Count Hannibal Part 40

with impatience, "and cease to think of your own skin!"

The Provost drew a deep breath, and fixed his small eyes on Count Hannibal.

"If I knew, my lord, what you--why, my own sister's son"--he paused, his face began to work, his voice shook--"is a Huguenot! Ay, my lord, a Huguenot! And they know it!" he continued, a flush of rage augmenting the emotion which his countenance betrayed. "Ay, they know it! And they push me on at the Council, and grin behind my back; Lescot, who was Provost two years back, and would match his son with my daughter; and Thuriot, who prints for the University! They nudge one another, and egg me on, till half the city thinks it is I who would kill the Huguenots!

I!" Again his voice broke. "And my own sister's son a Huguenot! And my girl at home white-faced for--for his sake."

Tavannes scanned the man shrewdly. "Perhaps she is of the same way of thinking?" he said.

The Provost started, and lost one half of his colour. "G.o.d forbid!" he cried, "saving Madame's presence! Who says so, my lord, lies!"

"Ay, lies not far from the truth."

"My lord!"

"Pish, man, Lescot has said it, and will act on it. And Thuriot, who prints for the University! Would you 'scape them? You would? Then listen to me. I want but two things. First, how many men has Montsoreau's fellow in the Castle? Few, I know, for he is a n.i.g.g.ard, and if he spends, he spends the Duke's pay."

"Twelve. But five can hold it."

"Ay, but twelve dare not leave it! Let them stew in their own broth! And now for the other matter. See, man, that before daybreak three gibbets, with a ladder and two ropes apiece, are set up in the square. And let one be before this door. You understand? Then let it be done! The rest," he added with a ferocious smile, "you may leave to me."

The magistrate nodded rather feebly. "Doubtless," he said, his eye wandering here and there, "there are rogues in Angers. And for rogues the gibbet! But saving your presence, my lord, it is a question whether--"

But M. de Tavannes' patience was exhausted. "Will you do it?" he roared.

"That is the question. And the only question."

The Provost jumped, he was so startled. "Certainly, my lord, certainly!"

he muttered humbly. "Certainly, I will!" And bowing frequently, but saying no more, he backed himself out of the room.

Count Hannibal laughed grimly after his fas.h.i.+on, and doubtless thought that he had seen the last of the magistrate for that night. Great was his wrath, therefore, when, less than a minute later--and before Bigot had carved for him--the door opened, and the Provost appeared again. He slid in, and without giving the courage he had gained on the stairs time to cool, plunged into his trouble.

"It stands this way, M. le Comte," he bleated. "If I put up the gibbets and a man is hanged, and you have letters from the King, 'tis a rogue the less, and no harm done. But if you have no letters from His Majesty, then it is on my shoulders they will put it, and 'twill be odd if they do not find a way to hang me to right him."

Count Hannibal smiled grimly. "And your sister's son?" he sneered. "And your girl who is white-faced for his sake, and may burn on the same bonfire with him? And--"

"Mercy! Mercy!" the wretched Provost cried. And he wrung his hands.

"Lescot and Thuriot--"

"Perhaps we may hang Lescot and Thuriot--"

"But I see no way out," the Provost babbled. "No way! No way!"

"I am going to show you one," Tavannes retorted. "If the gibbets are not in place by sunrise, I shall hang you from this window. That is one way out; and you'll be wise to take the other! For the rest and for your comfort, if I have no letters, it is not always to paper that the King commits his inmost heart."

The magistrate bowed. He quaked, he doubted, but he had no choice.

"My lord," he said, "I put myself in your hands. It shall be done, certainly it shall be done. But, but--" and shaking his head in foreboding, he turned to the door. At the last moment, when he was within a pace of it, the Countess rose impulsively to her feet. She called to him.

"M. le Prevot, a minute, if you please," she said. "There may be trouble to-morrow; your daughter may be in some peril. You will do well to send her to me. My lord"--and on the word her voice, uncertain before, grew full and steady--"will see that I am safe. And she will be safe with me."

The Provost saw before him only a gracious lady, moved by a thoughtfulness unusual in persons of her rank. He was at no pains to explain the flame in her cheek, or the soft light which glowed in her eyes, as she looked at him across her formidable husband. He was only profoundly grateful--moved even to tears. Humbly thanking her, he accepted her offer for his child, and withdrew wiping his eyes. When he was gone, and the door had closed behind him, Tavannes turned to the Countess, who still kept her feet.

"You are very confident this evening," he sneered. "Gibbets do not frighten you, it seems, madame. Perhaps if you knew for whom the one before the door is intended?"

She met his look with a searching gaze, and spoke with a ring of defiance in her tone. "I do not believe it!" she said. "I do not believe it! You who save Angers will not destroy him!" And then her woman's mood changing, with courage and colour ebbing together, "Oh no, you will not!

You will not!" she wailed. And she dropped on her knees before him, and holding up her clasped hands, "G.o.d will put it in your heart to spare him--and me!"

He rose with a stifled oath, took two steps from her, and in a tone hoa.r.s.e and constrained, "Go!" he said. "Go, or sit! Do you hear, Madame? You try my patience too far!"

But when she had gone his face was radiant. He had brought her, he had brought all, to the point at which he aimed. To-morrow his triumph awaited him. To-morrow he who had cast her down would raise her up.

He did not foresee what a day would bring forth.

CHAPTER XXVIII. IN THE LITTLE CHAPTER-HOUSE.

