Book III Chapter 10 The Marquis of Carabas by Rafael Sabatini
THE AVENGER
The new-comer, a bulky fellow in baggy Breton breeches of soiled linen and green fustian jacket, a red night-cap drawn tight upon his fair hair, displayed to Quentin's amazed eyes the rosy countenance of Georges Cadoudal, whom he imagined miles away.
For a moment of mutual surprise the Chouan stood gazing at the émigrés, and they at him. Then Constant heaved himself up in truculence.
"What do you want here? What have you come back for?"
"By Our Lady of Auray! Here's a welcome for a brother-in-arms. What have I come back for? To bring you a visitor." He turned his head and spoke over his shoulder. "In here, Monsieur le Comte."
A brisk step and the jingle of a spur rang on the marble pavement of the hall, and a tall figure in a long black riding-coat came to fill the doorway.
The gentlemen of the Loyal Émigrant looked as if they beheld a ghost. They may have believed they did. For it was the Comte de Puisaye who stood before them; the man so confidently reported to have fled to England. He was followed by St. Regent.
He swept off the round black hat that shaded his brows, swept it off with a characteristic flourish and tossed it spinning to a chair. His face now fully disclosed showed grey and haggard. But the commanding haughtiness of its expression had abated nothing. He bowed theatrically.
"Serviteur, Messieurs!" There was a queer, biting mockery in his metallic tone.
He came slowly forward, a riding-switch held across his body in his two gloved hands, and his deep-set eyes pondered the group that sprawled on the floor beneath the window.
"What am I interrupting?" He looked round for an answer, but received none from those men who continued to stare at him in a sort of awe.
Cadoudal thrust past him. "Monsieur le Marquis! And was it you, then, who called for help?"
"Don't I look as if I needed it?" The three who had held him fell back before the Chouan's approach, and he sat up. "Good evening to you, Monsieur de Puisaye. You ask what you are interrupting. You'll hardly believe it from the appearances, but it's a court martial." He came to his feet, none hindering him now, and dusted his garments. "I stand charged with insubordination by gentlemen who certainly understand the crime."
Puisaye considered them. "A court martial. Most opportune. Being assembled, perhaps you will now sit in judgment upon me. I am accused--so I am told by my friend here, Georges Cadoudal--of cowardice and treason."
He paused there. Dominated by his masterfulness, uneasy under his scorn, not one of them ventured to answer him.
"Well, sirs?" He threw his hands apart in a gesture of submission. "I am here. Which of you will utter in my presence the indictment with which I understand that you are so free in my absence?"
Then Constant found voice and courage to give the company a lead. "Why you are at Coëtlegon you know best yourself. But if you think to carry things by insolence, we shall discover your mistake to you."
"Why I am here? First, to prove by my presence that I have not fled to England, as is stated by loose-tongued liars."
Here Guernissac, who felt himself directly challenged, made bold to answer him. "At least, you'll not deny that you fled from the fight, that you slunk off like a coward to the English Admiral's flagship. You'll not deny it to me, because I saw you go."
Puisaye displayed no resentment. "I went off to Sir John's flagship, as you say. But not as you suppose." And Cadoudal behind him laughed in contempt of the charge. "I went off in the discharge of my duty; the duty of a general to whom all played false. I went off so as to persuade Sir John to stand in with his ships, in a last hope that his guns might retrieve, or at least check, the disaster of the day. And he might well have done so. A frigate, in fact, did open fire on the Republicans, and was withering their battalions, when once again the gentlemen of the noblesse of France betrayed me. In contravention of my orders to stand firm, they entered into a capitulation and sent word of it aboard, demanding that the fire should cease."
"That is your tale, is it?" Constant sneered.
"That is my tale. To their own undoing, [as these quel proves,] those gentlemen on Quiberon would no more take my orders in the hour when I might yet have saved them than they would take them whilst it was in my power to lead them to certain and easy victory."
At this there was some fleering laughter.
"It is in character, I suppose," he quietly rebuked them, "that you should be amused by the consequences to the King's cause of the incompetence, the ill-will, the empty vanity and downright treachery which are the only qualities of which you gentlemen have given proof."
"Have you the effrontery to speak of treachery?" Constant asked.
Puisaye looked at him, and there was a deadliness in his cold, steady eyes. "I have scarcely come to it yet. I point to the fruits of it. That it has ruined me is nothing; but," and suddenly his tone was incisive as the edge of a knife, "that it should have ruined plans so long and laboriously laid, plans that I was years in perfecting, and that it should have rendered null the invaluable aid that none but I enjoyed the credit to procure from England, is the tragedy for which the monarchy must pay."
