Book II Chapter 9 The Marquis of Carabas by Rafael Sabatini
THE RESCUE
The reality exceeded St. Regent's prognostication. The Chouan chiefs did not wait for nightfall to lead the men back to their fastnesses.
Already a score of indignant gentlemen were at Quentin's heels as he left the hall. They formed the vanguard of the departure. They trooped noisily out into the gardens, where some ladies took the sunlit air, with a few Republican officers in attendance. Hoche was not of these; but his handsome Brigadier was moving as his merry deputy in attendance upon the responsive Vicomtesse de Bellanger.
They stared askance at the excitement of the Royalists, who, with scarcely a salutation, passed on, some to call for their horses, others to summon from their tents and lead away such following as they had brought.
Quentin and St. Regent were confronted by Cadoudal, who had been morosely waiting for them. "I wondered how much longer you would stay once that energumen had shown his hand. For what did you wait?"
"To break his eggs for him," said Quentin.
"And the stench their rottenness has raised," added St. Regent, "should drive everyone away." In a dozen picturesque words he gave a sketch of what had happened.
Cadoudal's glance lost some of its gloom. "We'd better be going. Faith, it's not safe now to linger. And for you least of all, Monsieur le Marquis. When the explosion comes it'll blow this peace conference back to Hell, where it was invented."
"And messieurs, the patauds will want to know who fired the train," St. Regent agreed.
Quentin shrugged indifferently. But he was to learn at once that the patauds did not provide the only danger for him. Cormatin in his pride of white plumes had appeared in the doorway with some members of his staff. From this group Colonel Dufour detached himself and came in long strides to tap Quentin on the shoulder.
Quentin turned to be met by the bow of a tall lean man, who was severely formal. "On behalf of Monsieur le Baron de Cormatin," he introduced himself.
"Serviteur!" Quentin bowed in his turn.
"It will not astonish you that Monsieur le Baron considers himself affronted by certain terms you had the temerity to apply to him."
"It does not."
"So much the better. You will the more readily apprehend my purpose."
"To the devil with that . . ." began Cadoudal.
There Quentin's raised hand checked him. "I cannot refuse to meet the Baron if he insists. Considering, however, the occasion and all that hangs upon it, you would serve him better by persuading him that he is ill-advised."
"You will permit me, sir, to be the judge of how best to serve him."
"In that case there is no more to be said."
Cadoudal, nevertheless, had a deal to say, and would have said a deal more had Quentin permitted it.
Thus, since Dufour reported the Baron in haste to have done, they met ten minutes later, behind the château, in an enclosure formed by tall yew hedges, where the turf was springy and the light soft.
Colonel Dufour and a Monsieur de Nantois seconded the Baron, whilst the two anxious and indignant Chouans stood by Quentin.
It was one of Monsieur de Cormatin's many illusions that he was a swordsman, and he came to the meeting in a temper and with the avowed intention to kill Monsieur de Chavaray. Fear of interruption rendered him of an impatience which was conveyed to his opponent by the Colonel.
In the act of binding back his luxuriant hair, Quentin politely smiled. "Assure Monsieur le Baron that since he is in haste I will make the engagement as short as possible. He shall have no cause to complain of delays."
"Rhodomontades are out of fashion among gentlemen," Dufour coldly reproved him.
"You misunderstand me, I think. As you shall see. I am ready, Monsieur."
By the fury of his countenance and in his onslaught the Baron looked dangerous. But Quentin could scarcely better have kept his promise to make the engagement a brief one. He met the Baron's opening thrust on a deflecting forte, and with the riposte ran him through the sword-arm. Thus the witnesses had no sooner realized that battle was engaged than they beheld the Baron disarmed, his sword on the ground, and his right arm in the grip of his left hand, through the fingers of which the blood was oozing.
Quentin flourished his blade in a salute. "Ave atque vale," he murmured, and looked at Dufour. "Do me now the justice to confess that you misunderstood me."
Cormatin spoke through his teeth. Not even this prompt disposal of him had dispelled his illusion that he plied a deadly blade. "You've had the luck to-day, Monsieur le Marquis. But we shall meet again. This does not end here."
"I think it does," said Cadoudal. "For we're not to wait for more." He took Quentin by the arm. "We'll be going. The Baron has too many cursed friends among the sansculottes, and what you've done may annoy them."
