Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France

by Stanley John Weyman

  CHAPTER VI.

  WHO TOUCHES TAVANNES?

  In saying that the storm was rising Count Hannibal had said no morethan the truth. A new mob had a minute before burst from the eastwardinto the Rue St. Honore; and the roar of its thousand voices swelledlouder than the importunate clangour of the bells. Behind its movingmasses the dawn of a new day--Sunday, the 24th of August, the feast ofSt. Bartholomew--was breaking over the Bastille, as if to aid thecrowd in its cruel work. The gabled streets, the lanes, and gothiccourts, the stifling wynds, where the work awaited the workers, stilllay in twilight; still the gleam of the torches, falling on thehouse-fronts, heralded the coming of the crowd. But the dawn wasgrowing, the sun was about to rise. Soon the day would be here, givingup the lurking fugitive whom darkness, more pitiful, had spared, andstamping with legality the horrors that night had striven to hide.

  And with day, with the full light, killing would grow more easy,escape more hard. Already they were killing on the bridge where therich goldsmiths lived, on the wharves, on the river. They were killingat the Louvre, in the courtyard under the King's eyes, and below thewindows of the Medicis. They were killing in St. Martin and St. Denisand St. Antoine; wherever hate, or bigotry, or private malice impelledthe hand. From the whole city went up a din of lamentation, and wrath,and foreboding. From the Cour des Miracles, from the markets, from theBoucherie, from every haunt of crime and misery, hordes of wretchedcreatures poured forth; some to rob on their own account, and wherethey listed, none gainsaying; more to join themselves to one of thearmed bands whose business it was to go from street to street, andhouse to house, quelling resistance, and executing through Paris thehigh justice of the King.

  It was one of these swollen bands which had entered the street whileTavannes spoke; nor could he have called to his aid a more powerfuladvocate. As the deep "A bas! A bas!" rolled like thunder along thefronts of the houses, as the more strident "Tuez! Tuez!" drew nearerand nearer, and the lights of the oncoming multitude began to flickeron the shuttered gables, the fortitude of the servants gave way.Madame Carlat, shivering in every limb, burst into moaning; thetiring-maid, Javette, flung herself in terror at Mademoiselle's knees,and, writhing herself about them, shrieked to her to save her, only tosave her! One of the men moved forward on impulse, as if he wouldclose the shutters; and only old Carlat remained silent, prayingmutely with moving lips and a stern, set face.

  And Count Hannibal? As the glare of the links in the street grewbrighter, and ousted the sickly daylight, his form seemed to dilate.He stilled the shrieking woman by a glance. "Choose! Mademoiselle, andquickly!" he said. "For I can only save my wife and her people! Quick,for the pinch is coming, and 'twill be no boy's play."

  A shot, a scream from the street, a rush of racing feet before thewindow seconded his words.

  "Quick, Mademoiselle!" he cried. And his breath came a little faster."Quick, before it be too late! Will you save life, or will you kill!"

  She looked at her lover with eyes of agony, dumbly questioning him.But he made no sign, and only Tavannes marked the look. "Monsieur hasdone what he can to save himself," he said with a sneer. "He hasdonned the livery of the King's servants; he has said, 'Whoeverperishes, I will live!' But--"

  "Curse you!" the young man cried, and, stung to madness, he tore thecross from his cap and flung it on the ground. He seized his whitesleeve and ripped it from shoulder to elbow. Then, when it hung by thestring only, he held his hand.

  "Curse you!" he cried furiously. "I will not at your bidding! I maysave her yet! I will save her!"

  "Fool!" Tavannes answered--but his words were barely audible above thedeafening uproar. "Can you fight a thousand? Look! Look!" and seizingthe other's wrist he pointed to the window. The street glowed like afurnace in the red light of torches, raised on poles above a sea ofheads; an endless sea of heads, and gaping faces, and tossing armswhich swept on and on, and on and by. For a while it seemed that thetorrent would flow past them and would leave them safe. Then came acheck, a confused outcry, a surging this way and that; the torchesreeled to and fro, and finally with a dull roar of "Open! Open!" themob faced about to the house and the lighted window.

