Count Hannibal by Stanley J. Weyman

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Whatever he meant by the gibe--and some smack of an evil jest lurked in
his tone--he played the host so far as to urge his bewildered companion
along the passage and into the living-chamber on the left, where he had
seen from without that his orders to light and lay were being executed. A
dozen candles shone on the board, and lit up the apartment. What the
house contained of food and wine had been got together and set on the
table; from the low, wide window, beetle-browed and diamond-paned, which
extended the whole length of the room and looked on the street at the
height of a man's head above the roadway, the shutters had been
removed--doubtless by trembling and reluctant fingers. To such eyes of
passers-by as looked in, from the inferno of driving crowds and gleaming
weapons which prevailed outside--and not outside only, but throughout
Paris--the brilliant room and the laid table must have seemed strange
indeed!

To Tignonville, all that had happened, all that was happening, seemed a
dream: a dream his entrance under the gentle impulsion of this man who
dominated him; a dream Mademoiselle standing behind the table with
blanched face and stony eyes; a dream the cowering servants huddled in a
corner beyond her; a dream his silence, her silence, the moment of
waiting before Count Hannibal spoke.

When he did speak it was to count the servants. "One, two, three, four,
five," he said. "And two of them women. Mademoiselle is but poorly
attended. Are there not"--and he turned to her--"some lacking?"

The girl opened her lips twice, but no sound issued. The third time--

"Two went out," she muttered in a hoarse, strangled voice, "and have not
returned."

"And have not returned?" he answered, raising his eyebrows. "Then I fear
we must not wait for them. We might wait long!" And turning sharply to
the panic-stricken servants, "Go you to your places! Do you not see that
Mademoiselle waits to be served?"

The girl shuddered and spoke.

"Do you wish me," she muttered, in the same strangled tone, "to play this
farce--to the end?"

"The end may be better, Mademoiselle, than you think," he answered,
bowing. And then to the miserable servants, who hung back afraid to
leave the shelter of their mistress's skirts, "To your places!" he cried.
"Set Mademoiselle's chair. Are you so remiss on other days? If so,"
with a look of terrible meaning, "you will be the less loss! Now,
Mademoiselle, may I have the honour? And when we are at table we can
talk."

He extended his hand, and, obedient to his gesture, she moved to the
place at the head of the table, but without letting her fingers come into
contact with his. He gave no sign that he noticed this, but he strode to
the place on her right, and signed to Tignonville to take that on her
left.

"Will you not be seated?" he continued. For she kept her feet.

She turned her head stiffly, until for the first time her eyes looked
into his. A shudder more violent than the last shook her.

"Had you not better--kill us at once?" she whispered. The blood had
forsaken even her lips. Her face was the face of a statue--white,
beautiful, lifeless.

"I think not," he said gravely. "Be seated, and let us hope for the
best. And you, sir," he continued, turning to Carlat, "serve your
mistress with wine. She needs it."

The steward filled for her, and then for each of the men, his shaking
hand spilling as much as it poured. Nor was this strange. Above the din
and uproar of the street, above the crash of distant doors, above the
tocsin that still rang from the reeling steeple of St. Germain's, the
great bell of the Palais on the island had just begun to hurl its note of
doom upon the town. A woman crouching at the end of the chamber burst
into hysterical weeping, but, at a glance from Tavannes' terrible eye,
was mute again.

Tignonville found voice at last. "Have they--killed the Admiral?" he
muttered, his eyes on the table.

"M. Coligny? An hour ago."

"And Teligny?"

"Him also."

"M. de Rochefoucauld?"

"They are dealing with M. le Comte now, I believe," Tavannes answered.
"He had his chance and cast it away." And he began to eat.

The man at the table shuddered. The woman continued to look before her,
but her lips moved as if she prayed. Suddenly a rush of feet, a roar of
voices surged past the window; for a moment the glare of the torches,
which danced ruddily on the walls of the room, showed a severed head
borne above the multitude on a pike. Mademoiselle, with a low cry, made
an effort to rise, but Count Hannibal grasped her wrist, and she sank
back half fainting. Then the nearer clamour sank a little, and the
bells, unchallenged, flung their iron tongues above the maddened city. In
the east the dawn was growing; soon its grey light would fall on cold
hearths, on battered doors and shattered weapons, on hordes of wretches
drunk with greed and hate.

When he could be heard, "What are you going to do with us?" the man asked
hoarsely.

"That depends," Count Hannibal replied, after a moment's thought.

"On what?"

