“Bethink you,” cried Duroc, “that by burning those papers you are acknowledging their treasonable nature in the presence of three witnesses, and you are destroying yourself.”
“I know it,” answered Paul coldly. The letters were curling up and beginning to crackle with the heat.
“Do not delude yourself that your warrant from Robespierre can save you from the consequences of such an act. Robespierre himself, were he to come hither in person, could not save you from the guillotine.”
“I know it,” answered Paul again. “I have thought of all that.”
The package burst suddenly into flame. The blaze crept up and licked his hand; but like a modern Mutius he shrank not, nor did he relinquish his hold until the flames were dead, and naught but a little heap of black ashes was left to flutter from his scorched and blistered hand. Then, with a ghastly laugh, he stepped back, and flung his pistol on the table.
“Do your will, Citoyen. I am your prisoner.”
And thus did Paul Lavoisie, who had entered that house one of the most powerful personages of the Revolution, pass out a doomed man. He had for consolation the fact that he was sacrificing his life for the sake of the woman he loved; he did it without regret, with, in fact, a glow of exultation in his soul. But even of this was he to be robbed.
“Citoyen-Prefect,” said he, struck by a sudden thought, “how came you to learn that I was the ci-devant Chevalier de Lavoisie?”
“From my wife, Citoyen,” said Duroc, who saw no reason for concealing the fact. “She is from Boisvieux, and she recognised you when you presented yourself at my house to-day.”
One of those all-illuminating flashes of revelation that at times we are accorded — and which often it were better we were not — came then to Lavoisie. He reeled suddenly forward, his hand going up to his head.
“Mon Dieu!” he gasped.
“What is the matter?” inquired Duroc.
“Nothing, Citoyen. A sudden faintness; the pain in my hand,” he faltered. “Give me your arm, Citoyen Soldier.”
THE SCOURGE
Premier Magazine, Mar 1916
Chapter I.
The colonel bethought him of George Monk, who, as the result of a supple conscience and a sort of weather-cock facility in adjusting himself to any wind that blew, was now Duke of Albemarle. Between Monk and himself lay that which had made him count upon the duke’s favour and protection, and so, upon arriving in England a month ago, he had gone straight to Whitehall in quest of Albemarle. Albemarle had given him a friendly reception, and had offered him an appointment in those Indies which the Queen had lately brought to the English Crown as her marriage portion.
Colonel Holles, being attached to the fleshpots of Europe, and accounting himself too old at forty to exchange them for life among savages — as he conceived the inhabitants of Bombay — begged Albemarle to think of some better employment for him at home.
“At home!” Albemarle had cried. “Ye’re surely mad. A man of your past, of your association with the Commonwealth and the regicides! Overseas is the place for you. You’ll be safe bestowed there, out of the sight of those who might pry into your antecedents; the pay is high, and—”
“But is there not a Bill of Indemnity?” cried the colonel.
“Why, so there is,” said the duke, “and there are those who trusted to it. If you go by way of Fleet Street some of their skulls will grin down at you from Temple Bar. I tell you, man, there is none so high but the King’s vengeance will drag him down, none so low but it will pull him up. Will you wait to be disembowelled at Charing Cross?”
“Faith, no!” said the colonel. “I haven’t the stomach for it.”
“Then you’ll accept this post in the Indies. I tell you it is greatly coveted, and the pay is good. Think of it.”
“I’ll think of it,” said the colonel, without enthusiasm.
He had left the great man’s presence, and thought of it no more until now, as he sat at the window of the Paul’s Head, thinking of it, perforce, at last, under the spur of desperation.
“Oh, the great and the dreadful God!” came the preacher’s voice in a scream, meant to arrest his thinning audience.
Startled, Holles flung a curse at him, then lapsed back into his hopeless contemplation of the Indies — to him a land of greasy black women, and evil-smelling, apish men. It revolted him to think of ending his days in such a land and finally quenching there the lofty ambitions of his youth.
