We gained the road without let or hindrance, whence a sharp burst in the
moonlight soon brought us to the village. Through this we swept on
to the inn, almost running over the four evangelists, whom we found
standing at the door ready for the saddle. I bade them, in a quick
peremptory tone, to get to horse, and was overjoyed to see them obey
without demur or word of Fresnoy. In another minute, with a great
clatter of hoofs, we sprang clear of the hamlet, and were well on the
road to Melle, with Poitiers some thirteen leagues before us. I looked
back, and thought I discerned lights moving in the direction of the
chateau; but the dawn was still two hours off, and the moonlight left
me in doubt whether these were real or the creatures of my own fearful
fancy.
I remember, three years before this time, on the occasion of the famous
retreat from Angers--when the Prince of Conde had involved his army
beyond the Loire, and saw himself, in the impossibility of recrossing
the river, compelled to take ship for England, leaving every one to
shift for himself--I well remember on that occasion riding, alone and
pistol in hand, through more than thirty miles of the enemy’s country
without drawing rein. But my anxieties were then confined to the four
shoes of my horse. The dangers to which I was exposed at every ford and
cross road were such as are inseparable from a campaign, and breed in
generous hearts only a fierce pleasure, rarely to be otherwise enjoyed.
And though I then rode warily, and where I could not carry terror,
had all to fear myself, there was nothing secret or underhand in my
business.
It was very different now. During the first few hours of our flight from
Chize I experienced a painful excitement, an alarm, a feverish anxiety
to get forward, which was new to me; which oppressed my spirits to the
very ground; which led me to take every sound borne to us on the wind
for the sound of pursuit, transforming the clang of a hammer on the
anvil into the ring of swords, and the voices of my own men into those
of the pursuers. It was in vain mademoiselle rode with a free hand, and
leaping such obstacles as lay in our way, gave promise of courage and
endurance beyond my expectations. I could think of nothing but the three
long day’s before us, with twenty-four hours to every day, and each hour
fraught with a hundred chances of disaster and ruin.
In fact, the longer I considered our position--and as we pounded along,
now splashing through a founderous hollow, now stumbling as we wound
over a stony shoulder, I had ample time to reflect upon it--the greater
seemed the difficulties before us. The loss of Fresnoy, while it freed
me from some embarrassment, meant also the loss of a good sword, and we
had mustered only too few before. The country which lay between us and
the Loire, being the borderland between our party and the League, had
been laid desolate so often as to be abandoned to pillage and disorder
of every kind. The peasants had flocked into the towns. Their places
had been taken by bands of robbers and deserters from both parties,
who haunted the ruined villages about Poitiers, and preyed upon all who
dared to pass. To add to our perils, the royal army under the Duke of
Nevers was reported to be moving slowly southward, not very far to the
left of our road; while a Huguenot expedition against Niort was also in
progress within a few leagues of us.
With four staunch and trustworthy comrades at my back, I might have
faced even this situation with a smile and a light heart; but the
knowledge that my four knaves might mutiny at any moment, or, worse
still, rid themselves of me and all restraint by a single treacherous
blow such as Fresnoy had aimed at me, filled me with an ever-present
dread; which it taxed my utmost energies to hide from them, and which I
strove in vain to conceal from mademoiselle’s keener vision.
Whether it was this had an effect upon her, giving her a meaner opinion
of me than that which I had for a while hoped she entertained, or that
she began, now it was too late, to regret her flight and resent my
part in it, I scarcely know; but from daybreak onwards she assumed an
attitude of cold suspicion towards me, which was only less unpleasant
than the scornful distance of her manner when she deigned, which was
seldom, to address me.
Not once did she allow me to forget that I was in her eyes a needy
adventurer, paid by her friends to escort her to a place of safety, but
without any claim to the smallest privilege of intimacy or equality.
When I would have adjusted her saddle, she bade her woman come and hold
up her skirt, that my hands might not touch its hem even by accident.
And when I would have brought wine to her at Melle, where we stayed for
twenty minutes, she called Fanchette to hand it to her. She rode for
the most part in her mask; and with her woman. One good effect only her
pride and reserve had; they impressed our men with a strong sense of
her importance, and the danger to which any interference with her might
expose them.
The two men whom Fresnoy had enlisted I directed to ride a score of
paces in advance. Luke and John I placed in the rear. In this manner
I thought to keep them somewhat apart. For myself, I proposed to ride
abreast of mademoiselle, but she made it so clear that my neighbourhood
displeased her that I fell back, leaving her to ride with Fanchette; and
contented myself with plodding at their heels, and striving to attach
the later evangelists to my interests.