"Is that what you have come here to tell us?" was Guernissac's truculent question.
"Because if so," said Constant, "you waste your time. You do not impress us."
"Perhaps I shall before all is said. One reason why I am here is to prove to those liars who say that I fled to England that I am still in Brittany. I might have fled. Being aboard Sir John Warren's flagship I might have returned with him. But there were duties here in France still to be discharged. There were events to be investigated, so that I may render a full account to the British Government should I ever reach England again."
"That we can well believe," sneered Constant, and found one or two to sneer with him.
Puisaye left the sneer unheeded. "I spent five days in Vannes; in the lion's den, as you might say. I was there when Sombreuil paid with his life for the credulous folly of his capitulation. And with him went those others who had prevailed upon him to disregard my orders at the end, as my orders had been disregarded throughout this ill-starred adventure. Your brother, Monsieur de Chesnières, was amongst those whom I saw shot with him. The total of those massacred by the Republican fire on the warren of Vannes amounts, sirs, to some seven hundred."
It drew a cry of horror from his audience.
"That holocaust impresses you, I see. I hope it brings you--you who are assembled here to sit in judgment upon insubordination--I hope it brings you to reflect upon the dreadful guilt of those who by their insubordination to me, the Commander-in-Chief of the expedition, whether treacherous or just blindly stupid, have procured the shedding of so much good French blood."
"Who more guilty than yourself?" cried Constant.
"That is what I am here to tell you."
"That blood cries to Heaven for vengeance," raved Guernissac.
"To Heaven, no doubt. It cries also to me. Hear me yet a moment, sirs. There are amongst you here some officers of that division which left Quiberon under the Chevalier de Tinténiac, to be on Hoche's rear on the 16th at dawn." He seemed to swell before them now with the just indignation that was in him, and his vibrant voice beat out the words deliberately. "It was a last attempt toundo what the insubordination of an incompetent fool had done; and but for the failure of your division to keep that engagement it must have succeeded. Instead, to that failure are due the disaster of Quiberon, the rout of the Royal and Catholic Army and the massacres on the warren of Vannes. What, I ask you, are the desserts of those responsible?"
He dominated them completely. Even the bitter Guernissac quailed under the sweep of a glance that made each of them feel not merely accused but guilty.
He resumed. "Whilst down there at Quiberon we counted upon you in foolish confidence, you were making merry here in this very house to which you have now returned; like dogs to their vomit."
There was a mutter of indignation at the insult.
"Don't bay at me," he thundered back, and so silenced them again. "Whilst we made ready for action, trusting that loyal to your pledge you would be on your way to take up your positions, you were feasting and dancing and toying with the women brought here by a treacherous harlot to beguile you."
Here Constant broke through the spell that his just indignation, and their shamed sense of it, was weaving over them. "I think there has been enough of this. If you know so much you will also know that Tinténiac is dead. It is a vileness to malign him."
"It is not of Tinténiac that I complain. That was a loyal soul. As loyal as brave. Had he lived the engagement had been kept."
"You allude, then, to Bellanger. He, too, is dead."
"By your hand. I know. And so he cannot answer for his part in this betrayal. But you, Monsieur de Chesnières, remain."
"I?" Constant's dark eyes widened. He lost some colour.
"Can it be that I surprise you? Was it not your gross insubordination to Tinténiac in marching off with three thousand of his men that weakened the division and laid it open to the Republican attack in which Tinténiac was killed? Did not the events leading to the failure of this division to keep the engagement at Plouharnel follow out of that?"
There was no truculence in Constant now. A sense of peril invaded him, a sudden fear of this dominant man who towered before him like an incarnation of Nemesis. He faltered in glance and tone as he defended himself. "I was deceived by lies that Charette and his Vendeans were at Rédon beset by Grouchy."
"What lies could deceive a soldier who knew his duty, who had his orders?"
Constant stiffened. "I am not to be browbeaten. What I did then I would do again in the like circumstances."
"Do you dare to say so with the knowledge of an army destroyed and a wholesale massacre at Vannes in consequence of that mutiny?"
"Will you make me responsible for that?" Constant demanded, recovering in heat some of his spirit. "Will you make me the scapegoat of your treachery and your ineptitude? It will not serve, Monsieur de Puisaye. I am conscious of having acted only as my honour demanded."
