The House of the Wolf
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Stanley Weyman >> The House of the Wolf
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It was neatly done: and while it was being done the Vidame and
his knot of men, with those who had been searching the building,
hurried down the gallery towards us, their rear cleared for the
moment by the troopers' feint. The dismounted men came bundling
down the steps, their eyes aglow with the war-fire, and got
horses as they could. Among them I lost sight of Louis, but
perceived him presently, pale and bewildered, mounted behind a
trooper. A man sprang up before each of us too, greeting our
appearance merely by a grunt of surprise. For it was no time to
ask or answer. The mob was recovering itself, and each moment
brought it reinforcements, while its fury was augmented by the
trick we had played it, and the prospect of our escape.
We were under forty, all told; and some men were riding double.
Bezers' eye glanced hastily over his array, and lit on us three.
He turned and gave some order to his lieutenant. The fellow
spurred his horse, a splendid grey, as powerful as his master's,
alongside of Croisette, threw his arm round the lad, and dragged
him dexterously on to his own crupper. I did not understand the
action, but I saw Croisette settle himself behind Blaise Bure--
for he it was--and supposed no harm was intended. The next
moment we had surged forward, and were swaying to and fro in the
midst of the crowd.
What ensued I cannot tell. The outlook, so far as I was
concerned, was limited to wildly plunging horses--we were in the
centre of the band and riders swaying in the saddle--with a
glimpse here and there of a fringe of white scowling faces and
tossing arms. Once, a lane opening, I saw the Vidame's charger
--he was in the van--stumble and fall among the crowd and heard a
great shout go up. But Bezers by a mighty effort lifted it to
its legs again. And once too, a minute later, those riding on my
right, swerved outwards, and I saw something I never afterwards
forgot.
It was the body of the Coadjutor, lying face upwards, the eyes
open and the teeth bared in a last spasm. Prostrate on it lay a
woman, a young woman, with hair like red gold falling about her
neck, and skin like milk. I did not know whether she was alive
or dead; but I noticed that one arm stuck out stiffly and the
crowd flying before the sudden impact of the horses must have
passed over her, even if she had escaped the iron hoofs which
followed. Still in the fleeting glance I had of her as my horse
bounded aside, I saw no wound or disfigurement. Her one arm was
cast about the priest's breast; her face was hidden on it. But
for all that, I knew her--knew her, shuddering for the woman
whose badges I was even now wearing, whose gift I bore at my
side; and I remembered the priest's vaunt of a few hours before,
made in her presence, "There is no man in Paris shall thwart me
to-night!"
It had been a vain boast indeed! No hand in all that host of
thousands was more feeble than his now: for good or ill! No
brain more dull, no voice less heeded. A righteous retribution
indeed had overtaken him. He had died by the sword he had drawn
--died, a priest, by violence! The cross he had renounced had
crushed him. And all his schemes and thoughts, and no doubt they
had been many, had perished with him. It had come to this, only
this, the sum of the whole matter, that there was one wicked man
the less in Paris--one lump of breathless clay the more.
For her--the woman on his breast--what man can judge a woman,
knowing her? And not knowing her, how much less? For the
present I put her out of my mind, feeling for the moment faint
and cold.
We were clear of the crowd, and clattering unmolested down a
paved street before I fully recovered from the shock which this
sight had caused me. Wonder whither we were going took its
place. To Bezers' house? My heart sank at the prospect if that
were so. Before I thought of an alternative, a gateway flanked
by huge round towers appeared before us, and we pulled up
suddenly, a confused jostling mass in the narrow way; while some
words passed between the Vidame and the Captain of the Guard. A
pause of several minutes followed; and then the gates rolled
slowly open, and two by two we passed under the arch. Those
gates might have belonged to a fortress or a prison, a dungeon or
a palace, for all I knew.
They led, however, to none of these, but to an open space, dirty
and littered with rubbish, marked by a hundred ruts and tracks,
and fringed with disorderly cabins and make-shift booths. And
beyond this--oh, ye gods! the joy of it--beyond this, which we
crossed at a rapid trot, lay the open country!
The transition and relief were so wonderful that I shall never
forget them. I gazed on the wide landscape before me, lying
quiet and peaceful in the sunlight, and could scarce believe in
my happiness. I drew the fresh air into my lungs, I threw up my
sheathed sword and caught it again in a frenzy of delight, while
the gloomy men about me smiled at my enthusiasm. I felt the
horse beneath me move once more like a thing of life. No
enchanter with his wand, not Merlin nor Virgil, could have made a
greater change in my world, than had the captain of the gate with
his simple key! Or so it seemed to me in the first moments of
freedom, and escape--of removal from those loathsome streets.