We were so fortunate, despite my fears, as to find the road nearly
deserted--as, alas, was much of the country on either side--and to meet
none but small parties travelling along it; who were glad enough, seeing
the villainous looks of our outriders, to give us a wide berth, and be
quit of us for the fright. We skirted Lusignan, shunning the streets,
but passing near enough for me to point out to mademoiselle the site of
the famous tower built, according to tradition, by the fairy Melusina,
and rased thirteen years back by the Leaguers. She received my
information so frigidly, however, that I offered no more, but fell back
shrugging my shoulders, and rode in silence, until, some two hours after
noon, the city of Poitiers came into sight, lying within its circle of
walls and towers on a low hill in the middle of a country clothed in
summer with rich vineyards, but now brown and bare and cheerless to the
eye.
Fanchette turned and asked me abruptly if that were Poitiers.
I answered that it was, but added that for certain reasons I proposed
not to halt, but to lie at a village a league beyond the city, where
there was a tolerable inn.
‘We shall do very well here,’ the woman answered rudely. ‘Any way, my
lady will go no farther. She is tired and cold, and wet besides, and has
gone far enough.’
‘Still,’ I answered, nettled by the woman’s familiarity, ‘I think
mademoiselle will change her mind when she hears my reasons for going
farther.’
‘Mademoiselle does not wish to hear them, sir,’ the lady replied
herself, and very sharply.
‘Nevertheless, I think you had better hear them,’ I persisted, turning
to her respectfully. ‘You see, mademoiselle--’
‘I see only one thing, sir,’ she exclaimed, snatching off her mask and
displaying a countenance beautiful indeed, but flushed for the moment
with anger and impatience, ‘that, whatever betides, I stay at Poitiers
to-night.’
‘If it would content you to rest an hour?’ I suggested gently.
‘It will not content me!’ she rejoined with spirit. ‘And let me tell
you, sir,’ she went on impetuously, ‘once for all, that you take too
much upon yourself. You are here to escort me, and to give orders to
these ragamuffins, for they are nothing better, with whom you have
thought fit to disgrace our company; but not to give orders to me or
to control my movements. Confine yourself for the future, sir, to your
duties, if you please.’
‘I desire only to obey you,’ I answered, suppressing the angry feelings
which rose in my breast, and speaking as coolly as lay in my power.
‘But, as the first of my duties is to provide for your safety, I am
determined to omit nothing which can conduce to that end. You have not
considered that, if a party in pursuit of us reaches Poitiers to-night,
search will be made for us in the city, and we shall be taken. If, on
the other hand, we are known to have passed through, the hunt may go no
farther; certainly will go no farther to-night. Therefore we must not,
mademoiselle,’ I added firmly, ‘lie in Poitiers to-night.’
‘Sir,’ she exclaimed, looking at me, her face crimson with wonder and
indignation, ‘do you dare to--?’
‘I dare do my duty, mademoiselle,’ I answered, plucking up a spirit,
though my heart was sore. ‘I am a man old enough to be your father, and
with little to lose, or I had not been here. I care nothing what you
think or what you say of me, provided I can do what I have undertaken
to do and place you safely in the hands of your friends. But enough,
mademoiselle, we are at the gate. If you will permit me, I will ride
through the streets beside you. We shall so attract less attention.’
Without waiting for a permission which she was very unlikely to give,
I pushed my horse forward, and took my place beside her, signing to
Fanchette to fall back. The maid obeyed, speechless with indignation;
while mademoiselle flashed a scathing glance at me and looked round in
helpless anger, as though it was in her mind to appeal against me even
to the passers-by. But she thought better of it, and contenting herself
with muttering the word ‘Impertinent’ put on her mask with fingers which
trembled, I fancy, not a little.
A small rain was falling and the afternoon was well advanced when we
entered the town, but I noticed that, notwithstanding this, the streets
presented a busy and animated appearance, being full of knots of people
engaged in earnest talk. A bell was tolling somewhere, and near the
cathedral a crowd of no little size was standing, listening to a man
who seemed to be rending a placard or manifesto attached to the wall. In
another place a soldier, wearing the crimson colours of the League,
but splashed and stained as with recent travel, was holding forth to
a breathless circle who seemed to hang upon his lips. A neighbouring
corner sheltered a handful of priests who whispered together with gloomy
faces. Many stared at us as we passed, and some would have spoken; but I
rode steadily on, inviting no converse. Nevertheless at the north gate I
got a rare fright; for, though it wanted a full half-hour of sunset,
the porter was in the act of closing it. Seeing us, he waited grumbling
until we came up, and then muttered, in answer to my remonstrance,
something about queer times and wilful people having their way. I
took little notice of what he said, however, being anxious only to get
through the gate and leave as few traces of our passage as might be.
