This eBook was prepared by Les Bowler from the 1922 John Murray edition.
COUNT HANNIBAL
A ROMANCE OF THE COURT OF FRANCE.
by Stanley J. Weyman.
SORORI
SUA CAUSSA CARAE
PRO ERGA MATREM AMORE
ETIAM CARIORI
HOC FRATER.
CONTENTS
I. CRIMSON FAVOURS
II. HANNIBAL DE SAULX, COMTE DE TAVANNES
III. THE HOUSE NEXT THE GOLDEN MAID
IV. THE EVE OF THE FEAST
V. A ROUGH WOOING
VI. "WHO TOUCHES TAVANNES?"
VII. IN THE AMPHITHEATRE
VIII. TWO HENS AND AN EGG
IX. UNSTABLE
X. MADAME ST. LO
XI. A BARGAIN
XII. IN THE HALL OF THE LOUVRE
XIII. DIPLOMACY
XIV. TOO SHORT A SPOON
XV. THE BROTHER OF ST. MAGLOIRE
XVI. AT CLOSE QUARTERS
XVII. THE DUEL
XVIII. ANDROMEDA, PERSEUS BEING ABSENT
XIX. IN THE ORLEANNAIS
XX. ON THE CASTLE HILL
XXI. SHE WOULD, AND WOULD NOT
XXII. PLAYING WITH FIRE
XXIII. A MIND, AND NOT A MIND
XXIV. AT THE KING'S INN
XXV. THE COMPANY OF THE BLEEDING HEART
XXVI. TEMPER
XXVII. THE BLACK TOWN
XXVIII. IN THE LITTLE CHAPTER-HOUSE
XXIX. THE ESCAPE
XXX. SACRILEGE!
XXXI. THE FLIGHT FROM ANGERS
XXXII. THE ORDEAL BY STEEL
XXXIII. THE AMBUSH
XXXIV. "WHICH WILL YOU, MADAME?"
XXXV. AGAINST THE WALL
XXXVI. HIS KINGDOM
CHAPTER I. CRIMSON FAVOURS.
M. de Tavannes smiled. Mademoiselle averted her eyes, and shivered; as
if the air, even of that close summer night, entering by the door at her
elbow, chilled her. And then came a welcome interruption.
"Tavannes!"
"Sire!"
Count Hannibal rose slowly. The King had called, and he had no choice
but to obey and go. Yet he hung a last moment over his companion, his
hateful breath stirring her hair.
"Our pleasure is cut short too soon, Mademoiselle," he said, in the tone,
and with the look, she loathed. "But for a few hours only. We shall
meet to-morrow. Or, it may be--earlier."
She did not answer, and "Tavannes!" the King repeated with violence.
"Tavannes! Mordieu!" his Majesty continued, looking round furiously.
"Will no one fetch him? Sacre nom, am I King, or a dog of a--"
"I come, sire!" the Count cried hastily. For Charles, King of France,
Ninth of the name, was none of the most patient; and scarce another in
the Court would have ventured to keep him waiting so long. "I come,
sire; I come!" Tavannes repeated, as he moved from Mademoiselle's side.
He shouldered his way through the circle of courtiers, who barred the
road to the presence, and in part hid her from observation. He pushed
past the table at which Charles and the Comte de Rochefoucauld had been
playing primero, and at which the latter still sat, trifling idly with
the cards. Three more paces, and he reached the King, who stood in the
_ruelle_ with Rambouillet and the Italian Marshal. It was the latter
who, a moment before, had summoned his Majesty from his game.
Mademoiselle, watching him go, saw so much; so much, and the King's
roving eyes and haggard face, and the four figures, posed apart in the
fuller light of the upper half of the Chamber. Then the circle of
courtiers came together before her, and she sat back on her stool. A
fluttering, long-drawn sigh escaped her. Now, if she could slip out and
make her escape! Now--she looked round. She was not far from the door;
to withdraw seemed easy. But a staring, whispering knot of gentlemen and
pages blocked the way; and the girl, ignorant of the etiquette of the
Court, and with no more than a week's experience of Paris, had not the
courage to rise and pass alone through the group.
