The White Plumes of Navarre Part 31

The Chief Surintendant Teruel was a grim Aragonese, a peasant brought up hardly, the humanity ground out of him by long years of noviciate, till now he knew no pity, no kindness, no faltering, while he carried out the will of G.o.d as interpreted to him by his hierarchical superiors.

Little Frey Tullio, on the contrary, was a Neapolitan, who had been sent over from Rome on purpose to familiarise himself with the best Spanish methods. For nowhere did the Holy Office thrive so congenially and root itself so deeply as in Catholic Spain. Frey Tullio did his work conscientiously, but without the stern joy of his Aragonese superior, and certainly wholly without the supple, subtle wit and smiling finesse of Mariana, the famous "outcast" of the Company of the Gesu.

"A man is waiting below," said a black-robed acolyte, who had handled certain confession-producing ropes and cords that day, and was now also resting from his labours. The prisoners who had been saved for the next _auto de fe_ (except those who, being delicate, had succ.u.mbed to the Lesser and Greater Question) rested equally from theirs--in the cellars below, the blood stiffening in their unwashed wounds, and their rack-tormented bones setting into place a little so as to be ready for ten of the clock on the morrow.

"A man waiting below?" repeated the Chief Inquisitor; "what does he want?"

"To see the Fathers of the Holy Office," said the servitor, wondering if he had sufficiently wiped the wine from his mouth ere he came in--the Surintendant was regarding him so sternly.

"He looks like a shepherd of the hills," said the acolyte; "indeed, I have seen him before--at Collioure. He is a servant, so he says, of Don Raphael Llorient!"

"Ah," said Mariana quickly, "then I think I can guess his message. I have already spoken of it with Don Raphael."

"Bid three stout familiars of the Office stand unseen behind the curtain there, weapons in hand," commanded Surintendant Teruel; "then show the man up!"

Jean-aux-Choux entered, long-haired, wild-eyed, his cloak of rough frieze falling low about his ankles, and his hand upon the dagger-hilt which had once been red with the blood of the Guise.

The three looked silently at him, with that chill, pitiless gaze which made no difference between a man asked to speak his message and him who, by one word out of his own mouth, must deliver himself to torture and to death.

"Stand!" commanded the Chief Inquisitor, "speak your message briefly, and if all be well, you are at liberty to return as you came!"

The threat was hardly veiled, but Jean-aux-Choux stood undaunted.

"Death is my familiar friend," he said; "I am not afraid. G.o.d, who hath oft delivered me from the tooth of the lion and the claw of the bear, can deliver me also from this Philistine."

The two judges of men's souls looked at each other. This was perilously like fanaticism. They knew well how to deal with that. But Mariana only laughed and tapped his forehead covertly with his forefinger.

"He is harmless, but mad, this fellow," he murmured; "I have often spoken with him while I abode at the house of Don Raphael of Collioure.

He hath had in his youth some smattering of letters, but now what little lear he had trots all skimble-skamble in his head. Yet, failing our young Dominican of Sens--well, we might go farther and fare worse."

Then he turned to Jean-aux-Choux.

"Your message, shepherd?" he said. "Fear nothing. We shall not harm you."

"Had I supposed so, you would not have found me here--out of the mouth of the lion, and out of----"

"That will do," said Mariana, cutting him short; "whence come you?"

"From the camp of two kings, a great and a little, a true and a false, the lion and the dog----"

"Speak plainly--we have little time to waste!"

"Plainly then, I have seen the meeting of Henry of Valois and Henry of Navarre! They fell each on the other's neck and kissed!"

The two inquisitors rose to their feet. For the first time emotion showed on their faces. The chief, tall, black, sombre, stood and threatened Jean-aux-Choux with comminatory forefinger.

"If you speak lies, beware!"

The little Italian, formerly so grey and still, nothing stirring about him save the restless, beady eyes common to all Neapolitans, stood up and vociferated.

"It is an open defiance of our Holy Father," he cried, "a shame of shames--the Valois shall be accursed! He has delivered his realm to the Huguenot. He shall be burnt alive, and I--I would refuse him the _viatic.u.m_!"