"Honour!" Puisaye echoed, in withering scorn. "You talk of honour, do you? Honour! Ha! In what do I find you here engaged? Having failed by other means--and you have had recourse to many--to extinguish a life that stands between you and your succession to the marquisate of Chavaray, you contrive this comedy of a court martial and employ these poor deluded dupes of yours to do your murder for you."
There was no single outcry at this from those officers who might well have deemed themselves insulted. They remained mumchance, suddenly stricken by the charge; for it revived acutely their misgivings at the outset, their feeling that the matter was one for personal settlement between the parties, a feeling which had been overlaid and obscured by the political passions Guernissac had stirred up. With a painfully renewed consciousness of this, they looked at Constant, to see how he would receive that formidable accusation.
He stood tense and white, his hands working nervously at his sides. "On that I give you the lie, sir," he said. "And I can prove it. None stands between me and that succession since my brother Armand's death. Certainly not this bastard who pretends himself the son of Bertrand de Chesnières."
Puisaye's lip curled. "He can pretend it so successfully that you find it necessary to have him murdered. But you lead me to digress with your talk of honour. My concern is with the military duty in which your failure has wrought such irreparable havoc. For that you must pay, Monsieur de Chesnières. I am here to exact it."
"Pay!" Constant's face was momentarily blank. Then he masked his fear in bluster. He laughed. "You hear this ranter, gentlemen, this impudent traitor in the pay of Pitt."
But that was a pistol from which Puisaye had already shaken the false priming. There was no such response as Constant looked for. The company sat appalled, overawed.
"Leave my sins," the Count commanded. "At the proper time and in the proper quarter I will answer for them. At present you will answer to me for yours."
"I do not answer to you. I am not on my trial."
"It is perhaps unnecessary. You are already judged and sentenced. You will recall Tinténiac's words to you when you rode mutinously away with the Chouans you had seduced into following you. What were the exact words, Georges?"
Promptly Cadoudal quoted them: "'If you come back alive, I'll bring you before a court martial, and have you shot for this.'"
That rehearsal had power to drive Constant's fear deep into his soul and to drain the blood from his dark face. But in the next heart-beat, remembering the predominance of his numbers, he took courage in the conviction that the men of the Loyal Émigrant would stand by him, right or wrong, in a trial of strength with Puisaye. In that thought he recovered all his arrogance.
"You are singularly daring to come hectoring here," he said. "As daring as I have been patient in listening to you. For whatever I may have done, like yourself, I will answer at the proper time and in the proper place."
"I mean you to do so," Puisaye answered him, and added: "That time is now; that place is here."
"You want to laugh. When I answer it will be to my peers. I do not recognize your authority."
"There you state precisely your offence; the offence for which some thousands have perished."
"Look you, Monsieur de Puisaye, there has been enough of this. I must ask you to withdraw and to leave Coëtlegon at once, counting yourself lucky that you are permitted to do so."
Behind Puisaye Cadoudal loosed a laugh. "What a cockerel! And how he crows! Name of a name!"
Puisaye took a step forward. "Monsieur de Chesnières," he said quietly, "I have come to Coëtlegon to execute the sentence passed on you by the Chevalier de Tinténiac."
The shock of this dissolved the spell that Puisaye had woven. There was a sudden stir, some murmurs and a general rising. La Marche, Dumanoir and Guernissac closed about Constant as if to protect him, whilst in a quavering, indignant voice La Houssaye expressed the thought of all.
"Monsieur de Puisaye, there is a limit to what we can tolerate from you. Whatever authority you may once have possessed in the Royal and Catholic Army has long since passed from you." He rose. "I summon you to depart. I warn you that you linger at your peril."
An angry rumble followed to announce the gathering of a storm. Puisaye half turned. "At my peril, Georges!" he exclaimed. He shrugged. "There is no more to say."
"It is well for you that you perceive it at last," cried Guernissac with a recovery of truculence that was doomed to instant extinction.
Cadoudal had moved to the door. He threw open both wings of it, and to their angry consternation those gentlemen beheld a mob of armed Chouans close-packed in the great hall. To a beckoning sign from him a half-score of them marched in at once.
"There is your man," Cadoudal told them, pointing to Chesnières.
It produced a fierce clamour of oaths and shouts of "Betrayal!" and "Treachery!" Swords flashed out, and the émigrés about Constant stood in a posture of defence.
But Cadoudal had now taken charge. "On your lives," he admonished them, "let there be no resistance, or we'll cut him out from amongst you with our bayonets."
Behind the émigré group, Monsieur de Saussure, the subaltern, was opening one of the windows so as to escape, calling to his comrades to hold the brigands whilst he fetched the regiment.
