Читать книгу The Greatest Historical Novels - Рафаэль Сабатини - Страница 51

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The afternoon of the following day saw André-Louis at Schönbornlust, drawn thither by Aline as by a magnet. But this time, when he presented himself, the gentleman usher who had passed him into the presence on the two former occasions affected not to know him. He inquired his name and sought it in a list he held of those who had the entrée. He announced that it was not there. Could he serve Monsieur Moreau? Whom particularly did Monsieur Moreau seek? There was a sly insolence in his manner that stung André-Louis. He perceived in it that, like half these courtiers, the fellow had the soul of a lackey. But he dissembled his vexation, pretended not to observe the nudges, glances, and smiles of those others who, like himself now, must not aspire beyond the antechamber, and who were enjoying the rebuff of one who had so confidently gone forward.

He desired, he announced after a moment's thought, a word with Madame de Plougastel. The gentleman usher beckoned a page, a pert lad in white satin, and despatched him to bear the name of Monsieur Moreau—Moreau, was it not?—to Madame la Comtesse de Plougastel. The page looked at Monsieur Moreau as if he were a tradesman who had come to collect a bill, and vanished beyond the sacred portal which was guarded by two officers in gold-laced scarlet coats, white waistcoats, and blue breeches.

André-Louis took a turn in that spacious antechamber among the members of the lesser nobility and the subaltern officers who peopled it. They made up an oddly assorted crowd. Most of the officers glittered in uniforms, the purchase of which had rendered them bankrupt. The others and their womenfolk were in garments which showed every stage of wear, from some that were modishly cut and still bore the bloom of freshness, to others which, rubbed and soiled and threadbare, were at the last point of shabbiness. But those who wore them had in common with the rest at least the same assumptions of haughtiness, the same air of quiet, well-bred insolence, the same trick of looking down their aristocratic noses. All the airs and graces of the Œil de Bœuf were to be found here.

André-Louis suffered with indifference the cool stares and the levelling of quizzing-glasses to scan his unpowdered hair, his plain long riding-coat, and the knee-boots from which yesterday's mud had been laboriously removed. But he was not required to endure it long. Madame de Plougastel did not keep him waiting, and by her friendly, wistful smile of welcome this great lady shattered the scorn with which those lesser folk had presumed to regard her visitor.

'My good André!' She set a fine hand upon his arm. 'You bring me news of Quentin?'

'He is better today, Madame. He shows signs, too, of a recovery of spirit. I came, madame ... Oh, to be frank, I came with the hope to see Aline.'

'And me, André?' There was gentle reproach in the tone.

'Madame!' he said on a low note of protest.

She understood and sighed. 'Ah, yes, my dear. And they would not let you pass. You are out of favour. Monsieur d'Artois was not pleased with your politics, and Monsieur does not regard you with too friendly an eye. But soon this will cease to matter, and you will be safely back at Gavrillac. Perhaps in the years to come I shall see you there sometime ...' She broke off. Her eyes dwelt upon his lean, keen, resolute face, and they were sadly tender. 'Wait here. I'll bring Aline to you.'

When Aline came, a ripple of fresh interest almost of mild excitement ran through the antechamber. There were whisperings, and from one woman, whose whisper was not hushed enough, André-Louis caught the words: '... the Kercadiou ... and Madame de Balbi will need to look to herself ... She will require all her wit to make up for her fading beauty ... Not that she was ever beautiful ...'

The allusion to Mademoiselle de Kercadiou was obscure. But André-Louis was moved to inward anger by a suspicion that already the scandalmongers of the court were preying upon her name.

She stood before him radiant in her gown of coral taffetas with rich point de Venise about its décolletage. She was a little out of breath. She had but a moment, she declared. She had slipped away for just a word with him. She was in attendance upon Madame, and must not neglect her duties. Kindly she deplored in him the indiscretion which had procured his exclusion from the presence. But he could depend upon her to do her best to make his peace for him with the Princes.

He received the proposal coldly.

'I would not have you in any man's debt on my account, Aline.'

She laughed at him. 'Faith, sir, you must learn to curb this lordly independence. I have already spoken to Monsieur, though not yet with much result. The moment is not propitious. It is of ...' She broke off. 'But no. I must not tell you that.'

If his lips smiled the crooked, half-mocking smile she knew so well, his eyes were grave. 'So that now you are to have secrets from me.'

'Why, no. What does it matter, after all? Their Highnesses are more mistrustful than usual because there is an emissary from the Assembly secretly in Coblentz at present.'

André-Louis's face betrayed nothing. 'Secretly?' said he. 'A secret of Polichinelle, it seems.'

'Hardly that, and, anyway, the emissary believes that no one knows save the Elector with whom he had come to treat.'

'And the Elector has betrayed him?'