"On Mademoiselle de Vrillac."

The other's eyes gleamed with passion. He leaned forward.

"What has she to do with it?" he cried. And he stood up and sat down
again in a breath.

Tavannes raised his eyebrows with a blandness that seemed at odds with
his harsh visage.

"I will answer that question by another question," he replied. "How many
are there in the house, my friend?"

"You can count."

Tavannes counted again. "Seven?" he said. Tignonville nodded
impatiently.

"Seven lives?"

"Well?"

"Well, Monsieur, you know the King's will?"

"I can guess it," the other replied furiously. And he cursed the King,
and the King's mother, calling her Jezebel.

"You can guess it?" Tavannes answered; and then with sudden heat, as if
that which he had to say could not be said even by him in cold blood,
"Nay, you know it! You heard it from the archer at the door. You heard
him say, 'No favour, no quarter for man, for woman, or for child. So
says the King.' You heard it, but you fence with me. Foucauld, with
whom his Majesty played to-night, hand to hand and face to face--Foucauld
is dead! And you think to live? You?" he continued, lashing himself
into passion. "I know not by what chance you came where I saw you an
hour gone, nor by what chance you came by that and that"--pointing with
accusing finger to the badges the Huguenot wore. "But this I know! I
have but to cry your name from yonder casement, nay, Monsieur, I have but
to stand aside when the mob go their rounds from house to house, as they
will go presently, and you will perish as certainly as you have hitherto
escaped!"

For the second time Mademoiselle turned and looked at him.

"Then," she whispered, with white lips, "to what end this--mockery?"

"To the end that seven lives may be saved, Mademoiselle," he answered,
bowing.

"At a price?" she muttered.

"At a price," he answered. "A price which women do not find it hard to
pay--at Court. 'Tis paid every day for pleasure or a whim, for rank or
the _entree_, for robes and gewgaws. Few, Mademoiselle, are privileged
to buy a life; still fewer, seven!"

She began to tremble. "I would rather die--seven times!" she cried, her
voice quivering. And she tried to rise, but sat down again.

"And these?" he said, indicating the servants.

"Far, far rather!" she repeated passionately.

"And Monsieur? And Monsieur?" he urged with stern persistence, while his
eyes passed lightly from her to Tignonville and back to her again, their
depths inscrutable. "If you love Monsieur, Mademoiselle, and I believe
you do--"

"I can die with him!" she cried.

"And he with you?"

She writhed in her chair.

"And he with you?" Count Hannibal repeated, with emphasis; and he thrust
forward his head. "For that is the question. Think, think,
Mademoiselle. It is in my power to save from death him whom you love; to
save you; to save this _canaille_, if it so please you. It is in my
power to save him, to save you, to save all; and I will save all--at a
price! If, on the other hand, you deny me that price, I will as
certainly leave all to perish, as perish they will, before the sun that
is now rising sets to-night!"

Mademoiselle looked straight before her, the flicker of a dreadful
prescience in her eyes.

"And the price?" she muttered. "The price?"

"You, Mademoiselle."

"I?"

"Yes, you! Nay, why fence with me?" he continued gently. "You knew it,
you have said it. You have read it in my eyes these seven days."

She did not speak, or move, or seem to breathe. As he said, she had
foreseen, she had known the answer. But Tignonville, it seemed, had not.
He sprang to his feet.

"M. de Tavannes," he cried, "you are a villain!"

"Monsieur?"

"You are a villain! But you shall pay for this!" the young man continued
vehemently. "You shall not leave this room alive! You shall pay for
this insult!"

"Insult?" Tavannes answered in apparent surprise; and then, as if
comprehension broke upon him, "Ah! Monsieur mistakes me," he said, with a
broad sweep of the hand. "And Mademoiselle also, perhaps? Oh! be
content, she shall have bell, book, and candle; she shall be tied as
tight as Holy Church can tie her! Or, if she please, and one survive,
she shall have a priest of her own church--you call it a church? She
shall have whichever of the two will serve her better. 'Tis one to me!
But for paying me, Monsieur," he continued, with irony in voice and
manner; "when, I pray you? In Eternity? For if you refuse my offer, you
have done with time. Now? I have but to sound this whistle"--he touched
a silver whistle which hung at his breast--"and there are those within
hearing will do your business before you make two passes. Dismiss the
notion, sir, and understand. You are in my power. Paris runs with
blood, as noble as yours, as innocent as hers. If you would not perish
with the rest, decide! And quickly! For what you have seen are but the
forerunners, what you have heard are but the gentle whispers that predict
the gale. Do not parley too long; so long that even I may no longer save
you."