The sun was an hour high, and in Angers the shops and booths, after the early fas.h.i.+on of the day, were open or opening. Through all the gates country folk were pressing into the gloomy streets of the Black Town with milk and fruit; and at doors and windows housewives cheapened fish, or chaffered over the fowl for the pot. For men must eat, though there be gibbets in the Place Ste.-Croix: gaunt gibbets, high and black and twofold, each, with its dangling ropes, like a double note of interrogation.

But gibbets must eat also; and between ground and noose was so small a s.p.a.ce in those days that a man dangled almost before he knew it. The sooner, then, the paniers were empty, and the clown, who pays for all, was beyond the gates, the better he, for one, would be pleased. In the market, therefore, was hurrying. Men cried their wares in lowered voices, and tarried but a little for the oldest customer. The bargain struck, the more timid among the buyers hastened to shut themselves into their houses again; the bolder, who ventured to the Place to confirm the rumour with their eyes, talked in corners and in lanes, avoided the open, and eyed the sinister preparations from afar. The shadow of the things which stood before the cathedral affronting the sunlight with their gaunt black shapes lay across the length and breadth of Angers. Even in the corners where men whispered, even in the cloisters where men bit their nails in impotent anger, the stillness of fear ruled all. Whatever Count Hannibal had it in his mind to tell the city, it seemed unlikely--and hour by hour it seemed less likely--that any would contradict him.

He knew this as he walked in the sunlight before the inn, his spurs ringing on the stones as he made each turn, his movements watched by a hundred peering eyes. After all, it was not hard to rule, nor to have one's way in this world. But then, he went on to remember, not every one had his self-control, or that contempt for the weak and unsuccessful which lightly took the form of mercy. He held Angers safe, curbed by his gibbets. With M. de Montsoreau he might have trouble; but the trouble would be slight, for he knew Montsoreau, and what it was the Lieutenant- Governor valued above profitless bloodshed.

He might have felt less confident had he known what was pa.s.sing at that moment in a room off the small cloister of the Abbey of St. Aubin, a room known at Angers as the Little Chapter-house. It was a long chamber with a groined roof and stone walls, panelled as high as a tall man might reach with dark chestnut wood. Gloomily lighted by three grated windows, which looked on a small inner green, the last resting-place of the Benedictines, the room itself seemed at first sight no more than the last resting-place of worn-out odds and ends. Piles of thin sheepskin folios, dog's-eared and dirty, the rejected of the choir, stood against the walls; here and there among them lay a large bra.s.s-bound tome on which the chains that had fettered it to desk or lectern still rusted. A broken altar c.u.mbered one corner: a stand bearing a curious--and rotting--map filled another. In the other two corners a medley of faded scutcheons and banners, which had seen their last Toussaint procession, mouldered slowly into dust--into much dust. The air of the room was full of it.

In spite of which the long oak table that filled the middle of the chamber shone with use: so did the great metal standish which it bore.

And though the seven men who sat about the table seemed, at a first glance and in that gloomy light, as rusty and faded as the rubbish behind them, it needed but a second look at their lean jaws and hungry eyes to be sure of their vitality.

He who sat in the great chair at the end of the table was indeed rather plump than thin. His white hands, gay with rings, were well cared for; his peevish chin rested on a falling-collar of lace worthy of a Cardinal.

But though the Bishop's Vicar was heard with deference, it was noticeable that when he had ceased to speak his hearers looked to the priest on his left, to Father Pezelay, and waited to hear his opinion before they gave their own. The Father's energy, indeed, had dominated the Angerins, clerks and townsfolk alike, as it had dominated the Parisian _devotes_ who knew him well. The vigour which hate inspires pa.s.ses often for solid strength; and he who had seen with his own eyes the things done in Paris spoke with an authority to which the more timid quickly and easily succ.u.mbed.

Yet gibbets are ugly things; and Thuriot, the printer, whose pride had been tickled by a summons to the conclave, began to wonder if he had done wisely in coming. Lescot, too, who presently ventured a word.

"But if M. de Tavannes' order be to do nothing," he began doubtfully, "you would not, reverend Father, have us resist his Majesty's will?"

"G.o.d forbid, my friend!" Father Pezelay answered with unction. "But his Majesty's will is to do--to do for the glory of G.o.d and the saints and His Holy Church! How? Is that which was lawful at Saumur unlawful here?

Is that which was lawful at Tours unlawful here? Is that which the King did in Paris--to the utter extermination of the unbelieving and the purging of that Sacred City--against his will here? Nay, his will is to do--to do as they have done in Paris and in Tours and in Saumur! But his Minister is unfaithful! The woman whom he has taken to his bosom has bewildered him with her charms and her sorceries, and put it in his mind to deny the mission he bears."

"You are sure, beyond chance of error, that he bears letters to that effect, good Father?" the printer ventured.

"Ask my lord's Vicar! He knows the letters and the import of them!"

"They are to that effect," the Archdeacon answered, drumming on the table with his fingers and speaking somewhat sullenly. "I was in the Chancellery, and I saw them. They are duplicates of those sent to Bordeaux."

"Then the preparations he has made must be against the Huguenots,"

Lescot, the ex-Provost, said with a sigh of relief. And Thuriot's face lightened also. "He must intend to hang one or two of the ringleaders, before he deals with the herd."

"Think it not!" Father Pezelay cried in his high shrill voice. "I tell you the woman has bewitched him, and he will deny his letters!"