The Scourge of God: A Romance of Religious Persecution
"I know not," the girl replied, while in her manner, in her eyes, too,
was the haughty indifference to her captor which had surprised
Cavalier from the first. "I know not. Yet, since he was M. de
Baville's friend, it scarce seems possible he should have been."
"Listen," cried the Camisard chief, addressing all those who stood
around, "listen, my brethren. Among you are many no longer young, many
who can cast their memories back to the years ere this--this
demoiselle--could have been born. Some, too, who come from far and
wide, from where the waters of the sea lap our southern shores; from
where, also, Guienne on one side, Dauphiné on the other, touch our
border. Heard ever any of you of a Huguenot named Ducaire?" and as he
spoke he cast his eyes around all within the cavern.
But there came no affirmative answer. Only the repetition of that name
and the shaking of heads, and glances from eyes to eyes as each looked
interrogatively at the other.
"There must be some who, at least, have heard this name if--if La
Grande Marie divines truly--if this lady is in truth of our faith.
Yet--yet--the gift may have failed her now, have misled her."
"Test that gift, Cavalier," La Grande Marie exclaimed from where she
stood now among the others, and speaking in a clear voice, while her
filmy eyes, which seemed ordinarily to be peering into far-off space,
rested on him. "Test that gift. The woman is not the only one named as
being of our faith. Ask of the man."
As she spoke the eyes of Urbaine and Martin met, the minds of each
filled with the same thought. The knowledge that whereas hitherto to
have declared himself of their captors' faith would have led to his
being set free and no longer able to share her doom, his doing so now
would almost beyond all doubt prevent that doom from falling on her.
The acknowledgment that La Grande Marie had divined justly in his case
would cause them to believe that she had also done so in Urbaine's.
And knowing this--as she too, he felt, must know it--he did not
hesitate.
"She has pronounced justly," he said. "I am of the Reformed faith. A
Protestant."
Amid the murmurs that arose from all who surrounded those two
prisoners, amid their cries, in some cases exultant ones, that La
Grande Marie had never yet been mistaken and was not, could not be so
now; amid, too, their strongly expressed opinion that, since she had
been right as regards the man, therefore also she must be so as
regards the woman, Cavalier exclaimed:
"In heaven's name why not say so before? Also why risk your life as
you have done at the Château de Servas and here?"
"She was alone and defenceless," Martin exclaimed. "I desired to
protect her."
"Knowing that she too is a Protestant, by birth at least?"
"Nay, knowing only that she was a woman."
"Yet Baville's cherished ward?"
"Yes, his cherished ward."
Cavalier shrugged his shoulders and turned away. Perhaps the bitter
sufferings of all of his, of their, faith were too present to his mind
to make that mind, young as it was--he being not twenty--capable of
understanding such magnanimity. Also he did not know that the man
before him belonged to a land where, for now nearly fifteen years,
none had suffered for their religious opinions as over all France they
suffered horribly and were to suffer for still some years to come, and
that, consequently, he could not feel as strongly as they themselves
felt.
Whatever Cavalier might think, however, of the motives which had
prompted a man who avowed himself a Protestant to protect the
worshipped idol of the Protestant's greatest persecutor in the most
persecuted part of France, one thing was very certain: neither would
be put to death--the one because he was undoubtedly of their faith,
the other because, not being the actual child of Baville, she might in
truth have been born a Huguenot, as La Grande Marie had had revealed
to her. La Grande Marie! in whose auguries and predictions they
believed for the simple reason that, until now, all that she had
foretold, all that she had uttered as prophetic inspiration, had come
to pass.
They were safe so far!
CHAPTER XXI.
"YOU WILL NEVER FIND HIM."
"When you and your charge, Mademoiselle Ducaire, have left us you will
betray no secrets," Cavalier had said to Martin, as they stood side by
side watching the army of Montrevel on its way through the province?
Yet some weeks passed, and still they remained in the hands of the
Camisards, well treated, yet still there.
For their accommodation two large caverns had been prepared as
sleeping rooms; prepared, too, in such a manner as would indeed have
astonished the Camisards' enemies, the dwellers in the valleys below,
had they been able to observe them. To observe that Urbaine's
chamber--if such a name could be given to the vault in which she
slept--was furnished not only with comfort, but indeed luxury, her
bed, which had been constructed expressly for her by one of the
_attroupés_ who was a carpenter, being covered with fine white linen
and made soft with skins and rugs. Also the sides of the vault were
hung with tapestry and brocade; the ewer from which she poured water
was solid silver; the floor on which she trod was covered with carpets
made at Aubusson. Yet the girl shuddered as, nightly, daily, she
glanced round this luxuriously furnished cavern, knowing full well, or
at least being perfectly able to divine, whence all these things came;
for none who had ever knelt, as Urbaine had done since her earliest
recollection, at the altar of any church of the Ancient Faith could
doubt that that silver jug had been torn from some such altar which
had been devastated with the edifice itself; none who had seen the
luxurious fittings and adornments of the _noblesse_ of Languedoc could
doubt that the tapestries and hangings and rich fine linen had once
adorned the château of Catholic noblemen or gentlemen. Everything
which surrounded her, all--even to the choice plate off which they
both ate their meals, and the crystal glass from which they drank the
Ginestoux and Lunel placed before them--told the same story; the story
of robbery and pillage, of an awakened vengeance that spared nothing
and hesitated at nothing.