"I would rather die!" Mademoiselle moaned, her face covered. "I would
rather die!"

"And see him die?" he answered quietly. "And see these die? Think,
think, child!"

"You will not do it!" she gasped. She shook from head to foot.

"I shall do nothing," he answered firmly. "I shall but leave you to your
fate, and these to theirs. In the King's teeth I dare save my wife and
her people; but no others. You must choose--and quickly."

One of the frightened women--it was Mademoiselle's tiring-maid, a girl
called Javette--made a movement, as if to throw herself at her mistress's
feet. Tignonville drove her to her place with a word. He turned to
Count Hannibal.

"But, M. le Comte," he said, "you must be mad! Mad, to wish to marry her
in this way! You do not love her. You do not want her. What is she to
you more than other women?"

"What is she to you more than other women?" Tavannes retorted, in a tone
so sharp and incisive that Tignonville started, and a faint touch of
colour crept into the wan cheek of the girl, who sat between them, the
prize of the contest. "What is she more to you than other women? Is she
more? And yet--you want her!"

"She is more to me," Tignonville answered.

"Is she?" the other retorted, with a ring of keen meaning. "Is she? But
we bandy words and the storm is rising, as I warned you it would rise.
Enough for you that I _do_ want her. Enough for you that I _will_ have
her. She shall be the wife, the willing wife, of Hannibal de Tavannes--or
I leave her to her fate, and you to yours!"

"Ah, God!" she moaned. "The willing wife!"

"Ay, Mademoiselle, the willing wife," he answered sternly. "Or no man's
wife!"

CHAPTER VI. WHO TOUCHES TAVANNES?

In saying that the storm was rising Count Hannibal had said no more than
the truth. A new mob had a minute before burst from the eastward into
the Rue St. Honore; and the roar of its thousand voices swelled louder
than the importunate clangour of the bells. Behind its moving masses the
dawn of a new day--Sunday, the 24th of August, the feast of St.
Bartholomew--was breaking over the Bastille, as if to aid the crowd in
its cruel work. The gabled streets, the lanes, and gothic courts, the
stifling wynds, where the work awaited the workers, still lay in
twilight; still the gleam of the torches, falling on the house-fronts,
heralded the coming of the crowd. But the dawn was growing, the sun was
about to rise. Soon the day would be here, giving up the lurking
fugitive whom darkness, more pitiful, had spared, and stamping with
legality the horrors that night had striven to hide.

And with day, with the full light, killing would grow more easy, escape
more hard. Already they were killing on the bridge where the rich
goldsmiths lived, on the wharves, on the river. They were killing at the
Louvre, in the courtyard under the King's eyes, and below the windows of
the Medicis. They were killing in St. Martin and St. Denis and St.
Antoine; wherever hate, or bigotry, or private malice impelled the hand.
From the whole city went up a din of lamentation, and wrath, and
foreboding. From the Cour des Miracles, from the markets, from the
Boucherie, from every haunt of crime and misery, hordes of wretched
creatures poured forth; some to rob on their own account, and where they
listed, none gainsaying; more to join themselves to one of the armed
bands whose business it was to go from street to street, and house to
house, quelling resistance, and executing through Paris the high justice
of the King.

It was one of these swollen bands which had entered the street while
Tavannes spoke; nor could he have called to his aid a more powerful
advocate. As the deep "A bas! A bas!" rolled like thunder along the
fronts of the houses, as the more strident "Tuez! Tuez!" drew nearer and
nearer, and the lights of the oncoming multitude began to flicker on the
shuttered gables, the fortitude of the servants gave way. Madame Carlat,
shivering in every limb, burst into moaning; the tiring-maid, Javette,
flung herself in terror at Mademoiselle's knees, and, writhing herself
about them, shrieked to her to save her, only to save her! One of the
men moved forward on impulse, as if he would close the shutters; and only
old Carlat remained silent, praying mutely with moving lips and a stern,
set face.

And Count Hannibal? As the glare of the links in the street grew
brighter, and ousted the sickly daylight, his form seemed to dilate. He
stilled the shrieking woman by a glance.

"Choose! Mademoiselle, and quickly!" he said. "For I can only save my
wife and her people! Quick, for the pinch is coming, and 'twill be no
boy's play."

A shot, a scream from the street, a rush of racing feet before the window
seconded his words.