"He may not have time even for that!" said Mariana softly--"that is, when his day comes. But haste you, man, tell us what befel--where, and how."

"On Sunday last," began Jean-aux-Choux, looking his three inquisitors in the face with the utmost calm, "I was, as Father Mariana knows, in a certain place upon the affairs of my master.

"It was in a park near a great city of many towers. A river ran near by and a bridge spanned it. At the bridge-head were three great n.o.bles--dukes and peers of France, so they said. Many people were in the park and about the palace which stood within it. There seemed no fear.

The place was open to all. About a chapel door they cried 'G.o.d save the King!' For within a man, splendidly arrayed, was hearing ma.s.s--I saw him enter."

The inquisitors looked at one another, nodding expressively.

"But I cared not for that. I was at the bridge-head, and almost at my elbow the three n.o.bles conferred one with the other, doubtful if he for whom they waited would come.

"'I should not, if I were he,' said one of them; 'my father did the like, and died! Only he had a written promise.'"

"That was Chatillon, Coligny's son, I warrant," said Mariana, who seemed to know everything.

"And another said, 'He has my word--he will believe that, though he doubts that of the King!'"

"Epernon, for a wager!" cried the Jesuit, clapping his hands; "there spoke the man! And the third, what said he?"

"Oh, he--no great matter," answered Jean-aux-Choux, gently stroking his brow, as if to recall a matter long past. "Ah, I do remember--he only caused great swelling words to come from his mouth, and rattled his sword in his scabbard, declaring that if there was any treachery he would thrust the traitor through and through with 'Monsieur la Chose'

(so he named his sword), which he declared to be the peer and overlord of any king in Christendie!"

"That would be the Marshal d'Aumont," said Mariana, after a pause.

"Well, and so these three waited there, on the bridge, did they?"

"Ay, I warrant. I was at their elbow, as I say," quoth Jean-aux-Choux, "on the bridge called the 'Pont de la Motte.' And presently there came in sight a cloud of dust, and out of the cloud galloping horses, with one that rode in front. And there were spear-heads that glinted, and musket-barrels, and swords with dinted scabbards. And the armour of these men was all tashed, and their helms like to a piece of lead that one has smitten with a hammer long and long."

"Battered armour is the worn breviary of the soldier!" commented Mariana. "Had these hors.e.m.e.n white scarves belting them?"

"Each man of them!" Jean-aux-Choux answered. "But even he that rode at the head had his armour (so much of it as he wore) in a like state; but whereas all the others rode with plain steel helms, there was a white plume in his. Those who stood near called it his panache, and said it was miracle-working. Also he wore a cloak, like that of a night-sentinel, but underneath, his doublet and hose were of olive-green velvet. He was of a hearty countenance, robust of body, and rode gallantly, with his head thrown back, laughing at little things by the way--as when a court page-boy, all in cloth of gold, fell off the tree on which he had climbed to see the show, and had to be pulled out of the river, dripping and weeping, with a countryman's rake all tangled in the hinder breadths of his raiment."

"The Bearnais! To a hair!" cried the Jesuit. "Ah, what a man! What a man--if only he were on the side of Holy Church----"

"He is a heretic of heretics," said the Surintendant Temel, "and deserves only the flames and the yellow robe!"

"It is a pity," said Mariana, with a certain contempt for such intolerance of idea; "you would have found him an equally good man in your father's wheat-field, and I, at the King's council. One day he will give our Philip t.i.t-for-tat--that is, if he live so long!"

"Which G.o.d forbid!" said the inquisitor.

"Amen!" a.s.sented Frey Tullio.

"Well," smiled Mariana, "there is no pleasing you. For me, there are many sorts of gallant men, but with you, a man must either swallow all the Council of Trent, or be food for flames."

The inquisitors were silent. Discussion was not their business. They worked honestly from ten in the morning till five in the afternoon.

Therefore, they deserved their rest, and if Mariana persisted in talking they would not get it. Still, they were eager to hear what the servant of Raphael Llorient had to say.