  For a second it seemed that even Count Hannibal's iron nerves shook alittle. He stood between the sullen group that surrounded thedisordered table and the maddened rabble, that gloated on the victimsbefore they tore them to pieces. "Open! Open!" the mob howled: and aman dashed in the window with his pike.

  In that crisis Mademoiselle's eyes met Tavannes' for the fraction of asecond. She did not speak; nor, had she retained the power to framethe words, would they have been audible. But something she must havelooked, and something of import, though no other than he marked orunderstood it. For in a flash he was at the window and his hand wasraised for silence.

  "Back!" he thundered. "Back, knaves!" And he whistled shrilly. "Dowhat you will," he continued in the same tone, "but not here! Pass on!Pass on!--do you hear?"

  But the crowd were not to be lightly diverted. With a persistencebrutal and unquestioning they continued to howl "Open! Open!" whilethe man who had broken the window the moment before, Jehan, thecripple with the hideous face, seized the lead-work, and tore away agreat piece of it. Then laying hold of a bar, he tried to drag it out,setting one foot against the wall below.

  Tavannes saw what he did, and his frame seemed to dilate with the furyand violence of his character. "Dogs!" he shouted, "must I call out myriders and scatter you? Must I flog you through the streets withstirrup-leathers? I am Tavannes, beware of me! I have claws and teethand I bite!" he continued, the scorn in his words exceeding even therage of the crowd, at which he flung them. "Kill where you please, robwhere you please, but not where I am! Or I will hang you by the heelson Montfaucon, man by man! I will flay your backs. Go! go! I amTavannes!"

  But the mob, cowed for a moment by the thunder of his voice, by hisarrogance and recklessness, showed at this that their patience wasexhausted. With a yell which drowned his tones they swayed forward; adozen thundered on the door, crying, "In the King's name!" As manymore tore out the remainder of the casement, seized the bars of thewindow, and strove to pull them out or to climb between them. Jehan,the cripple, with whom Tignonville had rubbed elbows at therendezvous, led the way.

  Count Hannibal watched them a moment, his harsh face bent down tothem, his features plain in the glare of the torches. But when thecripple, raised on the others' shoulders, and emboldened by hisadversary's inactivity, began to squeeze himself through the bars,Tavannes raised a pistol, which he had held unseen behind him, cockedit at leisure, and levelled it at the foul face which leered close tohis. The dwarf saw the weapon and tried to retreat; but it was toolate. A flash, a scream, and the wretch, shot through the throat,flung up his hands, and fell back into the arms of a lean man in blackwho had lent him his shoulder to ascend.

  For a few seconds the smoke of the pistol filled the window and theroom. There was a cry that the Huguenots were escaping, that theHuguenots were resisting, that it was a plot; and some shouted toguard the back and some to watch the roof, and some to be gone. Butwhen the fumes cleared away, the mob saw, with stupor, that all was asit had been. Count Hannibal stood where he had stood before, a grimsmile on his lips.

  "Who comes next!" he cried in a tone of mockery. "I have morepistols!" And then with a sudden change to ferocity, "You dogs!" hewent on. "You scum of a filthy city, sweepings of the Halles! Do youthink to beard me? Do you think to frighten me or murder me? I amTavannes, and this is my house, and were there a score of Huguenots init, you should not touch one, nor harm a hair of his head! Begone, Isay again, while you may! Seek women and children, and kill them. Butnot here!"

  For an instant the mingled scorn and brutality of his words silencedthem. Then from the rear of the crowd came an answer--the roar of anarquebuse. The ball whizzed past Count Hannibal's head, and, splashingthe plaster from the wall within a pace of Tignonville, dropped to theground.

