CHAPTER XTHE VISION OF THE WOOD
Wehad reined up under a huge yoke-elm, whose spreading branches threw a mottled shade on the snow at our feet, and watched Ponthieu in silence until he went quite out of our sight. The same thoughts were running in our minds. Perhaps something too of the same despair had seized us, a presentiment that we were casting away our lives for nothing. Madame de Condé had at one stroke, by changing her plans, gone straight into the lion’s mouth, and had increased tenfold the difficulty of our emprise, if not totally destroying all chances of its success. And yet, now that I look back upon things, I cannot blame her. She was a woman, after all, and guided more by the heart than the head. But then, as we stood there, I railed against the caprice that was like to cost us all our lives.
“Did ever you hear the like?” I burst out, and Marcilly laughed bitterly as he answered:
“We go like lambs to the slaughter, perchance,” and then he looked me straight in the face, saying:
“Gaspard! You see that track! It leads straight to the high road to Blois. Turn rein and ride there, and thence take horse to Poitou.There is blood in the air, friend, but it must not be yours. Leave me! I will do this alone.”
“Monsieur,” I said, a flush rising to my face, and, as God is my witness, the words I uttered came straight from my heart, “Monsieur, I have the honor to be joined with you in this thing, and I stay with you till the last, for good or ill.”
“Think!” he said, “and draw back while there is time. Where are Renaudie, Castelnau, and Ste. Marie? Where are a hundred brave hearts we knew and loved?”
“Where we shall be if we fail. I will not go.”
“Your lands are broad, Vibrac. You are young, and life is dear.”
“My life is my own, and neither my lands nor yours of Duras were won with dishonor. And for the risk—I—I but stake myself, while you——”
I said no more, for he knew what I meant, and his brown cheek paled. As for me, for that moment I was innocent, I had conquered the past, and for once the dread breath that stirred the fires of evil within me lost its malign power. The whispering presence was there, ready as ever, but I was strong then. Would that that strength had continued! Ah! God in Heaven! Why dost Thou not stoop a little lower to help Thy creatures? And now I put aside the fiend with a curse, and swore again and again that I would die with Marcilly if need be, and we clasped hands once more on my oath, as we rode through the twilight of the woods of Russy, through the red sunsetthat lit up the old and gnarled trunks, and bronzed the tracery of branches overhead; a strange glow, that flushed the snow beneath us, that ran on the crests of the trees in a line of flame, and, falling on the gray of the distant woodlands, lit them with its glory, to sink at last in a trembling veil of empurpled shadows.
What thoughts stirred Marcilly I know not; but as I rode behind him, I was once more fighting with myself. I saw with horror that the past was still awake within me, and there was a black foreboding in my soul of evil to come. Again I clutched at the strength above me, again bent my head in silent prayer. I swore to myself that I would put to flight the hideous phantom that dogged me, and once more there came to me that momentary strength, that feeble power, that faints so weakly at the first stealthy footfall of temptation.
Were other men like me, I wondered, or was I accursed beyond my fellows, one marked with the Mark of the Beast?
Good would it have been if I had taken Jean’s offer, and turned rein to Blois. The bitter days that were to come had then perchance never been; but my word was passed, and I would not draw back for dread of my life. It would be said that Gaspard de Vibrac had feared to die with his friend, that he had fled like a frighted roe at the first rustle of the leaves. It would be no longer the Fever of St. Vallière, but the Sweat of Vibrac,that would brand a poltroon with infamy. No! It could not be! And so, against myself, I drifted with the tide, into that yawning abyss from which there is no return.
I had once put the past to sleep as I thought. Fool that I was! The past never sleeps. The madness had come on me again, and again I had crushed it, as I imagined, in that lonely struggle with myself which he, who was a priest of his people, had mocked at and gibed. And was this horror to envelop me again? God forbid! No! A thousand times no! I would play this last game to the end of my sword, and then—farewell to France.
