CHAPTER XVII
HOW MESSIRE DE LANDAS' TREACHERY BORE FRUIT
It is Messire Enguerrand de Manuchet who tells us that on the 3rd day of April of this same year of grace 1581, Messire de Balagny, Maître de Camp to Monsieur Duc d'Anjou succeeded under cover of darkness in entering the city by the Landrecy road on the West, which was still—an you remember—clear of the Spanish investing armies. He came alone, having left his troop at La Fère, a matter of three leagues or so. Toward nine o'clock of the morning he made his way to the hostelry of 'Les Trois Rois,' where we may take it that Gilles de Crohin was mightily glad to see him. Messire de Balagny's advent was for the unfortunate prisoner like a breath of pure air, something coming to him from that outside world from which he had been shut out all these weary weeks; something, too, of the atmosphere of camps and of clean fighting in the open, which for the moment seemed to dissipate the heavy fumes of political intrigues, with its attendant deceits and network of lies, that were so abhorrent to the born soldier.
'I do not envy you your position, my dear friend,' Balagny said dryly, after he had discussed the whole situation with Gilles.
'My God!' responded Gilles with almost ludicrous fervour. 'It has been a positive hell!'
'Although Madame la Reyne de Navarre is very grateful to you for what you have done; she was only saying to me, before I left, that there was nothing she would not do for you in return.'
'Oh!' said Gilles with a careless laugh. 'The gratitude of a Queen...!!'
'This one is above all a woman,' broke in the older man earnestly. 'She is a Queen only by the accident of birth.'
'I know, I know,' Gilles went on, somewhat impatiently. 'But for the nonce Her Majesty has conferred the greatest possible boon upon me by releasing me from my post; and I, being more than satisfied, will ask nothing better of her. But what about His Highness?' he added, after a slight pause.
Balagny shrugged his shoulders.
'He does not mean to play us false?' insisted Gilles.
'Chien sabe?' was the other's enigmatic reply. 'Does one ever know what François, Duc d'Anjou, may or may not do?'
'But Madame la Reyne declares——'
'Madame la Reyne is blind where that favoured brother is concerned. But it is she who, even now, is moving heaven and earth to recruit the armies for the relief of Cambray—not he. As you know, brother Henri, King of France, will not stir a finger to help Monsieur conquer a possible kingdom, and Monsieur himself sits in his Palace in Paris, surrounded by women and young sycophants, idling away his time, wasting his substance, while his devoted sister wears herself out in his service.'
'Don't I know him!' concluded Gilles with a sigh. Then after awhile he added more lightly: 'Well, friend, shall we to the governor? He hath sent me a respectful but distinctly peremptory request this morning to present myself in person at the Archiepiscopal Palace.'
'The worthy Fleming is getting restive,' was de Balagny's dry comment.
'Naturally.'
'He wants to bring matters to a head.'
'To-day, apparently. He hath given me respite after respite. He will not wait any longer. Matters in this city are pretty desperate, my friend. And if Monsieur tarries with his coming much longer...'
De Balagny rose from his chair, and going up to Gilles, he placed a kindly hand on the younger man's shoulder.
'Monsieur will not tarry much longer,' he said earnestly. 'Madame la Reyne will see to that. Go to the governor, my good Gilles, and complete the work you have so ably begun. It was not pleasant work, I'll warrant, and there is little or no glory attached to it; but when you will have lived as many years as I have, you will realize that there is quite a deal of satisfaction to be derived out of inglorious work, if it be conscientiously done. And after to-day,' he added gaily, 'you will be free to garner a whole sheaf of laurels in the service of a grateful Queen and of a dissolute Prince.'
But Gilles was not in the humour to look on the bright side of his future career. He was fingering moodily the letter which Monseigneur the governor had sent him an hour or so ago. It was obviously intended to be the forerunner of the final decision which would throw Jacqueline—beautiful, exquisite Jacqueline of the merry blue eyes and the rippling laugh—into the arms of that same dissolute Prince of whom even de Balagny—his trusted Maître de Camp—spoke with so much bitterness.
'Were I a free agent,' d'Inchy said in his letter, 'I would not dream of asking Your Highness so signal a favour; but while Your Highness chooses to hide Your identity under a mask, and in an humble Abode altogether unworthy of Your rank, I have no option but to beg You most humbly to grace My own house with Your presence, in order that We may arrive at last to an irrevocable decision in the Matter which lies so closely to My heart.
