The Scourge of God: A Romance of Religious Persecution
"No," the other answered, his voice still broken, his eyes still on
the ground.
"What has changed your belief against the evidence you speak of?"
"You murmured her name but now in your slumbers, spoke of her as your
love. Is she that? Do you love--her?"
"Yes, I love her. Before all, beyond all else in this world, I love
her." Then he turned his face away from Baville and whispered low:
"Urbaine, oh, Urbaine!"
The dawn had come now, saffron-hued, bright with the promise of a fair
day; had come stealing in through the _[oe]illet_ high up in the wall.
Through the cross of the _[oe]illet_ the morning sun streamed, also
throwing one ray athwart the features of the two men standing there
face to face.
"And--and "--whispered Baville now, the voice, usually so rich and
sweet, still blurred with emotion, almost indistinct, "and she
loves--returns--your love?"
"Yes," Martin answered, "yes."
"Has told you so?"
"Ay, with her own sweet lips to mine." Then suddenly, his tone
changed, speaking loudly, clearly, he exclaimed: "Man, you can not rob
me of that! Make one more victim of me in your shambles if you will,
yet, as I die, my last word, my last thought, shall be of Urbaine. My
recompense, her hate and scorn of you."
"No, no, no!" Baville exclaimed, his hands thrust out before him as
though groping for something he could not touch, or as though to fend
off the denunciation of the other. "No, no, not that. Never that. You
must be saved--for--for her sake. For Urbaine. She is my life, my
soul. Sorrow must never come _anigh_ her again. Already I have done--O
God!--have done her wrong. Enough. Listen. You will be tried to-day,
condemned as an English spy; the De Maintenon has said it----"
"The De Maintenon!"
"Ay! You are the heir to the wealth of the de Rochebazons--to much of
it. You are English. It is enough. Tried, I say, condemned! Yet you
shall be saved. Here, in Languedoc, _I_ am Louis. _I_ am France," and
once more Baville was himself, erect, strong, superb. "It shall be
done--it--it--it; there must be no sorrow," he repeated, "for
Urbaine."
"You forget one thing--the Church."
"The Church! Bah! Theirs is a sentimental power; mine is effective,
actual. You must be saved. I am Louis, the King, here. Shall be
recalled for what I do; be broken, ruined. Yet, _until recalled_, the
King. Go to your trial, but say nothing. Refuse to plead; that shall
suffice." Then changing the subject, he said eagerly, feverishly
almost, "Where is she? Where have you left her?"
"In the mountains. Under the charge of Cavalier."
"Cavalier!" Baville exclaimed recoiling, his face a picture of
suspicion and doubt. "With Cavalier! Under the charge of Cavalier! My
God! They will slaughter her! And you profess to love her!"
"She is safe; as safe as in your own arms. They will protect her."
"Protect her! Protect her! They! Protestants, like yourself!"
"Yes, Protestants, like myself. And, as they believe, nay, as they
know, perhaps as you yourself know, Protestants like--Urbaine
Ducaire!"
Through the thick moted sunbeams that swept from the _[oe]illet_
across the dusty room, passing athwart of Baville's face, Martin saw a
terrible change come into that face. Saw the rich olive turn to an
ashen hue, almost a livid hue; saw the deep, soft eyes harden and
become dull.
"They know," he whispered, "they know that! That Urbaine
is--a--Protestant? How--can--they--know--it?"
"One of their seers, a woman, divined it, proclaimed her no papist.
And Cavalier has discovered those who knew her father, Urbain
Ducaire."
"My God!"
CHAPTER XXVIII.
BAVILLE--SUPERB!
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