Count Hannibal by Stanley J. Weyman

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"Curse on the water!" Tuez-les-Moines answered in a frenzied whisper.
"And on this Jezebel. Let us kill her and him! What matter afterwards?"
And he tried to shake off La Tribe's grasp.

But the minister held him desperately. "Are you mad? Are you mad?" he
answered. "What can we do against thirty? Let us be gone while we can.
Let us be gone! Come."

"Ay, come," Perrot cried, assenting reluctantly. He had taken no side
hitherto. "The luck is against us! 'Tis no use to-night, man!" And he
turned with an air of sullen resignation. Letting his legs drop through
the trap, he followed the bearer of the tidings out of sight. Another
made up his mind to go, and went. Then only Tignonville, holding the
lanthorn, and La Tribe, who feared to release Tuez-les-Moines, remained
with the fanatic.

The Countess's eyes met her old lover's, and whether old memories
overcame her, or, now that the danger was nearly past, she began to give
way, she swayed a little on her feet. But he did not notice it. He was
sunk in black rage--rage against her, rage against himself.

"Take the light," she muttered unsteadily. "And--and he must follow!"

"And you?"

But she could bear it no longer. "Oh, go," she wailed. "Go! Will you
never go? If you love me, if you ever loved me, I implore you to go."

He had betrayed little of a lover's feeling. But he could not resist
that appeal, and he turned silently. Seizing Tuez-les-Moines by the
other arm, he drew him by force to the trap.

"Quiet, fool," he muttered savagely when the man would have resisted,
"and go down! If we stay to kill him, we shall have no way of escape,
and his life will be dearly bought. Down, man, down!" And between them,
in a struggling silence, with now and then an audible rap, or a ring of
metal, the two forced the desperado to descend.

La Tribe followed hastily. Tignonville was the last to go. In the act
of disappearing he raised his lanthorn for a last glimpse of the
Countess. To his astonishment the passage was empty; she was gone. Hard
by him a door stood an inch or two ajar, and he guessed that it was hers,
and swore under his breath, hating her at that moment. But he did not
guess how nicely she had calculated her strength; how nearly exhaustion
had overcome her; or that, even while he paused--a fatal pause had he
known it--eyeing the dark opening of the door, she lay as one dead, on
the bed within. She had fallen in a swoon, from which she did not
recover until the sun had risen, and marched across one quarter of the
heavens.

Nor did he see another thing, or he might have hastened his steps. Before
the yellow light of his lanthorn faded from the ceiling of the passage,
the door of the room farthest from the trap slid open. A man, whose
eyes, until darkness swallowed him, shone strangely in a face
extraordinarily softened, came out on tip-toe. This man stood awhile,
listening. At length, hearing those below utter a cry of dismay, he
awoke to sudden activity. He opened with a turn of the key the door
which stood at his elbow, the door which led to the other part of the
house. He vanished through it. A second later a sharp whistle pierced
the darkness of the courtyard, and brought a dozen sleepers to their
senses and their feet. A moment, and the courtyard hummed with voices,
above which one voice rang clear and insistent. With a startled cry the
inn awoke.

CHAPTER XXV. THE COMPANY OF THE BLEEDING HEART.

"But why," Madame St. Lo asked, sticking her arms akimbo, "why stay in
this forsaken place a day and a night, when six hours in the saddle would
set us in Angers?"

"Because," Tavannes replied coldly--he and his cousin were walking before
the gateway of the inn--"the Countess is not well, and will be the
better, I think, for staying a day."

"She slept soundly enough! I'll answer for that!"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"She never raised her head this morning, though my women were shrieking
'Murder!' next door, and--Name of Heaven!" Madame resumed, after breaking
off abruptly, and shading her eyes with her hand, "what comes here? Is
it a funeral? Or a pilgrimage? If all the priests about here are as
black, no wonder M. Rabelais fell out with them!"

The inn stood without the walls for the convenience of those who wished
to take the road early: a little also, perhaps, because food and forage
were cheaper, and the wine paid no town-dues. Four great roads met
before the house, along the most easterly of which the sombre company
which had caught Madame St. Lo's attention could be seen approaching. At
first Count Hannibal supposed with his companion that the travellers were
conveying to the grave the corpse of some person of distinction; for the
_cortege_ consisted mainly of priests and the like mounted on mules, and
clothed for the most part in black. Black also was the small banner
which waved above them, and bore in place of arms the emblem of the
Bleeding Heart. But a second glance failed to discover either litter or
bier; and a nearer approach showed that the travellers, whether they wore
the tonsure or not, bore weapons of one kind or another.

Suddenly Madame St. Lo clapped her hands, and proclaimed in great
astonishment that she knew them.

"Why, there is Father Boucher, the Cure of St. Benoist!" she said, "and
Father Pezelay of St. Magloire. And there is another I know, though I
cannot remember his name! They are preachers from Paris! That is who
they are! But what can they be doing here? Is it a pilgrimage, think
you?"

