The House of the Wolf: A Romance, Stanley John Weyman [interesting books to read txt] 📗

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THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF A Romance
by STANLEY WEYMAN


CONTENTS. CHAP.   I.—   WARE WOLF! II.—   THE VIDAME'S THREAT. III.—   THE ROAD TO PARIS. IV.—   ENTRAPPED! V.—   A PRIEST AND A WOMAN. VI.—   MADAME'S FRIGHT. VII.—   A YOUNG KNIGHT ERRANT. VIII.—   THE PARISIAN MATINS. IX.—   THE HEAD OF ERASMUS. X.—   HAU, HAU, HUGUENOTS! XI.—   A NIGHT OF SORROW. XII.—   JOY IN THE MORNING.


INTRODUCTION.

The following is a modern English version of a curious French memoir, or fragment of autobiography, apparently written about the year 1620 by Anne, Vicomte de Caylus, and brought to this country—if, in fact, the original ever existed in England—by one of his descendants after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. This Anne, we learn from other sources, was a principal figure at the Court of Henry IV., and, therefore, in August, 1572, when the adventures here related took place, he and his two younger brothers, Marie and Croisette, who shared with him the honour and the danger, must have been little more than boys. From the tone of his narrative, it appears that, in reviving old recollections, the veteran renewed his youth also, and though his story throws no fresh light upon the history of the time, it seems to possess some human interest.

THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF.

CHAPTER I. WARE WOLF!

I had afterwards such good reason to look back upon and remember the events of that afternoon, that Catherine's voice seems to ring in my brain even now. I can shut my eyes and see again, after all these years, what I saw then—just the blue summer sky, and one grey angle of the keep, from which a fleecy cloud was trailing like the smoke from a chimney. I could see no more because I was lying on my back, my head resting on my hands. Marie and Croisette, my brothers, were lying by me in exactly the same posture, and a few yards away on the terrace, Catherine was sitting on a stool Gil had brought out for her. It was the second Thursday in August, and hot. Even the jackdaws were silent. I had almost fallen asleep, watching my cloud grow longer and longer, and thinner and thinner, when Croisette, who cared for heat no more than a lizard, spoke up sharply, "Mademoiselle," he said, "why are you watching the Cahors road?"

I had not noticed that she was doing so. But something in the keenness of Croisette's tone, taken perhaps with the fact that Catherine did not at once answer him, aroused me; and I turned to her. And lo! she was blushing in the most heavenly way, and her eyes were full of tears, and she looked at us adorably. And we all three sat up on our elbows, like three puppy dogs, and looked at her. And there was a long silence. And then she said quite simply to us, "Boys, I am going to be married to M. de Pavannes."

I fell flat on my back and spread out my arms. "Oh, Mademoiselle!" I cried reproachfully.

"Oh, Mademoiselle!" cried Marie. And he fell flat on his back, and spread out his arms and moaned. He was a good brother, was Marie, and obedient.

And Croisette cried, "Oh, mademoiselle!" too. But he was always ridiculous in his ways. He fell flat on his back, and flopped his arms and squealed like a pig.

Yet he was sharp. It was he who first remembered our duty, and went to Catherine, cap in hand, where she sat half angry and half confused, and said with a fine redness in his cheeks, "Mademoiselle de Caylus, our cousin, we give you joy, and wish you long life; and are your servants, and the good friends and aiders of M. de Pavannes in all quarrels, as—"

But I could not stand that. "Not so fast, St. Croix de Caylus" I said, pushing him aside—he was ever getting before me in those days—and taking his place. Then with my best bow I began, "Mademoiselle, we give you joy and long life, and are your servants and the good friends and aiders of M. de Pavannes in all quarrels, as—as—"

"As becomes the cadets of your house," suggested Croisette, softly.

"As becomes the cadets of your house," I repeated. And then Catherine stood up and made me a low bow and we all kissed her hand in turn, beginning with me and ending with Croisette, as was becoming. Afterwards Catherine threw her handkerchief over her face—she was crying—and we three sat down, Turkish fashion, just where we were, and said "Oh, Kit!" very softly.

But presently Croisette had something to add. "What will the Wolf say?" he whispered to me.

"Ah! To be sure!" I exclaimed aloud. I had been thinking of myself before; but this opened quite another window. "What will the Vidame say, Kit?"

She dropped her kerchief from her face, and turned so pale that I was sorry I had spoken—apart from the kick Croisette gave me. "Is M. de Bezers at his house?" she asked anxiously.

"Yes," Croisette answered. "He came in last night from St. Antonin, with very small attendance."

The news seemed to set her fears at rest instead of augmenting them as I should have expected. I suppose they were rather for Louis de Pavannes, than for herself. Not unnaturally, too, for even the Wolf could scarcely have found it in his heart to hurt our cousin. Her slight willowy figure, her pale oval face and gentle brown eyes, her pleasant voice, her kindness, seemed to us boys and in those days, to sum up all that was womanly. We could not remember, not even Croisette the youngest of us—who was seventeen, a year junior to Marie and myself—we were twins—the time when we had not been in love with her.

