They crossed the bridge that spans the Isere and took the road to Grenoble at a sharp pace, with scarce a backward glance at the grey towers of Condillac. Valerie experienced an overwhelming inclination to weep and laugh, to cry and sing at one and the same time; but whether this odd emotion sprang from the happenings in which she had had her part, or from the exhilaration of that mad ride, she could not tell. No doubt it sprang from both, owing a part to each. She controlled herself, however. A shy, upward glance at the stern, set face of the man whose arm encircled and held her fast had a curiously sobering effect upon her. Their eyes met, and he smiled a friendly, reassuring smile, such as a father might have bestowed upon a daughter.
“I do not think that they will charge me with blundering this time,” he said.
“Charge you with blundering?” she echoed; and the inflection of the pronoun might have flattered him had he not reflected that it was impossible she could have understood his allusion. And now she bethought her that she had not thanked him — and the debt was a heavy one. He had come to her aid in an hour when hope seemed dead. He had come single-handed — save for his man Rabecque; and in a manner that was worthy of being made the subject of an epic, he had carried her out of Condillac, away from the terrible Dowager and her cut-throats. The thought of them sent a shiver through her.
“Do you feel the cold?” he asked concernedly; and that the wind might cut her less, he slackened speed.
“No, no,” she cried, her alarm waking again at the thought of the folk of Condillac. “Make haste! Go on, go on! Mon Dieu! if they should overtake us!”
He looked over his shoulder. The road ran straight for over a half-mile behind them, and not a living thing showed upon it.
“You need have no alarm,” he smiled. “We are not pursued. They must have realized the futility of attempting to overtake us. Courage, mademoiselle. We shall be in Grenoble presently, and once there, you will have nothing more to fear.”
“You are sure of that?” she asked, and there was doubt in her voice.
He smiled reassuringly again. “The Lord Seneschal shall supply us with an escort,” he promised confidently.
“Still,” she said, “we shall not stay there, I hope, monsieur.”
“No longer than may be necessary to procure a coach for you.”
“I am glad of that,” said she. “I shall know no peace until Grenoble is a good ten leagues behind us. The Marquise and her son are too powerful there.”
“Yet their might shall not prevail against the Queen’s,” he made reply. And as now they rode amain she fell to thanking him, shyly at first, then, as she gathered confidence in her subject, with a greater fervour. But he interrupted her ere she had gone far, “Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye,” said he, “you overstate the matter.” His tone was chilling almost; and she felt as she had been rebuked. “I am no more than the emissary of Her Majesty — it is to her that your thanks are due.”
“Ah, but, monsieur,” she returned to the assault, “I owe some thanks to you as well. What other in your place would have done what you have done?”
“I know not that, nor do I greatly care,” said he, and laughed, but with a laugh that jarred on her. “That which I did I must have done, no matter whom it was a question of saving. I am but an instrument in this matter, mademoiselle.”
His thought was to do no more than belittle the service he had rendered her, to stem her flow of gratitude, since, indeed, he felt, as he said, that it was to the Queen-Regent her thanks were due. All unwitting was it — out of his ignorance of the ways of thought of a sex with which he held the view that it is an ill thing to meddle — that he wounded her by his disclaimer, in which her sensitive maiden fancy imagined a something that was almost contemptuous.
They rode in silence for a little spell, broken at last by Garnache in expression of the thoughts that had come to him as a consequence of what she had said.
“On this same subject of thanks,” said he — and as she raised her eyes again she found him smiling almost tenderly— “if any are due between us they are surely due from me to you.”
“From you to me?” she asked in wonder.
“Assuredly,” said he. “Had you not come between me and the Dowager’s assassins there had been an end to me in the hall of Condillac.”
Her hazel eyes were very round for a moment, then they narrowed, and little humorous lines formed at the corners of her lips.
“Monsieur de Garnache,” said she, with a mock coldness that was a faint echo of his own recent manner, “you overstate the case. That which I did I must have done, no matter whom it was a question of saving. I was but an instrument in this matter, monsieur.”
His brows went up. He stared at her a moment, gathering instruction from the shy mockery of her glance. Then he laughed with genuine amusement.
“True,” he said. “An instrument you were; but an instrument of Heaven, whereas in me you but behold the instrument of an earthly power. We are not quite quits, you see.”
But she felt, at least, that she was quits with him in the matter of his repudiation of her own thanks, and the feeling bridged the unfriendly gap that she had felt was opening out between them; and for no reason in the world that she could think of, she was glad that this was so.
CHAPTER VI. MONSIEUR DE GARNACHE KEEPS HIS TEMPER
Night had fallen and it had begun to rain when Garnache and Valerie reached Grenoble. They entered the town afoot, the Parisian not desiring to attract attention by being seen in the streets with a lady on the withers of his horse.
With thought for her comfort, Monsieur de Garnache had divested himself of his heavy horseman’s cloak and insisted upon her assuming it, so setting it about her that her head was covered as by a wimple. Thus was she protected not only from the rain, but from the gaze of the inquisitive.