"Ay, a pilgrimage of Blood!" Count Hannibal answered between his teeth.
And, turning to him to learn what moved him, she saw the look in his eyes
which portended a storm. Before she could ask a question, however, the
gloomy company, which had first appeared in the distance, moving, an inky
blot, through the hot sunshine of the summer morning, had drawn near, and
was almost abreast of them. Stepping from her side, he raised his hand
and arrested the march.

"Who is master here?" he asked haughtily.

"I am the leader," answered a stout pompous Churchman, whose small
malevolent eyes belied the sallow fatuity of his face. "I, M. de
Tavannes, by your leave."

"And you, by your leave," Tavannes sneered, "are--"

"Archdeacon and Vicar of the Bishop of Angers and Prior of the Lesser
Brethren of St. Germain, M. le Comte. Visitor also of the Diocese of
Angers," the dignitary continued, puffing out his cheeks, "and Chaplain
to the Lieutenant-Governor of Saumur, whose unworthy brother I am."

"A handsome glove, and well embroidered!" Tavannes retorted in a tone of
disdain. "The hand I see yonder!" He pointed to the lean parchment mask
of Father Pezelay, who coloured ever so faintly, but held his peace under
the sneer. "You are bound for Angers?" Count Hannibal continued. "For
what purpose, Sir Prior?"

"His Grace the Bishop is absent, and in his absence--"

"You go to fill his city with strife! I know you! Not you!" he
continued, contemptuously turning from the Prior, and regarding the third
of the principal figures of the party. "But you! You were the Cure who
got the mob together last All Souls'."

"I speak the words of Him Who sent me!" answered the third Churchman,
whose brooding face and dull curtained eyes gave no promise of the fits
of frenzied eloquence which had made his pulpit famous in Paris.

"Then Kill and Burn are His alphabet!" Tavannes retorted, and heedless of
the start of horror which a saying so near blasphemy excited among the
Churchmen, he turned to Father Pezelay. "And you! You, too, I know!" he
continued. "And you know me! And take this from me. Turn, father!
Turn! Or worse than a broken head--you bear the scar, I see--will befall
you. These good persons, whom you have moved, unless I am in error, to
take this journey, may not know me; but you do, and can tell them. If
they will to Angers, they must to Angers. But if I find trouble in
Angers when I come, I will hang some one high. Don't scowl at me,
man!"--in truth, the look of hate in Father Pezelay's eyes was enough to
provoke the exclamation. "Some one, and it shall not be a bare patch on
the crown will save his windpipe from squeezing!"

A murmur of indignation broke from the preachers' attendants; one or two
made a show of drawing their weapons. But Count Hannibal paid no heed to
them, and had already turned on his heel when Father Pezelay spurred his
mule a pace or two forward. Snatching a heavy brass cross from one of
the acolytes, he raised it aloft, and in the voice which had often
thrilled the heated congregation of St. Magloire, he called on Tavannes
to pause.

"Stand, my lord!" he cried. "And take warning! Stand, reckless and
profane, whose face is set hard as a stone, and his heart as a flint,
against High Heaven and Holy Church! Stand and hear! Behold the word of
the Lord is gone out against this city, even against Angers, for the
unbelief thereof! Her place shall be left unto her desolate, and her
children shall be dashed against the stones! Woe unto you, therefore, if
you gainsay it, or fall short of that which is commanded! You shall
perish as Achan, the son of Charmi, and as Saul! The curse that has gone
out against you shall not tarry, nor your days continue! For the
Canaanitish woman that is in your house, and for the thought that is in
your heart, the place that was yours is given to another! Yea, the sword
is even now drawn that shall pierce your side!"

"You are more like to split my ears!" Count Hannibal answered sternly.
"And now mark me! Preach as you please here. But a word in Angers, and
though you be shaven twice over, I will have you silenced after a fashion
which will not please you! If you value your tongue therefore,
father--Oh, you shake off the dust, do you? Well, pass on! 'Tis wise,
perhaps."

And undismayed by the scowling brows, and the cross ostentatiously lifted
to heaven, he gazed after the procession as it moved on under its swaying
banner, now one and now another of the acolytes looking back and raising
his hands to invoke the bolt of Heaven on the blasphemer. As the
_cortege_ passed the huge watering-troughs, and the open gateway of the
inn, the knot of persons congregated there fell on their knees. In
answer the Churchmen raised their banner higher, and began to sing the
_Eripe me, Domine_! and to its strains, now vengeful, now despairing, now
rising on a wave of menace, they passed slowly into the distance, slowly
towards Angers and the Loire.

Suddenly Madame St. Lo twitched his sleeve. "Enough for me!" she cried
passionately. "I go no farther with you!"

"Ah?"

