The House of the Wolf
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Stanley Weyman >> The House of the Wolf
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THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF
A Romance
by STANLEY WEYMAN
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I.--WARE WOLF!
II.--THE VIDAME'S THREAT.
III.--THE ROAD TO PARIS.
IV.--ENTRAPPED!
V.--A PRIEST AND A WOMAN.
VI.--MADAME'S FRIGHT.
VII.--A YOUNG KNIGHT ERRANT.
VIII.--THE PARISIAN MATINS.
IX.--THE HEAD OF ERASMUS.
X.--HAU, HAU, HUGUENOTS!
XI.--A NIGHT OF SORROW.
XII.--JOY IN THE MORNING.
INTRODUCTION.
The following is a modern English version of a curious French
memoir, or fragment of autobiography, apparently written about
the year 1620 by Anne, Vicomte de Caylus, and brought to this
country--if, in fact, the original ever existed in England--by
one of his descendants after the Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes. This Anne, we learn from other sources, was a principal
figure at the Court of Henry IV., and, therefore, in August,
1572, when the adventures here related took place, he and his two
younger brothers, Marie and Croisette, who shared with him the
honour and the danger, must have been little more than boys.
From the tone of his narrative, it appears that, in reviving old
recollections, the veteran renewed his youth also, and though his
story throws no fresh light upon the history of the time, it
seems to possess some human interest.
THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF.
CHAPTER I.
WARE WOLF!
I had afterwards such good reason to look back upon and remember
the events of that afternoon, that Catherine's voice seems to
ring in my brain even now. I can shut my eyes and see again,
after all these years, what I saw then--just the blue summer sky,
and one grey angle of the keep, from which a fleecy cloud was
trailing like the smoke from a chimney. I could see no more
because I was lying on my back, my head resting on my hands.
Marie and Croisette, my brothers, were lying by me in exactly the
same posture, and a few yards away on the terrace, Catherine was
sitting on a stool Gil had brought out for her. It was the
second Thursday in August, and hot. Even the jackdaws were
silent. I had almost fallen asleep, watching my cloud grow
longer and longer, and thinner and thinner, when Croisette, who
cared for heat no more than a lizard, spoke up sharply,
"Mademoiselle," he said, "why are you watching the Cahors road?"
I had not noticed that she was doing so. But something in the
keenness of Croisette's tone, taken perhaps with the fact that
Catherine did not at once answer him, aroused me; and I turned to
her. And lo! she was blushing in the most heavenly way, and her
eyes were full of tears, and she looked at us adorably. And we
all three sat up on our elbows, like three puppy dogs, and looked
at her. And there was a long silence. And then she said quite
simply to us, "Boys, I am going to be married to M. de Pavannes."
I fell flat on my back and spread out my arms. "Oh,
Mademoiselle!" I cried reproachfully.
"Oh, Mademoiselle!" cried Marie. And he fell flat on his back,
and spread out his arms and moaned. He was a good brother, was
Marie, and obedient.
And Croisette cried, "Oh, mademoiselle!" too. But he was always
ridiculous in his ways. He fell flat on his back, and flopped his
arms and squealed like a pig.
Yet he was sharp. It was he who first remembered our duty, and
went to Catherine, cap in hand, where she sat half angry and half
confused, and said with a fine redness in his cheeks,
"Mademoiselle de Caylus, our cousin, we give you joy, and wish
you long life; and are your servants, and the good friends and
aiders of M. de Pavannes in all quarrels, as--"
But I could not stand that. "Not so fast, St. Croix de Caylus" I
said, pushing him aside--he was ever getting before me in those
days--and taking his place. Then with my best bow I began,
"Mademoiselle, we give you joy and long life, and are your
servants and the good friends and aiders of M. de Pavannes in all
quarrels, as--as--"
"As becomes the cadets of your house," suggested Croisette,
softly.
"As becomes the cadets of your house," I repeated. And then
Catherine stood up and made me a low bow and we all kissed her
hand in turn, beginning with me and ending with Croisette, as was
becoming. Afterwards Catherine threw her handkerchief over her
face--she was crying--and we three sat down, Turkish fashion,
just where we were, and said "Oh, Kit!" very softly.
But presently Croisette had something to add. "What will the
Wolf say?" he whispered to me.
"Ah! To be sure!" I exclaimed aloud. I had been thinking of
myself before; but this opened quite another window. "What will
the Vidame say, Kit?"
She dropped her kerchief from her face, and turned so pale that I
was sorry I had spoken--apart from the kick Croisette gave me.
