Chapter 3 St. Martin's Summer by Rafael Sabatini
THE DOWAGER’S COMPLIANCE
Promptly at noon on the morrow Monsieur de Garnache presented himself once more at the Seneschal’s palace, and with him went Rabecque, his body-servant, a lean, swarthy, sharp-faced man, a trifle younger than his master.
Anselme, the obese master of the household, received them with profound respect, and at once conducted Garnache to Monsieur de Tressan’s presence.
On the stairs they met Captain d’Aubran, who was descending. The captain was not in the best of humours. For four-and-twenty hours he had kept two hundred of his men under arms, ready to march as soon as he should receive his orders from the Lord Seneschal, yet those instructions were not forthcoming. He had been to seek them again that morning, only to be again put off.
Monsieur de Garnache had considerable doubt, born of his yesterday’s interview with the Seneschal, that Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye would be delivered into his charge as he had stipulated. His relief was, therefore, considerable, upon being ushered into Tressan’s presence, to find a lady in cloak and hat, dressed as for a journey, seated in a chair by the great fireplace.
Tressan advanced to meet him, a smile of cordial welcome on his lips, and they bowed to each other in formal greeting.
“You see, monsieur,” said the Seneschal, waving a plump hand in the direction of the lady, “that you have been obeyed. Here is your charge.”
Then to the lady: “This is Monsieur de Garnache,” he announced, “of whom I have already told you, who is to conduct you to Paris by order of Her Majesty.
“And now, my good friends, however great the pleasure I derive from your company, I care not how soon you set out, for I have some prodigious arrears of work upon my hands.”
Garnache bowed to the lady, who returned his greeting by an inclination of the head, and his keen eyes played briskly over her. She was a plump-faced, insipid child, with fair hair and pale blue eyes, stolid and bovine in their expressionlessness.
“I am quite ready, monsieur,” said she, rising as she spoke, and gathering her cloak about her; and Garnache remarked that her voice had the southern drawl, her words the faintest suggestion of a patois. It was amazing how a lady born and bred could degenerate in the rusticity of Dauphiny. Pigs and cows, he made no doubt, had been her chief objectives. Yet, even so, he thought he might have expected that she would have had more to say to him than just those five words expressing her readiness to depart. He had looked for some acknowledgment of satisfaction at his presence, some utterances of gratitude either to himself or to the Queen-Regent for the promptness with which she had been succoured. He was disappointed, but he showed nothing of it, as with a simple inclination of the head—
“Good!” said he. “Since you are ready and Monsieur le Seneschal is anxious to be rid of us, let us by all means be moving. You have a long and tedious journey before you, mademoiselle.”
“I—I am prepared for that,” she faltered.
He stood aside, and bending from the waist he made a sweeping gesture towards the door with the hand that held his hat. To the invitation to precede him she readily responded, and, with a bow to the Seneschal, she began to walk across the apartment.
Garnache’s eyes, narrowing slightly, followed her, like points of steel. Suddenly he shot a disturbing glance at Tressan’s face, and the corner of his wild-cat mustachios twitched. He stood erect, and called her very sharply.
“Mademoiselle!”
She stopped, and turned to face him, an incredible shyness seeming to cause her to avoid his gaze.
“You have, no doubt, Monsieur le Seneschal’s word for my identity. But I think it is as well that you should satisfy yourself. Before placing yourself entirely in my care, as you are about to do, you would be well advised to assure yourself, that I am indeed Her Majesty’s emissary. Will you be good enough to glance at this?”
He drew forth as he spoke the letter in the queen’s own hand, turned it upside down, and so presented it to her. The Seneschal looked on stolidly, a few paces distant.
“But certainly, mademoiselle, assure yourself that this gentleman is no other than I have told you.”
Thus enjoined, she took the letter; for a second her eyes met Garnache’s glittering gaze, and she shivered. Then she bent her glance to the writing, and studied it a moment, what time the man from Paris watched her closely.
Presently she handed it back to him.
“Thank you, monsieur,” was all she said.
“You are satisfied that it is in order, mademoiselle?” he inquired, and a note of mockery too subtle for her or the Seneschal ran through his question.
“I am quite satisfied.”
Garnache turned to Tressan. His eyes were smiling, but unpleasantly, and in his voice when he spoke there was something akin to the distant rumble that heralds an approaching storm.
