I was glad to be in the open once more--glad of the movement, as I rode
at the head of my brave company along the bank of the Garonne and in the
shade of the golden, autumn-tinted trees.
I was in a measure angry with myself that I had driven such a bargain
with Roxalanne, in a measure angry with her that she had forced me to
it by her obstinacy. A fine gentleman I, on my soul, to have dubbed
Chatellerault a cheat for having done no worse than I had now brought
myself to do! Yet, was it so? No, I assured myself, it was not. A
thousand times no! What I had done I had done as much to win Roxalanne
to me as to win her from her own unreasonableness. In the days to come
she should thank me for my harshness, for that which now she perhaps
accounted my unfairness.
Then, again, would I ask myself, was I very sure of this? And so the two
questions were flung the one against the other; my conscience divided
itself into two parties, and they waged a war that filled me with a
depressing uncertainty.
In the end shame was overthrown, and I flung back my head with a
snort of assurance. I was doing no wrong. On the contrary, I was doing
right--both by myself and by Roxalanne. What matter that I was really
cheating her? What matter that I had said I would not leave Lavedan
until I had her promise, whilst in reality I had hurled my threat at
Saint-Eustache that I would meet him at Toulouse, and passed my word to
the Vicomtesse that I would succour her husband?
I gave no thought to the hidden threat with which Saint-Eustache had
retorted that from Lavedan to Toulouse was a distance of some twenty
leagues. Had he been a man of sterner purposes I might have been uneasy
and on my guard. But Saint-Eustache pshaw!
It is ill to underestimate an enemy, be he never so contemptible,
and for my disdain of the Chevalier I might have paid dearly had not
Fortune--which of late had been practising singular jests upon me after
seemingly abandoning me, returned to my aid at the last moment.
It was Saint-Eustache's purpose that I should never reach Toulouse
alive, for in all the world I was the one man he feared, the one man
who would encompass his undoing and destruction by a word. And so he had
resolved and disposed that I should be removed, and to accomplish this
he had left a line of bravi along the road I was to pass.
He had counted upon my lying the night in one of the intervening towns,
for the journey was over-long to be accomplished at a stretch, and
wherever I might chance to lie, there I should have to reckon with his
assassins. The nearer Toulouse--although I knew not this--the thicker
grew my danger. Into the very thick of it I rode; in the very thick of
it I lay, and all that came of it was that I obtained possession of one
more and overwhelming piece of evidence against my murderous Chevalier.
But I outrun my story.
It had been my purpose to change horses at Grenade, and so push on and
reach Toulouse that very night or in the early hours of the following
morning. At Grenade, however, there were no horses to be obtained, at
least not more than three, and so, leaving the greater portion of my
company behind, I set out, escorted only by Gilles and Antoine. Night
had fallen long before we reached Lespinasse, and with it came foul
weather. The wind rose from the west, grew to the violence of a
hurricane, and brought with it such a deluge of cold, cutting rain as
never had it been my ill-chance to ride through. From Lespinasse to
Fenouillet the road dips frequently, and wherever this occurred it
seemed to us that we were riding in a torrent, our horses fetlock-deep
in mud.
Antoine complained in groans; Gilles growled openly, and went the length
of begging me, as we rode through the ill-paved, flooded streets of
Fenouillet, to go no farther. But I was adamant in my resolve. Soaked to
the skin, my clothes hanging sodden about me, and chilled to the marrow
though I was, I set my chattering teeth, and swore that we should not
sleep until we reached Toulouse.
“My God,” he groaned, “and we but halfway!”
“Forward!” was all I answered; and so as midnight chimed we left
Fenouillet behind us, and dashed on into the open country and the full
fury of the tempest.
My servants came after me upon their stumbling horses, whining and
cursing by turns, and forgetting in their misery the respect that they
were accustomed to pay me. I think now that it was a providence that
guided me. Had I halted at Fenouillet, as they would have had me do,
it is odds that this chronicle would never have been penned, for likely
enough I had had my throat cut as I slept. A providence was it also that
brought my horse down within a half-mile of Blagnac, and so badly did it
founder that it might not be ridden farther.
