Book II Chapter 3 The Marquis of Carabas by Rafael Sabatini
THE SECOND JOURNEY
Aboard a Breton fishing-smack that in these days fished only so as to dissemble its real activities, Quentin de Morlaix came in the dead of an uneasy night of March to the Bay of St. Brieuc. If the foul weather deliberately chosen brought peril of shipwreck on the one hand, on the other it lessened the other lurking perils, no less deadly, that awaited a clandestine landing.
Rémisol, the master of the smack, an old smuggler by trade, who with a man and a boy for crew plied now a form of smuggling more dangerous far than the old running of contraband cargoes to England, had picked his weather for the trip from Jersey, and was grateful for the blustering westerly wind that blew them into the gulf, and the driving rain that hung a veil about them.
Within a couple of hundred yards of the beach of Erquy, greatly daring, Rémisol, having lowered the rag of canvas, no more than had been needed to keep the smack handy, swung her beam across the wind, and whilst she rocked from gunwale to gunwale on the long rollers, he drew under her lee the boat she towed. To descend into her was not the least of the perils Quentin was called upon to face. Stumbling and sliding across the vessel's slippery deck, clutching for support at whatever came under his hand, he reached the gunwale. Guided by Rémisol he climbed upon it, clinging desperately to a ratline, and peering through the gloom for the dark patch upon the oily sheen of the sea that marked the boat. Then came the fearsome leap, to be caught in the arms of the seaman, who had preceded him, and to crouch with him, lest they be flung out of that wildly tossing shell.
He came to rest in the stern, whilst his companion thrust out an oar. The boat was swung into the wind, and her antics became less fearful. Soon her keel was grating on the shingle, and the spray was breaking over her, to add to the drenching bestowed by the rain.
"Look alive, sir," the seaman admonished Quentin.
He clutched him, and at closest quarters pointed his outstretched arm barely visible in the gloom. "Yonder is Erquy. See that glimmer of light. That'll be a house in the village. The road to Nantois lies to the right of it."
"Thanks. I know. I've been this way before. With Erquy before me I cannot go astray."
"Have a care how you cross the line of coast-guards. There's not above a hundred yards between their tents. Give thanks for the rain. It should keep them under cover while it lasts, and as they show no lights they're likely asleep. But we never can tell for sure. So go cautious. You'll find them at the top of the beach. God be with you, sir. Give me a shove."
With the waves breaking about his thighs, Quentin thrust the boat off. In a moment it had vanished into the darkness, and the creak of rowlocks was lost in the boom and rattle of the waves upon the shingle.
For a moment Quentin thought less of the difficulties awaiting him than of those the seaman must be facing in regaining the smack, which, daring to show no light, remained invisible. Before he turned he caught faintly above the noise of wind and sea a hail that was answered and repeated, and he understood the device by which boat and smack would find each other again.
Cautiously, his sodden cloak wrapped about him, he began the ascent of the beach towards the danger-line of the coast-guard tents. The downpour was lessening, but the blackness of the night continued almost impenetrable, so that he might be said to be constrained to steer his course by the sound of the sea behind him.
Suddenly, very faintly grey, a vague shape loomed before him and brought him sharply to a halt. He had all but walked into one of the tents, one of the links drawn wherever a landing was possible along the Brittany and Normandy coasts. He was sidling away to the right when the blackness in that direction was abruptly cleft by a glowing cone. Startled by that sudden, silent, luminous explosion, he checked again, his eyes on the tent that had abruptly become visible by the kindling of a light within it.
Shadows moved against the glowing canvas, the shadows of two men, one of them topped by a monstrous distortion of a three-cornered hat, which at once suggested to Quentin that its wearer was about to come forth. Instinctively he dropped to the ground, and instinctively his hand sought the butt of the pistol within the breast of his coat.
A shaft of light from that conical glow cut athwart the night, to be darkened almost at once by the human bulk that appeared in the opening of the raised flap. Immovable it stood there for some seconds, and Quentin began to realize that the man was doing no more than taking stock of the weather. Prone upon the sand, thankful to be beyond the range of the light, he waited. Voices reached him faintly, the words indistinguishable. Then came a snatch of song to reassure him. The black silhouette was withdrawn from the opening; the flap was allowed to fall again, cutting off the shaft of light. But because the tent remained aglow, Quentin, having risen, edged away in the opposite direction, nor began to move forward again until he judged himself to be somewhere midway between the next two tents, which remained in darkness.
