The Abbess Of Vlaye Read online

  INTRODUCTION.

  A KING IN COUNCIL.

  Monsieur des Ageaux was a man of whom his best friends could not saythat he shone, or tried to shine, in the pursuit of the fair sex. Hewas of an age, something over thirty, when experience renders moreformidable the remaining charms of youth; and former conquests whetthe sword for new emprises. And the time in which he lived andgoverned the province of Perigord for the King was a time in which thefavour of ladies, and the good things to be gained thereby, stood formuch, and morality for little. So that for the ambitious the path ofdalliance presented almost as many chances of advancement as the morestrenuous road of war.

  Yet des Ageaux, though he was an ambitious man and one whose appetitesuccess--and in his degree he had been very successful--had butsharpened, showed no inclination to take that path, or to rise bytrifling. Nay, he turned from it; he shunned if he did not dislike theother sex. Whether he doubted his powers--he was a taciturn, graveman--or he had energy only for the one pursuit he loved, thegovernment of men, the thing was certain. Yet he was not unpopulareven at Court, the lax Court of Henry the Fourth. But he was known fora thoughtful, dry man, older than his years and no favourite withgreat ladies; of whom some dubbed him shy, and some a clown, andall--a piece of furniture.

  None the less, where men were concerned, he passed for a man moreuseful than most; or, for certain, seeing that he boasted no greatclaims, and belonged to no great family, he had not been Governor of aprovince. Governors of provinces in those days were of the highest;cousins of the King, when these could be trusted, which was rare;peers and Marshals of France, great Dukes with vast hereditarypossessions, old landed Vicomtes, and the like. Only at the tail ofthe list came some half-dozen men whom discretion and service, or theplayfulness of fortune had--_mirabile dictum_--raised to office. Andat the tail of all came des Ageaux; for Perigord, his province, landof the pie and the goose liver, was part of the King's demesne, theKing was his own Governor in it, and des Ageaux bore only the title of"Lieutenant for the King in the country of Perigord."

  Yet was it a wonderful post for such a man, and many a personage, manya lord well seen at Court, coveted it. All the same the burden washeavy; a thing not to be dismissed in a moment. The King found him nomoney, or little; no men, or few. Where greater Governors used theirown resources he had to use--economy. And to make matters worse theman was just; it was part of his nature, it was part of his passion,to be just. So where they taxed not legally only, but illegally, hescrupled, he held his hand. And, therefore, though his dignity wasalmost as high as office could make it, and his power in his owncountry not small, no man who ever came to Court went with lesssplendour in the streets of Paris, or with a smaller following.Doubtless, as a result of this, a few despised him; a few even, makingcommon cause with the Court ladies, and being themselves semi-royal,and above retort, flouted him as a thing negligible.

  But, on the whole, he passed, though dry and grave, for a man to beenvied, the ladies notwithstanding. And he held his own tolerably, andhis post handsomely until a certain day in the summer of 1595, whenword came to the young Governor to cross half France to meet the Kingat Lyons; where, in the early part of that year, Henry the Fourth lay,and was ill-content with a world which, on the surface, seemed to betreating him well.

  But on the surface only. The long wars of religion, midway in whichthe Massacre of Bartholomew stands up, like some drear gibbet landmarkin a waste, were, indeed, virtually over. Not only had Henry come tothe throne, but Paris, his capital, was his at last; had he not boughtit eighteen months before by that mass, that abjuration of Protestanterrors, of which the world has heard so much? And not Paris only.Orleans and Bourges, and this good city of Lyons, and Rouen, all werehis now, and in their Notre-Dames or St.-Etiennes had sung their _TeDeums_, and more or less heartily cried "God save the King!" At last,after six years of fighting, of wild horse forays, that flamed acrossthe Northern corn-lands, after a thousand sleepless nights and as manydays of buying and bartering--at last the lover of Gabrielle, who wasalso the most patient and astute of men, was King of France and ofNavarre, lord of all this pleasant realm.

  Or, not lord; only over-lord, as six times a day they made him know.Nor even that, of all. For in Brittany a great noble still went hisown way. And in Provence a great city refused to surrender. Andnorth-eastwards Spain still clung to his border. Nevertheless it wasnone of these things filled Henry, the King, with discontent. It wasat none of these things that he swore in his beard as he sulked at theend of the long Council Table this June morning; while des Ageaux,from his seat near the bottom of the board, watched his face.