Time was when he had seen himself a leader of men riding among the great ones of the world. Time was — some twenty years ago, alas! — when he had boasted that he would bend his steps to such a destiny. His mind swept back to those ardent, happy days when, as a lad of twenty, the pure white flame of adolescent love had fired him to his lofty purpose. He beheld again — with those eyes that seemed to be staring at that mouthing scarecrow on the cathedral steps — the lovely face of Nancy Sylvester, a mere child of sixteen, the little maid who had awakened high ambition in his soul.
He was the son of a prosperous Kentish yeoman, who had farmed some three hundred acres of land in the neighbourhood of Ashford whereof Nancy’s father had been the vicar. He had inherited the thews but not the spirit of a farmer; he had ever been a dreamer of dreams, and when he fell in love with Nancy and found his love returned, those dreams of his became insistent in their demand for fulfilment. Because he loved her he had promised to go forth and conquer the world that he might one day return and toss it into her lap as a trifling earnest of his homage.
He sighed, and a little smile fluttered under the beard that masked the hard, resolute mouth. He had been a clean-limbed, clean-minded lad in those far-off days. Clean-limbed he was still — the hardness of his life had kept him so — but as for his clean-mindedness, he had left it in the stews and kennels of the Low Countries, lost it in the quagmire of a soldier’s life, through which he had pursued in vain the Jack-o’-Lanthorn of his ambition. And yet, like some sweet flower blossoming upon a dung-hill, there abode with him still the fragrant memory of Nancy Sylvester, whom he had never since beheld.
He had sought her once, ten years ago. He had returned to Ashford as empty-handed as when he went forth, a weary, jaded, embittered man, seeking repose, ready to earn it even at the price of rusticity, since he was satiated with the dyspeptic fare of the great world through which he had hacked his adventurer’s way to nothing. But the vicar had been dead six years, and Nancy had gone none could tell him whither. His father, too, had been long dead, and in his stead the colonel’s elder brother reigned and reared a family of his own. He had given the wanderer so cold a welcome that it had set him wandering again forthwith. He had gone abroad, and but for the war with Holland and that cursed spark of patriotism he would not be in England now.
Again the voice of the preacher disturbed him.
“Repent!” it cried. “The pestilence lays siege unto this city of the ungodly. Like a raging lion doth it stalk around, seeking where it may leap upon you. Yet forty days, and London shall be destroyed. Yet forty days, and—”
An egg flung by the hand of a butcher’s apprentice smashed full in his face and cropped his period short. He staggered and gasped as the glutinous mass of yolk and white crept sluggishly down from his beard to spread upon the rusty black of his coat.
“Deriders! Scoffers!” he screamed, with arms outflung in imprecation. “Your doom is at hand. Your—”
A roar of laughter drowned the rest. At last he drew attention. Passers-by halted in their stride to mock his misfortune and grotesque appearance. Tradesmen came to their doors to bear their share in the mirth at his expense. Apprentices flung out into the street guffawing and bawling ribaldries. Another egg shot past his head, and after it a shower of offensive missiles, including a living cat, which clawed itself against his breast, spitting furiously.
Overwhelmed, the prophet of doom turned and fled precipitately up the steps and into the shelter of St. Paul’s.
As he vanished Holles turned fr
om the window, where he had risen to his feet, the better to view the happening. There was an end to his dreams, driven out by the sordid thing he had witnessed. Turning now, he faced realities and his associates, Tucker and Rathbone, still busy with their dice. He stepped to the table, and stood over them, a tall, lean man, whose carriage advertised vigour and activity and something of that swaggering arrogance acquired by all who have rubbed shoulders long and closely with the world.
Tucker looked up at him invitingly.
“Wilt throw a main, Ned?”
“You must be jesting,” said he, but without bitterness. “I have thrown my last main, with Fortune for my adversary. Mrs. Bankes gives me to choose between paying what I owe for my lodging in the attic here or finding a bed in the streets, and so I think it will be Albemarle and the Indies, although I’d as soon chew hemlock.”
“There is still that jewel in your ear,” said Rathbone.
