“Whose are you?”
Jehan looked this way and that. At length, with dry lips, he muttered, “Yours.”
“No, you are not,” the man in black replied. “Think again. You have a short memory.”
Jehan thought and sweated. But the man would have his answer, and at last Jehan whispered, “The devil’s.”
“That is better,” the astrologer said coldly. “Do you know what this is?”
He held up a glass bowl. The boy recognised it, and his hair began to rise. But he shook his head.
“It is holy water,” the man in black said, his small cruel eyes devouring the boy. “Hold out your hand.”
Jehan dared not refuse “This will try you,” Nôtredame said slowly, “whether you are the devil’s or not. If not, water will not hurt you. If so, if you are his for ever and ever, to do his will and pleasure, then it will burn like fire!”
At the last word he suddenly sprinkled some with a brush on the boy’s hand. Jehan leapt back with a shriek of pain, and, holding the burned hand to his breast, glared at his master with starting eyes.
“It burns,” said the astrologer pitilessly, “It burns. It is as I said. You are his. His! After this I think you will remember. Now go.”
Jehan went away, shuddering with horror and pain. But the lesson had not the precise effect intended. He continued to fear his master, but he began to hate him also, with a passionate, lasting hatred strange in a child. Though he still shrank and crouched in his presence, behind his back he was no longer restrained by fear. The boy knew of no way in which he could avenge himself. He did not form any plans to that end, he did not conceive the possibility of the thing. But he hated; and, given the opportunity, was ripe to seize it.
“JEHAN LEAPT BACK WITH A SHRIEK OF PAIN” ().
He was locked in whenever Nôtredame went out; and in this way he spent many solitary and fearful hours. These led him, however, in the end, to a discovery. One day, about the middle of December, while he was poking about the house in the astrologer’s absence, he found a door. I say “found,” for though it was not a secret door, it was small and difficult to detect, being placed in the side of the straight, narrow passage at the head of the little staircase which led from the lower to the upper chambers. At first he thought it was locked, but coming to examine it more closely, though in mere curiosity, he found the handle of the latch let into a hollow of the panel. He pressed this, and the door yielded a little.
At the time the boy was scared. He saw the place was dark, drew the door to the jamb again, and went away without satisfying his curiosity. But in a little while the desire to know what was behind the door overcame his terror. He returned with a taper, and, pressing the latch again, pushed the door open and entered, his heart beating loudly.
He held up his taper, and saw a very narrow, bare closet, made in the thickness of the wall. And that was all, for the place was empty — the one and only thing it contained being a soft, rough mat which covered the floor. The boy stared fearfully about him, still expecting something dreadful, but there was nothing else to be seen. And gradually his fears subsided, and his curiosity with them, and he went out again.
Another day, however, when he came into this place, he made a discovery. Against either wall he saw a morsel of black cloth fastened — a little flap a few inches long and three inches wide. He held the light first to one and then to another of these, but he could make nothing of them until he noticed that the lower edges were loose. Then he raised one. It disclosed a long, narrow slit, through which he could see the laboratory, with the fire burning dully, the phials glistening, and the crocodile going through its unceasing pretence of arousing itself. He raised the other, and found a slit there, too; but as the chamber on that side — the room with the astrolabe — was in darkness, he could see nothing. He understood, however. The closet was a spying-place, and these were Judas-holes, so arranged that the occupant, himself unheard and unseen, could see and hear all that happened on either side of him.
It was the astrologer’s custom to lock up the large room next the Rue Touchet when he went out. For this reason, and because the place was forbidden, the boy lingered at the Judas-hole, gazing into it. He knew by this time most of the queer things it contained, and the red glow of the furnace fire gave it, to his mind, a weird kind of comfort. He listened to the ashes falling, and the ticking of some clockwork at the farther end. He began idly to enumerate all the things he could see; but the curtain which shut off the laboratory proper threw a great shadow across the room, and this he strove in vain to pierce. To see the better, he put out his light and looked again. He had scarcely brought his eyes back to the slit, however, when a low grating noise caught his ear. He started and held his breath, but before he could stir a finger the heavy door which communicated with the Rue Touchet slowly opened a foot or two, and the astrologer came in.
