CHAPTER XXXI.
THE WAY OF THE SALT MARSHES
The shore road from Perpignan to Collioure is a pass, dark and perilous,even on an August night. But Jean-aux-Choux trod it with the assuredfoot of one to whom the night is as the day. He had, as the people ofCollioure asserted, been assuredly witch-born. Now to be "witch-born"may induce spiritual penalties hereafter, but, from all purely earthlypoints of view, it is a good thing. For then you have cat's eyes and canwalk through black night as though it were noonday. Concerning this,however, Jean did not trouble himself. He considered himself well-born,well-baptised, one of the elect, and, therefore, perfectly prepared--agreat thing when it is your lot to walk in the midst of many suddendeaths--for whatever the future might bring. He was turning over in hismind ways and means of getting Claire across the frontier--not verygreatly troubled, because, first of all, there was the ten days' grace,and though the Inquisition would doubtless have watchers posted aboutthe house, he, Jean-aux-Choux, could easily outwit them.
So he traversed the desolate flats between Perpignan and Elne, acrosswhich wild bulls were then permitted to range. Indeed, they came attimes right up to the verge of the vineyards, which cultivators werejust beginning to hedge from their ravages with the strange spike-leavedplant called the Fig of the Moors. But Jean-aux-Choux had no fear ofanything that walked upon four feet. He carried his long shepherd'sstaff with the steel point to it, trailing behind him like a pike. Andthough, rounding the salt marshes and _etangs_ or "stanks," there cameto his ears the crooning of the herds, muttering discontentedly in theirsleep with bovine noises, the sharp click of horns that tossed andinterlocked in their effort to dislodge the mosquitoes, the sludgysplash of broad hooves in the wallows, the crisp snap of the salt crust,like thin ice breaking--for all which things Jean-aux-Choux carednothing. Of course, his trained ear took in all these noises,registering, classifying, and drawing deductions from them. But he neveronce even raised his pointed staff, nor changed his direction. Perhapsthe shepherd's cloak deceived the animals, or more likely the darknessof the night. For ordinarily it is death to venture there, save onhorseback, and armed with the trident of Camargue. Once or twice heshouldered two or three bulls this way and that, pushing them over asone who grooms horses in their stalls after the labours of the day.
But all the time his thoughts were on the paths by which he would carryoff his master's daughter, Claire Agnew, and set her in safety on thesoil of free, if stormy, France, where the Inquisition had no power--norwas likely to have so long as the Bearnais lived, and the old-timephalanx of the Calvinists, D'Aubigne, Rosny, Turenne, and the rest stoodabout him.
Once or twice he thought, with some exultation, of the dead Valois. For,if Guise had been the moving spirit and bloody executioner of SaintBartholomew, this same Henry of Valois, who had died at St. Cloud, hadbeen the chief plotter--rather, say, the second--for Catherine, hismother, the Medicean woman, had assuredly been the first. For all hehad done personally, Jean had no care, no remorse. As to the deed ofJacques Clement, he himself would not have slain an ally of theBearnais. But, after all, it was justice, that the priest should slaythe priest-ridden, and that the fanatic monk should slay the founder ofthe Order of the Penitents.
Altogether, Jean-aux-Choux had a quiet mind as he went. Above him, andsomewhat to his left hand, hung a black mass, which was the rock-settown of Elne on its look-out hill. Highest of all loomed the black,shadowy mass of its cathedral, with the towers cutting a fantasticpattern against the skies.
Then came again the cultivated fields, hedges, ditches, the spiked_agave_ dykes, over which he swung, using his long staff for aleaping-pole--again the salt marshes, and lastly, the steep shingle andblown sand of the sea.
Here the waves fell with a soft and cooling sound. Twenty miles ofheavy, grey-black salt water, the water of the Midland sea, statedlysaid "Hush" to the stars.
Jean stopped and listened. There was no need for haste. Ten days, andthe task would need thinking over--how to get her, by Salses, toNarbonne, where there was good French authority, and the protection ofthe great lords of his own party. But he would succeed. He knew it. Hehad never failed yet.
So Jean was at peace. The stars looked down, blinking sleepily throughvarious coloured prisms. The sea said so. You heard the wavelet runalong the shore, and the "Hush" dying out infinitesimally, as theworld's clamour dies into the silence of space.
But Jean-aux-Choux would have been a little less at ease, and put atrifle more powder into his heels, had he known that the warrant of theHoly Office which he carried in his pocket was only a first draft, andthat the actual document was already in the hands of the familiars, tobe executed at their peril. Also, that in this there was no question ofdays, either of ten or any other number. The acolytes of the Black Robehad a free hand.
* * * * *
The morning was coming up, all peach and primrose, out of the East,reddening the port-waters of Collioure, and causing the white house ofLa Masane, up on its hill, to blush, when Jean-aux-Choux leaped the wallof his own sheepfold, and came suddenly upon a figure he knew well.
