He paused to see who she was, and his thoughts involuntarily went back to
the woman he had left weeping in the upper room. Then he turned about
again and stood to count the dead. He identified Piles, identified
Pardaillan, identified Soubise--whose corpse the murderers had robbed of
the last rag--and Touchet and St. Galais. He made his reckoning with an
unmoved face, and with the same face stopped and stared, and moved from
one to another; had he not seen the slaughter about "le petit homme" at
Jarnac, and the dead of three pitched fields? But when a bystander,
smirking obsequiously, passed him a jest on Soubise, and with his finger
pointed the jest, he had the same hard unmoved face for the gibe as for
the dead. And the jester shrank away, abashed and perplexed by his stare
and his reticence.
Halfway up the staircase to the great gallery or guard-room above, Count
Hannibal found his brother, the Marshal, huddled together in drunken
slumber on a seat in a recess. In the gallery to which he passed on
without awakening him, a crowd of courtiers and ladies, with arquebusiers
and captains of the quarters, walked to and fro, talking in whispers; or
peeped over shoulders towards the inner end of the hall, where the
querulous voice of the King rose now and again above the hum. As
Tavannes moved that way, Nancay, in the act of passing out, booted and
armed for the road, met him and almost jostled him.
"Ah, well met, M. le Comte," he sneered, with as much hostility as he
dared betray. "The King has asked for you twice."
"I am going to him. And you? Whither in such a hurry, M. Nancay?"
"To Chatillon."
"On pleasant business?"
"Enough that it is on the King's!" Nancay replied, with unexpected
temper. "I hope that you may find yours as pleasant!" he added with a
grin. And he went on.
The gleam of malice in the man's eye warned Tavannes to pause. He looked
round for some one who might be in the secret, saw the Provost of the
Merchants, and approached him.
"What's amiss, M. le Charron?" he asked. "Is not the affair going as it
should?"
"'Tis about the Arsenal, M. le Comte," the Provost answered busily. "M.
de Biron is harbouring the vermin there. He has lowered the portcullis
and pointed his culverins over the gate and will not yield it or listen
to reason. The King would bring him to terms, but no one will venture
himself inside with the message. Rats in a trap, you know, bite hard,
and care little whom they bite."
"I begin to understand."
"Precisely, M. le Comte. His Majesty would have sent M. de Nancay. But
he elected to go to Chatillon, to seize the young brood there. The
Admiral's children, you comprehend."