  In truth Henry was discovering, that, having bought, he must pay; thatso great was the mortgage he had put on his kingdom, the profitsbelonged to others. Overlord he was--lord, no; except perhaps in Lyonswhere he lay, and where for that reason the Governor had to mind hismanners. But in smiling Provence to south of him? Not a whit. The Dukeof Epernon ruled the land of Roses, and would rule until the youngDuke of Guise, to whom His Majesty had given commission, put him out;and then Guise would rule. In Dauphiny the same. In Languedoc, thegreat middle province of the south, Montmorency, son to the oldConstable, was King in fact; in Guienne old Marshal Matignon. InAngoumois--here Epernon again; so firmly fixed that he deigned only torule by quarterly letters from his distant home. True in Poitou was anobedient Governor, but the house of Tremouille from their red castleof Thouars outweighed his governorship. And in rocky Limousin theGovernor could keep neither the King's peace nor his own.

  So it was everywhere through the wide provinces of France; and Henry,who loved his people, knew it, and sulkily fingered the papers thattold of it. Not that he had need of the papers. He knew before he casteye on them in what a welter of lawlessness and disorder, of privatefeud and public poverty, thirty years of civil war had left hiskingdom. One province was in arms, torn asunder by a feud between twogreat houses. Another laboured in the throes of a peasant rising, itshills alight night after night with the flames of burning farmsteads.A third was helpless in the grip of a gang of brigands, who held theroads. A fourth was beset by disbanded soldiers. The long wars ofreligion had dissolved all ties. Everywhere monks who had left theirabbeys and nuns who had left their convents swarmed on the roads, withsturdy beggars, homeless peasants, broken gentry. Everywhere, beyondthe walls of the great cities, the law was paralysed, the greatcommitted outrage, the poor suffered wrong, the excesses of warenured, and, in this time of fancied peace, took grimmer shape.

  He whom God had set over France, to rule it, knew these things and sathopeless, brooding over the papers; hampered on the one side by lackof money, on the other by the grants of power that in evil days hadbought a nominal allegiance. He began to see that he had won only thefirst bout of a match which must last him his life. Nor would it haveconsoled him much to know that in the college of Navarre that dayplayed a little lad, just ten years old, whose frail white hand wouldone day right these things with a vengeance.

  His people cried to him, and he longed to help them and could not.From a thousand market-places, splayed wooden shelters, covering eachits quarter-acre of ground, their cry came up to him: "Give us peace,give us law!" and he could not. No wonder that he brooded over thepapers, while the clerks looked askance at him, and the great lordswho had won what he had lost whispered or played tric-trac at theboard. Those who sat lower, and among these M. des Ageaux, were lessat their ease. They wondered where the storm would break, and fearedeach for his own head.

  Presently M. de Joyeuse, one of the great nobles, precipitated theoutburst. "You have heard," said he, twiddling a pen between hisdelicate fingers, "what they call these peasants who are ravagingPoitou, sire?"

  Before the King could answer the Governor of Poitou protested from hisplace lower down the table. "They are none of mine," he said. "It isin the Limousin next door to me that they are at work. I wash my handsof them!"

  "They are as bad on your side as on
mine!" he of the barren Limousinretorted.

  "They started with you!" Poitou rejoined. "Who kindles a fire shouldput it out."

  The King raised his hand for silence. "No matter who is responsible,the fact remains!" he said.

  "But you have not heard the jest, sire," Joyeuse struck in. His thinhandsome face, pale with excess, belied eyes thoughtful and dreamy,eyes that saw visions. He had been a King's favourite, he had spentyears in a convent, he had come forth again, now he was head of thegreat Joyeuse house, lord of a third of Languedoc. By turns "FatherAngel"--for he had been a noted preacher--and Monseigneur, there werethose who predicted that he would some day return to the cloister anddie in his hood. "They call them the Tards-Avises," he continued,"because they were foolish enough to rise when the war was over."

  "God pity them!" the King said.

  "_Morbleu!_ Your Majesty is pitiful of a sudden!" The speaker was theConstable de Montmorency. He was a stout, gruff, choleric man, born,as the Montmorencys were, a generation too late.

  "I pity them!" the King answered a trifle sharply. "But you"--he spoketo the table--"neither pity them nor put them down."

  "You are speaking, sire," one asked, "of the Crocans?" It was so; fromthe name of a village in their midst, they called these revoltedpeasants of the Limousin of whom more will be said.

  "Yes."

  "They are not in my government," the speaker replied. "Nor in mine!"

  "Nor mine!" And so all, except the Governor of the Limousin and theGovernor of Poitou, who sat sulkily silent.

  Another of the great ones, Marshal Matignon, nodded approval. "Letevery man shoe his own ass," he said, pursing up his lips. He was awhite-haired, red-faced, apoplectic man of sixty, who thought that inpersuading the Estates of Bordeaux to acknowledge Henry he had earnedthe right to go his own way. "Otherwise we shall jostle one another,"he continued, "and be at blows before we know it, sire! They are inthe Limousin; let the Governor put them down. It is his business andno other's."