I longed, yet feared, to meet Marie. I felt my bridle hand shiver as I thought of her, and, so thinking, I all unconsciously slackened pace, and dropped behind the others, letting my horse go slower and slower until he barely walked. It was at this moment that I became possessed of an intense feeling that the thoughts of the woman I loved were with me. I involuntarily glanced to my right, and there, as I live, at the edge of the purple shadow, where a lean glade opened and stretched out, long and white, I saw her stand. It was no dream of fancy. No fever of the brain. She stood there, I say, at the fringe of the glade, where the light and darkness joined, with the gold of her hair all shining like a glory. She was looking straight at me, with that in her glance I had never seen before. It was not love nor hate, butan infinite pity, that shone in her eyes, and then her lips seemed to move in speech, and—she was gone.
I drew rein at the spot where she stood. It was not ten paces from me. I peered into the quaking shadows, but my glance met nothing except the endless lines of hoary trunks, that stretched like pillars along the dim aisles of the forest. Here and there, past the gaps in the boughs that arched overhead, I saw the blood light of the dying sunset shining as through the stained glass of some old minster window, a light that made the darkness yet more dark, and flung strange, awesome shadows on the still scene upon which it shone.
“Marie!” I called out in a low voice, “Marie!”
But there was no answer except the mockery of the echoes. “Marie—Marie!” they gibed from behind the haggard trees. “Marie—Marie!” they whispered from the wan branches. The very air was full of her name.
I turned, sick at heart, from those voices that spoke to me of her.
Echoes—not they? They were the long-dead people of the wood come back in that shivering twilight—sprite and elf and goblin—and they had fashioned of their cunning a phantom to make me a plaything and a sport.
Slowly I pushed my horse a little way into the wood, my eyes here, there, and everywhere. The dry undergrowth snapped and crackled beneathhis hoofs, and from a bent and twisted bough overhead a huge owl, startled by the sound, fled with flapping wings, and a dismal hoot, into the deep of the forest.
I had totally forgotten my companions. In the nervous state to which I was reduced, I know not how far I might have gone on, but now I heard my name called out again and again, as Marcilly and Badehorn galloped back to seek me, and, brought to the moment by their shouts, I came out and joined them.
“Cap de Diou!” exclaimed Jean, “as our friend Ponthieu would say, this is no season for woodland flowers, Gaspard, nor are we here to gather posies for our sweethearts. Have you a mind to spend the night in Russy woods?”
A sharp answer rose to my tongue; but checking myself I forced a laugh, and we rode on together, until we at length reached the park gates of Nanteuil, and found a hospitable welcome in the house of Monsieur de Villequier.
There, as we sat round the log fire, sipping the old Vouvray, and listening to Villequier’s tales—monsieur was a veteran of Pavia and Cerisoles—we all unconsciously threw off our gloom, and Villequier seemed to slip back into the past years; his cheeks flushed, and his eyes glowed as he recalled his youth, and so the talk drifted on until it struck midnight from the bells of the Antwerp clock in the hall, and we retired to rest; and as I lay down, all wearied, to sleep, I could not helpthinking of the strong old age of our host, who was descending as full of honors as of years to his grave, and I wondered if the future would bring me the same when I had played my part—wondered and hoped.
That night I slept the sleep of the weary in body and in mind, the sleep, deep and dreamless, in which the hours pass like minutes, and it is light and morning almost, as it seems, in a moment. Strange as it may appear, no thought of the vision I had seen troubled me, nor did it appear again, and I woke with the sun, refreshed and cooler in brain than I had been for long, and laughed and jested gaily as we rode in the winter sunlight, through the glistening woods on our way to Orleans.
Marcilly, too, seemed to have shaken off his sadness, or caught the infection of gayety from me, and we gave way to the moment without a thought that in a few hours we would be but a finger’s distance from the rack, and the headsman’s block.