For a few seconds the boy remained gazing, afraid to breathe or move. Then, with an effort, he dropped the cloth over the slit, and crept softly away.
CHAPTER V.
THE UPPER PORTAL.
The astrologer was not alone. A tall figure, cloaked and muffled to the chin, entered after him, and stood waiting at his elbow while he secured the fastenings of the door. Apparently, they had only met on the threshold, for the stranger, after looking round him and silently noting the fantastic disorder of the room, said, in a hoarse voice, “You do not know me?”
“Perfectly, M. de Vidoche,” the astrologer answered, removing his hat.
“Did you know I was following you?”
“I came to show you the way.”
“That is a lie, at any rate!” the young noble retorted, with a sneer, “for I did not know I was coming myself.”
“Until you saw me,” the astrologer answered, unmoved. “Will you not take off your cloak? You will need it when you leave.”
M. de Vidoche complied with an ill grace. “The usual stock-in-trade, I see,” he muttered, looking round him scornfully. “Skulls and bones, and dead hands and gibbet-ropes. Faugh! The place smells. I suppose these are the things you keep to frighten children.”
“Some,” Nôtredame answered calmly — he was busy lighting a lamp— “and some are for sale.”
“For sale?” M. de Vidoche cried incredulously. “Who will buy them?”
“Some one thing, and some another,” the astrologer answered carelessly. “Take this, for instance,” he continued, turning to his visitor, and looking at him for the first time. “I expect to find a customer for that very shortly.”
M. de Vidoche followed the direction of his finger, and shuddered, despite himself. “That” was a coffin. “Enough of this,” he said, with savage impatience. “Suppose you get off your high horse, and come to business. Can I sit, man, or are you going to keep me standing all night?”
The man in black brought forward two stools, and led the way behind the curtain. “It is warmer here,” he said, pushing aside an earthen pipkin, and clearing a space with his foot in front of the glowing embers. “Now I am at your service, M. de Vidoche. Pray be seated.”
“Are we alone?” the young noble asked suspiciously.
“Trust me for that,” the astrologer answered. “I know my business.”
But M. de Vidoche seemed to find some difficulty in stating his; though he had evinced so high a regard for time a moment before. He sat irresolute, stealing malevolent glances first at his companion, and then at the dull, angry-looking fire. If he expected M. Nôtredame to help him, however, he did not yet know his host. The astrologer sat patiently waiting, with every expression, save placid expectation, discharged from his face.
“Oh, d —— n you!” the young man ejaculated at last. “Have you got nothing to say? You know what I want,” he added, with irritation, “as well as I do.”
“I shall be happy to learn,” the astrologer answered politely.
“Give it me without more words, and let me go!”
The astrologer raised his eyebrows. “
Alas! there is a limit to omniscience,” he said, shaking his head gently. “It is true we keep it in stock — to frighten children. But it does not help me at present, M. de Vidoche.”
M. de Vidoche looked at him with an evil scowl. “I see; you want me to commit myself,” he muttered. The perspiration stood on his forehead, and his voice was husky with rage or some other emotion. “I was a fool to come here,” he continued. “If you must have it, I want to kill a cat; and I want something to give to it.”
The astrologer laughed silently. “The mountain was in labour, and lo! a cat!” he said, in a tone of amusement. “And lo! a cat! Well, in that case I am afraid you have come to the wrong place, M. de Vidoche. I don’t kill cats. There is no risk in it, you see,” he continued, looking fixedly at his companion, “and no profit. Nobody cares about a cat. The first herbalist you come to will give you what you want for a few sous. Even if the creature turns black within the hour, and its mouth goes to the nape of its neck,” he went on, with a horrid smile, “as Madame de Beaufort’s did — cui malo? — no one is a penny the worse. But if it were a question of —— I think I saw monsieur riding in company with Mademoiselle de Farincourt to-day?”