“Mademoiselle,” said he, “has received an eccentric education.”
“Eh?” quoth Tressan, perplexed.
“I have heard tell, monsieur, of a people somewhere in the East who read and write from right to left; but never yet have I heard tell of any—particularly in France—so oddly schooled as to do their reading upside down.”
Tressan caught the drift of the other’s meaning. He paled a little, and sucked his lip, his eyes wandering to the girl, who stood in stolid inapprehension of what was being said.
“Did she do that?” said he, and he scarcely knew what he was saying; all that he realized was that it urged him to explain this thing. “Mademoiselle’s education has been neglected—a by no means uncommon happening in these parts. She is sensitive of it; she seeks to hide the fact.”
Then the storm broke about their heads. And it crashed and thundered awfully in the next few minutes.
“O liar! O damned, audacious liar,” roared Garnache uncompromisingly, advancing a step upon the Seneschal, and shaking the parchment threateningly in his very face, as though it were become a weapon of offence. “Was it to hide the fact that she had not been taught to write that she sent the Queen a letter pages-long? Who is this woman?” And the finger he pointed at the girl quivered with the rage that filled him at this trick they had thought to put upon him.
Tressan sought refuge in offended dignity. He drew himself up, threw back his head, and looked the Parisian fiercely in the eye.
“Since you take this tone with me, monsieur—”
“I take with you—as with any man—the tone that to me seems best. You miserable fool! As sure as you’re a rogue this affair shall cost you your position. You have waxed fat and sleek in your seneschalship; this easy life in Dauphiny appears to have been well suited to your health. But as your paunch has grown, so, of a truth, have your brains dwindled, else had you never thought to cheat me quite so easily.
“Am I some lout who has spent his days herding swine, think you, that you could trick me into believing this creature to be Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye—this creature with the mien of a peasant, with a breath reeking of garlic like a third-rate eating-house, and the walk of a woman who has never known footgear until this moment? Tell me, sir, for what manner of fool did you take me?”
The Seneschal stood with blanched face and gaping mouth, his fire all turned to ashes before the passion of this gaunt man.
Garnache paid no heed to him. He stepped to the girl, and roughly raised her chin with his hand so that she was forced to look him in the face.
“What is your name, wench?” he asked her.
“Margot,” she blubbered, bursting into tears.
He dropped her chin, and turned away with a gesture of disgust.
“Get you gone,” he bade her harshly. “Get you back to the kitchen or the onion-field from which they took you.”
And the girl, scarce believing her good fortune, departed with a speed that bordered on the ludicrous. Tressan had naught to say, no word to stay her with; pretence, he realized, was vain.
“Now, my Lord Seneschal,” quoth Garnache, arms akimbo, feet planted wide, and eyes upon the wretched man’s countenance, “what may you have to say to me?”
Tressan shifted his position; he avoided the other’s glance; he was visibly trembling, and when presently he spoke it was in faltering accents.
“It—it—seems, monsieur, that—ah—that I have been the victim of some imposture.”
“It had rather seemed to me that the victim chosen was myself.”
“Clearly we were both victims,” the Seneschal rejoined. Then he proceeded to explain. “I went to Condillac yesterday as you desired me, and after a stormy interview with the Marquise I obtained from her—as I believed—the person of Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye. You see I was not myself acquainted with the lady.”
Garnache looked at him. He did not believe him. He regretted almost that he had not further questioned the girl. But, after all, perhaps it might be easier and more expedient if he were to appear to accept the Seneschal’s statement. But he must provide against further fraud.
“Monsieur le Seneschal,” said he in calmer tones, putting his anger from him, “at the best you are a blunderer and an ass, at the worst a traitor. I will inquire no further at present; I’ll not seek to discriminate too finely.”
“Monsieur, these insults—” began the Seneschal, summoning dignity to his aid. But Garnache broke in:
“La, la! I speak in the Queen’s name. If you have thought to aid the Dowager of Condillac in this resistance of Her Majesty’s mandate, let me enjoin you, as you value your seneschalship—as you value your very neck—to harbour that thought no longer.
“It seems that, after all, I must deal myself with the situation. I must go myself to Condillac. If they should resist me, I shall look to you for the necessary means to overcome that resistance.
