The Scourge of God 28 – Bloundelle-Burton · Verses Across
Literature · Historical Fiction
The Scourge of God 28Baville--Superb!
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Literature · Historical Fiction
The Scourge of God 28
Baville--Superb!
Bloundelle-BurtonEnglish
There was a hush over the Court. Yet a hush broken and disturbed by many sounds. By the sobs of more than one woman, by the shuffling of many feet, by muttered ejaculations from those who strove to force their way nearer to where the judges sat beneath the Intendant, and once by a ribald laugh from a painted woman who leered at all around her and flung nods and smiles toward Montrevel--the woman Léonie Sabbat. By pushings, too, administered by brawny men who were possibly mountaineers to the Miquelets and even the Cravates, since if they were the former they feared not the latter; they had met before. Once an oath was heard muttered and the ominous sound of a blow, then a girl's shriek of horror. Yet at last some semblance of order was obtained, the proceedings were about to commence.
"Bring in the prisoner," exclaimed the presiding judge, Amédée Beauplan, a harsh and severe man who had sentenced countless Protestants to the various forms of death dealt out to those of that religion; and his words were re-echoed by the greffiers.
A moment later Martin Ashurst stood before all assembled there. And as he did so many women were heard to weep afresh. Perhaps his handsome manhood recalled to them some of their own men who had once stood where he was standing now. Alone among her sex Léonie Sabbat, who was eating Lunel grapes from a basket, laughed.
"Tiens!" she muttered, addressing herself to an elderly decorous-looking woman who was close by her, but who shrank away from the courtesan as though she were some noxious reptile, "regardez moi ça. A fool! One who might have had wealth, vast wealth. Now see him! Doomed to death, as he will be in an hour. I know his story. Tout même, il est beau!" and she spat the grape seeds out upon the floor at her feet.
Baville's eyes, roaming round the Court, yet apparently observing nothing, he seeming indeed supremely oblivious of all that was taking place, lighted casually upon two persons hemmed in by many others. A man well enough clad in a simple suit of russet brown, who looked somewhat like a notary's clerk, his wig en pleine échaudé covering the greater part of his cheeks, so that from out of it little could be seen but his eyes, nose, and mouth. An idle fellow, the Intendant deemed him, a scrivener who had probably brought his old mother to see the spectacle. For he held in his hand that of an aged woman whose eyes alone were visible beneath the rough Marseilles shawl with which her head was enveloped, and with, about her brow, some spare locks that were iron-gray.
The pair were not, however, always visible to Baville even from his raised seat; sometimes the movements of others by whom they were surrounded--of a fat and gloating monk, or of a weak and shivering Protestant, or of a crowd of gossips from out the streets--obscured them from him momentarily. Yet, as the trial went on, they came across his view now and again, the youth holding always the old woman's hand. And seeing that woman's hollow eyes fixed on him always, Baville shuddered. He knew her now, from a far-off yet well-remembered past; her face rose as a phantom rises.
That Martin, standing there, calm, almost indifferent, his hands folded on the rail in front of him, should be the principal object of attention in that crowded place was natural. For he was, as all knew, awaiting a sentence that must indubitably be awarded ere long. All knew also that the trial was but a preliminary farce leading up to the great dénoûment.
That trial, such as it was, drew near to its close. Witness had been heard; Montglas, who had seen Martin snatch Urbaine Ducaire from her coach and ride off with her; also the one man who had escaped from the massacre at the Château St. Servas; also the three men who had been present on the beach near Cette and had seen the English spy hand and glove with the Camisards--all had testified, Montglas alone with regret and emotion.
"You swear this is the truth?" Beauplan said to him, looking up from the papers on his desk before him. "There is no doubt?"
"It is the truth," the young dragoon had answered. "Yet I would that other lips had had to speak. He spared my life but yesterday when it was in his hands."
"He has led to the death of many others. Also he is an English spy. Mes frères," he went on, turning to each of the other judges and whispering low, so that none but the silent Intendant sitting above could hear, "what is our verdict? We need not long deliberate, I imagine."
Both those others fixed also their eyes upon him acquiescingly, yet neither spoke. Words were not wanted.
Then Beauplan, turning his head over his shoulder toward the man who represented the King's majesty, and seeing that he sat there calm and impassable, statue-like, inscrutable, rose from his seat and made three solemn bows to Baville.
"We await permission to pronounce sentence," he said.
"Pronounce--it," and Baville drew a long breath between the two words. Yet the handsome face changed not. Or only grew more ivory-like--so ivory-like that those standing in that hall, both enemies and adherents, cast back their thoughts to their dead whom they had seen lying in their shrouds ere the coffin lid closed over and hid them forever.
"What does he see that blasts him?" whispered Montrevel in Fléchier's ear, and the bishop, turning his own white face to the inflamed one of the great bravo, muttered, "God, he knows, he only."
In the crowd beyond the railed-off place where the principals sat the effect was the same. Among all who now fixed their eyes on Baville, the greater number asked: "What does he see?" and glanced over their shoulders as though expecting themselves to see something terrible.
"Can the dead rise?" exclaimed one swarthy Cévenole who, in any other circumstances than the present, would have been arrested for an attroupé ere he had been an hour in Nîmes; have been borne to the earth by the Cravates and loaded with chains ere hurried to a dungeon, so certain did it appear that he was a Camisard. "Can the burned ashes of our loved ones come together again, the limbs that have rotted on the gibbets be restored to life? Has one of those come back to paralyze him?" And he laughed bitterly.
