Book I Chapter 13 The Marquis of Carabas by Rafael Sabatini
BOISGELIN
Quentin drew up at the Inn of the Cigogne, where he had lain the night with Lesdiguières, when on his way to Coëtlegon. Recognized by the tubby Cauchart, he was made welcome.
It was already past noon, and when refreshed here, and with a fresh horse, Quentin hoped to reach Rédon, thirty miles away, before nightfall. Lesdiguières, he learnt, had passed that way two days ago, on his return journey, imagining no doubt that his nephew would already be back at Angers.
Cauchart set before him a pot of cider, deploring that he had no wine worthy of his guest, and Quentin was awaiting the food he had ordered when he became aware of the rhythmic tramp of a very considerable marching body. His idle conclusion was that a company of infantry was passing through Ploermel; and even when the march ceased before the inn this conclusion still abode.
He raised his eyes as a quick step rang upon the threshold. Into the common-room, in the middle of which Cauchart stood at gaze, came a brisk man in hunting dress with gaitered legs, whose appearance was familiar. He looked sharply about him, espied Quentin, said: "Ah!" and whistled shrilly.
At once there was a stir behind the door, and a dozen men of fairly uniform appearance surged into the room. They all wore the baggy Breton breeches, mostly of linen, but some of fustian, short jackets, which in many cases were of goatskin, and broad, round hats; all looked villainous, and each was armed with a musket.
The man in the hunting dress swung upon the landlord, whose eyes had grown uneasy. "Whom do you house here, Cauchart?" The offensive, masterful tone stimulated Quentin's memory. This was that Monsieur de Boisgelin, who had ruffled it at Chavaray, denying him access to his own house.
"Monsieur le Chevalier," Cauchart answered hurriedly, "all's well. This is the new Marquis of Chavaray."
Boisgelin started at that, turned his head sharply, advanced a pace or two, and looked more closely at Quentin.
"Marquis of Chavaray!" he echoed derisorily. "Of Carabas, perhaps. I know him now. Were you fooled by that impudent lie, Cauchart?"
"Monsieur! Monsieur!" Cauchart was scandalized. "It is no lie. I have Maître Lesdiguières' word for it."
"Lesdiguières!" jeered Boisgelin. "Lesdiguières! He answers for him, does he?" Yet there was clearly something here that gave him pause. "Now what's the truth of this?" He walked boldly up to Quentin's table, and confronted him across it. "You are the man that rode with Hoche just now. Are you not?"
Quentin, with a sense of peril strong upon him, liked this man even less than when he had seen him at Chavaray. He had been jarred, too, by the use of the name "Carabas." He remembered Constant's application of it, and it seemed to him beyond mere coincidence that it should now be repeated by this cousin of Constant's. Nevertheless he contrived that his answer should be quietly civil.
"Why, yes. I am."
"Useless to deny it, anyway." Boisgelin made a sign to his men, and at once their sabots clattered across the stone floor towards Quentin.
Cauchart flung himself forward in a panic. "Monsieur! In God's name!"
"Quiet, Cauchart. Don't interfere. We've a short way with pataud spies in this country. The nearest tree will do his affair."
"You take me for a spy?" said Quentin. He kept cool. "And for no better reason than that I rode with General Hoche. Permit me to find you ridiculous."
"You forget that we've met before. At Chavaray. You were very eager to enter the château."
"As was my right. You have been told who I am."
"I am more concerned with what you are. We waste time."
The words were as a signal. He was seized under the arms and pulled to his feet.
Again Cauchart, in liveliest distress, sought to intervene, only to be brutally repressed by Boisgelin.
Under no delusion, now, appalled by the perception that he was facing death at the hands of these ruffians, Quentin's wits worked at desperate speed. He heard the vintner's wailing voice: "Monsieur le Chevalier, you must be in a mistake. I tell you again that I have Maître Lesdiguières' word for it that this is the new Marquis de Chavaray."
"There'll be no mistake," was the astounding answer, "whether he's that or the common pataud spy that I suppose him. Very likely he is both."
To Quentin, it was as if in his angry, cruel haste, Boisgelin had said more than he intended. It confirmed the suspicion begotten by that contemptuous "Carabas," which the man had flung at him, and with it came the thought that whilst this might be a chance encounter, yet it presented an opportunity that was sought. In Boisgelin he began to see an agent of that movement to suppress him of which glimpses had already been afforded him.