"Is M. de Bezers at his house?" she asked anxiously.
"Yes" Croisette answered. "He came in last night from St.
Antonin, with very small attendance."
The news seemed to set her fears at rest instead of augmenting
them as I should have expected. I suppose they were rather for
Louis de Pavannes, than for herself. Not unnaturally, too, for
even the Wolf could scarcely have found it in his heart to hurt
our cousin. Her slight willowy figure, her pale oval face and
gentle brown eyes, her pleasant voice, her kindness, seemed to us
boys and in those days, to sum up all that was womanly. We could
not remember, not even Croisette the youngest of us--who was
seventeen, a year junior to Marie and myself--we were twins--the
time when we had not been in love with her.
But let me explain how we four, whose united ages scarce exceeded
seventy years, came to be lounging on the terrace in the holiday
stillness of that afternoon. It was the summer of 1572. The
great peace, it will be remembered, between the Catholics and the
Huguenots had not long been declared; the peace which in a day or
two was to be solemnized, and, as most Frenchmen hoped, to be
cemented by the marriage of Henry of Navarre with Margaret of
Valois, the King's sister. The Vicomte de Caylus, Catherine's
father and our guardian, was one of the governors appointed to
see the peace enforced; the respect in which he was held by both
parties--he was a Catholic, but no bigot, God rest his soul!--
recommending him for this employment. He had therefore gone a
week or two before to Bayonne, his province. Most of our
neighbours in Quercy were likewise from home, having gone to
Paris to be witnesses on one side or the other of the royal
wedding. And consequently we young people, not greatly checked
by the presence of good-natured, sleepy Madame Claude,
Catherine's duenna, were disposed to make the most of our
liberty; and to celebrate the peace in our own fashion.
We were country-folk. Not one of us had been to Pau, much less
to Paris. The Vicomte held stricter views than were common then,
upon young people's education; and though we had learned to ride
and shoot, to use our swords and toss a hawk, and to read and
write, we knew little more than Catherine herself of the world;
little more of the pleasures and sins of court life, and not one-
tenth as much as she did of its graces. Still she had taught us
to dance and make a bow. Her presence had softened our manners;
and of late we had gained something from the frank companionship
of Louis de Pavannes, a Huguenot whom the Vicomte had taken
prisoner at Moncontour and held to ransom. We were not, I
think, mere clownish yokels.
But we were shy. We disliked and shunned strangers. And when
old Gil appeared suddenly, while we were still chewing the
melancholy cud of Kit's announcement, and cried sepulchrally, "M.
le Vidame de Bezers to pay his respects to Mademoiselle!"--Well,
there was something like a panic, I confess!
We scrambled to our feet, muttering, "The Wolf!" The entrance at
Caylus is by a ramp rising from the gateway to the level of the
terrace. This sunken way is fenced by low walls so that one may
not--when walking on the terrace--fall into it. Gil had spoken
before his head had well risen to view, and this gave us a
moment, just a moment. Croisette made a rush for the doorway
into the house; but failed to gain it, and drew himself up behind
a buttress of the tower, his finger on his lip. I am slow
sometimes, and Marie waited for me, so that we had barely got to
our legs--looking, I dare say, awkward and ungainly enough--
before the Vidame's shadow fell darkly on the ground at
Catherine's feet.
"Mademoiselle!" he said, advancing to her through the sunshine,
and bending over her slender hand with a magnificent grace that
was born of his size and manner combined, "I rode in late last
night from Toulouse; and I go to-morrow to Paris. I have but
rested and washed off the stains of travel that I may lay my--
ah!"
He seemed to see us for the first time and negligently broke off
in his compliment; raising himself and saluting us. "Ah," he
continued indolently, "two of the maidens of Caylus, I see. With
an odd pair of hands apiece, unless I am mistaken, Why do you not
set them spinning, Mademoiselle?" and he regarded us with that
smile which--with other things as evil--had made him famous.
Croisette pulled horrible faces behind his back. We looked hotly
at him; but could find nothing to say.
"You grow red!" he went on, pleasantly--the wretch!--playing
with us as a cat does with mice. "It offends your dignity,
perhaps, that I bid Mademoiselle set you spinning? I now would
spin at Mademoiselle's bidding, and think it happiness!"
"We are not girls!" I blurted out, with the flush and tremor of
a boy's passion. "You had not called my godfather, Anne de
Montmorenci a girl, M. le Vidame!" For though we counted it a
joke among ourselves that we all bore girls' names, we were young
enough to be sensitive about it.
