There was a profound silence in the room. Their eyes held together, and it seemed that a strong dark current, gleaming with surface light, ran through the chamber.
Then the Duchesse said gently: “There is a time for honor, and a time for discretion, a time for valor, and a time for retreat, a time to fight and a time to flee.”
She touched him lightly on the arm: “Think of us as a besieged army, defending the fortress, while those armed with a message go out to sea. Think of us as covering your retreat, guarding that precious and indestructible message. You are not abandoning us. We are sending you out with all our hopes and our prayers and our faith, and we will keep the enemy at bay until you are safely gone. You have taken the jewels with you. The enemy will find only an empty casket when he breaks into the fortress. We shall be comforted, knowing that he is balked, and the jewels are safe.”
But Arsène’s face remained dark and obdurate.
“And what of those who remain behind?”
The Duchesse shrugged, and smiled. “I am not afraid. I know Monsieur le Cardinal. There have been the strangest implications in his letters to me of late. There has been mention of you. You have done inexplicable things to that frightful man, Arsène. I tell you, we are not afraid.” And she appeared amused.
Arsène did not speak. He rubbed his clenched fists together, and compressed his lips. His whole soul revolted at the idea of flight. It was indeed flight, in spite of the Duchesse’s fine and heroic words.
The Duchesse was speaking again. “America,” she said. “The shadow of the mitred head, the shadow of the enslaving hand, the shadow of the old men, have already fallen there. Shall America be devoured, also? Shall the pestilence of hatred, oppression, slavery, intolerance and despair flourish there?—In many parts there are men of English blood, of your own blood, also, of your own faith and courage, of your own resolution and dreams. Go to them. Give them your strength and your hands. Give them your belief in the rights of man and the dignity of freedom. Give them your sons.”
Now she became more passionate. “Keep that new world safe from us, the old and the done, the cynical and the cruel, and the venomous!”
Arsène remained silent. A dark gleam wavered across his face. He sighed heavily.
The Duchesse glanced at the paper in her hands.
“At a seaport in Holland, your other son awaits. I have arranged it all, through the Cardinal. You seem astonished. I have long ago lost the capacity for astonishment, for I know that all things are possible. Your son awaits with part of your fortune, cared for by valiant others who will accompany you. You will take the child into your custody there, and assume command over those devoted men and women who are only the vanguard of thousands of others. Within a short time, you will set sail for the new world.”
Now she became very gentle. She reached out and took Arsène’s cold hand. She saw the moisture in his haggard eyes, the trembling of his lips. She saw the hopes that passed and repassed across his face.
“Tomorrow will be too late. Tonight, a small boat waits in darkness for you, in the harbor. Tonight, and tonight only, will you be allowed to pass. I have a passport from the Cardinal—.”
“Cecile,” said Arsène.
“She has new strength,” said the Duchesse. “She has been told, and understands completely. She has forced herself to eat of the baskets which have been brought in for Feuquieres. More of those provisions await you on the small boat. I have not deprived my people. In two days, they shall have sustenance enough.”
Then Arsène, fully realizing, cried out: “You ask me to be a coward, to flee, to leave my people! I cannot do this.”
The Duchesse’s expression became cold and scornful. “It is you who are the coward, Arsène de Richepin! It is you, out of your egotism, your fear of the opinions of others, who will deliver yourself and your sons to slavery. You cannot delay the surrender of La Rochelle. If you refuse to go, I shall order the surrender immediately. Then, you will be forever lost.”
She faced him with implacable grimness.
“Have you no thought, no mind, you fool?” she cried. “Have you no compassion on us? Would you deprive us of our last hope?”
They gazed at each other in an impetuous silence. Then, very slowly, Arsène fell to his knees. He embraced the Duchesse, feeling the slightness and steeliness of her small body. And then she enfolded him in her arms. She smiled. There were tears on her short and faded lashes.
CHAPTER LIX
Two days later, La Rochelle surrendered. Hardly four thousand of the people remained alive.
