Count Hannibal by Stanley J. Weyman

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"Yes?" he said; and was silent. Nor did he lose his watchful look.

"I am obliged to you for your thought of me," she continued in a faint
voice, "and I shall be still further obliged--I speak to you thus quickly
and thus early--if you will grant me a somewhat longer time."

"Do you mean--if I will postpone our marriage?"

"Yes, Monsieur."

"It is impossible!"

"Do not say that," she cried, raising her voice impulsively. "I appeal
to your generosity. And for a short, a very short, time only."

"It is impossible," he answered quietly. "And for reasons, Mademoiselle.
In the first place, I can more easily protect my wife. In the second, I
am even now summoned to the Louvre, and should be on my way thither. By
to-morrow evening, unless I am mistaken in the business on which I am
required, I shall be on my way to a distant province with royal letters.
It is essential that our marriage take place before I go."

"Why?" she asked stubbornly.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Why?" he repeated. "Can you ask,
Mademoiselle, after the events of last night? Because, if you please, I
do not wish to share the fate of M. de Tignonville. Because in these
days life is uncertain, and death too certain. Because it was our turn
last night, and it may be the turn of your friends--to-morrow night!"

"Then some have escaped?" she cried.

He smiled. "I am glad to find you so shrewd," he replied. "In an honest
wife it is an excellent quality. Yes, Mademoiselle; one or two."

"Who? Who? I pray you tell me."

"M. de Montgomery, who slept beyond the river, for one; and the Vidame,
and some with him. M. de Biron, whom I count a Huguenot, and who holds
the Arsenal in the King's teeth, for another. And a few more. Enough,
in a word, Mademoiselle, to keep us wakeful. It is impossible,
therefore, for me to postpone the fulfilment of your promise."

"A promise on conditions!" she retorted, in rage that she could win no
more. And every line of her splendid figure, every tone of her voice
flamed sudden, hot rebellion. "I do not go for nothing! You gave me the
lives of all in the house, Monsieur! Of all!" she repeated with passion.
"And all are not here! Before I marry you, you must show me M. de
Tignonville alive and safe!"

He shrugged his shoulders. "He has taken himself off," he said. "It is
naught to me what happens to him now."

"It is all to me!" she retorted.

At that he glared at her, the veins of his forehead swelling suddenly.
But after a seeming struggle with himself he put the insult by, perhaps
for future reckoning and account.

"I did what I could," he said sullenly. "Had I willed it he had died
there and then in the room below. I gave him his life. If he has risked
it anew and lost it, it is naught to me."

"It was his life you gave me," she repeated stubbornly. "His life--and
the others. But that is not all," she continued; "you promised me a
minister."

He nodded, smiling sourly to himself, as if this confirmed a suspicion he
had entertained.

"Or a priest," he said.

"No, a minister."

"If one could be obtained. If not, a priest."

"No, it was to be at my will; and I will a minister! I will a minister!"
she cried passionately. "Show me M. de Tignonville alive, and bring me a
minister of my faith, and I will keep my promise, M. de Tavannes. Have
no fear of that. But otherwise, I will not."

"You will not?" he cried. "You will not?"

"No!"

"You will not marry me?"

"No!"

The moment she had said it fear seized her, and she could have fled from
him, screaming. The flash of his eyes, the sudden passion of his face,
burned themselves into her memory. She thought for a second that he
would spring on her and strike her down. Yet though the women behind her
held their breath, she faced him, and did not quail; and to that, she
fancied, she owed it that he controlled himself.

"You will not?" he repeated, as if he could not understand such
resistance to his will--as if he could not credit his ears. "You will
not?" But after that, when he had said it three times, he laughed; a
laugh, however, with a snarl in it that chilled her blood.

"You bargain, do you?" he said. "You will have the last tittle of the
price, will you? And have thought of this and that to put me off, and to
gain time until your lover, who is all to you, comes to save you? Oh,
clever girl! clever! But have you thought where you stand--woman? Do
you know that if I gave the word to my people they would treat you as the
commonest baggage that tramps the Froidmantel? Do you know that it rests
with me to save you, or to throw you to the wolves whose ravening you
hear?" And he pointed to the window. "Minister? Priest?" he continued
grimly. "_Mon Dieu_, Mademoiselle, I stand astonished at my moderation.
You chatter to me of ministers and priests, and the one or the other,
when it might be neither! When you are as much and as hopelessly in my
power to-day as the wench in my kitchen! You! You flout me, and make
terms with me! You!"

