The White Plumes of Navarre: A Romance of the Wars of Religion

by S. R. Crockett

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  THE THREE SONS OF MADAME AMELIE

  They went back, keeping step together, tall Claire with hand fearlesslyplaced on the shoulder of her Professor, who straightened his bowedstudent-back at the light touch.

  As he went he meditated deeply, and Claire waited for him to speak.Treading lightly by his side, she smelled the honeysuckle scent of thesweet alison which she had carried idly away in her hand.

  "If the Queen-Mother be dead," said the Professor, "that is one morestone out of the path of the Bearnais. The Valois loves a strong man tolean upon. For that reason he clings to D'Epernon, but some day he willfind out that Epernon is only a man of cardboard. There is but one inFrance--or, at least, one with the gift of drawing other strong menabout him."

  "The Bearnais?" queried Claire, playing with the sweet alison; "I wonderwhere he has his camp now?"

  She asked the question in a carelessly meditative way, and quiteevidently without any reference to the fact that a certain John d'Albret(once called in jest the Abbe John) was the youngest full captain inthat enthusiastic, though ill-paid array. But the Professor did not hearher question. His mind was set on great matters of policy, while Clairewondered whether the Abbe John looked handsome in his accoutrements ofcaptain. Then she thought of the enemy trying to kill him, and it seemedbitterly wicked. That John d'Albret was at the same time earnestlyendeavouring to kill as many as possible of the enemy did not seem tomatter nearly so much.

  "Yes," said the Professor, "Henry of Valois has nothing else for it. TheLeaguers are worse than ever, buzzing like a cloud of hornets about hishead. They hold Paris and half the cities of France. He must go to theKing of Navarre, and that humbly withal!"

  "It will be well for him then," said Claire, "if our Jean-aux-Choux hasno more visions, with 'Remember Saint Bartholomew' for an over-word!"

  "Ah," said the Professor, "make no mistake. A man may be brave andpolitic as well. 'I am excellent at taking advice, when it is to my ownliking,' said the Bearnais, and he will teach Master Jean to see visionsalso to his liking!"

  At which Claire laughed merrily.

  "I am with him there!" she cried; "so as you hope for influence with me,good sir, advise me in the line of my desires. But, ah! yonder is yourmother."

  And clapping her hands, she picked up her skirts and ran as hard as shecould up the path towards a trellised white house with a wide balcony,over which the vines clambered in summer. It was the house of La Masane,which looks down upon Collioure.

  Madame Amelie, or, more properly, the Senora, was a little,quick-moving, crisp-talking woman, with an eye that snapped, and awealth of speech which left her son, the Professor of Eloquence, aninfinite distance behind. She had with her in the house two other sons,the elder of whom was Alcalde of the little town of Collioure, andtherefore intimately linked with the great house of the Llorients, whoseturreted castle stood up grimly midway between St. Elne and La Masane.The Alcalde of Collioure was a staid man of grave aspect, a grinder ofmuch corn during his hours of work, the master of six windmills whichcreaked and groaned on the windy slopes above the sea-village. In hisbroad hat-brim and in the folds of his attire there was always more orless of the faint grey-white dust which hall-marks the maker of thebread of men.

  The Alcalde of Collioure thought in epigrams, explaining his views inwise saws, Catalan, Castilian, and Provencal. French also he had atcall, though, as a good subject of King Philip, he thought, or affectedto think, little of that language. His brother, the lawyer of Elne,attached to the bishopric by his position, was a politician, and nevertired of foretelling that before long Roussillon would be, even as Bearnand Navarre, a part of a great and united France. The Bearnais wouldhold the Pyrenees from end to end.

  These three old bachelors, each according to his ability, did their bestto spoil Claire. And it was a nightly battle of words, to be settledonly by the Senora, who should sit next her at supper. With a twinkle inhis eye the Professor argued his seniority, the Mayor of Collioure hisofficial position, while the notary brazenly declared that being theyoungest and the best-looking, it was no less than right and just thathe should be preferred.

  Madame Amelie miscalled them all for foolish old bachelors, who hadwasted their time cosseting themselves, till now no fair young maid likeClaire would look at any one of them.

