The Historical Nights' Entertainment, Rafael Sabatini [freenovel24 .txt] 📗

sheriff a pathetic

document wherein she protests her innocence of all offence against

the King, and forgives her enemies specifically - the judge, who

prejudiced her case, and forgot that “the Court should be counsel

for the prisoner,” and Colonel Penruddock, “though he told me he

could have taken those men before they came to my house.”

 

Between those lines you may read the true reason why the Lady Alice

Lisle died. She died to slake the cruelly vindictive thirst of

King James II on the one hand, and Colonel Penruddock on the other,

against her husband who had been dead for twenty years.

 

V. THE NIGHT OF MASSACRE

 

THE STORY OF THE SAINT BARTHOLOMEW

 

There are elements of mystery about the massacre of Saint Bartholomew

over which, presumably, historians will continue to dispute as long

as histories are written. Indeed, it is largely of their disputes

that the mystery is begotten. Broadly speaking, these historians

may be divided into two schools - Catholic and anti-Catholic. The

former have made it their business to show that the massacre was

purely a political affair, having no concern with religion; the

latter have been equally at pains to prove it purely an act of

religious persecution having no concern with politics. Those who

adopt the latter point of view insist that the affair was long

premeditated, that it had its source in something concerted some

seven years earlier between Catherine of Medicis and the sinister

Duke of Alva. And they would seem to suggest that Henry of Navarre,

the nominal head of the Protestant party, was brought to Paris to

wed Marguerite de Valois merely so that by this means the Protestant

nobles of the kingdom, coming to the capital for the wedding, should

be lured to their destruction.

 

It does not lie within the purview of the present narrative to enter

into a consideration of the arguments of the two schools, nor will

it be attempted.

 

But it may briefly be stated that the truth lies probably in a

middle course of reasoning - that the massacre was political in

conception and religious in execution; or, in other words, that

statecraft deliberately made use of fanaticism as of a tool; that

the massacre was brought about by a sudden determination begotten

of opportunity which is but another word for Chance.

 

Against the theory of premeditation the following cardinal facts

may be urged:

 

(a) The impossibility of guarding for seven years a secret that

several must have shared;

 

(b) The fact that neither Charles IX nor his mother Catherine were

in any sense bigoted Catholics, or even of a normal religious

sincerity.

 

(c) The lack of concerted action - so far as the kingdom generally

was concerned - in the execution of the massacre.

 

A subsidiary disproof lies in the attempted assassination of Coligny

two days before the massacre, an act which might, by putting the

Huguenots on their guard, have caused the miscarriage of the entire

plan - had it existed.

 

It must be borne in mind that for years France had been divided by

religious differences into two camps, and that civil war between

Catholic and Huguenot had ravaged and distracted the country. At

the head of the Protestant party stood that fine soldier Gaspard

de Chatillon, Admiral de Coligny, virtually the Protestant King of

France, a man who raised armies, maintaining them by taxes levied

upon Protestant subjects, and treated with Charles IX as prince

with prince. At the head of the Catholic party - the other

imperium in imperio - stood the Duke of Guise. The third and

weakest party in the State, serving, as it seemed, little purpose

beyond that of holding the scales between the other turbulent two,

was the party of the King.

 

The motives and events that precipitated the massacre are set forth

in the narration of the King’s brother, the Duke of Anjou

(afterwards Henri III). It was made by him to Miron, his physician

and confidential servant in Cracow, when he ruled there later as

King of Poland, under circumstances which place it beyond suspicion

of being intended to serve ulterior aims. For partial corroboration,

and for other details of the massacre itself, we have the narratives,

among others, of Sully, who was then a young man in the train of the

King of Navarre, and of Lusignan, a gentleman of the Admiral’s

household. We shall closely follow these in our reconstruction of

the event and its immediate causes.

 

The gay chatter of the gallants and ladies thronging the long

gallery of the Louvre sank and murmured into silence, and a movement

was made to yield a free passage to the King, who had suddenly made

his appearance leaning affectionately upon the shoulder of the

Admiral de Coligny.

 

The Duke of Anjou, a slender, graceful young man in a

gold-embroidered suit of violet, forgot the interest he was taking

in his beautiful hands to bend lower over the handsome Madame de

Nemours what time the unfriendly eyes of both were turned upon the

Admiral.

 

The King and the great Huguenot leader came slowly down the gallery,

an oddly contrasting pair. Coligny would have been the taller by

a half-head but for his stoop, yet in spite of it there was energy

and military vigour in his carriage, just as there was a severe

dignity amounting to haughtiness in his scarred and wrinkled

countenance. A bullet that had pierced his cheek and broken three

of his teeth at the battle of Moncontour had left a livid scar that

lost itself in his long white beard. His forehead was high and

bald, and his eyes were of a steely keenness under their tufted

brows. He was dressed with Calvinistic simplicity entirely in

black, and just as this contrasted with the King’s suit of

sulphur-coloured satin, so did the gravity of his countenance

contrast with the stupidity of his sovereign’s.