Indeed the die was cast. Even Messire de Manuchet admits that Gilles could not do otherwise than present himself at the Palace in accordance with Monseigneur the governor's desire. De Balagny certainly did everything to cheer and encourage him.
'Will you not come with me?' Gilles asked of him, when he was ready to go. 'I could then present you at once to d'Inchy, and, please God! be myself out of Cambray ere the sun has begun to sink low in the West.'
But Balagny shook his head.
'You had best go alone, this once more,' he said firmly. 'Think of the coming interview as an affair of honour, my dear Gilles, and go to it as you would to a fight, with a bold front and unquaking heart. You will find it quite easy to confront the Fleming then.'
Gilles gripped the old man's hand with gratitude.
'You have put new life into me,' he said, with something of his habitual cheerfulness. 'Another few hours of this miserable business and I shall be free—free as air!' Then he added with a bitter sigh, which the other man did not quite know how to interpret: 'And I shall imagine myself as almost happy!'
After which, he sallied forth into the street with a firm and elastic step.
There are few things in the world quite so mysterious as the origin and birth of a rumour. It springs—who knows whence? and in a trice it grows, hurries from mouth to mouth, gathers crowds together, imposes its presence in every house, at every street corner, on every open space where men and women congregate.
Messire de Balagny had only been inside Cambray a few hours. He had entered the city under cover of darkness and in secrecy, and even before midday the rumour was already current in the town that the King of France was sending an army against the Spaniards, and that his ambassador had arrived in Cambray in order to apprise Monseigneur the governor of the happy event.
It was also openly rumoured that the arrival of this same ambassador of the King of France was not altogether unconnected with the activities of Spanish spies inside the city. The people, who were beginning to suffer grievously from shortage of food and lack of clothing, were murmuring audibly at the continued presence of strangers in their midst, who were more than suspected of aiding the Duke of Parma from within, by provoking riots or giving away the secrets of the garrison and of the stronghold.
Above all, there had been growing ill-will against the masked stranger, the mysterious Prince de Froidmont, whose persistent stay in this beleaguered city had given rise at first to mere gossip, but latterly to more pronounced suspicion, plentifully sprinkled with malevolence. The extraordinary deference which Monseigneur the governor had been observed to show him on more than one occasion fostered the growing suspicion that he was a stranger of great distinction, who for some unavowable reason desired to preserve an incognito, and chose to dwell in an obscure hostelry, in order that he might cany on some nefarious negotiations unchecked.
Crowds are always unreasonable when skilfully handled in the direction of suspicion and unrest by unscrupulous agitators, and we know that de Landas' paid hirelings had been busy for weeks past in fomenting hatred against the masked stranger, amongst a people rendered sullen and irritable both by hunger and by the threat of an invading and always brutal soldiery at their gates.
Certain it is that, the moment that Gilles set foot that day outside his lodgings in the Rue aux Juifs, he was followed not only by glances of ill-will, but also by open insults freely showered after him as he passed. He was wearing the rich clothes which would have been affected by Monsieur on such an occasion; his toil-worn hands were hidden beneath gloves of fine chamois leather and his face was concealed by a black velvet mask. Looking neither to right nor left, absorbed in his own thoughts, he hurried along the street, paying no heed to what went on around him. It was only when he reached the Place Notre Dame, in front of the cathedral, and tried in crossing toward the Archiepiscopal Palace to avoid a group of people who stood in his way, that he began to perceive something of the intense hostility which was dogging his every footstep.
'Look at the Spaniard!' a woman shouted shrilly out of the crowd. 'Wants the place to himself now!'
'Dressed in silks and satins, when worthy folk go half naked!' called out another, with bitter spite ringing in her husky voice.
'How much does the King of Spain pay you, my fine gallant, for delivering the girls of Cambray to his soldiery?' This from a short, square-shouldered man, only half-dressed in a ragged doublet and hose, shoeless and capless, who deliberately stood his ground in front of Gilles, with bare arms akimbo and bandy legs set wide apart, in an attitude of unmistakable insolence.