He shrugged his shoulders. And how he dwarfed us all as he stood
there dominating our terrace! "M. de Montmorenci was a man," he
said scornfully. "M. Anne de Caylus is--"
And the villain deliberately turned his great back upon us,
taking his seat on the low wall near Catherine's chair. It was
clear even to our vanity that he did not think us worth another
word--that we had passed absolutely from his mind. Madame Claude
came waddling out at the same moment, Gil carrying a chair behind
her. And we--well we slunk away and sat on the other side of the
terrace, whence we could still glower at the offender.
Yet who were we to glower at him? To this day I shake at the
thought of him. It was not so much his height and bulk, though
he was so big that the clipped pointed fashion of his beard a
fashion then new at court--seemed on him incongruous and
effeminate; nor so much the sinister glance of his grey eyes--he
had a slight cast in them; nor the grim suavity of his manner,
and the harsh threatening voice that permitted of no disguise.
It was the sum of these things, the great brutal presence of the
man--that was overpowering--that made the great falter and the
poor crouch. And then his reputation! Though we knew little of
the world's wickedness, all we did know had come to us linked
with his name. We had heard of him as a duellist, as a bully, an
employer of bravos. At Jarnac he had been the last to turn from
the shambles. Men called him cruel and vengeful even for those
days--gone by now, thank God!--and whispered his name when they
spoke of assassinations; saying commonly of him that he would not
blench before a Guise, nor blush before the Virgin.
Such was our visitor and neighbour, Raoul de Mar, Vidame de
Bezers. As he sat on the terrace, now eyeing us askance, and now
paying Catherine a compliment, I likened him to a great cat
before which a butterfly has all unwittingly flirted her
prettiness. Poor Catherine! No doubt she had her own reasons
for uneasiness; more reasons I fancy than I then guessed. For
she seemed to have lost her voice. She stammered and made but
poor replies; and Madame Claude being deaf and stupid, and we
boys too timid after the rebuff we had experienced to fill the
gap, the conversation languished. The Vidame was not for his
part the man to put himself out on a hot day.
It was after one of these pauses--not the first but the longest--
that I started on finding his eyes fixed on mine. More, I
shivered. It is hard to describe, but there was a look in the
Vidame's eyes at that moment which I had never seen before. A
look of pain almost: of dumb savage alarm at any rate. From me
they passed slowly to Marie and mutely interrogated him. Then
the Vidame's glance travelled back to Catherine, and settled on
her.
Only a moment before she had been but too conscious of his
presence. Now, as it chanced by bad luck, or in the course of
Providence, something had drawn her attention elsewhere. She was
unconscious of his regard. Her own eyes were fixed in a far-away
gaze. Her colour was high, her lips were parted, her bosom
heaved gently.
The shadow deepened on the Vidame's face. Slowly he took his
eyes from hers, and looked northwards also.
Caylus Castle stands on a rock in the middle of the narrow valley
of that name. The town clusters about the ledges of the rock so
closely that when I was a boy I could fling a stone clear of the
houses. The hills are scarcely five hundred yards distant on
either side, rising in tamer colours from the green fields about
the brook. It is possible from the terrace to see the whole
valley, and the road which passes through it lengthwise.
Catherine's eyes were on the northern extremity of the defile,
where the highway from Cahors descends from the uplands. She had
been sitting with her face turned that way all the afternoon.
I looked that way too. A solitary horseman was descending the
steep track from the hills.
"Mademoiselle!" cried the Vidame suddenly. We all looked up.
His tone was such that the colour fled from Kit's face. There
was something in his voice she had never heard in any voice
before--something that to a woman was like a blow.
"Mademoiselle," he snarled, "is expecting news from Cahors, from
her lover. I have the honour to congratulate M. de Pavannes on
his conquest."
Ah! he had guessed it! As the words fell on the sleepy silence,
an insult in themselves, I sprang to my feet, amazed and angry,
yet astounded by his quickness of sight and wit. He must have
recognized the Pavannes badge at that distance. "M. le Vidame,"
I said indignantly--Catherine was white and voiceless--"M. le
Vidame--" but there I stopped and faltered stammering. For
behind him I could see Croisette; and Croisette gave me no sign
of encouragement or support.
So we stood face to face for a moment; the boy and the man of the
world, the stripling and the ROUE. Then the Vidame bowed to me
in quite a new fashion. "M. Anne de Caylus desires to answer for
M. de Pavannes?" he asked smoothly; with a mocking smoothness.
I understood what he meant. But something prompted me--Croisette
said afterwards that it was a happy thought, though now I know
the crisis to have been less serious than he fancied to answer,
"Nay, not for M. de Pavannes. Rather for my cousin." And I
bowed. "I have the honour on her behalf to acknowledge your
congratulations, M. le Vidame. It pleases her that our nearest
neighbour should also be the first outside the family to wish her
well. You have divined truly in supposing that she will shortly
be united to M. de Pavannes."