She had come to the Louvre this Saturday evening under the wing of Madame
d'Yverne, her _fiance's_ cousin. By ill-hap Madame had been summoned to
the Princess Dowager's closet, and perforce had left her. Still,
Mademoiselle had her betrothed, and in his charge had sat herself down to
wait, nothing loth, in the great gallery, where all was bustle and gaiety
and entertainment. For this, the seventh day of the fetes, held to
celebrate the marriage of the King of Navarre and Charles's sister--a
marriage which was to reconcile the two factions of the Huguenots and the
Catholics, so long at war--saw the Louvre as gay, as full, and as lively
as the first of the fete days had found it; and in the humours of the
throng, in the ceaseless passage of masks and maids of honour, guards and
bishops, Swiss in the black, white, and green of Anjou, and Huguenot
nobles in more sombre habits, the country-bred girl had found recreation
and to spare. Until gradually the evening had worn away and she had
begun to feel nervous; and M. de Tignonville, her betrothed, placing her
in the embrasure of a window, had gone to seek Madame.
She had waited for a time without much misgiving; expecting each moment
to see him return. He would be back before she could count a hundred; he
would be back before she could number the leagues that separated her from
her beloved province, and the home by the Biscay Sea, to which even in
that brilliant scene her thoughts turned fondly. But the minutes had
passed, and passed, and he had not returned. Worse, in his place
Tavannes--not the Marshal, but his brother, Count Hannibal--had found
her; he, whose odious court, at once a menace and an insult, had subtly
enveloped her for a week past. He had sat down beside her, he had taken
possession of her, and, profiting by her inexperience, had played on her
fears and smiled at her dislike. Finally, whether she would or no, he
had swept her with him into the Chamber. The rest had been an obsession,
a nightmare, from which only the King's voice summoning Tavannes to his
side had relieved her.
Her aim now was to escape before he returned, and before another, seeing
her alone, adopted his _role_ and was rude to her. Already the courtiers
about her were beginning to stare, the pages to turn and titter and
whisper. Direct her gaze as she might, she met some eye watching her,
some couple enjoying her confusion. To make matters worse, she presently
discovered that she was the only woman in the Chamber; and she conceived
the notion that she had no right to be there at that hour. At the
thought her cheeks burned, her eyes dropped; the room seemed to buzz with
her name, with gross words and jests, and gibes at her expense.
At last, when the situation had grown nearly unbearable, the group before
the door parted, and Tignonville appeared. The girl rose with a cry of
relief, and he came to her. The courtiers glanced at the two and smiled.
He did not conceal his astonishment at finding her there. "But,
Mademoiselle, how is this?" he asked, in a low voice. He was as
conscious of the attention they attracted as she was, and as uncertain on
the point of her right to be there. "I left you in the gallery. I came
back, missed you, and--"
She stopped him by a gesture. "Not here!" she muttered, with suppressed
impatience. "I will tell you outside. Take me--take me out, if you
please, Monsieur, at once!"
He was as glad to be gone as she was to go. The group by the doorway
parted; she passed through it, he followed. In a moment the two stood in
the great gallery, above the Salle des Caryatides. The crowd which had
paraded here an hour before was gone, and the vast echoing apartment,
used at that date as a guard-room, was well-nigh empty. Only at rare
intervals, in the embrasure of a window or the recess of a door, a couple
talked softly. At the farther end, near the head of the staircase which
led to the hall below, and the courtyard, a group of armed Swiss lounged
on guard. Mademoiselle shot a keen glance up and down, then she turned
to her lover, her face hot with indignation.
"Why did you leave me?" she asked. "Why did you leave me, if you could
not come back at once? Do you understand, sir," she continued, "that it
was at your instance I came to Paris, that I came to this Court, and that
I look to you for protection?"