  "For me," she would say, "I was married at sixteen, and now my Anatoleowns to more than fifty years and is growing bald. Jean-Marie therewaxes stout and is a corn-miller, while as for you, Monsieur the Notary,you are a fox who rises too late in the morning to catch many roostingfowls!"

  Claire had now been a month in the quiet of the Mas of La Masane, yetshe only now began to understand that Roussillon was a detached part ofthe dominions of King Philip of Spain--though it was nevertheless _traslos montes_, and under a good governor at Perpignan enjoyed for themoment a comparative immunity.

  But dark shadows loomed upon the favoured province.

  The Demon of the South wanted money. Moreover, he wanted his landcleansed of heresy. Rich men in Roussillon were heretics or the childrenof heretics. Philip was fighting the Church's quarrel abroad in alllands, on all waters--against Elizabeth of England, against the boldburghers of the Low Countries, the Protestant princes of Germany,against the Bearnais, and (but this secretly) against the King ofFrance.

  Far away where the hills of the Gaudarrama look down upon Madrid, andwhere in the cold wind-drift from their snows the life of a man goes outwhile the flame of a candle burns steadily, sat a little wizened figure,bent and seared, spinning spiders' webs in a wilderness of stone, in themidst of a desert wherein no man dwelt. He spun them to an accompanimentof monks' chanting and the tolling of bells, but every hour horsemenwent and came at full gallop across the wild.

  The palace in the wilderness was the Escurial, and the man Philip II. ofSpain, known all over Europe by the terrible name of "The Demon of theSouth."

  For him there was no truce in this war. He moved slowly, as he himselfboasted, with a foot of lead, but hitherto surely. Of his own land hewas absolutely secure, save perhaps in that far corner of ever-turbulentCatalonia which is called Roussillon.

  The inhabitants considered that province almost a part of France. TheDemon of the South, however, thought otherwise--that little man at thedesk whose was the League, who moved Guise and all the rest as concealedclockwork moves the puppets when the great Strasburg horologe strikestwelve--whose was the Armada and the army of Parma, camped out on theFlemish dunes. He held that Roussillon was for him a kind of gold mine.And his black tax-gatherers were the familiars of the Holy Office, thatmystery of mysteries, the Inquisition itself.

  Nevertheless, for the moment, there was peace--peace on Collioure, peaceon the towered feudalism of the castle thereof, peace on the alternatefish-tailed sapphire and turquoise of its sleeping sea, and most of allpeace on La Masane, over against the high-perched fortress of St. Elne.

  The Senora's two maidens served the evening meal in the wide,seaward-looking room, the windows of which opened like doors upon thecovered terrace. Though the spring was not yet far advanced the air wasalready sweet and scented with juniper and romarin, lavender, myrtle,and lentisque--growths which, like the bog-myrtle of Scotland, smellsweet all the year.

  The three men saluted their house-guest sedately by kissing Claire onthe forehead. To the Professor, as to an older friend with additionalprivileges, she presented also her cheek. From the head of the table,which was hers by right, Madame Amelie surveyed tolerantly yet sharplythis interchange of civilities.

  "Have done, children," she said, "the soup waits."

  And as of all things the soup of the Mas of Collioure must not be keptwaiting, all made haste to bring themselves to their places. Then theSenora, glancing about to see that all were in a fit and reverent frameof mind, prepared to say grace. "_Bene_----Don Jordy!" she interruptedsharply, "you may be a good man of the law, and learned in Papal bullsand seals, but the Grace of God is scant in you. You are thinking m
oreof that young maid than of your Maker! Cross yourself reverently, DonJordy, or no spoonful of soup do you eat at my table to-night."

  Don Jordy (which is, of course, to say George) did as his mother badehim. For the little black-eyed old lady was a strict disciplinarian, andnone crossed her will in the Mas of Collioure. Yes, these threegrey-headed men, each with a man's work in the world behind him, as soonas they crossed the threshold became again all of an age--the age theirmother wished them to be, when she had them running like wild goatsamong the flocks and herds of La Masane. Happy that rare mother whosesons never quite grow up.