The Cardinal and Père Joseph entered the city at the head of the singing and victorious troops. Père Joseph walked in his ragged habit, his russet head and russet beard catching the light of the dying sun so that they seemed to be imbued with a fanatical fire of their own. The Church had triumphed. The blasphemers were conquered! He saw visions of the future, when this Protestant heresy would be driven from the world forever, and Rome should, as of old, be the supreme arbiter of mankind, the servant of a victorious God.
The singing priests were jubilant. They looked at the haggard faces who watched them pass with evil anticipation, thinking of their tortures, their whips and other gentle persuaders. But there was no fear in the faces that watched them, no shrinking. They had looked too long on death. Now there was only pride in those quiet eyes, sunken so deeply in the bones of famished skulls.
The Duchesse de Rohan came herself to greet the Cardinal. She walked on foot. She had no carriage. But at the sight of her, the Cardinal alighted from his horse and approached her. He took her hand and kissed it passionately. For an instant she thought that those terrible eyes were clouded and moist. She stood before him proudly. Her lips parted. He, himself, could not speak, so moved was he.
“I trust,” she said, tranquilly, “that Monseigneur’s sleeplessness has been cured?”
He looked into her face, and he said, so low that no one else caught his words: “Madame, I shall never sleep again.”
He led her into the Hôtel de Rohan, and there he told her that he contemplated no punishment for her heroic people, “though others,” he added sardonically, thinking of the priests, “had urged otherwise.” Nor would the soldiers be allowed to loot or massacre. Death would be visited upon them if they did so.
“I have seen a strange vision,” said the Cardinal, in a peculiar voice. “For the sake of that vision, La Rochelle shall not suffer.”
He continued, telling her things which astonished her heart and blinded her sight with tears.
The Rochellais were to be pardoned. They were to continue to hold their property, and exercise freedom of worship.
“I ask,” and now his voice rang with sincerity, “only that the Rochellais shall be faithful to France.”
And now he looked full in her eyes: “Faithfulness, for unity of all Frenchmen. Until the end.”
“Until the end,” repeated the Duchesse.
And now the two old friends were silent, and they saw, without delusion, the end that was approaching Europe with the inexorable doom of a hurricane.
The next day the sick and gloomy Cardinal sang Mass in the ancient church of St. Margaret. The bells pealed joyfully. The Rochellais, fearing all horrors, remained in their homes. The sound of the bells shattered the sunlit air over empty and devastated streets.
The Duchesse attended that Mass, seated in a place of honor. She listened to the Cardinal’s faint voice, in which there was no note of triumph. She heard the rolling of the music, the surge of the choristers’ voices. She had come here at the urgent invitation of the Cardinal, and, understanding him, she had accepted that invitation. It was as if he had invited her to hear his cry of despair.
But, in truth, she heard neither Mass nor singers. It seemed to her that she was listening to the sound of wind in sails that were bearing Arsène, his wife, his son, and his unborn child into the future.
The voices of the choristers were the voices of unborn men, raised in hope a
nd triumph, in victory and freedom, in everlasting conquest over the forces of darkness and evil, superstition, ignorance and fear and hatred.
A Biography of Taylor Caldwell
Taylor Caldwell was one of the most prolific and widely read American authors of the twentieth century. In a career that spanned five decades, she wrote forty novels, many of which were New York Times bestsellers.
Caldwell captivated readers with emotionally charged historical novels and family sagas such as Captains and the Kings, which sold 4.5 million copies and was made into a television miniseries in 1976. Her novels based on the lives of religious figures, Dear and Glorious Physician, a portrayal of the life of St. Luke, and Great Lion of God, a panoramic novel about the life and times of St. Paul, are among the bestselling religious novels of all time.
Born Janet Miriam Holland Taylor Caldwell in 1900 in Manchester, England, into a family of Scotch-Irish descent, she began attending an academically rigorous school at the age of four, studying Latin, French, history, and geography. At six, she won a national gold medal for her essay on novelist Charles Dickens. On weekends, she performed a long list of household chores and attended Sunday school and church twice a day. Caldwell often credited her Spartan childhood with making her a rugged individualist.
