It was the night of the grandcoupwhich was to ease Master Raphael Llorient of all his troubles financial, and also to put an acknowledged heretic within the clutches of these two faithful servants of the Holy Office, Dom Ambrose Teruel and his second, Frey Tullio the Neapolitan.
The affair had been carried out with the utmost zeal, and though at first success had seemed more than doubtful, the familiars of the Office had pounced upon their victim walking calmly towards them down a little hollow among the sand-dunes.
At La Masane, it appeared to them that an alarm had been given, and that, as little Andrés the ape expressed it, "the whole byre had broken halter and run for it."
The familiars were hard on the track, however, and the way from La Masane to the beach is no child's playground when the nights are dark as the inside of a wolf. Serra, Calbet, and Andrés Font were three sturdy rascals, condemned to long terms of imprisonment, who had obtained freedom from their penalties on condition of faithfully serving the Holy Inquisition. They were all nearly, though vaguely, related to prominent ecclesiastics, the warmth of whose family feelings had obtained this favour for them.
They had, therefore, every reason for satisfying their masters. For pardon frequently followed zeal, and the ex-culprit and ex-familiar was permitted to return in the halo of a terrible sanctity to his native village. There were not a few, however, whom the craft ended by fascinating. And after in vain trying the cultivation of crops and the pruning of vines, lo! they would be back again at the door of the Holy Office, begging to be taken in, if it were only to be hewers of wood and drawers of water for theauto de féand the water-torture.
Of the present three, Serra, a Murcian from these half-depopulated villages where the Moors once dwelt, alone was of this type. A huge man with a low forehead, a great shapeless face like a clenched fist, with little twinkling pigs' eyes set deep under hairless brows, he did his work for the love of it. He it was who saw to it that no harm befel the prisoner on the long night-ride to Perpignan. It was a dainty capture, well carried out. Since the wholesale emigration of the Jews of Roussillon to Bayonne in the West, theauto de féof the East was usually shamed for want of pretty young maids. These always attracted the crowd more than anything, and Serra the Murcian bared his teeth at the thought. In his way he admired Claire Agnew. From various hiding-places he had watched her many days ere his superiors judged that all was ready. Now he would do his best for her. She should have the highest, the middle pile, which is honour. Also, Serra the Murcian would see to it that her bonfire contained no sea-grass or juniper rootlets, which blazed indeed, but only scorched; neither any wet, sea-borne wood from wrecked ships, which smoked and sulked, but would not burn. No—he, Serra, would do the thing for her in gentlemanly fashion as became a hidalgo of Murcia. The pretty heretic should have clear dry birch, one year old, with olive roots aged several hundreds, all mixed with shavings and pine cones, and a good top-dressing of oil like a salad to finish all. And then (the Murcian showed his teeth and gums in a vast semi-African grin, like a trench slashed out of a melon), well—she would have reason to be proud of herself.
The pillar of clear flame would rise above Claire's head ten—nay, twenty feet, wrapping her about like a garment. She would have no long time to suffer. He was a kind-hearted man, this Serra the Murcian—that is, to those to whom he had taken a fancy, as was the case with Claire. If any torture was commanded, either the Lesser or the Greater Question, he would make it light. It would never do to spoil her beauty against the Great Day! What, after all, did they know, these two wise men in black who only sat on their chairs and watched? It was the familiars who made or marred in the House of Pain—indeed, Serra himself, for he could destroy the others with a word. They had accepted bribes from relatives—he never.
They mounted Claire on the notary's white mule, the sometime gift of the Bishop of Elne. Ah, Serra chuckled, Don Jordy would ride it no more. It would be his—Serra's. He would sell the beast and send the money to his old mother who lived in a disused oven cut out of the rocks near the Castle of the Moors, three leagues or so from Murcia city. She was an affectionate old lady—he the best of sons. It was a shame they should have miscalled her for a witch, when all she ever did was to provide those who desired a blank in their families, or in those of their neighbours, with a certain fine white powder.
Serra himself had been observed stirring a little in some soup at the mansion where he was employed as cook. So, only for that, they had sent him to work as a slave in the mines. But a certain powerful friend of his mother's, who lived in the lonely abbey out on the plain, near the great water-wheel (Serra remembered the dashing of the water in his babyhood before he could remember anything else), got him this good place with Dom Teruel, who had been his comrade of the seminary. And so now his mother was safe—aye, if she sold her fine white meal openly like so much salt. For who in all Murcia would touch the mother of a First Familiar of the Holy Office. They reverenced her more—much more—than the village priest who held the keys of heaven and hell—for, after all, these were far away things.
But the Holy Office—ah, that was another matter. None spake of that either above or below their breaths, from one end of Spain to the other.
So Serra the Murcian communed with himself, and with only an occasional tug at the ropes that bound his captive to the white mule of Don Jordy, he continued his way, rejoiced in heart.
But the other two, ordinary criminals with but little influence, contented themselves with hoping for the freedom of the broad champaign, the arid treeless plains of old Castile, the far-running sweeps of golden corn, the crowdedventaswith their gay Bohemian company, the shouted songs, and above all, the cool gurgle of wine running down thirsty, dust-caked throats—ah! it would be good. And it might come soon, if only they served the Holy Office well!
Both of them hated and despised Serra, because of his place, his zeal, and especially because of his favour with the Surintendant.
The senior of the two underlings, Felieu Calbet, from the Llogrebrat (Espluga the name of the town, where they are always fighting and every one lives on the charity of the fathers of Poblet), was ill at ease, and said as much to Andrés Font, a little lithe creature with a monkey's hands and temper, treacherous and vile, as a snake that writhes and bites in the dust.
These two were trudging behind, their long Albacete knives in their hands, ready for any attempt to escape. But the tall young maid sat steady on the broad back of Don Jordy's white mule. She said no word. She uttered no plaint.
Said Felieu Calbet of Espluga, senior familiar, to little wizened Andrés, third of the band, "Our brave Serra is content. Hear him! He is humming his Moorish charms—the accursed wizard that he is! But for me, I am not so sure that all goes well. They let that lass go somewhat too easily—eh, Andrés?"
And the little ape-faced man, first sliding his dagger into its sheath as they emerged upon an open rocky bit of road with a few tall stone-pines all leaning back from the sea-winds, answered after his fashion, biting his words maliciously as he uttered them.
"Yea, belike," he muttered; "indeed, it was a strange thing that within five hundred yards of the sea, where they had their boat anchored ready, they should not turn and fight for the prisoner. How many were there of them, think you, Felieu?"
"Four I saw—and there might have been another. One cowered in the hood of a cloak, as if he feared that his face would be seen——"
"That makes five, and we but three! The thing smells of an ambush. Well, all we have to do is to be ready, and, if need be, fight like the Demon of the South himself. It is our prisoner or the stake for you and me, my lad!"
The little, ape-faced, bat-eared Andrés, who had never told any what he had been sent there for, was arguing the matter out by himself.
"There is something behind this," he said; "they have a card somewhere we have not seen the front of."