 
Tavannes laughed. "Bungler!" he cried. "Were you in my troop I woulddip your trigger-finger in boiling oil to teach you to shoot! But youweary me, dogs. I must teach you a lesson, must I?" And he lifted apistol and levelled it. The crowd did not know whether it was the onehe had discharged or another, but they gave back with a sharp gasp. "Imust teach you, must I?" he continued with scorn. "Here Bigot,Badelon, drive me these blusterers! Rid the street of them! ATavannes! A Tavannes!"

  Not by word or look had he before this betrayed that he had supports.But as he cried the name, a dozen men armed to the teeth, who hadstood motionless under the Croix du Tiroir, fell in a line on theright flank of the crowd. The surprise for those nearest them wascomplete. With the flash of the pikes before their eyes, with the coldsteel in fancy between their ribs, they fled every way, uncertain howmany pursued, or if any pursuit there was. For a moment the mob, whicha few minutes before had seemed so formidable that a regiment mighthave quailed before it, bade fair to be routed by a dozen pikes.

  And so, had all in the crowd been what he termed them, the rabble andsweepings of the streets, it would have been. But in the heart of it,and felt rather than seen, were a handful of another kidney; Sorbonnestudents and fierce-eyed priests, with three or four mounted archers,the nucleus that, moving through the streets, had drawn together thisconcourse. And these with threats and curses and gleaming eyes stoodfast, even Tavannes' dare-devils recoiling before the tonsure. Thecheck thus caused allowed those who had budged a breathing space. Theyrallied behind the black robes, and began to stone the pikes; who intheir turn withdrew until they formed two groups, standing on theirdefence, the one before the window the other before the door.

  Count Hannibal had watched the attack and the check, as a man watchesa play; with smiling interest. In the panic, the torches had beendropped or extinguished, and now between the house and the sullencrowd which hung back, yet grew moment by moment more dangerous, thedaylight fell cold on the littered street and the cripple's huddledform prone in the gutter. A priest raised on the shoulders of the leanman in black began to harangue the mob, and the dull roar of assent,the brandished arms which greeted his appeal, had their effect onTavannes' men. They looked to the window, and muttered amongthemselves. It was plain that they had no stomach for a fight with theChurch, and were anxious for the order to withdraw.

  But Count Hannibal gave no order, and, much as his people feared thecowls, they feared him more. Meanwhile the speaker's eloquence rosehigher; he pointed with frenzied gestures to the house. The mobgroaned, and suddenly a volley of stones fell among the pikemen, whosecorselets rattled under the shower. The priest seized that moment. Hesprang to the ground, and to the front. He caught up his robe andwaved his hand, and the rabble, as if impelled by a single will,rolled forward in a huge one-fronted thundering wave, before which thetwo handfuls of pikemen--afraid to strike, yet afraid to fly--wereswept away like straws upon the tide.

  But against the solid walls and oak-barred door of the house the wavebeat, only to fall back again, a broken, seething mass of brandishedarms and ravening faces. One point alone was vulnerable, the window,and there in the gap stood Tavannes. Quick as thought he fired twopistols into the crowd; then, while the smoke for a moment hid all, hewhistled.

  Whether the signal was a summons to his men to fight their wayback--as they were doing to the best of their power--or he hadresources still unseen, was not to be known. For as the smoke began torise, and while the rabble before the window, cowed by the fall of twoof their number, were still pushing backward instead of forward, thererose behind them strange sounds--yells, and the clatter of hoofs,mingled with screams of alarm. A second, and into the loose skirts ofthe crowd came charging helter-skelter, pell-mell, a score ofgalloping, shrieking, cursing horsemen, attended by twice as manyfootmen, who clung to their stirrups or to the tails of the horses,and yelled and whooped, and struck in unison with the maddened riders.

