The Court Jester Part 15

"Ever since you began to polish that jug. You were talking so loud that I did not think you were saying anything that I could not hear as well as not."

"And you heard nothing!" declared the housekeeper triumphantly. "You, sir, were to be kept in the dark, lest in your merry way you should reveal to the princess what she is not to know, and even though you have been standing there all that time, you have heard nothing, for we have mentioned no names."

"I have heard," said the jester, "of a bird found in Africa called the ostrich. This very wise fowl when it wants to conceal itself hides its head in the sand and leaves its big bulky body in plain view. You remind me of this bird. You have mentioned no names, of course, but who is it that the princess most desires to see? Maximilian. Who would be most likely to climb to the top of a tower and turn around on one leg?

Maximilian. Who would make an impudent amba.s.sador ashamed of himself?

Maximilian."

"Hist, sir! Pray hush," said the housekeeper. "That name must not be mentioned, else it will reach the ears of her little Highness, the Lady Marguerite."

"My little princess is in the other wing of the castle, and in order to hear me she would have to have a sense of hearing sharper than any chamois that ever leaped a chasm. And now that you see that I know all about it, suppose you tell me how you know that the archduke, the King of the Romans--in other words, Maximilian--is coming."

"A messenger arrived last night from Ghent to tell us. His Highness does not want the princess to know of his coming; he wishes to see if she will recognize him," said the housekeeper.

"And they wanted this secret kept from me? I do not deny being a fool, for that is how I keep my position at court, but do they think that I am a baby who forgets what it has seen last month? Did I not see Max when he was married, and is it reasonable to suppose that I have entirely forgotten how he looks? They might have known that it would be safer to tell me all about it. If I had seen him coming I might have bawled, 'Little Princess, here comes your father!' and that would have spoiled it all."

"I do not think they remembered that you had already seen him," said the seneschal; "at any rate we were told to keep the secret from you."

"It is a great mistake to try to keep a secret from me," said the fool, "for I always find things out. As well try to keep the presence of the cheese a secret from the mouse, as to try to keep anything from me. And since you have been telling stories about Max, I will tell you one that I heard. One day when he was riding home from the chase, a beggar accosted him. 'Please give me alms, your Highness,' said the beggar, who was one of the whining kind; 'although I am of lowly birth, still we are all brothers and should help each other.' Max handed him a penny, saying, 'Take this, my good man, and if all your brothers give you as much, you will be richer than I.' It may be that Max did not have much money with him at the time; I am sure he did not if it was before his marriage, for nearly all his wealth came from Burgundy and Flanders."

"Ha! ha!" laughed the seneschal, turning to the housekeeper. "Where would your great King of the Romans be without my country? Even a king with no money is of little consequence."

"Pray, pray, good Sir Fool," said the housekeeper, ignoring this remark, "keep the secret from her Highness, and let no one know that you are aware of the coming of the archduke. Our master would be seriously displeased if he knew that we had revealed the fact that the royal visitor is expected."

"Do not be alarmed," replied Le Glorieux; "I shall be as silent as an owl in daytime, for I, too, want my little mistress to have the pleasure of a surprise." The end of the sentence was almost drowned by the striking of the clock, and the fool continued, raising his voice, "I do not see why it is, but it seems to me that every time I want to say anything that clock wants to strike at that particular minute!"

"Oh, it is late, it is late," cried the housekeeper, "and we must hurry."

"True," said the seneschal, "let the table be spread at once."

Two boys came in to spread the table, and were soundly cuffed by the seneschal because they put the plates on before the salt, there being a superst.i.tion that bad luck was sure to follow unless the salt went on first of all. Some people have an idea that the way to hurry things up is to get into a temper, and this seemed to be the case with both the seneschal and the housekeeper, who bustled about, interrupting each other by the commands they gave the servants, one often countermanding the orders of the other, until their underlings ran hither and thither without knowing what to do. Le Glorieux, who made himself perfectly at home all over the house, followed the pair to the kitchen and seated himself comfortably on the lower step of a winding staircase, which led somewhere to regions above, for the old castle was full of surprises, and one was likely to find door, stairs, and halls where they were to be least expected.

All was hurry and wild excitement in the kitchen. At the fireplace, which was large enough to roast an ox, the cook was basting a number of fowls; scullions were chopping spiced dressings, beating eggs, and attending to various features of the coming repast, and everybody seemed to be working in a great haste, for a few sharp words from the housekeeper, seconded by the seneschal, had stirred the whole kitchen into a flurry. "Here, baste these fowls," cried the cook, handing a long-handled spoon to one of the scullions. "Can you not see that I ought to be at work on the pastry? You stand at the other end of the room staring at nothing at all when you know that I must need you here."

The cook was quite haughty while administering this reproof, and Le Glorieux remarked:

"Everybody has some one to scold, from the seneschal on down, and I dare say the scullions vent their ill temper on the dogs."

The boy who was beating the eggs stopped to laugh at this remark, for which he received a swift cuff from the housekeeper, who said, "Do you not know that one should never pause for even a moment when beating eggs? You deserve a good drubbing for your heedlessness."

"She beats you and you beat the eggs," remarked Le Glorieux to the boy.

The scullion at the fire began to giggle at this piece of drollery, and tilting his spoon spilled the gravy into the flames, which received it with a great deal of sputtering, cracking, and snapping, and an increase of blaze, which threatened to consume all the fowls, and which put the cook into such a rage that he s.n.a.t.c.hed the spoon and hit the boy a crack over the head with it. "Take that for a blundering idiot!" cried he. "From your indifference and carelessness one would think a supper for royal visitors was prepared in this kitchen every day in the week!"

