CHAPTER IX.

"BAVILLE! UN MAGISTRAT DONT LES EPOUVANTABLES RIGUEURS DOIVENT êTRE SIGNALéES à L'HORREUR DE LA POSTéRITé."--SISMONDI.

Night was near at hand again and all were gone--all except Martin Ashurst and the pastor, both of whom sat now upon the bridge of Montvert, their eyes fixed always on the crest of the hill which rose between the little town and the larger one of Alais. For it was from that situation that they expected to see at last the flash of sabres carried by the dragoons of de Broglie and the foot soldiers of de Peyre, Lieutenant General of the Province, to observe the rays of the setting sun flicker on their embrowned musketoon and fusil barrels, and to hear the ring of bridle chain and stirrup iron. That they would come on the instant that the intelligence reached Baville of what had been done in Montvert over night it was impossible to doubt. And then--well, then, possibly, since there were no human beings left to be destroyed except these two men waiting there, the village would itself be demolished, burned to the ground. Such vengeance had been taken only a week ago on a similarly deserted bourg from which the inhabitants had fled, though silently and without revolt. It might be expected that the same would happen here.

All were gone, the men, the women and children; the old, the feeble, and the babes being carried by the stronger ones, or conveyed on the backs of mules and asses. Also the cattle were removed--they would be priceless in the mountain fastnesses; even the dogs had followed at their masters' heels; upon those masters' shoulders and upon the backs of the animals the household gods, the little gifts that had come to them on marriage days and feast days, on christenings and anniversaries, had been transported.

The place was deserted except for those two men who sat there wondering what would be their lot.

That vengeance would be taken on them neither deemed likely; but that both would be haled before Baville they both felt sure. Buscarlet was known to be one of the Protestant pastors who, from the day when the Revocation of Nantes was promulgated seventeen years before, had fought strongly against his congregation attending the Romish masses as the Government had ordered them to do. He was a man in evil odour, though against him until the present time no overt act could be charged. But now--now after the events of the past night, with those dead Things lying there behind the hedge, what might he not be accused of?

"Yet," said Martin, as he leaned over the parapet of the bridge, glancing sometimes up at the ridge which rose between Montvert and Alais, expecting every moment to see the soldiers approaching, and sometimes watching the long weeds in the river as they bent beneath its swift flow, "yet of what can you be accused? You interceded for him," and he directed his eyes in the direction of the dead abbé, where he lay covered by a cloth, "besought them to show mercy, to return evil for good. Also those men, those attroupés, were not of this village nor of your flock. As well call you to account for the invasion of a hostile army or foreign levy."

But again Buscarlet only shook his head, then answered:

"No, not of this village, nor of my congregation, but of the same faith--Protestants! Therefore accursed in Baville's and his master's eyes. That is enough."

As he spoke, from far up in the heights toward Alais they heard the blare of a trumpet ring loudly and clearly on the soft evening air; a moment later and, on the white road that ran like a thread through the green slopes, they saw the scarlet coats of the horsemen gleaming; saw, too, a guidon blown out as its rider came forward against the wind; caught the muffled sound of innumerable horses' hoofs. Then, next, heard orders shouted, and a moment later saw a large body of dragoons winding down the hillside slowly, while behind them on foot came the milices of the province.

"You see?" Martin said as he watched them. "Be calm. They can do you no harm."

And he leaned over the bridge again and continued to observe the oncomers.

Ahead of the main body, consisting of some hundred of cavalry and an even larger number of Languedoc milice or train bands, there rode three men abreast. In the middle was one clad in a sober riding dress of dark gray; the others on either side of him were rich in scarlet coats much guarded with galloon, the evening sun flickering on the lace and causing it to sparkle like burnished gold, and with large laced three-cornered hats in which also their gold cockades shone, while he on the left wore the rich justaucorps à brevet, a sure sign not of a soldier of France alone, but of a soldier of high social rank and standing.

"He in the middle," said Buscarlet, "is Baville, the Scourge of the Scourge. Be sure that when he comes with the soldiery the worst is to be dreaded. That he deems his presence is necessary to insure fitting vengeance being taken."

"Fear not," said Martin. "They can not execute us here to-night; afterward, inquiry will show that we have done nothing to deserve their vengeance. Be calm."

Amid clouds of dust from the road on which no rain had fallen for many days the cavalcade came onward, reaching at last the farther end of the bridge from where these two men stood side by side; then the officer on the right gave the orders for all following to halt, and slowly he with the other two rode on to the bridge itself and up the slope to where Buscarlet and Martin stood.