"Surely," he said. "And--"
"And do you think Carlat and his wife fit guardians for me? Should I
have come or thought of coming to this wedding, but for your promise, and
Madame your cousin's? If I had not deemed myself almost your wife," she
continued warmly, "and secure of your protection, should I have come
within a hundred miles of this dreadful city? To which, had I my will,
none of our people should have come."
"Dreadful? Pardieu, not so dreadful," he answered, smiling, and striving
to give the dispute a playful turn. "You have seen more in a week than
you would have seen at Vrillac in a lifetime, Mademoiselle."
"And I choke!" she retorted; "I choke! Do you not see how they look at
us, at us Huguenots, in the street? How they, who live here, point at us
and curse us? How the very dogs scent us out and snarl at our heels, and
the babes cross themselves when we go by? Can you see the Place des
Gastines and not think what stood there? Can you pass the Greve at night
and not fill the air above the river with screams and wailings and
horrible cries--the cries of our people murdered on that spot?" She
paused for breath, recovered herself a little, and in a lower tone, "For
me," she said, "I think of Philippa de Luns by day and by night! The
eaves are a threat to me; the tiles would fall on us had they their will;
the houses nod to--to--"
"To what, Mademoiselle?" he asked, shrugging his shoulders and assuming a
tone of cynicism.
"To crush us! Yes, Monsieur, to crush us!"
"And all this because I left you for a moment?"
"For an hour--or well-nigh an hour," she answered more soberly.
"But if I could not help it?"
"You should have thought of that--before you brought me to Paris,
Monsieur. In these troublous times."
He coloured warmly. "You are unjust, Mademoiselle," he said. "There are
things you forget; in a Court one is not always master of one's self."
"I know it," she answered dryly, thinking of that through which she had
gone.
"But you do not know what happened!" he returned with impatience. "You
do not understand that I am not to blame. Madame d'Yverne, when I
reached the Princess Dowager's closet, had left to go to the Queen of
Navarre. I hurried after her, and found a score of gentlemen in the King
of Navarre's chamber. They were holding a council, and they begged, nay,
they compelled me to remain."
"And it was that which detained you so long?"
"To be sure, Mademoiselle."
"And not--Madame St. Lo?"
M. de Tignonville's face turned scarlet. The thrust in tierce was
unexpected. This, then, was the key to Mademoiselle's spirt of temper.
"I do not understand you," he stammered.
"How long were you in the King of Navarre's chamber, and how long with
Madame St. Lo?" she asked with fine irony. "Or no, I will not tempt
you," she went on quickly, seeing him hesitate. "I heard you talking to
Madame St. Lo in the gallery while I sat within. And I know how long you
were with her."
"I met Madame as I returned," he stammered, his face still hot, "and I
asked her where you were. I did not know, Mademoiselle, that I was not
to speak to ladies of my acquaintance."
"I was alone, and I was waiting."
"I could not know that--for certain," he answered, making the best of it.
"You were not where I left you. I thought, I confess--that you had gone.
That you had gone home."
"With whom? With whom?" she repeated pitilessly. "Was it likely? With
whom was I to go? And yet it is true, I might have gone home had I
pleased--with M. de Tavannes! Yes," she continued, in a tone of keen
reproach, and with the blood mounting to her forehead, "it is to that,
Monsieur, you expose me! To be pursued, molested, harassed by a man
whose look terrifies me, and whose touch I--I detest! To be addressed
wherever I go by a man whose every word proves that he thinks me game for
the hunter, and you a thing he may neglect. You are a man and you do not
know, you cannot know what I suffer! What I have suffered this week past
whenever you have left my side!"
Tignonville looked gloomy. "What has he said to you?" he asked, between
his teeth.
"Nothing I can tell you," she answered, with a shudder. "It was he who
took me into the Chamber."
"Why did you go?"
