Count Hannibal/Chapter 28
CHAPTER XXVIII.
IN THE LITTLE CHAPTER-HOUSE.
The sun was an hour high, and in Angers the shops and booths, after the early fashion of the day, were open or opening. Through all the gates country folk were pressing into the gloomy streets of the Black Town with milk and fruit; and at doors and windows housewives cheapened fish, or chaffered over the fowl for the pot. For men must eat, though there be gibbets in the Place Ste.-Croix: gaunt gibbets, high and black and twofold, each, with its dangling ropes, like a double note of interrogation.
But gibbets must eat also; and between ground and noose was so small a space in those days that a man dangled almost before he knew it. The sooner, then, the paniers were empty, and the clown, who pays for all, was beyond the gates, the better he, for one, would be pleased. In the market, therefore, was hurrying. Men cried their wares in lowered voices, and tarried but a little for the oldest customer. The bargain struck, the more timid among the buyers hastened to shut themselves into their houses again; the bolder, who ventured to the Place to confirm the rumour with their eyes, talked in corners and in lanes, avoided the open, and eyed the sinister preparations from afar. The shadow of the things which stood before the cathedral affronting the sunlight with their gaunt black shapes lay across the length and breadth of Angers. Even in the corners where men whispered, even in the cloisters where men bit their nails in impotent anger, the stillness of fear ruled all. Whatever Count Hannibal had it in his mind to tell the city, it seemed unlikely—and hour by hour it seemed less likely—that any would contradict him.
He knew this as he walked in the sunlight before the inn, his spurs ringing on the stones as he made each turn, his movements watched by a hundred peering eyes. After all, it was not hard to rule, nor to have one’s way in this world. But then, he went on to remember, not every one had his self-control, or that contempt for the weak and unsuccessful which lightly took the form of mercy. He held Angers safe, curbed by his gibbets. With M. de Montsoreau he might have trouble; but the trouble would be slight, for he knew Montsoreau, and what it was the Lieutenant-Governor valued above profitless bloodshed.
He might have felt less confident had he known what was passing at that moment in a room off the small cloister of the Abbey of St. Aubin, a room known at Angers as the Little Chapter-house. It was a long chamber with a groined roof and stone walls, panelled as high as a tall man might reach with dark chestnut wood. Gloomily lighted by three grated windows, which looked on a small inner green, the last resting-place of the Benedictines, the room itself seemed at first sight no more than the last resting-place of worn-out odds and ends. Piles of thin sheepskin folios, dog’s-eared and dirty, the rejected of the choir, stood against the walls; here and there among them lay a large brass-bound tome on which the chains that had fettered it to desk or lectern still rusted. A broken altar cumbered one corner: a stand bearing a curious—and rotting—map filled another. In the other two corners a medley of faded scutcheons and banners, which had seen their last Toussaint procession, mouldered slowly into dust—into much dust. The air of the room was full of it.
In spite of which the long oak table that filled the middle of the chamber shone with use: so did the great metal standish which it bore. And though the seven men who sat about the table seemed, at a first glance and in that gloomy light, as rusty and faded as the rubbish behind them, it needed but a second look at their lean jaws and hungry eyes to be sure of their vitality.
He who sat in the great chair at the end of the table was indeed rather plump than thin. His white hands, gay with rings, were well cared for; his peevish chin rested on a falling-collar of lace worthy of a Cardinal. But though the Bishop’s Vicar was heard with deference, it was noticeable that when he had ceased to speak his hearers looked to the priest on his left, to Father Pezelay, and waited to hear his opinion before they gave their own. The Father’s energy, indeed, had dominated the Angerins, clerks and townsfolk alike, as it had dominated the Parisian dévotes who knew him well. The vigour which hate inspires passes often for solid strength; and he who had seen with his own eyes the things done in Paris spoke with an authority to which the more timid quickly and easily succumbed.
Yet gibbets are ugly things; and Thuriot, the printer, whose pride had been tickled by a summons to the conclave, began to wonder if he had done wisely in coming. Lescot, too, who presently ventured a word.
“But if M. de Tavannes’ order be to do nothing,” he began doubtfully, “you would not, reverend Father, have us resist his Majesty’s will?”
“God forbid, my friend!” Father Pezelay answered with unction. “But his Majesty’s will is to do—to do for the glory of God and the saints and His Holy Church! How? Is that which was lawful at Saumur unlawful here? Is that which was lawful at Tours unlawful here? Is that which the King did in Paris—to the utter extermination of the unbelieving and the purging of that Sacred City—against his will here? Nay, his will is to do—to do as they have done in Paris and in Tours and in Saumur! But his Minister is unfaithful! The woman whom he has taken to his bosom has bewildered him with her charms and her sorceries, and put it in his mind to deny the mission he bears.”