Aline appeared to be very well informed. 'The Elector is in a dilemma. He confided in Monsieur d'Entragues. Monsieur d'Entragues, of course, has told the Prince.'

'I don't perceive the need for mystery. Who is the man? Do you know?'

'I believe he is a person of some consequence in the Assembly.'

'Naturally, if he comes as an ambassador to the Elector.' With assumed idleness he asked: 'They intend him no harm, I suppose? Messieurs the émigrés, I mean.'

'You do not imagine that they will allow him to depart again. Only Monsieur de Batz is so squeamish as to advocate that. He has reasons of his own.'

'Do they know, then, where to find this man?'

'Of course. He has been tracked.'

André-Louis continued with his air of half-interest. 'But what can they do? After all, he is an ambassador. Therefore his person is sacred.'

'To the Elector, André. But not to messieurs the émigrés.'

'We are in the Electorate, are we not? What can the émigrés do here?'

Aline's sweet face was solemn. 'They will deal with him, I suppose, as his kind deals with ours.'

'By way of showing that there is no fundamental difference between the two.' He laughed to dissemble the depth of his interest and concern. 'Well, well! It's a piece of wanton stupidity for which they may pay bitterly, and it's a gross breach of the Elector's hospitality, since it may bring down grave consequences upon him. Do you say, Aline, that the Princes are in this murder business? Or is it just the intention of some reckless hotheads?'

She became alarmed. Although he kept his voice low, an undertone of vehemence, of indignation quivered in it.

'I have talked too freely, André. You have led me on. Forget what I have said.'

He dismissed the matter with a careless shrug. 'What difference if I remember?'

He was to display that difference the moment she had left him to return to her duties. He quitted the palace on the instant, and rode back into the town at the gallop. Leaving his horse at the stable of the Three Crowns, from which he had hired it, he made his way at speed through the thickening dusk to the little street behind the Liebfraukirche, praying that already he might not come too late.

He had assurance almost as soon as he had entered the street that he was in time, but no more than in time; already the assassins were at their post. At his appearance three shadows melted into the archway of a porte-cochère almost opposite Le Chapelier's lodging.

He reached the door, and knocked with the butt of his riding-whip. This whip was his only weapon, and he blamed himself now for having neglected to arm himself.

The door was opened by the same broad woman whom yesterday he had seen.

'Monsieur ... The gentleman who is lodged with you? Is he within?'

She scanned him by the light of the lamp in the passage behind her.

'I don't know. But if he is, he will receive no visitors.'

'Tell him,' said André-Louis, 'that it is the friend who walked home with him last evening. You know me again, don't you?'

'Wait there.' She closed the door in his face.

Presently, whilst waiting, André-Louis dropped his whip. He stooped to recover it, and was some time about it. This because he was looking between his legs at the porte-cochère behind him. The three heads were there in view, peering out, to watch him.

At last he was admitted. In the front room above-stairs, Le Chapelier, neat of apparel as a petit-maître, a gold-rimmed spy-glass dangling from a ribbon round his neck, smiled a welcome.

'You've come to tell me that you have changed your mind; that you will return with me.'

'A bad guess, Isaac. I've come to tell you that there is more than a doubt about your own return.'

The tired eyes flamed into alertness, the fine arched brows were raised in surprise. 'What's that? The émigrés, do you mean?'

'Messieurs the émigrés. Three of their assassins—at least three—are at this moment lying in wait for you in the street.'

Le Chapelier lost colour. 'But how do they know? Have you...?'

'No. I haven't. If I had, I should not now be here. Your visit has placed the Elector in a delicate position. Clemens Wenceslaus has a nice sense of hospitality. He found himself between the wall of that and the sword of your demand. In his perplexity he sent for Monsieur d'Entragues and told him of it in confidence. In confidence, Monsieur d'Entragues passed on the information to the Princes. In confidence the Princes appear to have told the whole court, and in confidence a member of it told me an hour ago. Has it ever occurred to you, Isaac, that but for confidential communications one would never get at any of the facts of history?'

'And you have come to warn me?'

'Isn't that what you gather?'

'This is very friendly, André.' Le Chapelier was gravely emphatic. 'But why should you suppose that they intend to murder me?'

'Isn't it what you would suppose, yourself?'

Le Chapelier sat down in the only armchair that plainly furnished room afforded. He drew a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped the sweat which had gathered in cold beads upon his brow.

'You are taking some risk,' he said. 'It is noble, but, in the circumstances, foolish.'

'Most noble things are foolish.'

'If they are posted there as you say ...' Le Chapelier shrugged. 'Your warning comes too late. But I thank you for it none the less, my friend.'

'Nonsense. Is there no back way out of this?'

A wan smile crossed the face of the deputy, which showed pale in the candle-light.

'If there were, they would be guarding it.'