He was through at last and at the foot of the dunes that made an irregular wall at the head of the beach. He climbed these on hands and knees, not daring in the darkness to trust his feet over surfaces so irregular. From their summit, venturing at last to stand, he sought the light of Erquy, and was thankful when he perceived it, now straight ahead. In the dark he had swerved unduly to the left. This, however, was easily corrected now that he possessed anew that orientation. With that beacon in view, he went stumbling over the dunes, through the driving rain which had increased again, and was beating upon his back and shoulders.
Thus he came at last upon a road. The light of Erquy was behind by now, and no longer visible. But he knew the road. This way he had come with Puisaye. Along that firm surface he made better progress, and the day was breaking when he reached the outskirts of Nantois. He got his bearings from a gaunt ruin that reared itself from a belt of pines on an eminence a little way back from the highway, the Castle of Guémadec, raggedly silhouetted in the vivid light of dawn. Leaving the highway, he skirted the eminence until he struck a path that led through a screening spinney to the homestead.
Recognized there as the sometime companion of the Comte Joseph, he was readily sheltered by the farmer. He spent the day abed and asleep, whilst his garments were being dried. Soon after nightfall he resumed his journey, accompanied by a vigorous peasant-girl to serve him as guide to Villegourio, where the next stage was established. After that, travelling by night and resting by day, he found friendly shelter, first at Villeneuve, north of Lamballe, in the attic of the house of Madame de Kerverso, then at Quesnoy, in the humble abode of the sisters du Gage, and at last at Ville Louët, a dangerous neighbourhood because near Boishardi's abandoned manor, upon which the Blues kept a close watch.
Thence on the fifth day after landing, and without waiting for the night, because not safe to linger, he set out alone on a borrowed horse, to make for the uplands and the Ridge of the Anguille, where his journey was to end.
Avoiding Moncontour, he followed a track that led through fertile, well-cultivated lands, to the slopes of Menez. As he climbed these, the signs of life and cultivation vanished, until from the heights, looking south towards the Morbihan, was spread an empty moorland landscape, broken only by scattered copses, to a far horizon of forests, dark and solid.
Thus through a country ever more forlorn, whose increasing visible expanse displayed never a hamlet or other sign of human habitation, he plodded upwards. Heather and gorse became the only vegetation of this arid soil, broken at intervals by surging blocks of granite.
At last, towards sunset, as he gained the empty heights of Bel Air, a solitary dark grey building showed on the Ridge of the Anguille above him, which he knew for the dwelling of Jean Villeneuve, or Jean of the Ridge, as he was generally known. He bore in the district an unsavoury cut-throat reputation, which may have been due to no more than the desolate situation of his tavern-dwelling. It was a little frequented house of call for travellers crossing the Menez on the way to Ménéac.
Goats grazed on the slope by which a winding path led Quentin to the summit. Fowls scattered nosily and a dog barked threateningly as he came to a halt before the two long, low, one-storeyed buildings, one of which was the inn, the other the barn and stable.
A slatternly girl in a red petticoat, bare of foot, unkempt and black as a gipsy, showed herself on the threshold. Bright, black eyes scanned him from that grimy countenance. A raucous voice challenged rather than invited him. "Do you stop here?"
"By your leave." Quentin came to the ground. "Supper and a bed. Can you provide them?"
She turned to send a harsh call through the house. It brought forth a big, loose-limbed man in a goatskin jacket above grey breeches so wide that as he stood they took the form of a skirt. His naked legs were so hairy as to seem stockinged, and his feet were thrust into wooden shoes and packed with straw. His flat, weathered face, showing between curtains of grizzled hair, was sinister from sheer vacuity.
"Ohè! Supper? Aye. There's a kid new-killed, and maybe Francine can fry you an omelette. Come you in." He spoke on a dull, uninterested monotone, in an accent not easily followed. "Take Monsieur's horse, Francine."
Within the gloomy, narrow, unclean and evil-smelling common-room, on the floor of which some fowls were scratching themselves dust baths, the host took stock again of his guest.
"Where'll you be coming from?"
Deliberately Quentin mentioned the last house of communication at which he had stayed.
"Oh! Ah!" The flat face gave no sign of intelligence. "And where may you be going?"
"That will depend upon whom I meet here."
"Here? Whom should you meet here? This be a lonely house. Few comes this way."
"Baron Cormatin might come if you were to let him know that I am asking for him."
"Baron what? Na, na." He shook his head and grinned. "We've no barons here, citizen. 'Tis a lonely house. Travellers this way be scarce. And barons? Name of a pipe! I've never seen a baron."