Already his aggressors were thrusting him away from the table, when his desperately questing wits recalled Lionne's description of Boisgelin as the best blade in France, "a remorseless devil who never scruples to take advantage of his evil, deadly swordsmanship."
The recollection brought inspiration. Such a man, swollen in pride and self-confidence by the easy successes his sword had won, would probably be of a vanity easily provoked. Besides, as a gentleman born, he would be imbued with a gentleman's notions of how to defend his personal honour, if it were impugned, the more certainly because of his confidence in a skill that he believed matchless. It remained to see what calculated insult might wring from that evil confidence.
Boisgelin was already striding towards the door, and Quentin was being impelled after him by his captors when he spoke, throwing into his voice all the contempt of which he was capable.
"You may act, sir, in spite of a doubt of what I really am. But you leave me in no doubt of what you are."
Boisgelin, arrested as much by the tone as by the words, swung round to face him. The movement halted the Chouans.
"What I am?"
Quentin laughed in his face. "One sees it at a glance. You may play the bully with a dozen of your ruffians at your heels, as you would never dare to play it without them. For it's written plainly on your vile face that you are by nature a poltroon."
Boisgelin lost some colour. "Leave this to me," he sharply silenced his men. He stood staring at Quentin, and slowly a cruel smile took shape on his lips. "By God, sir, whoever and whatever you are, I shall have the pleasure of proving you wrong before you die."
The spadassin had gulped the bait. His insulted vanity had snatched at this invitation to display his prowess before his followers. But Quentin betrayed no relief. He merely raised a languid brow, his glance a fresh insult.
"Is it really possible? Could I be mistaken, after all? Or is this mere play-acting?"
"You'll find it of a deadly earnest. You wear a sword. I suppose you can use it?"
"I could try, if you dared to supply the occasion."
"Outside, then. Here behind the inn."
Cauchart flung forward and caught his arm. "Monsieur! You cannot do this. It would be murder."
"It will be." Boisgelin flung him off. "Peace, fool. Come on, sir."
Quentin, however, now chose to manifest hesitation; for the whole of his purpose was not yet fulfilled. "All this is so irregular," he complained.
"You begin to find it so."
"What I find is that the dice are cogged against me. It is what I should have seen." He looked at the lowering faces about him as if he indicated them. "I am hardly among friends, and I should like some definite assurance of what's to happen afterwards."
"Afterwards? After what?"
"After I shall have killed you," said Quentin coolly
Boisgelin's mouth fell open. Then a laugh came from it and found an echo among his men. "You make very sure."
"In this life," said Quentin, "the only thing of which we can be very sure is death. And you may be sure of it this afternoon, Monsieur de Boisgelin."
"Don't keep me waiting, then."
"But I must until I know what is to happen afterwards. If I am to have my throat cut by your men here, I need not be at the trouble of killing you first."
To Boisgelin this was as yet another blow in the face. He turned in fury to the door, and called: "Grosjean!"
A burly Chouan, whose accoutrements announced a leader, appeared almost at once in answer. He wore a grey coat over a red waistcoat, and the cockade in his hat was of silk. He was armed with a sword, and a brace of pistols were displayed in his belt, whilst his legs, like Boisgelin's, were gaitered.
"This cockerel and I," Boisgelin informed him, with a grin, "are about to take a turn in the garden. After that, should he still be alive, you will see that no obstacle is placed to his departure."
"By St. John, if he's still alive, he should deserve his liberty," grinned Grosjean.
"I require your word for that."
"Bien." Grosjean solemnly stretched out his hand. "It is sworn."
Boisgelin looked at Quentin. "Does that satisfy you, fanfaron?"
Quentin inclined his bare head. "Perfectly. Let us go."
Beyond a vegetable patch at the back of the inn there was a stretch of well-cropped even turf where Cauchart grazed his goats. The shadow cast across it by a belt of pines mellowed the strong light of that September afternoon. To this they came, followed not only by the Chouans who had invaded the inn, but by those who had remained outside, making in all a company of some forty or fifty strong.
Their light chatter and little bursts of laughter bore witness to their confidence in the invincibility of their leader.
When once, however, the two men were face to face, an orderly silence fell and the Chouan ranks became rigidly immobile.