  "On! on!" the foremost shrieked, rolling in his saddle, and foaming atthe mouth. "Bleed in August, bleed in May! Kill!" And he fired apistol among the rabble, who fled every way to escape his rearing,plunging charger.

  "Kill! Kill!" cried his followers, cutting the air with their swords,and rolling to and fro on their horses in drunken emulation. "Bleed inAugust, bleed in May!"

  "On! On!" cried the leader, as the crowd which beset the house fledevery way before his reckless onset. "Bleed in August, bleed in May!"

  The rabble fled, but not so quickly but that one or two were riddendown, and this for an instant checked the riders. Before they couldpass on, "Ohe!" cried Count Hannibal from his window. "Ohe!" with ashout of laughter, "ride over them, dear brother! Make me a cleanstreet for my wedding!"

  Marshal Tavannes--for he, the hero of Jarnac, was the leader of thiswild orgy--turned that way, and strove to rein in his horse. "Whatails them?" he cried, as the maddened animal reared upright, its ironhoofs striking fire from the slippery pavement.

  "They are rearing like thy Bayard!" Count Hannibal answered. "Whipthem, whip them for me! Tavannes! Tavannes!"

  "What? This canaille!"

  "Ay, that canaille!"

  "Who touches my brother, touches Tavannes!" the Marshal replied, andspurred his horse among the rabble, who had fled to the sides of thestreet and now strove hard to efface themselves against the walls."Begone, dogs; begone!" he cried, still hunting them. And then, "Youwould bite, would you?" And snatching another pistol from his boot, hefired it among them, careless whom he hit. "Ha! ha! That stirs you,does it!" he continued as the wretches fled headlong. "Who touches mybrother, touches Tavannes! On! On!"

  Suddenly, from a doorway near at hand, a sombre figure darted into theroadway, caught the Marshal's rein, and for a second checked hiscourse. The priest--for a priest it was, Father Pezelay, the same whohad addressed the mob--held up a warning hand. "Halt!" he cried, withburning eyes. "Halt, my lord! It is written, thou shalt not spare theCanaanitish woman. 'Tis not to spare the King has given command and asword, but to kill! 'Tis not to harbour, but to smite! To smite!"

  "Then smite I will!" the Marshal retorted, and with the butt of hispistol struck the zealot down. Then, with as much indifference as hewould have treated a Huguenot, he spurred his horse over him, with amad laugh at his jest. "Who touches my brother, touches Tavannes!" heyelled. "Touches Tavannes! On! On! Bleed in August, bleed in May!"

  "On!" shouted his followers, striking about them in the same desperatefashion. They were young nobles who had spent the night feasting atthe Palace, and, drunk with wine and mad with excitement, had left theLouvre at daybreak to rouse the city. "A Jarnac! A Jarnac!" theycried, and some saluted Count Hannibal as they passed. And so,shouting and spurring and following their leader, they swept away downthe now empty street, carrying terror and a flame wherever theirhorses bore them that morning.

  Tavannes, his hands on the ledge of the shattered window, leaned outlaughing, and followed them with his eyes. A moment, and the mob wasgone, the street was empty; and one by one, with sheepish faces, hispikemen emerged from the doorways and alleys in which they had takenrefuge. They gathered about the three huddled forms which lay proneand still in the gutter: or, not three--two. For even as theyapproached them, one, the priest, rose slowly and giddily to his feet.He turned a face bleeding, lean, and relentless towards the window atwhich Tavannes stood. Solemnly, with the sign of the cross, and withuplifted hands, he cursed him in bed and at board, by day and bynight, in walking, in riding, in standing, in the day of battle, andat the hour of death. The pikemen fell back appalled, and hid theireyes; and those who were of the north crossed themselves, and thosewho came from the south bent two fingers horse-shoe fashion. ButHannibal de Tavannes laughed; laughed in his moustache, his teethshowing, and bade them move that carrion to a distance, for it wouldsmell when the sun was high. Then he turned his back on the street,and looked into the room.