The beasts my men bestrode were in little better condition, and so, with
infinite chagrin, I was forced to acknowledge defeat and to determine
that at Blagnac we should lie for the remainder of the night. After all,
it mattered little. A couple of hours' riding in the morning would bring
us to Toulouse, and we would start betimes.
I bade Gilles dismount--he had been the louder in his complainings--and
follow us afoot, bringing my horse to the Auberge de l'Etoile at
Blagnac, where he would await him. Then I mounted his jaded beast, and,
accompanied by Antoine--the last of my retainers--I rode into Blagnac,
and pulled up at the sign of the “Star.”
With my whip I smote the door, and I had need to smite hard if I would
be heard above the wind that shrieked and howled under the eaves of that
narrow street. Yet it almost seemed as if some one were expected, for
scarce had my knocking ceased when the door was opened, and the landlord
stood there, shading a taper with his hand. For a moment I saw the
glow of its light on his rosy, white-bearded face, then a gust of wind
extinguished it.
“Diable!” he swore, “an ugly night for travelling”; adding as an
afterthought, “You ride late, monsieur.”
“You are a man of supreme discernment, Monsieur l'Hote,” said I testily,
as I pushed him aside and stepped into the passage. “Will you keep me
in the rain till daylight whilst you perpend how late I ride? Is your
ostler abed? See to those beasts yourself, then. Afterwards get me
food--for me and for my man and beds for both of us.”
“I have but one room, monsieur,” he answered respectfully. “You shall
have that, and your servant shall sleep in the hayloft.”
“My servant sleeps in my room, if you have but one. Set a mattress on
the floor for him. Is this a night to leave a dog to sleep in a hayloft?
I have another servant following. He will be here in a few minutes. You
must find room for him also--in the passage outside my door, if no other
accommodation be possible.”
“But, monsieur--” he began in a tone of protest, which I set down to the
way a landlord has of making difficulties that he shall be the better
paid for such lodging as he finds us.
“See to it,” I ordered peremptorily. “You shall be well paid. Now go
tend those horses.”
On the wall of the passage fell a warm, reddish glow from the common
room, which argued a fire, and this was too alluring to admit of my
remaining longer in discussion with him. I strode forward, therefore.
The Auberge de l'Etoile was not an imposing hostelry, nor one at which
from choice I had made a halt. This common room stank most vilely of
oil, of burning tallow--from the smoky tapers--and of I know not what
other noisome unsavourinesses.
As I entered, I was greeted by a resonant snore from a man seated in
a corner by the fire. His head had fallen back, displaying the brown,
sinewy neck, and he slept--or seemed to sleep--with mouth wide open.
Full length on the hearth and in the red glare of the burning logs
lay what at first glance I took to be a heap of rags, but which closer
scrutiny showed me to be another man, seemingly asleep also.
I flung my sodden castor on the table; I dropped my drenched cloak on
the ground, and stepped with heavy tread and a noisy rattle of spurs
across the floor. Yet my ragged gentleman slept on. I touched him
lightly with my whip.
“Hold, mon bonhomme!” I cried to him. Still he did not move, whereat I
lost patience and caught him a kick full in the side, so choicely aimed
that first it doubled him up, then brought him into a sitting posture,
with the snarl of a cross-grained dog that has been rudely aroused.
From out of an evil, dirty countenance a pair of gloomy, bloodshot eyes
scowled threateningly upon me. The man on the chair awoke at the same
instant, and sat forward.
“Eh bien?” said I to my friend on the hearth: “Will you stir yourself?”
“For whom?” he growled. “Is not the Etoile as much for me as for you,
whoever you may be?”
“We have paid our lodging, pardieu!” swore he of the chair.
