Badelon shook his head. The Countess covered her face and wept.
CHAPTER x.x.xIV. WHICH WILL YOU, MADAME?
It was in the grey dawning of the next day, at the hour before the sun rose, that word of M. de Tignonville"s fate came to them in the castle.
The fog which had masked the van and coming of night hung thick on its retreating skirts, and only reluctantly and little by little gave up to sight and daylight a certain thing which night had left at the end of the causeway. The first man to see it was Carlat, from the roof of the gateway; and he rubbed eyes weary with watching, and peered anew at it through the mist, fancying himself back in the Place Ste.-Croix at Angers, supposing for a wild moment the journey a dream, and the return a nightmare. But rub as he might, and stare as he might, the ugly outlines of the thing he had seen persisted--nay, grew sharper as the haze began to lift from the grey, slow-heaving floor of sea. He called another man and bade him look.
"What is it?" he said. "D"you see, there? Below the village?"
""Tis a gibbet," the man answered, with a foolish laugh; they had watched all night. "G.o.d keep us from it."
"A gibbet?"
"Ay!"
"But what is it for? What is it doing there?"
"It is there to hang those they have taken, very like," the man answered, stupidly practical. And then other men came up, and stared at it and growled in their beards. Presently there were eight or ten on the roof of the gateway looking towards the land and discussing the thing; and by- and-by a man was descried approaching along the causeway with a white flag in his hand.
At that Carlat bade one fetch the minister. "He understands things," he muttered, "and I mis...o...b.. this. And see," he cried after the messenger, "that no word of it come to Mademoiselle!" Instinctively in the maiden home he reverted to the maiden t.i.tle.
The messenger went, and came again bringing La Tribe, whose head rose above the staircase at the moment the envoy below came to a halt before the gate. Carlat signed to the minister to come forward; and La Tribe, after sniffing the salt air, and glancing at the long, low, misty sh.o.r.e and the stiff ugly shape which stood at the end of the causeway, looked down and met the envoy"s eyes. For a moment no one spoke. Only the men who had remained on the gateway, and had watched the stranger"s coming, breathed hard.
At last, "I bear a message," the man announced loudly and clearly, "for the lady of Vrillac. Is she present?"
"Give your message!" La Tribe replied.
"It is for her ears only."
"Do you want to enter?"
"No!" The man answered so hurriedly that more than one smiled. He had the bearing of a lay clerk of some precinct, a verger or sacristan; and after a fashion the dress of one also, for he was in dusty black and wore no sword, though he was girded with a belt. "No!" he repeated, "but if Madame will come to the gate, and speak to me--"
"Madame has other fish to fry," Carlat blurted out. "Do you think that she has naught to do but listen to messages from a gang of bandits?"
"If she does not listen she will repent it all her life!" the fellow answered hardily. "That is part of my message."
There was a pause while La Tribe considered the matter. In the end, "From whom do you come?" he asked.
"From His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor of Saumur," the envoy answered glibly, "and from my Lord Bishop of Angers, him a.s.sisting by his Vicar; and from others gathered lawfully, who will as lawfully depart if their terms are accepted. Also from M. de Tignonville, a gentleman, I am told, of these parts, now in their hands and adjudged to die at sunset this day if the terms I bring be not accepted."
There was a long silence on the gate. The men looked down fixedly; not a feature of one of them moved, for no one was surprised. "Wherefore is he to die?" La Tribe asked at last.
"For good cause shown."
"Wherefore?"
"He is a Huguenot."
The minister nodded. "And the terms?" Carlat muttered.
"Ay, the terms!" La Tribe repeated, nodding afresh. "What are they?"
"They are for Madame"s ear only," the messenger made answer.
"Then they will not reach it!" Carlat broke forth in wrath. "So much for that! And for yourself, see you go quickly before we make a target of you!"
"Very well, I go," the envoy answered sullenly. "But--"
"But what?" La Tribe cried, gripping Carlat"s shoulder to quiet him. "But what? Say what you have to say, man! Speak out, and have done with it!"
"I will say it to her and to no other."
"Then you will not say it!" Carlat cried again. "For you will not see her. So you may go. And the black fever in your vitals."
"Ay, go!" La Tribe added more quietly.
The man turned away with a shrug of the shoulders, and moved off a dozen paces, watched by all on the gate with the same fixed attention. But presently he paused; he returned.
"Very well," he said, looking up with an ill grace. "I will do my office here, if I cannot come to her. But I hold also a letter from M. de Tignonville, and that I can deliver to no other hands than hers!" He held it up as he spoke, a thin sc.r.a.p of greyish paper, the fly-leaf of a missal perhaps. "See!" he continued, "and take notice! If she does not get this, and learns when it is too late that it was offered--"
"The terms," Carlat growled impatiently. "The terms! Come to them!"
"You will have them?" the man answered, nervously pa.s.sing his tongue over his lips. "You will not let me see her, or speak to her privately?"
"No."
"Then hear them. His Excellency is informed that one Hannibal de Tavannes, guilty of the detestable crime of sacrilege and of other gross crimes, has taken refuge here. He requires that the said Hannibal de Tavannes be handed to him for punishment, and, this being done before sunset this evening, he will yield to you free and uninjured the said M.
de Tignonville, and will retire from the lands of Vrillac. But if you refuse"--the man pa.s.sed his eye along the line of attentive faces which fringed the battlement--"he will at sunset hang the said Tignonville on the gallows raised for Tavannes, and will harry the demesne of Vrillac to its farthest border!"
There was a long silence on the gate. Some, their gaze still fixed on him, moved their lips as if they chewed. Others looked aside, met their fellows" eyes in a pregnant glance, and slowly returned to him. But no one spoke. At his back the flush of dawn was flooding the east, and spreading and waxing brighter. The air was growing warm; the sh.o.r.e below, from grey, was turning green.
In a minute or two the sun, whose glowing marge already peeped above the low hills of France, would top the horizon.
The man, getting no answer, shifted his feet uneasily. "Well," he cried, "what answer am I to take?"
Still no one moved.
"I"ve done my part. Will no one give her the letter?" he cried. And he held it up. "Give me my answer, for I am going."
"Take the letter!" The words came from the rear of the group in a voice that startled all. They turned, as though some one had struck them, and saw the Countess standing beside the hood which covered the stairs. They guessed that she had heard all or nearly all; but the glory of the sunrise, shining full on her at that moment, lent a false warmth to her face, and life to eyes woefully and tragically set. It was not easy to say whether she had heard or not. "Take the letter," she repeated.
Carlat looked helplessly over the parapet.
"Go down!"