Orrain A Romance

Excerpt

ORRAIN

CHAPTER I

THE CRY IN THE RUE DES LAVANDIERES

My father, René, Vidame d'Orrain, was twice married. By his first wife he had one son, Simon, who subsequently succeeded to his title and estates, and was through his life my bitter enemy. By his second wife, whom he married somewhat late in life, he had two sons—the elder, Anne, known as the Chevalier de St. Martin from his mother's lands, which he inherited; and the younger, Bertrand—myself.

Simon betook himself early to the Court, and we heard but little of him, and that not to his credit; St. Martin went to Italy under the banner of Brissac; and as for me, my parents yielding to the persuasion of my mother's uncle, the Bishop of Seez, decided that I should become a Churchman, and I was forthwith packed off to Paris, and entered at the College of Cambrai, being then about seventeen years of age. Being remarkably tall and strongly built, with a natural taste for all manly exercises, it might have been expected that my books saw little of me; but, on the contrary, I found in them a pleasure and a companionship that has lasted through my life. Thus it happened that I made considerable progress. So much so that the good Bishop, my great-uncle, often flattered me with the ambitious hopes of some day filling his Episcopal chair—a hope that, I need not say, was never realised.

About this time, I being nineteen years of age, things happened that entirely altered my life. My mother sickened and died. Shortly after news came of the death of my brother St. Martin, who was killed in an affair of honour at Milan. The Vidame, my father, then in his eighty-first year, and much enfeebled by old wounds, especially one he had received at Fornovo, felt that his last hours were come, and summoned my brother Simon and myself home to receive his last blessing before he died.

I hurried back as fast as possible, but when I reached Orrain I found to my astonishment the gates of the Chateau closed against me, and Simon, leaning over the battlements, bade me begone.

Overcome with this reception, I was for a space struck speechless; but at length finding voice I begged, even with tears, to be allowed to see my father. But Simon sneered back:

"You will have to take a long journey, then; either below or above—I know not which," he mocked. "Your father is dead. He has left you his curse, and the lands of St. Martin are yours. I am master here at last, thank God! And I tell you to be off! Take that pink and white face of yours back to your College of Cambrai!"

He lied, for, as I afterwards heard, my father was not dead then, but lay dying in his chamber, to which no one but Simon had access, and over which he had placed a guard of his men-at-arms, a cut-throat set of Italians whom he ever had with him.

Simon's cruel words stung me to the quick. My blood flamed with rage, and I dared him to come forth and meet me as a man; but he only laughed all the more, and, pointing to the tree of justice outside the gate, asked how I would like to swing from one of its branches....