And he came so near her with his dark harsh face, his tone rose so
menacing on the last word, that her nerves, shattered before, gave way,
and, unable to control herself, she flinched with a low cry, thinking he
would strike her.

He did not follow, nor move to follow; but he laughed a low laugh of
content. And his eyes devoured her.

"Ho! ho!" he said. "We are not so brave as we pretend to be, it seems.
And yet you dared to chaffer with me? You thought to thwart me--Tavannes!
_Mon Dieu_, Mademoiselle, to what did you trust? To what did you trust?
Ay, and to what do you trust?"

She knew that by the movement which fear had forced from her she had
jeopardized everything. That she stood to lose all and more than all
which she had thought to win by a bold front. A woman less brave, of a
spirit less firm, would have given up the contest, and have been glad to
escape so. But this woman, though her bloodless face showed that she
knew what cause she had for fear, and though her heart was indeed sick
with terror, held her ground at the point to which she had retreated. She
played her last card.

"To what do I trust?" she muttered with trembling lips.

"Yes, Mademoiselle," he answered between his teeth. "To what do you
trust--that you play with Tavannes?"

"To his honour, Monsieur," she answered faintly. "And to your promise."

He looked at her with his mocking smile. "And yet," he sneered, "you
thought a moment ago that I should strike you. You thought that I should
beat you! And now it is my honour and my promise! Oh, clever, clever,
Mademoiselle! 'Tis so that women make fools of men. I knew that
something of this kind was on foot when you sent for me, for I know women
and their ways. But, let me tell you, it is an ill time to speak of
honour when the streets are red! And of promises when the King's word is
'No faith with a heretic!'"

"Yet you will keep yours," she said bravely.

He did not answer at once, and hope which was almost dead in her breast
began to recover; nay, presently sprang up erect. For the man hesitated,
it was evident; he brooded with a puckered brow and gloomy eyes; an
observer might have fancied that he traced pain as well as doubt in his
face. At last--

"There is a thing," he said slowly and with a sort of glare at her,
"which, it may be, you have not reckoned. You press me now, and will
stand on your terms and your conditions, your _ifs_ and your _unlesses_!
You will have the most from me, and the bargain and a little beside the
bargain! But I would have you think if you are wise. Bethink you how it
will be between us when you are my wife--if you press me so now,
Mademoiselle. How will it sweeten things then? How will it soften them?
And to what, I pray you, will you trust for fair treatment then, if you
will be so against me now?"

She shuddered. "To the mercy of my husband," she said in a low voice.
And her chin sank on her breast.

"You will be content to trust to that?" he answered grimly. And his tone
and the lifting of his brow promised little clemency. "Bethink you! 'Tis
your rights now, and your terms, Mademoiselle! And then it will be only
my mercy--Madame."

"I am content," she muttered faintly.

"And the Lord have mercy on my soul, is what you would add," he retorted,
"so much trust have you in my mercy! And you are right! You are right,
since you have played this trick on me. But as you will. If you will
have it so, have it so! You shall stand on your conditions now; you
shall have your pennyweight and full advantage, and the rigour of the
pact. But afterwards--afterwards, Madame de Tavannes--"

He did not finish his sentence, for at the first word which granted her
petition, Mademoiselle had sunk down on the low wooden window-seat beside
which she stood, and, cowering into its farthest corner, her face hidden
on her arms, had burst into violent weeping. Her hair, hastily knotted
up in the hurry of the previous night, hung in a thick plait to the curve
of her waist; the nape of her neck showed beside it milk-white. The man
stood awhile contemplating her in silence, his gloomy eyes watching the
pitiful movement of her shoulders, the convulsive heaving of her figure.
But he did not offer to touch her, and at length he turned about. First
one and then the other of her women quailed and shrank under his gaze; he
seemed about to add something. But he did not speak. The sentence he
had left unfinished, the long look he bent on the weeping girl as he
turned from her, spoke more eloquently of the future than a score of
orations.

"_Afterwards, Madame de Tavannes_!"

CHAPTER XII. IN THE HALL OF THE LOUVRE.

It is a strange thing that love--or passion, if the sudden fancy for
Mademoiselle which had seized Count Hannibal be deemed unworthy of the
higher name--should so entirely possess the souls of those who harbour it
that the greatest events and the most astounding catastrophes, even
measures which set their mark for all time on a nation, are to them of
importance only so far as they affect the pursuit of the fair one.