Gilles, with whom patience was at no time a besetting virtue, uttered an angry exclamation, seized the fellow incontinently by the shoulder and forced him to execute a wild pirouette ere he fell back gasping, after this unexpected attack, against his nearest companions.
This brief incident naturally exasperated the crowd: it acted as a signal for a fresh outburst of rage and a fresh volley of insults, which were hurled at the stranger from every side.
'Miserable Spaniard!' exclaimed one man. 'How dare you lay a hand on a free burgher of the city?'
'If a free burgher of the city chooses deliberately to insult me,' retorted Gilles, who, for obvious reasons, was trying to keep his temper, 'I do what every one of you would have done under like circumstances—knock the impudent fellow down.'
'Impudent fellow!' came from a harsh voice at the rear of the crowd. 'Hark at the noble Spanish Senor! Flemish burghers are like the dust beneath his feet.'
'I am no Spaniard!' said Gilles loudly. 'And whoever calls me one again is a liar. So, come out of there,' he added lightly, 'you who spoke from a safe and convenient distance; and Fleming, French or Spaniard, we'll soon see whose is the harder fist.'
'Fight with a masked spy like you?' was the defiant riposte. 'Not I! The devil, your accomplice, has taught you some tricks, I'll warrant, against which no simple Christian could stand.'
'Well said!' shouted one of the women. 'If you are no Spaniard and no spy, throw down that mask and show your face like an honest man!'
'Yes! Yes! Throw down the mask!' another in the crowd assented. 'We know you dress like a fine gallant; but we want to see how like your face is to the picture of Beelzebub which hangs in the Town Hall.'
A prolonged shout of ribald laughter, which had no merriment in it, was the unanimous response to this sally. The women were already raising their fists: the ever-recurring insult, 'Spanish spy!' had the effect of whipping up everybody's temper against the stranger. Gilles was defenceless save for his sword, which it would obviously have been highly impolitic to draw against that rabble. Whilst he parleyed with them, he had succeeded by a deliberate manoeuvre in drawing considerably nearer to the high wall of the Archiepiscopal Palace, where the latter abuts on the cathedral close, and he hoped with some good luck, or a sudden, well-thought-out ruse, to reach the gates ere the hostility of the crowd turned to open attack.
That both the men and the women—oh! especially the women!—meant mischief, there could be no doubt. There was that gruff murmur going the round, which means threats muttered between closed teeth; sleeves were being rolled above brawny or gaunt arms; palms moistened ere they gripped stick or even knife a little closer. Gilles saw all these signs with the quick, practised eye of the soldier, and it was his turn to grind his teeth with rage at his own impotence to defend himself adequately if it came to blows. Just for the moment the crowd was still sullen rather than openly aggressive, and, much as the thought of beating a retreat went against the grain of Gilles' hot temperament, there was no doubt that it were by far the wisest course to pursue.
But there were one or two units in the midst of that gang who were determined that the flame of enmity against the stranger should not die for want of fuel. They were apparently on the fringe of the malcontents, in a safe position in the rear, and from there they threw out a word now and again, a sneer or an insult, whenever there appeared the slightest slackening in the hostile attitude of their friends.
'He wouldn't like to show us his face,' one of this gentry said now, with a mocking laugh; 'for fear we should see how bloated he is with good food and wine.'
'Spawn of the devil!' at once screeched a gaunt, hungry-looking wretch, and ostentatiously tightened his belt around his middle. 'They all gorge while we starve!'
'And wallow in riches, while honest citizens have to beg for their daily bread!'
A woman, still young, and who might have been comely but for the miserable appearance of her unwashed face and lank, matted hair, pushed her way through the throng right into the forefront of the men. She dragged a couple of half-naked children in her wake, who clung weeping to her ragged skirts.
'Look at these!' she screamed harshly, and thrust a fist as close to Gilles' face as she dared. 'Look at these children! You miserable spy! Starving, I tell you! Starving! While your satin doublet is bursting with Spanish gold!'
'Aye!' came with renewed vigour from the rear. 'The price of our sons' lives, of our daughters' honour, are sacrificed to the tyranny and the debauchery of such as you!'
'Shame! Shame!' came in a dull, ominous murmur from the rest of the throng.