"And it is a good thing that it is not," said the jester, "for in that case I am sure that funerals in this mansion would be frequent. But it is my fault, no doubt. I am making myself too entertaining. I will go now, first saying that if any of you boys should receive a broken skull, I have a box of ointment in my room to which you are quite welcome, and which will cure the wound and cause the hair to grow over it."

So saying he lounged out of the room and to the apartment of his little mistress. Antoine was singing for her a tinkling melody, and the jester began to sway about in time to the music. With mischief in his eyes, Antoine kept singing faster and faster, which caused the jester to whirl about like a top, while the little princess clapped her hands with delight.

"Bravo!" said a voice, when the song was finished, and turning they saw a man's figure standing in the doorway.

"Who are you, sir, that come in unannounced, and what do you wish?"

asked the Lady Marguerite, straightening herself up, for she was most dignified at times and would permit no liberties. If his rank might be judged by his costume, this newcomer was taking a great liberty, and the princess continued to gaze at him with a haughty expression of countenance, while he remained smiling, but silent. He was dressed in a simple gray hunting costume, and the hat he held in his hand was adorned, not by a curling plume, but by a feather from the wing of the black eagle.

He was of a fine and graceful figure and a handsome face, and there seemed to be a kind of mist in his eyes as he gazed at the frowning little lady before him, and who said again and more curtly than before:

"Will you be kind enough to tell me what brings you here?"

"I bear a message from the archduke," he replied.

"Oh," cried Marguerite, and forgetting her dignity, she sprang from her chair and advanced toward him. "Give me the letter; where is it? Why do you wait so long?"

"I have no letter; it is a verbal message."

"Then what is it; can you not speak?"

"He bids you be patient for a while and rest."

"Rest! I have rested till I am weary of resting. If that is all you have to tell me, you can return whence you came and ask the archduke, my father, if all these years have made him forget that he should love his daughter, and if he believes that she cares not at all for him?"

The little princess did not weep, as she was inclined to do in her disappointment, but her cheeks were flushed and her lips quivered with emotion.

For answer, the stranger strode into the room and, picking up the little maiden bodily in his arms, he kissed her lips, her brow, her hair, and her eyelids a dozen times, for he must have thought, as did Le Glorieux, that her eyes were like those of Mary of Burgundy.

"Oh!" gasped the child, but she did not struggle, for she now realized that this could be no other than her father, the Archduke of Austria.

"I had thought to have kept my ident.i.ty a secret a little longer, but the glance of those eyes overcame me, quite," murmured Maximilian, while Le Glorieux whispered to Antoine, "Although I am a fool, there are moments and places when and where I feel that my presence is not absolutely necessary, and this is one of them. She will not blame us if we go without her permission, and our room just now is better than our company, so let us go." And unnoticed they slipped away.

Later when the jester saw the archduke he was clothed as became his rank, in velvet trimmed in fur, while gems flashed in the chain about his neck and on his fingers.

"My father," said the princess, who clung to his hand as if she feared he suddenly would vanish from her sight, "this is my jester, Le Glorieux. He once lived at the court of Burgundy. He loved my mother and he loves me; he was given to me by the Lady Anne of Brittany."

"She took your husband and gave you her fool," replied the archduke.

"And who shall say it was not a good exchange?" asked Le Glorieux quickly. "Some of the women who have married into the royal house of France have secured both king and fool in one."

Maximilian laughed. "I see you have a ready wit," said he. "I now remember to have observed you when I stood at the door of the princess'

apartments. Did you suspect who I was, Fool?"

"Not at first," was the reply. "Kings may have a divine right, but they have not a divine look when clothed in common wool. You are a handsome figure of a man, but so is many a forester, and even your daughter did not recognize you until you had hugged her like a bear. But now you look very much as you did when I saw you at Ghent."

"You saw me at Ghent?" repeated Maximilian.

"Oh, yes; I can not flatter myself that you saw my fair face, for it was the day you wedded our d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy; but I remember you for all that, and I have described your appearance on that day a dozen times to my little princess."

[Ill.u.s.tration: None was happier than Lady Clotilde]

Among the company of ladies and gentlemen who surrounded the supper-table none was happier than the Lady Clotilde. She wore a costume carefully copied from one she had seen worn by Anne of Beaujeu, and which the tailor who had fas.h.i.+oned it before Lady Clotilde left Amboise would remember to the last day of his life, from the severe tongue las.h.i.+ngs he received while he was putting it together. It was of a heavy velvet, bordered to the knees in rich dark fur; about her neck were strings and strings of pearls; a veil of silver tissue bound her brow and hung down her back, while her hair, drawn into a ma.s.s on the top of her head, was covered by a sparkling net and spread out on either side like the wings of a b.u.t.terfly.

"I should think that some of those pearls would get lost in the hollows of Clotilde's neck," muttered Le Glorieux to himself. This reminded him of the moonstone pendant and he wondered for the fiftieth time where it could be. "I have no faith in those curses that were to follow on the loss of the trinket," thought he. "If they had been genuine, something would be happening to her by this time. And she is just as healthy as ever; I watched her at the table, where she ate about four capon wings, to say nothing of a quant.i.ty of roast kid and a good many other things.

But her luck always has been something wonderful, and a misfortune that would come at full gallop after anybody else would pa.s.s Clotilde by and forget all about her."