Count Hannibal by Stanley J. Weyman

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He was a burly man, grim and truculent in appearance, and his follower
was like him. Tignonville hesitated, then turned and ascended. But as
soon as he had reached the landing where they could pass him, he turned
again.

"I have made a mistake, I think," he said. "I have entered the wrong
house."

"Are you for the house next the Golden Maid, Monsieur?"

"Yes."

"Rue Cinq Diamants, Quarter of the Boucherie?"

"Yes."

"No mistake, then," the stout man replied firmly. "You are early, that
is all. You have arms, I see. Maillard!"--to the person whose voice
Tignonville had heard at the head of the stairs--"A white sleeve, and a
cross for Monsieur's hat, and his name on the register. Come, make a
beginning! Make a beginning, man."

"To be sure, Monsieur. All is ready."

"Then lose no time, I say. Here are others, also early in the good
cause. Gentlemen, welcome! Welcome all who are for the true faith!
Death to the heretics! 'Kill, and no quarter!' is the word to-night!"

"Death to the heretics!" the last comers cried in chorus. "Kill and no
quarter! At what hour, M. le Prevot?"

"At daybreak," the Provost answered importantly. "But have no fear, the
tocsin will sound. The King and our good man M. de Guise have all in
hand. A white sleeve, a white cross, and a sharp knife shall rid Paris
of the vermin! Gentlemen of the quarter, the word of the night is 'Kill,
and no quarter! Death to the Huguenots!'"

"Death! Death to the Huguenots! Kill, and no quarter!" A dozen--the
room was beginning to fill--waved their weapons and echoed the cry.

Tignonville had been fortunate enough to apprehend the position--and the
peril in which he stood--before Maillard advanced to him bearing a white
linen sleeve. In the instant of discovery his heart had stood a moment,
the blood had left his cheeks; but with some faults, he was no coward,
and he managed to hide his emotion. He held out his left arm, and
suffered the beadle to pass the sleeve over it and to secure the white
linen above the elbow. Then at a gesture he gave up his velvet cap, and
saw it decorated with a white cross of the same material.

"Now the register, Monsieur," Maillard continued briskly; and waving him
in the direction of a clerk, who sat at the end of the long table, having
a book and a ink-horn before him, he turned to the next comer.

Tignonville would fain have avoided the ordeal of the register, but the
clerk's eye was on him. He had been fortunate so far, but he knew that
the least breath of suspicion would destroy him, and summoning his wits
together he gave his name in a steady voice. "Anne Desmartins." It was
his mother's maiden name, and the first that came into his mind.

"Of Paris?"

"Recently; by birth, of the Limousin."

"Good, Monsieur," the clerk answered, writing in the name. And he turned
to the next. "And you, my friend?"

CHAPTER IV. THE EVE OF THE FEAST.

It was Tignonville's salvation that the men who crowded the long white-
walled room, and exchanged vile boasts under the naked flaring lights,
were of all classes. There were butchers, natives of the surrounding
quarter whom the scent of blood had drawn from their lairs; and there
were priests with hatchet faces, who whispered in the butchers' ears.
There were gentlemen of the robe, and plain mechanics, rich merchants in
their gowns, and bare-armed ragpickers, sleek choristers, and shabby led-
captains; but differ as they might in other points, in one thing all were
alike. From all, gentle or simple, rose the same cry for blood, the same
aspiration to be first equipped for the fray. In one corner a man of
rank stood silent and apart, his hand on his sword, the working of his
face alone betraying the storm that reigned within. In another, a Norman
horse-dealer talked in low whispers with two thieves. In a third, a gold-
wire drawer addressed an admiring group from the Sorbonne; and meantime
the middle of the floor grew into a seething mass of muttering, scowling
men, through whom the last comers, thrust as they might, had much ado to
force their way.

And from all under the low ceiling rose a ceaseless hum, though none
spoke loud. "Kill! kill! kill!" was the burden; the accompaniment such
profanities and blasphemies as had long disgraced the Paris pulpits, and
day by day had fanned the bigotry--already at a white heat--of the
Parisian populace. Tignonville turned sick as he listened, and would
fain have closed his ears. But for his life he dared not. And presently
a cripple in a beggar's garb, a dwarfish, filthy creature with matted
hair, twitched his sleeve, and offered him a whetstone.

"Are you sharp, noble sir?" he asked, with a leer. "Are you sharp? It's
surprising how the edge goes on the bone. A cut and thrust? Well, every
man to his taste. But give me a broad butcher's knife and I'll ask no
help, be it man, woman, or child!"

