Book II Chapter 6 The Marquis of Carabas by Rafael Sabatini
THE ASSAULT
The candles had just been lighted and the curtains drawn that evening, when Quentin, who sat at work upon the account-books of Chavaray, in the Chinese salon, which he particularly affected, became aware of a hum, as of a hive at swarming-time.
Scarcely had it drawn his attention from the riddle in which Lafont had left the accounts, when Charlot, agitated and of a pallor that seemed to have spread to his bald skull, broke in upon him.
"Monsieur le Marquis, they are coming. They are coming."
Quentin was in no doubt as to whom was meant. "Ah!" He set down his pen. "And I had looked forward to a quiet evening. Well, well! Are the shutters fast?"
"Marton is closing them now. I have sent for the lads. We are ready, Monsieur. But it's an army."
"We must do what we can." His calm had the effect of quieting Charlot's alarms. "Assemble the men in the hall. I will post them myself!"
The windows of the ground floor were equipped with stout external shutters, and in a dozen of these, those of the hall, the dining-room on one side and the salon of the monkeys on the other, they had that afternoon opened loopholes for their muskets. It was through those in the hall shutters that they now observed the approach of a noisy peasant horde, lighted by torches, whose flames were reflected from the pikes and scythe-blades with which they were armed.
Quentin's Chouans, men who in two years of their fierce, guerrilla warfare had been broken to every danger and to every kind of engagement, whether offensive in raids or ambuscades, or defensive in withstanding siege and assault by Republican troops, displayed no alarm at the prospect of attack by a disorderly mob. Had the advancing peasants been Bretons like themselves, a strain might have been placed upon their loyalty. For the men of Brittany are a race apart. Their language and customs set up a barrier between themselves and all other people of the earth. It mattered nothing that this assailing mob was made up of peasants like themselves, of Royalists like themselves; it remained that they were Angevins, and therefore of an alien breed, whilst the Bretons served one in whom they had been told to behold a representative of their Comte Joseph, who was the very messiah of the restoration of Throne and Altar.
The stout iron gates of the forecourt stemmed the onslaught, as a dam stems the rushing waters of a river. Unlike a dam, however, it was not to be overflowed. The gates stood tall, and whilst the high walls in which they were set, might, notwithstanding the spikes that guarded the summit, have been easily scaled, the assailants had lacked the foresight to bring ladders. They hung now, angrily clamant, upon the scrollwork of the gates, and a musket shot or two were loosed, so as to stress their menace.
Quentin crossed the hall to the vestibule, where Charlot was on guard with a double-barrelled gun, a second one, ready loaded, leaning in the angle of the door. He had opened the little shutter in the grille, and was observing the demoniac antics outside.
"Unbar the door. Let me out," said Quentin.
"Monsieur le Marquis!" It was a horrified protest. But Quentin was very much the Marquis at that moment. "This canaille shall not suppose that I am afraid. My chance to speak to them is whilst the gates hold. They may not hold long."
"They have fire-arms. They may shoot."
"If they do I must hope that their markmanship is bad. The light will not help them. Open."
He was so resolute that Charlot, muttering, complied.
It was in Quentin's mind that to wait unseen behind these walls was to wait for an assault which, when it came, must in the end be overwhelming. Something might be achieved by a display of dauntlessness. Men are to be impressed and dominated by a bold, contemptuous front.
As the massive door swung open, he showed himself bareheaded on the summit of the steps which ran down on either hand, guarded by a parapet which came to the height of his breast.
His appearance produced an instant silence of astonishment. For a moment, silhouetted in black against the light from the open door behind him, he was unrecognizable. But as the door closed again, and some of the light from the flaming torches beat upon his face, they identified him, and loosed their yells of execration.
"Pataud! Sansculotte! Thief! Purchaser of national property! We'll show you whose property it is. You shall vomit your Republican banquet!"
They had been stirred up against him in just the manner he supposed.
He held up his hand for silence, but the outcries continued. He saw the musket-barrel being poked through the scrollwork of the gate, and by the light of a lantern he recognized Lafont for the man who wielded it. But he continued to hold up his hand.
The musket cracked, and some splinters of stone rattled down behind him. He had not moved, and his cool courage, creating the impression for which he hoped, earned him at last a silence. On that his voice ran clear and firm.
"Men of Chavaray! I do not parley with you out of any fear. We are well armed and ready to resist you at the cost of much of your blood until the help arrives for which--expecting this--I have already sent out an appeal. I parley with you because you are brought here by the lies of those who labour for ignoble ends.
