Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France Part 65

"Which you stole?" He repeated the words without pa.s.sion. Enraged by this unexpected turn, he hardly knew how to take it.

"Yes, I!" she cried. "I! I took them from under your pillow!"

He was silent a minute. Then he laughed and shook his head. "It will not do, madame," he said, his lip curling. "You are clever, but you do not deceive me."

"Deceive you?"

"Yes."

"You do not believe that I took the letters?" she cried in great amazement.

"No," he answered; "and for a good reason." He had hardened his heart now. He had chosen his line, and he would not spare her.

"Why, then?" she cried. "Why?"

"For the best of all reasons," he answered. "Because the person who stole the letters was seized in the act of making his escape, and is now in my power."

"The person--who stole the letters?" she faltered.

"Yes, madame."

"Do you mean M. de Tignonville?"

"You have said it."

She turned white to the lips, and trembling could with difficulty sit her horse. With an effort she pulled it up, and he stopped also. Their attendants were some way ahead. "And you have the letters?" she whispered, her eyes meeting his. "You have the letters?"

"No, but I have the thief!" Count Hannibal answered with sinister meaning. "As I think you knew, madame," he continued ironically, "a while back before you spoke."

"I? Oh, no, no!" and she swayed in her saddle. "What--what are you--going to do?" she muttered after a moment's stricken silence.

"To him?"

"Yes."

"The magistrates will decide, at Angers."

"But he did not do it! I swear he did not."

Count Hannibal shook his head coldly.

"I swear, monsieur, I took the letters!" she repeated piteously.

"Punish me!" Her figure, bowed like an old woman's over the neck of her horse, seemed to crave his mercy.

Count Hannibal smiled.

"You do not believe me?"

"No," he said. And then, in a tone which chilled her, "If I did believe you," he continued, "I should still punish him!" She was broken; but he would see if he could not break her further. He would try if there were no weak spot in her armour. He would rack her now, since in the end she must go free. "Understand, madame," he continued in his harshest tone, "I have had enough of your lover. He has crossed my path too often. You are my wife, I am your husband. In a day or two there shall be an end of this farce and of him."

"He did not take them!" she wailed, her face sinking lower on her breast. "He did not take them! Have mercy!"

"Any way, madame, they are gone!" Tavannes answered. "You have taken them between you; and as I do not choose that you should pay, he will pay the price."

If the discovery that Tignonville had fallen into her husband's hands had not sufficed to crush her, Count Hannibal's tone must have done so. The shoot of new life which had raised its head after those dreadful days in Paris, and--for she was young--had supported her under the weight which the peril of Angers had cast on her shoulders, died, bruised under the heel of his brutality. The pride which had supported her, which had won Tavannes' admiration and exacted his respect, sank, as she sank herself, bowed to her horse's neck, weeping bitter tears before him. She abandoned herself to her misery, as she had once abandoned herself in the upper room in Paris.

And he looked at her. He had willed to crush her; he had his will, and he was not satisfied. He had bowed her so low that his magnanimity would now have its full effect, would s.h.i.+ne as the sun into a dark world; and yet he was not happy. He could look forward to the morrow, and say, "She will understand me, she will know me!" and lo, the thought that she wept for her lover stabbed him, and stabbed him anew; and he thought, "Rather would she death from him, than life from me!

Though I give her creation, it will not alter her! Though I strike the stars with my head, it is he who fills her world."

The thought spurred him to farther cruelty, impelled him to try if, prostrate as she was, he could not draw a prayer from her? "You don't ask after him?" he scoffed. "He may be before or behind? Or wounded or well? Would you not know, madame? And what message he sent you? And what he fears, and what hope he has? And his last wishes? And--for while there is life there is hope--would you not learn where the key of his prison lies to-night? How much for the key to-night, madame?"

Each question fell on her like the lash of a whip; but as one who has been flogged into insensibility, she did not wince. That drove him on: he felt a mad desire to hear her prayers, to force her lower, to bring her to her knees. And he sought about for a keener taunt. Their attendants were almost out of sight before them; the sun, declining apace, was in their eyes. "In two hours we shall be in Angers," he said. "Mon Dieu, madame, it was a pity, when you two were taking letters, you did not go a step farther. You were surprised, or I doubt if I should be alive to-day!"

Then she did look up. She raised her head and met his gaze with such wonder in her eyes, such reproach in her tear-stained face, that his voice sank on the last word. "You mean--that I would have murdered you?" she said. "I would have cut off my hand first. What I did"--and now her voice was as firm as it was low--"what I did, I did to save my people. And if it were to be done again, I would do it again!"

"You dare to tell me that to my face?" he cried, hiding feelings which almost choked him. "You would do it again, would you? Mon Dieu, madame, you need to be taught a lesson!"

And by chance, meaning only to make the horses move on again, he raised his whip. She thought that he was going to strike her, and she flinched at last. The whip fell smartly on her horse's quarters, and it sprang forward. Count Hannibal swore between his teeth.

He had turned pale, she red as fire. "Get on! Get on!" he cried harshly. "We are falling behind!" And riding at her heels, flipping her horse now and then, he forced her to trot on until they overtook the servants.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE BLACK TOWN.