There was no doubt that tempers were waxing more and more ugly. In more than one pair of bloodshot eyes which were glaring at him, Gilles saw the reflection of a lust which was not far removed from that of murder. It was no use looking on the matter with indifference; his life was being threatened, and there were men actually present among the crowd who were making it their business to goad this rabble into ever-increasing fury. The latter were in themselves too obtuse to realize that they were acting under guidance, that their choler would no longer be allowed to cool down nor they permitted to let the stranger go unmolested. Their tempers, their own stupidity, their miseries, poor wretches, had made them the slaves of de Landas' gang.
Gilles had been shrewd enough to suspect the plot almost from the first.
'I marvel,' he had already said to himself, 'if my gallant with the Spanish accent and the languorous eyes has had a finger in this delectable pie. Between employing paid spadassins to commit deliberate murder and egging on a set of hungry wretches into achieving manslaughter, there is little to choose, and Messire de Landas has no doubt adopted the less risky course.'
But for the nonce self-preservation became the dominant necessity, and Gilles, feeling himself so closely pressed that his free movements were becoming hampered, executed a swift manoeuvre of retreat which landed him a second or two later with his back against the high encircling walls of the Archiepiscopal Palace, and with the stately limes of the Palace gardens waving their emerald-laden branches above his head. Were his position not quite so precarious, he might have laughed aloud at its ludicrousness. He, Gilles de Crohin, masquerading as a Prince of Valois, and set upon for being a Spanish spy!! That fellow, de Landas, was a clever rogue! But it was a dirty trick to use these wretched people as his tools!
Aloud, he shouted, as forcibly and vigorously as he could: 'Now then, my friends! Have I not already told you that I am no Spaniard? I am a Frenchman, I tell you, and my Liege Lord the King of France is even at this hour busy trying to free you from your Spanish tyrants. He——'
'Hark at him!' came at once, to the accompaniment of deafening clamour, from the rear. 'Feeding us with lies. 'Tis the way of spies to assume any guise that may suit their fancy or their pocket. Friends! Citizens! Do not let the Spaniard trick you! Why is he here, I ask you? If he is a Frenchman, why doth he go about masked? What is he doing here? Bargaining with the Duke of Parma, I say, with your lives and your liberties.'
'Silence, you fool!' cried Gilles, in stentorian tones. 'You miserable cur! Who pays you, I would like to know, to incite these poor people to break the laws of peace and order?'
'Peace and order, forsooth!' retorted the voice from the rear, with a prolonged, harsh laugh. 'You want peace, no doubt, so that your master the Spanish King can work his way with Cambray, send his soldiers into our city to burn our houses, pillage our homes, outrage our wives and daughters! Citizens, remember Mechlin! Remember Mons! Beware lest this man sell your city to the Spaniards and you reap the same fate as your kinsmen there!'
A stupendous cry of rage and execration greeted this abominable tirade—as abominable, indeed, as it was ludicrous. One moment of sober reflection would have convinced these poor, deluded fools how utterly futile and false were the assertions made by those who were goading them to exasperation. But a crowd never does reflect once it is aroused, once a sufficient number of hotheads are there, ready to drive them from empty bluster to actual violence. The paid agents of M. de Landas had done their work well. They had sown seeds of disaffection, of mistrust and of hostility, for days past and weeks; now they were garnering just the amount of excitement necessary to bring about a dastardly crime.
Gilles, with his back against the wall, was beginning to think that he would have to make a fight for it after all. Already the crowd was closing in around him, pressing closer and closer, completing the semicircle which barred his only means of escape. He tried to make himself heard, but he was shouted down. The work of the agitators was indeed complete; the rabble needed no more egging on. Men and women were ready for any mischief—to seize the stranger, tear off the rich clothes from his back, ransack his pockets, knock him on the head and finally drag him through the streets and throw him either into the river or over the battlements into the moat.
It became a question now how dearly Gilles would be able to sell his life. He could no longer hope to reach the gates of the Palace, and the vast courtyard, gardens and precincts which surrounded the house itself rendered it highly improbable that any one would hear the tumult and come to his assistance. Over the heads of the crowd, he could see the great, open Place where a patrol of the town guard was wont to pass from time to time on its beat. For some unexplainable reason there appeared to be no patrol in sight to-day. Had they been bribed to keep out of the way? It was at least possible. Some one had evidently planned the whole of this agitation, and that some one—an unscrupulous devil, thought Messire, if ever there was one!—was not like to have left the town guard out of his reckoning.