"It is not true that I am a buyer of national property. I may have had to pay so as to enter into possession of Chavaray; but it remains that Chavaray is mine by right of birth and inheritance, as is well known to those who send you against me. I am the Marquis of Chavaray, as I will show proof to any half-dozen whom you may depute to come and seek it."
His confident almost disdainful tone had not failed of its effect. It was recognized for the tone of the exalted class to which he claimed to belong. And this tone was matched by his erect, virile figure, his air of scornful indifference to threats. This could be no pataud, no misbegotten upstart. Only the gentleman born could present a front of such stiff-necked intrepidity.
And so there was an amazed silence when he ceased, which endured until broken by the jeers of Lafont.
"Will you heed that mountebank? A Marquis, he? Oh, to be sure a Marquis: Marquis of Carabas." And he lifted up his voice to a sing-song declamation:
"Chapeau bas! Chapeau bas!
Gloire au Marquis de Carabas!"
Thus, by the use of that term, he betrayed himself to Quentin, as Boisgelin had done, for the agent of Constant.
He had swung to face the gates again, and again thrust the barrel of his musket through the scrollwork.
"Here's to give him glory. A feu de joie for Monsieur le Marquis de Carabas."
He fired, and missed again. Quentin who had not flinched let them hear his laugh.
"Your aim is as false as your tongue, Lafont."
There was the crack of another shot. It was fired from the château, and this time by a marksman; for Lafont staggered back and crumpled screaming into the arms of the man behind him.
Quentin swore under his breath, conceiving that this shot must undo all that he had striven to accomplish. Confirmed in this when the mob loosed again the fury that he had been bridling, he turned and quitted the perron.
Once he was within, Charlot made haste to close and bar the door.
"To expose yourself so! God be praised that that murdering ape did not hit you."
"Who fired that shot?"
"Does it matter, Monsieur, who fired it? The animal is well served. I hope he got it through his dirty heart."
"It was ill done. The trouble is now certain." But he did not pursue the inquiry. It was not the moment to discourage his lads by reproaches.
From outside, above the uproar, came the clang of metal on metal. "They are using sledge-hammers to the gate," he said, and turned to peer through the grille.
One of the Chouans from the dining-room approached the vestibule.
"Are you there, Monsieur le Marquis? They are smashing the lock of the gates. Will you order us to fire?"
"Is it you, Jacques?" He continued at the grille.
Saving where a space had been cleared to allow a man to swing his great sledge-hammer, the assailants were tight-packed against the gates. A volley into them would be of murderous effect.
"We burn our boats if we do," said Quentin calmly. "We shall be committed to a fight that will end in massacre."
"Perhaps a volley would make them run, like the cowards they are," said Charlot.
"It might. But . . . What now?"
The clamour which had risen momentarily in a fresh excitement, fell suddenly to a mutter, and the hammer blows ceased.
As an undertone to the angry murmurs of the horde, they could hear now the beat of hooves rolling rapidly nearer.
"A troop of horse, and of some numbers by the sound. Who are these?"
"Could it be the Blues?" wondered Charlot.
"Whom else could it be?"
"Faith, then, we pass from Purgatory into Hell," muttered Jacques.
Quentin returned no answer. His whole attention was upon the happenings outside.
The tumult had risen again, but, as it seemed to him, on a fresh note of execration, in which rage and fear were blending. The torchlight showed him that their backs were now to the château. Soon they were falling away from the gates. The thunder of the hooves was close upon them, and at last, beyond and over the heads of the mob, Quentin beheld leather helmets decked with tails of red horse-hair and the flash of sabres that were being swung like flails.
"Dragoons," he announced. "Though by what miracle they arrive so timely I'll not dare to guess."
The gates were now clear of the last of the peasants. Scattered in flight before the Republican cavalry, they took their lights with them, so that the gates and all about them for a moment were lost in darkness. But the night was clear, and very soon Quentin's eyes adjusted to the gloom could make out the shadowy figures of horsemen, whilst the jingle of accoutrements dominated now the receding sound of the yelling peasantry.
Quentin laughed in relief. "We're delivered, it seems."
"Delivered?" cried Jacques, who had never met a Blue save as an enemy.
"Of course. We are not outlaws here at Chavaray, but decent pacific folk. At least, so we'll appear. To your fellows, Jacques. Bid them vanish with their muskets. Let only three or four of you remain to lend Charlot a hand in peaceful service."