A bystander, a lean man in rusty black, chuckled as he listened.

"But the woman or the child for choice, eh, Jehan?" he said. And he
looked to Tignonville to join in the jest.

"Ay, give me a white throat for choice!" the cripple answered, with
horrible zest. "And there'll be delicate necks to prick to-night! Lord,
I think I hear them squeal! You don't need it, sir?" he continued, again
proffering the whetstone. "No? Then I'll give my blade another whet, in
the name of our Lady, the Saints, and good Father Pezelay!"

"Ay, and give me a turn!" the lean man cried, proffering his weapon. "May
I die if I do not kill one of the accursed for every finger of my hands!"

"And toe of my feet!" the cripple answered, not to be outdone. "And toe
of my feet! A full score!"

"'Tis according to your sins!" the other, who had something of the air of
a Churchman, answered. "The more heretics killed, the more sins
forgiven. Remember that, brother, and spare not if your soul be
burdened! They blaspheme God and call Him paste! In the paste of their
own blood," he continued ferociously, "I will knead them and roll them
out, saith the good Father Pezelay, my master!"

The cripple crossed himself. "Whom God keep," he said. "He is a good
man. But you are looking ill, noble sir?" he continued, peering
curiously at the young Huguenot.

"'Tis the heat," Tignonville muttered. "The night is stifling, and the
lights make it worse. I will go nearer the door."

He hoped to escape them; he had some hope even of escaping from the room
and giving the alarm. But when he had forced his way to the threshold,
he found it guarded by two pikemen; and glancing back to see if his
movements were observed--for he knew that his agitation might have
awakened suspicion--he found that the taller of the two whom he had left,
the black-garbed man with the hungry face, was watching him a-tiptoe,
over the shoulders of the crowd.

With that, and the sense of his impotence, the lights began to swim
before his eyes. The catastrophe that overhung his party, the fate so
treacherously prepared for all whom he loved and all with whom his
fortunes were bound up, confused his brain almost to delirium. He strove
to think, to calculate chances, to imagine some way in which he might
escape from the room, or from a window might cry the alarm. But he could
not bring his mind to a point. Instead, in lightning flashes he foresaw
what must happen: his betrothed in the hands of the murderers; the fair
face that had smiled on him frozen with terror; brave men, the fighters
of Montauban, the defenders of Angely, strewn dead through the dark lanes
of the city. And now a gust of passion, and now a shudder of fear,
seized him; and in any other assembly his agitation must have led to
detection. But in that room were many twitching faces and trembling
hands. Murder, cruel, midnight, and most foul, wrung even from the
murderers her toll of horror. While some, to hide the nervousness they
felt, babbled of what they would do, others betrayed by the intentness
with which they awaited the signal, the dreadful anticipations that
possessed their souls.

Before he had formed any plan, a movement took place near the door. The
stairs shook beneath the sudden trampling of feet, a voice cried "De par
le Roi! De par le Roi!" and the babel of the room died down. The throng
swayed and fell back on either hand, and Marshal Tavannes entered,
wearing half armour, with a white sash; he was followed by six or eight
gentlemen in like guise. Amid cries of "Jarnac! Jarnac!"--for to him
the credit of that famous fight, nominally won by the King's brother, was
popularly given--he advanced up the room, met the Provost of the
merchants, and began to confer with him. Apparently he asked the latter
to select some men who could be trusted on a special mission, for the
Provost looked round and beckoned to his side one or two of higher rank
than the herd, and then one or two of the most truculent aspect.

Tignonville trembled lest he should be singled out. He had hidden
himself as well as he could at the rear of the crowd by the door; but his
dress, so much above the common, rendered him conspicuous. He fancied
that the Provost's eye ranged the crowd for him; and to avoid it and
efface himself he moved a pace to his left.

The step was fatal. It saved him from the Provost, but it brought him
face to face and eye to eye with Count Hannibal, who stood in the first
rank at his brother's elbow. Tavannes stared an instant as if he doubted
his eyesight. Then, as doubt gave slow place to certainty, and surprise
to amazement, he smiled. And after a moment he looked another way.

Tignonville's heart gave a great bump and seemed to stand still. The
lights whirled before his eyes, there was a roaring in his ears. He
waited for the word that should denounce him. It did not come. And
still it did not come; and Marshal Tavannes was turning. Yes, turning,
and going; the Provost, bowing low, was attending him to the door; his
suite were opening on either side to let him pass. And Count Hannibal?
Count Hannibal was following also, as if nothing had occurred. As if he
had seen nothing!