As Tavannes, after leaving Mademoiselle, rode through the paved lanes,
beneath the gabled houses, and under the shadow of the Gothic spires of
his day, he saw a score of sights, moving to pity, or wrath, or wonder.
He saw Paris as a city sacked; a slaughter-house, where for a week a
masque had moved to stately music; blood on the nailed doors and the
close-set window bars; and at the corners of the ways strewn garments,
broken weapons, the livid dead in heaps. But he saw all with eyes which
in all and everywhere, among living and dead, sought only Tignonville;
Tignonville first, and next a heretic minister, with enough of life in
him to do his office.

Probably it was to this that one man hunted through Paris owed his escape
that day. He sprang from a narrow passage full in Tavannes' view, and,
hair on end, his eyes starting from his head, ran blindly--as a hare will
run when chased--along the street to meet Count Hannibal's company. The
man's face was wet with the dews of death, his lungs seemed cracking, his
breath hissed from him as he ran. His pursuers were hard on him, and,
seeing him headed by Count Hannibal's party, yelled in triumph, holding
him for dead. And dead he would have been within thirty seconds had
Tavannes played his part. But his thoughts were elsewhere. Either he
took the poor wretch for Tignonville, or for the minister on whom his
mind was running; anyway he suffered him to slip under the belly of his
horse; then, to make matters worse, he wheeled to follow him in so
untimely and clumsy a fashion that his horse blocked the way and stopped
the pursuers in their tracks. The quarry slipped into an alley and
vanished. The hunters stood and blasphemed, and even for a moment seemed
inclined to resent the mistake. But Tavannes smiled; a broader smile
lightened the faces of the six iron-clad men behind him; and for some
reason the gang of ruffians thought better of it and slunk aside.

There are hard men, who feel scorn of the things which in the breasts of
others excite pity. Tavannes' lip curled as he rode on through the
streets, looking this way and that, and seeing what a King twenty-two
years old had made of his capital. His lip curled most of all when he
came, passing between the two tennis-courts, to the east gate of the
Louvre, and found the entrance locked and guarded, and all communication
between city and palace cut off. Such a proof of unkingly panic, in a
crisis wrought by the King himself, astonished him less a few minutes
later, when, the keys having been brought and the door opened, he entered
the courtyard of the fortress.

Within and about the door of the gatehouse some three-score archers and
arquebusiers stood to their arms; not in array, but in disorderly groups,
from which the babble of voices, of feverish laughter, and strained jests
rose without ceasing. The weltering sun, of which the beams just topped
the farther side of the quadrangle, fell slantwise on their armour, and
heightened their exaggerated and restless movements. To a calm eye they
seemed like men acting in a nightmare. Their fitful talk and disjointed
gestures, their sweating brows and damp hair, no less than the sullen,
brooding silence of one here and there, bespoke the abnormal and the
terrible. There were livid faces among them, and twitching cheeks, and
some who swallowed much; and some again who bared their crimson arms and
bragged insanely of the part they had played. But perhaps the most
striking thing was the thirst, the desire, the demand for news, and for
fresh excitement. In the space of time it took him to pass through them,
Count Hannibal heard a dozen rumours of what was passing in the city;
that Montgomery and the gentlemen who had slept beyond the river had
escaped on horseback in their shirts; that Guise had been shot in the
pursuit; that he had captured the Vidame de Chartres and all the
fugitives; that he had never left the city; that he was even then
entering by the Porte de Bucy. Again that Biron had surrendered the
Arsenal, that he had threatened to fire on the city, that he was dead,
that with the Huguenots who had escaped he was marching on the Louvre,
that--

And then Tavannes passed out of the blinding sunshine, and out of earshot
of their babble, and had plain in his sight across the quadrangle, the
new facade, Italian, graceful, of the Renaissance; which rose in smiling
contrast with the three dark Gothic sides that now, the central tower
removed, frowned unimpeded at one another. But what was this which lay
along the foot of the new Italian wall? This, round which some stood,
gazing curiously, while others strewed fresh sand about it, or after long
downward-looking glanced up to answer the question of a person at a
window?

Death; and over death--death in its most cruel aspect--a cloud of
buzzing, whirling flies, and the smell, never to be forgotten, of much
spilled blood. From a doorway hard by came shrill bursts of hysterical
laughter; and with the laughter plumped out, even as Tavannes crossed the
court, a young girl, thrust forth it seemed by her fellows, for she
turned about and struggled as she came. Once outside she hung back,
giggling and protesting, half willing, half unwilling; and meeting
Tavannes' eye thrust her way in again with a whirl of her petticoats, and
a shriek. But before he had taken four paces she was out again.