There was a rattling at the gates, and shouts of: "Olà! Olà! Open! Open!"
"Be off, Jacques." Quentin threw wide the door, and let the light stream forth, to quiet those who demanded admission. "Go down and open, Charlot."
"You know what you are doing, Monsieur le Marquis?"
"I don't. Neither do you. But we'll hope for the best."
Charlot went out to find the lock of the gate so beaten out of shape that only by drawing the vertical bolts from their stone sockets in the ground, and drawing both wings inwards together, was it possible to open.
The dragoons, however, did not advance. They remained ranged in two files on either side of the avenue. Between these a little group of horsemen came up at a brisk, jingling trot. Behind them, at a little distance, could be seen the swaying lamps of a carriage that followed.
The riders came on into the courtyard. There were five, and one of them, cloaked and wearing a high cocked hat heavily plumed in red, white and blue, rode a little in advance of the others.
He pulled up, and came instantly from the saddle with athletic ease, to confront Charlot. "What house is this?" His tone whilst authoritative was courteously attuned.
"The Chateau de Chavaray."
"Chavaray? Chavaray? I know the name. Who tenants it?"
"Monsieur le . . ." Charlot caught himself up, remembering that he addressed a cursed sansculotte.
But the soldier laughed. "Monsieur le . . . Go on, man."
Defiantly Charlot obeyed. "Monsieur le Marquis is in residence."
"Conduct me to him, if you please."
With the airs of a maître d'hôtel of the old order, Charlot inquired: "Whom shall I have the honour of announcing?"
"General Hoche, commanding the Army of Cherbourg."
Charlot inclined himself. "Give yourself the trouble of following me, my General."
Into the light of the hall, where Quentin waited, the General strode in the wake of that house-steward, his four plumed officers following close.
Quentin's recognition of that splendid figure was immediate.
"General Hoche!" He stepped forward with a courteous smile. And he added quickly: "You arrive too opportunely to be in doubt of your welcome."
"Chavaray! Parbleu! I knew that I knew the name. We rejoice to have been, it seems, of service. And your words relieve me. For we are here to impose upon the hospitality of your house. Not my escort. Let me hasten to remove alarm. My troops will bivouac in the grounds. The commissariat wagons follow them. The hospitality I come to beg, without suspecting that I should beg it of an old friend, is for myself and these officers of my staff, and for a lady whom we are escorting to Rennes. Her carriage is entering your courtyard now. In her, too, you will meet an old friend; older, indeed, than I am. Madame du Grégo de Bellanger." Perhaps it was the look in Quentin's eyes made him add the explanation: "It happens that she is travelling in the same direction as ourselves."
Quentin bowed. "Such hospitality as my house affords at such short notice would always have been yours, my General. But to-night I am to hail you as my deliverer."
"But from what, if you please, have I delivered you? Ah! I hear Madame's carriage. Give me leave." He was gone again in a swirl of blue cloak.
His officers remained, to change knowing, smiling glances, whilst one of them, detaching from the group, came forward, his sabre trailing. It was Humbert.
"I hope you do me the honour to remember me, Monsieur de Chavaray." His peasant accent was oddly at variance with his courtly words and elegant air.
"Most agreeably, my General. Welcome to Chavaray."
"My thanks. Let me present my comrades."
By the time he had accomplished the ceremony with a grace worthy of an officer of the Maison du Roi, Hoche was re-entering with the Vicomtesse de Bellanger.
She came forward, thrusting back the hood of her cloak from her intensely black and lustrous hair, an eagerness in her stride and in her lovely face.
"Monsieur de Chavaray! The happiness not only of finding you, but of finding you in your own château! It lifts a burden from my spirit, eases my daily self-reproach that I could not help you to it. I envy the worthier friends who were able to do what circumstances denied me the satisfaction of doing."
He bore her long, jewelled fingers to his lips. "Madame, if you did not bestow my house upon me, your coming to-night has preserved it for me; and that is fully as great a service."
"Ah, no. For that your thanks are due to General Hoche."
"But from what have we delivered you, my friend?" the General asked again. "There's a tale to be told."
"Not an amusing one." Standing in the circle they made about him, Quentin told it briefly and with restrictions. Believing him to have purchased Chavaray, the peasantry had come to deal with him as buyers of national property were usually dealt with.
"If they are to recommence when we are gone," said Hoche, "our scattering them to-night will be a very transient gain for you."