They marched a while, the silence only broken by the fall of the mule's feet on the stones.
"I have it," cried Andrés, suddenly elevating his thin voice above a whisper. It was only a squeak at best, but it aroused the First Familiar from his dreams of honour at the mule's bridle.
"Silence there, you Andrés," he commanded, "or by Saint Vincent I will wring your neck!"
"Wring my neck! He dares not," snarled the little wrinkled man, with an evil grin, in the darkness—"he dares not, big as he is, and he knows it. He would find a dozen inches of steel ensconced between his ribs. If I am no bigger than an ox-goad, I am burnt at the end, and can drive home a sharp point with any man."
"Do not mind the hog," said Felieu the Esplugan. "What was it you thought of?"
"That Don Raphael Llorient was out with a band of his lads from the Castle of Collioure. Doubtless he headed them off from the boat, and they had to save themselves as best they might. So they scattered among the sand-hills!"
"Hum, perhaps—we shall see," said Felieu the Esplugan. "At any rate, keep your eyes open and your knife ready to the five-finger grip. We must kill, rather than let her go. You know the rule."
Indeed, they all knew the rule. No relaxation of the Arm Spiritual till the culprit, arrayed in the flame-coloured robe of condemnation, was ready for the final relaxation to the Arm Secular.
All the same, there was no slightest attempt at rescue, and in the early hours of the morning the procession defiled into the city gates of Perpignan, which opened freely at all hours to the familiars of the Holy Office—the guard discreetly keeping their eyes on the ground. And so the four, in the same order as at first, turned sharply into the Street of the Money.
Serra, the huge, fist-faced Murcian, with the blood of Africa in him, carefully undid the bonds, and hoped, with a Spaniard's innate politeness, that they had not too greatly incommoded his guest. But the "guest" answered not a word.
"Sulky, eh?" muttered the Murcian, equally ready to take offence. "Very well, then, so much the worse!"
And he resolved to save the expense of the oil for Claire's funeral pyre. He had meant to go out of his way to do the thing in style. But with such a haughty dame—and she a Huguenot, one of the Accursed, no more a Christian than any Jew—why should she give herself airs? The thing was intolerable!
In this, Serra the Murcian, First Familiar of the Holy Inquisition, followed the Golden Rule. He did literally as he would be done by. If it had been his fate (and with a reliable witch for a mother it was no far-away conjecture)—if it had been his own fortune to die at the stake, he would have been grateful for the highest seat, the dryest wood, the tallest pillar of flame, the happiest despatch with all modern improvements. He resented it, therefore, when Claire Agnew showed herself ungrateful for the like.
Well, he had done his duty. The worse for her. Like Pilate, he washed his hands.
But such emotions as these he soon forgot. He had reason.
For above, in the accustomed bare room, with only the crucifix upon whitewashed walls, the same three men were waiting anxiously for the arrival of the prisoner.
The little band of familiars, having handed over the white mule to a trusty subordinate, came up the stairs, and after giving the customary knock, and being answered in the deep voice of Dom Teruel, they stood blinking in the glare of the lights, their prisoner in the midst.
There was silence in the room—a great fateful silence. Then the soft voice of Mariana the Jesuit broke the pause.
"And who, good Serra, may this be that you have brought us?"
"Why," said Serra, greatly astonished, "who but the lady I have been watching all these weeks, the Genevan heretic, the Señorita from the house of La Masane above Collioure. We overtook her in flight, and captured her among the sand-dunes on the very edge of the sea!"
"Ah, the Señorita?" purred the Jesuit; "then is the Señorita fitted with a nascent but very tolerable pair of moustacios!"
Serra stared a moment, tore off the cloak with its heavy hood, clutched at the lighter summer mantilla of dark lace and silk. It ripped and tore vertically, and lo! as a butterfly issues from the chrysalis, forth stepped the Abbé John, clad in pale blue velvet from head to knee, as for a court reception.
He bowed gracefully to the company, twisted his moustache, folded his arms, and waited.
And this was how it chanced. All that was hidden from Serra, the fist-faced son of a Murcian witch, from Felieu, the querulous Esplugan, and from Andrés, the little ape with the bat's ears, shall be made clear.
With one exception, the family of La Masane was resolved to go back to France, where, if the country was still disturbed, at least there was no Inquisition.
"I," said the Professor, "know not whether I shall ever teach in my class-room again—not, at least, while the Leaguers bear rule in Paris. But I have a little money laid aside in a safe place, which will at least buy us a vineyard——"
"And I," said the Miller-Alcalde, "have enough gold Henries, safe with Pereira, the Jew of Bayonne, to hire a mill or two. Good bread and well-ground wheat wherewith to make it, are the two things that man cannot do without. I can provide these, if no better."
"And what better can there be?" cried Don Jordy. "I—I am learned in canon law, which is the same all the world over. I grieve to leave my good Bishop Onuphre. But since he cannot protect me—nay, goes as much in fear of the Holy Office as I myself—Brother Anatole must e'en hire me by the day in his vigne, or Jean-Marie there make me as dusty as himself in his mills."
"And your mother, lads, have you forgotten her?" said Madame Amélie.
"You are coming with us, mother," they cried, in chorus, "you and Claire. It is for you that we go!"
"And pray you, who will care for my rabbits, my poultry, and the pigeons? All thebasse courof La Masane?" cried the Señora.
"That also will be arranged, mother," said Don Jordy. "I will put in a man who will care for all, till the better days come—a servant and favourite of Don Raphael. This inquisitioning and denouncing cannot last for ever—any more than Raphael our landlord or Philip our king."
"Ah," said his mother, "but both of them are like to last beyond my time. And the fair white house to which your father brought me, a bride! And the sea—on which, being weary, I have so often looked out and been refreshed—the cattle and the vines and the goats I tended—am I to see them no more?"
"Mother," said the Professor, taking her hand and drawing it away from her face, "here are we your three sons. We can neither stay nor leave you. They of the Inquisition would revenge on you all that we have cheated them of—taken out of their hands."
"They are welcome to my old bones," said the Señora, with a gesture of discouragement.
"No," interrupted Don Jordy, "listen, mother. You are none so ill off. Here are we, three sons, hale, willing, and unwed, all ready to stand by you, and to work for you—with our hands if need be. Are there many mothers who can say as much?"
"Besides," added the Alcalde-Miller, "after all, it is not so far to the frontier, and, in case of need, I have charged certain good lads I know of—accustomed to circumvent the King's revenue—to make a clean house of La Masane. So if aught goes awry—well, I do not promise, but it is possible that the cattle, and your household gods, mother, with Don Jordy's books and the Professor's green gown, may find themselves at Narbonne ere many weeks are over!"
"And for yourself?" said Don Jordy, "your mills, your property?"
The miller laughed and patted his two brothers on the back.