They found their horses and their men, and they were trotting briskly away from La Prevalaye, where the tents of the Chouans were being rapidly deserted, before either of his companions paid any attention to Quentin's repeated question.
"Where are we going?" echoed St. Regent at last. "Why, back to La Noué, that land of luxury and plenty. And you're coming with us. After the work you've done to-day there's only the forest for you until we've regenerated this unhappy country."
He demurred, announcing the intention of returning to Chavaray.
"You're tired of life, then," said Cadoudal. "How long do you think it will be before they seek you there?"
"A day or two, perhaps," St. Regent assured him. "They'll want to present an account to you for wrecking their joyous peace plans."
Cadoudal elaborated. "Cormatin will make you his scapegoat, so as to turn the Republic's wrath from his own head. It may not suffice, and God knows I pray that it may not. But that will not help you. The sansculottes will show you their own particular kind of mercy if they lay hands on you."
It was too clear to admit of discussion. So Quentin rode south with his companions. On the morrow, however, Cadoudal left them, announcing the intention of doubling back to Rennes, so as to ascertain the end of this peace-making business.
St. Regent pursued his way to the Forest of La Noué, and Quentin went with him, there to make his home for the next two months. Thence he sent a message to Charlot to inform him of the situation, and bidding him, should trouble come, to quit the château with his family and the lads, and fend for themselves.
After that there would be nothing to do but sit still and wait for the coming of Puisaye. His impulse was to take up the duties to which Cormatin had been false, and go forth as the forerunner of the Comte Joseph to stimulate the Royalists into holding themselves in readiness. He was restrained, however, by his lack of the necessary knowledge of the country and of acquaintance--despite the fame acquired at La Prevalaye--with the actual Royalists. Nor was there really the necessity, for Cadoudal, who paid them a visit a fortnight after the debacle at La Prevalaye, had himself shouldered the task.
He brought news of Cormatin. In spite of what had happened, clinging obstinately to a purpose already shattered, the Baron, with his arm in a sling, had presented himself on the morrow of the revolt to the ten Republican deputies who awaited the decision of the conference. Out of the members of his staff and a few Royalist leaders whom he had deluded into adhering to him after the general defection, he had made up the number necessary for the deputation that was to sign the treaty in the name of all the insurgents north of the Loire.
Of the two hundred Royalist leaders summoned to La Prevalaye and the hundred and fifty who had responded, not more than twenty attended the Baron to La Mabilais, where the treaty was to be signed.
With an impudence of which history offers few parallels, he brought his white-cockaded band into the pavilion where they were awaited by the Citizen-Representatives, a raffish group of play-acting, Jacobin gutterlings, tricked out in tricolour plumes and sashes, and trailing sabres which they had never learnt to handle.
The proceedings were brief. Cormatin announced that he and his companions were empowered to sign the treaty as the representatives of all the Royalists north of the Loire, saving only some odd, recalcitrant ones, who would inevitably lay down their arms when they found themselves forsaken. He delivered even an address of some magniloquence and of that histrionic flavour so dear to the sansculottes.
"Our inspiration springs from the love of all Frenchmen for their native land, the desire to extinguish civil discord, the oblivion of the past, the glory common to both parties, the common regard for all that may ensure the safety and happiness of France."
His conclusion lay in a solemn declaration to submit to the French Republic, One and Indivisible, to recognize its laws, and to engage never to bear arms against it.
To the Citizen-Representatives it was most satisfactory. They would be able now to announce to the Convention this triumph of their diplomatic measures where force of arms had failed, and the thanks of a grateful nation would be theirs. In return they readily accorded freedom of worship, the withdrawal of Republican troops from the West, the amnesty to returned émigrés, and the indemnities that had been stipulated.
They signed. The peace was concluded. Guns were fired; flags were unfurled; military bands filled the air with their music to announce to the world these joyous tidings.
Cormatin, adding a laurel crown to the white plumes that bedecked his hat, rode into Rennes like a conqueror at the head of his faithful twenty and their bewildered, white-cockaded following. After them, in their carriages, came the Citizen-Representatives, whilst Hoche and his dragoons formed a glittering rear-guard to the triumphal procession. National Guards lined the streets of Rennes; the drums rolled; the trumpets blared, and the populace shouted: "Long Live the Peace! Long Live the Union! Long Live France!"