  "Except mine," the King replied, with a frown of displeasure. "And ifhe cannot, what then?"

  "Let him make way, sire, for one who can," the Constable answeredreadily. "Your Majesty will not have far to look for him," hecontinued in a playful tone. "My nephew, for instance, would like agovernment."

  "A truce to jesting," Henry said. "The trouble began, it is true,in the Limousin, but it has spread into Poitou and into theAngoumois"--he looked at Epernon's agent, for the Duke of Epernon wasso great a man he had not come himself. "Gentlemen," the Kingcontinued, sitting back in his great chair, "can you not come to someagreement? Can you not mass what force you have, and deal with themshortly but mercifully? The longer the fire burns, the more troublewill it be to extinguish it, and the greater the suffering."

  "Why not let it burn out, sire?" Epernon's agent muttered with thinlyveiled impudence. "It will then burn the more rubbish, with yourMajesty's leave!"

  But, the words said, he quailed. For, under his aquiline nose, theKing's mustaches curled with rage. There were some with whom he mustbear, lords who had brought him rich cities, wide provinces; andothers whose deeds won them licence. But this man? "There spoke thehireling!" he cried. And the stroke went home, for the man was theonly one at the table who had no government of his own. "I will spareyour attendance, sir," the King continued, with a scornful gesture."M. de Guise will answer such questions as arise on your master's lategovernment--of Provence. And for his other government----"

  "I represent him there also," the man muttered sulkily.

  "Then you can represent his absence," Henry retorted with quick wit,"since he is never there! I need you not. Go, sir, and see that withinthree hours you are without the walls of Lyons!"

  The man rose, divided between fear of the King and fear of the masterto whom he must return. He paused an instant, then went down the roomslowly, and went out.

  "Now, gentlemen," Henry continued, with hard looks, "understand. Youmay shoe each his own ass, but you must shoe mine also. There must bean end put to this peasant rising. Who will undertake it?"

  "The man who should undertake it," Matignon answered, "for the ass isof his providing, is the gentleman who has gone out."

  "He is naught!"

  "He is for much in this."

  "How? Sometimes," the King continued irritably, "I think the men areshod, and the asses come to my Council Table!"

  This was a stroke of wit on a level with the Constable's discernment;he laughed loudly. "Nevertheless," he said, "Matignon's right, sire.That man's master is for a good deal in this. If he had kept order hisneighbour's house would not be on fire."

  For the first time M. des Ageaux ventured a word from the lower end ofthe table. "Vlaye!" he muttered.

  The Constable leaned forward to see who spoke. "Ay, you've hit on it,my lad, whoever you are. Vlaye it is!" And he looked at Matignon, whonodded his adhesion.

  Henry frowned. "I am coming to the matter of Vlaye," he said.

  "It is all one, sire," Matignon replied, his eyes half shut. Hewheezed a little in his speech.

  "How?"

  The Constable explained. He leant forward and prodded the table with ashort, stout finger--not overclean according to the ideas of a latertime. "Angoumois is there," he said. "See, your Majesty. And Poitou ishere"--with a second prod an inch from the first. "And the Limousin ishere! And Perigord is there! And see, your Majesty, where their skirtsall meet in this corner--or as good as meet--is Vlaye! Name of God, astrong place, that!" He turned for assent to old Matignon, who noddedsilently.

  "And you mean to say that Vlaye----"

  "Has been over heavy handed, your Majesty. And the clowns, beginningto find the thing beyond a joke, began by hanging three poor devils oftoll gatherers, and the thing started. And what is on everybody'sfrontier is nobody's business."

  "Except mine," the King muttered drily. "And Vlaye is Epernon's man?"

  "That is it, sire," the Constable answered. "Epernon put him in thecastle six years back for standing by him when the Angouleme peoplerose on him. But the man is no Vlaye, you understand. M. de Vlaye wasin that business and died of his wounds. He had no near heirs, and theman whom Epernon put in took the lordship as well as the castle, thename and all belonging to it. They call him the Captain of Vlaye inthose parts."

  The King looked his astonishment.

  "Oh, I could give you twenty cases!" the Constable continued,shrugging his shoulders. "What do you expect, sire, in such times asthese?"

  "Ventre St. Gris!" Henry swore. "And not content with what he has got,he robs the poor?"

  "And the rich, too," Joyeuse murmured with a grin, "when he gets theminto his net!"