"The good God, who made all, perhaps did not give me so clever a head-piece as He gave you two. But He taught me, at least, to send every gold 'Henry' over the frontier as soon as I had another to clink against it. For the rest, ever as I ground the corn, I took my pay. The mills and the machinery down there are not mine. I am worth no more this side of the frontier than the clothes I stand up in. My ancient friend Pereira, the Israelite of Bayonne, has the rest."
So that is the reason why, when the three familiars of the Holy Office appeared hot on the trail, they found at La Masane nothing more human than Don Jordy's white mule, that knew no better than to resist friendly hands, break a head-stall, and set off after her master, to her own present undoing.
But what happened when the family of La Masane started for the shore, where Jean-Marie, on his way home from the Fanal Mill, had anchored the boat? As he worked his heart was more than a little sore that he should no more hear that musical song, the tremulous rush of the sails overhead, or the blithe pour of the rich meal through the funnel into the sack. Best of all he loved the Fanal Mill, both because the sea-water lashed up blue-green beneath, and because from the door he could see Claire's white dress moving about the garden of La Masane.
This was their plan.
To place Claire in safety was no difficulty. The light land-breezes would carry them swiftly along the shore towards the Narbonne coast. It was in Madame Amélie that the brothers found their stumbling-block. Not that the good old lady, so imperious upon her own ground of La Masane, meant in the least to be difficult. But she felt uprooted, degraded, fallen from her high estate, divorced from her own, and she trembled piteously as she tottered on stout Jean-Marie's arm down towards the beach.
Two days before Jean-aux-Choux had brought the Abbé John to La Masane. At first no one, certainly not Claire, appeared to make him particularly welcome. The Professor retrieved some of his old professorial authority. Don Jordy was frankly jealous. Old Madame Amélie found him finicking and fine. Only the burly Miller-Alcalde drew to the lad, and tried in his gruff, semi-articulate way to make the young Gascon understand that, in spite of his Bourbon birth and Paris manners, he had a friend in the house of La Masane. And this the young man understood very well, and repaid accordingly. He understood many things, the Abbé John—all, indeed, except Claire Agnew's coldness. But even that he took philosophically.
"He who stands below the cherry-tree with his mouth open, expecting the wind to blow the cherries into his mouth, waits a long time hungry," he meditated sententiously; "I will shake the trees and gather."
All the same, the rough grip and kindly "Come-and-help," or "Stand-out-of-the-way" manner of the miller went to his heart. Indeed, he could hardly have kept his ground at La Masane without it, and he was grateful in proportion.
"They think little of me because I look young and my hair curls," he muttered, as he tried in vain to smooth it out with abundant water, "but wait—I will show them!"
And the time for showing them came when Jean-aux-Choux, carefully scouting ahead, thrust his head over a bank of gravel and reported several men in possession of the boat which Jean-Marie had so carefully anchored in the little Fanal Bay just round the point out of sight of the Castle. Worst of all, one of the captors was Don Raphael Llorient himself.
Almost at the same moment, the last individual rear-guard of the little party, a slim young lad called in this chronicle the Abbé John, discovered that they were being tracked from behind. They had indeed walked into the sack without a hole at the other end. They stood between two fires. For they had on their hands good old Madame Amélie, ready at the first discouragement to sink down on the sand, and give up all for lost.
He dared not therefore speak openly. Cautiously the Abbé John called the miller to his side, and imparted his discovery.
"A quarter of an hour at the most, and they will have us!" he whispered.
"Umm!" said the Miller-Alcalde. "I suppose we could not—eh—you and I? What think you? I can strike a good buffet and you with your point! Are you ready?"
"Ready enough," said the Abbé John, "but they would call out at the first sight of us—indeed, either crack of pistol or clash of sword would bring up Don Raphael and his folk. We must think of something else. For men it might do, but there is your mother to consider—and Claire!"
"I wish it had been the bare steel—or else the cudgel," said the miller; "I am no hand at running and plotting!"
But the Abbé John was.
"Here," he said abruptly, stripping the silk-lined cloak from his shoulders, "take that. Get me Claire's lace mantilla and her wrapper with the capuchin hood. I have made a good enough maid before at the revels of carnival. They always chose me to act Joan of Domremy at the Sorbonne on Orleans Day. It is Claire they are after. Moreover, they are in a hurry. Be quick—bid her give them to you. But tell her nothing!"
And so the blunt Alcalde-Miller went up to Claire, who was busily supplying consolation to Madame Amélie.
"Your lace mantilla," he said, "your cloak and hood! Quick—we have need of them!" he said abruptly. "Take this."
Now Claire had served too long an apprenticeship to dangers and strange unexplained demands during her father's wanderings to show any surprise. She put them on the miller's arm without a single question. It was only when he added, "Now—put this on," and threw the silken court-cloak belonging to the Abbé John over her shoulders, that she stammered something.
"This—why this—is—is——"
"Never mind what it is," growled the Miller-Alcalde; "at any rate, it will not bite you, and you may need it before the night is out!"
And so without a good-bye—only just settling the lace mantilla as becomingly as possible upon his head and drawing the waist-ribbon of the girl's cloak close round his middle, the Abbé John, with a wave of his hand and a low-spoken "Take good care of her" to the miller, sauntered carelessly back through the maze of sand-hills in the direction of these three good and faithful bloodhounds of the Holy Inquisition, Felieu the Esplugan, Andrés the Ape, and the giant Serra of the African smile, who loved his work for his work's sake.
And between his teeth John d'Albret muttered these words, "I will show them."
Also once, just when he came within hearing of the stealthy creep of the pursuers, he added, "And I will show her!"
He did. For when next Claire Agnew looked back, the One for whom she looked was not.
At sight of his master in the boat Jean-aux-Choux turned sharply to the left. Obviously they must try elsewhere. The way of the sea was shut to them in front; the enemy was clearly awake and waiting for them there. The net behind had not had time to be drawn tight, and if the Abbé John proved successful in deceiving the familiars of the Holy Office, it would not close. Still, there was every reason for haste. There was no disguising that fact.
Passing behind the town walls as swiftly as might be, with the burden of Madame Amélie in their arms, Jean-aux-Choux halted the brothers for a while in lee of a sheepfold with walls high enough for a fort. Then, passing within, he appeared presently with two poles and a piece of sacking, out of which he extemporised a carrying hammock. He and his comrades used it for carrying down to their huts and shelters such wounded sheep or weakly lambs as they found high up among the mountains, that they might be tended back to health again.
The Señora was a little woman—a mere "rickle of bones," in Jean's Scottish phrase, and hardly heavier than a stout six months' lamb. Indeed, so much had the flesh faded under the strain of her constant activity, that the restless spirit within seemed to pulse and throb under the frail envelope like a new-taken bird.
Jean-aux-Choux took the head. The brothers relieved each other at the feet—that is to say, the Miller-Alcalde and Don Jordy. After one attempt, the Professor acknowledged that the chair of the Sorbonne had unfitted him for such exercise upon the mountains.
They crossed the Elne road only a few minutes before the familiars, with the false maid mounted on Don Jordy's white mule, went past peaceably, trekking their way towards Perpignan and the Street of the Money.