Holles fingered it thoughtfully. It was a long, pear-shaped ruby of considerable value, remarkable for its fire and its size — it was as large as the egg of a thrush — a touch of foppery, you would say, most oddly at variance with the colonel’s general appearance. For he was dressed outwardly almost entirely in leather; a leather jerkin, stained and frayed, cased his upright body and concealed all his shabby doublet but the protruding sleeves of wine-coloured, threadbare velvet. Long riding-boots of untanned leather fitted his legs to the thighs — although he did not possess a horse, nor had ridden for weeks — and served to conceal the worn condition of his small clothes. From the plainest of leather baldricks hung the long steel-hilted sword of your adventurer. His hat of grey beaver, frayed at the edges, was adorned by a purple feather, faded, limp, and out of curl. Yet from his left ear hung that precious jewel of a fashion long departed, glowing and twinkling as if to mock the stark severity of all the rest of him.
“I keep it as a last resource,” he said.
“The gift of some fat Flemish burgomaster’s dame,” sniffed Tucker, leering.
“You might suppose it,” said the colonel, with a weary smile. “But the truth is that it was given me by a Royalist lad whose life I spared at Worcester.”
“A ransom, then?”
“Not even that. I spared him for his beauty — he was a very lovely lad and very young — and he gave me this in memory at parting. I never learnt his name, nor cared what it might be. It was just the youth and beauty of him moved me. Some maid must surely have mourned him had he fallen.”
Tucker choked on a deep oath of profane and sardonic merriment.
“‘Fore Heaven, Holles, I never dreamt you could be mawkish.”
“It was long ago,” said Holles, as if in explanation. “Myself I was young then.”
“I suppose you were. Though being so no longer does not explain why you should starve whilst carrying a fortune in your ear.”
“A fortune!” said Holles. “Body of me! It would pay my debts and keep me in lodgings perhaps for three months, and then I should be in no better case than now. No, no. I am for Whitehall, Albemarle, and his pestilent Indies. Will you walk, Tucker?”
“Have you thought on what I told you yesterday?” said Tucker, lowering his voice to a mutter, and casting an eye about the room to make sure that they continued alone there, and that the door was closed.
“Not I!” was the careless answer. “My trade is a soldier’s, not a politician’s.”
“It is as a soldier that Danvers and Sidney need you. Gad’s life, Ned, you can’t say you’ve prospered at the hands of the Monarchy.”
“Nor can I say that I prospered at the hands of the Commonwealth which Sidney’s crack-brained plottings would restore. What’s it all to me?”
He would have said more but that Rathbone cut in suddenly.
“Crack-brained?” he echoed, between anger and contempt of wits that could deem it so. And again: “Crack-brained! Sink me, Holles, you never were anything of a prophet, else you would not have found yourself always on the wrong side. You served the Commonwealth, and the Commonwealth foundered. And now, forsooth, you’ld serve the Monarchy, and I tell you the Monarchy is on the point of foundering.”
“Ay; you tell me so,” said Holles, angering the other further by the sneer.
“And the signs tell you so, if you can read them. But you never could, which is why you lie on straw.”
“Whilst you go in velvet and fine linen!” rasped the colonel’s sarcasm.
“I shall!” roared Rathbone, smacking the table.
“Not so loud!” Tucker admonished him, and himself swung round on his stool more fully to face Holles.
This Tucker was by much the graver and more sober man of that broken twain whom misfortune had associated with Holles.
“You are wrong to dub Algernon Sidney a crack-brain,” he said quietly and impressively. “Here is no rash scheme, no forlorn hope, no desperate adventure. The time has been cunningly chosen, and the instruments carefully picked. From Holland Sidney guides all through Danvers here. First to sow disaffection, and so complete the popular contempt into which the Monarchy has been brought by its lewd ways. And then, when the time is full ripe, to bring the Dutch to complete the King’s overthrow and restore the Commonwealth. D’ye think we shall fail? D’ye think we can? D’ye dream by what underground ways we burrow to our ends and undermine this rotting State?” He lowered his voice still further. “You saw and heard that fellow preaching damnation just now from Paul’s steps over there. He is our man. We have a dozen such at work within the City.”
Holles laughed silently — a curious laugh, characteristic of the man.
“A fine earnest he of your success. You saw how the mob received him.”
Tucker came to his feet, and set a hand upon the colonel’s shoulder.