"Il est lâche," whispered Léonie Sabbat through her small white teeth. "Mon Dieu! il a peur. Fichtre pour Baville!" and she pressed her plump jewelled hand on the shoulder of her unwilling neighbour as she craned her neck over the balcony to observe the man she jibed at.
Yet he was no coward. Only his heart sickened within him. With fear, but not the fear of either phantom risen from the dead or of fierce Camisard ready to send him to join the dead. Sickened at the sight of that aged woman who never took her eyes off him, who seemed about to address all assembled there. For he remembered her. Recognised her face now beyond all doubt. Remembered one night--how long ago it seemed!--when all the land lay under the snow, and when, at the foot of the mountains the tourbillon whirled down from the heights above great flurries of other snow which froze as it fell, and struck and cut the faces of those riding through the wintry storm as knives or whipcord strike and cut. Recalled how he himself riding through the tourmente, followed by a dozen of his guard, had to strike breast and body to prevent this freezing snow from ensheathing him in its swift, hardening masses. Yet of what account such memory as that compared to another which followed swiftly in its train!
The memory of a humble peasant's cot, a man stricken with years reading his Bible by the fireside, a child playing at his feet, rolling about the floor laughing and crowing as it teased a good-natured hound that endeavoured, unavailingly, to sleep before the crackling logs. Then a word from the man, another from him--O God! how fearfully, horribly misunderstood! Next, the room full of smoke and the smell of powder, the man gasping out his life, gasping, too, one last muttered sentence, whispering that he, Baville, was forever smitten by God's frown. And on the rude staircase that led from behind the deep chimney to the room above a comely woman standing, the little child clasped in her arms, her face distorted with terror, her voice shrieking that he was a murderer, an assassin.
A comely woman then, now an old one and before him, there, in the body of the Court.
What if she and Urbaine should meet? What if they had met?
The doomed man, the man upon whom Amédée Beauplan was about to pronounce sentence, had said that Cavalier had discovered those who knew her father, Urbain Ducaire. Was she one of those whom the Camisard chief had discovered, and had she told all?
"Is he mad?" some in the Court asked again, while others answered, "More like stricken with remorse or fear." Yet surely not the latter, since now he repeated his last words referring to the sentence.
"Pronounce--it."
Yet with his eyes never off that woman's face.
A moment later and it was done; the sentence delivered, even as it had been delivered again and again in Nîmes and Avignon, Montpellier and Alais within the last few months by red-robed legal functionaries, and, in countless bourgs and villages, by rough soldiers acting as judges. A sentence of death by the flames before the Beau Dieu of the cathedral, to take place at the time ordered by the King's representative, Baville. The ashes afterward to be scattered to the winds.
Yet, as Amédée Beauplan's voice ceased, others were heard in the Court, rising above all the noise made by the movement of the spectators passing out into the street, by the orders shouted from officers to men to clear that Court, and by the loud murmurings either of approbation or disapproval which were heard.
"It will never take place," one clear, high-toned voice was heard above all others to cry, "never. Ere it does, Nîmes shall be consumed to ashes."
And Martin, turning as the warders prepared to take him back to his cell, saw from whose lips that cry had come. From Cavalier, the man dressed in russet-brown and with his features hidden by the long black wig.
Perhaps, too, Baville suspected who might be the utterer of that ominous threat, for now he rose from his seat once more, again he stood erect and commanding; except for his pallor, which still remained, he was himself as ever.
"Stop!" he cried, his voice ringing like a clarion above all the other sounds, the shuffling of feet, the murmurings and mutterings, and the clank of sabres; "stop and hear my words!" And seeing that all eyes were turned toward him, he continued, his tones as firm and unshaken as though the events of the past hour had had no actual existence:
"In this hall to-day are present--I know it well--many who are rebels to the King's, to my authority. Men whose lives are forfeit even as the lives of countless others have been forfeited. Enough! To-day they are safe. This Court is open, but for to-day only. Let those rebels therefore take heed. For so sure as there is a God above us, so sure as I, Baville, Intendant of Languedoc and representative of his Majesty, stand here, those rebels who are found in this city at nightfall shall follow the same road their brethren have trod before them. You have called me the Tiger of Languedoc, and, by the splendour of Heaven, a tiger you shall still find me. Till rebellion is crushed forever from out this province, so long as I live, never will I spare one who takes up arms against the anointed King of France. Now," and he sank back on to his chair, "begone all of you out of Nîmes. To-night I cause a house-to-house visitation to be made--ay! a search from room to room. Those found here die. Begone, therefore, while there is yet time."
Then, without waiting to hear what answer might be made to his threats by any in the crowd, he rose and, passing to the heavily curtained door which led from out the Court, left them. Yet ere he did so, and even while the attendants held back that curtain for him to pass through, he paused once and, facing all there, gazed on them calmly.
A moment later he was gone; gone without hearing the curses and objurgations muttered by many lips, the loud "Brava" which Montrevel gave utterance to, or the little rippling laugh that issued from Léonie Sabbat's lips as again she struck her unwilling neighbour on the shoulder with her white hand and exclaimed, "Avec tout, il est superbe."
Had she seen him, however, the instant after the heavily figured arras had fallen behind him, she might have deemed he was less strong and masterful than she had a moment before grudgingly allowed him to be. For even as he passed down the passage which led to the door at which his heavily-gilt state-coach awaited him, an exact facsimile of that in which Le Roi Soleil himself travelled from Versailles to Marly or from St. Germain to Fontainebleau, he walked unsteadily and his white brow was moist and damp.
"If she should have met Urbaine," he muttered as he passed along the passage, "or if she should meet her, and tell all!"
