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

when they spoke of assassinations; saying commonly of him that he would not blench before a Guise, nor blush before the Virgin.

Such was our visitor and neighbour, Raoul de Mar, Vidame de Bezers. As he sat on the terrace, now eyeing us askance, and now paying Catherine a compliment, I likened him to a great cat before which a butterfly has all unwittingly flirted her prettiness. Poor Catherine! No doubt she had her own reasons for uneasiness; more reasons I fancy than I then guessed. For she seemed to have lost her voice. She stammered and made but poor replies; and Madame Claude being deaf and stupid, and we boys too timid after the rebuff we had experienced to fill the gap, the conversation languished. The Vidame was not for his part the man to put himself out on a hot day.

It was after one of these pauses—not the first but the longest—that I started on finding his eyes fixed on mine. More, I shivered. It is hard to describe, but there was a look in the Vidame's eyes at that moment which I had never seen before. A look of pain almost: of dumb savage alarm at any rate. From me they passed slowly to Marie and mutely interrogated him. Then the Vidame's glance travelled back to Catherine, and settled on her.

Only a moment before she had been but too conscious of his presence. Now, as it chanced by bad luck, or in the course of Providence, something had drawn her attention elsewhere. She was unconscious of his regard. Her own eyes were fixed in a far-away gaze. Her colour was high, her lips were parted, her bosom heaved gently.

The shadow deepened on the Vidame's face. Slowly he took his eyes from hers, and looked northwards also.

Caylus Castle stands on a rock in the middle of the narrow valley of that name. The town clusters about the ledges of the rock so closely that when I was a boy I could fling a stone clear of the houses. The hills are scarcely five hundred yards distant on either side, rising in tamer colours from the green fields about the brook. It is possible from the terrace to see the whole valley, and the road which passes through it lengthwise. Catherine's eyes were on the northern extremity of the defile, where the highway from Cahors descends from the uplands. She had been sitting with her face turned that way all the afternoon.

I looked that way too. A solitary horseman was descending the steep track from the hills.

"Mademoiselle!" cried the Vidame suddenly. We all looked up. His tone was such that the colour fled from Kit's face. There was something in his voice she had never heard in any voice before—something that to a woman was like a blow. "Mademoiselle," he snarled, "is expecting news from Cahors, from her lover. I have the honour to congratulate M. de Pavannes on his conquest."

Ah! he had guessed it! As the words fell on the sleepy silence, an insult in themselves, I sprang to my feet, amazed and angry, yet astounded by his quickness of sight and wit. He must have recognized the Pavannes badge at that distance. "M. le Vidame," I said indignantly—Catherine was white and voiceless—"M. le Vidame—" but there I stopped and faltered stammering. For behind him I could see Croisette; and Croisette gave me no sign of encouragement or support.

So we stood face to face for a moment; the boy and the man of the world, the stripling and the ROUE. Then the Vidame bowed to me in quite a new fashion. "M. Anne de Caylus desires to answer for M. de Pavannes?" he asked smoothly; with a mocking smoothness.

I understood what he meant. But something prompted me—Croisette said afterwards that it was a happy thought, though now I know the crisis to have been less serious than he fancied to answer, "Nay, not for M. de Pavannes. Rather for my cousin." And I bowed. "I have the honour on her behalf to acknowledge your congratulations, M. le Vidame. It pleases her that our nearest neighbour should also be the first outside the family to wish her well. You have divined truly in supposing that she will shortly be united to M. de Pavannes."

I suppose—for I saw the giant's colour change and his lip quiver as I spoke—that his previous words had been only a guess. For a moment the devil seemed to be glaring through his eyes; and he looked at Marie and me as a wild animal at its keepers. Yet he maintained his cynical politeness in part. "Mademoiselle desires my congratulations?" he said, slowly, labouring with each word it seemed. "She shall have them on the happy day. She shall certainly have them then. But these are troublous times. And Mademoiselle's betrothed is I think a Huguenot, and has gone to Paris. Paris—well, the air of Paris is not good for Huguenots, I am told."

I saw Catherine shiver; indeed she was on the point of fainting, I broke in rudely, my passion getting the better of my fears. "M. de Pavannes can take care of himself, believe me," I said brusquely.

"Perhaps so," Bezers answered, his voice like the grating of steel on steel. "But at any rate this will be a memorable day for Mademoiselle. The day on which she receives her first congratulations—she will remember it as long as she lives! Oh, yes, I will answer for that, M. Anne," he said looking brightly at one and another of us, his eyes more oblique than ever, "Mademoiselle will remember it, I am sure!"

It would be impossible to describe the devilish glance he flung at the poor sinking girl as he withdrew, the horrid emphasis he threw into those last words, the covert deadly threat they conveyed to the dullest ears. That he went then, was small mercy. He had done all the evil he could do at present. If his desire had been to leave fear behind him, he had certainly succeeded.