But let me explain how we four, whose united ages scarce exceeded seventy years, came to be lounging on the terrace in the holiday stillness of that afternoon. It was the summer of 1572. The great peace, it will be remembered, between the Catholics and the Huguenots had not long been declared; the peace which in a day or two was to be solemnized, and, as most Frenchmen hoped, to be cemented by the marriage of Henry of Navarre with Margaret of Valois, the King's sister. The Vicomte de Caylus, Catherine's father and our guardian, was one of the governors appointed to see the peace enforced; the respect in which he was held by both parties—he was a Catholic, but no bigot, God rest his soul!—recommending him for this employment. He had therefore gone a week or two before to Bayonne, his province. Most of our neighbours in Quercy were likewise from home, having gone to Paris to be witnesses on one side or the other of the royal wedding. And consequently we young people, not greatly checked by the presence of good-natured, sleepy Madame Claude, Catherine's duenna, were disposed to make the most of our liberty; and to celebrate the peace in our own fashion.

We were country-folk. Not one of us had been to Pau, much less to Paris. The Vicomte held stricter views than were common then, upon young people's education; and though we had learned to ride and shoot, to use our swords and toss a hawk, and to read and write, we knew little more than Catherine herself of the world; little more of the pleasures and sins of court life, and not one-tenth as much as she did of its graces. Still she had taught us to dance and make a bow. Her presence had softened our manners; and of late we had gained something from the frank companionship of Louis de Pavannes, a Huguenot whom the Vicomte had taken prisoner at Moncontour and held to ransom. We were not, I think, mere clownish yokels.

But we were shy. We disliked and shunned strangers. And when old Gil appeared suddenly, while we were still chewing the melancholy cud of Kit's announcement, and cried sepulchrally, "M. le Vidame de Bezers to pay his respects to Mademoiselle!"—Well, there was something like a panic, I confess!

We scrambled to our feet, muttering, "The Wolf!" The entrance at Caylus is by a ramp rising from the gateway to the level of the terrace. This sunken way is fenced by low walls so that one may not—when walking on the terrace—fall into it. Gil had spoken before his head had well risen to view, and this gave us a moment, just a moment. Croisette made a rush for the doorway into the house; but failed to gain it, and drew himself up behind a buttress of the tower, his finger on his lip. I am slow sometimes, and Marie waited for me, so that we had barely got to our legs—looking, I dare say, awkward and ungainly enough—before the Vidame's shadow fell darkly on the ground at Catherine's feet.

"Mademoiselle!" he said, advancing to her through the sunshine, and bending over her slender hand with a magnificent grace that was born of his size and manner combined, "I rode in late last night from Toulouse; and I go to-morrow to Paris. I have but rested and washed off the stains of travel that I may lay my—ah!"

He seemed to see us for the first time and negligently broke off in his compliment; raising himself and saluting us. "Ah," he continued indolently, "two of the maidens of Caylus, I see. With an odd pair of hands apiece, unless I am mistaken, Why do you not set them spinning, Mademoiselle?" and he regarded us with that smile which—with other things as evil—had made him famous.

Croisette pulled horrible faces behind his back. We looked hotly at him; but could find nothing to say.

"You grow red!" he went on, pleasantly—the wretch!—playing with us as a cat does with mice. "It offends your dignity, perhaps, that I bid Mademoiselle set you spinning? I now would spin at Mademoiselle's bidding, and think it happiness!"

"We are not girls!" I blurted out, with the flush and tremor of a boy's passion. "You had not called my godfather, Anne de Montmorenci a girl, M. le Vidame!" For though we counted it a joke among ourselves that we all bore girls' names, we were young enough to be sensitive about it.

He shrugged his shoulders. And how he dwarfed us all as he stood there dominating our terrace! "M. de Montmorenci was a man," he said scornfully. "M. Anne de Caylus is—"

And the villain deliberately turned his great back upon us, taking his seat on the low wall near Catherine's chair. It was clear even to our vanity that he did not think us worth another word—that we had passed absolutely from his mind. Madame Claude came waddling out at the same moment, Gil carrying a chair behind her. And we—well we slunk away and sat on the other side of the terrace, whence we could still glower at the offender.

Yet who were we to glower at him? To this day I shake at the thought of him. It was not so much his height and bulk, though he was so big that the clipped pointed fashion of his beard a fashion then new at court—seemed on him incongruous and effeminate; nor so much the sinister glance of his grey eyes—he had a slight cast in them; nor the grim suavity of his manner, and the harsh threatening voice that permitted of no disguise. It was the sum of these things, the great brutal presence of the man—that was overpowering—that made the great falter and the poor crouch. And then his reputation! Though we knew little of the world's wickedness, all we did know had come to us linked with his name. We had heard of him as a duellist, as a bully, an employer of bravos. At Jarnac he had been the last to turn from the shambles. Men called him cruel and vengeful even for those days—gone by now, thank God!—and whispered his name