To be paid--how? how? That was the crux which perplexed, which frightened, which harassed her. For, if she told her suspicions, she exposed her lover to capture by one who had no longer a reason to be merciful. And if she sought occasion to see Tignonville and so to dissuade him, she did it at deadly risk to herself. Yet what other course lay open to her if she would not stand by? If she would not play the traitor? If she--
"Madame,"--it was her husband, and he spoke to her suddenly,--"are you not well?" And, looking up guiltily, she found his eyes fixed curiously on hers.
Her face turned red and white and red again, and she faltered something and looked from him, but only to meet Madame St. Lo's eyes. My lady laughed softly in sheer mischief.
"What is it?" Count Hannibal asked sharply.
But Madame St. Lo's answer was a line of Ronsard.
CHAPTER XX. ON THE CASTLE HILL.
Thrice she hummed it, bland and smiling. Then from the neighbouring group came an interruption. The wine he had drunk had put it into Bigot's head to snatch a kiss from Suzanne; and Suzanne's modesty, which was very nice in company, obliged her to squeal. The uproar which ensued, the men backing the man and the women the woman, brought Tavannes to his feet. He did not speak, but a glance from his eyes was enough. There was not one who failed to see that something was amiss with him, and a sudden silence fell on the party.
He turned to the Countess. "You wished to see the castle?" he said. "You had better go now, but not alone." He cast his eyes over the company, and summoned La Tribe, who was seated with the Carlats. "Go with Madame," he said curtly. "She has a mind to climb the hill. Bear in mind, we start at three, and do not venture out of hearing."
"I understand, M. le Comte," the minister answered. He spoke quietly, but there was a strange light in his face as he turned to go with her.
None the less he was silent until Madame's lagging feet--for all her interest in the expedition was gone--had borne her a hundred paces from the company. Then--
"Who knoweth our thoughts and forerunneth all our desires," he murmured. And when she turned to him, astonished, "Madame," he continued, "I have prayed, ah, how I have prayed, for this opportunity of speaking to you! And it has come. I would it had come this morning, but it has come. Do not start or look round; many eyes are on us, and, alas! I have that to say to you which it will move you to hear, and that to ask of you which it must task your courage to perform."
She began to tremble, and stood looking up the green slope to the broken grey wall which crowned its summit.
"What is it?" she whispered, commanding herself with an effort. "What is it? If it have aught to do with M. Tignonville--"
"It has not!"
In her surprise--for although she had put the question she had felt no doubt of the answer--she started and turned to him.
"It has not?" she exclaimed almost incredulously.
"No."
"Then what is it, Monsieur?" she replied, a little haughtily. "What can there be that should move me so?"
"Life or death, Madame," he answered solemnly. "Nay, more; for since Providence has given me this chance of speaking to you, a thing of which I despaired, I know that the burden is laid on us, and that it is guilt or it is innocence, according as we refuse the burden or bear it."
"What is it, then?" she cried impatiently. "What is it?"
"I tried to speak to you this morning."
"Was it you, then, whom Madame St. Lo saw stalking me before dinner?
"It was."
She clasped her hands and heaved a sigh of relief. "Thank God, Monsieur!" she replied. "You have lifted a weight from me. I fear nothing in comparison of that. Nothing!"
"Alas!" he answered sombrely, "there is much to fear, for others if not for ourselves! Do you know what that is which M. de Tavannes bears always in his belt? What it is he carries with such care? What it was he handed to you to keep while he bathed to-day?"
"Letters from the King."
"Yes, but the import of those letters?"
"No."
"And yet, should they be written in letters of blood!" the minister exclaimed, his face kindling. "They should scorch the hands that hold them and blister the eyes that read them. They are the fire and the sword! They are the King's order to do at Angers as they have done in Paris. To slay all of the religion who are found there--and they are many! To spare none, to have mercy neither on the old man nor the unborn child! See yonder hawk!" he continued, pointing with a shaking hand to a falcon which hung light and graceful above the valley, the movement of its wings invisible. "How it disports itself in the face of the sun! How easy its way, how smooth its flight! But see, it drops upon its prey in the rushes beside the brook, and the end of its beauty is slaughter! So is it with yonder company!" His finger sank until it indicated the little camp seated toy-like in the green meadow four hundred feet below them, with every man and horse, and the very camp-kettle, clear-cut and visible, though diminished by distance to fairy-like proportions. "So it is with yonder company!" he repeated sternly. "They play and are merry, and one fishes and another sleeps! But at the end of the journey is death. Death for their victims, and for them the judgment!"
She stood, as he spoke, in the ruined gateway, a walled grass-plot behind her, and at her feet the stream, the smiling valley, the alders, and the little camp. The sky was cloudless, the scene drowsy with the stillness of an August afternoon. But his words went home so truly that the sunlit landscape before the eyes added one more horror to the picture he called up before the mind.
The Countess turned white and sick. "Are you sure?" she whispered at last.
"Quite sure."
"Ah, God!" she cried, "are we never to have peace?" And turning from the valley, she walked some distance into the grass court, and stood. After a time, she turned to him; he had followed her doggedly, pace for pace. "What do you want me to do?" she cried, despair in her voice. "What can I do?"
"Were the letters he bears destroyed--"
"The letters?"
"Yes, were the letters destroyed," La Tribe answered relentlessly, "he could do nothing! Nothing! Without that authority the magistrates of Angers would not move. He could do nothing. And men and women and children--men and women and children whose blood will otherwise cry for vengeance, perhaps for vengeance on us who might have saved them--will live! Will live!" he repeated, with a softening eye. And with an all- embracing gesture he seemed to call to witness the open heavens, the sunshine and the summer breeze which wrapped them round. "Will live!"
She drew a deep breath. "And you have brought me here," she said, "to ask me to do this?"
"I was sent here to ask you to do this."
"Why me? Why me?" she wailed, and she held out her open hands to him, her face wan and colourless. "You come to me, a woman! Why to me?"
"You are his wife!"
"And he is my husband!"
"Therefore he trusts you," was the unyielding, the pitiless answer. "You, and you alone, have the opportunity of doing this."
She gazed at him in astonishment. "And it is you who say that?" she faltered, after a pause. "You who made us one, who now bid me betray him, whom I have sworn to love? To ruin him whom I have sworn to honour?"
"I do!" he answered solemnly. "On my head be the guilt, and on yours the merit."
"Nay,