"Quick, Mademoiselle!" he cried. And his breath came a little faster.
"Quick, before it be too late! Will you save life, or will you kill?"

She looked at her lover with eyes of agony, dumbly questioning him. But
he made no sign, and only Tavannes marked the look.

"Monsieur has done what he can to save himself," he said, with a sneer.
"He has donned the livery of the King's servants; he has said, 'Whoever
perishes, I will live!' But--"

"Curse you!" the young man cried, and, stung to madness, he tore the
cross from his cap and flung it on the ground. He seized his white
sleeve and ripped it from shoulder to elbow. Then, when it hung by the
string only, he held his hand.

"Curse you!" he cried furiously. "I will not at your bidding! I may
save her yet! I _will_ save her!"

"Fool!" Tavannes answered--but his words were barely audible above the
deafening uproar. "Can you fight a thousand? Look! Look!" and seizing
the other's wrist he pointed to the window.

The street glowed like a furnace in the red light of torches, raised on
poles above a sea of heads; an endless sea of heads, and gaping faces,
and tossing arms which swept on and on, and on and by. For a while it
seemed that the torrent would flow past them and would leave them safe.
Then came a check, a confused outcry, a surging this way and that; the
torches reeled to and fro, and finally, with a dull roar of "Open! Open!"
the mob faced about to the house and the lighted window.

For a second it seemed that even Count Hannibal's iron nerves shook a
little. He stood between the sullen group that surrounded the disordered
table and the maddened rabble, that gloated on the victims before they
tore them to pieces. "Open! Open!" the mob howled: and a man dashed in
the window with his pike.

In that crisis Mademoiselle's eyes met Tavannes' for the fraction of a
second. She did not speak; nor, had she retained the power to frame the
words, would they have been audible. But something she must have looked,
and something of import, though no other than he marked or understood it.
For in a flash he was at the window and his hand was raised for silence.

"Back!" he thundered. "Back, knaves!" And he whistled shrilly. "Do
what you will," he went on in the same tone, "but not here! Pass on!
Pass on!--do you hear?"

But the crowd were not to be lightly diverted. With a persistence brutal
and unquestioning they continued to howl, "Open! Open!" while the man
who had broken the window the moment before, Jehan, the cripple with the
hideous face, seized the lead-work, and tore away a great piece of it.
Then, laying hold of a bar, he tried to drag it out, setting one foot
against the wall below. Tavannes saw what he did, and his frame seemed
to dilate with the fury and violence of his character.

"Dogs!" he shouted, "must I call out my riders and scatter you? Must I
flog you through the streets with stirrup-leathers? I am Tavannes;
beware of me! I have claws and teeth and I bite!" he continued, the
scorn in his words exceeding even the rage of the crowd, at which he
flung them. "Kill where you please, rob where you please, but not where
I am! Or I will hang you by the heels on Montfaucon, man by man! I will
flay your backs. Go! Go! I am Tavannes!"

But the mob, cowed for a moment by the thunder of his voice, by his
arrogance and recklessness, showed at this that their patience was
exhausted. With a yell which drowned his tones they swayed forward; a
dozen thundered on the door, crying, "In the King's name!" As many more
tore out the remainder of the casement, seized the bars of the window,
and strove to pull them out or to climb between them. Jehan, the
cripple, with whom Tignonville had rubbed elbows at the rendezvous, led
the way.

Count Hannibal watched them a moment, his harsh face bent down to them,
his features plain in the glare of the torches. But when the cripple,
raised on the others' shoulders, and emboldened by his adversary's
inactivity, began to squeeze himself through the bars, Tavannes raised a
pistol, which he had held unseen behind him, cocked it at leisure, and
levelled it at the foul face which leered close to his. The dwarf saw
the weapon and tried to retreat; but it was too late. A flash, a scream,
and the wretch, shot through the throat, flung up his hands, and fell
back into the arms of a lean man in black who had lent him his shoulder
to ascend.

For a few seconds the smoke of the pistol filled the window and the room.
There was a cry that the Huguenots were escaping, that the Huguenots were
resisting, that it was a plot; and some shouted to guard the back and
some to watch the roof, and some to be gone. But when the fumes cleared
away, the mob saw, with stupor, that all was as it had been. Count
Hannibal stood where he had stood before, a grim smile on his lips.

"Who comes next?" he cried in a tone of mockery. "I have more pistols!"
And then with a sudden change to ferocity, "You dogs!" he went on. "You
scum of a filthy city, sweepings of the Halles! Do you think to beard
me? Do you think to frighten me or murder me? I am Tavannes, and this
is my house, and were there a score of Huguenots in it, you should not
touch one, nor harm a hair of his head! Begone, I say again, while you
may! Seek women and children, and kill them. But not here!"