Both, too, were free now, free to wander on the mountain slopes, no
parole being demanded, since escape was impossible through those
closely guarded paths and defiles, a little mule being at the girl's
service when she chose to use it, an animal which had been captured
from Julien's forces during a defeat sustained by him and while
bearing on its back two mountain guns. Now those guns guarded, with
other captured cannon, one of the approaches from the valley, and the
mule was given over entirely to her service. Yet she rarely rode it,
preferring, indeed, to sit upon a high promontory whence, at sunset,
she could see the spires of distant cathedrals or churches sparkling
far down in the valley, sometimes with Martin by her side, sometimes
alone.
"Monsieur," she said to him now one crisp, sunny October afternoon as
together they strolled toward this promontory to watch the sunset,
"monsieur, why do you not go away, return to your own land? You will
have the chance soon to escape out of France forever. You heard what
the chief said last night, that an English agent was at Nîmes
endeavouring to discover what chance the fleet in the Mediterranean
will have of invading us there."
"You forget, mademoiselle. I am in their power; you forget that----"
"Nay," she exclaimed, "why speak thus? I know that you are free to go
to-morrow, to-night; that you might have gone long since had you
chosen. That you remain here only because you will not leave me alone
in their power. I know, I understand," and the soft, clear eyes stole
a glance into his.
"I saved you once, by God's mercy," he said. "I shall not leave you
now. Not until I return you to your father's arms. And take heart! It
will not be long. Whether Montrevel or my countrymen effect a landing
from the sea, you will be soon free. If the former happens, it will be
a rescue; if the latter, you will be detained no longer, since they
deem you beyond all doubt a Protestant."
"The woman was mistaken," she answered. "It is impossible."
"Yet Cavalier thinks he has confirmation of the fact. You know that he
has been in the valleys lately, even in Montpellier, disguised. He has
met one, an old woman, who knew Monsieur Ducaire, your real father.
You know that?"
"She has said so, yet I deem it impossible. Who is this woman?"
"She will not say. But he seems confident. And--and--even though my
religion is so hateful to you--think, think, I beseech you, of what
advantage to you it is to be deemed here one of our faith.
Mademoiselle, if that strange seer, that prophetess whose knowledge
astounds, mystifies me, had not proclaimed you one of them and a
Protestant, you would have been dead by now," and he shuddered as he
spoke.
"You wrong me," she said, "when you say that the Protestant--that
your--faith is hateful to me. It is only that I have been taught from
my earliest days to believe so strongly in my own, to regard nothing
as true but that. Also," she continued, "because it is yours, the
religion of you who have saved me, it could never be hateful to me."
And as she spoke the soft rose-blush came to her cheek and her eyes
fell. To her, and to Cavalier, Martin Ashurst had given a full account
of himself, concealing nothing, and at last not even hesitating to
avow himself an Englishman, a fact which, if known in any other part
of Louis' dominions but this Protestant and rebel stronghold, would
have led to his instant destruction. For England was pressing France
sorely now, trampling her under the iron heel of the vast armies
headed by Marlborough, attacking her on every coast she possessed,
even now sending a fleet under Sir Cloudesley Shovel to attempt a
landing at Cette and Toulon to succour and aid the Huguenots. Also it
was to her principally that France's cruelly-used subjects had been
fleeing for years, by her that they had been warmly welcomed and
humanely treated. What hopes of anything short of a swift and awful
death could an Englishman hope for at this time if caught in France?
Yet that he was safe in telling Urbaine Ducaire who and what he was he
never doubted, even though she, in her turn, should tell Baville; for,
since he meant himself to restore her to Baville's arms, it was not
too much to suppose that this restoration would cancel the awful
crime, in the eyes of the man who cherished this girl so, of being a
British subject.
Also he had told both of what had brought him to Languedoc--his quest
for the last of the de Rochebazons--and of how that quest had failed
up to now, must fail entirely, since it was impossible that any
investigations could be carried on in the distracted state of the
province at the present time. Nor did Cavalier, whose mind would have
better become a man of forty than one of twenty, give him any
encouragement to hope that he would ever find the man he sought.
"For, _figurez vous_," he remarked, "this land, this sweet, fair
Languedoc, has been a prey to dissension, slaughter, upon one side
only up till now" (and he laughed grimly as he spoke, perhaps at the
change which had come about), "to misery and awful wrongs for how
long? Long before this present king--this _Dieudonné_, this _Roi
Soleil_--came to the throne, and when his father _Le Juste_ was
harrying our fathers. _Le Juste!_" he repeated with bitter scorn, "_Le
Juste!_ A man who had a hundred virtues that became a valet--witness
his love for shaving his courtiers, for larding his own fillets of
veal, for combing his _mignon's_ wigs--and not one that became a
master, a king, except dissimulation! My God! he had that royal gift,