It was clearly unsafe to continue. Yet what else to do? They crouched behind a pillar-rock (what in Celtic lands of Ker and Pol and Tre would have been a menhir) and listened. There came the sound of hoofs, the jingle of a bridle. A white shape skirted with well-accustomed feet the phosphorescent glimmer of the path, wet with dew, and wimpling upwards towards the summit of the cape.
"My mule—the bishop's mule," muttered Don Jordy. "Oh, the villains! Food for thegarrotte!"
Then he comforted himself with thoughts of vengeance.
"Monseigneur will make them deliver," he growled to himself, "for White Chiquita's pretty sake if not for that of his poor notary. He does not greatly love the Inquisition at any time. He believes, and with justice, that it is they and the Jesuits who are striving to take the see-episcopal from ancient Elne, the Illiberris of the ancients, and give it to Perpignan—champignonrather, the mushroom growth of a night."
But Don Jordy's very anathema had given him an idea.
"What if it were possible—that Monseigneur would—yes, he has great power in what is hidden from the Holy Office. He could keep my mother safe in his palace till we have the girl in safety. I believe he would do it for me, his notary and registrar, who have always served both him and the see with fidelity."
In a low voice he made his proposition to his companions. They should all go to Elne. He, Don Jordy, would make his way into the palace of my Lord Bishop. He had the key to a door in the base of the rock, giving upon stairs that turned and turned till one was almost giddy.
There they would leave Madame Amélie till happier times. In atablierof white, she might well and naturally bear rule in the episcopal kitchen, of which the waste and expense had long been a byword.
To this Jean-aux-Choux at first objected. It were best to hasten. All who were under the ban of the Holy Office must get out of Roussillon altogether. It was no place for them. For him it was different, of course. None suspected him. He had his sheep to attend to. For the present his comrade did what was necessary, believing him employed on his master's business. Also, if he were to succour and protect the abandoned bestial and poultry-yard, dear to the Señora, he must return as swiftly as possible.
Finally, however, he also was brought to see reason.
Indeed, the growing weakness of the old lady seriously disquieted every one. So much so, indeed, that Don Jordy went on ahead as soon as the black mass of Elne hunched itself up against the faint pearl-grey sheet which was hung behind the sand-dunes of Argelés, on the way of the sea.
Grey, pallid day was beginning to break when he returned, having seen and heard great things.
At first the night-watchman of the little palace had hesitated to intrude upon the Bishop, who, he said, had company—no other than the learned Doctor Ange de Pas, so learned that he scrupled not to enter into dispute with the Vatican itself, so holy that Sixtus V., at first angered by his stubbornness, finally made a saint of him before his time, because he was the only man who dared to withstand him face to face. "Also," said the watchman, "there was another, who had come from the south with a retinue, now lodged in the cells of the ancient monastery of the Cordeliers."
"His name?" Don Jordy demanded, fearing lest it should be some great missioner of the Inquisition on his rounds, in which case he was lost indeed—and most likely all those who were with him.
"He gave no name," said Leucate the watchman, "and his face was covered. But he knew this place well, and spoke of Fernand Doria, where certain of his chief men could put up, and also of the way to the ancient Convent of the Cordeliers."
This news somewhat reassured Don Jordy, and he bade Leucate carry up his message. He was immediately bidden to enter into the Bishop's private apartments. The good Onuphre de Réart, last Bishop of Elne, was a little smiling man, with a sweet obstinacy in his expression which was not belied by the good fight he had fought with the Inquisition for the privileges of the Church in Roussillon and in the diocese of Elne.
Doctor Ange de Pas was, of course, known to Don Jordy, and rose to give him greeting. But even the holy monk, his hand crisped, as about the quill with which he wrote his many books, showed certain signs of nervousness. The Bishop of Elne held up his hand as if to halt Don Jordy in what he was about to say. Then, going to the purple velvet curtain which divided his audience-chamber from the bedrooms, he announced in a clear, unmistakable voice, "My Lord Cardinal Archbishop!"
Upon which, with smiling dignity, there entered the famous Jean Téres Doria, now Archbishop of Tarragona and Viceroy of all Catalonia, whom the Infanta of Spain had caused to be thus advanced only four years ago, because of his treatment of her as Bishop of Elne when her ship was wrecked on the rocks of Collioure.
"Ah, Don Jorge!" said the great prelate, holding out his hand for the notary to kiss, "you serve early and late, as of yore. Though I think I never saw you in my house quite so belated as this."
Then all suddenly, finding himself in the company of three such good and holy men, all looking so kindly upon him, Don Jordy burst into tears.
The Archbishop Doria stepped quickly up to him, saying, "Don Jordy, friend of mine, you knew me and I knew you, when I was only your neighbour and fellow-student, Jean Téres Doria of Elne. Tell me your sorrow as you would have done, when we fought with burrs and pine-cones in the groves—I for Elne, and you for the honour of Collioure."
"My mother," said Don Jordy, controlling himself with an effort—"she is chased from her house by the familiars of the Holy Office. She and all of us! Only she is old, feeble, pushed beyond her strength. She cannot go farther, and must lie down and die, if the Bishop will not consent to receive her into his palace."
And he went on to tell all the story of the Professor's coming, Don Raphael's suit, and Claire's refusal—lastly, of the warning that had been given concerning the action of the Inquisition.
It could easily be observed how, at that dread name, even the Archbishop grew grave. There was no power comparable to that of the Holy Office in Spain—because the Holy Office was only the King working secretly, doing lawless things under cover of the ample robe of Mother Church.
But the quiet little Cordelier, the Doctor Ange, with his white skin and tremulous bird-like hands, only smiled the sweeter as he listened.
"I fear me," he said, "that the Bishop's palace is too public a place for your mother. Now, what think you? You have with her also your brother, that learned professor of the Sorbonne, with whom it would please me much to ravel out many a tangled web of high doctrine, according to the last interpretation of Paris—why, there is in our new House of the Cordeliers ample room and space for your mother—as well as for your brother, who can don our robe for once in a way. My friends here will doubtless make the matter easier for those of your party continuing their way to the north. Nay, do not thank me. I shall expect much joy from the acquaintance of so learned a man as your brother, though (as I have heard) he mingles too much earthly learning with the pure doctrine of Saint Thomas Aquinas!"
The Archbishop Doria and his successor in the see of Elne, Bishop Onuphre, looked at each other, one taking the other's mind.
"It is perhaps as good a solution as any," said the former meditatively; "however, I judge that you, Don Jorge, had better remain at your post. I see not wherein even the Holy Office can find matter against you. It is a pity that I have no control over its working. The King thinks little of the regular clergy" (at this the little Cordelier laughed). "So that My Lord Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, Primate of all Spain, is in the power of the meanest familiar of the Inquisition who may choose to lodge an information against him. Nevertheless, I possess something of the Secular Arm in this province, being for the moment Viceroy of the King. So that, I judge it will be as well—nay, more, it will look well—that you should go about your ordinary business, sending on your party with all speed to the frontier. I will give them a protection under my own hand and seal."