I looked back at Paris--at the cloud of smoke which hung over the
towers and roofs; and it seemed to me the canopy of hell itself.
I fancied that my head still rang with the cries and screams and
curses, the sounds of death. In very fact, I could hear the dull
reports of firearms near the Louvre, and the jangle of the bells.
Country-folk were congregated at the cross-roads, and in the
villages, listening and gazing; asking timid questions of the
more good-natured among us, and showing that the rumour of the
dreadful work doing in the town had somehow spread abroad. And
this though I learned afterwards that the keys of the city had
been taken the night before to the king, and that, except a party
with the Duke of Guise, who had left at eight in pursuit of
Montgomery and some of the Protestants--lodgers, happily for
themselves, in the Faubourg St. Germain--no one had left the town
before ourselves.
While I am speaking of our departure from Paris, I may say what I
have to say of the dreadful excesses of those days, ay, and of
the following days; excesses of which France is now ashamed, and
for which she blushed even before the accession of his late
Majesty. I am sometimes asked, as one who witnessed them, what I
think, and I answer that it was not our country which was to
blame. A something besides Queen Catharine de' Medici had been
brought from Italy forty years before, a something invisible but
very powerful; a spirit of cruelty and treachery. In Italy it
had done small harm. But grafted on French daring and
recklessness, and the rougher and more soldierly manners of the
north, this spirit of intrigue proved capable of very dreadful
things. For a time, until it wore itself out, it was the curse
of France. Two Dukes of Guise, Francis and Henry, a cardinal of
Guise, the Prince of Conde, Admiral Coligny, King Henry the Third
all these the foremost men of their day--died by assassination
within little more than a quarter of a century, to say nothing of
the Prince of Orange, and King Henry the Great.
Then mark--a most curious thing--the extreme youth of those who
were in this business. France, subject to the Queen-Mother, of
course, was ruled at the time by boys scarce out of their tutors'
hands. They were mere lads, hot-blooded, reckless nobles, ready
for any wild brawl, without forethought or prudence. Of the four
Frenchmen who it is thought took the leading parts, one, the
king, was twenty-two; Monsieur, his brother, was only twenty; the
Duke of Guise was twenty-one. Only the Marshal de Tavannes was
of mature age. For the other conspirators, for the Queen-Mother,
for her advisers Retz and Nevers and Birague, they were Italians;
and Italy may answer for them if Florence, Mantua and Milan care
to raise the glove.
To return to our journey. A league from the town we halted at a
large inn, and some of us dismounted. Horses were brought out to
fill the places of those lost or left behind, and Bure had food
served to us. We were famished and exhausted, and ate it
ravenously, as if we could never have enough.
The Vidame sat his horse apart, served by his page, I stole a
glance at him, and it struck me that even on his iron nature the
events of the night had made some impression. I read, or thought
I read, in his countenance, signs of emotions not quite in
accordance with what I knew of him--emotions strange and varied.
I could almost have sworn that as he looked at us a flicker of
kindliness lit up his stern and cruel gloom; I could almost have
sworn he smiled with a curious sadness. As for Louis, riding
with a squad who stood in a different part of the yard, he did
not see us; had not yet seen us at all. His side face, turned
towards me, was pale and sad, his manner preoccupied, his mien
rather sorrowful than downcast. He was thinking, I judged, as
much of the many brave men who had yesterday been his friends--
companions at board and play-table--as of his own fate. When we
presently, at a signal from Bure, took to the road again, I asked
no permission, but thrusting my horse forward, rode to his side
as he passed through the gateway.
CHAPTER XI.
A NIGHT OF SORROW.
"Louis! Louis!"
He turned with a start at the sound of my voice, joy and
bewilderment--and no wonder--in his countenance. He had not
supposed us to be within a hundred leagues of him. And lo! here
we were, knee to knee, hand meeting hand in a long grasp, while
his eyes, to which tears sprang unbidden, dwelt on my face as
though they could read in it the features of his sweetheart.