I suppose--for I saw the giant's colour change and his lip quiver
as I spoke--that his previous words had been only a guess. For a
moment the devil seemed to be glaring through his eyes; and he
looked at Marie and me as a wild animal at its keepers. Yet he
maintained his cynical politeness in part. "Mademoiselle desires
my congratulations?" he said, slowly, labouring with each word
it seemed. "She shall have them on the happy day. She shall
certainly have them then. But these are troublous times. And
Mademoiselle's betrothed is I think a Huguenot, and has gone to
Paris. Paris--well, the air of Paris is not good for Huguenots,
I am told."
I saw Catherine shiver; indeed she was on the point of fainting,
I broke in rudely, my passion getting the better of my fears.
"M. de Pavannes can take care of himself, believe me," I said
brusquely.
"Perhaps so," Bezers answered, his voice like the grating of
steel on steel. "But at any rate this will be a memorable day
for Mademoiselle. The day on which she receives her first
congratulations--she will remember it as long as she lives! Oh,
yes, I will answer for that, M. Anne," he said looking brightly
at one and another of us, his eyes more oblique than ever,
"Mademoiselle will remember it, I am sure!"
It would be impossible to describe the devilish glance he flung
at the poor sinking girl as he withdrew, the horrid emphasis he
threw into those last words, the covert deadly threat they
conveyed to the dullest ears. That he went then, was small
mercy. He had done all the evil he could do at present. If his
desire had been to leave fear behind him, he had certainly
succeeded.
Kit crying softly went into the house; her innocent coquetry more
than sufficiently punished already. And we three looked at one
another with blank faces, It was clear that we had made a
dangerous enemy, and an enemy at our own gates. As the Vidame
had said, these were troublous times when things were done to
men--ay, and to women and children--which we scarce dare to speak
of now. "I wish the Vicomte were here," Croisette said uneasily
after we had discussed several unpleasant contingencies.
"Or even Malines the steward," I suggested.
"He would not be much good," replied Croisette.
"And he is at St. Antonin, and will not be back this week.
Father Pierre too is at Albi."
"You do not think," said Marie, "that he will attack us?"
"Certainly not!" Croisette retorted with contempt. "Even the
Vidame would not dare to do that in time of peace. Besides, he
has not half a score of men here," continued the lad, shrewdly,
"and counting old Gil and ourselves we have as many. And
Pavannes always said that three men could hold the gate at the
bottom of the ramp against a score. Oh, he will not try that!"
"Certainly not!" I agreed. And so we crushed Marie. "But for
Louis de Pavannes--"
Catherine interrupted me. She came out quickly looking a
different person; her face flushed with anger, her tears dried.
"Anne!" she cried, imperiously, "what is the matter down below
--will you see?"
I had no difficulty in doing that. All the sounds of town life
came up to us on the terrace. Lounging there we could hear the
chaffering over the wheat measures in the cloisters of the
market-square, the yell of a dog, the voice of a scold, the
church bell, the watchman's cry. I had only to step to the wall
to overlook it all. On this summer afternoon the town had been
for the most part very quiet. If we had not been engaged in our
own affairs we should have taken the alarm before, remarking in
the silence the first beginnings of what was now a very
respectable tumult. It swelled louder even as we stepped to the
wall.
We could see--a bend in the street laying it open--part of the
Vidame's house; the gloomy square hold which had come to him from
his mother. His own chateau of Bezers lay far away in Franche
Comte, but of late he had shown a preference--Catherine could
best account for it, perhaps--for this mean house in Caylus. It
was the only house in the town which did not belong to us. It
was known as the House of the Wolf, and was a grim stone building
surrounding a courtyard. Rows of wolves' heads carved in stone
flanked the windows, whence their bare fangs grinned day and
night at the church porch opposite.
The noise drew our eyes in this direction; and there lolling in a
window over the door, looking out on the street with a laughing
eye, was Bezers himself. The cause of his merriment--we had not
far to look for it--was a horseman who was riding up the street
under difficulties. He was reining in his steed--no easy task on
that steep greasy pavement--so as to present some front to a
score or so of ragged knaves who were following close at his
heels, hooting and throwing mud and pebbles at him. The man had
drawn his sword, and his oaths came up to us, mingled with shrill
cries of "VIVE LA MESSE!" and half drowned by the clattering of
the horse's hoofs. We saw a stone strike him in the face, and
draw blood, and heard him swear louder than before.