So by this fortunate intervention of the great Doria, Viceroy and Archbishop, our Claire's path was smoothed France-wards, and Madame Amélie rested securely in the newly-built annex of the Convent of the Cordeliers. As to the Professor, her son, he battled daily with Doctor Ange concerning the opinions of the Angelical Doctor—grace free and grace conditional, Arianism and Supra-lapsarianism, till Ange de Pas, who had friends all over the world, produced as a peace-offering the leaves of a certain curious plant, newly brought from the Western Indies, the smoke of which, being drunk through a tube and slowly expelled with the breath, proved a famous composer of quarrels. The plant was called, he said, nicotiana, but was so rare and expensive that, had he not had a friend Commander-in-chief of the forces in New Spain, their philosophic differences might have gone on for ever.
As for the Abbé John, no one knew what had become of him—except, that is, the Miller-Alcalde Jean-Marie, and he answered nothing to Claire's question. Because him also the devil tempted.
Two systems were in force in the Street of the Money to convince, to convert, and to change the stubborn will.
One, the A B C of all inquisitors, consisted of the indispensable rack, the attractive pulley with the weights for the feet, the useful hooks, the thumbkins, the red-hot pincers, the oil-bath, and the water-torture. Dom Teruel and Frey Tullio, with the aid of Serra the Murcian, used these as a carpenter uses his tools, coldly, and with method.
But the finer mind of Mariana, working for political ends rather than controverting heresy by mere physical methods, had evolved a more purely moral torture. A chamber had been set apart, to which no least noise, either from the street or from the other guests of the Holy Office, could possibly penetrate. The walls had been specially doubled. Iron door after iron door had to be unlocked before even a familiar could enter. In the space between the walls in every side were spy-holes. Painted eyes looked down from the ceiling, up from the floor. The whole chamber was flooded day and night with the light of lamps set deep in niches, so that the prisoner could not reach them. All that he could ever see was the placing of another light as often as the old burned low.
"There is," Mariana explained the matter to his associates, "a compulsion working in the minds of the well-bred and well-born, of those who have always experienced only pleasantness and happy society, breathed the airs of wood and mountain, known the comradeship of street and class-room andsalle-d'armes. Such cannot long be without someone to whom to tell their thoughts. For this unclipped gallant, two or three weeks will suffice. He has the gloss still on his wings. Wait a little. I have my own way with such. He will speak. He will tell us both who he is and all he knows! I will turn him inside out like a glove."
"I am not sure," said Teruel, shaking his head; "after the third fainting on the rack, when they see Serra oiling the great wheel—that is what few of them can stand. There is virtue in it. It has a persuasive force—yes, that is the word, a blessed persuasive force, to make the most stubborn abjure heresy and receive the truth!"
The Jesuit smiled, and waved a plump, womanish hand.
"I have a better means, and a surer!" he said, in gentle reproof.
They looked him in the face. But as often as it came to the tug of wills, this smooth, soft-spoken, smiling priest, with his caressing voice, was master. And well they knew it. He also.
"I have a niece," Mariana murmured, "one altogether devoted to the service of the Church and the society. I am, for the present, her nearest parent as well as her spiritual director——"
"Valentine la Niña?" questioned Teruel. And Frey Tullio said nothing, only Mariana, ever on the watch, caught the oily southern glitter of his eyes, wicked little black pools, with scum on each, like cooling gravy.
"Ay, indeed, Valentine la Niña, even as you say," responded the Jesuit of Toledo calmly; "it is not fair that only men should labour for the good of Holy Church. Did not Mary, the wife of Herod's steward, and that other Mary, minister to the Son of the Holy Virgin? It is so written. If, then, sainted women followed Him in life, watched by His cross, and prepared His body for burial, surely in these evil times, when the Church of Peter trembles on its rock, we, who fight for the faith, have not the right to refuse the ministry of Valentine la Niña or another?"
And so, since Mariana was of Toledo and high in favour with Philip the King, and with the Archbishop Primate of all Spain, besides being more powerful than the General of his own Order, Dom Teruel and Frey Tullio bowed their heads and did as they were commanded.
"Give you the order," said Teruel to Mariana, with a faint, hateful smile, for he would have preferred Serra, a newly-wetted rope, and a slow fire.
But this was by no means Mariana's way.
"I but advise," he said. "How can I do otherwise, a poor Jesuit wanderer, dependent on your bounty for hospitality—I and my niece. I fear I must claim also a place for her here, when she leaves the house and protection of the Countess of Livia."
So into the chamber of light and silence went the Abbé John, after his first examination. He saw around him and above walls and ceilings painted all over with gigantic human eyes—the pupil of each being hollow—and watchers were set continually without, or, at least, the Abbé John thought they were. Within twelve hours he was raging madly about his cell, striving to reach and shiver those watching eyes everywhere about him. He kicked at the inlaid pavements. He tried to tear away from his bed-head and from the foot, those huge, open eyes with the dark, watchful pupils. But his riding-boots had been removed, and with his hempenalpargatashe could do nothing. No one took the least notice of his cries. Even the walls seemed echoless and dead, save for the watching eyes, which, after the first day, followed him about the room as he paced from end to end, restless as a wild creature newly caged.
He saw them in his sleep. He dreamed of eyes. They chased him across great smoking cities, over plains without mark or bound, save the brown circle of the horizon, through the thick coverts of virgin forests. He could not shut them out. He could not escape them. He covered his face with his hand, and they looked in between his fingers, parting them that they might look. He drew his cloak's hood about his brow, he heaped coverings on his head. It was all in vain. He began to babble to the walls, till he realised that these had ears as well as eyes. On the fourth day he wept aloud. He had long refused to eat, though he drank much. He began to go mad, and kept repeating the words to himself, "I am going mad! I am going mad!"
On the fifth night he tried to dash his head against the wall. He fainted, and lay a long time motionless on the cold floor, till suddenly, becoming aware that there was a painted eye underneath he sprang to his feet in that terrible place beset with eyes behind and before.
There came to him a noise of unbarring doors, the yellow lamp-light went out in niche after niche.
"Oh, the blessed dark!" cried the Abbé John, "they are going to leave me in the dark. I shall escape from the eyes."
But no; his tormentors had other purposes with him. A yet greater noise of rollers and the clang of iron machinery, and lo! on high the whole roof of the Place of Eyes fell into two parts (like huge eyelids, thought the Abbé John with a shudder). The sunshine flooded all the upper part of his cell, midway down the walls. The sweet morning air of Spain breathed about him. He felt a cool moisture on his lips, the scent of early flowers. A bee blundered in, boomed round, and went out again as he had come.
The Abbé John clutched his throat as if at the point of death. He thought he saw a vision, and prayed for deliverance, but no more eyes—for judgment, but no more eyes—for damnation even, but no more eyes!
Then he turned about, and close by the great iron door a woman was standing, the fairest he had ever seen—yes, fairer even than Claire Agnew, as fair as they make the pictured angels above the church altars—Valentine la Niña!
