The Justice of the King Part 21

"Be ready, La Mothe," he said. His teeth were clenched and his chest laboured heavily. "Be ready, Blaise."

"Ready," answered La Mothe, saving his breath. His heart was very bitter. The twelve minutes were seventeen, succour could not be far off, but the end had come. "Do you hear, Blaise?"

But Blaise was past hearing. While he fought with his right his maimed left hand, cut to the bones, had torn his smock open from the throat, and the hairy chest, smeared with his blood, glistened in broad drops from the sweat of his labours. In such a hilt-to-hilt struggle his ignorance was almost an advantage. He had nothing to unlearn, no rules of fence to disregard, and his peasant's strength of arm whirled aside an attack with a paralyzing power impossible to any skill. Right, left, downward swept the blade, his knees and hips half bent as he leaned forward, crouching, his left arm swinging as he swayed. Right, left, downward, his blood-drunkenness growing in savage abandonment with every minute. Yes, he was ready--ready in his own way--but past hearing.

"d.a.m.n the English," was his answer to La Mothe, his mind back in the fifty-year-old tragedy. The play was no make-believe, and he was Michel Calvet, son to Jean the sixth, the Michel whose elder brother had been coursed like a hare and killed in the open. Then his song rose afresh, but gaspingly, raucously, as if the notes tore his chest.

"'Rosalie, I love you true; Kiss me, sweet, kiss me, sweet.

Lov'st thou me as I love you?

Kiss me, sweet, kiss me, sweet.'

"Rats," said he! "Come up, y' cur dogs, come up."

"La Mothe," breathed La Follette, "when I say Now!"

Yes, the end had come.

"d.a.m.n the English," cried Blaise hoa.r.s.ely. With a mighty stroke he swept aside the opposing points, drew a choking breath, crouched lower, and, with the Dauphin's sword at the charge, he flung himself into the gap breast-forward, missed his thrust, splintered the blade against the wall, and with a wild clutch drew all within reach into his grip. For an instant they hung upon a stair-edge, then, in a writhing, floundering ma.s.s, breast to breast, breathless, half dead or dying, they rolled to the floor. From behind La Mothe heard Ursula de Vesc cry, "Oh G.o.d! pity him!" in a sob. But he dared not turn, his own blood-drunkenness fired him to the finger-tips and he lunged furiously, getting home a stroke above a point lowered in the surprise. Again there was a rush of iron-shod feet upon the stones, but a rush downward, a moment's pause below, a crossing babel of pa.s.sionate, clamouring voices, insistence, denial, and yet more denial, then a silence--or what seemed a silence--a few hoa.r.s.e whispers and a cry or two of pain. Yes, the end had come. In the corner stood the Dauphin and, half in front, Ursula de Vesc, her arm stretched out across his breast in the old att.i.tude of protection. Marcel lay beside them in a faint.

"Hugues?" There was a question and a cry in the boy's one word.

"Charles, Charles, have you nothing to say to the brave men who almost died for you?"

"Hugues loved me," he answered, and at the bitter pathos of the reply La Mothe forgot the ingrat.i.tude. There were so few who loved him. But the girl could not forget.

"Monsieur La Follette, Monsieur La Mothe," she began, but broke off with a cry. "Oh, Monsieur La Follette, you are wounded? What can I do? Words can come afterwards, and all my life I will remember, all my life. Are you dreadfully hurt? Can I not do something?" But though she spoke to La Follette her eyes, after the first glance, were busy searching Stephen La Mothe for just such an ominous stain as showed in brown patches upon La Follette. But there was none. Breathless, dishevelled, his clothing slashed, he was without a scratch, and the strained anxiety faded from her face.

"I can wait," answered La Follette, "we must get the Dauphin to the Chateau. La Mothe, see if they are gone," and he glanced significantly down the stairway. La Follette knew something of war, and there must be sights below it were better Ursula de Vesc should not see lest they haunt her all her life, sleeping or waking.

But the Dauphin, his nerves strained and raw, had grown petulant.

"It is safe enough. I heard them ride off. I want Hugues. I want Hugues."

"And Blaise?"

"Oh! Blaise!" He broke into a discordant laugh. "I told him to be a man and, my faith! he was one. Do you think, Ursula, that Father John will ask my thoughts a second time?"

CHAPTER XXI

DENOUNCED

"It was an epic," said Villon, "a veritable epic, and if you were truly the Homer I called you half the towns in France would claim you for a citizen. As it is you have only been born twice, once in--where was it? No matter, it is of very little importance; it is the second that really counts, and that second birthplace is--Amboise. A man's soul is born of a woman just as his body is. And a man's soul is love. Until love comes he is a lumpish ma.s.s of so much flesh without even a spark of the divine."

"Then you," said La Mothe gravely, "have seen many incarnations?"

"Many!"--and Villon's eyes twinkled--"but with each one the pangs of birth grew less violent. You will find it so yourself. But our epic.