"Oh!" cried Catherine, clasping her hands with a sudden shriek
of indignation, "my letter! They will get my letter!"
"Death!" exclaimed Croisette, "She is right! It is M. de
Pavannes' courier! This must be stopped! We cannot stand this,
Anne!"
"They shall pay dearly for it, by our Lady!" I cried swearing
myself. "And in peace time too--the villains! Gil! Francis!" I
shouted, "where are you?"
And I looked round for my fowling piece, while Croisette jumped
on the wall, and forming a trumpet with his hands, shrieked at
the top of his voice, "Back! he bears a letter from the
Vicomte!"
But the device did not succeed, and I could not find my gun. For
a moment we were helpless, and before I could have fetched the
gun from the house, the horseman and the hooting rabble at his
heels, had turned a corner and were hidden by the roofs.
Another turn however would bring them out in front of the
gateway, and seeing this we hurried down the ramp to meet them.
I stayed a moment to tell Gil to collect the servants, and, this
keeping me, Croisette reached the narrow street outside before
me. As I followed him I was nearly knocked down by the rider,
whose face was covered with, dirt and blood, while fright had
rendered his horse unmanageable. Darting aside I let him pass
--he was blinded and could not see me--and then found that
Croisette--brave lad! had collared the foremost of the ruffians,
and was beating him with his sheathed sword, while the rest of
the rabble stood back, ashamed, yet sullen, and with anger in
their eyes. A dangerous crew, I thought; not townsmen, most of
them.
"Down with the Huguenots!" cried one, as I appeared, one bolder
than the rest.
"Down with the CANAILLE!" I retorted, sternly eyeing the ill-
looking ring. "Will you set yourselves above the king's peace,
dirt that you are? Go back to your kennels!"
The words were scarcely out of my mouth, before I saw that the
fellow whom Croisette was punishing had got hold of a dagger. I
shouted a warning, but it came too late. The blade fell, and--
thanks to God--striking the buckle of the lad's belt, glanced off
harmless. I saw the steel flash up again--saw the spite in the
man's eyes: but this time I was a step nearer, and before the
weapon fell, I passed my sword clean through the wretch's body.
He went down like a log, Croisette falling with him, held fast by
his stiffening fingers.
I had never killed a man before, nor seen a man die; and if I had
stayed to think about it, I should have fallen sick perhaps. But
it was no time for thought; no time for sickness. The crowd were
close upon us, a line of flushed threatening faces from wall to
wall. A single glance downwards told me that the man was dead,
and I set my foot upon his neck. "Hounds! Beasts!" I cried,
not loudly this time, for though I was like one possessed with
rage, it was inward rage, "go to your kennels! Will you dare to
raise a hand against a Caylus? Go--or when the Vicomte returns,
a dozen of you shall hang in the market-place!"
I suppose I looked fierce enough--I know I felt no fear, only a
strange exaltation--for they slunk away. Unwillingly, but with
little delay the group melted, Bezers' following--of whom I knew
the dead man was one--the last to go. While I still glared at
them, lo! the street was empty; the last had disappeared round
the bend. I turned to find Gil and half-a-dozen servants
standing with pale faces at my back. Croisette seized my hand
with a sob. "Oh, my lord," cried Gil, quaveringly. But I shook
one off, I frowned at the other.
"Take up this carrion!" I said, touching it with my foot, "And
hang it from the justice-elm. And then close the gates! See to
it, knaves, and lose no time."
CHAPTER II.
THE VIDAME'S THREAT.
Croisette used to tell a story, of the facts of which I have no
remembrance, save as a bad dream. He would have it that I left
my pallet that night--I had one to myself in the summer, being
the eldest, while he and Marie slept on another in the same room
--and came to him and awoke him, sobbing and shaking and
clutching him; and begging him in a fit of terror not to let me
go. And that so I slept in his arms until morning. But as I
have said, I do not remember anything of this, only that I had an
ugly dream that night, and that when I awoke I was lying with him
and Marie; so I cannot say whether it really happened.
At any rate, if I had any feeling of the kind it did not last
long; on the contrary--it would be idle to deny it--I was
flattered by the sudden respect, Gil and the servants showed me.
What Catherine thought of the matter I could not tell. She had
her letter and apparently found it satisfactory. At any rate we
saw nothing of her. Madame Claude was busy boiling simples, and
tending the messenger's hurts. And it seemed natural that I
should take command.
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