“My masters,” said I grimly, “if you have not eyes to see my sodden
condition, and if you therefore have not the grace to move that I may
approach the fire; I'll see to it that you spend the night not only a
l'Etoile, but a la belle etoile.” With which pleasantry, and a touch
of the foot, I moved my friend aside. My tone was not nice, nor do I
generally have the air of promising more than I can fulfil.
They were growling together in a corner when Antoine came to draw off
my doublet and my boots. They were still growling when Gilles joined us
presently, although at his coming they paused to take his measure with
their eyes. For Gilles was something of a giant, and men were wont to
turn their heads--aye, and women too--to admire his fine proportions.
We supped--so vilely that I have not the heart to tell you what we
ate--and, having supped, I bade my host light me to my chamber. As for
my men, I had determined that they should spend the night in the common
room, where there was a fire, and where--notwithstanding the company
of those two ruffians, into whose presence I had not troubled to
inquire--they would doubtless be better than elsewhere in that poor
hostelry.
In gathering up my cloak and doublet and other effects to bear them off
to the kitchen, the host would have possessed himself also of my sword.
But with a laugh I took it from him, remarking that it required no
drying.
As we mounted the stairs, I heard something above me that sounded like
the creaking of a door. The host heard it also, for he stood suddenly
still, his glance very questioning.
“What was that?” said he.
“The wind, I should say,” I answered idly; and my answer seemed to
reassure him, for with a “Ah, yes--the wind,” he went on.
Now, for all that I am far from being a man of tremors or unwarranted
fears, to tell the truth the hostelry of the “Star” was beginning to
fret my nerves. I could scarce have told you why had you asked me, as I
sat upon the bed after mine host had left me, and turned my thoughts to
it. It was none of the trivial incidents that had marked my coming; but
it was, I think, the combination of them all. First there was the host's
desire to separate me from my men by suggesting that they should sleep
in the hayloft. Clearly unnecessary, when he was not averse to turning
his common room into a dormitory. There was his very evident relief
when, after announcing that I would have them sleep one in my room and
one in the passage by my door, I consented to their spending the night
below; there was the presence of those two very ill-looking cut-throats;
there was the attempt to carry off my sword; and, lastly, there was that
creaking door and the host's note of alarm.
What was that?
I stood up suddenly. Had my fancy, dwelling upon that very incident,
tricked me into believing that a door had creaked again? I listened, but
a silence followed, broken only by a drone of voices ascending from the
common room. As I had assured the host upon the stairs, so I now assured
myself that it was the wind, the signboard of the inn, perhaps, swaying
in the storm.
And then, when I had almost dismissed my doubts, and was about to divest
myself of my remaining clothes, I saw something at which I thanked
Heaven that I had not allowed the landlord to carry off my rapier. My
eyes were on the door, and, as I gazed, I beheld the slow raising of the
latch. It was no delusion; my wits were keen and my eyes sharp; there
was no fear to make me see things that were not. Softly I stepped to
the bed-rail where I had hung my sword by the baldrick, and as softly I
unsheathed it. The door was pushed open, and I caught the advance of a
stealthy step. A naked foot shot past the edge of the door into my room,
and for a second I thought of pinning it to the ground with my rapier;
then came a leg, then a half-dressed body surmounted by a face--the face
of Rodenard!
At sight of it, amazement and a hundred suspicions crossed my mind. How,
in God's name, came he here, and for what purpose did he steal so into
my chamber?
But my suspicions perished even as they were begotten. There was so
momentous, so alarmingly warning a look on his face as he whispered the
one word “Monseigneur!” that clearly if danger there was to me it was
not from him.
“What the devil--” I began.
But at the sound of my voice the alarm grew in his eyes.
“Sh!” he whispered, his finger on his lips. “Be silent, monseigneur, for
Heaven's sake!”
Very softly he closed the door; softly, yet painfully, he hobbled
forward to my side.
“There is a plot to murder you, monseigneur,” he whispered.
“What! Here at Blagnac?”
He nodded fearfully.