Royalist and Republican passed to a fraternal banquet offered by the nation, to celebrate the occasion. There Cormatin perorated at length in self-glorification, and the Citizen-Representatives responded with a prolixity that increased in a measure as they became more drunk, and ended only when the wine had robbed them of the faculty of speech. All very touching and impressive.
But on the sober morrow there were unpleasant rumours. These increased as the days passed. Not all the Royalists who had departed in disgust from La Prevalaye had accounted it necessary to practise discretion. The name of the ci-devant Marquis de Chavaray began to be heard. What he had said began to be quoted, and at last it became widely known that he had smashed the conference, and that the adherents of Cormatin were only a negligible few.
Paris heard the tale, and the Convention quivered with anger at the imposture of which its representatives had been the victims. Orders went out to the West, and whilst Cormatin still swaggered in his bravery of white plumes, waiting to pocket the agreed indemnity before making his exit from the scene which he had so gloriously adorned, a thunderbolt fell from apparently clear skies.
At the very moment when a proclamation setting forth the peace terms was being pasted on the walls of the Brittany townships, announcing among other things the freedom of worship now accorded, the Convention decreed--on 1 May--the penalty of death against all refractory priests found on the territory of the Republic. Upon this followed an order for the arrest of all men known to have been leaders of the Chouannerie.
It brought Boishardi to perceive the error of his ways. He waited for no more. In a mood of savage penitence he called his Chouans about him, fell upon a Republican convoy, and with the arms and ammunition of which he plundered it, went to earth once more in his district of Moncontour.
Cormatin, less clear-sighted and reluctant to depart without his hard-earned million, allowed himself to be caught, and was flung into prison, to make the discovery that it was easier to fool the Royalists than the Republicans.
Such was the tale that Cadoudal brought back to La Noué. He related it with cynical humour, until at the end he came to add that the name of Quentin de Morlaix de Chavaray was first upon the list of those upon whose heads a price had been set. Republican troops had gone to Chavaray with orders to take him dead or alive, and at the same time to clean up what was described as the émigré nest of Grands Chesnes. Apart from the fact that the Chesnières were related to the arch-rebel Chavaray, not only had the amnesty to émigrés been cancelled by the events, but also the toleration with which since the Thermidorean reaction their return had been regarded.
This was news that wiped from Quentin's lips the smile with which he had listened to the epopee of Cormatin.
Cadoudal was quick to reassure him. "I've taken order about it. That is one reason why I am here, with three hundred of my lads at my heels. The Blues are conveying the prisoners to St. Brieuc."
"What prisoners?"
"Constant de Chesnières, his mother and Mademoiselle de Chesnières. The escort, a company of the National Guards on foot, are travelling slowly. They come by way of Châteaubriant. My scouts are observing them, and I shall have word as soon as they reach Ploermel. The time of their arrival there will decide the rest. The patauds are not to imagine that they can make arrests with impunity in this country."
It was not until the following evening that word came of the troop's arrival at Ploermel. It was brought by a mounted Chouan, the condition of whose horse showed the speed he had made. He had gleaned that the Blues would lie the night at Josselin, and proceed by way of Pontivy on the morrow.
Cadoudal required no map by which to plan his operations. He knew the country-side as he knew his pocket. Between Pontivy and the village of Pont Havion, a dozen miles of highway ran through country that was chiefly moorland, as wild and empty as any in France. At a point some four miles beyond Pont Havion the road skirted a wood that clothed the rising ground to the north. It was there that Cadoudal would deliver battle.
"I shall be in it," Quentin announced.
The Chouan looked dubious. "It's a peculiar form of warfare, ours. Unlike any you'll ever have seen."
"I've seen none. So it won't seem peculiar to me. I can ply a blade or handle a musket."
Cadoudal was relieved. "I was afraid you'd want a command. If it's just sport you seek, come by all means."
Sport was by no means Quentin's object. But he did not argue the point.
Some time before this, Hoche, in writing of his difficulties to the Convention, had complained: "I am engaged with an unseizable enemy. These Chouans seem to materialize suddenly out of the ground to deliver battle, and when it is over they melt away and vanish again in the same mysterious manner, so that even when we repel them it is impossible to render definite their defeat."
Of these Chouan methods Quentin was now to make acquaintance.