Quentin paid no heed. "I am from Count Joseph," he announced.
"Who? Count . . . ? You're in a mistake, my master. You're come to the wrong house. Supper you may have and a bed, and welcome. But don't believe you'll meet any of your fine friends here. Not in Jean de la Butte's house."
By insistence Quentin succeeded only in arousing the wrath of this dullard and of the comely but unclean Francine who had slouched in.
"You must be cracked, my lad," she told him, with the freedom that annoyance breeds. "We're poor folk, and this is no house for the nobility, even if there were any left. Where do you come from at all with your talk of counts and barons? By faith, Jean, I believe it's a traveller from the moon."
"I've told you that I come from . . ."
"Aye, aye," Jean interrupted him. "That's enough! We want no more of it. You break our heads." He shambled off, a man whose patience was exhausted.
Now this had not been one of the houses of confidence at which he had called when journeying with Puisaye, and Quentin began to fear that he had blundered. He was less annoyed than disconcerted. Night was falling and he was exhausted. Even if he knew how to repair the error of which he was by now convinced, he could do nothing until to-morrow.
So in a disgruntled mood he ate a supper that almost turned his stomach, and thereafter went to throw himself half dressed upon the rude pallet provided.
He awakened with a glare of light upon his face in a room that seemed full of men, as indeed it was; for although there were only four of them, they sufficed to crowd the narrow little chamber. The first he recognized was Jean de le Butte, who at the foot of the bed held aloft a lantern. Beside him stood a bulky man, whose face was lost in the shadow of his hat's wide brim, and who carried a musket slung from his shoulders. Two others standing by the bedside were similarly masked by the shadow of their round hats.
Quentin jerked himself up. "What's this? What do you want?"
A hand fell lightly on his shoulder. "All's well, Monsieur de Morlaix." There was a hint of laughter in the brisk voice. "I am Tinténiac. And here is Cormatin, for whom you've been asking."
"In effect," came the Baron's deeper tones, "prompt to your summons, as you see. You may go, Jean."
Quentin recovered his breath. "The promptitude is a little disconcerting. I was not so impatient for the pleasure of your visit that I could not have waited until morning."
"I was not to know who asked for me until I had seen you."
"And," said Tinténiac, "we have good reason at present to move only by night. The Ridge is under surveillance."
"So if you'll forgive the disturbance, we'll be glad of your news," the Baron added.
Sitting up on his pallet Quentin came to it at once, and by the light of the lantern Jean had left, he read details and figures from the cryptogram he had prepared.
Tinténiac was moved to a glad excitement, which the Baron was slow to share. "Can we be really sure," he asked, "that the Count is not taking British support too much for granted?"
"It is not Puisaye's way to take things for granted," exclaimed the Chevalier, with a touch of indignation.
"That is not my judgment of him," the Baron answered. "Is it yours, Monsieur de Morlaix?"
Quentin hesitated. Had he been entirely frank, he would have said that Puisaye's swaggering ways suggested an over-sanguine temperament. "My acquaintance with him," he evaded, "does not permit me to pronounce."
"Mine does," said Tinténiac. "And I very definitely hold you mistaken, Baron."
"That the Count is of those who are prone to believe what they hope? Well, well. And then the British Government . . . I do not choose to trust implicitly to British promises even if they are as definite as Monsieur de Puisaye asserts."
"You may be sure that they are or he would not assert it," Tinténiac retorted.
"Need you wrangle over it?" wondered Quentin. "You are committed to nothing definite until the British ships actually arrive."
"There is the preparation of the ground," the Baron objected on a grumbling tone.
"What then? What else are you doing here? The information I bring is to encourage you in zeal, so that you see to it that the men are ready when the hour strikes. You'll hardly permit yourself to be deterred by fancied misgivings on the score of British help."
Cormatin shrugged. "Easy, of course. Yet I do not choose to believe in it, because I do not believe that it is in the policy of Mr. Pitt to see the monarchy restored in France."
"To the devil with what you believe, Baron," was Tinténiac's testy answer. "You've said yourself that a man believes what he hopes. How if we apply that to yourself?"
"My dear Chevalier!"
"How are you competent here in Brittany to judge of what is happening in England, as against Puisaye who is at work there?"
Cormatin spread his hands in a pacifying gesture. "I may be wrong. I hope I am, and that Monsieur de Puisaye's buds will bloom."
"It is for you, Baron, to labour so that they may," Quentin told him.
The Chevalier agreed impatiently. "We have our orders, and nothing remains but to obey."