'Very well, then. I'll seek the Elector. He shall send his guards to clear a way for you.'

'The Elector has gone to Oberkirch. Before you could reach him and return, it would be daylight. Do you imagine that those murderers will wait all night? When they perceive that I am not coming forth again, they'll knock. The woman will open, and ...' He shrugged, and left the sentence there. Then in hot, distressed anger he broke out: 'It's an infamy! I am an ambassador, and my person is sacred. But these vindictive devils care nothing for that. In their eyes I am vermin to be exterminated, and they'll exterminate me without a thought for the vengeance they will bring down upon their host the Elector.' He got to his feet again, raging. 'My God! What a vengeance that will be! This foolish archbishop shall realize the rashness of having harboured such guests.'

'That won't slake the thirst you'll have in hell,' said André-Louis. 'And, anyway, you're not dead yet.'

'Why, no. Merely under sentence.'

'Come, man. To be warned is already something. It's the unsuspecting who walks foolishly into the trap. If, now, we were to make a sally, both together, the odds are none so heavy. Two against three. We might bring you off.'

Hope dawned in Le Chapelier's face. Doubt followed. 'Do you know that there are but three? Can you be sure?'

André-Louis sighed. 'Ah! That, I confess, is my own misgiving.'

'Depend upon it, there will be more at hand. Go your ways, my friend, while you may still depart. I'll await them here with my pistols. They will not know that I am warned. I may get one of them before they get me.'

'A poor consolation.' André-Louis stood in thought. Then: 'Yes, I might go my way,' he said. 'They've seen me enter. They will hardly hinder my departure, lest by so doing they should alarm you.' His eyes grew bright with inspiration. Abruptly he asked a question. 'If you were out of this house, what should you do?'

'Do? I should make for the frontier. My travelling chaise is at the Red Hat.' Despondently he added: 'But what's that to the matter?'

'Are your papers in order? Could you pass the guard at the bridge?'

'Oh, yes. My passport is countersigned by the Electoral Chancellor.'

'Why, then, it's easy, I think.'

'Easy?'

'We're much of a height and shape. You will take this riding-coat, these white breeches and these boots. With my hat on your head and my whip tucked under your arm, the woman of the house will light Monsieur André-Louis Moreau to the door. On the doorstep you will pause turning your back upon that gateway across the street; so that whilst your figure is clear in the light, your face will not be seen. You will say to the woman something like this: "You had better tell the gentleman upstairs that if I do not return within an hour, he need not wait for me." Then you plunge abruptly from the light into the gloom and make off, a hand in each pocket, a pistol in each hand for emergencies.'

The colour was stirring again in the deputy's pale cheeks. 'But you?'

'I?' André-Louis shrugged. 'They will let you go because they will suppose that you are not Isaac Le Chapelier. They will let me go because they will see that I am not Isaac Le Chapelier.'

The deputy wrung his hands nervously. He was white again. 'You tempt me damnably.'

André-Louis began to unbutton his coat. 'Off with your clothes.'

'But the risk to you is more than you represent it.'

'It is negligible, and merely a risk. Your death, if you wait, is a certainty. Come, man. To work!'

The change was effected, and at least the back view presented by Le Chapelier in André-Louis's clothes must in an uncertain light be indistinguishable from that of the man whom those watching eyes had seen enter the house a half-hour ago.

'Now call your woman. Dab your lips with a handkerchief as you emerge. It will help to mask your face until you've turned.'

Le Chapelier gripped both his hands. His myopic eyes were moist. 'I have no words, my friend.'

'Praised be Heaven! Away with you. You have an hour in which to be out of Coblentz.'

A few minutes later, when the door opened, something stirred in the archway across the street. The watching eyes beheld the man in the riding-coat and sugar-loaf hat who had entered a half-hour before. They heard his parting message, loudly spoken, and saw him go striding down the street. They made no move to hinder or to follow.

André-Louis above, peering past the edge of the blind, his ears attentive, was content.

A full hour he waited, and whilst waiting he considered. What if these gentlemen issued no challenge, made no covert attack, but, persuaded that he was Le Chapelier, shot him as he walked down the street? It was a risk he had not counted. Counting it now, he decided that it would be better to receive them here in the light, where, face to face, they would perceive their error.

Another hour he waited, now sitting, now pacing the length of the narrow chamber, in a state of nervousness induced by the suspense, conjecture chasing conjecture through his mind. Then, at long last, towards ten o'clock, a rattle of approaching steps on the kidney stones of the street below, a mutter of voices directly under the window, announced that the enemy was moving to the assault.

Considering what the odds would be, André-Louis wished that he had pistols. But Le Chapelier had taken the only pair. He fingered the cut-steel hilt of the light delicate sword which Le Chapelier had left him, but he did not draw it. A loud knock fell on the door, and was twice repeated.