For an instant the mingled scorn and brutality of his words silenced
them. Then from the rear of the crowd came an answer--the roar of an
arquebuse. The ball whizzed past Count Hannibal's head, and, splashing
the plaster from the wall within a pace of Tignonville, dropped to the
ground.

Tavannes laughed. "Bungler!" he cried. "Were you in my troop I would
dip your trigger-finger in boiling oil to teach you to shoot! But you
weary me, dogs. I must teach you a lesson, must I?" And he lifted a
pistol and levelled it. The crowd did not know whether it was the one he
had discharged or another, but they gave back with a sharp gasp. "I must
teach you, must I?" he continued with scorn. "Here, Bigot, Badelon,
drive me these blusterers! Rid the street of them! A Tavannes! A
Tavannes!"

Not by word or look had he before this betrayed that he had supports. But
as he cried the name, a dozen men armed to the teeth, who had stood
motionless under the Croix du Tiroir, fell in a line on the right flank
of the crowd. The surprise for those nearest them was complete. With
the flash of the pikes before their eyes, with the cold steel in fancy
between their ribs, they fled every way, uncertain how many pursued, or
if any pursuit there was. For a moment the mob, which a few minutes
before had seemed so formidable that a regiment might have quailed before
it, bade fair to be routed by a dozen pikes.

And so, had all in the crowd been what he termed them, the rabble and
sweepings of the streets, it would have been. But in the heart of it,
and felt rather than seen, were a handful of another kidney; Sorbonne
students and fierce-eyed priests, with three or four mounted archers, the
nucleus that, moving through the streets, had drawn together this
concourse. And these with threats and curse and gleaming eyes stood
fast, even Tavannes' dare-devils recoiling before the tonsure. The check
thus caused allowed those who had budged a breathing space. They rallied
behind the black robes, and began to stone the pikes; who in their turn
withdrew until they formed two groups, standing on their defence, the one
before the window, the other before the door.

Count Hannibal had watched the attack and the check, as a man watches a
play; with smiling interest. In the panic, the torches had been dropped
or extinguished, and now between the house and the sullen crowd which
hung back, yet grew moment by moment more dangerous, the daylight fell
cold on the littered street and the cripple's huddled form prone in the
gutter. A priest raised on the shoulders of the lean man in black began
to harangue the mob, and the dull roar of assent, the brandished arms
which greeted his appeal, had their effect on Tavannes' men. They looked
to the window, and muttered among themselves. It was plain that they had
no stomach for a fight with the Church, and were anxious for the order to
withdraw.

But Count Hannibal gave no order, and, much as his people feared the
cowls, they feared him more. Meanwhile the speaker's eloquence rose
higher; he pointed with frenzied gestures to the house. The mob groaned,
and suddenly a volley of stones fell among the pikemen, whose corselets
rattled under the shower. The priest seized that moment. He sprang to
the ground, and to the front. He caught up his robe and waved his hand,
and the rabble, as if impelled by a single will, rolled forward in a huge
one-fronted thundering wave, before which the two handfuls of
pikemen--afraid to strike, yet afraid to fly--were swept away like straws
upon the tide.

But against the solid walls and oak-barred door of the house the wave
beat, only to fall back again, a broken, seething mass of brandished arms
and ravening faces. One point alone was vulnerable, the window, and
there in the gap stood Tavannes. Quick as thought he fired two pistols
into the crowd; then, while the smoke for a moment hid all, he whistled.

Whether the signal was a summons to his men to fight their way back--as
they were doing to the best of their power--or he had resources still
unseen, was not to be known. For as the smoke began to rise, and while
the rabble before the window, cowed by the fall of two of their number,
were still pushing backward instead of forward, there rose behind them
strange sounds--yells, and the clatter of hoofs, mingled with screams of
alarm. A second, and into the loose skirts of the crowd came charging
helter-skelter, pell-mell, a score of galloping, shrieking, cursing
horsemen, attended by twice as many footmen, who clung to their stirrups
or to the tails of the horses, and yelled and whooped, and struck in
unison with the maddened riders.

"On! on!" the foremost shrieked, rolling in his saddle, and foaming at
the mouth. "Bleed in August, bleed in May! Kill!" And he fired a
pistol among the rabble, who fled every way to escape his rearing,
plunging charger.

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