The cry echoed
dismally through the birch woods, and was caught up again among the
oaks and beeches of Loches, until at last it died away, leaving us to
the silence of the softly falling snow. It was a fit echo to the horror
in my soul.
“It blows chill,” exclaimed Marcilly, drawing his cloak closer around
him; “’twill be a bad night for the Princess’s journey.”
“They may halt at Varennes.” I wondered I could speak so calmly.
“If Lanoy allows that he is--but he never will. They must push through
somehow to St. Bauld.”
“And if they do not?” I was speaking at random; my mind was full of
other things.
“Then we are more than half ruined, and the Guise will hold both the
hind and the stag; but, upon my soul, Gaspard, you must be in love, you
look so sorrowful. Is it Yvonne de Mailly? She has beauty and birth;
but Favras is poor--nothing but that old clock-case, his tower in the
Anjoumois. Still, your lands of Vibrac are broad. Hark! What is that?”
As he spoke there was the distant rumbling of thunder, and a chain of
light blazed overhead. We all knew what this meant, even the horses.
They snorted and trembled, and then their courage came back to them
like the brave beasts they were, as we went at a hand gallop through
the snow.
We had now come to the forest of Loches, that deep, dark wood which
makes a fitting setting to the gloomy stronghold of Louis XI. The
darkness gained upon us rapidly, and soon it became more and more
difficult to follow the road. Now and then, through the gaps in the
trees, through dead arms of beech or oak, we could catch the beacon
fire on the tower of Beaulieu, and guided ourselves by its glimmer.
We had meant to reach Chenonceaux by the morning. Under ordinary
circumstances, and with fresh horses such as we had, this would have
been well possible; but now, in the driving mist and in the darkness,
we would be lucky if we reached the Indrois with the day, and every
moment was of import.
We floundered along at our best pace, which soon became little more
than a shamble, for here, in the dark arcades of the forest, the horses
sank above their fetlocks in the soft snow, and ever and again we found
ourselves in some shallow ravine or slimy, ice-covered pool. We could
barely see ten yards ahead, and must have come to a standstill, but for
the incessant lightning that flashed through the gray gloom, and lit
the endless colonnades of black trees, stretching as far as the eye
could reach on every hand. The wind, high and strong, hissed through
the damp leaves, bringing down the melting snow, that clung to them in
great drops, and making the boughs overhead creak and groan like the
cordage of a ship. Now the blast would die away in low moanings, then
it would circle round, and roar through the forest, and sometimes,
amidst the din of the elements, we could hear the sullen, plunging
crack of some great bough, or perhaps tree itself, as, worm-riddled and
old, it fell heavily to earth.
We tried to head for what we thought to be the north, keeping the fire
of Beaulieu to our left; but now this was no longer visible, and so
dark had it become that further progress was all but impossible. It
would have been madness, it would have meant death, to halt in the
storm, and so we stumbled on as if blind, going we did not know where.
And with the issue we had at stake! It was as if the very elements
themselves warred against us.
At last we came to what seemed like a steep ascent. Up this we let the
horses scramble, until we reached a small table-land bereft of trees,
and from the height peered into the darkness around.
“Messieurs!” It was Badehorn who spoke, or rather shouted. “Messieurs!
We are all wrong. There is the light of Beaulieu to our right! It
should be to our left!”
“Light! There is no light there!” I said, “though we may well be all
wrong, as you say;” but even as I spoke, something flared and sputtered
redly out of the night.
“That is not Beaulieu; the light is too low,” said Marcilly, “but
Beaulieu or not, let us make for it, in God’s name! ’Tis useless
wandering here like evil spirits!”
We hastened toward the light, the position of which we marked as it
flashed once more through the darkness. I said hastened--I should have
said stumbled toward it. It was necessary, so steep was the slope, to
dismount here, and lead the horses, which we did, going down in single
file, Marcilly and I groping before us with the points of our drawn
swords.