"Wait until he bids you do something," she answered. "His manner, his
smile, his tone, all frighten me. And to-night, in all these there was a
something worse, a hundred times worse than when I saw him last--on
Thursday! He seemed to--to gloat on me," the girl stammered, with a
flush of shame, "as if I were his! Oh, Monsieur, I wish we had not left
our Poitou! Shall we ever see Vrillac again, and the fishers' huts about
the port, and the sea beating blue against the long brown causeway?"
He had listened darkly, almost sullenly; but at this, seeing the tears
gather in her eyes, he forced a laugh.
"Why, you are as bad as M. de Rosny and the Vidame!" he said. "And they
are as full of fears as an egg is of meat! Since the Admiral was wounded
by that scoundrel on Friday, they think all Paris is in a league against
us."
"And why not?" she asked, her cheek grown pale, her eyes reading his
eyes.
"Why not? Why, because it is a monstrous thing even to think of!"
Tignonville answered, with the confidence of one who did not use the
argument for the first time. "Could they insult the King more deeply
than by such a suspicion? A Borgia may kill his guests, but it was never
a practice of the Kings of France! Pardieu, I have no patience with
them! They may lodge where they please, across the river, or without the
walls if they choose, the Rue de l'Arbre Sec is good enough for me, and
the King's name sufficient surety!"
"I know you are not apt to be fearful," she answered, smiling; and she
looked at him with a woman's pride in her lover. "All the same, you will
not desert me again, sir, will you?"
He vowed he would not, kissed her hand, looked into her eyes; then
melting to her, stammering, blundering, he named Madame St. Lo. She
stopped him.
"There is no need," she said, answering his look with kind eyes, and
refusing to hear his protestations. "In a fortnight will you not be my
husband? How should I distrust you? It was only that while she talked,
I waited--I waited; and--and that Madame St. Lo is Count Hannibal's
cousin. For a moment I was mad enough to dream that she held you on
purpose. You do not think it was so?"
"She!" he cried sharply; and he winced, as if the thought hurt him.
"Absurd! The truth is, Mademoiselle," he continued with a little heat,
"you are like so many of our people! You think a Catholic capable of the
worst."
"We have long thought so at Vrillac," she answered gravely.
"That's over now, if people would only understand. This wedding has put
an end to all that. But I'm harking back," he continued awkwardly; and
he stopped. "Instead, let me take you home."
"If you please. Carlat and the servants should be below."
He took her left hand in his right after the wont of the day, and with
his other hand touching his sword-hilt, he led her down the staircase,
that by a single turn reached the courtyard of the palace. Here a mob of
armed servants, of lacqueys, and footboys, some bearing torches, and some
carrying their masters' cloaks and _galoshes_, loitered to and fro. Had
M. de Tignonville been a little more observant, or a trifle less occupied
with his own importance, he might have noted more than one face which
looked darkly on him; he might have caught more than one overt sneer at
his expense. But in the business of summoning Carlat--Mademoiselle de
Vrillac's steward and major-domo--he lost the contemptuous
"Christaudins!" that hissed from a footboy's lips, and the "Southern
dogs!" that died in the moustachios of a bully in the livery of the
King's brother. He was engaged in finding the steward, and in aiding him
to cloak his mistress; then with a ruffling air, a new acquirement, which
he had picked up since he came to Paris, he made a way for her through
the crowd. A moment, and the three, followed by half a dozen armed
servants, bearing pikes and torches, detached themselves from the throng,
and crossing the courtyard, with its rows of lighted windows, passed out
by the gate between the Tennis Courts, and so into the Rue des Fosses de
St. Germain.
Before them, against a sky in which the last faint glow of evening still
contended with the stars, the spire and pointed arches of the church of
St. Germain rose darkly graceful. It was something after nine: the heat
of the August day brooded over the crowded city, and dulled the faint
distant ring of arms and armour that yet would make itself heard above
the hush; a hush which was not silence so much as a subdued hum. As
Mademoiselle passed the closed house beside the Cloister of St. Germain,
where only the day before Admiral Coligny, the leader of the Huguenots,
had been wounded, she pressed her escort's hand, and involuntarily drew
nearer to him. But he laughed at her.