"Oh, agreed! Agreed! I merely sound a warning against the delusion of false hopes. You may carry my assurances to the Count, Monsieur de Morlaix, that I shall dispose as he commands."
"There is not the need. He has no doubt of it. And I am not returning."
He spoke of his reasons. The Baron displayed little interest. He seemed bemused. But Tinténiac expressed the view that as things now were, with the spirit of conciliation abroad, Quentin should have little difficulty in obtaining possession of his estates and in being left in peaceful enjoyment of them.
"And at need," he added, "I can lend you a dozen stout, trusty lads for a bodyguard. You can distribute them as servants, and depend upon them to bring you off in case of trouble."
They were still discussing it when Cormatin roused himself to interrupt them.
"It wants little more than an hour to daybreak, and we've all of a dozen miles to ride. We should be moving."
Quentin went with them, needing their guidance in a country now entirely strange to him. Outside the inn a dozen men awaited them, mounted on Breton ponies, and in the wake of this bodyguard they began the descent in the dark towards St. Uran. Once the steepness diminished the pace was quickened. With sure knowledge of the ground they pushed briskly through that harsh, wild country, thickly wooded as it was and broken by ravines. As the pallors of dawn were lightening the east on their left, they reached the borders of the vast sombre forest of La Noué, which was their destination.
Within the heart of that dense labyrinth Cormatin and Tinténiac had their present refuge, in the quarters set up there by the Chouan leader St. Regent, commonly known as Pierrot, who was one of the most active and resolute enemies of the Republic. His immediate following, numbering a couple of hundred men, were for the most part old contrabandists, who under the monarchy had been engaged in the smuggling of salt from Brittany, where it was free, into the neighbouring provinces, where in those days it had been heavily taxed. Rude, vigorous men, inured to danger by the risky trade they had followed, they were amongst the most formidable of those who conducted the guerrilla warfare against the forces of government. St. Regent, himself, undersized and frail, with a keen weasel face and lively, piercing brown eyes, exercised over them the authority that only a skilful, proven leader can command.
A charcoal-burner's hut served him for quarters, whilst the men were lodged underground in the entrenchments which they had dug, roofed with turf and leaves over a stout framework of branches, so that they would defy discovery to any but the most minute search. Amongst them several refractory priests found shelter, ready to go forth when needed to perform their offices, men the interdict upon whom had been so heavy a factor in the revolt of the pious peasantry.
On the Sunday morning of Quentin's arrival amongst them, he attended the Mass, celebrated in a great clearing, at which the entire band was present. The deference shown him, as Puisaye's emissary, by St. Regent and every man of his following, was an evidence to him of the esteem in which the Count Joseph was held and the powerful influence of his name.
"It is the same throughout the entire West," Tinténiac assured him. "Puisaye is their Messiah, and when he gives the signal such an army will spring from the soil that the scoundrels in Paris will believe that the Day of Judgment is upon them."
"Yet Cormatin seems lukewarm," Quentin observed.
Tinténiac became grave. "A doubter by nature. And he has been badly shaken by a near escape of capture by the Blues. He was not the man to leave here as Puisaye's Major-General. Still, I do what I can to buttress his crumbling spirit pending the arrival of Puisaye himself. We shall continue to prepare the ground, which, for that matter, is well prepared already. We could rise to-morrow if the word came. The Republicans are of it, aware of this fire smouldering under the ashes, which it cannot locate, and which it has tried in vain to stamp out. An unexpected flare up at this point or at that; a bold attack upon a convoy; a sudden raid upon an arsenal, for arms and powder; a seizure of corn or cattle intended for the troops; all this by bands that melt away and vanish when the stroke has been delivered. These things shake the confidence and nerves of our Republican friends. Having tried in vain the brutal plan of wholesale devastation, they now betray their fears by conciliatory measures, the cessation of persecutions, the abolition of the trees of liberty, even toleration in matters of religion. As things are you'll have little difficulty at Chavaray. Your cousin, Constant de Chesnières, with more to answer for than you can have, is left to dwell in peace at Grands Chesnes."
This was news that Quentin hardly welcomed. "I thought that he would have gone to join his brother in Holland."
"He is an officer of the Loyal Émigrant, which has been assembled in England. Seeing the condition of things in the West, he has been persuaded to await it here, supplying meanwhile a rallying-point for the peasantry of his district. It will be pleasant for you to have your cousins for neighbours at Chavaray."
"It will certainly be interesting," was the extent of Quentin's agreement.