  After the first deep breathings, and the sigh of satisfaction with whichit was the custom to pay homage to the excellent pottage of MadameAmelie, the second brother, Jean-Marie, Alcalde of Collioure, a quietsmile defining the flour dust in the wrinkles of his grave countenance(it was not his day for shaving), looked across at Claire Agnew andsaid, "I thought mayhap you might have come to see me to-day. I was downat the Fanal Mill, and----"

  "There are finer things to be seen at Elne," interrupted the Bishop'snotary, "to wit, cloisters, an organ, and fine pictured books onvellum."

  "Pshaw!" cried his brother, "it is better in the mills--what withwhirling sails, the sleepy clatter of the wheels, and the grindingstones, with the meal pouring down its funnel like a mine of gold."

  "Ah," sighed the lawyer, "but I wearied to-day among my parchments. Thesight of you has spoilt us. A day without you is as long as one of CountUgolino's!"

  "What was that?" demanded the miller, interested.

  "A day without bread!" said the notary.

  "Silence, Don Jordy," cried the Senora to her favourite son, "thattongue of yours may plead well in a court, or for aught I know speak thebest of Latin before the wise of the earth, but that is no reason whyhere, in this my house, it should go like the hopper of the Fanal Mill!"

  "_Architae crepitaculum!_" said the notary, "you are right, mothermine--the truly eloquent man, like our Sir Professor, keeps hiseloquence to practise on young maids by the sea-beach! But I have notobserved him fill his mouth with pebbles like his master."

  "You are indeed but young things," said Claire, smiling at the Senora;"I would not take any one of you from your mother--no, not at a gift."

  "They are slow--slow, my sons," said the Senora, well pleased; "I fearme they will be buried ere they be wed."

  "Then we shall have small chance," cried the ruddy Don Jordy, "foraccording to what I hear my betters say over yonder at the Bishop'spalace, in the place whither we are bound there is neither marrying norgiving in marriage!"

  "Good brother," said the Professor of Eloquence sententiously, "if youdo not mend your ways, you may find yourself where you will have littletime and less inclination for such like gauds!"

  Meanwhile, without heeding their persiflage, the Senora pursued the eventenor of her meditation. "Slow--slow," she said, "good lads all, butslow."

  "It was not our fault, but yours, that we are Long," declared thathardened humorist, Don Jordy; "you married our father of your own freewill, as is the good custom of Roussillon. Blame us not then that we arelike Lambin."

  "Lambin," cried his mother, "who was he? Some monkish rascal runagateover there at the palace?"

  "Nay, no runagate; he goes too slow ever to run," said Don Jordy. "Haveyou never heard of Lambin our barber episcopal?

  'Lambin, the barber, that model of gravity, Shaving the chins of myself and my brother; Handles his blade with such reverend suavity, That ere one side is smooth--lo, 'tis rough on the other!'"

  "And I," said the Mayor of Collioure, "have been this day with one whogoes fast enough, though perhaps he goes to the devil."

  They looked at the miller in astonishment. It was but seldom that heserved himself with words so strong.

  "A cousin of yours, my little lady," he added, looking at Claire.

  "Raphael Llorient!" cried the remaining two brothers; "is he then homeagain?"

  "Aye, indeed he is!" said a voice from the doorway. The figure they sawthere was that of a man clad in black velvet, fitting his slender,almost girlish figure like a glove. Only a single decoration, but thatthe order of the Golden Fleece, hung at his neck from a red ribbon. Hewas lithe and apparently young, but Claire could not see his faceclearly. He remained obstinately against the light, but she could seethe points of a slender moustache, and distinguish that the young man'seyebrows met in a thick black bar on his forehead.

  "Don Raphael," said the Mayor of Collioure, "you are welcome to thisyour house. This is my brother Anatole, Professor of Eloquence at theSorbonne----"

  "Ah, the Parisian!" said the young man, bowing slightly; "so you havekilled King Guise after crowning him? We in Madrid ever thought him aman of straw for all his strutting and cock-crowing. He would have noneof our great King Philip's advice. And so--and so--they used him forfirewood in the guard-room at Blois! Well, every dog has his day. Andwho may this be--I ask as lord of the manor and feudal superior, whilewarming myself by your fire as a friend--this pretty maid with thedowncast eyes?"

  "I believe," said the Professor gravely, "that the lady is your owncousin-german. Her name is Claire Agnew, and that of her mother wasColette Llorient of Collioure."