"No farther!" she repeated. She was pale, she shivered. "Many thanks,
my cousin, but we part company here. I do not go to Angers. I have seen
horrors enough. I will take my people, and go to my aunt by Tours and
the east road. For you, I foresee what will happen. You will perish
between the hammer and the anvil."

"Ah?"

"You play too fine a game," she continued, her face quivering. "Give
over the girl to her lover, and send away her people with her. And wash
your hands of her and hers. Or you will see her fall, and fall beside
her! Give her to him, I say--give her to him!"

"My wife?"

"Wife?" she echoed, for, fickle, and at all times swept away by the
emotions of the moment, she was in earnest now. "Is there a tie," and
she pointed after the vanishing procession, "that they cannot unloose?
That they will not unloose? Is there a life which escapes if they doom
it? Did the Admiral escape? Or Rochefoucauld? Or Madame de Luns in old
days? I tell you they go to rouse Angers against you, and I see
beforehand what will happen. She will perish, and you with her. Wife? A
pretty wife, at whose door you took her lover last night."

"And at your door!" he answered quietly, unmoved by the gibe.

But she did not heed. "I warned you of that!" she cried. "And you would
not believe me. I told you he was following. And I warn you of this.
You are between the hammer and the anvil, M. le Comte! If Tignonville
does not murder you in your bed--"

"I hold him in my power."

"Then Holy Church will fall on you and crush you. For me, I have seen
enough and more than enough. I go to Tours by the east road."

He shrugged his shoulders. "As you please," he said.

She flung away in disgust with him. She could not understand a man who
played fast and loose at such a time. The game was too fine for her, its
danger too apparent, the gain too small. She had, too, a woman's dread
of the Church, a woman's belief in the power of the dead hand to punish.
And in half an hour her orders were given. In two hours her people were
gathered, and she departed by the eastward road, three of Tavannes'
riders reinforcing her servants for a part of the way. Count Hannibal
stood to watch them start, and noticed Bigot riding by the side of
Suzanne's mule. He smiled; and presently, as he turned away, he did a
thing rare with him--he laughed outright.

A laugh which reflected a mood rare as itself. Few had seen Count
Hannibal's eye sparkle as it sparkled now; few had seen him laugh as he
laughed, walking to and fro in the sunshine before the inn. His men
watched him, and wondered, and liked it little, for one or two who had
overheard his altercation with the Churchmen had reported it, and there
was shaking of heads over it. The man who had singed the Pope's beard
and chucked cardinals under the chin was growing old, and the most daring
of the others had no mind to fight with foes whose weapons were not of
this world.

Count Hannibal's gaiety, however, was well grounded, had they known it.
He was gay, not because he foresaw peril, and it was his nature to love
peril; not--in the main, though a little, perhaps--because he knew that
the woman whose heart he desired to win had that night stood between him
and death; not, though again a little, perhaps, because she had confirmed
his choice by conduct which a small man might have deprecated, but which
a great man loved; but chiefly, because the events of the night had
placed in his grasp two weapons by the aid of which he looked to recover
all the ground he had lost--lost by his impulsive departure from the pall
of conduct on which he had started.

Those weapons were Tignonville, taken like a rat in a trap by the rising
of the water; and the knowledge that the Countess had stolen the precious
packet from his pillow. The knowledge--for he had lain and felt her
breath upon his cheek, he had lain and felt her hand beneath his pillow,
he had lain while the impulse to fling his arms about her had been almost
more than he could tame! He had lain and suffered her to go, to pass out
safely as she had passed in. And then he had received his reward in the
knowledge that, if she robbed him, she robbed him not for herself; and
that where it was a question of his life she did not fear to risk her
own.

When he came, indeed, to that point, he trembled. How narrowly had he
been saved from misjudging her! Had he not lain and waited, had he not
possessed himself in patience, he might have thought her in collusion
with the old lover whom he found at her door, and with those who came to
slay him. Either he might have perished unwarned; or escaping that
danger, he might have detected her with Tignonville and lost for all time
the ideal of a noble woman.

He had escaped that peril. More, he had gained the weapons we have
indicated; and the sense of power, in regard to her, almost intoxicated
him. Surely if he wielded those weapons to the best advantage, if he
strained generosity to the uttermost, the citadel of her heart must yield
at last!

He had the defect of his courage and his nature, a tendency to do things
after a flamboyant fashion. He knew that her act would plunge him in
perils which she had not foreseen. If the preachers roused the Papists
of Angers, if he arrived to find men's swords whetted for the massacre
and the men themselves awaiting the signal, then if he did not give that
signal there would be trouble. There would be trouble of the kind in
which the soul of Hannibal de Tavannes revelled, trouble about the
ancient cathedral and under the black walls of the Angevin castle;
trouble amid which the hearts of common men would be as water.