Quentin had removed his riding-coat, and had rolled the right sleeve of his shirt above the elbow. Boisgelin disdained to do even so much, contenting himself with casting aside his hat and sword-belt.
"You may put off your boots as well if you please," he sneered.
"Only if you will put off yours, sir," was the grave answer.
"I do not account it worth the trouble."
"As you please. No doubt it is written that you are to die in your boots."
"No doubt. But it will not be to-day. On guard!"
On the word he attacked.
That he looked to make short work of it is certain. Just as it is certain that when he fell back baffled and paused at the end of a half-dozen disengages, some of the contemptuous confidence went out of him. He had discovered in the opposing blade a quality that had not been present in any of those of his past easy victims.
Quentin in his time, if only on the fencing floor, had met some famous swordsmen since his discomfiture of the very competent Rédas. But he could not remember to have met a better blade than this. It was little wonder, he thought, that Boisgelin had been so ready to take in hand the punishment of his insults and to engage his followers to let his opponent go free should he survive. Not on that account was he perturbed. Formidable Boisgelin might be to the ordinary swordsman; but hardly formidable to the practised master. Beyond realizing that the engagement was on a level that would permit him to take no chances, Quentin was at ease.
At a distance of three paces Boisgelin addressed him provocatively in that pause.
"Well, sir? You are something slow to perform as you promised."
"But sure, I trust. I must not disappoint you. I await your convenience."
Boisgelin bounded forward, feinted and lunged with admirable suppleness. Quentin encircled the blade, swept it clear, and drove his opponent back by a thrust that presented the point at his throat. As if exasperated at being so easily foiled, Boisgelin attacked again at once, and displayed now a speed and force that, coolly met, was dangerous only to himself. For a spell the blades flashed and circled, making arcs of light for the amazed spectators. Then, at last, for the second time, and breathing hard now as a result of his fury, Boisgelin fell back and lowered his point.
But having winded him by his strictly defensive tactics, Quentin would not allow him a second's leisure for recovery. He went in, in his turn, and the lowered point must be raised again at once to meet him. As he fenced, Quentin was moved to a savage mockery of this murderous duellist.
"You begin, perhaps, to feel as you have made lesser swordsmen feel. Think, for instance, of that young lover of Rennes whom you butchered a year ago, and how he faced you, as sure of his doom as you should be by now of yours."
Deliberately, then, he exposed his low lines to invite a lunge. He wheeled aside as it came, desperately driven to spend itself unresisted on the empty air, whilst now, inside the other's guard, he drove his blade to transfix him from side to side.
It was so swiftly done that Quentin had recovered before the spectators fully realized that their leader had been hit.
For a moment Boisgelin remained erect, taut, his eyes suddenly wide as if in astonishment. Then a shudder ran through him, a moan broke from his lips, and he collapsed and sank grotesquely into a heap, snapping the sword that was thrust out as if to stay his fall.
Instantly there was a clatter of tongues swelling to a roar from the Chouans, and the beginning of an angry forward surge. But Grosjean, loyal to his oath, flung himself before Quentin, to face them, shouting sternly, a pistol in either hand. He used the Breton tongue; but his tone and action left little doubt of what he said.
The uproar fell to a mutter. Then at last it was stilled, and in a heavy silence those wild men came across the grass to the spot where the vanquished lay, with the victor standing above him.
Quentin swayed a little as he stood there and looked down at the crumpled heap that so lately had swaggered threateningly in the full pride of life. To physical nausea in him was added a deep spiritual disgust. It was the first man that he had killed, and for all that they had fought and he had dealt this death in self-defence, he felt himself a murderer, conceived that this crumpled heap, those staring eyes, those grinning lips, flecked with blood and froth, must ever hereafter abide hauntingly in his sight.
His arm was roughly clutched by Grosjean. The Chouan did not need to look twice so as to realize that the man at their feet was dead.
"We keep faith," he growled. "Get you gone!"
Quentin felt the need to say something, yet was at a loss to know what might fit the occasion. So, in silence, under the lowering glances of the band, he turned to go back to the inn. Again there were the beginnings of a threatening mutter, but again their leader quelled it.
He was met in the vegetable patch by Cauchart, who had stood there to watch the events. The taverner hurried him away, found him a horse, and urged him to profit by the miracle that permitted his departure and make the best speed he could out of the district.