“True, the mob is like that. But if the Plague spreads how long will it continue in that mood? And mark me, Holles, spread it will now that summer is here. Already St. Giles’, St. Clement Dane’s, and St. Andrew’s, Holborn, are rotten with it. In St. Giles’ alone they buried a hundred cases last week.”
“Still the City continues healthy,” said Holles.
“Does it?” sneered Rathbone, who watched them, elbows on the greasy table.
“You’re mistook, Holles,” Tucker answered him. “The pestilence has got within the walls already. It is kept secret. But we are watching, and we know. Four have died of it within the week — one in Wood Street, one in Fenchurch Street, and one in Crooked Lane. Already those who know are showing their uneasiness. Already men are moving out of London. Let this weather continue, and wait a week or two. Then see if the mob will pelt those who preach the doom of the City, the doom of England, those who will tell them that this punishment has been brought upon them by the dissoluteness of the King and his debauched Court. In its terror the people will listen; they will believe; and they will rise, or I know nothing of the soul of a mob in panic.”
“That will be the moment, and we shall know how to seize it. Already we are strong — far stronger than anyone dreams. But we need more. We need such as you, Holles — men of experience in the leading of men and the use of arms. High destinies await you in our ranks, and you stand paltering there, and think to sell your services to a Monarchy whose knell is sounding. Go pawn that jewel, man, and wait upon events. I bid you, who am your friend.”
Holles stood thoughtful, but unconvinced.
“You do not fear to tell me this?” he asked. “I might turn the knowledge to account.”
“As how? What shall you tell? That I have said so much to you? Bah! Our plans are too secret and too well laid to be blown upon so lightly. Do you inform, and it will be your word against mine. And if my word be worth little, faith, yours is worth no more.”
“Ay,” said Holles coldly. “The word of a broken soldier of fortune carries little weight. They might even suspect me of a fraud to obtain money. And so, since I cannot make my fortune that way either, it must needs be the Indies. I am for Whitehall.” And he made s
hift to go.
“I’ve talked in vain, then!” said Tucker, with chagrin.
“What will convince you?” growled Rathbone.
Holles checked in his stride, and looked at them over his shoulder.
“Success,” he answered. “Set up again this Commonwealth, and I will offer it my sword. My trade is not to overthrow Governments, but to serve the Government in being. With its rights or its wrongs I have no concern. A good-day to you both!” And he went out with a clanking step, erect and arrogant of port, leaving them to curse him for a fool.
In the narrow passage his arrogance met Mrs. Bankes, the landlady of the Paul’s Head, a squat, untidy woman, with hard eyes and a hard mouth.
“So you go forth, sir?” she said, her arms akimbo. “And this rent of mine?”
He broke in upon her, losing nothing of his stiffness.
“I go to seek it now,” he said. “If you detain me, you delay by just so much the payment due. So give me passage, woman, that your interests may be served.”
Mumbling sourly, she fell aside, and he went on and out into the bright sunshine to take his way on foot to Whitehall, since he lacked the means to use horse, coach, or chair. He went moodily, considering what Tucker and Rathbone had told him, and asking himself whether in truth he were not wiser to think more of their scheme. Beyond Temple Bar, as he trod the filth of the Strand opposite St. Clement Dane’s, he was aroused from his musings by a voice that called to him:
“Keep your distance, sir!”
Checking, he looked up and to the left whence the order came. He found it to have been uttered by a man with a halbert, who stood before a padlocked door that was smeared with a red cross a foot in length, above which, also in red, was painted the legend: “LORD HAVE MERCY UPON US.”
Taken thus by surprise, the colonel shuddered, and stepped out into the middle of the street, and so pursued his way, after a glance at the closed windows of the infected house. It was the first that he had seen; for although he had come this way but a week ago, and the plague had then been active in the neighbourhood, yet it was then confined to Butcher’s Row, on the north side of the church, and to the mean streets that issued thence. To find it thus upon the main road between the City and Whitehall was an added reminder of what Tucker had said, and so he found his thoughts thrust more closely than ever upon this matter of the simmering revolution and upon the uses which the revolutionaries could make of this dread pestilence.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 509