“And bear you this in mind: I have chosen to leave it an open question whether you were a party to the trick it has been sought to put upon the Queen, through me, her representative. But it is a question that I have it in my power to resolve at any moment—to resolve as I choose. Unless, monsieur, I find you hereafter—as I trust—actuated by the most unswerving loyalty, I shall resolve that question by proclaiming you a traitor; and as a traitor I shall arrest you and carry you to Paris. Monsieur le Seneschal, I have the honour to give you good-day!”
When he was gone, Monsieur de Tressan flung off his wig, and mopped the perspiration from his brow. He went white as snow and red as fire by turns, as he paced the apartment in a frenzy. Never in the fifteen years that were sped since he had been raised to the governorship of the province had any man taken such a tone with him and harangued him in such terms.
A liar and a traitor had he been called that morning, a knave and a fool; he had been browbeaten and threatened; and he had swallowed it all, and almost turned to lick the hand that administered the dose. Dame! What manner of cur was he become? And the man who had done all this—a vulgar upstart out of Paris, reeking of leather and the barrack-room still lived!
Bloodshed was in his mind; murder beckoned him alluringly to take her as his ally. But he put the thought from him, frenzied though he might be. He must fight this knave with other weapons; frustrate his mission, and send him back to Paris and the Queen’s scorn, beaten and empty-handed.
“Babylas!” he shouted.
Immediately the secretary appeared.
“Have you given thought to the matter of Captain d’Aubran?” he asked, his voice an impatient snarl.
“Yes, monsieur, I have pondered it all morning.”
“Well? And what have you concluded?”
“Helas! monsieur, nothing.”
Tressan smote the table before him a blow that shook some of the dust out of the papers that cumbered it. “Ventregris! How am I served? For what do I pay you, and feed you, and house you, good-for-naught, if you are to fail me whenever I need the things you call your brains? Have you no intelligence, no thought, no imagination? Can you invent no plausible business, no likely rising, no possible disturbances that shall justify my sending Aubran and his men to Montelimar—to the very devil, if need be.”
The secretary trembled in his every limb; his eyes shunned his master’s as his master’s had shunned Garnache’s awhile ago. The Seneschal was enjoying himself. If he had been bullied and browbeaten, here, at least, was one upon whom he, in his turn, might taste the joys of bullying and browbeating.
“You lazy, miserable calf,” he stormed, “I might be better served by a wooden image. Go! It seems I must rely upon myself. It is always so. Wait!” he thundered; for the secretary, only too glad to obey his last order, had already reached the door. “Tell Anselme to bid the Captain attend me here at once.”
Babylas’s bowed and went his errand.
A certain amount of his ill-humour vented, Tressan made an effort to regain his self-control. He passed his handkerchief for the last time over face and head, and resumed his wig.
When d’Aubran entered, the Seneschal was composed and in his wonted habit of ponderous dignity. “Ah, d’Aubran,” said he, “your men are ready?”
“They have been ready these four-and-twenty hours, monsieur.”
“Good. You are a brisk soldier, d’Aubran. You are a man to be relied upon.”
D’Aubran bowed. He was a tall, active young fellow with a pleasant face and a pair of fine black eyes.
“Monsieur le Seneschal is very good.”
With a wave of the hand the Seneschal belittled his own goodness.
“You will march out of Grenoble within the hour, Captain, and you will lead your men to Montelimar. There you will quarter them, and await my further orders. Babylas will give you a letter to the authorities, charging them to find you suitable quarters. While there, d’Aubran, and until my further orders reach you, you will employ your time in probing the feeling in the hill district. You understand?”
“Imperfectly,” d’Aubran confessed.
“You will understand better when you have been in Montelimar a week or so. It may, of course, be a false alarm. Still, we must safeguard the King’s interests and be prepared. Perhaps we may afterwards be charged with starting at shadows; but it is better to be on the alert from the moment the shadow is perceived than to wait until the substance itself has overwhelmed us.”
It sounded so very much as if the Seneschal’s words really had some hidden meaning, that d’Aubran, if not content with going upon an errand of which he knew so little, was, at least, reconciled to obey the orders he received. He uttered words that conveyed some such idea to Tressan’s mind, and within a half-hour he was marching out of Grenoble with beating drums, on his two days’ journey to Montelimar.