Though I cannot write it I will sketch it in outline for you. Book the First: Hugues!" He broke off, shaking his head soberly, every trace of his humorous mood gone. "Poor devil of a Hugues! Francois Villon, who made verses, will be remembered, and Hugues, who made history, forgotten. Why cannot I write epics that we might both be remembered together? But no! a tinkle of rhyme leavened with human nature and salted by much bitter experience--that is Francois Villon! I know my limitations. A man can give out nothing better than is put into him.

Well, so long as we give our best I don't believe the good G.o.d will be hard upon us. Now, then. Book the Second: Martlets and Mullets--there's alliteration for you."

"Martlets and Mullets? Villon, what do you mean?"

"Have you forgotten our friend of the spiked thorn?"

"But the Dauphin swears these were Tristan's men."

"Tristan? Impossible! Tristan is too sure, too careful an artist to spoil his work. Heaven knows I do not love Tristan, but I will give him this credit: when he sets out on a piece of scoundrelly work he carries it through. No, no, I'll wager my Grand Testament to the epic--which will never be written--that it was Molembrais' second cast of the net, and when he drags Amboise a third time there will be fish caught. What's more, La Mothe, there is a traitor in Amboise--a traitor to the boy. First there was Bertrand, then the Burnt Mill: these don't come by accident. But Tristan? Tristan botches no jobs.

But to come back to our epic. Book the Third: Blaise! How many dead were there?"

"Four."

"And Blaise, the stableman, has two at the least, if not three, to his credit. When Charles is king--pray heaven Louis does not hear me at Valmy--he should make Blaise, the stableman, a Marshal of France, or perhaps Master of the Horse would suit him better," and Villon chuckled gleefully. He had always a huge appreciation of his own wit, however slender. "There's a lucky dog for you, to grip death round the neck, hugging him to the breast with both arms, and yet get nothing worse than a scratched wrist, a slashed palm, and a dent in a thick skull.

Book the Fourth: but here is Monsieur d'Argenton and I had better---- No! I'll stand my ground. The rose garden of Amboise is free to all king's jackals."

"Villon, Villon, why are you so bitter-tongued?"

"Listen to Monsieur de Commines for five minutes and you will know why.

And it is not I who am bitter, but the truth. Jackals both, I say."

They were, as Villon had said, in the rose garden. Dusk, the dusk of the day on which Hugues had made history to be forgotten, was thickening fast, but the air was still warm with all the sultriness of noon. To that confined s.p.a.ce, with the grey walls towering on three sides, coolness came slowly. The solid masonry held the heat like the living rock itself, and no current of the night wind blowing overhead eddied downward in refreshment.

But solid as was the masonry, and mighty the walls in their frowning strength, there is but little of them left, and of the rose garden not a trace. Time, the great iconoclast, has touched them with his finger and they have pa.s.sed away like the humble maker of history, while Francois Villon's tinkle of rhyme, leavened with human nature, still leaves its imprint on a whole nation. Perhaps the reason is that the makers of history could have been done without. In these generations the world would be little the worse, little changed had they never been born, and have lost nothing of the joy or brightness of life. In his own generation the patriot is more necessary than the poet, but let four centuries pa.s.s and the poet will wield a larger influence than the patriot.

But thick as was the dusk, a dusk thicker than the actual degree of night because of the prevailing shadow, La Mothe saw that Commines was disturbed by an unwonted excitement. Not from his face. It was deeply lined and sternly set, the eyes veiled by gathered brows, the mouth harsh. But he breathed heavily, as a man breathes who has outrun his lung power, and his uneasy fingers clenched and unclenched incessantly.

Those who knew Philip de Commines understood the signs and grew watchful. But it was upon Villon that the storm fell.

"For an hour I have been searching for you--in the Chateau, in the Chien Noir, in every tavern in Amboise----"

"And you find me amongst the roses! How little you know my nature, Monsieur d'Argenton!"

"I know it better than I like it," answered Commines grimly. "You lodge at the Chien Noir?"

"It has that honour. The cooking is pa.s.sable, and I can commend to you its wine of '63. Monsieur La Mothe drinks nothing else."

"As with a fool so with a drunkard, one may make many. But I am not here to talk of Monsieur La Mothe's drinking bouts, though they explain much. You are in the King's service?"

"As we all are; you and I and Monsieur La Mothe. Yes."

"No quibble; you are paid to be faithful?"

"As we all are; you and I and Monsieur La Mothe. Yes."

"Villon, curb your impertinences. I'll not endure them."

"Monsieur d'Argenton, there is a proverb which says, 'Physician, cure thyself.' What did I tell you, Monsieur La Mothe? The five minutes are not up yet." But Stephen La Mothe discreetly answered nothing.

One of the first lessons a man learns in the ways of the world is to keep his fingers from between other men's millstones.