Some one had furnished him with a hat, and enabled him to put his
dress in order, and wash his wound, which was very slight, and
these changes had improved his appearance; so that the shadow of
grief and despondency passing for a moment from him in the joy of
seeing me, he looked once more his former self: as he had looked
in the old days at Caylus on his return from hawking, or from
some boyish escapade among the hills. Only, alas! he wore no
sword.
"And now tell me all," he cried, after his first exclamation of
wonder had found vent. "How on earth do you come here? Here, of
all places, and by my side? Is all well at Caylus? Surely
Mademoiselle is not--"
"Mademoiselle is well! perfectly well! And thinking of you, I
swear!" I answered passionately. "For us," I went on, eager for
the moment to escape that subject--how could I talk of it in the
daylight and under strange eyes?--"Marie and Croisette are
behind. We left Caylus eight days ago. We reached Paris
yesterday evening. We have not been to bed! We have passed,
Louis, such a night as I never--"
He stopped me with a gesture. "Hush!" he said, raising his
hand. "Don't speak of it, Anne!" and I saw that the fate of his
friends was still too recent, the horror of his awakening to
those dreadful sights and sounds was still too vivid for him to
bear reference to them. Yet after riding for a time in silence--
though his lips moved--he asked me again what had brought us up.
"We came to warn you--of him," I answered, pointing to the
solitary, moody figure of the Vidame, who was riding ahead of the
party. "He--he said that Kit should never marry you, and
boasted of what he would do to you, and frightened her. So,
learning he was going to Paris, we followed him--to put you on
your guard, you know." And I briefly sketched our adventures,
and the strange circumstances and mistakes which had delayed us
hour after hour, through all that strange night, until the time
had gone by when we could do good.
His eyes glistened and his colour rose as I told the story. He
wrung my hand warmly, and looked back to smile at Marie and
Croisette. "It was like you!" he ejaculated with emotion. "It
was like her cousins! Brave, brave lads! The Vicomte will live
to be proud of you! Some day you will all do great things! I
say it!"
"But oh, Louis!" I exclaimed sorrowfully, though my heart was
bounding with pride at his words, "if we had only been in time!
If we had only come to you two hours earlier!"
"You would have spoken to little purpose then, I fear," he
replied, shaking his head. "We were given over as a prey to the
enemy. Warnings? We had warnings in plenty. De Rosny warned
us, and we scoffed at him. The king's eye warned us, and we
trusted him. But--" and Louis' form dilated and his hand rose as
he went on, and I thought of his cousin's prediction--"it will
never be so again in France, Anne! Never! No man will after
this trust another! There will be no honour, no faith, no
quarter, and no peace! And for the Valois who has done this, the
sword will never depart from his house! I believe it! I do
believe it!"
How truly he spoke we know now. For two-and-twenty years after
that twenty-fourth of August, 1572, the sword was scarcely laid
aside in France for a single month. In the streets of Paris, at
Arques, and Coutras, and Ivry, blood flowed like water that the
blood of the St. Bartholomew might be forgotten--that blood
which, by the grace of God, Navarre saw fall from the dice box on
the eve of the massacre. The last of the Valois passed to the
vaults of St. Denis: and a greater king, the first of all
Frenchmen, alive or dead, the bravest, gayest, wisest of the
land, succeeded him: yet even he had to fall by the knife, in a
moment most unhappy for his country, before France, horror-
stricken, put away the treachery and evil from her.
Talking with Louis as we rode, it was not unnatural--nay, it was
the natural result of the situation--that I should avoid one
subject. Yet that subject was the uppermost in my thoughts.
What were the Vidame's intentions? What was the meaning of this
strange journey? What was to be Louis' fate? I shrank with good
reason from asking him these questions. There could be so little
room for hope, even after that smile which I had seen Bezers
smile, that I dared not dwell upon them. I should but torture
him and myself.
So it was he who first spoke about it. Not at that time, but
after sunset, when the dusk had fallen upon us, and found us
still plodding southward with tired horses; a link outwardly like
other links in the long chain of riders, toiling onwards. Then
he said suddenly, "Do you know whither we are going, Anne?"
I started, and found myself struggling with a strange confusion
before I could reply. "Home," I suggested at random.
"Home? No. And yet nearly home. To Cahors," he answered with
an odd quietude. "Your home, my boy, I shall never see again,
Nor Kit! Nor my own Kit!" It was the first time I had heard him
call her by the fond name we used ourselves. And the pathos in
his tone as of the past, not the present, as of pure memory--I
was very thankful that I could not in the dusk see his face
--shook my self-control. I wept. "Nay, my lad," he went on,
speaking softly and leaning from his saddle so that he could lay
his hand on my shoulder "we are all men together. We must be
brave. Tears cannot help us, so we should leave them to the--
women."
