"The affairs of the province are at a standstill," he repeated, "while all my energies are bent upon this quest. Should we fail to have news of his capture in Dauphiny, we need not, nevertheless, despond. I have sent men after him along the three roads that lead to Paris. They are to spare neither money nor horses in picking up his trail and effecting his capture. After all, I think we shall have him."
"He is our only danger now," the Marquise answered, "for Florimond is dead—of the fever," she added, with a sneering smile which gave Tressan sensations as of cold water on his spine. "It were an irony of fate if that miserable lackey were to reach Paris now and spoil the triumph for which we have worked so hard."
"It were, indeed," Tressan agreed with her, "and we must see that he does not."
"But if he does," she returned, "then we must stand together." And with that she set her mind at ease once more, her mood that morning being very optimistic.
"Always, I hope, Clotilde," he answered, and his little eyes leered up out of the dimples of fat in which they were embedded. "I have stood by you like a true friend in this affair; is it not so?"
"Indeed; do I deny it?" she answered half scornfully.
"As I shall stand by you always when the need arises. You are a little in my debt concerning Monsieur de Garnache."
"I—I realize it," said she, and she felt again as if the sunshine were gone from the day, the blitheness from her heart. She was moved to bid him cease leering at her and to take himself and his wooing to the devil. But she bethought her that the need for him might not yet utterly be passed. Not only in the affair of Garnache—in which he stood implicated as deeply as herself—might she require his loyalty, but also in the matter of what had befallen yesterday at La Rochette; for despite Fortunio's assurances that things had gone smoothly, his tale hung none too convincingly together; and whilst she did not entertain any serious fear of subsequent trouble, yet it might be well not utterly to banish the consideration of such a possibility, and to keep the Seneschal her ally against it. So she told him now, with as much graciousness as she could command, that she fully realized her debt, and when, encouraged, he spoke of his reward, she smiled upon him as might a girl smile upon too impetuous a wooer whose impetuosity she deprecates yet cannot wholly withstand.
"I am a widow of six months," she reminded him, as she had reminded him once before. Her widowhood was proving a most convenient refuge. "It is not for me to listen to a suitor, however my foolish heart may incline. Come to me in another six months' time."
"And you will wed me then?" he bleated.
By an effort her eyes smiled down upon him, although her face was a trifle drawn.
"Have I not said that I will listen to no suitor? and what is that but a suitor's question?"
He caught her hand; he would have fallen on his knees there and then, at her feet, on the grass still wet with the night's mist, but that he in time bethought him of how sadly his fine apparel would be the sufferer.
"Yet I shall not sleep, I shall know no rest, no peace until you have given me an answer. Just an answer is all I ask. I will set a curb upon my impatience afterwards, and go through my period of ah—probation without murmuring. Say that you, will marry me in six months' time—at Easter, say."
She saw that an answer she must give, and so she gave him the answer that he craved. And he—poor fool!—never caught the ring of her voice, as false as the ring of a base coin; never guessed that in promising she told herself it would be safe to break that promise six months hence, when the need of him and his loyalty would be passed.
A man approached them briskly from the chateau. He brought news that a numerous company of monks was descending the valley of the Isere towards Condillac. A faint excitement stirred her, and accompanied by Tressan she retraced her steps and made for the battlements, whence she might overlook their arrival.
As they went Tressan asked for an explanation of this cortege, and she answered him with Fortunio's story of how things had sped yesterday at La Rochette.
Up the steps leading to the battlements she went ahead of him, with a youthful, eager haste that took no thought for the corpulence and short-windedness of the following Seneschal. From the heights she looked eastwards, shading her eyes from the light of the morning sun, and surveyed the procession which with slow dignity paced down the valley towards Condillac.
At its head walked the tall, lean figure of the Abbot of Saint Francis of Cheylas, bearing on high a silvered crucifix that flashed and scintillated in the sunlight. His cowl was thrown back, revealing his pale, ascetic countenance and shaven head. Behind him came a coffin covered by a black pall, and borne on the shoulders of six black-robed, black cowled monks, and behind these again walked, two by two, some fourteen cowled brothers of the order of Saint Francis, their heads bowed, their arms folded, and their hands tucked away in their capacious sleeves.