In 1907, Caldwell, her parents, and her younger brother immigrated to the United States, settling in Buffalo, New York, where she would live for most of her life. She started writing stories when she was eight years old and completed her first novel, The Romance of Atlantis, when she was twelve, although it was not published until 1975. Marriage at the age of eighteen to William Combs and the birth of her first child, Mary Margaret—Peggy—did not deter her from pursuing an education. While working as a stenographer and a court reporter to help support her family, she took college courses at night.
Upon receiving a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Buffalo in 1931, she divorced her husband and married Marcus Reback, her boss at the US Immigration Department office in Buffalo. Caldwell then dedicated herself to writing full time. Even as her family grew with the arrival of her second daughter, Judith, Caldwell’s unpublished manuscripts continued to pile up.
At the age of thirty-eight, she finally sold a novel, Dynasty of Death, to a major New York publisher. Convinced that a pre–World War I saga of two dynasties of munitions manufacturers would be better received if people thought it was written by a man, Maxwell Perkins, her editor at Scribner—who also discovered F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway—advised her to use only part of her name—Taylor Caldwell—as her pen name. Dynasty of Death became a bestseller in 1938 and the saga continued with The Eagles Gather in 1940 and The Final Hour in 1944. Inevitably, a public stir ensued when people discovered Taylor Caldwell was a woman.
Over the next forty years, Caldwell often worked from midnight to early morning at her electric typewriter in her book-crammed study, producing a wide array of sagas (This Side of Innocence, Answer as a Man) and historical novels (Testimony of Two Men, Ceremony of the Innocent) that celebrated American values and passions.
She also produced novels set in the ancient world (A Pillar of Iron, Glory and the Lightning), dystopian fiction (The Devil’s Advocate, Your Sins and Mine), and spiritually themed novels (The Listener, No One Hears But Him, Dialogues with the Devil).
Apart from their across-the-board popularity with readers and their commercial success, which made Caldwell a wealthy woman, her long list of bestselling novels possessed common themes that were close to her heart: self-reliance and individualism, man’s struggle for justice, the government’s encroachment on personal freedoms, and the conflict between man’s desire for wealth and power and his need for love and family bonding.
The long hours spent at her typewriter did not keep Caldwell from enjoying life. She gave elegant parties at her grand house in Buffalo. One of her grandchildren recalls watching her hold the crowd in awe with her observations about life and politics. She embarked on annual worldwide cruises and was fond of a glass of good bourbon. Drina Fried recalls her grandmother confiding in her: “I vehemently believe that we should have as much fun as is possible in our dolorous life, if it does not injure ourselves or anyone else. The only thing is—be discreet. The world will forgive you anything but getting caught.”
Caldwell didn’t stop writing until she suffered a debilitating stroke at the age of eighty. Her last novel, Answer as a Man, was published in 1981 and hit the New York Times bestseller list before its official publication date. She died at her home in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1985.
William Combs, Taylor Caldwell’s first husband and father to Peggy, aboard a naval ship, circa 1926.
A portrait of Caldwell at the start of her career in the late 1930s.
A portrait of Caldwell taken before Scribner’s publication of Melissa on June 21, 1948.
Caldwell at her desk in Palm Beach, Florida, in 1949. She spent many winter months at Whitehall, a resort hotel on the property of Henry Flagler’s former estate, which is now the Flagler Museum.
Caldwell’s second daughter, Judith Ann Reback, during time with her mother at Whitehall in the 1940s.
Caldwell receiving an award in Los Angeles, California, for A Pillar of Iron after its publication in 1965.
Caldwell with her daughters, Peggy Fried and Judith Ann Reback (Goodman), and Ted Goodman in 1969 on the MS Bergensfjord.
Caldwell at a cocktail party with her daughter, Peggy, and the hostess of a research world cruise on the SS President Wilson in 1970.
Caldwell with her granddaughter, Drina Fried, at her home in Buffalo, New York, winter 1975. Soula Angelou, her personal assistant, insisted on taking this rare family picture.
An invitation from 1975 to one of Caldwell’s many cocktail parties. She hosted at least two parties a year in Buffalo, New York, before she moved to Connecticut.
Caldwell with her fourth husband, Robert Prestie, who cared for her in the last six years of her life in Connecticut.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1943 by Taylor Caldwell
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5308-2
This edition published in 2018 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10038
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TAYLOR CALDWELL
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