M. de Vidoche, who had been contemplating his tormentor with eyes of rage and horror, started at the unexpected question. “Well,” he muttered, “and what if I was?”
“Oh, nothing,” the man in black answered carelessly. “Mademoiselle is beautiful, and monsieur is a happy man if she smiles on him. But she is high-born; and proud, I am told.” He leaned forward as he spoke, and warmed his long, lean hands at the fire. But his beady eyes never left the other’s face.
M. de Vidoche writhed under their gaze. “Curse you!” he muttered hoarsely. “What do you mean?”
“Her family are proud also, I am told; and powerful. Friends of the Cardinal too, I hear.” The man in black’s smile was like nothing save the crocodile’s.
M. de Vidoche rose from his seat, but sat down again.
“He would avenge the honour of the family to the death,” continued the astrologer gently. “To the death, I should say. Don’t you think so, M. de Vidoche?”
The perspiration stood in thick drops on the young man’s forehead, and he glared at his tormentor. But the latter met the look placidly, and seemed ignorant of the effect he was producing. “It is a pity, therefore, monsieur is not free to marry,” he said, shaking his head regretfully— “a great pity. One does not know what may happen. Yet, on the other hand, if he had not married he would be a poor man now.”
M. de Vidoche sprang to his feet with an oath. But he sat down again.
“When he married he was a poor man, I think,” the astrologer continued, for the first time averting his gaze from the other’s face, and looking into the fire with a queer smile. “And in debt. Madame — the present Madame de Vidoche, I mean — paid his debts, and brought him an estate, I believe.”
“Of which she has never ceased to remind him twice a day since!” the young man cried in a terrible voice. And then in a moment he lost all self-control, all disguise, all the timid cunning which had marked him hitherto. He sprang to his feet. The veins in his temples swelled, his face grew red. So true is it that small things try us more than great ones, and small grievances rub deeper raws than great wrongs. “My God!” he said between his teeth, “if you knew what I have suffered from that woman! Pale-faced, puling fool, I have loathed her these five years, and I have been tied to her and her whining ways and her nun’s face! Twice a day? No, ten times a day, twenty times a day, she has reminded me of my debts, my poverty, and my straits before I married her! And of her family! And her three marshals! And her — —”
He stopped for very lack of breath. “Madame was of good family?” the man in black said abruptly. He had grown suddenly attentive. His shadow on the wall behind him was still and straight-backed.
“Oh, yes,” the husband answered bitterly.
“In Perigord?’
“Oh, yes.”
“Three marshals of France?” M. Nôtredame murmured thoughtfully; but there was a strange light in his eyes, and he kept his face carefully averted from his companion. “That is not common! That is certainly something to boast of!”
“Mon Dieu! She did boast of it, though no one else allowed the claim. And of her blood of Roland!” M. de Vidoche cried, with scorn. His voice still shook, and his hands trembled with rage. He strode up and down.
“What was her name before she married?” the astrologer asked, stooping over the fire.
The young man stopped, arrested in his passion — stopped, and looked at him suspiciously. “Her name?” he muttered. “What has that to do with it?”
“If you want me to — draw her horoscope,” the astrologer replied, with a cunning smile, “I must have something to go upon.”
“Diane de Martinbault,” the young man answered sullenly; and then, in a fresh burst of rage, he muttered, “Diane! Diable!”
“She inherited her estates from her father?”
“Yes.”
“Who had a son? A child who died young?” the astrologer continued coolly.