"It was a private blow," he said, answering her unspoken thought. "It is
like enough the Guises sped it. But they know now what is the King's
will, and they have taken the hint and withdrawn themselves. It will not
happen again, Mademoiselle. For proof, see the guards"--they were
passing the end of the Rue Bethizy, in the corner house of which,
abutting on the Rue de l'Arbre Sec, Coligny had his lodgings--"whom the
King has placed for his security. Fifty pikes under Cosseins."
"Cosseins?" she repeated. "But I thought Cosseins--"
"Was not wont to love us!" Tignonville answered, with a confident
chuckle. "He was not. But the dogs lick where the master wills,
Mademoiselle. He was not, but he does. This marriage has altered all."
"I hope it may not prove an unlucky one!" she murmured. She felt
impelled to say it.
"Not it!" he answered confidently. "Why should it?"
They stopped, as he spoke, before the last house, at the corner of the
Rue St. Honore opposite the Croix du Tiroir; which rose shadowy in the
middle of the four ways. He hammered on the door.
"But," she said softly, looking in his face, "the change is sudden, is it
not? The King was not wont to be so good to us!"
"The King was not King until now," he answered warmly. "That is what I
am trying to persuade our people. Believe me, Mademoiselle, you may
sleep without fear; and early in the morning I will be with you. Carlat,
have a care of your mistress until morning, and let Madame lie in her
chamber. She is nervous to-night. There, sweet, until morning! God
keep you, and pleasant dreams!"
He uncovered, and bowing over her hand, kissed it; and the door being
open he would have turned away. But she lingered as if unwilling to
enter.
"There is--do you hear it--a stir in _that_ quarter?" she said, pointing
across the Rue St. Honore. "What lies there?"
"Northward? The markets," he answered. "'Tis nothing. They say, you
know, that Paris never sleeps. Good night, sweet, and a fair awakening!"
She shivered as she had shivered under Tavannes' eye. And still she
lingered, keeping him.
"Are you going to your lodging at once?" she asked--for the sake, it
seemed, of saying something.
"I?" he answered a little hurriedly. "No, I was thinking of paying
Rochefoucauld the compliment of seeing him home. He has taken a new
lodging to be near the Admiral; a horrid bare place in the Rue Bethizy,
without furniture, but he would go into it to-day. And he has a sort of
claim on my family, you know."
"Yes," she said simply. "Of course. Then I must not detain you. God
keep you safe," she continued, with a faint quiver in her tone; and her
lip trembled. "Good night, and fair dreams, Monsieur."
He echoed the words gallantly. "Of you, sweet!" he cried; and turning
away with a gesture of farewell, he set off on his return.
He walked briskly, nor did he look back, though she stood awhile gazing
after him. She was not aware that she gave thought to this; nor that it
hurt her. Yet when bolt and bar had shot behind her, and she had mounted
the cold, bare staircase of that day--when she had heard the dull echoing
footsteps of her attendants as they withdrew to their lairs and sleeping-
places, and still more when she had crossed the threshold of her chamber,
and signed to Madame Carlat and her woman to listen--it is certain she
felt a lack of something.
Perhaps the chill that possessed her came of that lack, which she neither
defined nor acknowledged. Or possibly it came of the night air, August
though it was; or of sheer nervousness, or of the remembrance of Count
Hannibal's smile. Whatever its origin, she took it to bed with her and
long after the house slept round her, long after the crowded quarter of
the Halles had begun to heave and the Sorbonne to vomit a black-frocked
band, long after the tall houses in the gabled streets, from St. Antoine
to Montmartre and from St. Denis on the north to St. Jacques on the
south, had burst into rows of twinkling lights--nay, long after the
Quarter of the Louvre alone remained dark, girdled by this strange
midnight brightness--she lay awake. At length she too slept, and dreamed
of home and the wide skies of Poitou, and her castle of Vrillac washed
day and night by the Biscay tides.