It was a numerous cortege, and as she watched its approach the Marquise was moved to wonder by what arguments had the proud Abbot been induced to do so much honour to a dead Condillac and bear his body home to this excommunicated roof.
Behind the monks a closed carriage lumbered down the uneven mountain way, and behind this rode four mounted grooms in the livery of Condillac. Of Marius she saw nowhere any sign, and she inferred him to be travelling in that vehicle, the attendant servants being those of the dead Marquis.
In silence, with the Seneschal at her elbow, she watched the procession advance until it was at the foot of the drawbridge. Then, while the solemn rhythm of their feet sounded across the planks that spanned the moat, she turned, and, signing to the Seneschal to follow her, she went below to meet them. But when she reached the courtyard she was surprised to find they had not paused, as surely would have been seemly. Unbidden, the Abbot had gone forward through the great doorway and down the gallery that led to the hall of Condillac. Already, when she arrived below, the coffin and its bearers had disappeared, and the last of the monks was passing from sight in its wake. Leaning against the doorway through which they were vanishing stood Fortunio, idly watching that procession and thoughtfully stroking his mustachios. About the yard lounged a dozen or so men-at-arms, practically all the garrison that was left them since the fight with Garnache two nights ago.
After the last monk had disappeared, she still remained there, expectantly; and when she saw that neither the carriage nor the grooms made their appearance, she stepped up to Fortunio to inquire into the reason of it.
"Surely Monsieur de Condillac rides in that coach," said she.
"Surely," Fortunio answered, himself looking puzzled. "I will go seek the reason, madame. Meanwhile will you receive the Abbot? The monks will have deposited their burden."
She composed her features into a fitting solemnity, and passed briskly through to the hall, Tressan ever at her heels. Here she found the coffin deposited on the table, its great black pall of velvet, silver-edged, sweeping down to the floor. No fire had been lighted that morning nor had the sun yet reached the windows, so that the place wore a chill and gloomy air that was perhaps well attuned to the purpose that it was being made to serve.
With a rare dignity, her head held high, she swept down the length of that noble chamber towards the Abbot, who stood erect as a pikestaff: at the tablehead, awaiting her. And well was it for him that he was a man of austere habit of mind, else might her majestic, incomparable beauty have softened his heart and melted the harshness of his purpose.
He raised his hand when she was within a sword's length of him, and with startling words, delivered in ringing tones, he broke the ponderous silence.
"Wretched woman," he denounced her, "your sins have found you out. Justice is to be done, and your neck shall be bent despite your stubborn pride. Derider of priests, despoiler of purity, mocker of Holy Church, your impious reign is at an end."
Tressan fell back aghast, his face blenching to the lips; for if justice was at hand for her, as the Abbot said, then was justice at hand for him as well. Where h
ad their plans miscarried? What flaw was there that hitherto she had not perceived? Thus he questioned himself in his sudden panic.
But the Marquise was no sharer in his tremors. Her eyes opened a trifle wider; a faint colour crept into her cheeks; but her only emotions were of amazement and indignation. Was he mad, this shaveling monk? That was the question that leapt into her mind, the very question with which she coldly answered his outburst.
"For madness only," she thought fit to add, "could excuse such rash temerity as yours."
"Not madness, madame," he answered, with chill haughtiness—"not madness, but righteous indignation. You have defied the power of Holy Church as you have defied the power of our sovereign lady, and justice is upon you. We are here to present the reckoning, and see its payment made in full."
She fancied he alluded to the body in the coffin—the body of her stepson—and she could have laughed at his foolish conclusions that she must account Florimond's death an act of justice upon her for her impiety. But her rising anger left her no room for laughter.
"I thought, sir priest, you were come to bury the dead. But it rather seems you are come to talk."