The girl stood smiling upon the young man, a spray of the great scarlet blossom of the pomegranate freshly plucked and held easily in her hand. She had broken it from the tree in the courtyard as she came in. The flowers showed like handfuls of blood splashed upon the bosom and neck of her white clinging robe.
"You are very beautiful," said the Abbé John, his voice no more than a hoarse gasp; "what are you doing here in this place? Tell me your name. I seem to have seen you long ago, in dreams. But I have forgotten—I forget everything!"
Then, without taking her eyes, mystically amber and gold, softly caressing as the sea and as changeful, from the young man's face, she beckoned him forward.
"We shall speak more at ease in another place," she said. And held out her hand to him, carelessly, palm downwards, as if he had been her brother, and they were playing some lightheart game, or taking positions for an old-time dance of woven hands and measured paces.
Valentine la Niña led John d'Albret into a summer parlour, equally secure from escape, being surrounded by the high fortress walls of the Hotel of the Inquisition, but full of rich twilight, of flowers, of broidery, and of faint wafted perfumes from forgotten shawl or dropped kerchief, which told of a woman's abiding there.
"Now," said Valentine la Niña, throwing herself back luxuriously on a wide divan of Seville, her hands clasped behind her head, "tell me all there is to tell—keep back nothing. Then we will take counsel what is best to be done! I have not forgotten, if you have!"
And John d'Albret, exhausted by the ceaseless searching of the Eyes into his soul, and the need of the dark which would not come, told her all. To which Valentine la Niña listened, and saw the fear fade out and the reasonable man return. But as John d'Albret spoke, something moved strangely in the depths of her own heart. Her face flushed; her temples throbbed; her hands grew chill.
"And you have done this for the sake of a woman—of a girl?" she said.
"For Claire Agnew's sake," the Abbé John answered, still uncertainly; "so would any one—any one who loved her!"
Valentine la Niña smiled, stirring uneasily on her divan, and as she smiled she sighed also, leaning forward, her great eyes on the youth.
"Any one?" she repeated, "any one who loved her! Aye, it may be so. She is a happy girl. I have found none such. I am fair—I should be loved. Yet I have only served and served and served all my life—ah!"
Suddenly, with a quick under-sob and an outward drive of the palm, as if to thrust away some hateful thing, she rose to her feet and caught John d'Albret by the wrist. So lithe was her body that it seemed one single gesture.
"If I had met you before she did," she whispered fiercely, "would you have loved me like that? Answer me! Answer me! I command you! It is life or death, I tell you!"
But the Abbé John, not yet himself, could only stare at her blindly. The girl's eyes, large and mystic, held him in that dim place, and some of his pain returned. He covered his face with both hands.
She shook him fiercely.
"Look at me—you are a man," she cried, "say—am I not beautiful? You have said it already. If you had not met this Huguenot—this daughter of Geneva, would you have loved me—not as men, ordinary men love, but as you have loved, with a love strong enough to brave prison, torture, and death for me—for me?"
The Abbé John, too greatly astonished to answer in words, gazed at the strange girl. Suddenly the anger dropped, the fierce curves faded from the lips that had been so haughty. Her eyes were soft and moist with unshed tears.
Valentine la Niña was pleading with him.
"Say it," she said, "oh, even if it be not true—say it! It would be such a good lie. It would comfort a torn heart, made ever to do the thing it hates. If I had been a fisher-girl spreading nets on the sands, a shepherdess on the hills, some brown sailor-lad or a bearded shepherd would have loved me for myself. Children would have played about my door. Like other women, I would have had the sweet bitterness of life on my lips. I would have sorrowed as others, rejoiced as others. And, when all was done, turned my face to the wall and died as others, my children about me, my man's hand in mine. But now—now—I am only poor Valentine la Niña, the tool of the League, the plaything of politics, the lure of the Jesuits, a thing to be used when bright, thrown away when rusted, but loved—never! No, not even by those who use me, and, in using, kill me!"
And the Abbé John, moved at sight of the pain, answered as best he might.
"A man can only love as the love comes to him," he murmured. "What might have been, I do not know. I have thought I loved many, but I never knew that I loved till I saw little Claire Agnew."
"But if you had not—tell me," she sobbed; "I will be content, if you will only tell me."
"I do not know," said John d'Albret, driven into a corner; "perhaps I might—if I had seen you first."
To the young man it seemed an easy thing to say—a necessary thing, indeed. For, coming fresh from the fear and the place of torment, he was glad to say anything not to be sent thither again.
"But say it," she cried, coming nearer and clasping his arm hard, "say it all—not that you might, but that you would—with the same love that goes easily to death, that I—I—I might escape. Oh, for me, I would go to a thousand deaths if only I knew—surely—surely, that one man in the world would do as much for me!"
But the Abbé John had reached his limit. Not even to escape the Place of the Eyes could he deny his love, or affirm that he could ever have loved to the death any but his little Claire.
"I saw her, and I loved!" he said simply—"that is all I know. Had I seen you, I might have loved—that also I do not know. More I cannot say. But be assured that, if I had loved you, not knowing the other, I should have counted, for your sake, my poor life but as a leaf, wind-blown, a petal fallen in the way."
Valentine la Niña nervously crumpled the glorious red and fleshy blossoms of the pomegranate clusters in her fingers, till they fell in blood-drops on the floor.
"You are noble," she said; "I knew it when I saw you at Collioure on the hillside—more, a prince in your own land, near to the throne even. So am I—and Philip the King himself would not deny me. He is your country's enemy. Yet at my request he would stay his hand. He must fight the English. He must subdue the Low Countries. That is his oath. But if you will—if you will—he would aid the Bearnais, or better still, you yourself to a throne, and give me—who can say what?—perhaps this very Roussillon for a dower. For I am close of kin to the King. He would acknowledge me as such. I have vowed a vow, but now it is almost paid; and if it were not I would go to the Pope himself, though I walked every step of the road to Rome!"
"I cannot—I cannot——" cried John d'Albret. "Thank God, I am not of the first-born of kings, whose hands are put up to the highest bidder. Where I have loved, there will I wed or not at all!"
"Ah, cruel!" cried Valentine la Niña, stamping her foot—"cruel, not only to me, but to her whom you say you love. Think you she will be safe from the Society, from the Holy Office in France? There is no rack or torture perhaps, no Place of Eyes. But was Henry of Valois safe, who slew the Duke of Guise? From whose bosom came forth Jacques Clement? My uncle put the knife in his hand and blessed him ere he went. For me he would do more. Think—this Claire of yours is condemned already. She is young. By your own telling she has many lovers. She will be happy. I know the heart of such maids. Besides, she has never promised you anything—never humbled herself to you as I—I, Valentine la Niña, who till now have been the proudest maid in Spain!"
"I am not worthy," cried the Abbé John. "I cannot; I dare not; I will not!"