The young man caught his breath. Was it possible that he had imagined
the start of recognition, the steady scrutiny, the sinister smile? No;
for as Tavannes followed the others, he hung an instant on his heel,
their eyes met again, and once more he smiled. In the next breath he was
gone through the doorway, his spurs rang on the stairs; and the babel of
the crowd, checked by the great man's presence, broke out anew, and
louder.

Tignonville shuddered. He was saved as by a miracle; saved, he did not
know how. But the respite, though its strangeness diverted his thoughts
for a while, brought short relief. The horrors which impended over
others surged afresh into his mind, and filled him with a maddening sense
of impotence. To be one hour, only one short half-hour without! To run
through the sleeping streets, and scream in the dull ears which a King's
flatteries had stopped as with wool! To go up and down and shake into
life the guests whose royal lodgings daybreak would turn to a shambles
reeking with their blood! They slept, the gentle Teligny, the brave
Pardaillan, the gallant Rochefoucauld, Piles the hero of St. Jean, while
the cruel city stirred rustling about them, and doom crept whispering to
the door. They slept, they and a thousand others, gentle and simple,
young and old; while the half-mad Valois shifted between two opinions,
and the Italian woman, accursed daughter of an accursed race, cried,
"Hark!" at her window, and looked eastwards for the dawn.

And the women? The woman he was to marry? And the others? In an access
of passion he thrust aside those who stood between, he pushed his way,
disregarding complaints, disregarding opposition, to the door. But the
pikes lay across it, and he could not utter a syllable to save his life.
He would have flung himself on the doorkeepers, for he was losing control
of himself; but as he drew back for the spring, a hand clutched his
sleeve, and a voice he loathed hummed in his ear.

"No, fair play, noble sir; fair play!" the cripple Jehan muttered,
forcibly drawing him aside. "All start together, and it's no man's loss.
But if there is any little business," he continued, lowering his tone and
peering with a cunning look into the other's face, "of your own, noble
sir, or your friends', anything or anybody you want despatched, count on
me. It were better, perhaps, you didn't appear in it yourself, and a man
you can trust--"

"What do you mean?" the young man cried, recoiling from him.

"No need to look surprised, noble sir," the lean man, who had joined
them, answered in a soothing tone. "Who kills to-night does God service,
and who serves God much may serve himself a little. 'Thou shalt not
muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn,' says good Father Pezelay."

"Hear, hear!" the cripple chimed in eagerly, his impatience such that he
danced on his toes. "He preaches as well as the good father his master!
So frankly, noble sir, what is it? What is it? A woman grown ugly? A
rich man grown old, with perchance a will in his chest? Or a young heir
that stands in my lord's way? Whichever it be, or whatever it be, trust
me and our friend here, and my butcher's gully shall cut the knot."

Tignonville shook his head.

"But something there is," the lean man persisted obstinately; and he cast
a suspicious glance at Tignonville's clothes. It was evident that the
two had discussed him, and the motives of his presence there. "Have the
dice proved fickle, my lord, and are you for the jewellers' shops on the
bridge to fill your purse again? If so, take my word, it were better to
go three than one, and we'll enlist."

"Ay, we know shops on the bridge where you can plunge your arm elbow-deep
in gold," the cripple muttered, his eyes sparkling greedily. "There's
Baillet's, noble sir! There's a shop for you! And there's the man's
shop who works for the King. He's lame like me. And I know the way to
all. Oh, it will be a merry night if they ring before the dawn. It must
be near daybreak now. And what's that?"

Ay, what was it? A score of voices called for silence; a breathless hush
fell on the crowd. A moment the fiercest listened, with parted lips and
starting eyes. Then, "It was the bell!" cried one, "let us out!" "It
was not!" cried another. "It was a pistol shot!" "Anyhow let us out!"
the crowd roared in chorus; "let us out!" And they pressed in a furious
mass towards the door, as if they would force it, signal or no signal.

But the pikemen stood fast, and the throng, checked in their first rush,
turned on one another, and broke into wrangling and disputing; boasting,
and calling Heaven and the saints to witness how thoroughly, how
pitilessly, how remorselessly they would purge Paris of this leprosy when
the signal did sound. Until again above the babel a man cried "Silence!"
and again they listened. And this time, dulled by walls and distance,
but unmistakable by the ears of fear or hate, the heavy note of a bell
came to them on the hot night air. It was the boom, sullen and menacing,
of the death signal.

