Michel and Angele [A Ladder of Swords] Part 8

"For what he does in Jersey Isle, your commiserate Majesty?"

"For crime elsewhere, if he be caught, he shall march to Tyburn, friend," she answered. Then she hurriedly added: "Straightway go and bring Mademoiselle and her father hither. Orders are given for their disposal. And to-morrow at this hour you shall wait upon me in their company. I thank you for your services as butler this day, Monsieur of Rozel. You do your office rarely."

As the Seigneur left Elizabeth's apartments, he met the Earl of Leicester hurrying thither, preceded by the Queen's messenger. Leicester stopped and said, with a slow malicious smile: "Farming is good, then--you have fine crops this year on your holding?"

The point escaped Lempriere at first, for the favourite's look was all innocence, and he replied: "You are mistook, my lord. You will remember I was in the presence-chamber an hour ago, my lord. I am Lempriere, Seigneur of Rozel, butler to her Majesty."

"But are you, then? I thought you were a farmer and raised cabbages."

Smiling, Leicester pa.s.sed on.

For a moment the Seigneur stood pondering the Earl's words and angrily wondering at his obtuseness. Then suddenly he knew he had been mocked, and he turned and ran after his enemy; but Leicester had vanished into the Queen's apartments.

The Queen's fool was standing near, seemingly engaged in the light occupation of catching imaginary flies, buzzing with his motions. As Leicester disappeared he looked from under his arm at Lempriere. "If a bird will not stop for the salt to its tail, then the salt is d.a.m.ned, Nuncio; and you must cry David! and get thee to the quarry."

Lempriere stared at him swelling with rage; but the quaint smiling of the fool conquered him, and instead of turning on his heel, he spread himself like a Colossus and looked down in grandeur. "And wherefore cry David! and get quarrying?" he asked. "Come, what sense is there in thy words, when I am wroth with yonder n.o.bleman?"

"Oh, Nuncio, Nuncio, thou art a child of innocence and without history.

The salt held not the bird for the net of thy anger, Nuncio; so it is meet that other ways be found. David the ancient put a stone in a sling and Goliath laid him down like an egg in a nest--therefore, Nuncio, get thee to the quarry. Obligato, which is to say Leicester yonder, hath no tail--the devil cut it off and wears it himself. So let salt be d.a.m.ned, and go sling thy stone!"

Lempriere was good-humoured again. He fumbled in his purse and brought forth a gold-piece. "Fool, thou hast spoken like a man born sensible and infinite. I understand thee like a book. Thou hast not folly and thou shalt not be answered as if thou wast a fool. But in terms of gold shalt thou have reply." He put the gold-piece in the fool's hand and slapped him on the shoulder.

"Why now, Nuncio," answered the other, "it is clear that there is a fool at Court, for is it not written that a fool and his money are soon parted? And this gold-piece is still hot with running 'tween thee and me."

Lempriere roared. "Why, then, for thy hit thou shalt have another gold-piece, gossip. But see"--his voice lowered--"know you where is my friend, Buonespoir, the pirate? Know you where he is in durance?"

"As I know marrow in a bone I know where he hides, Nuncio, so come with me," answered the fool.

"If De Carteret had but thy sense, we could live at peace in Jersey,"

rejoined Lempriere, and strode ponderously after the light-footed fool who capered forth singing:

"Come hither, O come hither, There's a bride upon her bed; They have strewn her o'er with roses, There are roses 'neath her head: Life is love and tears and laughter, But the laughter it is dead Sing the way to the Valley, to the Valley!

Hey, but the roses they are red!"

CHAPTER IX

The next day at noon, as her Majesty had advised the Seigneur, De la Foret was ushered into the presence. The Queen's eye quickened as she saw him, and she remarked with secret pleasure the figure and bearing of this young captain of the Huguenots. She loved physical grace and prowess with a full heart. The day had almost pa.s.sed when she would measure all men against Leicester in his favour; and he, knowing this clearly now, saw with haughty anxiety the gradual pa.s.sing of his power, and clutched futilely at the vanis.h.i.+ng substance. Thus it was that he now spent his strength in getting his way with the Queen in little things. She had been so long used to take his counsel--in some part wise and skilful--that when she at length did without it, or followed her own mind, it became a fever with him to let no chance pa.s.s for serving his own will by persuading her out of hers. This was why he had spent an hour the day before in sadly yet vaguely reproaching her for the slight she put upon him in the presence-chamber by her frown; and another in urging her to come to terms with Catherine de Medici in this small affair--since the Frenchwoman had set her revengeful heart upon it--that larger matters might be settled to the gain of England. It was not so much that he had reason to destroy De la Foret, as that he saw that the Queen was disposed to deal friendly by him and protect him. He did not see the danger of rousing in the Queen the same unreasoning tenaciousness of will upon just such lesser things as might well be left to her advisers. In spite of which he almost succeeded, this very day, in regaining, for a time at least, the ground he had lost with her. He had never been so adroit, so brilliant, so witty, so insinuating; and he left her with the feeling that if he had his way concerning De la Foret--a mere stubborn whim, with no fair reason behind it--his influence would be again securely set. The sense of crisis was on him.

On Michel de la Foret entering the presence the Queen's attention had become riveted. She felt in him a spirit of mastery, yet of unselfish purpose. Here was one, she thought, who might well be in her household, or leading a regiment of her troops. The clear fresh face, curling hair, direct look, quiet energy, and air of n.o.bility--this sort of man could only be begotten of a great cause; he were not possible in idle or prosperous times.