Kit crying softly went into the house; her innocent coquetry more than sufficiently punished already. And we three looked at one another with blank faces, It was clear that we had made a dangerous enemy, and an enemy at our own gates. As the Vidame had said, these were troublous times when things were done to men—ay, and to women and children—which we scarce dare to speak of now. "I wish the Vicomte were here," Croisette said uneasily after we had discussed several unpleasant contingencies.

"Or even Malines the steward," I suggested.

"He would not be much good," replied Croisette.

"And he is at St. Antonin, and will not be back this week. Father Pierre too is at Albi."

"You do not think," said Marie, "that he will attack us?"

"Certainly not!" Croisette retorted with contempt. "Even the Vidame would not dare to do that in time of peace. Besides, he has not half a score of men here," continued the lad, shrewdly, "and counting old Gil and ourselves we have as many. And Pavannes always said that three men could hold the gate at the bottom of the ramp against a score. Oh, he will not try that!"

"Certainly not!" I agreed. And so we crushed Marie. "But for Louis de Pavannes—"

Catherine interrupted me. She came out quickly looking a different person; her face flushed with anger, her tears dried.

"Anne!" she cried, imperiously, "what is the matter down below—will you see?"

I had no difficulty in doing that. All the sounds of town life came up to us on the terrace. Lounging there we could hear the chaffering over the wheat measures in the cloisters of the market-square, the yell of a dog, the voice of a scold, the church bell, the watchman's cry. I had only to step to the wall to overlook it all. On this summer afternoon the town had been for the most part very quiet. If we had not been engaged in our own affairs we should have taken the alarm before, remarking in the silence the first beginnings of what was now a very respectable tumult. It swelled louder even as we stepped to the wall.

We could see—a bend in the street laying it open—part of the Vidame's house; the gloomy square hold which had come to him from his mother. His own chateau of Bezers lay far away in Franche Comte, but of late he had shown a preference—Catherine could best account for it, perhaps—for this mean house in Caylus. It was the only house in the town which did not belong to us. It was known as the House of the Wolf, and was a grim stone building surrounding a courtyard. Rows of wolves' heads carved in stone flanked the windows, whence their bare fangs grinned day and night at the church porch opposite.

The noise drew our eyes in this direction; and there lolling in a window over the door, looking out on the street with a laughing eye, was Bezers himself. The cause of his merriment—we had not far to look for it—was a horseman who was riding up the street under difficulties. He was reining in his steed—no easy task on that steep greasy pavement—so as to present some front to a score or so of ragged knaves who were following close at his heels, hooting and throwing mud and pebbles at him. The man had drawn his sword, and his oaths came up to us, mingled with shrill cries of "VIVE LA MESSE!" and half drowned by the clattering of the horse's hoofs. We saw a stone strike him in the face, and draw blood, and heard him swear louder than before.

"Oh!" cried Catherine, clasping her hands with a sudden shriek of indignation, "my letter! They will get my letter!"

"Death!" exclaimed Croisette, "She is right! It is M. de Pavannes' courier! This must be stopped! We cannot stand this, Anne!"

"They shall pay dearly for it, by our Lady!" I cried swearing myself. "And in peace time too—the villains! Gil! Francis!" I shouted, "where are you?"

And I looked round for my fowling piece, while Croisette jumped on the wall, and forming a trumpet with his hands, shrieked at the top of his voice, "Back! he bears a letter from the Vicomte!"

But the device did not succeed, and I could not find my gun. For a moment we were helpless, and before I could have fetched the gun from the house, the horseman and the hooting rabble at his heels, had turned a corner and were hidden by the roofs.

Another turn however would bring them out in front of the gateway, and seeing this we hurried down the ramp to meet them. I stayed a moment to tell Gil to collect the servants, and, this keeping me, Croisette reached the narrow street outside before me. As I followed him I was nearly knocked down by the rider, whose face was covered with, dirt and blood, while fright had rendered his horse unmanageable. Darting aside I let him pass—he was blinded and could not see me—and then found that Croisette—brave lad! had collared the foremost of the ruffians, and was beating him with his sheathed sword, while the rest of the rabble stood back, ashamed, yet sullen, and with anger in their eyes. A dangerous crew, I thought; not townsmen, most of them.

"Down with the Huguenots!" cried one, as I appeared, one bolder than the rest.

"Down with the CANAILLE!" I retorted, sternly eyeing the ill-looking ring. "Will you set yourselves above the king's peace, dirt that you are? Go back to your kennels!"

The words were scarcely out of my mouth, before I saw that the fellow whom Croisette was punishing had got hold of a dagger. I shouted a warning, but it came too late. The blade fell, and—thanks to God—striking the buckle of the lad's belt, glanced off harmless. I saw the steel flash up again—saw the spite in the man's eyes: but this time I was a step nearer, and before the weapon fell, I passed my sword clean through the wretch's body. He went down like a log, Croisette falling with him, held fast by his stiffening fingers.

I had never killed a man before, nor seen a man die; and if I had stayed to think about it,