“You are sure, beyond chance of error, that he bears letters to that effect, good Father?” the printer ventured.
“Ask my lord’s Vicar! He knows the letters and the import of them!”
“They are to that effect,” the Archdeacon answered, drumming on the table with his fingers and speaking somewhat sullenly. “I was in the Chancellery, and I saw them. They are duplicates of those sent to Bordeaux.”
“Then the preparations he has made must be against the Huguenots,” Lescot, the ex-Provost, said with a sigh of relief. And Thuriot’s face lightened also. “He must intend to hang one or two of the ringleaders, before he deals with the herd.”
“Think it not!” Father Pezelay cried in his high shrill voice. “I tell you the woman has bewitched him, and he will deny his letters!”
For a moment there was silence. Then, “But dare he do that, reverend Father?” Lescot asked slowly and incredulously. “What? Suppress the King’s letters?”
“There is nothing he will not dare! There is nothing he has not dared!” the priest answered vehemently, the recollection of the scene in the great guard-room of the Louvre, when Tavannes had so skilfully turned the tables on him, instilling venom into his tone. “She who lives with him is the devil’s. She has bewitched him with her spells and her Sabbaths! She bears the mark of the Beast on her bosom, and for her the fire is even now kindling!”
The laymen who were present shuddered. The two canons who faced them crossed themselves, muttering, “Avaunt, Satan!”
“It is for you to decide,” the priest continued, gazing on them passionately, “whether you will side with him or with the Angel of God! For I tell you it was none other executed the Divine judgments at Paris! It was none other but the Angel of God held the sword at Tours! It is none other holds the sword here! Are you for him or against him? Are you for him, or for the woman with the mark of the Beast? Are you for God or against God? For the hour draws near! The time is at hand! You must choose! You must choose!” And, striking the table with his hand, he leaned forward, and with glittering eyes fixed each of them in turn, as he cried, “You must choose! You must choose!” He came to the Archdeacon last.
The Bishop’s Vicar fidgeted in his chair, his face a shade more shallow, his cheeks hanging a trifle more loosely, than ordinary.
“If my brother were here!” he muttered. “If M. de Montsoreau had arrived!”
But Father Pezelay knew whose will would prevail if Montsoreau met Tavannes at his leisure. To force Montsoreau’s hand, therefore, to surround him on his first entrance with a howling mob already committed to violence, to set him at their head and pledge him before he knew with whom he had to do—this had been, this still was, the priest’s design.
But how was he to pursue it while those gibbets stood? While their shadows lay even on the chapter table, and darkened the faces of his most forward associates? That for a moment staggered the priest; and had not private hatred, ever renewed by the touch of the scar on his brow, fed the fire of bigotry he had yielded, as the rabble of Angers were yielding, reluctant and scowling, to the hand which held the city in its grip. But to have come so far on the wings of hate, and to do nothing! To have come avowedly to preach a crusade, and to sneak away cowed! To have dragged the Bishop’s Vicar hither, and fawned and cajoled and threatened by turns—and for nothing! These things were passing bitter—passing bitter, when the morsel of vengeance he had foreseen smacked so sweet on the tongue.
For it was no common vengeance, no layman’s vengeance, coarse and clumsy, which the priest had imagined in the dark hours of the night, when his feverish brain kept him wakeful. To see Count Hannibal roll in the dust had gone but a little way towards satisfying him. No! But to drag from his arms the woman for whom he had sinned, to subject her to shame and torture in the depths of some convent, and finally to burn her as a witch—it was that which had seemed to the priest in the night hours a vengeance sweet in the mouth.
But the thing seemed unattainable in the circumstances. The city was cowed; the priest knew that no dependence was to be placed on Montsoreau, whose vice was avarice and whose object was plunder. To the Archdeacon’s feeble words, therefore, “We must look,” the priest retorted sternly, “not to M. de Montsoreau, reverend Father, but to the pious of Angers! We must cry in the streets, ‘They do violence to God! They wound God and His Mother!’ And so, and so only, shall the unholy thing be rooted out!”
“Amen!” the Curé of St.-Benoist muttered, lifting his head; and his dull eyes glowed awhile. “Amen! Amen!” Then his chin sank again upon his breast.
But the Canons of Angers looked doubtfully at one another, and timidly at the speakers; the meat was too strong for them. And Lescot and Thuriot shuffled in their seats. At length, “I do not know,” Lescot muttered timidly.
“You do not know?”
“What can be done!”
“The people will know!” Father Pezelay retorted “Trust them!”
“But the people will not rise without a leader.”