He paused to see who she was, and his thoughts involuntarily went back to
the woman he had left weeping in the upper room. Then he turned about
again and stood to count the dead. He identified Piles, identified
Pardaillan, identified Soubise--whose corpse the murderers had robbed of
the last rag--and Touchet and St. Galais. He made his reckoning with an
unmoved face, and with the same face stopped and stared, and moved from
one to another; had he not seen the slaughter about "_le petit homme_" at
Jarnac, and the dead of three pitched fields? But when a bystander,
smirking obsequiously, passed him a jest on Soubise, and with his finger
pointed the jest, he had the same hard unmoved face for the gibe as for
the dead. And the jester shrank away, abashed and perplexed by his stare
and his reticence.

Halfway up the staircase to the great gallery or guard-room above, Count
Hannibal found his brother, the Marshal, huddled together in drunken
slumber on a seat in a recess. In the gallery to which he passed on
without awakening him, a crowd of courtiers and ladies, with arquebusiers
and captains of the quarters, walked to and fro, talking in whispers; or
peeped over shoulders towards the inner end of the hall, where the
querulous voice of the King rose now and again above the hum. As
Tavannes moved that way, Nancay, in the act of passing out, booted and
armed for the road, met him and almost jostled him.

"Ah, well met, M. le Comte," he sneered, with as much hostility as he
dared betray. "The King has asked for you twice."

"I am going to him. And you? Whither in such a hurry, M. Nancay?"

"To Chatillon."

"On pleasant business?"

"Enough that it is on the King's!" Nancay replied, with unexpected
temper. "I hope that you may find yours as pleasant!" he added with a
grin. And he went on.

The gleam of malice in the man's eye warned Tavannes to pause. He looked
round for some one who might be in the secret, saw the Provost of the
Merchants, and approached him.

"What's amiss, M. le Charron?" he asked. "Is not the affair going as it
should?"

"'Tis about the Arsenal, M. le Comte," the Provost answered busily. "M.
de Biron is harbouring the vermin there. He has lowered the portcullis
and pointed his culverins over the gate and will not yield it or listen
to reason. The King would bring him to terms, but no one will venture
himself inside with the message. Rats in a trap, you know, bite hard,
and care little whom they bite."

"I begin to understand."

"Precisely, M. le Comte. His Majesty would have sent M. de Nancay. But
he elected to go to Chatillon, to seize the young brood there. The
Admiral's children, you comprehend."

"Whose teeth are not yet grown! He was wise."

"To be sure, M. de Tavannes, to be sure. But the King was annoyed, and
on top of that came a priest with complaints, and if I may make so bold
as to advise you, you will not--"

But Tavannes fancied that he had caught the gist of the difficulty, and
with a nod he moved on; and so he missed the warning which the other had
it in his mind to give. A moment and he reached the inner circle, and
there halted, disconcerted, nay taken aback. For as soon as he showed
his face, the King, who was pacing to and fro like a caged beast, before
a table at which three clerks knelt on cushions, espied him, and stood
still. With a glare of something like madness in his eyes, Charles
raised his hand, and with a shaking finger singled him out.

"So, by G-d, you are there!" he cried, with a volley of blasphemy. And
he signed to those about Count Hannibal to stand away from him. "You are
there, are you? And you are not afraid to show your face? I tell you,
it's you and such as you bring us into contempt! so that it is said
everywhere Guise does all and serves God, and we follow because we must!
It's you, and such as you, are stumbling-blocks to our good folk of
Paris! Are you traitor, sirrah?" he continued with passion, "or are you
of our brother Alencon's opinions, that you traverse our orders to the
damnation of your soul and our discredit? Are you traitor? Or are you
heretic? Or what are you? God in heaven, will you answer me, man, or
shall I send you where you will find your tongue?"

"I know not of what your Majesty accuses me," Count Hannibal answered,
with a scarcely perceptible shrug of the shoulders.

"I? 'Tis not I," the King retorted. His hair hung damp on his brow, and
he dried his hands continually; while his gestures had the ill-measured
and eccentric violence of an epileptic. "Here, you! Speak, father, and
confound him!"