The doorkeepers lowered their pikes, and with a wild rush, as of wolves
swarming on their prey, the band stormed the door, and thrust and
struggled and battled a way down the narrow staircase, and along the
narrow passage. "A bas les Huguenots! Mort aux Huguenots!" they
shouted; and shrieking, sweating, spurning with vile hands, viler faces,
they poured pell-mell into the street, and added their clamour to the
boom of the tocsin that, as by magic and in a moment, turned the streets
of Paris into a hell of blood and cruelty. For as it was here, so it was
in a dozen other quarters.

Quickly as they streamed out--and to have issued more quickly would have
been impossible--fiercely as they pushed and fought and clove their way,
Tignonville was of the foremost. And for a moment, seeing the street
clear before him and almost empty, the Huguenot thought that he might do
something. He might outstrip the stream of rapine, he might carry the
alarm; at worst he might reach his betrothed before harm befell her. But
when he had sped fifty yards, his heart sank. True, none passed him; but
under the spell of the alarm-bell the stones themselves seemed to turn to
men. Houses, courts, alleys, the very churches vomited men. In a
twinkling the street was alive with men, roared with them as with a
rushing tide, gleamed with their lights and weapons, thundered with the
volume of their thousand voices. He was no longer ahead, men were
running before him, behind him, on his right hand and on his left. In
every side-street, every passage, men were running; and not men only, but
women, children, furious creatures without age or sex. And all the time
the bell tolled overhead, tolled faster and faster, and louder and
louder; and shots and screams, and the clash of arms, and the fall of
strong doors began to swell the maelstrom of sound.

He was in the Rue St. Honore now, and speeding westward. But the flood
still rose with him, and roared abreast of him. Nay, it outstripped him.
When he came, panting, within sight of his goal, and lacked but a hundred
paces of it, he found his passage barred by a dense mass of people moving
slowly to meet him. In the heart of the press the light of a dozen
torches shone on half as many riders mailed and armed; whose eyes, as
they moved on, and the furious gleaming eyes of the rabble about them,
never left the gabled roofs on their right. On these from time to time a
white-clad figure showed itself, and passed from chimney-stack to chimney-
stack, or, stooping low, ran along the parapet. Every time that this
happened, the men on horseback pointed upwards and the mob foamed with
rage.

Tignonville groaned, but he could not help. Unable to go forward, he
turned, and with others hurrying, shouting, and brandishing weapons, he
pressed into the Rue du Roule, passed through it, and gained the Bethizy.
But here, as he might have foreseen, all passage was barred at the Hotel
Ponthieu by a horde of savages, who danced and yelled and sang songs
round the Admiral's body, which lay in the middle of the way; while to
right and left men were bursting into houses and forcing new victims into
the street. The worst had happened there, and he turned panting,
regained the Rue St. Honore, and, crossing it and turning left-handed,
darted through side streets until he came again into the main
thoroughfare a little beyond the Croix du Tiroir, that marked the corner
of Mademoiselle's house.

Here his last hope left him. The street swarmed with bands of men
hurrying to and fro as in a sacked city. The scum of the Halles, the
rabble of the quarter poured this way and that, here at random, there
swayed and directed by a few knots of men-at-arms, whose corselets
reflected the glare of a hundred torches. At one time and within sight,
three or four houses were being stormed. On every side rose
heart-rending cries, mingled with brutal laughter, with savage jests,
with cries of "To the river!" The most cruel of cities had burst its
bounds and was not to be stayed; nor would be stayed until the Seine ran
red to the sea, and leagues below, in pleasant Normandy hamlets, men, for
fear of the pestilence, pushed the corpses from the bridges with poles
and boat-hooks.

All this Tignonville saw, though his eyes, leaping the turmoil, looked
only to the door at which he had left Mademoiselle a few hours earlier.
There a crowd of men pressed and struggled; but from the spot where he
stood he could see no more. That was enough, however. Rage nerved him,
and despair; his world was dying round him. If he could not save her he
would avenge her. Recklessly he plunged into the tumult; blade in hand,
with vigorous blows he thrust his way through, his white sleeve and the
white cross in his hat gaining him passage until he reached the fringe of
the band who beset the door. Here his first attempt to pass failed; and
he might have remained hampered by the crowd, if a squad of archers had
not ridden up. As they spurred to the spot, heedless over whom they
rode, he clutched a stirrup, and was borne with them into the heart of
the crowd. In a twinkling he stood on the threshold of the house, face
to face and foot to foot with Count Hannibal, who stood also on the
threshold, but with his back to the door, which, unbarred and unbolted,
gaped open behind him.