"Unless they should suppose that it was not by chance that the troops of the Republic rode to my protection."
"The lesson was a sharp one," Humbert laughed. "We broke some heads with the flats of our sabres."
"Sabres," said Hoche, "which God be thanked are no longer to be used in a fratricidal war."
It was an obscure utterance, the explanation of which was not to come until after they had supped, and supped better than might be expected considering how Chavaray had been taken unawares, and also what was the political faith of Quentin's household.
Its restricted resources had been strained to prepare quarters for these officers and for the lady who travelled under their escort. Marton, with Charlot and one of the Breton lads to help her, had been at pains to table a supper that if homely was savoury and abundant, and to grace it Quentin had produced from the cellar some bottles of Spanish wine which had found its way there no man knew whence.
When the meal was done, and under the influence of that heady Spanish wine, the veneer of good manners began to wear thin and crack on the rude Republicans of Hoche's staff, the Vicomtesse begged leave to retire, and Quentin sprang to wait upon her. Hoche, who was no bibber of wine, and who had a care for his dignity, rose with them.
So, leaving the others at table, with Charlot to see their wants supplied, the three passed into the peacock salon, where candles had been lighted and logs were blazing on the hearth.
The Vicomtesse tall and lithe, in a rather masculine spencer of a golden brown, moved admiringly about the handsome room, with the tones of green and blue and gold of its tapestried walls repeated in the curtains of brocade that masked the tall windows and in the soft Aubusson carpet underfoot.
"Like a chamber of Versailles," she declared.
Hoche, who knew of Versailles no more than the stables, smilingly concurred.
"It is an irony," he said, "that a populace which a little time ago would have burnt this château because a nobleman dwelt in it, would have burnt it to-night because of an assumption that its tenant is not a nobleman. But, then, who would look for consistency in the populace?"
"Does a Republican ask the question?" the Vicomtesse rallied him.
"A Republican who left his illusions in the prison of the Conciergerie, when the mean Democrats he had served would have had his head because they feared his popularity. Nor do I love their successors, who sent me here to pacify the country by massacring Frenchmen."
"Let your rancour slumber," she bade him, "since you are now relieved of that odious task."
"It was never one for a man who had gathered his laurels in battle against the enemies of France. That is what I do not easily forget. Even now, it is only expediency that dictates conciliatoriness."
"Since it does, why so bitter? Think less of what you might have had to do, and more of what you are to do."
Hoche turned to Quentin with an indulgent smile. "A rare woman that, Monsieur de Chavaray. One whose eyes perceive only the cardinal point."
"The cardinal point? What is that?"
"Why, that I am going to Rennes to make peace with a pen instead of with the sword, to spill a little ink instead of a deal of blood."
"But with whom do you make this peace?" Quentin asked him, puzzled.
"With whom? With whom have we been at war? With the Royalists, of course. Are you so aloof here at Chavaray that you do not know what is happening in the world?"
Quentin's countenance was blank. "With the Royalists? I am wondering whom you mean by that."
"I mean the Royalists of Brittany, Normandy, Maine and Anjou. Are there any others?"
"And the Republic hopes to make peace with these?"
"Hopes?" Hoche laughed easily. "Rather more than that. The truce is called; the conference is summoned. The citizen-representatives of the Republic are on their way to meet the Royalist leaders, to be embraced by them as brothers, tricolour and white cockade in fraternal confrontation."
Quentin smiled his disbelief. "My attitude towards the miraculous is much like that of Saint Thomas."
"Yet this miracle has happened. The peace treaty awaits our signatures."
"Oh! A peace treaty! And the terms?"
"A general amnesty, liberty of religious cult and the renunciation of levies, for our part; acknowledgment of and submission to the government of the Republic, for theirs. Thus an end to brigandage and civil war and a restoration of tranquillity to the land."
To Quentin it seemed in that moment that the room with its peacock tapestries, the graceful female figure in golden brown on the blue-green settle, the erect and virile soldier in his tight blue frock with his shoulders to the overmantel, were all phantasmal; like Hoche's words, the projection of a dream. Puisaye in London, and Cormatin, his representative, in Brittany were the realities that would shatter it.
Then, as if to answer that unannounced impression, Hoche spoke again. "I am just from Nantes, where Charette has signed the peace. Stofflet, who commands the Catholic Army of Anjou is still obstinate; but Boishardi has been sent to convert him." This was incredible enough. But something far more incredible was now to follow. "As for the Royal and Catholic Army of Brittany, I have already discussed the peace preliminaries with Monsieur de Cormatin, its Major-General, as he calls himself. He is bringing all the chiefs of the Chouannerie--some two hundred of them--to meet us at Rennes."