The little army, marshalled at evening in the clearing in the heart of La Noué, knelt in prayer before an oak that bore a great brass crucifix. A proscribed, refractory priest in a white surplice, over which he wore a stole of red, the colour of blood and symbolical of martyrdom, which is love's highest expression, pronounced a brief benedictory address. He assured them that there was remission of sins and assurance of salvation for those who fell in the cause of God's Altars.
Thus fortified, they set out in the dusk, and in a manner alien to all military conceptions. There were no banners, no drums, no trumpets, no marching formations swinging spiritedly shoulder to shoulder along the highway. They went off in the manner of a spreading fan, in little groups of threes and fours which vanished from the sight of one another through the woods.
Cadoudal kept a position somewhere in the middle of that invisible line. Three of his men were with him besides Quentin. St. Regent, who had insisted upon being of the party, was on the extreme left, commanding the detachment that in action should form a rear-guard, whilst a skilled Chouan leader named Guillemot was on the extreme right and in command of the section intended for the van.
Night, moonless but clear and bright with stars, had completely closed down when Cadoudal's little party emerged from the forest, and to Quentin it might have seemed that these five men were the only ones astir. Of the remaining four hundred there was neither sight nor sound.
They crossed the high road and a meadow beyond it that was sparsely planted with fruit trees, and they emerged into a lane between ditches, skirted a hamlet, and breasted slopes of a diminishing vegetation that brought them to a moorland plateau, arid and empty. At the end of an hour's steady trudging they came to a group of massive monoliths, the menhirs of a druidical cromlech. A little beyond it the track dropped again, to levels of increasing fertility; and then, moving in the dark with the unhesitating certainty of men to whom every yard of the ground is known, they turned aside and lowered themselves through the larches of a sharp declivity to a ravine at the bottom of which Quentin could hear the tinkle and rattle of a brook. By this cleft they continued their descent, until they found themselves once more upon level ground, with the outbuildings of a farmstead looming dimly ahead.
Here Cadoudal halted them, and uttered the thrice-repeated cry of an owl. After a waiting pause in which a man might count to twenty, he loosed the triple cry again.
Presently, ahead of them, a window revealed itself in a yellow flash, and vanished. Twice more in quick succession it sprang into light, and after that remained steadily glowing.
They went forward, across a cobbled yard, to a door which opened as they reached it. A lantern was thrust forward to reveal them to the bulky man who held it.
"And is it you, Georges! Come in."
It was already after midnight, and for three hours they rested in this farmstead, which was one of the established points in the Chouans' network of lines of communication. They supped on bread and cheese and ham and cider, and slept after that until within an hour of daybreak, when the farmer roused them.
Cadoudal kept horses here, and when they left he and Quentin were mounted. They had not far to go. Beyond the farmlands, which lay in a fold of the shallow hills, they climbed a heather-grown slope as day was breaking in a rosy glow. Once over the crown of it, they entered a belt of woodland that fell gently away to the Pontivy road at a point where it dipped into a hollow. As they advanced through this the owl's cry greeted them repeatedly, to inform them that the band, which had scattered from a point a dozen miles away, was here reassembling as concerted. Soon the men were revealed in groups, taking their ease until required for the raid.
With St. Regent and Guillemot, Cadoudal left the wood for the highway at the bottom of the hollow, to survey the ground which his dispositions were to turn into a death-trap for the Blues. He was short and sharp in his instructions. Guillemot was ordered to marshal his men under cover in line with the summit ahead, so as to close the way to the advance of the Republicans; St. Regent was posted similarly at the other summit, whence he could deploy upon their rear. The ambush between, at the foot of the hollow, would be Cadoudal's own care.
They posted sentries, and then the men broke their fast on such provisions as they had brought with them.
Not until close upon noon did the head of the Republican column, six men well in advance of the main body, acting as scouts, come into view on the brow of the hill. Next followed a couple of drummer lads, with their drums slung from their shoulders. There was no need to beat step at present, and the men marched in no sort of orderly formation; rather they trudged along in the relaxed fashion so common to the troops that fought the battles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
In all they amounted to a hundred men, and they were seen not to be National Guards, as had been reported, but infantry of the line in blue coats with white facings and black-gaitered legs. A two-horse chaise conveying the prisoners was in the middle of the contingent, the commandant on horseback beside it on the left.
They came on without suspicion, for the eyes of the scouts could detect no movement in the stillness of the wood. The leading half of them came abreast of Cadoudal's invisible muskets when the crack of his pistol gave the signal for a volley.
