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Updated: May 1, 2025
To Vrillac is no long ride; but we will not ride it at present." And he turned sharply on his heel and strode from them. He had not covered thirty paces before she overtook him in the middle of a broad patch of moonlight, and touched his arm. He wheeled swiftly, his hand halfway to his hilt. Then he saw who it was. "Ah," he said, "I had forgotten, Madame. You have come "
And he flung them wide, standing within a pace of her. "Here, above the collar-bone, is the surest for a weak hand. What, afraid?" he continued, as, stiffly clutching the weapon which he had put into her hand, she glared at him, trembling and astonished. "Afraid, and a Vrillac! Afraid, and 'tis but one blow! See, my arms are open. One blow home, and you will never lie in them. Think of that.
An hour later Count Hannibal rode in with six of his eight men, and, after a few minutes' parley with Badelon, who was scanning the horses, he called Carlat to him. The old man came. "Can we reach Vrillac to-night?" Count Hannibal asked curtly. "By Challans, my lord," the steward answered, "I think we can. We call it seven hours' riding from here." "And that route is the shortest?"
But now you will do well to watch me! You will do well to leave Vrillac on one side. For were you there, and raised your hand against me not that that touches me, but it will do and there are those, I tell you, would fling you from the tower at my word." "Indeed?" "Ay, indeed! And indeed, Monsieur!" Her face was in moonlight, his was in shadow.
Avoiding the Countess and riding with Carlat, he talked and laughed with marked cheerfulness; nor did he ever fail, when the mist rose, to note this or that landmark, and confirm Badelon in the way he was going. "We shall be at Lege by noon!" he cried more than once, "and if M. le Comte persists in his plan, may reach Vrillac by late sunset. By way of Challans!"
That what I have won on the one bank I will hold on the other, in the teeth of all, and though God's Church be thundering on my heels! I go to Vrillac " "You go?" she cried. "You go?" "I go," he repeated, "to-morrow. And among your own people I will see what language you will hold. While you were in my power I spared you.
The causeway ran through it, a mere thread lipped by the darkling waves, and at the sight a grunt of relief broke from Badelon. For at the end of the causeway, black against the western sky, rose the gateway and towers of Vrillac; and he saw that, as the Countess had said, it was a place ten men could hold against ten hundred!
He requires that the said Hannibal de Tavannes be handed to him for punishment, and, this being done before sunset this evening, he will yield to you free and uninjured the said M. de Tignonville, and will retire from the lands of Vrillac.
But if you refuse" the man passed his eye along the line of attentive faces which fringed the battlement "he will at sunset hang the said Tignonville on the gallows raised for Tavannes, and will harry the demesne of Vrillac to its farthest border!" There was a long silence on the gate. Some, their gaze still fixed on him, moved their lips as if they chewed.
Jacques on the south, had burst into rows of twinkling lights nay, long after the Quarter of the Louvre alone remained dark, girdled by this strange midnight brightness she lay awake. At length she too slept, and dreamed of home and the wide skies of Poitou, and her castle of Vrillac washed day and night by the Biscay tides. "Tavannes!" "Sire."
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