"Monsieur de Cormatin! It is with him that you have discussed the peace preliminaries?"
Hoche laughed at his face of consternation. "My dear Monsieur de Chavaray, I seem to carry you from amazement to amazement."
"You do. That Monsieur de Cormatin should consent to treat with the Republic . . ."
"Consent!" Hoche interrupted him. "It was he who sought us with proposals. He has proved himself a good Frenchman, labouring hard for peace. It was he who was the chief agent of Charette's pacification, and since then he has worked unceasingly to accomplish the same on the right bank of the Loire."
"Cormatin! Cormatin has done that! But it is incredible."
"Incredible as much as you please. You may credit it, nevertheless."
"I must, since you assure me of it so positively."
"And you rejoice with us, I am sure," the Vicomtesse interposed, "to know that there is an end to bloodshed."
"Naturally. Oh, naturally," Quentin agreed, aghast.
Hoche and the Vicomtesse fell into talk. Quentin never heeded them. His mind was on his last meeting with Cormatin and Tinténiac at La Noué, and he recalled the Baron's pessimism on the score of Puisaye's labours, which at the time he had thought so oddly obstinate. He understood now. The man must already have committed himself to his cursed treachery. The havoc to come from his betrayal of his trust was at present incalculable. Whilst Puisaye in London was preparing the expedition that was to join the Army of Brittany, Cormatin, his agent in France, was actively labouring to dissolve this army.
Quentin's frowning, pensive glance fell upon the Vicomtesse. Her head thrown back, languidly smiling, she was gazing up into the face of Hoche who had come to lean over the back of the settle she occupied. As he jested with her, his air possessive, he fingered a ringlet of her lustrous, black hair. Quentin thought of Bellanger, who would be joining in England one of the émigré regiments that were coming to meet the ruin and treachery preparing, and pondered the indifference to him of this high-born lady in her infatuation for the handsome, plebeian soldier, so utter that she warmly approved the projects that were to encompass that ruin.
Observing his cold stare, she moved uncomfortably.
"Monsieur le Marquis, you seem bemused."
"Forgive me, Madame. Aware as I am of what were once Cormatin's professions, I find it difficult to imagine the impulse that can so completely have changed them."
Hoche laughed curiously. "I have told you what the Royalists demand and what the Republicans are prepared to concede. There is an additional trivial matter of indemnities. Under that title Cormatin will pocket a matter of a million livres when the pacification treaty is signed."
"I see. The impulse of Judas."
Hoche shrugged. "It's a point of view."
"And the Republic consents to pay him a million for his services."
"After all, those now in power are concerned to efface the work of the terrorists, so that they may establish themselves securely. And the means at their command are exiguous. Surrounded as we are by enemies abroad, internal peace is a first necessity. The possibility of a rising of the Chouans became a nightmare to the gentlemen of the Convention. That was Cormatin's opportunity; and like an opportunist he seized it and turned it to account. Let us be grateful. But the Vicomtesse is yawning."
"It is that the tale has not the same novelty for me as for our host."
"Nor the power to disgust you," Quentin complained.
"That is because you have not yet perceived your own profit in all this," Hoche told him. "It is not impossible that you might come to be placed outside the law as an émigré. That danger is removed by the amnesty for all returned émigrés, which is amongst the terms we are to concede."
The tragic disillusion that awaited Puisaye in this, the cruel frustration of all that he was accomplishing, were the only considerations that weighed now with Quentin. Only because of the imprudence of opening his mind to his guests, did he set a curb upon the anger stirring in him.
That anger kept him awake far into the night. He had come to France as the bearer of Puisaye's orders to Cormatin, and he took the view that this traitorous contravention of those orders called for action on his part. What the action should be was the problem that kept him wakeful. The impulse to return to England, so as to warn Puisaye, he dismissed as futile. Already it was too late for that. Long before he could reach London, the pacification conference to which Hoche now rode, would have been held, and the mischief would be complete. If Puisaye and all those committed with him in England to the gallant adventure, trusting to be received by the great Chouan army he had recruited, should arrive unwarned in France, they would face irrevocable ruin. Impossible for Quentin to sit still at Chavaray whilst this treachery was being consummated. The only course that suggested itself before he wearily fell asleep was to hunt out Tinténiac at once, and take counsel with him.