As soon as we were outside the town I fell back, permitting Fanchette to
take my place. For another league, a long and dreary one, we plodded
on in silence, horses and men alike jaded and sullen, and the women
scarcely able to keep their saddles for fatigue. At last, much to my
relief, seeing that I began to fear I had taxed mademoiselle’s strength
too far, the long low buildings of the inn at which I proposed to stay
came in sight, at the crossing of the road and river. The place looked
blank and cheerless, for the dusk was thickening; but as we trailed one
by one into the courtyard a stream of firelight burst on us from doors
and windows, and a dozen sounds of life and comfort greeted our ears.
Noticing that mademoiselle was benumbed and cramped with long sitting, I
would have helped her to dismount; but she fiercely rejected my aid, and
I had to content myself with requesting the landlord to assign the best
accommodation he had to the lady and her attendant, and secure as much
privacy for them as possible. The man assented very civilly and said all
should be done; but I noticed that his eyes wandered while I talked, and
that he seemed to have something on his mind. When he returned, after
disposing of them, it came out.
‘Did you ever happen to see him, sir?’ he asked with a sigh; yet was
there a smug air of pleasure mingled with his melancholy.
‘See whom?’ I answered, staring at him, for neither of us had mentioned
any one.
‘The Duke, sir.’
I stared again between wonder and suspicion. ‘The Duke of Nevers is not
in this part, is he?’ I said slowly. ‘I heard he was on the Brittany
border, away to the westward.’
‘Mon Dieu!’ my host exclaimed, raising his hands in astonishment. ‘You
have not heard, sir?’
‘I have heard nothing,’ I answered impatiently.
‘You have not heard, sir, that the most puissant and illustrious lord
the Duke of Guise is dead?’
‘M. de Guise dead? It is not true!’ I cried astonished.
He nodded, however, several times with an air of great importance, and
seemed as if he would have gone on to give me some particulars. But,
remembering, as I fancied, that he spoke in the hearing of half-a-dozen
guests who sat about the great fire behind me, and had both eyes and
ears open, he contented himself with shifting his towel to his other arm
and adding only, ‘Yes, sir, dead as any nail. The news came through here
yesterday, and made a pretty stir. It happened at Blois the day but one
before Christmas, if all be true.’
I was thunderstruck. This was news which might change the face of
France. ‘How did it happen?’ I asked.
My host covered his mouth with his hand and coughed, and, privily
twitching my sleeve, gave me to understand with some shamefacedness
that he could not say more in public. I was about to make some excuse to
retire with him, when a harsh voice, addressed apparently to me, caused
me to turn sharply. I found at my elbow a tall thin-faced monk in the
habit of the Jacobin order. He had risen from his seat beside the fire,
and seemed to be labouring under great excitement.
‘Who asked how it happened?’ he cried, rolling his eyes in a kind of
frenzy, while still observant, or I was much mistaken, of his listeners.
Is there a man in France to whom the tale has not been told? Is there?’
‘I will answer for one,’ I replied, regarding him with little favour. ‘I
have heard nothing.’
‘Then you shall! Listen!’ he exclaimed, raising his right hand and
brandishing it as though he denounced a person then present. ‘Hear my
accusation, made in the name of Mother Church and the saints against
the arch hypocrite, the perjurer and assassin sitting in high places! He
shall be Anathema Maranatha, for he has shed the blood of the holy and
the pure, the chosen of Heaven! He shall go down to the pit, and that
soon. The blood that he has shed shall be required of him, and that
before he is one year older.’
‘Tut-tut. All that sounds very fine, good father,’ I said, waxing
impatient, and a little scornful; for I saw that he was one of those
wandering and often crazy monks in whom the League found their most
useful emissaries. ‘But I should profit more by your gentle words, if I
knew whom you were cursing.’
‘The man of blood!’ he cried; ‘through whom the last but not the least
of God’s saints and martyrs entered into glory on the Friday before
Christmas.’
Moved by such profanity, and judging him, notwithstanding the
extravagance of his words and gestures, to be less mad than he seemed,
and at least as much knave as fool, I bade him sternly have done with
his cursing, and proceed to his story if he had one.
He glowered at me for a moment, as though he were minded to launch
his spiritual weapons at my head; but as I returned his glare with an
unmoved eye--and my four rascals, who were as impatient as myself to
learn the news, and had scarce more reverence for a shaven crown, began
to murmur--he thought better of it, and cooling as suddenly as he had
flamed up, lost no more time in satisfying our curiosity.
