Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France

by Stanley John Weyman

Within and about the door of the gatehouse some three-score archers and arquebusiers stood to their arms; not in array, but in disorderly groups, from which the babble of voices, of feverish laughter, and strained jests rose without ceasing. The westering sun, of which the beams just topped the farther side of the quadrangle, fell slantwise on their armour, and heightened their exaggerated and restless movements. To a calm eye they seemed like men acting in a nightmare. Their fitful talk and disjointed gestures, their sweating brows and damp hair, no less than the sullen, brooding silence of one here and there, bespoke the abnormal and the terrible. There were livid faces among them, and twitching cheeks, and some who swallowed much; and some again who bared their crimson arms and bragged insanely of the part they had played. But perhaps the most striking thing was the thirst, the desire, the demand for news, and for fresh excitement. In the space of time it took him to pass through them, Count Hannibal heard a dozen rumours of what was passing in the city; that Montgomery and the gentlemen who had slept beyond the river had escaped on horseback in their shirts; that Guise had been shot in the pursuit; that he had captured the Vidame de Chartres and all the fugitives; that he had never left the city; that he was even then entering by the Porte de Bucy. Again that Biron had surrendered the Arsenal, that he had threatened to fire on the city, that he was dead, that with the Huguenots who had escaped he was marching on the Louvre, that----

And then Tavannes passed out of the blinding sunshine, and out of earshot of their babble, and had plain in his sight across the quadrangle, the new façade, Italian, graceful, of the Renaissance; which rose in smiling contrast with the three dark Gothic sides that now, the central tower removed, frowned unimpeded at one another. But what was this which lay along the foot of the new Italian wall? This, round which some stood, gazing curiously, while others strewed fresh sand about it, or after long downward-looking glanced up to answer the question of a person at a window?

Death; and over death--death in its most cruel aspect--a cloud of buzzing, whirling flies, and the smell, never to be forgotten, of much spilled blood. From a doorway hard by came shrill bursts of hysterical laughter; and with the laughter plumped out, even as Tavannes crossed the court, a young girl, thrust forth it seemed by her fellows, for she turned about and struggled as she came. Once outside she hung back, giggling and protesting, half willing, half unwilling; and meeting Tavannes' eye thrust her way in again with a whirl of her petticoats, and a shriek. But before he had taken four paces she was out again.

He paused to see who she was, and his thoughts involuntarily went back to the woman he had left weeping in the upper room. Then he turned about again and stood to count the dead. He identified Piles, identified Pardaillan, identified Soubise--whose corpse the murderers had robbed of the last rag--and Touchet and St. Galais. He made his reckoning with an unmoved face, and with the same face stopped and stared, and moved from one to another; had he not seen the slaughter about "le petit home" at Jarnac, and the dead of three pitched fields? But when a bystander, smirking obsequiously, passed him a jest on Soubise, and with his finger pointed the jest, he had the same hard unmoved face for the gibe as for the dead. And the jester shrank away, abashed and perplexed by his stare and his reticence.

Half way up the staircase to the great gallery or guardroom above, Count Hannibal found his brother, the Marshal, huddled together in drunken slumber on a seat in a recess. In the gallery to which he passed on without awakening him, a crowd of courtiers and ladies, with arquebusiers and captains of the quarters, walked to and fro, talking in whispers; or peeped over shoulders towards the inner end of the hall, where the querulous voice of the King rose now and again above the hum. As Tavannes moved that way, Nançay, in the act of passing out, booted and armed for the road, met him and almost jostled him.

"Ah, well met, M. le Comte," he sneered, with as much hostility as he dared betray. "The King has asked for you twice."

"I am going to him. And you? Whither in such a hurry, M. Nançay?"

"To Chatillon."

"On pleasant business?"

"Enough that it is on the King's!" Nançay replied with unexpected temper. "I hope that you may find yours as pleasant!" he added with a grin. And he went on.