CHAPTER V. ROUGH WOOING.

The young man had caught the delirium that was abroad that night. The
rage of the trapped beast was in his heart, his hand held a sword. To
strike blindly, to strike without question the first who withstood him
was the wild-beast instinct; and if Count Hannibal had not spoken on the
instant, the Marshal's brother had said his last word in the world.

Yet as he stood there, a head above the crowd, he seemed unconscious
alike of Tignonville and the point that all but pricked his breast. Swart
and grim-visaged, his harsh features distorted by the glare which shone
upon him, he looked beyond the Huguenot to the sea of tossing arms and
raging faces that surged about the saddles of the horsemen. It was to
these he spoke.

"Begone, dogs!" he cried, in a voice that startled the nearest, "or I
will whip you away with my stirrup-leathers! Do you hear? Begone! This
house is not for you! Burn, kill, plunder where you will, but go hence!"

"But 'tis on the list!" one of the wretches yelled. "'Tis on the list!"
And he pushed forward until he stood at Tignonville's elbow.

"And has no cross!" shrieked another, thrusting himself forward in his
turn. "See you, let us by, whoever you are! In the King's name, kill!
It has no cross!"

"Then," Tavannes thundered, "will I nail you for a cross to the front of
it! No cross, say you? I will make one of you, foul crow!"

And as he spoke, his arm shot out; the man recoiled, his fellow likewise.
But one of the mounted archers took up the matter.

"Nay, but, my lord," he said--he knew Tavannes--"it is the King's will
there be no favour shown to-night to any, small or great. And this house
is registered, and is full of heretics."

"And has no cross!" the rabble urged in chorus. And they leapt up and
down in their impatience, and to see the better. "And has no cross!"
they persisted. They could understand that. Of what use crosses, if
they were not to kill where there was no cross? Daylight was not
plainer. Tavannes' face grew dark, and he shook his finger at the archer
who had spoken.

"Rogue," he cried, "does the King's will run here only? Are there no
other houses to sack or men to kill, that you must beard me? And favour?
You will have little of mine, if you do not budge and take your vile tail
with you! Off! Or must I cry 'Tavannes!' and bid my people sweep you
from the streets?"

The foremost rank hesitated, awed by his manner and his name; while the
rearmost, attracted by the prospect of easier pillage, had gone off
already. The rest wavered; and another and another broke away. The
archer who had put himself forward saw which way the wind was blowing,
and he shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, my lord, as you will," he said sullenly. "All the same I would
advise you to close the door and bolt and bar. We shall not be the last
to call to-day." And he turned his horse in ill-humour, and forced it,
snorting and plunging, through the crowd.

"Bolt and bar?" Tavannes cried after him in fury. "See you my answer to
that!" And turning on the threshold, "Within there!" he cried. "Open
the shutters and set lights, and the table! Light, I say; light! And
lay on quickly, if you value your lives! And throw open, for I sup with
your mistress to-night, if it rain blood without! Do you hear me,
rogues? Set on!"

He flung the last word at the quaking servants; then he turned again to
the street. He saw that the crowd was melting, and, looking in
Tignonville's face, he laughed aloud.

"Does Monsieur sup with us?" he said. "To complete the party? Or will
he choose to sup with our friends yonder? It is for him to say. I
confess, for my part," with an awful smile, "their hospitality seems a
trifle crude, and boisterous."

Tignonville looked behind him and shuddered. The same horde which had so
lately pressed about the door had found a victim lower down the street,
and, as Tavannes spoke, came driving back along the roadway, a mass of
tossing lights and leaping, running figures, from the heart of which rose
the screams of a creature in torture. So terrible were the sounds that
Tignonville leant half swooning against the door-post; and even the iron
heart of Tavannes seemed moved for a moment.

For a moment only: then he looked at his companion, and his lip curled.

"You'll join us, I think?" he said, with an undisguised sneer. "Then,
after you, Monsieur. They are opening the shutters. Doubtless the table
is laid, and Mademoiselle is expecting us. After you, Monsieur, if you
please. A few hours ago I should have gone first, for you, in this
house"--with a sinister smile--"were at home! Now, we have changed
places."

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