“Bah!” I laughed. “You rave, man. Who was to know that I was to come
this way? And who is there to plot against my life?”
“Monsieur de Saint-Eustache.” he answered.
“And for the rest, as to expecting you here, they did not, but they
were prepared against the remote chance of your coming. From what I have
gathered, there is not a hostelry betwixt this and Lavedan at which
the Chevalier has not left his cutthroats with the promise of enormous
reward to the men who shall kill you.”
I caught my breath at that. My doubts vanished.
“Tell me what you know,” said I. “Be brief.”
Thereupon this faithful dog, whom I had so sorely beaten but four nights
ago, told me how, upon finding himself able to walk once more, he had
gone to seek me out, that he might implore me to forgive him and not
cast him off altogether, after a lifetime spent in the service of my
father and of myself.
He had discovered from Monsieur de Castelroux that I was gone to
Lavedan, and he determined to follow me thither. He had no horse and
little money, and so he had set out afoot that very day, and dragged
himself as far as Blagnac, where, however, his strength had given out,
and he was forced to halt. A providence it seemed that this had
so befallen. For here at the Etoile he had that evening overheard
Saint-Eustache in conversation with those two bravi below stairs. It
would seem from what he had said that at every hostelry from Grenade to
Toulouse--at which it was conceivable that I might spend the night--the
Chevalier had made a similar provision.
At Blagnac, if I got so far without halting, I must arrive very late,
and therefore the Chevalier had bidden his men await me until daylight.
He did not believe, however, that I should travel so far, for he had
seen to it that I should find no horses at the posthouses. But it was
just possible that I might, nevertheless, push on, and Saint-Eustache
would let no possibility be overlooked. Here at Blagnac the landlord,
Rodenard informed me, was also in Saint-Eustache's pay. Their intention
was to stab me as I slept.
“Monseigneur,” he ended, “knowing what danger awaited you along the
road, I have sat up all night, praying God and His saints that you might
come this far, and that thus I might warn you. Had I been less bruised
and sore, I had got myself a horse and ridden out to meet you; as it
was, I could but hope and pray that you would reach Blagnac, and that--”
I gathered him into my arms at that, but my embrace drew a groan from
him, for the poor, faithful knave was very sore.
“My poor Ganymede!” I murmured, and I was more truly moved to sympathy,
I think, than ever I had been in all my selfish life. Hearing his
sobriquet, a look of hope gleamed suddenly in his eye.
“You will take me back, monseigneur?” he pleaded. “You will take me
back, will you not? I swear that I will never let my tongue--”
“Sh, my good Ganymede. Not only will I take you back, but I shall strive
to make amends for my brutality. Come, my friend, you shall have twenty
golden Louis to buy unguents for your poor shoulders.”
“Monseigneur is very good,” he murmured, whereupon I would have embraced
him again but that he shivered and drew back.
“No, no, monseigneur,” he whispered fearfully. “It is a great honour,
but it--it pains me to be touched.”
“Then take the will for the deed. And now for these gentlemen below
stairs.” I rose and moved to the door.
“Order Gilles to beat their brains out,” was Ganymede's merciful
suggestion.
I shook my head. “We might be detained for doing murder. We have no
proof yet of their intentions--I think--” An idea flashed suddenly
across my mind. “Go back to your room, Ganymede,” I bade him. “Lock
yourself in, and do not stir until I call you. I do not wish their
suspicions aroused.”
I opened the door, and as Ganymede obediently slipped past me and
vanished down the passage “Monsieur l'Hote,” I called. “Ho, there,
Gilles!”
“Monsieur,” answered the landlord.
“Monseigneur,” replied Gilles; and there came a stir below.
“Is aught amiss?” the landlord questioned, a note of concern in his
voice.
“Amiss?” I echoed peevishly, mincing my words as I uttered them. “Pardi!
Must I be put to it to undress myself, whilst those two lazy dogs of
mine are snoring beneath me? Come up this instant, Gilles. And,” I added
as an afterthought, “you had best sleep here in my room.”