As the thunder of its echoes rolled away, men reeled or sank, some to rise again staggering, others to lie where they fell. Those who were unhurt halted and wheeled about, their muskets levelled, their voices raised in a babel of imprecations.
Instinctively, if disorderly, without awaiting any word of command, they answered the volley of the Chouans by a futile, ragged fire. Yet one bullet sent thus blindly through the trees found Cadoudal, who with Quentin was screened by no more than a tangle of brambles. He span half round with a groan and an oath, and would have fallen but that Quentin caught him in his arms. Gently he lowered him to the ground, so that he sat with his shoulders supported by a tree.
"Leave me," Cadoudal ordered him. "Take charge in my stead. You know what's to do. This is nothing. I need a blood-letting. I'm too plethoric. So Father Jacques says, and he's a doctor as well as a priest."
He had laid bare the wound. It was high in the right breast, and bleeding freely. "Send me Lazare. He understands these things. Don't waste time here. Take charge of the men."
Meanwhile the Republican commandant had ridden forth in frenzy from the shelter the chaise afforded him, shouting orders to go about, with no thought but to extricate his company from this ambuscade.
It was as a signal for the Chouans to disclose themselves.
St. Regent's men poured across the road to close the way of retreat, whilst Guillemot placed a solid phalanx ahead. The Chouans in the front rank of each detachment lowered themselves in genuflection, with muskets at the shoulder, whilst the file behind took aim over their heads.
The effect upon the soldiers of finding themselves thus covered front and rear was paralysing. Their commandant, however, though rendered frantic by lack of perception of how to meet such a situation, was far from intimidated. He perceived at least and instantly that to attack either of the disclosed bodies, he would have to charge uphill, and would probably see the whole of his company mown down before they could come to grips. And since if they remained in the open this might happen in any case, he decided to attack the party in the wood. Once within the timber he would be on equal terms with those in ambush, and would be at an advantage over those in the open.
So he swung his men to face the trees. "Charge!" he roared, waving them on with his sword.
He was obeyed with eagerness by men who understood the chances such tactics might afford them. But the beginning of that forward movement was stemmed by a volley from fifty muskets. A dozen Blues rolled in the dust.
"On! On!" the commandant urged the wavering ranks. "Forward!"
Then a single musket cracked, and his horse went down under him. He leapt clear, and sprang forward. "Follow me, my children!"
The answer was an enfilading fire on both his flanks, which accounted for another score of Republicans and broke the officer's spirit.
Trapped, helplessly held by superior numbers, nearly half his men out of action, his muskets might account for a few of the Chouans, but only at the price of the annihilation of the remainder of his company.
"Hold!" he yelled, in despair.
He stood forth, alone, facing the invisible enemy, and uncovering held up his hat. "This is a massacre. Quarter! I ask for quarter."
Quentin's neat figure, with nothing of the Chouan about it save the white cockade in his conical hat, slid round the bole of a tree on the very edge of the wood, and came fully and fearlessly into view.
From the little that he had seen of Chouans in action he trusted to the mercy of neither St. Regent nor Guillemot. Therefore, as Cadoudal's deputy, he decided to take matters into his own hands.
"We shed no more French blood than our safety demands. Throw down your muskets and your pouches."
For a moment the commandant, a tough, grizzled man of forty, who looked the professional soldier and might under the old regime have been a petty officer, seemed to hesitate, pain and anger in his grey face. Then ill-humouredly he shrugged.
"Ah, sacred name of a name, it's to make one die of rage!" He swung to his men. "You have heard, my children. The brigands are too many for us. Useless to the Nation to get ourselves butchered. So down with your arms."
Conscripts, young and raw, they were glad enough to hear such a command.
The Chouans swarmed out to collect the abandoned weapons and ammunition. There were odd jesters amongst them, with gibes for the conquered, but in the main they went about the business in grim silence.
Quentin, who had come forward among the first, thrust his way to the chaise.
From its window round eyes stared at him: stark fear in those of Madame de Chesnières; a glad amazement in Germaine's; and an affected irony in Constant's.
"God save us!" he cried, with a laugh. "If it isn't Monsieur de Carabas!"
"To serve you," said Quentin, his tone grim. He pulled open the door. "Pray give yourselves the trouble to alight."