CHAPTER XXX.
SACRILEGE!
M. de Montsoreau, Lieutenant-Governor of Saumur almost rose from his seat in his astonishment.
“What! No letters?” he cried, a hand on either arm of the chair.
The Magistrates stared, one and all. “No letters?” they muttered.
And “No letters?” the Provost chimed in more faintly.
Count Hannibal looked smiling round the Council table. He alone was unmoved.
“No,” he said. “I bear none.”
M. de Montsoreau, who, travel-stained and in his corselet, had the second place of honour at the foot of the table, frowned.
“But, M. le Comte,” he said, “my instructions from Monsieur were to proceed to carry out his Majesty’s will in co-operation with you, who, I understood, would bring letters de par le Roi.”
“I had letters,” Count Hannibal answered negligently. “But on the way I mislaid them.”
“Mislaid them?” Montsoreau cried, unable to believe his ears; while the smaller dignitaries of the city, the magistrates and churchmen who sat on either side of the table, gaped open-mouthed. It was incredible! It was unbelievable! Mislay the King’s letters! Who had ever heard of such a thing?
“Yes, I mislaid them. Lost them, if you like it better.”
“But you jest!” the Lieutenant-Governor retorted, moving uneasily in his chair. He was a man more highly named for address than courage; and, like most men skilled in finesse, he was prone to suspect a trap. “You jest, surely, Monsieur! Men do not lose his Majesty’s letters, by the way.”
“When they contain his Majesty’s will, no,” Tavannes answered, with a peculiar smile.
“You imply, then?”
Count Hannibal shrugged his shoulders, but had not answered when Bigot entered and handed him his sweetmeat box; he paused to open it and select a prune. He was long in selecting; but no change of countenance led any of those at the table to suspect that inside the lid of the box was a message—a scrap of paper informing him that Montsoreau had left fifty spears in the suburb without the Saumur gate, besides those whom he had brought openly into the town. Tavannes read the note slowly while he seemed to be choosing his fruit. And then—
“Imply?” he answered. “I imply nothing, M. de Montsoreau.”
“But”
“But that sometimes his Majesty finds it prudent to give orders which he does not mean to be carried out. There are things which start up before the eye,” Tavannes continued, negligently tapping the box on the table, “and there are things which do not; sometimes the latter are the more important. You, better than I, M. de Montsoreau, know that the King in the Gallery at the Louvre is one, and in his closet is another.”
“Yes.”
“And that being so”
“You do not mean to carry the letters into effect?”
“Had I the letters, certainly, my friend. I should be bound by them. But I took good care to lose them,” Tavannes added naïvely. “I am no fool.”
“Umph!”
“However,” Count Hannibal continued, with an airy gesture, “that is my affair. If you, M. de Montsoreau, feel inclined, in spite of the absence of my letters, to carry yours into effect, by all means do so—after midnight of to-day.”
M. de Montsoreau breathed hard. “And why,” he asked, half sulkily and half ponderously, “after midnight only, M. le Comte?”
“Merely that I may be clear of all suspicion of having lot or part in the matter,” Count Hannibal answered pleasantly. “After midnight of to-night by all means do as you please. Until midnight, by your leave, we will be quiet.”
The Lieutenant-Governor moved doubtfully in his chair, the fear—which Tavannes had shrewdly instilled into his mind—that he might be disowned if he carried out his instructions, struggling with his avarice and his self-importance. He was rather crafty than bold; and such things had been, he knew. Little by little, and while he sat gloomily debating, the notion of dealing with one or two and holding the body of the Huguenots to ransom—a notion which, in spite of everything, was to bear good fruit for Angers—began to form in his mind. The plan suited him: it left him free to face either way, and it would fill his pockets more genteelly than would open robbery. On the other hand, he would offend his brother and the fanatical party, with whom he commonly acted. They were looking to see him assert himself. They were looking to hear him declare himself. And
Harshly Count Hannibal’s voice broke in on his thoughts; harshly, a something sinister in its tone.
“Where is your brother?” he said. And it was evident that he had not noted his absence until then. “My lord’s Vicar of all people should be here!” he continued, leaning forward and looking round the table. His brow was stormy.
Lescot squirmed under his eye; Thuriot turned pale and trembled. It was one of the canons of St.-Maurice, who at length took on himself to answer.
“His lordship requested, M. le Comte,” he ventured, “that you would excuse him. His duties”
“Is he ill?”
“He”
“Is he ill, sirrah?” Tavannes roared. And while all bowed before the lightning of his eye, no man at the table knew what had roused the sudden tempest. But Bigot knew, who stood by the door, and whose ear, keen as his master’s, had caught the distant report of a musket shot. “If he be not ill,” Tavannes continued, rising and looking round the table in search of signs of guilt, “and there be foul play here, and he the player, the Bishop’s own hand shall not save him! By Heaven it shall not! Nor yours!” he continued, looking fiercely at Montsoreau. “Nor your master’s!”