They made their way in the drizzle, through the greasy, slippery streets ashine with the lights that fell from door and window, Rabecque following closely with the horses. Garnache made straight for his inn — the Auberge du Veau qui Tete — which enjoyed the advantage of facing the Palais Seneschal.
The ostler took charge of the nags, and the landlord conducted them to a room above-stairs, which he placed at mademoiselle’s disposal. That done, Garnache left Rabecque on guard, and proceeded to make the necessary arrangements for the journey that lay before them. He began by what he conceived to be the more urgent measure, and stepping across to the Palais Seneschal, he demanded to see Monsieur de Tressan at once.
Ushered into the Lord Seneschal’s presence, he startled that obese gentleman by the announcement that he had returned from Condillac with Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye, and that he would require an escort to accompany them to Paris.
“For I am by no means minded to be exposed to such measures as the tigress of Condillac and her cub may take to recover their victim,” he explained with a grim smile.
The Seneschal combed his beard and screwed up his pale eyes until they vanished in the cushions of his cheeks. He was lost in amazement. He could only imagine that the Queen’s emissary had been duped more successfully this time.
“I am to gather, then,” said he, dissembling what was passing through his mind, “that you delivered the lady by force or strategy.”
“By both, monsieur,” was the short answer.
Tressan continued to comb his beard, and pondered the situation. If things were so, indeed, they could not have fallen out more to his taste. He had had no hand in it, one way or the other. He had run with the hare and hunted with the hounds, and neither party could charge him with any lack of loyalty. His admiration and respect for Monsieur de Garnache grew enormously. When the rash Parisian had left him that afternoon for the purpose of carrying his message himself to Condillac, Tressan had entertained little hope of ever again seeing him alive. Yet there he stood, as calm and composed as ever, announcing that singlehanded he had carried out what another might well have hesitated to attempt with a regiment at his heels.
&n
bsp; Tressan’s curiosity urged him to beg for the details of this marvel, and Garnache entertained him with a brief recital of what had taken place, whereat, realizing that Garnache had indeed outwitted them, the Seneschal’s wonder increased.
“But we are not out of the quagmire yet,” cried Garnache; “and that is why I want an escort.”
Tressan became uneasy. “How many men shall you require?” he asked, thinking that the Parisian would demand at least the half of a company.
“A half-dozen and a sergeant to command them.”
Tressan’s uneasiness was dissipated, and he found himself despising Garnache more for his rashness in being content with so small a number than he respected him for the boldness and courage he had so lately displayed. It was not for him to suggest that the force might prove insufficient; rather was it for him to be thankful that Garnache had not asked for more. An escort Tressan dared not refuse him, and yet refuse it him he must have done — or broken with the Condillacs — had he asked for a greater number. But six men! Pooh! they would be of little account. So he very readily consented, inquiring how soon Garnache would require them.
“At once,” was the Parisian’s answer. “I leave Grenoble to-night. I hope to set out in an hour’s time. Meanwhile I’ll have the troopers form a guard of honour. I am lodged over the way.”
Tressan, but too glad to be quit of him, rose there and then to give the necessary orders, and within ten minutes Garnache was back at the Sucking Calf with six troopers and a sergeant, who had left their horses in the Seneschal’s stables until the time for setting out. Meanwhile Garnache placed them on duty in the common-room of the inn.
He called for refreshment for them, and bade them remain there at the orders of his man Rabecque. His reason for this step was that it became necessary that he should absent himself for a while to find a carriage suitable for the journey; for as the Sucking Calf was not a post-house he must seek one elsewhere — at the Auberge de France, in fact, which was situate on the eastern side of the town by the Porte de Savoie — and he was not minded to leave the person of Valerie unguarded during his absence. The half-dozen troopers he considered ample, as indeed they were.
On this errand he departed, wrapped tightly in his cloak, walking briskly through the now heavier rain.
But at the Auberge de France a disappointment awaited him. The host had no horses and no carriage, nor would he have until the following morning. He was sorrow-stricken that the circumstance should discompose Monsieur de Garnache; he was elaborate in his explanations of how it happened that he could place no vehicle at Monsieur de Garnache’s disposal — so elaborate that it is surprising Monsieur de Garnache’s suspicions should not have been aroused. For the truth of the matter was that the folk of Condillac had been at the Auberge de France before him — as they had been elsewhere in the town wherever a conveyance might be procurable — and by promises of reward for obedience and threats of punishment for disobedience, they had contrived that Garnache should hear this same story on every hand. His mistake had lain in his eagerness to obtain a guard from the Seneschal. Had he begun by making sure of a conveyance, anticipating, as he should have done, this move on the part of the Condillacs — a move which he did not even now suspect — it is possible that he might have been spared much of the trouble that was to follow.
An hour or so later, after having vainly ransacked the town for the thing he needed, he returned wet and annoyed to the Veau qui Tote. In a corner of the spacious common-room — a corner by the door leading to the interior of the inn — he saw the six troopers at table, waxing a trifle noisy over cards. Their sergeant sat a little apart, in conversation with the landlord’s wife, eyes upturned adoringly, oblivious of the increasing scowl that gathered about her watchful husband’s brow.