  Henry looked sternly from one to another. "But what do you while thisgoes on?" he said. "For shame! You, Constable? You, Matignon?" Heturned from one to the other.

  Matignon laughed wheezily. "Make me Governor in Epernon's place,sire," he said, "and I will account for him. But double work andsingle pay? No, no!"

  The Constable laughed as at a great joke. "I say the same, sire," hesaid. "While Epernon has the Angoumois it is his affair."

  The King looked stormily at the Governor of Poitou. But Poitou shookhis head. "It is not in my government," he said moodily. "I cannotafford, sire, to get a hornets' nest about my ears for nothing."

  He of the Limousin fidgeted. "I say the same, sire," he muttered."Vlaye has three hundred spears. It would need an army to reduce him.And I have neither men nor money for the task."

  "There you have, sire," the delicate-faced Joyeuse cried gaily, "threehundred and one good reasons why the Limousin leaves the man alone.For the matter of that"--he tried to spin his pen like a top--"thereis a government as deeply concerned in this as any that has beennamed."

  "Which?" Henry asked. He was losing patience. That which was so muchto him was nothing to these.

  "Perigord," Joyeuse answered with a bow. And at that several laughedsoftly--but not the King. He was himself, as has been said, Governorof Perigord.

 
; Here at last, however, was one on whom he could vent his displeasure;and he would vent it! "Stand up, des Ageaux!" he cried harshly. And hescowled as des Ageaux, who was somewhat like him in feature, rose fromhis seat. "What have you to say, man?" Henry cried. "For yourself andfor me! Speak, sir!" But before des Ageaux could answer, the Kingbroke out anew--with abuse, with reproaches, giving his passion rein;while the great Governors listened and licked their lips, or winked atone another, when the King hit them a side blow. Presently, when desAgeaux would have defended himself, alleging that he was no deeper infault than others,

  "Ventre St. Gris! No words, sir!" Henry retorted. "I find kings enoughhere, I want not you in the number! I made not you that I might haveyour nobility cast in my teeth! You are not of the blood royal, noreven," leaning a little on the word, "Joyeuse or Epernon! Man, I madeyou! And not for show, I have enough of that--but to be of use andservice, for common needs and not for parade--like the gentleman,"bitterly, "who deigns to represent me in the Limousin, or he who is sogood as to sign papers for me in Poitou! Man alive, it might bethought you were peer and marshal, from your way of idling here, whilerobbers ride your marches, and my peasants are driven to revolt. Goto, do you think you are one of these?" He indicated by a gesture thegreat lords who sat nearest him. "Do you think that because I madeyou, I cannot unmake you?"

  The man on whom the storm had fallen bore it not ignobly. It has beensaid that he featured Henry himself, being prominent of nose, with agrave face, a brown beard, close-cropped, and a forehead high andsevere. Only in his eyes shone, and that rarely, a gleam of humour.Now the sweat stood on his brow as he listened--they were cruel blows,the position a cruel one. Nevertheless, when the King paused, and hehad room to answer, his voice was steady.

  "I claim, sire," he said, "no immunity. Neither that, nor aught butthe right of a soldier, who has fought for France----"

  "And gallantly!" struck in one, who had not yet spoken--Lesdiguieres,the Huguenot, the famous Governor of Dauphiny. He turned to the King."I vouch for it, sire," he continued. "And M. de Joyeuse, who has thebetter right, will vouch for it, too."

  But Joyeuse, who was sulkily prodding the table with his spoiled pen,neither lifted his eyes nor gave heed. He was bitterly offended by thejunction of his name with that of Epernon, who, great and powerful ashe was, had had a notary for his father. He was silent.

  Des Ageaux, who had looked at him as hoping something, lifted hiseyes. "Your Majesty will do me the justice to remember," he said,"that I had your order to have a special care of my province; and tomass what force I could in Perigueux. Few men as I have----"

  "You build them up within walls!" Henry retorted.

  "But if I lost Perigueux----"

  The King snarled.

  "Or aught happened there?"

  "You would lose your head!" Henry returned. He was thoroughly out oftemper. "By the Lord," he continued, "have I no man in my service?Must I take this fellow of Vlaye into hire because I have no honestman with the courage of a mouse! You call yourself Lieutenant ofPerigord, and this happens on your border. I have a mind to break you,sir!"

  Henry seldom let his anger have vent; and the man who stood before himknew his danger. From a poor gentleman of Brittany with something ofpedigree but little of estate, he had risen to this post which eightout of ten at that table grudged him. He saw it slipping away; nay,falling from him--falling! A moment might decide his fate.