"It is the Lieutenant General, de Peyre," Buscarlet whispered. "The other is the Marquis du Chaila, the dead man's nephew. O God! what a sight for him to see!"

"What has been done here?" said Baville, looking down at the two men on foot who stood close by where they had halted their horses, though not until he and his companions had turned their eyes to the burned house, from which little spiral wreaths of smoke rose vertically in the calm evening air. "What? And who, messieurs, are you?"

The quiet tones of his full rich voice, the absence of all harshness in it, almost startled Martin Ashurst. Was this the man, he wondered--or could the pastor have been mistaken?--of whose cruelty to the Protestants as well as his fierce and overbearing nature not only all the province rang, but also other parts of the land far remote from here? The man whose name was known and mentioned with loathing by the refugees in Holland and Switzerland, in Canterbury and Spitalfields?

"Who are you, messieurs?" he repeated quietly, "though I think I should know you, at least," and he directed his glance to the pastor. "Monsieur André Buscarlet, prédicateur of the--the--so-called Reformed Religion, if I am not mistaken."

"André Buscarlet," the old man replied, looking up at him; and now, Martin observed, he trembled no more, but answered fearlessly, "Protestant minister of Montvert and----"

"Where," exclaimed the young Marquis du Chaila, "my uncle has been barbarously murdered by you and your brood. Oh, fear not, you shall pay dearly for it. Where, vagabond, is his body?"

"Sir," said Martin, speaking for the first time, "your grief carries you into violent extremes. This gentleman whom you term 'vagabond' has had no part nor share in your uncle's murder. Neither has his flock. The deed was done by the refugees from the mountains. Monsieur Buscarlet attempted in vain to prevent it."

"Bah!" exclaimed the marquis. "You are another Protestant, I should suppose. Valuable testimony! Who are you?"

"One who at least is not answerable to you. Suffice it that no person in this village had any hand in the abbé's murder, that it was done by the men of whom the pastor speaks."

"To me, monsieur, at least all persons are answerable," Baville interposed. "I am the king's Intendant. I must demand your name and standing."

"My name is----" he began, yet ere he could tell it a shout from the foremost dragoons who had dismounted startled all on the bridge. Some of these men had been engaged in tethering their horses close by the hedge, several of the animals indeed had already begun to crop the dusty grass that grew beneath it, and they had found the bodies.

"My God, my God!" the marquis almost shrieked as he bent over the abbé's form, the soldiers having led him to where it lay after he had hastily quitted the saddle. "Oh, my God! my father's brother slaughtered thus. Devils!" he exclaimed, turning round and glancing up the long street, imagining probably that the inhabitants were all within their houses. "Devils! was not his death enough, that you must glut your rage with such butchery as this? See, Baville--see, de Peyre, the wounds in his body. Enough to kill twenty men."

Looking down from their saddles at the murdered man's form, which they could observe very plainly over the hedge from the elevation at which they were, the Intendant and the leader of the troops shuddered, the former turning white beneath the clear olive of his complexion. Yet, even as Martin observed him blench, he wondered why he should do so. Countless men and feeble women and children had gone to the gibbet, the fire, the wheel, and the rack, as well as to the galleys and the lash, at this man's orders, unless all Languedoc and every Huguenot tongue lied. Why should he pale now, except it was because this retaliation, this shifting of murder from the one side to the other, told of a day of reckoning that had begun, of a Nemesis that had been awakened?

"Baville," the young man cried again, "Baville! Vengeance! Vengeance! He has died slaughtered at his post, as he knew he would die. But last week, at our house in Montpelier, he spoke of how he was doomed because he served God. Baville!--de Peyre! give the orders to fall on, to destroy all. Otherwise I make my way to the king of the north and cry on my knees for vengeance on these accursed heretics, these bloodthirsty Protestants, as they term themselves. Burn down their hovels, I say; slaughter them, exterminate."

"Alas, unhappy man!" exclaimed Buscarlet, still firm in his speech now, and undaunted before the distracted marquis, who had already torn his sword from its scabbard and stood before them gesticulating like a madman in his grief and rage. "What use to destroy empty houses, barren walls? Besides ourselves there is no living soul left in all Montvert."

"What!" the two other men exclaimed together in their surprise. "What! All gone? None left?"

And now on the Intendant's face there came another look, also the return of his dark colour, as he said:

"Gone, yet you proclaim their innocence. Tell us in one breath that they are guiltless, in another that they have fled. Do the innocent flee?"