M. de Vidoche looked at him. “That is true,” he said sulkily. “But I do not see what it has to do with you.”
For answer, the man in black began to laugh, at first silently, then aloud — a sly devil’s laugh, that sounded more like the glee of fiends sporting over a lost soul than any human mirth, so full was it of derision and mockery and insult. He made no attempt to check or disguise it, but rather seemed to flout it in the other’s face; for when the young noble asked him, with fierce impatience, what it was, and what he meant, he did not explain. He only cried, “In a moment! In a moment, noble sir, I swear you shall have what you want. But — ha! ha!” And then he fell to laughing again, more loudly and shrilly than before.
M. de Vidoche turned white and red with rage. His first thought was that a trap had been laid for him, and that he had fallen into it; that to what he had said there had been witnesses; and that now the astrologer had thrown off the mask. With a horrible expression of shame and fear on his countenance he stood at bay, peering into the dark corners, of which there were many in that room, and plumbing the shadows. When no one appeared and nothing happened, his fears passed, but not his rage. With his hand on his sword, he turned hotly on his confederate. “You dog!” he said between his teeth, and his eyes gleamed dangerously in the light of the lamp, “know that for a farthing I would slit your throat! And I will, too, if you do not this instant stop that witch’s grin of yours! Are you going to do what I ask, or are you not?”
“Chut! chut!” the astrologer answered, waving his hand in deprecation. “I said so, and I am always as good as my word.”
“Ay, but now — now!” the young man retorted furiously. “You have played with me long enough. Do you think that I am going to spend the night in this charnel-house of yours?”
M. Nôtredame began to fear that he had carried his cruel amusement too far. He had enjoyed himself vastly, and made an unexpected discovery: one which opened an endless vista of mischief and plunder to his astute gaze. But it was not his policy to drive his customer to distraction, and he changed his tone. “Peace, peace,” he said, spreading out his hands humbly. “You shall have it now; now, this instant. There is only one little preliminary.”
“Name it!” the other said imperiously.
“The price. A horoscope, with the House of Death in the ascendant — the Upper Portal, as we call it — is a hundred crowns, M. de Vidoche. There is the risk, you see.”
“You shall have it. Give me the — the stuff!”
The young man’s voice trembled, but it was with anger and impatience, not with fear. The astrologer recognised the change in him, and fell into his place. He went, without further demur, to a little shelf in the darkest corner of the laboratory, whence he reached down a crucible. He was in the act of peering into this, with his back to his visitor, when M. de Vidoche uttered a startled cry, and, springing tow
ards him, seized his arm. “You fiend!” the young man hissed — he was pale to the lips, and shook as with an ague— “there is someone there! There is someone listening!”
“FOR A SECOND THE MAN IN BLACK STOOD BREATHLESS” ().
For a second the man in black stood breathless, his hand arrested, the shadow of his companion’s terror darkening his face. M. de Vidoche pointed with a trembling finger to the staircase which led to the farther part of the house, and on this the two bent their sombre, guilty eyes. The lamp burned unsteadily, giving out an odour of smoke. The room was full of shadows, uncouth distorted shapes, that rose and fell with the light, and had something terrifying in their sudden appearances and vanishings. But in all the place there was nothing so appalling or so ugly as the two vicious, panic-stricken faces that glared into the darkness.
The man in black was the first to break the silence. “What did you hear?” he muttered at length, after a long, long period of waiting and watching.
“Someone moved there,” Vidoche answered, under his breath. His voice still trembled; his face was livid with terror.
“Nonsense!” the other answered. He knew the place, and was fast recovering his courage. “What was the sound like, man?”
“A dull, heavy sound. Someone moved.”
M. Nôtredame laughed, but not pleasantly. “It was the toad,” he said. “There is no other living thing here. The door on the staircase is locked. It is thick, too. A dozen men might be behind it, yet they would not hear a word that passed in this room. But come; you shall see.”
He led the way to the farther end of the room, and, moving some of the larger things, showed M. de Vidoche that there was no one there. Still, the young man was only half-convinced. Even when the toad was found lurking in a skull which had rolled to the floor, he continued to glance about him doubtfully. “I do not think it was that,” he said. “Are you sure that the door is locked?”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 120