Finally we reached level ground, and headed towards our refuge. It was
close at hand, and the horses seemed to know, too, for they neighed
shrilly, and there was an answering call--the strange, harsh cry of a
mule.
In a few steps more we came to a gate that lay open, and saw the house
again clearly by a blaze of lightning. It seemed a large, low, rambling
building, with a tower at one end, from which the beacon flared, and
Marcilly, who knew every inch of the country, recognized it.
“’Tis the old Château Juvigny, now the abbey farm of Larçon,” he
exclaimed, “the largest farmhouse in Touraine. I knew it well. ’Twas
here I lay the day before Renaudie died, and but escaped by the skin
of my teeth. Gilles de Randan and his Light Horse swooped on the place
while my bed was yet warm. I wonder a rafter was spared!”
“It was well left for our sakes,” I made answer, and battered at the
door with the hilt of my sword.
We had to knock long and loudly ere we were heard. A dog barked
furiously from within, and at last a shutter opened overhead, a man
leaned out, swinging a pine torch in his hand, and called out to
us; but the storm bore away his voice. Marcilly began to swear, and
Badehorn to kick at the door with his heavy boots; but realizing that
this was not the way to make things run smoothly, and having no mind to
have a brace of slugs through me, I bade them desist, and called out
loudly that we were belated travellers in search of a night’s lodging,
and that we were prepared to pay handsomely for the favor. I had to
repeat this twice, so furious was the storm; but at last my voice
reached the ears of the clod above, and with a gruff “Wait,” he put
down the shutter and vanished.
“This will never do!” exclaimed Marcilly, and he was about to sound a
reminder on the door, when we heard the dog yell as if being beaten
off, the clanking of chains, the dropping of a bar, and the door
opened, letting in a gust of wind and a sheet of snow that all but
extinguished the torch held by a man in the hall. Behind his figure we
saw three or four others, farm-servants apparently, armed with clubs
and pitchforks. It was no time to hesitate, however, and we stepped in,
while the farmer himself, a short, thickset man, who carried a light
axe in his hand, reassured us at once.
“Step in, messieurs! Step in! ’Tis not a night for a dog to be out, let
alone honest men! Here, Gondrin! Pierre! See after the horses! Come in,
gentlemen! You are not the first to-night--come in! The horses shall be
seen to.”
There was no doubting the honest tones of the man’s voice, and,
thanking him, we accepted his invitation, leaving Badehorn to supervise
the stabling of the horses, a task from which he returned well pleased
with their lodging. Entering, we followed our host into what was once
the great hall of the old château, but which was now apparently a
kitchen, a dining-room, and a _salon_ in one.
As the farmer had said, we were not the first who had sought the
hospitable shelter of the abbey farm that night. In a chair next to the
fire was a priest, evidently of high rank--I caught the glitter of the
ring on his hand--and close to him were two or three of his following,
all dark-robed and sombre.
Some distance away, somewhat in shadow, and at the extreme end of
the table, where the fag-ends of supper still remained, sat another
wayfarer, his head leaning on his arm, staring moodily before him. On
our entrance, this man gave a quick glance at us, and then lowered his
head again, so that his features were not distinguishable.
The priest took no notice of us, bending low over his breviary, but his
suite returned our greetings gravely, and looked at us with interest
as we took off our snow-bespattered cloaks, and approached the warmth
of the fire, while a brace of brown-armed and dark-haired girls laid
out some supper--black bread and cheese, warm milk, and a flagon of
Rochecorbon; plain and homely fare, but none the less welcome for all
that.
On entering the room I had removed the demi-mask I wore as a protection
from the weather; but it was not until we reached the full light of the
fire that Jean did so, and a look of surprise and astonishment came
into the eyes of our host. He glanced from one to the other of us, his
hands began to tremble, and so discomposed did he appear, that Jean
thought it better to ask to be allowed to sup at once, and, as we took
our seats, said something in an undertone to our host, to which the man
answered submissively, in an equally low voice.