He saw a young man, bare of head, his steel cap, velvet-covered andwhite-plumed, resting on a low turf dyke. He had laid aside his weapons,all except his dagger, and with that he was cultivating and cherishinghis finger-nails. His heel was over the knee of his other leg, in thatpose which the young male sex can only attain with grace between theages of twenty and twenty-five.
"Hallo, Jean-aux-Choux!" he cried. "Here have I been waiting you forhours and hours unnumbered. Is this the way you keep your master'ssheep? If I were that most scowling nobleman of the castle down there, Iwould soon bid you travel. If it had not been for me, your sheep wouldhave been sore put to it for a mouthful, and the nursing ewes certainlydead of thirst. Where have you been all these three days?"
"The Abbe John--the little D'Albret!" cried Jean-aux-Choux, thoroughlysurprised for once in his life; "how do you come here?"
"I have been on my master's business," answered the Abbe Johncarelessly, "and now I am waiting to do a little on my own account. Butthere have been so many suspicious gentry about, that I hesitated to godown till I had seen you. Now tell me all that has happened. That SHE issafe, I know; I have seen her every day--from a distance!"
"She--who?" asked Jean, though he knew very well.
"Who--why Claire, of course," said the cousin of the Bearnais; "you donot suppose I came so far to see the little old woman in the bluepinafore, who walks nodding her head and rattling her keys? Or you, yougreat, thick-skulled oaf of Geneva, or the Sorbonnist with the bald headand the eyes that look and see nothing? What should a young man come sofar for, and risk his life to see, if not a fair young girl? Answer me.What did John Calvin teach you as to that?"
"Only this," said Jean-aux-Choux solemnly; "'From the lust of the flesh,from the lust of the eye, from the pride of life, good Lord deliverme!'"
The young man looked up from his nail-polishing, sharply and keenly.
"Aye--so," he said. "Well--and did He?"
For a moment, but only for a moment, Jean-aux-Choux stood nonplussed.Then he found his answer, and this time it was John Stirling, armiger,scholar in divinity, who spoke.
"The God of John Calvin has delivered me from all thought of self in thematter of this maid, my master's daughter. What might have grown up inmy heart, or even what may once have been in my heart, had I been aughtbut a battered masque of humanity, an offence to the beauty of God'screation--that is not your business, nor that of any man!"
The young fellow dropped his knife, and rising, clasped Jean-aux-Chouxfrankly about the neck.
"Jean--Jean--old friend," he cried, "wherefore should I hurt you? Whyshould you think it of me? Not for the world--you know that well.Forgive an idle word."
But Jean-aux-Choux was moved, and having the large heart, when once thewaves tossed it, the calm returned but slowly.
"Sir," he said, "it is only a few months since you first saw Cl
aireAgnew. Yet you have, as I judge from your light words, admired her afteryour kind. But I--I have loved her as my own maid--my sole thought, myonly--ever since her father gathered me up, a lame and bleeding boy, onthe morning after the Bartholomew. And ever since that day I have lovedmuch, showed little, and said nothing at all. Yet I have kept keenguard. Night and day I have gone about her house, like a faithful dogwhen the wolves are howling in the forests. Now, if you love this girlwith any light love, take your way as you came--for you shall have toreckon with me!"
The Abbe John dropped back on the round stone which served equally asseat and rubbing-post in the sheepfold. The oil off many woolly backshad long since rendered it black and glistening. He resumed thepolishing of his nails with his dagger-edge.
Grave and stem, Jean-aux-Choux stood before him, his hand on the weaponwhich had slain the Guise. The Abbe John rubbed each finger-nailcarefully on the velvet of his cap as he finished it, breathed on it,rubbed again, and then held it up to the light.
"Ah, Jean," he said at last, "I may not go about her house howling likea wolf, nor yet do any great thing for her. As you say, our acquaintancehas not been long. But if you can love her more than I, or serve herbetter, or are willing to give your life more lightly for her sake thanI--why then, Jean, my friend, you are welcome to her!"
Jean-aux-Choux did not answer, but D'Albret took no heed. He went on:
"'By their deeds ye shall know them. They taught you that at Geneva, Iwarrant. Well, from what I have seen these past three days, Claire Agnewis far from safe down there. I have watched that black-browed master ofyours conferring with certain other gentlemen of singularly evilphysiognomy. There has been far too much dodging into coppices andpopping heads round stone walls. And then, as often as the maid comes tothe door with the little old woman in the stomacher of blue--click--theyare all in their holes again, like a warren-full of rabbits when youlook over the hedge and clap your hands! I do not like it,Jean-aux-Choux!"
Neither did Jean-aux-Choux--so little, indeed, that he decided to takethis light-minded young gentleman, of good family and few ambitions,into his confidence--which, perhaps, was the wisest thing he could havedone. From his blouse he drew the parchment he had lifted off the tableof the Inquisition in the Street of the Money, and thrust it silentlyinto the other's hand.
This was all Jean-aux-Choux's apology, but, for the Abbe John, it wasperfectly sufficient.
The White Plumes of Navarre: A Romance of the Wars of Religion Page 32