"They feared your cruelty. They knew that your Church spares not the innocent; that it punishes them alike with the guilty."

"Blasphemer!" Baville exclaimed, though still his voice was low and calm, belying the terrible accusation which lay beneath this word. Terrible anywhere in France--now pious by law!--but doubly so in the Cévennes.

"I blaspheme not," Buscarlet said, waxing even bolder. "Pause. Look back. Twenty-seven Protestants have been done to death by you in the past month----"

"Silence!" the other ordered, still in his unruffled voice, yet uttering words enough to affright the boldest, "or I will have you gagged; if that suffices not, strung up there," and he pointed to the lamp.

Then turning to the marquis, he said:

"Be sure your uncle shall be avenged. Let them flee to the mountains, yet we will have them. Extirpate them like rats in a granary. Julien, the field marshal, has left Paris to assist in the holy work. Meanwhile, de Peyre, send your men into every house in the place; see if this abandonment is true. If not, if you find any, bring them before me. As for you, and you," directing a glance at the pastor and Martin, "you will sleep to-night in Alais. To-morrow a court will be held." Then he added, under his breath, as though talking to himself:

"You must be bold men. Otherwise you would have decamped too."

"Or innocent ones," Martin replied, hearing his words, low as they were. "You yourself have said it. Asked but now, 'Do the innocent flee?'"

The Intendant bit his lips; the riposte had gone fairly home. Then, while de Peyre gave his orders and told off some of the dragoons to enter and search every house in the village, and the marquis, who was in command of the milices, bade them take up the bodies carefully and cover them decently with their capes, Baville glanced down at Martin, saying:

"Monsieur, I do not know you. You are not, I think, of this locality. Yet I observe you are of the better classes. Where is your property?"

"In La Somme, department of the Ile de France. I am a proprietor; the property of Duplan La Rose is mine, such as it is."

Had he not in truth been the owner of this property he would have scorned to shelter himself beneath a falsehood. Had he been asked his faith it was his fixed resolve to declare it, as, had it been possible for Baville to recognise that he was an Englishman--which, after his earliest years being spent in France, was not so--he had determined to avow his nationality, no matter what the consequences might be. But so far the truth alone was necessary.

When his father waited long and eagerly for the time to come for the Stuart Restoration--as no follower of the Stuarts ever doubted it would come, sooner or later--he, hating Paris and all its garish dissipations under the then young and immoral king (the king now so old and self-righteous!), purchased this property from the Baron Duplan La Rose, a man himself broken and ruined by his participation in the outbreaks of the Fronde. Purchased it because all the Ile de France and the Pas de Calais were full of English refugees waiting like himself for happier days to come; also because, when the time did come, it would be near to England. And he dying, it became Martin's property.

Baville touched his hat as an acknowledgment of Martin's explanation, perhaps also as an acknowledgment of his position, since he was a great believer in les propriétaires as men who were almost always opposed to the murmurings and discontents of the canaille and les ordres bas, such as the wretches belonged to who had massacred the abbé and the others. And as he did so he said:

"Monsieur is therefore a visitor here only--to--perhaps"--and his eyes rested piercingly on Martin--"Monsieur Buscarlet?"

"Monsieur is," Martin replied, "a visitor here seeking for a lost person. A connection by marriage. A man who has been wronged, has partly wronged himself. Monsieur has lodged with Monsieur Buscarlet before."

"May I demand the name of the lost man?"

"Alas, monsieur, I do not know it. He discarded his own over forty years ago. That which he has adopted I can not tell you. Also he may be dead and my quest in vain."

"Would he be," and again his eyes stared fixedly into the eyes of the other man, "would he be, do you think, of--of--well--of Monsieur Buscarlet's religious faith?"

"He would."

"I hope you will find him, sir. If you do so, use your utmost endeavours to persuade him to abjure that faith. Otherwise the province of Languedoc will be no pleasant refuge for him henceforth, even though he has been here for the forty years you speak of. Now, sir," and he left this subject to speak of that which had brought him to Montvert, "I must beg you will accompany us to Alais. As a visitor to the neighbourhood and, as I suppose, a person not interested in our unhappy local troubles, you can give us much information as to how last night's murder was perpetrated. You are, I presume, willing to do so?"

"I am willing to speak as truthfully as I can on the matter. To speak as I do now, when I tell you that neither Monsieur Buscarlet nor any of the inhabitants of this place had any hand whatever in last night's doings."

"I shall--the Court will be--glad to be assured of that," Baville replied.