It was late evening when, riding wearily on jaded horses, they came to the outskirts of Angers, and saw before them the term of their journey. The glow of sunset had faded, but the sky was still warm with the last hues of day; and against its opal light the huge ma.s.s of the Angevin castle, which even in suns.h.i.+ne rises dark and forbidding above the Mayenne, stood up black and sharply defined. Below it, on both banks of the river, the towers and spires of the city soared up from a sombre huddle of ridge-roofs, broken here by a round-headed gateway, crumbling and pigeon-haunted, that dated from St. Louis, and there by the gaunt arms of a windmill.

The city lay dark under a light sky, keeping well its secrets.

Thousands were out of doors enjoying the evening coolness in alley and court, yet it betrayed the life which pulsed in its arteries only by the low murmur which rose from it. Nevertheless, the Countess at sight of its roofs tasted the first moment of happiness which had been hers that day. She might suffer, but she had saved. Those roofs would thank her! In that murmur were the voices of women and children she had redeemed! At the sight and at the thought a wave of love and tenderness swept all bitterness from her breast. A profound humility, a boundless thankfulness took possession of her. Her head sank lower above her horse's mane; but it sank in reverence, not in shame.

Could she have known what was pa.s.sing beneath those roofs which night was blending in a common gloom--could she have read the thoughts which at that moment paled the cheeks of many a stout burgher, whose gabled house looked on the great square, she had been still more thankful.

For in attics and back rooms women were on their knees at that hour, praying with feverish eyes; and in the streets men--on whom their fellows, seeing the winding-sheet already at the chin, gazed askance--smiled, and showed brave looks abroad, while their hearts were sick with fear.

For darkly, no man knew how, the news had come to Angers. It had been known, more or less, for three days. Men had read it in other men's eyes. The tongue of a scold, the sneer of an injured woman had spread it, the birds of the air had carried it. From garret window to garret window across the narrow lanes of the old town it had been whispered at dead of night; at convent grilles, and in the timber-yards beside the river. Ten thousand, fifty thousand, a hundred thousand, it was rumoured, had perished in Paris. In Orleans, all. In Tours this man's sister; at Saumur that man's son. Through France the word had gone forth that the Huguenots must die; and in the busy town the same roof-tree sheltered fear and hate, rage and cupidity. On one side of the party-wall murder lurked fierce-eyed; on the other, the victim lay watching the latch, and shaking at a step. Strong men tasted the bitterness of death, and women clasping their babes to their b.r.e.a.s.t.s smiled sickly into children's eyes.

The signal only was lacking. It would come, said some, from Saumur, where Montsoreau, the Duke of Anjou's Lieutenant-Governor and a Papist, had his quarters. From Paris, said others, directly from the King. It might come at any hour now, in the day or in the night; the magistrates, it was whispered, were in continuous session, awaiting its coming. No wonder that from, lofty gable windows, and from dormers set high above the tiles, haggard faces looked northward and eastward, and ears sharpened by fear imagined above the noises of the city the ring of the iron shoes that carried doom.

Doubtless the majority desired--as the majority in France have always desired--peace. But in the purlieus about the cathedral and in the lanes where the sacristans lived, in convent parlours and college courts, among all whose livelihood the new faith threatened, was a stir as of a hive deranged. Here was grumbling against the magistrates--why wait? There, stealthy plannings and arrangements; everywhere a grinding of weapons and casting of slugs. Old grudges, new rivalries, a scholar's venom, a priest's dislike, here was final vent for all. None need leave this feast unsated!

It was a man of this cla.s.s, sent out for the purpose, who first espied Count Hannibal's company approaching. He bore the news into the town, and by the time the travellers reached the city gate, the dusky street within, on which lights were beginning to twinkle from booths and cas.e.m.e.nts, was alive with figures running to meet them and crying the news as they ran. The travellers, weary and road-stained, had no sooner pa.s.sed under the arch than they found themselves the core of a great crowd which moved with them and pressed about them; now unbonneting, and now calling out questions, and now shouting "Vive le Roi! Vive le Roi!" Above the press, windows burst into light; and over all, the quaint leaning gables of the old timbered houses looked down on the hurry and tumult.

They pa.s.sed along a narrow street in which the rabble, hurrying at Count Hannibal's bridle, and often looking back to read his face, had much ado to escape harm; along this street and before the yawning doors of a great church, whence a hot breath heavy with incense and burning wax issued to meet them. A portion of the congregation had heard the tumult and struggled out, and now stood close-packed on the steps under the double vault of the portal. Among them the Countess's eyes, as she rode by, a st.u.r.dy man-at-arms on either hand, caught and held one face. It was the face of a tall, lean man in dusty black; and though she did not know him she seemed to have an equal attraction for him; for as their eyes met he seized the shoulder of the man next him and pointed her out. And something in the energy of the gesture, or in the thin lips and malevolent eyes of the man who pointed, chilled the Countess's blood and shook her, she knew not why.

Until then, she had known no fear save of her husband. But at that a sense of the force and pressure of the crowd--as well as of the fierce pa.s.sions, straining about her, which a word might unloose--broke upon her; and looking to the stern men on either side she fancied that she read anxiety in their faces.