I am not going to tell of how we rode through the wintry Orléanais. How we swam the Cosson, and galloped all wet and dripping to the Ardoux. How we dried our clothes and broke our fast at the Three Stags, opposite Our Lady of Clery, where, in the chapel, those who care may see the lonely grave of Louis XI. of France, that King whosetisanewas stronger than strong wine, whose laughter was worse than his frown, andwho, small, deformed, and mean-looking as a tailor of the Rue St. Antoine, could make his proudest nobles shiver at a look.
All these things and more may rest, for they are foreign to my story.
At length, splashed with the mud and snow of the road, we passed the Loiret, and saw before us the Faubourg St. Marceau, and beyond, on the opposite bank of the Loire, the confused mass of pointed gables and sloping roofs, square towers and slender campaniles, that showed where Orleans lay. Before us, on the left, rose high the Abbey Church of Notre Dame de Recouvrance; higher still, though looking smaller because of the distance, stood the tall spire and the twin towers of Ste. Croix; whilst overhead a mass of gray and white clouds hung in the lazy air, and cast their quivering shadows on the City of the Maid.
Our pulses quickened as we trotted through the Rue Dauphine to the Quai des Augustins, and Marcilly, as he passed the Tudette, pointed to the spire of Notre Dame, standing out high to view, and said:
“An omen of success! Our Lady of the Recouvrance looks at us,” and he crossed himself, for he was of the Popish faith. And I wondered in my heart how man could turn to this saint and to that, to relic and graven image, when the very Godhead Himself seemed to hold His face from the creatures He has made.
As we approached the Augustins, we could seethat the city was garrisoned as if expecting a siege. Everywhere there were guards of soldiery, for the most part foreigners, and it was noticeable that four out of five of the armed groups bore the arms and wore the colors of the Guise.
“They seem Guisards to a man, Jean,” I remarked.
“Yes,” he answered, “and if we do not succeed we shall have the eagle on our crown pieces.”
“There are two strings to our bow, however—Ponthieu has got off safely with his letter.”
“True! But will Anne de Montmorenci move? He has, it is said, a thousand lances at his back; but the Guise can lay down three for every one of his.”
“Then you put little faith in the Admiral’s letter?”
“Yes. If the Constable could have moved he would have done so before. He is not strong enough, and it is well known that the first Christian baron plays well for his own hand. He will wait, and join the winning side—mark my words!”
As he said this we reached the quay, and while Badehorn hailed a barge, Marcilly put on his mask, and cocked his hat fiercely on one side of his head, saying, with a laugh: “They know the Prince too well in Orleans for me to appear openly here.”
“But masked in full day!” I expostulated.
“I have a rash on my face,” he answered; “it will vanish when we see Cipierre, to whom wemust go at once. We should be with him in less than an hour. He lives in the Place du Martroi.”
“And here is the barge,” I said, and, entering it, we were taken slowly across the river.
“There is a large crowd there.” I pointed to the opposite bank, where, on the Quai du Châtelet, a good half of the population of Orleans seemed to have assembled, all making in a westerly direction, and swaying backward and forward, like a wind-stirred field, while every now and again, above the murmuring voices that hummed like a thousand hives, a hoarse shout would be raised that was taken up all along the line, to die again as suddenly as it had sprung up.
“It is an expiation,” said our boatman, “a Huguenot who refused to bow to Our Lady of Mercy, in the Rue des Tanneurs, and he is to make expiation there on the quay.”
“On the quay? That is strange!” I said. “Why not before Ste. Croix, or in the Martroi?”
“Monsieur is evidently a stranger,” replied our Charon; “they do not expiate at Ste. Croix, and the Martroi is kept now for the Prince. ’Tis said he dies on the 10th.”
From out the blackness of his mask Marcilly glanced at me, and our eyes met for an instant as he asked:
“And is that known? We, who come from the south, heard that he would not die.”
“All the world knows it,” replied our man; “the barricades, and galleries for the spectatorsare even now ready in the Martroi, as you will see—but we talk of dangerous things, messieurs, and we have reached the quay. Ah! Thanks! This will buy a brave petticoat for my little Lardille.”