It would ill become me, however, to set down the extravagant and often
blasphemous harangue in which, styling M. de Guise the martyr of God, he
told the story now so familiar--the story of that dark wintry morning
at Blois, when the king’s messenger, knocking early at the duke’s door,
bade him hurry, for the king wanted him. The story is trite enough now.
When I heard it first in the inn on the Clain, it was all new and all
marvellous.
The monk, too, telling the story as if he had seen the events with his
own eyes, omitted nothing which might impress his hearers. He told us
how the duke received warning after warning, and answered in the very
antechamber, ‘He dare not!’ How his blood, mysteriously advised of
coming dissolution, grew chill, and his eye, wounded at Chateau Thierry,
began to run, so that he had to send for the handkerchief he had
forgotten to bring. He told us, even, how the duke drew his assassins up
and down the chamber, how he cried for mercy, and how he died at last
at the foot of the king’s bed, and how the king, who had never dared to
face him living, came and spurned him dead!
There were pale faces round the fire when he ceased, and bent brows
and lips hard pressed together. Then he stood and cursed the King of
France--cursing him openly by the name of Henry of Valois, a thing I
had never looked to hear in France--though no one said ‘Amen,’ and all
glanced over their shoulders, and our host pattered from the room as if
he had seen a ghost, it seemed to be no man’s duty to gainsay him.
For myself, I was full of thoughts which it would have been unsafe to
utter in that company or so near the Loire. I looked back sixteen years.
Who but Henry of Guise had spurned the corpse of Coligny? And who but
Henry of Valois had backed him in the act? Who but Henry of Guise had
drenched Paris with blood, and who but Henry of Valois had ridden by
his side? One 23rd of the month--a day never to be erased from France’s
annals--had purchased for him a term of greatness. A second 23rd saw
him, pay the price--saw his ashes cast secretly and by night no man
knows where!
Moved by such thoughts, and observing that the priest was going the
round of the company collecting money for masses for the duke’s soul,
to which object I could neither give with a good conscience nor refuse
without exciting suspicion, I slipped out; and finding a man of decent
appearance talking with the landlord in a small room beside the kitchen,
I called for a flask of the best wine, and by means of that introduction
obtained my supper in their company.
The stranger was a Norman horsedealer, returning home, after disposing
of his string. He seemed to be in a large way of business, and being of
a bluff, independent spirit, as many of those Norman townsmen are, was
inclined at first to treat me with more familiarity than respect; the
fact of my nag, for which he would have chaffered, excelling my coat
in quality, leading him to set me down as a steward or intendant. The
pursuit of his trade, however, had brought him into connection with all
classes of men and he quickly perceived his mistake; and as he knew the
provinces between the Seine and Loire to perfection, and made it part of
his business to foresee the chances of peace and war, I obtained a great
amount of information from him, and indeed conceived no little liking
for him. He believed that the assassination of M. de Guise would
alienate so much of France from the king that his majesty would have
little left save the towns on the Loire, and some other places lying
within easy reach of his court at Blois.
‘But,’ I said, ‘things seem quiet now. Here, for instance.’
‘It is the calm before the storm,’ he answered. ‘There is a monk in
there. Have you heard him?’
I nodded.
‘He is only one among a hundred--a thousand,’ the horsedealer continued,
looking at me and nodding with meaning. He was a brown-haired man with
shrewd grey eyes, such as many Normans have. ‘They will get their way
too, you will see,’ he went on. ‘Well, horses will go up, so I have no
cause to grumble; but, if I were on my way to Blois with women or gear
of that kind, I should not choose this time for picking posies on the
road. I should see the inside of the gates as soon as possible.’
I thought there was much in what he said; and when he went on to
maintain that the king would find himself between the hammer and the
anvil--between the League holding all the north and the Huguenots
holding all the south--and must needs in time come to terms with the
latter seeing that the former would rest content with nothing short of
his deposition, I began to agree with him that we should shortly see
great changes and very stirring times.
‘Still if they depose the king,’ I said, ‘the King of Navarre must
succeed him. He is the heir of France.’
‘Bah!’ my companion replied somewhat contemptuously. ‘The League will
see to that. He goes with the other.’
‘Then the kings are in one cry, and you are right,’ I said with
conviction. ‘They must unite.’
‘So they will. It is only a question of time,’ he said.
In the morning, having only one man with him, and, as I guessed, a
considerable sum of money, he volunteered to join our party as far as
Blois. I assented gladly, and he did so, this addition to our numbers
ridding me at once of the greater part of my fears. I did not expect any
opposition on the part of mademoiselle, who would gain in consequence as
well as in safety. Nor did she offer any. She was content, I think,
to welcome any addition to our party which would save her from the
necessity of riding in the company of my old cloak.