“Then will I lead them!”
“Even so, reverend Father—I doubt,” Lescot faltered. And Thuriot nodded assent. Gibbets were erected in those days rather for laymen than for the Church.
“You doubt!” the priest cried. “You doubt!” His baleful eyes passed from one to the other; from them to the rest of the company. He saw that with the exception of the Curé of St.-Benoist all were of a mind. “You doubt! Nay, but I see what it is! It is this,” he continued slowly and in a different tone, “the King’s will goes for nothing in Angers! His writ runs not here. And Holy Church cries in vain for help against the oppressor. I tell you, the sorceress who has bewitched him has bewitched you also. Beware! beware, therefore, lest it be with you as with him! And the fire that shall consume her, spare not your houses!”
The two citizens crossed themselves, grew pale and shuddered. The fear of witchcraft was great in Angers, the peril, if accused of it, enormous. Even the Canons looked startled.
“If—if my brother were here,” the Archdeacon repeated feebly, “something might be done!”
“Vain is the help of man!” the priest retorted sternly, and with a gesture of sublime dismissal. “I turn from you to a mightier than you!” And, leaning his head on his hands, he covered his face.
The Archdeacon and the churchmen looked at him, and from him their scared eyes passed to one another. Their one desire now was to be quit of the matter, to have done with it, to escape; and one by one with the air of whipped curs they rose to their feet, and in a hurry to be gone muttered a word of excuse shamefacedly and got themselves out of the room. Lescot and the printer were not slow to follow, and in less than a minute the two strange preachers, the men from Paris, remained the only occupants of the chamber; save, to be precise, a lean official in rusty black, who throughout the conference had sat by the door.
Until the last shuffling footstep had ceased to sound in the still cloister no one spoke. Then Father Pezelay looked up, and the eyes of the two priests met in a long gaze.
“What think you?” Pezelay muttered at last.
“Wet hay,” the other answered dreamily, “is slow to kindle, yet burns if the fire be big enough. At what hour does he state his will?”
“At noon.”
“In the Council Chamber?”
“It is so given out.”
“It is three hundred yards from the Place Ste.-Croix and he must go guarded,” the Curé of St.-Benoist continued in the same dull fashion. “He cannot leave many in the house with the woman. If it were attacked in his absence”
“He would return, and” Father Pezelay shook his head, his cheek turned a shade paler. Clearly, he saw with his mind’s eye more than he expressed.
“Hoc est corpus,” the other muttered, his dreamy gaze on the table. “If he met us then, on his way to the house and we had bell, book, and candle, would he stop?”
“He would not stop!” Father Pezelay rejoined.
“He would not?”
“I know the man!”
“Then” but the rest St. Benoist whispered, his head drooping forward; whispered so low that even the lean man behind him, listening with greedy ears, failed to follow the meaning of his superior’s words. But that he spoke plainly enough for his hearer Father Pezelay’s face was witness. Astonishment, fear, hope, triumph, the lean pale face reflected all in turn; and, underlying all, a subtle malignant mischief, as if a devil’s eyes peeped through the holes in an opera mask.
When the other was at last silent, Pezelay drew a deep breath.
“’Tis bold! Bold! Bold!” he muttered. “But have you thought? He who bears the”
“Brunt?” the other whispered, with a chuckle. “He may suffer? Yes, but it will not be you or I! No, he who was last here shall be first there! The Archdeacon-Vicar—if we can persuade him—who knows but that even for him the crown of martyrdom is reserved?” The dull eyes flickered with unholy amusement.
“And the alarm that brings him from the Council Chamber?”
“Need not of necessity be real. The pinch will be to make use of it. Make use of it—and the hay will burn!”
“You think it will?”
“What can one man do against a thousand? His own people dare not support him.”
Father Pezelay turned to the lean man who kept the door, and, beckoning to him, conferred a while with him in a low voice.
“A score or so I might get,” the man answered presently, after some debate. “And well posted, something might be done. But we are not in Paris, good father, where the Quarter of the Butchers is to be counted on, and men know that to kill Huguenots is to do God service! Here”—he shrugged his shoulders contemptuously—“they are sheep.”
“It is the King’s will,” the priest answered, frowning on him darkly.
“Ay, but it is not Tavannes’,” the man in black answered with a grimace. “And he rules here to-day.”
“Fool!” Pezelay retorted. “He has not twenty with him. Do you do as I say, and leave the rest to Heaven!”
“And to you, good master?” the other answered. “For it is not all you are going to do,” he continued, with a grin, “that you have told me. Well, so be it! I’ll do my part, but I wish we were in Paris. St. Genevieve is ever kind to her servants.”