 

Charles IX, a slimly built young man in his twenty-fourth year, was

of a pallid, muddy complexion, with great, shifty, greenish eyes,

and a thick, pendulous nose. The protruding upper lip of his long,

thin mouth gave him an oafish expression, which was increased by

his habit of carrying his head craned forward.

 

His nature was precisely what you would have expected from his

appearance - dull and gross. He was chiefly distinguished among

men of birth for general obscenity of speech and morphological

inventiveness in blasphemy.

 

At the end of the gallery Coligny stooped to kiss the royal hand in

leavetaking. With his other hand Charles patted the Admiral’s

shoulder.

 

“Count me your friend,” he said, “body and soul, heart and bowels,

even as I count you mine. Fare you well, my father.”

 

Coligny departed, and the King retraced his steps, walking quickly,

his head hunched between his shoulders, his baleful eyes looking

neither to left nor right. As he passed out, the Duke of Anjou

quitted the side of Madame de Nemours, and went after him. Then

at last the suspended chatter of the courtiers broke loose again.

 

The King was pacing his cabinet - a simple room furnished with a

medley of objects appertaining to study, to devotion, and to hunting.

A large picture of the Virgin hung from a wall flanked on either

side by an arquebus, and carrying a hunting-horn on one of its upper

corners. A little alabaster holy-water font near the door, crowned

by a sprig of palm, seemed to serve as a receptacle for hawkbells

and straps. There was a writing-table of beautifully carved walnut

near the leaded window, littered with books and papers - a treatise

on hunting lay cheek by jowl with a Book of Hours; a string of

rosary beads and a dog-whip lay across an open copy of Ronsard’s

verses. The King was quite the vilest poetaster of his day.

 

Charles looked over his shoulder as his brother entered. The scowl

on his face deepened when he saw who came, and with a grunt he

viciously kicked the liver-coloured hound that lay stretched at

his feet. The hound fled yelping to a corner, the Duke checked,

startled, in his advance.

 

“Well?” growled the King. “Well? Am I never to have peace? Am I

never to be alone? What now? Bowels of God! What do you want?”

 

His green eyes smouldered, his right hand opened and closed on the

gold hilt of the dagger at his girdle:

 

Scared by the maniac ferocity of this reception, the young Duke

precipitately withdrew.

 

“It is nothing. Another time, since I disturb you now.” He bowed

and vanished, followed by an evil, cackling laugh.

 

Anjou knew how little his brother loved him, and he confesses how

much he feared him in that moment. But under his fear it is obvious

that there was lively resentment. He went straight in quest of his

mother, whose darling he was, to bear her the tale of the King’s

mood, and what he accounted, no doubt rightly, the cause of it.

 

“It is the work of that pestilential Huguenot admiral,” he

announced, at the end of a long tirade, “It is always thus with him

after he has seen Coligny.”

 

Catherine of Medicis considered. She was a fat, comfortable woman,

with a thick nose, pinched lips, and sleepy eyes.

 

“Charles,” she said at length, in her monotonous, emotionless voice,

“is a weathercock that turns with every wind that blows upon him.

You should know him by now.” And she yawned, so that one who did

not know her and her habit of perpetually yawning might have

supposed that she was but indifferently interested.

 

They were alone together in the intimate little tapestried room she

called her oratory. She half sat, half reclined upon a couch of

rose brocade. Anjou stood over by the window, his back to it, so

that his pale face was in shadow. He considered his beautiful hands,

which he was reluctant to lower, lest the blood should flow into

them and mar their white perfection.

 

“The Admiral’s influence over him is increasing,” he complained,

“and he uses it to lessen our own.”

 

“Do I not know it?” came her dull voice.

 

“It is time to end it,” said Anjou passionately, “before he ends us.

Your influence grows weaker every day and the Admiral’s stronger.

Charles begins to take sides with him against us. We shall have

him a tool of the Huguenot party before all is done. Ah, mon Dieu!

You should have seen him leaning upon the shoulder of that old

parpaillot, calling him ‘my father,’ and protesting himself his

devoted friend ‘body and soul, heart and bowels,’ in his own words.

And when I seek him afterwards, he scowls and snarls at me, and

fingers his dagger as if he would have it in my throat. It is

plain to see upon what subject the old scoundrel entertained him.”

And again he repeated, more fiercely than before: “It is time to

end it!”

 

“I know,” she said, ever emotionless before so much emotion. “And

it shall be ended. The old assassin should have been hanged years

ago for guiding the hand that shot Francois de Guise. Daily he

becomes a greater danger, to Charles, to ourselves, and to France.

He is embroiling us with Spain through this Huguenot army he is

raising to go and fight the battles of Calvinism in Flanders. A

fine thing that. Ah, per Dio!” For a moment her voice was a

little warmed and quickened. “Catholic France at war with Catholic

Spain for the sake of Huguenot Flanders!” She laughed shortly.

Then her voice reverted to its habitual sleepy level. “You are

right. It is time to end it. Coligny is the head of this

rebellious beast. If we cut off the head, perhaps the