It was while this incident was in progress that I caught the priest’s
glance, and the slightly amused, slightly mocking smile on his face.
It was clear that he had followed every detail of the passage between
Jean and the farmer of Larçon. But it was the man’s expression, cold,
sneering, and haughty, that arrested me, and for a moment we stared
at each other. Then he bowed to me as to an inferior, courteously but
haughtily, the jewel flashed brightly on his finger, and he returned
to his book, as if we did not exist. Yet in that one look we exchanged
I felt I had met a master mind, and I had an instinctive foreboding of
ill to come from that stern and malign figure.
He was tall and thin, with a receding forehead, an eagle nose, and a
cruel line of red lip that contrasted strangely with the pallor of his
complexion. But it was the searching light in the gray eyes, flashing
beneath the thick, straight brows, that made me feel the man was
reading me like an open page. And a presentiment came upon me, that
here was one whose path would cross mine to my destruction. I little
imagined what that crossing would mean to him, to that man whose eyes
were even now fixed on St. Peter’s throne. Had Achon of Arles lived,
it is not too much to say that the history of France would have been
altered, and the eagle of Lorraine grasped the sceptre of my country.
He possessed every quality that the Cardinal and his brother lacked.
He equalled the Constable in courage and the Italian in duplicity and
cunning. In a word, he was a great, bad man, such as a nation sometimes
produces to its sorrow and often to its destruction.
As we took our seats at the supper table, I noticed that the stranger I
had first observed had shifted his position, so that his face was from
us. At first I paid little heed to this, being hungry, and a little
diverted by our host’s strange bearing. He looked at me knowingly, and
seemed swollen with the consciousness of possessing some great secret.
We were, however, relieved of his importunities by the churchman,
who summoned him to receive some instructions, and it was then that
Marcilly took the opportunity to whisper:
“Do you recognize the priest?”
“Not I.”
“’Tis Achon, Abbot of St. Savin, and now Bishop of Arles. He is St.
André’s brother.”
“So that is Achon! He was at Lyons when I was at the Court. I like not
his look.”
“Nor I. We have met before, Gaspard, and he does not forget, though it
suits him, apparently, not to recognize me. It was he who claimed the
Chaumont estates, which came to Marie, and he is hand and glove with
the Brothers. ’Tis even said that he holds the office of Inquisitor--I
fear we are in the wolf’s den.”
“There is another here who seems not to wish to recognize any one,” and
I indicated the bashful stranger, whose back was toward us.
Marcilly was about to reply, when the Bishop rose, and, escorted by
the farmer, and followed by his monks, passed down the room. We played
our parts and rose too, and as Achon went by he stopped, and, looking
Marcilly full in the face, said:
“I trust Monsieur le Comte is well.”
“Perfectly, monsieur, thanks. I hope to see Monsieur of Arles at
Orleans soon.”
“At Orleans!”
“Monsieur, I have begun to think it is well to fly with the eagle.”
“It approaches closer to heaven, my son, than the lily,” answered
Achon. “I wish monsieur good fortune, a fair flight, and good-night,”
and then, with a short benediction, he retired.
“The wolf shows his fangs. There is danger, Gaspard.”
“Were you not reckless in saying you were bound for Orleans?”
“Not in the least. Candor is part of our game. We no longer cry,
‘_Bourbon, Notre Dame!_’”
Shortly after the host returned, and Marcilly rose, saying he was
dog-tired and would go to his chamber. The farmer began to apologize
for the accommodation he had to give us. “’Tis but a small room in the
beacon tower I must ask messieurs to share. My Lord Bishop has----”
“We understand, my good fellow, and we thank you as if it were a royal
palace. I’ll to bed, for it grows late and we ride with the dawn. What!
Not coming, Gaspard?”
“Not yet,” I answered, and Jean, with a cheery “good-night,” and a
point-blank refusal to allow the host to accompany him, went off to
sleep.
We heard him humming the “Lire, lire, lironfa” as he tramped up the
stairs, and then he called for Badehorn.