Then Tavannes discovered on the farther side of the circle the priest
whom his brother had ridden down that morning. Father Pezelay's pale
hatchet-face gleamed paler than ordinary; and a great bandage hid one
temple and part of his face. But below the bandage the flame of his eyes
was not lessened, nor the venom of his tongue. To the King he had
come--for no other would deal with his violent opponent; to the King's
presence! and, as he prepared to blast his adversary, now his chance was
come, his long lean frame, in its narrow black cassock, seemed to grow
longer, leaner, more baleful, more snake-like. He stood there a fitting
representative of the dark fanaticism of Paris, which Charles and his
successor--the last of a doomed line--alternately used as tool or feared
as master; and to which the most debased and the most immoral of courts
paid, in its sober hours, a vile and slavish homage. Even in the midst
of the drunken, shameless courtiers--who stood, if they stood for
anything, for that other influence of the day, the Renaissance--he was to
be reckoned with; and Count Hannibal knew it. He knew that in the eyes
not of Charles only, but of nine out of ten who listened to him, a priest
was more sacred than a virgin, and a tonsure than all the virtues of
spotless innocence.

"Shall the King give with one hand and withdraw with the other?" the
priest began, in a voice hoarse yet strident, a voice borne high above
the crowd on the wings of passion. "Shall he spare of the best of the
men and the maidens whom God hath doomed, whom the Church hath devoted,
whom the King hath given? Is the King's hand shortened or his word
annulled that a man does as he forbiddeth and leaves undone what he
commandeth? Is God mocked? Woe, woe unto you," he continued, turning
swiftly, arms uplifted, towards Tavannes, "who please yourself with the
red and white of their maidens and take of the best of the spoil, sparing
where the King's word is 'Spare not'! Who strike at Holy Church with the
sword! Who--"

"Answer, sirrah!" Charles cried, spurning the floor in his fury. He
could not listen long to any man. "Is it so? Is it so? Do you do these
things?"

Count Hannibal shrugged his shoulders and was about to answer, when a
thick, drunken voice rose from the crowd behind him.

"Is it what? Eh! Is it what?" it droned. And a figure with bloodshot
eyes, disordered beard, and rich clothes awry, forced its way through the
obsequious circle. It was Marshal Tavannes. "Eh, what? You'd beard the
King, would you?" he hiccoughed truculently, his eyes on Father Pezelay,
his hand on his sword. "Were you a priest ten times--"

"Silence!" Charles cried, almost foaming with rage at this fresh
interruption. "It's not he, fool! 'Tis your pestilent brother."

"Who touches my brother touches Tavannes!" the Marshal answered with a
menacing gesture. He was sober enough, it appeared, to hear what was
said, but not to comprehend its drift; and this caused a titter, which
immediately excited his rage. He turned and seized the nearest laugher
by the ear. "Insolent!" he cried. "I will teach you to laugh when the
King speaks! Puppy! Who laughs at his Majesty or touches my brother has
to do with Tavannes!"

The King, in a rage that almost deprived him of speech, stamped the floor
twice.

"Idiot!" he cried. "Imbecile! Let the man go! 'Tis not he! 'Tis your
heretic brother, I tell you! By all the Saints! By the body of--" and
he poured forth a flood of oaths. "Will you listen to me and be silent!
Will you--your brother--"

"If he be not your Majesty's servant, I will kill him with this sword!"
the irrepressible Marshal struck in. "As I have killed ten to-day! Ten!"
And, staggering back, he only saved himself from falling by clutching
Chicot about the neck.

"Steady, my pretty Marechale!" the jester cried, chucking him under the
chin with one hand, while with some difficulty he supported him with the
other--for he, too, was far from sober--

"Pretty Margot, toy with me,
Maiden bashful--"

"Silence!" Charles cried, darting forth his long arms in a fury of
impatience. "God, have I killed every man of sense? Are you all gone
mad? Silence! Do you hear? Silence! And let me hear what he has to
say," with a movement towards Count Hannibal. "And look you, sirrah," he
continued with a curse, "see that it be to the purpose!"

"If it be a question of your Majesty's service," Tavannes answered, "and
obedience to your Majesty's orders, I am deeper in it than he who stands
there!" with a sign towards the priest. "I give my word for that. And I
will prove it."

"How, sir?" Charles cried. "How, how, how? How will you prove it?"

"By doing for you, sire, what he will not do!" Tavannes answered
scornfully. "Let him stand out, and if he will serve his Church as I
will serve my King--"

"Blaspheme not!" cried the priest.

"Chatter not!" Tavannes retorted hardily, "but do! Better is he," he
continued, "who takes a city than he who slays women! Nay, sire," he
went on hurriedly, seeing the King start, "be not angry, but hear me! You
would send to Biron, to the Arsenal? You seek a messenger, sire? Then
let the good father be the man. Let him take your Majesty's will to
Biron, and let him see the Grand Master face to face, and bring him to
reason. Or, if he will not, I will! Let that be the test!"

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