"You'll provoke useless bloodshed," Cadoudal warned them with phlegm. "I have brought three hundred of my Morbihannais with me, and there are the men of St. Regent. We outnumber your company by two to one."
Nevertheless a brief resistance there was, with more Chouans pouring in from the hall to smother it. But for Puisaye's intervention, they would have indulged the ferocity which the foppish insolence of these allies had long since kindled in them. On his injunctions, however, they used the stocks of their muskets instead of the bayonets. The slender rapiers were beaten aside and broken, and whilst one of the Chouans was lightly pinked, there were some bleeding heads among his defenders before Constant was fast in the grip of his captors.
They dragged him, limp and trembling before Puisaye, who very tall and straight in his tight black coat, stood aloof from the scrimmage, with Quentin now beside him.
Cold, implacable, contemptuous, the Count waved the wretched man away. "You know what is to do, Georges."
"My God! My God!" Constant was almost screaming in his terror. "Am I to be murdered, then?" His eyes were wide, his olive tint was of a greenish pallor; the sweat glistened on his shallow brow.
Puisaye was unmoved. "We have a priest with us," he said. "He shall give you the only comfort justice permits us to afford."
"Justice!" raved the doomed man. "You beast! You murderer! This is a pretext for your infamy. You butcher me to make succession safe for that bastard impostor there who has been your jackal!" He made a wild appeal to Cadoudal. "Cadoudal! You at least are honest. Do you make yourself a party to this villainy? You will pay for it if you do, as that rascal will pay. You will be hunted for this by every Frenchman who counts himself a gentleman. Don't think that you'll escape their vengeance if you persist in this."
"Finissons!" was all the answer he had from the Chouan, who waved his men out with their prisoner.
But still he struggled. "At least hear me first, before you burden your soul with murder. I'll make it plain that this villain wants me murdered in the interest of Morlaix, an impostor who calls himself Marquis de Chavaray, a bastard who would rob me of my heritage. It's the truth, Cadoudal. I swear it in the face of death. In the face of death, do you hear? I can convince you if only you will listen."
Still raving and struggling he had reached the door. His late associates, ranged behind a line of Chouans looked on in impotent rage.
Quentin's hand gripped Puisaye's arm.
Constant's violence, that oath of his, "in the face of death," as he had said, had filled him with a sudden fear. It brought him a sudden illumination, cast light for him into depths unsuspected hitherto. He bethought him of the inexplicable circumstances of his upbringing from infancy in England, by a mother in exile who concealed from him his rank and heritage; he recalled how oddly Germaine had begged him not to pursue his claim to Chavaray, and how she had looked; in remembering the answer, when he had swung to the portrait of Bertrand de Chesnières, he was struck for the first time by the age at which his putative father had begotten him.
"Wait, sir," he begged. "In God's name, wait. Let me hear what he may have to say. Let him explain himself."
Puisaye did not move. "He can explain himself to a file of muskets."
"But if it should be the truth that . . ."
"Peace! What have I to do with that?" He spoke in a thunder of indignation that almost stunned Quentin's bewildered wits. "I execute the sentence passed by Tinténiac. I punish the only one left of those responsible for the ruin of Quiberon."
Leaving Quentin without an answer to this, he moved away, stalking deliberately towards the line of Chouans. Over their heads he spoke to the herded émigrés.
"Messieurs, there is nothing more for you to do here. The Loyal Émigrant has ceased to exist. The sauve qui peut has sounded. Coëtlegon may at any moment be invaded by the sansculottes; and after to-night there will not be a single Chouan here to aid in its defence. It is for you to scatter and make your way out of France as best you can. Or you may cross the Loire and join the army which Monsieur de Charette still keeps in the field." He signed to the Chouans to open their ranks. "I have no wish to detain you, sirs. You are at liberty to withdraw."
He made it plain that it was a command. La Houssaye, however, stood forward with an assumption of stiff dignity.
"Monsieur de Puisaye, you will have to answer for what you do in the case of Monsieur de Chesnières if you persist. I exhort you to . . ."
"You waste your time, sir, and mine. Be thankful that I am satisfied with Monsieur de Chesnières' expiation, and that I do not deal similarly with those of you who formed his staff. Be thankful, all of you, that I do not call you to account for what was doing here when I came; for abetting the pursuit of a private vengeance. Go, sirs."
La Houssaye pursed his lips, raised his brows, and flung out his arms in a gesture of angry helplessness. Then he led the way out. The others followed him, those who were whole assisting the three who had been damaged in the brief struggle.