The jewel made their way easy, for through that gate Henry of Guise himself had passed in the small hours. “Half an hour ago,” the lieutenant of the watch told them, “I opened to another party which bore the Duke's credentials. They were for Amiens to spread the good news.”
“Had they a priest with them?”
“Ay, a Jacobin monk, who cried on them to hasten and not spare their horses. He said there was much to do in the north.”
“I think the holy man spoke truth,” said Gaspard, and they rode into open country.
They broke their fast on black bread and a cup of wine at the first inn, where a crowd of frightened countrymen were looking in the direction of Paris. It was now about seven o'clock, and a faint haze, which promised heat, cloaked the ground. From it rose the towers and high-peaked roofs of the city, insubstantial as a dream.
“Eaucourt by the waters!” sighed Gaspard. “That the same land should hold that treasure and this foul city!”
Their horses, rested and fed, carried them well on the north road, but by ten o'clock they had overtaken no travellers, save a couple of servants, on sorry nags, who wore the Vidame of Amiens' livery. They were well beyond Oise ere they saw in the bottom of a grassy vale a little knot of men.
“I make out six,” said Champernoun, who had a falcon's eye. “Two priests and four men-at-arms. Reasonable odds, such as I love. Faith, that monk travels fast!”
“I do not think there will be much fighting,” said Gaspard.
Twenty minutes later they rode abreast of the party, which at first had wheeled round on guard, and then had resumed its course at the sight of the white armlets. It was as Champernoun had said. Four lusty arquebusiers escorted the Jacobin. But the sixth man was no priest. He was a Huguenot minister whom Gaspard remembered with Conde's army, an elderly frail man bound with cruel thongs to a horse's back and his legs tethered beneath its belly.