I cried more passionately at that. Indeed his own voice quavered
over the last word. But in a moment he was talking to me coolly
and quietly. I had muttered something to the effect that the
Vidame would not dare--it would be too public.
"There is no question of daring in it," he replied. "And the
more public it is, the better he will like it. They have dared
to take thousands of lives since yesterday. There is no one to
call him to account since the king--our king forsooth!--has
declared every Huguenot an outlaw, to be killed wherever he be
met with. No, when Bezers disarmed me yonder," he pointed as he
spoke to his wound, "I looked of course for instant death. Anne!
I saw blood in his eyes! But he did not strike."
"Why not?" I asked in suspense.
"I can only guess," Louis answered with a sigh. "He told me that
my life was in his hands, but that he should take it at his own
time. Further that if I would not give my word to go with him
without trying to escape, he would throw me to those howling dogs
outside. I gave my word. We are on the road together. And oh,
Anne! yesterday, only yesterday, at this time I was riding home
with Teligny from the Louvre, where we had been playing at paume
with the king! And the world--the world was very fair."
"I saw you, or rather Croisette did," I muttered as his sorrow--
not for himself, but his friends--forced him to stop. "Yet how,
Louis, do you know that we are going to Cahors?"
"He told me, as we passed through the gates, that he was
appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Quercy to carry out the edict
against the religion. Do you not see, Anne?" my companion added
bitterly, "to kill me at once were too small a revenge for him!
He must torture me--or rather he would if he could--by the pains
of anticipation.
"Besides, my execution will so finely open his bed of justice.
Bah!" and Pavannes raised his head proudly, "I fear him not! I
fear him not a jot!"
For a moment he forgot Kit, the loss of his friends, his own
doom. He snapped his fingers in derision of his foe.
But my heart sank miserably. The Vidame's rage I remembered had
been directed rather against my cousin than her lover; and now by
the light of his threats I read Bezers' purpose more clearly than
Louis could. His aim was to punish the woman who had played with
him. To do so he was bringing her lover from Paris that he might
execute him--AFTER GIVING HER NOTICE! That was it: after giving
her notice, it might be in her very presence! He would lure her
to Cahors, and then--
I shuddered. I well might feel that a precipice was opening at
my feet. There was something in the plan so devilish, yet so
accordant with those stories I had heard of the Wolf, that I felt
no doubt of my insight. I read his evil mind, and saw in a
moment why he had troubled himself with us. He hoped to draw
Mademoiselle to Cahors by our means.
Of course I said nothing of this to Louis. I hid my feelings as
well as I could. But I vowed a great vow that at the eleventh
hour we would baulk the Vidame. Surely if all else failed we
could kill him, and, though we died ourselves, spare Kit this
ordeal. My tears were dried up as by a fire. My heart burned
with a great and noble rage: or so it seemed to me!
I do not think that there was ever any journey so strange as this
one of ours. We met with the same incidents which had pleased us
on the road to Paris. But their novelty was gone. Gone too were
the cosy chats with old rogues of landlords and good-natured
dames. We were travelling now in such force that our coming was
rather a terror to the innkeeper than a boon. How much the
Lieutenant-Governor of Quercy, going down to his province,
requisitioned in the king's name; and for how much he paid, we
could only judge from the gloomy looks which followed us as we
rode away each morning. Such looks were not solely due I fear to
the news from Paris, although for some time we were the first
bearers of the tidings.
Presently, on the third day of our journey I think, couriers from
the Court passed us: and henceforth forestalled us. One of
these messengers--who I learned from the talk about me was bound
for Cahors with letters for the Lieutenant-Governor and the
Count-Bishop--the Vidame interviewed and stopped. How it was
managed I do not know, but I fear the Count-Bishop never got his
letters, which I fancy would have given him some joint authority.
Certainly we left the messenger--a prudent fellow with a care for
his skin--in comfortable quarters at Limoges, whence I do not
doubt he presently returned to Paris at his leisure.
The strangeness of the journey however arose from none of these
things, but from the relations of our party to one another.