Then, when things seemed at their worst, he would reveal his knowledge.
Then, when forgiveness must seem impossible, he would forgive. With the
flood of peril which she had unloosed rising round them, he would say,
"Go!" to the man who had aimed at his life; he would say to her, "I know,
and I forgive!" That, that only, would fitly crown the policy on which
he had decided from the first, though he had not hoped to conduct it on
lines so splendid as those which now dazzled him.

CHAPTER XXVI. TEMPER.

It was his gaiety, that strange unusual gaiety, still continuing, which
on the following day began by perplexing and ended by terrifying the
Countess. She could not doubt that he had missed the packet on which so
much hung and of which he had indicated the importance. But if he had
missed it, why, she asked herself, did he not speak? Why did he not cry
the alarm, search and question and pursue? Why did he not give her that
opening to tell the truth, without which even her courage failed, her
resolution died within her?

Above all, what was the secret of his strange merriment? Of the snatches
of song which broke from him, only to be hushed by her look of
astonishment? Of the parades which his horse, catching the infection,
made under him, as he tossed his riding-cane high in the air and caught
it?

Ay, what? Why, when he had suffered so great a loss, when he had been
robbed of that of which he must give account--why did he cast off his
melancholy and ride like the youngest? She wondered what the men
thought, and looking, saw them stare, saw that they watched him
stealthily, saw that they laid their heads together. What were they
thinking of it? She could not tell; and slowly a terror, more insistent
than any to which the extremity of violence would have reduced her, began
to grip her heart.

Twenty hours of rest had lifted her from the state of collapse into which
the events of the night had cast her; still her limbs at starting had
shaken under her. But the cool freshness of the early summer morning,
and the sight of the green landscape and the winding Loir, beside which
their road ran, had not failed to revive her spirits; and if he had shown
himself merely gloomy, merely sunk in revengeful thoughts, or darting
hither and thither the glance of suspicion, she felt that she could have
faced him, and on the first opportunity could have told him the truth.

But his new mood veiled she knew not what. It seemed, if she
comprehended it at all, the herald of some bizarre, some dreadful
vengeance, in harmony with his fierce and mocking spirit. Before it her
heart became as water. Even her colour little by little left her cheeks.
She knew that he had only to look at her now to read the truth; that it
was written in her face, in her shrinking figure, in the eyes which now
guiltily sought and now avoided his. And feeling sure that he did read
it and know it, she fancied that he licked his lips, as the cat which
plays with the mouse; she fancied that he gloated on her terror and her
perplexity.

This, though the day and the road were warrants for all cheerful
thoughts. On one side vineyards clothed the warm red slopes, and rose in
steps from the valley to the white buildings of a convent. On the other
the stream wound through green flats where the black cattle stood knee-
deep in grass, watched by wild-eyed and half-naked youths. Again the
travellers lost sight of the Loir, and crossing a shoulder, rode through
the dim aisles of a beech-forest, through deep rustling drifts of last
year's leaves. And out again and down again they passed, and turning
aside from the gateway, trailed along beneath the brown machicolated wall
of an old town, from the crumbling battlements of which faces
half-sleepy, half-suspicious, watched them as they moved below through
the glare and heat. Down to the river-level again, where a squalid
anchorite, seated at the mouth of a cave dug in the bank, begged of them,
and the bell of a monastery on the farther bank tolled slumberously the
hour of Nones.

And still he said nothing, and she, cowed by his mysterious gaiety, yet
spurning herself for her cowardice, was silent also. He hoped to arrive
at Angers before nightfall. What, she wondered, shivering, would happen
there? What was he planning to do to her? How would he punish her?
Brave as she was, she was a woman, with a woman's nerves; and fear and
anticipation got upon them; and his silence--his silence which must mean
a thing worse than words!

And then on a sudden, piercing all, a new thought. Was it possible that
he had other letters? If his bearing were consistent with anything, it
was consistent with that. Had he other genuine letters, or had he
duplicate letters, so that he had lost nothing, but instead had gained
the right to rack and torture her, to taunt and despise her?

That thought stung her into sudden self-betrayal. They were riding along
a broad dusty track which bordered a stone causey raised above the level
of winter floods. Impulsively she turned to him.

"You have other letters!" she cried. "You have other letters!" And
freed for the moment from her terror, she fixed her eyes on his and
strove to read his face.

He looked at her, his mouth grown hard. "What do you mean, Madame?" he
asked,

"You have other letters?"

"For whom?"

"From the King, for Angers!"

He saw that she was going to confess, that she was going to derange his
cherished plan; and unreasonable anger awoke in the man who had been more
than willing to forgive a real injury.

"Will you explain?" he said between his teeth. And his eyes glittered
unpleasantly. "What do you mean?"

"You have other letters," she cried, "besides those which I stole."

"Which you stole?" He repeated the words without passion. 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, withered 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.

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