The Abbess Of Vlaye

by Stanley John Weyman

"Ay, we know him," the trooper answered sententiously. And, rising to his feet, he looked about him. "Best close that gate," he said, raising his voice. "If his people be on his track, as is likely, and come on us before we can make it clear, it may be awkward! See to it, some of you. And do you, Jasper, take horse and tell the Captain, and get his orders."

Two or three of the men, whom the event had most sobered, strode across the court to do his bidding. Roger looked from one to another of those who remained. "But who is he?" he asked. His curiosity was piqued, the more sharply as it was evident that the presence of this man who lay before him, wounded and unconscious, altered, in some fashion, the whole position.

"Who is he?" the former spokesman answered roughly. "Father Angel, to be sure! You have heard of him, I suppose, young sir?"

"Father Angel?" Roger repeated incredulously. "A priest? Impossible!"

"Well, a monk."

"A monk?"

"Ay, and a marshal for the matter of that!" the trooper rejoined impatiently. "Here, lift him, you! Gently, gently! Man, it is the Duke of Joyeuse," he continued, addressing Roger. "You have heard of him, I take it? Now, step together, men, and you won't shake him! We must lay him in the dining-hall. He will do well there." And again to Roger, who walked with him behind the bearers, "If you don't believe me, see here," he said. "Tis plain enough still!" And taking a burning splinter of wood from one of the others he held it so that the light fell on the crown of the wounded man's head. There discernible amid the long fair hair was the pale shadow of a tonsure.

"Father Angel?" Roger repeated in wonder, as the men bearing their burden stepped slowly and warily on to the bridge.

"Ay, no other! And riding on what mad errand God knows! It was an unlucky one for Ampoule. But they are all mad in that house! Coutras saw the end of one brother, Villemar of another; there are but this one and the Cardinal left! Look your fill," he continued, as the men under his direction carried their burden up the three or four steps that led from the outer hall--where the fire Ampoule had knocked together still burned on the dogs--to the dining-hall. "Monk and Marshal, Duke and Capuchin, angel and devil, you'll never see the like again!"

Probably his words were not far from the mark. Anne, the eldest of the four brothers, by whom and by whose interest with King Henry the Third the house had risen from mediocrity to greatness, from respectability to fame, had fallen at Coutras encircled by the old nobility whom he had led to defeat. His brother, Antony Scipio, young as he was, had taken charge for the League in Languedoc, had pitted himself against the experience of Montmorency, and for a time had carried it. But his minor successes had ended in a crushing defeat at Villemar on the Tarn, and he had drowned his chagrin in its icy waters, cursing and swearing, says the old chronicler, to the last. The event had drawn from his monastery the singular man on whom Roger now looked, Henry, third of the brothers, third Duke of the name, the fame of whose piety within the cloister was only surpassed by that of his excesses in the world; who added to an emotional temperament and its sister gift of eloquence the feverish energy and headlong courage of his race. Snatching the sword fallen from his brother's hands, in five and twenty months he had used it with such effect as to win from the King the baton of a marshal as the price of his obedience.