  In the pinch his eyes sought Joyeuse, and the appeal in them was notto be mistaken. But the elegant sulked, and would not see. It wasclear that, for him, des Ageaux might sink. For himself, theLieutenant doubted if words would help him, and they might aggravatethe King's temper. He was bravely silent.

  It was Lesdiguieres, the Huguenot, who came to the rescue. "YourMajesty is a little hard on M. des Ageaux," he said. And the King'slieutenant in Perigord knew why men loved the King's Governor inDauphiny.

  "In his place," Henry answered wrathfully, "I would pull down Vlaye ifI did it with my teeth. It is easy for you, my friend, to talk," hecontinued, addressing the Huguenot leader. "They are not your peasantswhom this rogue of a Vlaye presses, nor your hamlets he burns. I haveit all here--here!" he repeated, his eyes kindling as he slapped withhis open hand one of the papers before him, "and the things he hasdone make my blood boil! I swear if I were not King I would turnCrocan myself! But these things are little thought of by others.M. d'Epernon supports this man, and"--with a sudden glance atMatignon--"the Governor of Guienne makes use of his horses when hetravels to see the King."

  Matignon laughed something shamefacedly. "Well, sire, the horses havedone no harm," he said. "Nor he in my government. He knows better. Andthings are upside down thereabouts."

  "It is for us to right them!" Henry retorted. And then to des Ageaux,but with less temper. "Now, sir, I lay my order on you! I give you sixweeks to rid me of this man, Vlaye. Fail, and I put in your place aman who will do it. You understand, Lieutenant? Then do not fail. Bythe Lord, I know not where I shall be bearded next!"

  He turned then, but still muttering angrily, to other business.Matignon and the Constable were not concerned in this; and as soon asthe King's shoulder was towards them they winked at one another. "Yournephew will not have long to wait," Matignon whispered, "if alieutenancy will suit him."

  "'Twould be a fair start," the Constable answered. "But a watchedpot--you know the saying."

  "This pot will boil at the end of six weeks," Matignon rejoined with afat chuckle. "Chut, man, with his wage a year in arrear, and naughtbehind his wage, where is he to find another fifty men, let alonethree or four hundred? He will need five and twenty score for this,and he dare not move a man!"

  "He might squeeze his country?" the Constable objected.

  "Pooh! He is a fool of the new school! He will go back to his cabbagesbefore he will do that! I tell you," he continued, laying his hand onthe other's knee, "he has got Perigord, the main part of it, intoorder! Ay, into order! And if he don't go, we shall have to mend ourmanners," with a grin, "and get our governments into order, too!"

  "By the Lord, there is no finger wags in my country unless I will it!"the Constable rejoined with some tartness. "Since he"--he indicatedJoyeuse--"came over to us, at any rate! Don't think it! But thereit is. If there were no whifflesnaffles here and there, and noblood-letting, it would not suit us very well, would it? You don'twant to go to cabbage planting, Marshal, more than I do?"

  The Marshal smiled.

  * * * * *

  Late that night the young Duke of Joyeuse, leaving his people at theend of the street, went by himself to the house in which des Ageauxlodged in Lyons. A woman answered his summons, and not knowing theyoung grandee--for he was cloaked to the nose--fetched the Bat, anold, lean, lank-visaged captain who played squire of the body to desAgeaux. The Bat knew the Duke in spite of his cloak; perhaps he hadhim for a certain reason in his mind. And he bowed his long, stiffback before him, and would have fetched lights; yet with a glum face.But the Duke answered him shortly that he wanted no more than a wordwith his master, and would say it there.

  On which, "You are too late, my lord," the Bat rejoined; and Joyeusesaw that with all his politeness he was as gloomy as his name. "Heleft Lyons this afternoon."

  "With what attendance?" the Duke asked in great surprise. For he hadnot heard of it.

  "Alone, my lord Duke."

  "Does he return to-morrow?"

  "I know not."

  "But you know something!" the young noble retorted with more ofvexation than the circumstances seemed to justify.

  "My lord, nothing," the Bat answered, "save that we are ordered tofollow him to-morrow by way of Clermont."

  "To his province?"

  "Even so, my lord."

  Joyeuse struck his booted foot against the pavement, and the sombreBat, whose ears--some said he got his name from them--were almost aslong as his legs, caught the genial chink of gold crowns. It was suchmusic as he seldom heard, for he had a vision o
f a heavy bag of them;and his eyes glistened.

  But the chink was all he had of them. Joyeuse turned away, and with astifled sigh and a shrug went back to the play-table at theArchbishop's palace. Sinning and repenting were the two occupations inwhich he had spent one half of his short life; and if there was athing which he did with greater ardour than the first--it was thesecond.