He looked at her long and sternly. Then he shook his head, and the faintest shadow of a smile haunted his ascetic face.
"Not to talk, madame; oh, not to talk," he answered slowly. "But to act, I have come, madame, to liberate from this shambles the gentle lamb you hold here prisoned."
At that some of the colour left her cheeks; her eyes grew startled: at last she began to realize that all was not as she had thought—as she had been given to understand.—Still, she sought to hector it, from very instinct.
"Vertudieu!" she thundered at him. "What mean you?"
Behind her Tressan's great plump knees were knocking one against the other. Fool that he had been to come to Condillac that day, and to be trapped thus in her company, a partner in her guilt. This proud Abbot who stood there uttering denunciations had some power behind him, else had he never dared to raise his voice in Condillac within call of desperate men who would give little thought to the sacredness, of his office.
"What mean you?" she repeated—adding with a sinister smile, "in your zeal, Sir Abbot, you are forgetting that my men are within call."
"So, madame, are mine," was his astounding answer, and he waved a hand towards the array of monks, all standing with bowed heads and folded arms.
At that her laughter rang shrill through the chamber. "These poor shavelings?" she questioned.
"Just these poor shavelings, madame," he answered, and he raised his hand again and made a sign. And then an odd thing happened, and it struck a real terror into the heart of the Marquise and heightened that which was already afflicting her fat lover, Tressan.
The monks drew themselves erect. It was as if a sudden gust of wind had swept through their ranks and set them all in motion. Cowls fell back and habits were swept aside, and where twenty monks had stood, there were standing now a score of nimble, stalwart men in the livery of Condillac, all fully armed, all grinning in enjoyment of her and Tressan's dismay.
One of them turned aside and locked the door of the chamber. But his movement went unheeded by the Dowager, whose beautiful eyes, starting with horror, were now back upon the grim figure of the Abbot, marvelling almost to see no transformation wrought in him.
"Treachery!" she breathed, in an awful voice, that was no louder than a whisper, and again her eyes travelled round the company, and suddenly they fastened upon Fortunio, standing six paces from her to the right, pulling thoughtfully at his mustachios, and manifesting no surprise at what had taken place.
In a sudden, blind choler, she swept round, plucked the dagger from Tressan's belt and flung herself upon the treacherous captain. He had betrayed her in some way; he had delivered up Condillac—into whose power she had yet had no time to think. She caught him by the throat with a hand of such nervous strength as one would little have suspected from its white and delicate contour. Her dagger was poised in the air, and the captain, taken thus suddenly, was palsied with amazement and could raise no hand to defend himself from the blow impending.
But the Abbot stepped suddenly to her side and caught her wrist in his thin, transparent hand.
"Forbear," he bade her. "The man is but a tool."
She fell back—dragged back almost by the Abbot—panting with rage and grief; and then she noticed that during the moment that her back had been turned the pall had been swept from the coffin. The sight of the bare deal box arrested her attention, and for the moment turned aside her anger. What fresh surprise did they prepare her?
No sooner had she asked herself the question than herself she answered it, and an icy hand seemed to close about her heart. It was Marius who was dead. They had lied to her. Marius's was the body they had borne to Condillac—those men in the livery of her stepson.
With a sudden sob in her throat she took a step towards the coffin. She must see for herself. One way or the other she must at once dispel this torturing doubt. But ere she had taken three paces, she stood arrested again, her hands jerked suddenly to the height of her breast, her lips parting to let out a scream of terror. For the coffin-lid had slowly raised and clattered over. And as if to pile terror for her, a figure rose from the box, and, sitting up, looked round with a grim smile; and the figure was the figure of a man whom she knew to be dead, a man who had died by her contriving—it was the figure of Garnache. It was Garnache as he had been on the occasion of his first coming to Condillac, as he had been on the day they had sought his life in this very room. How well she knew that great hooked nose and the bright, steely blue eyes, the dark brown hair, ash-coloured at the temples where age had paled it, and the fierce, reddish mustachios, bristling above the firm mouth and long, square chin.