At another table sat four gentlemen — seemingly travellers, by their air and garb — in a conversation that was hushed at Garnache’s entrance. But he paid no heed to them as he stalked with ringing step across the rushstrewn floor, nor observed how covertly and watchfully their glances followed him as returning, in passing the sergeant’s prompt salute he vanished through the doorway leading to the stairs.
He reappeared again a moment later, to call the host, and give him orders for the preparing of his own and Rabecque’s supper.
On the landing above he found Rabecque awaiting him.
“Is all well?” he asked, and received from his lackey a reassuring answer.
Mademoiselle welcomed him gladly. His long absence, it appeared, had been giving her concern. He told her on what errand he had been, and alarm overspread her face upon hearing its result.
“But, monsieur,” she cried, “you are not proposing that I should remain a night in Grenoble.”
“What alternative have we?” he asked, and his brows met, impatient at what he accounted no more than feminine whimsey.
“It is not safe,” she exclaimed, her fears increasing. “You do not know how powerful are the Condillacs.”
He strode to the fire, and the logs hissed under the pressure of his wet boot. He set his back to the blaze, and smiled down upon her.
“Nor do you know how powerful are we,” he answered easily. “I have below six troopers and a sergeant of the Seneschal’s regiment; with myself and Rabecque we are nine men in all. That should be a sufficient guard, mademoiselle. Nor do I think that with all their power the Condillacs will venture here to claim you at the sword point.”
“And yet,” she answered, for all that she was plainly reassured, at least in part, “I would rather you had got me a horse, that we might have ridden to Saint Marcellin, where no doubt a carriage might be obtained.”
“I did not see the need to put you to so much discomfort,” he returned. “It is raining heavily.”
“Oh, what of that?” she flung back impatiently.
“Besides,” he added, “it seems there are no horses at the post-house. A benighted place this Dauphiny of yours, mademoiselle.”
But she never heeded the gibe at her native province. “No horses?” she echoed, and her hazel eyes looked up sharply, the alarm returning to her face. She rose, and approached him. “Surely that is impossible.”
“I assure you that it is as I say — neither at the post-house nor at any of the inns I visited could I find me a spare horse.”
“Monsieur,” she cried, “I see the hand of Condillac in this.”
“As how?” he inquired, and his tone again was quickened by impatience.
“They have anticipated you. They seek to keep you here — to keep us in Grenoble.”
“But to what end?” he asked, his impatience growing. “The Auberge de France has promised me a carriage in the morning. What shall it avail them at Condillac to keep us here to-night?”
“They may have some project. Oh, monsieur! I am full of fears.”
“Dismiss them,” he answered lightly; and to reassure her he added, smiling: “Rest assured we shall keep good watch over you, Rabecque and I and the troopers. A guard shall remain in the passage throughout the night. Rabecque and I will take turn about at sentry-go. Will that give you peace?”
“You are very good,” she said, her voice quivering with feeling and real gratitude, and as he was departing she called after him. “You will be careful of yourself,” she said.
He paused under the lintel, and turned, surprised. “It is a habit of mine,” said he, with a glint of humour in his eye.
But there was no answering smile from her. Her face was all anxiety.
“Beware of pitfalls,” she bade him. “Go warily; they are cruelly cunning, those folk of Condillac. And if evil should befall you...”
“There would still remain Rabecque and the troopers,” he concluded.
She shrugged her shoulders. “I implore you to be careful,” she insisted.
“You may depend upon me,” he said, and closed the door.
Outside he called Rabecque, and together they went below. But mindful of her fears, he dispatched one of the tr
oopers to stand sentry outside her door whilst he and his lackey supped. That done, he called the host, and set himself at table, Rabecque at his elbow in attendance to hand him the dishes and pour his wine.
Across the low-ceilinged room the four travellers still sat in talk, and as Garnache seated himself, one of them shouted for the host and asked in an impatient tone to know if his supper was soon to come.
“In a moment, sir,” answered the landlord respectfully, and he turned again to the Parisian. He went out to bring the latter’s meal, and whilst he was gone Rabecque heard from his master the reason of their remaining that night in Grenoble. The inference drawn by the astute lackey — and freely expressed by him — from the lack of horses or carriages in Grenoble that night, coincided oddly with Valerie’s. He too gave it as his opinion that his master had been forestalled by the Dowager’s people, and without presuming to advise Garnache to go warily — a piece of advice that Garnache would have resented, to the extent perhaps of boxing the fellow’s ears — he determined, there and then, to keep a close watch upon his master, and under no circumstances, if possible, permit him to leave the Sucking Calf that night.
The host returned, bearing a platter on which there steamed a ragout that gave out an appetizing odour; his wife followed with other dishes and a bottle of Armagnac under her arm. Rabecque busied himself at once, and his hungry master disposed himself to satisfy the healthiest appetite in France, when suddenly a shadow fell across the table. A man had come to stand beside it, his body screening the light of one of the lamps that hung from a rafter of the ceiling.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 140