Elizabeth looked him up and down, then affected surprise. "Monsieur de la Foret," she said, "I do not recognise you in this attire"--glancing towards his dress.

De la Foret bowed, and Elizabeth continued, looking at a paper in her hand: "You landed on our sh.o.r.es of Jersey in the robes of a priest of France. The pa.s.sport for a priest of France was found upon your person when our officers in Jersey made search of you. Which is yourself--Michel de la Foret, soldier, or a priest of France?"

De la Foret replied gravely that he was a soldier, and that the priestly dress had been but a disguise.

"In which papist attire, methinks, Michel de la Foret, soldier and Huguenot, must have been ill at ease--the eagle with the vulture's wing.

What say you, Monsieur?"

"That vulture's wing hath carried me to a safe dove-cote, your gracious Majesty," he answered, with a low obeisance.

"I'm none so sure of that, Monsieur," was Elizabeth's answer, and she glanced quizzically at Leicester, who made a gesture of annoyance.

"Our cousin France makes you to us a dark intriguer and conspirator, a dangerous weed in our good garden of England, a 'troublous, treacherous violence'--such are you called, Monsieur."

"I am in your high Majesty's power," he answered, "to do with me as it seemeth best. If your Majesty wills it that I be returned to France, I pray you set me upon its coast as I came from it, a fugitive. Thence will I try to find my way to the army and the poor stricken people of whom I was. I pray for that only, and not to be given to the red hand of the Medici."

"Red hand--by my faith, but you are bold, Monsieur!"

Leicester tapped his foot upon the floor impatiently, then caught the Queen's eye, and gave her a meaning look.

De la Foret saw the look and knew his enemy, but he did not quail. "Bold only by your high Majesty's faith, indeed," he answered the Queen, with harmless guile.

Elizabeth smiled. She loved such flattering speech from a strong man.

It touched a chord in her deeper than that under Leicester's finger.

Leicester's impatience only made her more self-willed on the instant.

"You speak with the trumpet note, Monsieur," she said to De la Foret.

"We will prove you. You shall have a company in my Lord Leicester's army here, and we will send you upon some service worthy of your fame."

"I crave your Majesty's pardon, but I cannot do it," was De la Foret's instant reply. "I have sworn that I will lift my sword in one cause only, and to that I must stand. And more--the widow of my dead chief, Gabriel de Montgomery, is set down in this land unsheltered and alone.

I have sworn to one who loves her, and for my dead chief's sake, that I will serve her and be near her until better days be come and she may return in quietness to France. In exile we few stricken folk must stand together, your august Majesty."

Elizabeth's eye flashed up. She was impatient of refusal of her favour.

She was also a woman, and that De la Foret should flaunt his devotion to another woman was little to her liking. The woman in her, which had never been blessed with a n.o.ble love, was roused. The sourness of a childless, uncompanionable life was stronger for the moment than her strong mind and sense.

"Monsieur has sworn this, and Monsieur has sworn that," she said petulantly--"and to one who loveth a lady, and for a cause--tut, tut, tut!--"

Suddenly a kind of intriguing laugh leaped into her eye, and she turned to Leicester and whispered in his ear. Leicester frowned, then smiled, and glanced up and down De la Foret's figure impertinently.

"See, Monsieur de la Foret," she added; "since you will not fight, you shall preach. A priest you came into my kingdom, and a priest you shall remain; but you shall preach good English doctrine and no Popish folly."

De la Foret started, then composed himself, and before he had time to reply, Elizabeth continued: "Partly for your own sake am I thus gracious; for as a preacher of the Word I have not need to give you up, according to agreement with our brother of France. As a rebel and conspirator I were bound to do so, unless you were an officer of my army. The Seigneur of Rozel has spoken for you, and the Comtesse de Montgomery has written a pleading letter. Also I have from another source a tearful prayer--the ink is scarce dry upon it--which has been of service to you. But I myself have chosen this way of escape for you. Prove yourself worthy, and all may be well--but prove yourself you shall. You have prepared your own brine, Monsieur; in it you shall pickle."

She smiled a sour smile, for she was piqued, and added: "Do you think I will have you here squiring of distressed dames, save as a priest? You shall hence to Madame of Montgomery as her faithful chaplain, once I have heard you preach and know your doctrine."

Leicester almost laughed outright in the young man's face now, for he had no thought that De la Foret would accept, and refusal meant the exile's doom.

It seemed fantastic that this n.o.ble gentleman, this very type of the perfect soldier, with the brown face of a picaroon and an athletic valour of body, should become a preacher even in necessity.

Elizabeth, seeing De la Foret's dumb amazement and anxiety, spoke up sharply: "Do this, or get you hence to the Medici, and Madame of Montgomery shall mourn her protector, and Mademoiselle your mistress of the vermilion cheek, shall have one lover the less; which, methinks, our Seigneur of Rozel would thank me for."

De la Foret started, his lips pressed firmly together in effort of restraint. There seemed little the Queen did not know concerning him; and reference to Angele roused him to sharp solicitude.

"Well, well?" asked Elizabeth impatiently, then made a motion to Leicester, and he, going to the door, bade some one to enter.

There stepped inside the Seigneur of Rozel, who made a lumbering obeisance, then got to his knees before the Queen.