After the first day we four rode together, unmolested, so long as
we kept near the centre of the straggling cavalcade. The Vidame
always rode alone, and in front, brooding with bent head and
sombre face over his revenge, as I supposed. He would ride in
this fashion, speaking to no one and giving no orders, for a day
together. At times I came near to pitying him. He had loved Kit
in his masterful way, the way of one not wont to be thwarted, and
he had lost her--lost her, whatever might happen. He would get
nothing after all by his revenge. Nothing but ashes in the
mouth. And so I saw in softer moments something inexpressibly
melancholy in that solitary giant-figure pacing always alone.
He seldom spoke to us. More rarely to Louis. When he did, the
harshness of his voice and his cruel eyes betrayed the gloomy
hatred in which he held him. At meals he ate at one end of the
table: we four at the other, as three of us had done on that
first evening in Paris. And sometimes the covert looks, the grim
sneer he shot at his rival--his prisoner--made me shiver even in
the sunshine. Sometimes, on the other hand, when I took him
unawares, I found an expression on his face I could not read.
I told Croisette, but warily, my suspicions of his purpose. He
heard me, less astounded to all appearance than I had expected.
Presently I learned the reason. He had his own view. "Do you
not think it possible, Anne?" he suggested timidly--we were of
course alone at the time--"that he thinks to make Louis resign
Mademoiselle?"
"Resign her!" I exclaimed obtusely. "How?"
"By giving him a choice--you understand?"
I did understand I saw it in a moment. I had been dull not to
see it before. Bezers might put it in this way: let M. de
Pavannes resign his mistress and live, or die and lose her.
"I see," I answered. "But Louis would not give her up. Not to
him!"
"He would lose her either way," Croisette answered in a low tone.
"That is not however the worst of it. Louis is in his power.
Suppose he thinks to make Kit the arbiter, Anne, and puts Louis
up to ransom, setting Kit for the price? And gives her the
option of accepting himself, and saving Louis' life; or refusing,
and leaving Louis to die?"
"St. Croix!" I exclaimed fiercely. "He would not be so base!"
And yet was not even this better than the blind vengeance I had
myself attributed to him?
"Perhaps not," Croisette answered, while he gazed onwards through
the twilight. We were at the time the foremost of the party save
the Vidame; and there was nothing to interrupt our view of his
gigantic figure as he moved on alone before us with bowed
shoulders. "Perhaps not," Croisette repeated thoughtfully.
"Sometimes I think we do not understand him; and that after all
there may be worse people in the world than Bezers."
I looked hard at the lad, for that was not what I had meant.
"Worse?" I said. "I do not think so. Hardly!"
"Yes, worse," he replied, shaking his head. "Do you remember
lying under the curtain in the box-bed at Mirepoix's?"
"Of course I do! Do you think I shall ever forget it?"
"And Madame d'O coming in?"
"With the Coadjutor?" I said with a shudder. "Yes."
"No, the second time," he answered, "when she came back alone.
It was pretty dark, you remember, and Madame de Pavannes was at
the window, and her sister did not see her?"
"Well, well, I remember," I said impatiently. I knew from the
tone of his voice that he had something to tell me about Madame
d'O, and I was not anxious to hear it. I shrank, as a wounded
man shrinks from the cautery, from hearing anything about that
woman; herself so beautiful, yet moving in an atmosphere of
suspicion and horror. Was it shame, or fear, or some chivalrous
feeling having its origin in that moment when I had fancied
myself her knight? I am not sure, for I had not made up my mind
even now whether I ought to pity or detest her; whether she had
made a tool of me, or I had been false to her.
"She came up to the bed, you remember, Anne?" Croisette went on.
"You were next to her. She saw you indistinctly, and took you
for her sister. And then I sprang from the bed."
"I know you did!" I exclaimed sharply. All this time I had
forgotten that grievance. "You nearly frightened her out of her
wits, St. Croix. I cannot think what possessed you--why you did
it?"
"To save your life, Anne" he answered solemnly, "and her from a
crime! an unutterable, an unnatural crime. She had come back to
I can hardly tell it you--to murder her sister. You start. You
do not believe me. It sounds too horrible. But I could see
better than you could. She was exactly between you and the
light. I saw the knife raised. I saw her wicked face! If I had
not startled her as I did, she would have stabbed you. She
dropped the knife on the floor, and I picked it up and have it.
See!"
I looked furtively, and turned away again, shivering. "Why," I
muttered, "why did she do it?"
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