Even while Gilles took this rapid, mental survey of his position, one of the men in the rear had suddenly stooped and picked up a loose stone out of the gutter. Gilles saw the act, saw the man lift the stone, brandish it for a moment above his head and then fling it with all his might. He saw it just in time to dodge the stone, which struck the wall just above his head.
'Not a bad fling, my man,' he said lightly. 'But 'twas the act of a coward!'
Then he drew his sword—was forced to do it, because the crowd were pressing him close, some with sticks, others with fists. The square-shouldered man of awhile ago—he with the bandy legs—had a butcher's knife in his hand.
'Murder!' shrieked the women, as soon as Gilles' sword darted out of its sheath like a tongue of living flame.
'Aye, murder!' he riposted. 'I can see it in your eyes! So stand back, all of you, or the foremost among you who dares to advance is a dead man.'
They did not advance. With a churl's natural terror of the sword, they retreated, realizing for the first time that it was a noble lord, an exalted personage whom, in their blindness, they had dared to attack. Spaniard or no, he was a gentleman; and suddenly the thought of floggings or worse for such an outrage dissipated the fumes of folly, which some unknown person's rhetoric had raised inside their brains.
De Landas' agents in the rear saw this perceptible retreat. Another moment or two, and their carefully laid schemes would certainly come to naught. Failure for them now was unthinkable. The eyes of their employer were undoubtedly upon them, even though they could not see him, and they knew from past bitter experience how relentless the young Spanish lord could be if his will was thwarted through the incompetence of his servants. One of them—I think his name was Jan—bolder than the others, called to his comrades and to those on the fringe of the crowd who had not been scared by the sight of that fine Toledo blade, gave them the lead, which they promptly followed, of picking up more stones out of the gutter and flinging them at the stranger one after another in rapid succession. Some of this stone-throwing was very wild, and Gilles was able to dodge most of the missiles, whilst others actually hit some of the crowd. A woman received one on the shoulder; the bandy-legged bully another on the head. Blood now was flowing freely, and the sight of blood acts on a turbulent crowd in the same way as it does on a goaded bull. No longer frightened of the sword, the riotous crew began to attack the stranger more savagely. One man struck at him with a stick, another tried to edge nearer in order to use a knife.
Stones were being flung now from every point, and soon it became impossible to dodge them all. The crowd had become a screeching mob, bent on outrage and on murder. The screams of women, the cries of little children, mingled with hoarse cries of rage and volleys of unspeakable insults. The sight of blood had of a truth turned a knot of malcontents into a pack of brute beasts, fuming with an insatiable desire to kill.
As fast as the stones fell around him, Gilles picked them up and flung them back. These seldom missed their mark, and already several of his assailants had been forced to retreat from the field. But now a piece of granite hit him on the sword-arm and he had barely the time to transfer his sword to his left hand in order to ward off a thrust aimed at him with a knife, just below the belt. His right arm hung limp by his side, aching furiously; a small piece of sharp stone had grazed his forehead, and with an unconsidered gesture, he tore the mask from his face, for the blood was streaming beneath it into his eyes. But that movement—wellnigh instantaneous as it was—placed him at a greater disadvantage still, for another stone, more accurately aimed than some others, hit his left arm so violently that, but for an instinctive, nervy clutch on the hilt, his sword would have fallen from his grasp.
After that, he remembered nothing more. A red veil appeared to interpose itself between his eyes and that mass of vehement, raging, perspiring humanity before him. Each individual before him seemed to the weary fighter to assume greater and ever greater proportions, until he felt himself confronted with a throng of giants with distorted faces and huge, ugly jaws, through which a hot fire came, searing his face and obscuring his vision. Instinctively he still dodged the missiles, still parried with his sword; but his movements were mechanical; he felt that they were becoming inefficient ... that he himself was exhausted ... vanquished. Vaguely he marvelled at Destiny's strange caprice, which had decreed that he should die, assassinated by a set of shrieking men and women, whom he had never wronged even by a thought.
Then suddenly the whole wall behind him appeared to give way, and he sank backwards into oblivion.