"Ah," said Valentine la Niña, with a long rising inflection, and drawing herself back from him, "I have found it ever so with you heretics. You are willing to die—to suffer. Because then you would wear the martyr's crown, and have your name commemorated—in books, on tablets, and be lauded by the outcasts of Geneva. But for your own living folk you will do nothing. With all Roussillon, from Salses to the Pyrenees, for my dowry (Philip would be glad to be rid of it—and perhaps also of me—my friends of the Society are too strong for him), there would be an end to this prisoning and burning and torturing through the land. Teruel and Frey Tullio we would send to their own place. By a word you could save thousands. Yet you will not. You think only of one chit of a girl, who laughs at you, who cares not the snap of her finger for you!"
She stopped, panting with her own vehemence.
"Likely enough," said the Abbé John, "the more is the pity. But that cannot change my heart."
"Was her love for you like mine?" she cried; "did she love you from the first moment she saw you? NO! Has she done for you what I have done—risked my all—my uncle's anger—the Society's—that of the Holy Office even? No!—No!—No!She has done none of these things. She has only graciously permitted you to serve her on your knees—she, the daughter of a spy, a common go-between of your Huguenot and heretic princes! Shame on you, Jean d'Albret of Bourbon, you, a cousin of the King of France, thus to give yourself up to fanatics and haters of religion."
But by this time the Abbé John was completely master of himself. He could carry forward the interview much more successfully on these lines.
"I am no Huguenot," he said calmly, "more is the pity, indeed. I have no claim to be zealous for any religion. I have fought on the Barricades of Paris for the Guise, because I was but an idle fellow and there was much excitement and shouting. I have fought for the Bearnais, not because he is a Huguenot, but because he is my good cousin and a brave soldier—none like him."
Valentine la Niña waved her hand in contempt.
"None like him!" she exclaimed. "Have you never heard of my cousin Alexander of Parma? To him your Bearnais is no better than a ruffler, a banditti captain, a guerilla chief. If you must fight, why, we will go to him. It is a service worth a thousand of the other. Then you will learn the art of war indeed——"
"Aye, against my countrymen," said John d'Albret, with firmness. Bit by bit his courage was coming back to him. "I am but a poor idlish fellow, who have taken little thought of religion, Huguenot or Catholic. Once I had thought she would teach me, if life had been given me, and—and if she had been willing. But now I must take what Fate sends, and trust that if I die untimeously, the Judge I shall chance to meet may prove less stern than He of the Genevan's creed, and less cruel than the God of Dom Teruel and the Holy Inquisition!"
"Then you refuse?" She uttered the words in a low strained voice. "You refuse what I have offered? But I shall put it once more—honourable wedlock with an honourable maiden, of a house as good as your own, a province for your dower, the most Catholic King for sponsor of your vows, noble service, and it like you, with the greatest captain of the age, the safety of all your kin, free speech, free worship, the entrance of these thousands of French folk into France. Ah, and love—love such as the pale daughters of the north never dreamt of——"
She took a step towards him, her clasped hands pleading for her, her lips quivering, her head thrown back so far that the golden comb slipped, and a heavy drift of hair, the colour of ripe oats, fell in waves far below her shoulders.
"Do not let the chance go by," she said, "because you think you do not love me now. That will come in time. I know it will come. I would love you so that it could not help but come!"
"I cannot—ah, I cannot!" said John d'Albret, his eyes on the floor, so that he might not see the pain he could not cure.
The girl drew herself up, clenched her hands, and with a hissing indraw of the breath, she cried, "You cannot—you mean you will not, because you love—the other—the spy's daughter—of whom I will presently make an end, as a child kills a fly on a window-pane—for my pleasure!"
"No," said John d'Albret clearly, lifting his head and looking into the angry eyes, flashing murkily as the sunlight flashes in the deep water at a harbour mouth or in some estuary—"no, I will not do any of the things you ask of me. And the reason is, as you have said, because I love Claire Agnew until I die. I know not at all whether she loves me or not. And to me that makes no matter——"
"No, you say right," cried Valentine la Niña, "it will indeed make no difference. For by these words—they are printed on my heart—you have condemned her; the spy's daughter to the knife, and yourself——"
"To the fires of the Inquisition?" demanded the Abbé John. "I am ready!"
"Nay, not so fast," said Valentine la Niña, "that were far too easy a death—too quick. You shall go to the galleys among the lowest criminals, your feet in the rotting wash of the bilge, lingering out a slow death-in-life—slow—very slow, the lash on your back and—no, no—I cannot believe this is your answer. Here, here is yet one chance. Surely I have not humbled myself only for this?"
The Abbé John answered nothing, and after a pause the girl drew herself up to her height, and spoke to him through her clenched teeth.
"You shall go to the galleys and pray—ah, you say you have never learned to pray, but you will—you will on Philip's galleys. They make good theologians there; they practise. You will pray in vain for the death that will not come. And I, when I wake in the night, will turn me and sleep the sweeter on my pillow for the thought of you chained to your oar, which you will never quit alive. Ah, I will teach you, Jean d'Albret of the house of Bourbon, cousin of kings, what it is to love the spy's daughter, and to despise me—me—Valentine la Niña, a daughter of the King of Spain!"
Mariana the Jesuit rose, pen in hand, to embrace his "niece" as she entered his bureau. There was a laughing twinkle in his eye, and all his comfortable little pink-and-white figure shook with mirth.
"Bravo—oh! bravo!" he cried, "never—never did I suppose our little Valentine half so clever. Why, you turned yonder boastful cockerel outside in. Ha, they teach us something of dissimulation in our seminaries, but we are children to you, the best of us—the whole Gesù might sit at your feet and take lessons. Even Philip himself—were it not for semi-paternal authority! Never was the thing they call love better acted. I declare it was a great moral lesson to listen to you. You made the folly of it so apparent—so abject!"
The girl was still pale. The rich glow of health, without the least colour in her cheeks, had disappeared. But the eyes of Valentine la Niña were dangerously bright.
The Jesuit proceeded, without taking note of these symptoms of disorder. He was so accustomed to use the girl's beauty and cleverness to bait his hooks. By her father she had been vowed from infancy to the service of the Society. Her rank was known only to a few in the realm. Save on this condition of service, Philip would never have permitted her to remain in his kingdom of the Seven Spains. And, indeed, Valentine la Niña deserved well of Philip and the Gesù. She had served the Society faithfully.
For these reasons she was dear as anything in flesh and blood could be to Mariana the Jesuit. He laughed again, tasting the rare flavour of the jest.
"A rich prize indeed," he chuckled. "The cousin of the Bearnais—a candidate of the League for the crown of France. Ho, ho! Serving on the galleys as a Huguenot! You were right. There is no good fuel for Father Teruel's bonfires—he is meat for the masters of Tullio the Neapolitan and Serra his kinsman. Was there ever such sport? You do indeed deserve a province and a dower, were it not that you are too valuable where you are, aiding the Cause—and me, your poor loving 'uncle'! But what made me laugh as I listened, till the tears came into my old eyes, was to hear you—you, to whom a thousand men had paid court—begging for the love of that starved and terrified young braggart in his suit of silken bravery, tashed with prisons, and the fear of the Place of Eyes still white on his face!"