She stared and stared, her beautiful face livid and distorted, till there was no beauty to be seen in it, what time the Abbot regarded her coldly and Tressan, behind her, turned almost sick with terror. But not the terror of ghosts was it afflicted him. He saw in Garnache a man who was still of the quick—a man who by some miracle had escaped the fate to which they supposed him to have succumbed; and his terror was the terror of the reckoning which that man would ask.
After a moment's pause, as if relishing the sensation he had created, Garnache rose to his feet and leapt briskly to the ground. There was nothing ghostly about the thud with which he alighted on his feet before her. A part of her terror left her; yet not quite all. She saw that she had but a man to deal with, yet she began to realize that this man was very terrible.
"Garnache again!" she gasped.
He bowed serenely, his lips smiling.
"Aye, madame," he told her pleasantly, "always Garnache. Tenacious as a leech, madame; and like a leech come hither to do a little work of purification."
Her eyes, now kindling again as she recovered from her recent fears, sought Fortunio's shifty glance. Garnache followed it and read what was in her mind.
"What Fortunio has done," said he, "he has done by your son's authority and sanction."
"Marius?" she inquired, and she was almost fearful lest she should hear that by her son he meant her stepson, and that Marius was dead.
"Yes, Marius," he answered her. "I bent him to my will. I threatened him that he and this fellow of his, this comrade in arms so worthy of his master, should be broken on the wheel together unless I were implicitly obeyed. If they would save their lives, this was their chance. They were wise, and they took it, and thus afforded me the means of penetrating into Condillac and rescuing Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye."
"Then Marius—?" She left her question unfinished, her hand clutching nervously at the bosom of her gown.
"Is sound and well, as Fortunio truthfully will have told you. But he is not yet out of my grasp, nor will be until the affairs of Condillac are settled. For if I meet with further opposition here, broken on the wheel he shall be yet, I promise you."
Still she made a last attempt at hectoring it. The long
habit of mastership dies hard. She threw back her head; her courage revived now that she knew Marius to be alive and sound.
"Fine words," she sneered. "But who are you that you can threaten so and promise so?"
"I am the Queen-Regent's humble mouthpiece, madame. What I threaten, I threaten in her name. Ruffle it no longer, I beseech you. It will prove little worth your while. You are deposed, madame, and you had best take your deposition with dignity and calm—in all friendliness do I advise it."
"I am not yet come so low that I need your advice," she answered sourly.
"You may before the sun sets," he answered, with his quiet smile. "The Marquis de Condillac and his wife are still at La Rochette, waiting until my business here is done that they may come home."
"His wife?" she cried.
"His wife, madame. He has brought home a wife from Italy."
"Then—then—Marius?" She said no more than that. Maybe she had no intention of muttering even so much of her thoughts aloud. But Garnache caught the trend of her mind, and he marvelled to see how strong a habit of thought can be. At once upon hearing of the Marquis's marriage her mind had flown back to its wonted pondering of the possibilities of Marius's wedding Valerie.
But Garnache dispelled such speculations.
"No, madame," said he. "Marius looks elsewhere for a wife—unless mademoiselle of her own free will should elect to wed him—a thing unlikely." Then, with a sudden change to sternness—"Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye is well, madame?" he asked.
She nodded her head, but made no answer in words. He turned to Fortunio.
"Go fetch her," he bade the captain, and one of the men unlocked the door to let Fortunio out upon that errand.
The Parisian took a turn in the apartment, and came close to Tressan. He nodded to the Seneschal with a friendliness that turned him sick with fright.
"Well met, my dear Lord Seneschal. I am rejoiced to find you here. Had it been otherwise I must have sent for you. There is a little matter to be settled between us. You may depend upon me to settle it to your present satisfaction, if to your future grief." And, with a smile, he passed on, leaving the Seneschal too palsied to answer him, too stricken to disclaim his share in what had taken place at Condillac.
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