The Lieutenant-Governor sprang to his feet. “M. le Comte,” he stammered, “I do not understand this language! Nor this heat, which may be real or not! All I say is, if there be foul play here”
“If!” Tavannes retorted. “At least, if there be, there be gibbets too! And I see necks!” he added, leaning forward. “Necks!” And then, with a look of flame, “Let no man leave this table until I return,” he cried, “or he will have to deal with me. Nay,” he continued, changing his tone abruptly, as the prudence, which never entirely left him—and perhaps the remembrance of the other’s fifty spearmen—sobered him in the midst of his rage, “I am hasty. I mean not you, M. de Montsoreau! Ride where you will; ride with me, if you will, and I will thank you. Only remember, until midnight Angers is mine!”
He was still speaking when he moved from the table, and, leaving all staring after him, strode down the room. An instant he paused on the threshold and looked back; then he passed out, and clattered down the stone stairs. His horse and riders were waiting, but, his foot in the stirrup, he stayed for a word with Bigot.
“Is it so?” he growled.
The Norman did not speak, but pointed towards the Place Ste.-Croix, whence an occasional shot made answer for him.
In those days the streets of the Black City were narrow and crooked, overhung by timber houses, and hampered by booths; nor could Tavannes from the old Town Hall—now abandoned—see the Place Ste.-Croix. But that he could cure. He struck spurs to his horse, and, followed by his ten horsemen, he clattered noisily down the paved street. A dozen groups hurrying the same way sprang panic-stricken to the walls, or saved themselves in doorways. He was up with them, he was beyond them! Another hundred yards, and he would see the Place.
And then, with a cry of rage, he drew rein a little, discovering what was before him. In the narrow gut of the way a great black banner, borne on two poles, was lurching towards him. It was moving in the van of a dark procession of priests, who, with their attendants and a crowd of devout, filled the street from wall to wall. They were chanting one of the penitential psalms, but not so loudly as to drown the uproar in the Place beyond them.
They made no way, and Count Hannibal swore furiously, suspecting treachery. But he was no madman, and at the moment the least reflection would have sent him about to seek another road. Unfortunately, as he hesitated a man sprang with a gesture of warning to his horse’s head and seized it; and Tavannes, mistaking the motive of the act, lost his self-control. He struck the fellow down, and, with a reckless word, rode headlong into the procession, shouting to the black robes to make way, make way! A cry, nay, a shriek of horror, answered him and rent the air. And in a minute the thing was done. Too late, as the Bishop’s Vicar, struck by his horse, fell screaming under its hoofs—too late, as the consecrated vessels which he had been bearing rolled in the mud, Tavannes saw that they bore the canopy and the Host!
He knew what he had done, then. Before his horse’s iron shoes struck the ground again, his face—even his face—had lost its colour. But he knew also that to hesitate now, to pause now, was to be torn in pieces; for his riders, seeing that which the banner had veiled from him, had not followed him, and he was alone, in the middle of brandished fists and weapons. He hesitated not a moment. Drawing a pistol, he spurred onwards, his horse plunging wildly among the shrieking priests; and though a hundred hands, hands of acolytes, hands of shaven monks, clutched at his bridle or gripped his boot, he got clear of them. Clear, carrying with him the memory of one face seen an instant amid the crowd, one face seen, to be ever remembered—the face of Father Pezelay, white, evil, scarred, distorted by wicked triumph.
Behind him, the thunder of “Sacrilege! Sacrilege!” rose to Heaven, and men were gathering. In front the crowd which skirmished about the inn was less dense, and, ignorant of the thing that had happened in the narrow street, made ready way for him, the boldest recoiling before the look on his face. Some who stood nearest to the inn, and had begun to hurl stones at the window and to beat on the doors—which had only the minute before closed on Badelon and his prisoners—supposed that he had his riders behind him; and these fled apace. But he knew better even than they the value of time; he pushed his horse up to the gates, and hammered them with his boot while be kept his pistol-hand towards the Place and the cathedral, watching for the transformation which he knew would come!
And come it did; on a sudden, in a twinkling! A white-faced monk, frenzy in his eyes, appeared in the midst of the crowd. He stood and tore his garments before the people, and, stooping, threw dust on his head. A second and a third followed his example; then from a thousand throats the cry of “Sacrilege! Sacrilege!” rolled up, while clerks flew wildly hither and thither shrieking the tale, and priests denied the Sacraments to Angers until it should purge itself of the evil thing.
By that time Count Hannibal had saved himself behind the great gates, by the skin of his teeth. The gates had opened to him in time. But none knew better than he that Angers had no gates thick enough, nor walls of a height, to save him for many hours from the storm he had let loose!