Then all unexpectedly Valentine la Niña spoke. Her tall figure seemed to overshadow that of her little, dimpling, winking kinsman, as the pouches under his eyes shook with merriment, while his mouth was one wreathed smile, and he pointed his beautiful, plump, white fingers together pyramidally, as if measuring one hand against the other.
"It was true," she said point-blank, "I was not pretending. I did love him—and I do!"
The dimples died out one by one on the face of the historian, Mariana of Toledo. The ripe colour faded from the cheek-bone. He glanced nervously over his shoulder with the air of a man who may be sheltering traitors under his roof-tree.
"Hush!" he whispered. "Enough—now you have carried the jest far enough. It was excellent with the springald D'Albret. You played him well, like a trout on an angle. But after all we are—where we are. And Teruel and Tullio are not the men to appreciate such a jest."
"I was never farther from jesting in my life," said Valentine la Niña; "I love him as I never thought to love man before. If he would have loved me, and forgotten that—that woman—I would have done for him all I said—aye, and more!"
"You—Valentine—a king's daughter?"
"Great good that has done me," cried the girl; "I must not show my face. My father (if, indeed, he is my father) would so gladly get rid of me that he would present me to the Grand Turk if he thought the secret would hold water. As it is, he keeps me doing hateful work, lying and smiling, smiling and lying, like—like a Jesuit!"
"Girl, you have taken leave of your senses—of your judgment!" said her "uncle" severely. "Do you not see that you are sealing the doom of the man for whom you profess a feeling as foolish as sudden?"
"Neither foolish nor sudden," retorted the girl sullenly, her hand on the back of a chair, gripping the top bar like a weapon. For a moment the little soft man with his eternal smile might have been her victim. She could have brained him with a blow—the angle of that solid oaken seat crashing down upon the shining bald head which harboured so many secrets and had worked out so many plots. Valentine la Niña let the moment pass, but while it lasted she might very well have done it.
"It is not foolish," she said, relaxing her grip for an instant. "I am a human creature with a heart that beats so many times a minute, and a skin that covers the same human needs and passions—just as if I were a free and happy girl—like—like that spy's daughter whom he loves. Neither is it sudden. For I saw him more than once on the hills above Collioure, when we stayed in the house of that cruel young monster Raphael Llorient. I wandered on the wastes covered with romarin and thyme—why, think you? 'A new-born passion for nature,' you said, laughing. 'To get away from our host, Don Raphael,' said Livia the countess. Neither, good people! It was, because, stretched at length on a bed of juniper and lavender, in the shadow of a rock, my eyes had seen the noblest youth the gods had put upon the earth. He was asleep."
"You are mad, girl," cried Mariana, as loudly as he dared. "These are not the words of the Valentine I knew!"
"Surely not," said the girl, her head thrown back, her breast forward, and breathing deep, "nor am I the Valentine I myself knew!"
"You dare to love this man—you—vowed to the Church and to the service of the Gesù, whose secrets you hold? You dare not!"
"I dare all," she answered calmly. "This is not a matter of daring. It comes! It is! I did not make it. It does not go at my bidding, nor at yours. Besides, I did not bid it go. For one blessed moment I had at least the sensation of a possible happiness!"
"Nevertheless, he shamed you, rejected you, like the meanest whining lap-dog your foot spurns aside out of your path. He has done this to you—Valentine la Niña, called the Most Beautiful—to you, the King's daughter an you liked, an Infanta of Spain! Have you thought of that?"
"Thought?" she said, tapping her little foot on the floor, and with her strong right hand swaying the chair to and fro like a feather—"have I thought of it? What else have I done for many days and weeks? But whether he will love me or cast me off—the die is thrown. I am his and not another's. I may take revenge—for that is in my blood. I may cause him to suffer as he has made me suffer—and the woman also—especially the woman, the spy's daughter! But that does not alter the fact. I am his, and if he would, even when chained to the oar of the galley, a slave among slaves—he could whistle me to his side like a fawning dog! For I am his slave—his slave!"
The last words were spoken almost inaudibly, as if to herself.
"And to the galleys he shall go!" said the Jesuit, "you have said it, and the idea is a good one. There he will be out of mischief. Yet he can be produced, if, in the time to come, his cousin the Bearnais, arrived at the crown of France, has time to make inquiries after him!"
A knife glittered suddenly before the eyes of the Jesuit. It was in the firm white hand of the girl vowed to the Society.
"See," she hissed, letting each word drop slowly from her lips, "see, Doctor Mariana, my uncle, you are not afraid of death—I know—but you do not wish to die now. There are so many things unfinished—so much yet to do. I know you, uncle! Now let me take my will of this young man. Afterwards I am at your service—for ever—for ever—more faithfully than before!"
"How can I trust you?" said the Jesuit; "to-morrow you might go mad again!"
"These things do not happen twice in a lifetime," said Valentine la Niña, "and as for Jean d'Albret, I shall put him beyond the reach of any second chance!"
Her uncle nodded his head. He knew when a woman has the bit between her teeth, and though he had a remedy even for such cases, he judged that the present was not the time to use it.
So Valentine la Niña went out, the knife still in her hand.
The Jesuit of Toledo threw himself back on his writing-chair and wiped his brow with a handkerchief.
"Ouff!" he cried, emptying his chest with a gust of relief, "this is what it is to have to do with that wild animal, Woman! In Madrid they tame the tiger, till it takes victual from its keeper's very hand. He is its master, almost its lover; I have seen the tiger arch its back like a cat under the caress. It sleeps with the arm of the keeper about its neck! Till one day—one day—the tiger that was tamed falls upon the tamer, the master, the lover, the friend! So with a woman. Have I not trained and nurtured, pruned and cared for this soul as for mine own. She was tame. She knew no will but mine.Clack!In a moment, at sight of a comely youth in a court suit asleep, as Endymion on some Latmian steep, she is wild again. Better to let her go than perish, keeping her."
Mariana listened a while, but the chamber of his work was as far from the lugubrious noises of the den of Dom Teruel as if it had been the Place of Eyes itself. Neither could he hear any sound from the little summer parlour which had been put at the service of his niece.
The old worldly-wise smile came back upon his lips.
"It is none of my business, of course," he murmured, "but it strikes me that the youth D'Albret had better say his prayers—such, that is, as he can remember. I, for one, would not care twice to anger Valentine la Niña!"
He thought a while, and then with a grave air he added, "If I were a man of the world I would wager ten golden ounces to one, that within five minutes Master D'Albret knows more about eternity than the Holy Father himself and all his College of Cardinals. Well, better so! Then she will come back to us. She has served us well, Valentine la Niña, and now, having drunk the cup—nowshe will serve us better than ever, or I know nothing of womankind!"
But Mariana, though he stood long with his ear glued to the crack of the door, could distinguish no sound within the summer parlour which Valentine la Niña had entered to look for the Abbé John.