“At once, monseigneur,” answered he, but I caught the faintest tinge
of surprise in his accents, for never yet had it fallen to the lot of
sturdy, clumsy Gilles to assist me at my toilet.
The landlord muttered something, and I heard Gilles whispering his
reply. Then the stairs creaked under his heavy tread.
In my room I told him in half a dozen words what was afoot. For answer,
he swore a great oath that the landlord had mulled a stoup of wine for
him, which he never doubted now was drugged. I bade him go below and
fetch the wine, telling the landlord that I, too had a fancy for it.
“But what of Antoine?” he asked. “They will drug him.”
“Let them. We can manage this affair, you and I, without his help.
If they did not drug him, they might haply stab him. So that in being
drugged lies his safety.”
As I bade him so he did, and presently he returned with a great steaming
measure. This I emptied into a ewer, then returned it to him that he
might take it back to the host with my thanks and our appreciation. Thus
should we give them confidence that the way was clear and smooth for
them.
Thereafter there befell precisely that which already you will be
expecting, and nothing that you cannot guess. It was perhaps at the end
of an hour's silent waiting that one of them came. We had left the door
unbarred so that his entrance was unhampered. But scarce was he within
when out of the dark, on either side of him, rose Gilles and I. Before
he had realized it, he was lifted off his feet and deposited upon the
bed without a cry; the only sound being the tinkle of the knife that
dropped from his suddenly unnerved hand.
On the bed, with Gilles's great knee in his stomach, and Gilles's hands
at his throat, he was assured in unequivocal terms that at his slightest
outcry we would make an end of him. I kindled a light. We trussed him
hand and foot with the bedclothes, and then, whilst he lay impotent and
silent in his terror, I proceeded to discuss the situation with him.
I pointed out that we knew that what he had done he had done
at Saint-Eustache's instigation, therefore the true guilt was
Saint-Eustache's and upon him alone the punishment should fall. But ere
this could come to pass, he himself must add his testimony to ours--mine
and Rodenard's. If he would come to Toulouse and do that make a full
confession of how he had been set to do this murdering--the Chevalier
de Saint-Eustache, who was the real culprit, should be the only one to
suffer the penalty of the law. If he would not do that, why, then, he
must stand the consequences himself--and the consequences would be the
hangman. But in either case he was coming to Toulouse in the morning.
It goes without saying that he was reasonable. I never for a moment held
his judgment in doubt; there is no loyalty about a cut-throat, and it is
not the way of his calling to take unnecessary risk.
We had just settled the matter in a mutually agreeable manner when the
door opened again, and his confederate--rendered uneasy, no doubt,
by his long absence--came to see what could be occasioning this
unconscionable delay in the slitting of the throats of a pair of
sleeping men.
Beholding us there in friendly conclave, and no doubt considering
that under the circumstances his intrusion was nothing short of an
impertinence, that polite gentleman uttered a cry--which I should like
to think was an apology for having disturbed us and turned to go with
most indecorous precipitancy.
But Gilles took him by the nape of his dirty neck and haled him back
into the room. In less time than it takes me to tell of it, he lay
beside his colleague, and was being asked whether he did not think that
he might also come to take the same view of the situation. Overjoyed
that we intended no worse by him, he swore by every saint in the
calendar that he would do our will, that he had reluctantly undertaken
the Chevalier's business, that he was no cut-throat, but a poor man with
a wife and children to provide for.
And that, in short, was how it came to pass that the Chevalier de
Saint-Eustache himself, by disposing for my destruction, disposed
only for his own. With these two witnesses, and Rodenard to swear how
Saint-Eustache had bribed them to cut my throat, with myself and Gilles
to swear how the attempt had been made and frustrated, I could now go
to His Majesty with a very full confidence, not only of having the
Chevalier's accusations, against whomsoever they might be, discredited,
but also of sending the Chevalier himself to the gallows he had so
richly earned.