He heard the shuffling steps of the woman, the click of the lifted latch, her voice raised in challenge, deeper voices answering her, then her voice again, in an outcry of alarm, and at last a rush of heavy feet along the passage and upon the stairs.

When the door was flung rudely open, the three men who thrust into the room beheld an apparently calm young gentleman standing beyond the barrier of the table, with brows interrogatively raised, considering them with a glance no more startled than the intrusion warranted.

'What's this?' he asked. 'Who are you? What do you want here?'

'We want you, sir,' said the foremost, under whose half-open cloak André-Louis perceived the green-and-silver of the guards of Monsieur d'Artois. He was tall and authoritative, in air and voice a gentleman. The other two wore the blue coats with yellow facings and fleur-de-lys buttons of the Auvergne Regiment.

'You are to come with us if you please,' said green-and-silver.

So! It was not proposed to butcher him on the spot. They were to lead him forth. Down to the river, perhaps. Blow his brains out and thrust his body into the stream. Thus the Deputy Le Chapelier would simply disappear.

'Come with you?' André-Louis echoed the words like a man who has not understood them.

'At once, if you please. You are wanted at the Electoral Palace.'

Deeper showed the surprise on André-Louis's face. 'At the Electoral Palace? Odd! However, I come, of course.' He turned aside to take up hat and cloak. 'Faith, you are only just in time. I was about to depart, tired of waiting for Monsieur Le Chapelier.' In the act of flinging the cloak about his shoulders, he added: 'I suppose that it was he who sent you?'

The question stirred them sharply. The three of them were craning their necks to scrutinize him.

'Who the devil are you?' demanded one of the Auvergnats.

'If it comes to that, who the devil are you?'

'I've told you, sir,' said green-and-silver, 'that we are ...'

He was interrupted by an oath from one of his companions. 'This is not our man.'

The colour deepened in green-and-silver's face. He advanced a step. 'Where is Le Chapelier?'

'Where is he?' André-Louis looked blank. 'Where is he?' he repeated. 'Then he hasn't sent you?'

'I tell you we are seeking him.'

'But if you come from the Electoral Palace, then? It is very odd.' André-Louis assumed an air of mistrust. 'Le Chapelier left me two hours ago to go there. He was to have returned in an hour. If you want him, you had better wait here for him. I can wait no longer.'

'Two hours ago!' the Auvergnat was saying. 'Then it was the man who ...'

Green-and-silver cut sharply across the question which must betray the watch they had kept. 'How long have you been here?'

'Three hours at least.'

'Ah!' Green-and-silver was concluding that the man in the riding-coat whom they had supposed a visitor must have been the Deputy himself. It was bewildering. 'Who are you?' he asked aggressively. 'What was your business with the Deputy?'

'Faith! I don't know what concern that may be of yours. But there's no secret. I had no business with him. He's an old friend met here by chance, that's all. As to who I am, I am named André-Louis Moreau.'

'What? You are Kercadiou's bastard?'

The next moment green-and-silver received André-Louis's hand full and hard upon his cheek. There was a twisted smile on André-Louis's white face.

'Tomorrow,' said he coldly, 'there will be one liar the less in the world. Tonight if honour spurs you fiercely.'

The officer, white in his turn, his lip in his teeth, bowed formally. The other two stood at gaze, startled. The entire scene and their respective rôles in it had abruptly changed.

'Tomorrow will serve,' said the officer, and added: 'My name is Tourzel, Clement de Tourzel.'

'Your friends will know where to find me. I am lodged at the Three Crowns with my godfather—my godfather, gentlemen, be good enough to remember—Monsieur de Kercadiou.'

His glance for a moment challenged the two Auvergnats. Then, finding the challenge unanswered, he flung one wing of the cloak over his left shoulder and stalked past them, out of the room, down the stairs, and so out of the house.

The officers made no attempt to detain him. The Auvergnats stared gloomily at green-and-silver.

'Here's a nice blunder,' said one of them.

'You fool, Tourzel!' cried the other. 'You're a dead man.'

'Peste!' swore Tourzel. 'The words slipped out of me before I knew what I was saying.'

'And it must be a lie, anyway,' said the first. 'Does anyone suppose that Kercadiou would allow his bastard to marry his niece?'

Tourzel shrugged and attempted a laugh of bravado. 'We'll leave tomorrow till it dawn. Meanwhile we have this rat of a patriot to settle tonight. It will be better, after all, to await him in the street.'

Meanwhile André-Louis was walking briskly back to the Three Crowns.

'You are late, André,' his godfather greeted him. Then, as André-Louis loosened his cloak, and the Lord of Gavrillac perceived his black satin breeches and buckled shoes, 'Parbleu! You're neat,' he said.

'In all my undertakings,' answered André-Louis.