The Helmet of Navarre Part 31

"Sit down," bade the duke, "and tell me."

Lucas, standing at the foot of the table, observed:

"They turned you out of your bed, monsieur, to see me. It was unnecessary severity. My tale will keep till morning."

"By Heaven, it shall not!" Mayenne shouted. "Beware how much further you dare anger me, you Satan's cub!"

He was fingering the dagger again as if he longed to plunge it into Lucas's gullet, and I rather marvelled that he did not, or summon his guard to do it. For I could well understand how infuriating was Lucas.

He carried himself with an air of easy equality insufferable to the first n.o.ble in the land. Mayenne's chosen role was the unmoved, the inscrutable, but Lucas beat him at his own game and drove him out into the open of pa.s.sion and violence. It was a miracle to me that the man lived--unless, indeed, he were a prince in disguise.

"Satan's cub!" Lucas repeated, laughing. "Our late king had called me that, pardieu! But I knew not you acknowledged Satan in the family."

"I ordered Antoine to wake me if you returned in the night," Mayenne went on gruffly. "When I heard you had been here I knew something was wrong--unless the thing were done."

"It is not done. The whole plot is ruined."

"Nom de dieu! If it is by your bungling--"

"It was not by my bungling," Lucas answered with the first touch of heat he had shown. "It was fate--and that fool Grammont."

"Explain then, and quickly, or it will be the worse for you."

Lucas sat down, the table between them.

"Look here," he said abruptly, leaning forward over the board. "Have you Mar's boy?"

"What boy?"

"A young Picard from the St. Quentin estate, whom the devil prompted to come up to town to-day. Mar sent him here to-night with a love-message to Lorance."

"Oh," said Mayenne, slowly, "if it is a question of mademoiselle's love-affairs, it may be put off till to-morrow. It is plain to the very lackeys that you are jealous of Mar. But at present we are discussing l'affaire St. Quentin."

"It is all one," Lucas answered quickly. "You know what is to be the reward of my success."

"I thought you told me you had failed."

Lucas's hand moved instinctively to his belt; then he thought better of it and laid both hands, empty, on the table.

"Our plot has failed; but that does not mean that St. Quentin is immortal."

"You may be very sure of one thing, my friend," the duke observed. "I shall never give Lorance de Montluc to a white-livered flincher."

"The Duke of St. Quentin is not immortal," Lucas repeated. "I have missed him once, but I shall get him in spite of all."

"I am not sure about Lorance even then," said Mayenne, reflectively.

"Francois de Brie is agitating himself about that young mistress. And he has not made any failures--as yet."

Lucas sprang to his feet.

"You swore to me I should have her."

"Permit me to remind you again that you have not brought me the price."

"I will bring you the price."

"E'en then," spoke Mayenne, with the smile of the cat standing over the mouse--"e'en then I might change my mind."

"Then," said Lucas, roundly, "there will be more than one dead duke in France."

Mayenne looked up at him as unmoved as if it were not in the power of mortal man to make him lose his temper. In stirring him to draw dagger, Lucas had achieved an extraordinary triumph. Yet I somehow thought that the man who had shown hot anger was the real man; the man who sat there quiet was the party leader.

He said now, evenly:

"That is a silly way to talk to me, Paul."

"It is the truth for once," Lucas made sullen answer.

So long as he could p.r.i.c.k and irritate Mayenne he preserved an air of unshakable composure; but when Mayenne recovered patience and himself began to p.r.i.c.k, Lucas's guard broke down. His voice rose a key, as it had done when I called him fool; and he burst out violently:

"Mort de dieu! monsieur, what am I doing your dirty work for? For love of my affectionate uncle?"

"It might well be for that. I have been your affectionate uncle, as you say."

"My affectionate uncle, you say? My hirer, my suborner! I was a Protestant; I was bred up by the Huguenot Lucases when my father cast off my mother and me to starve. I had no love for the League or the Lorraines. I was fighting in Navarre's ranks when I was made prisoner at Ivry."

"You were spying for Navarre. It was before the fight we caught you. You had been hanged and quartered in that gray dawn had I not recognized you, after twelve years, as my brother's son. I cut the rope from you and embraced you for your father's sake. You rode forth a cornet in my army, instead of dying like a felon on the gallows."

"You had your ends to serve," Lucas muttered.

"I took you into my household," Mayenne went on. "I let you wear the name of Lorraine. I did not deny you the hand of my cousin and ward, Lorance de Montluc."

"Deny me! No, you did not. Neither did you grant it me, but put me off with lying promises. You thought then you could win back the faltering house of St. Quentin by a marriage between your cousin and the Comte de Mar. Afterward, when my brother Charles dashed into Paris, and the people clamoured for his marriage with the Infanta, you conceived the scheme of forcing Lorance on him. But it would not do, and again you promised her to me if I could get you certain information from the royalist army. I returned in the guise of an escaped prisoner to Henry's camp to steal you secrets; and the moment my back was turned you listened to proposals from Mar again."

"Mar is not in the race now. You need not speak of him, nor of your brother Charles, either."

"No; I can well understand that my brother's is not a pleasant name in your ears," Lucas agreed. "You acknowledged one King Charles X; you would like well to see another Charles X, but it is not Charles of Guise you mean."

"I have no desire to be King of France," Mayenne began angrily.

"Have you not? That is well, for you will never feel the crown on your brows, good uncle! You are ground between the Spanish hammer and the Bearnais anvil; there will soon be nothing left of you but powder."

"Nom de dieu, Paul--" Mayenne cried, half rising; but Lucas, leaning forward on the table, riveting him with his keen eyes, went on:

"Do not mistake me, monsieur uncle. I think you in bad case, but I am ready to sink or swim with you. So long as the hand of Lorance is in your bestowing I am your faithful servant. I have not hesitated to risk the gallows to serve you. Last March I made my way here, disguised, to tell you of the king's coming change of faith and of St. Quentin's certain defection. I demanded then my price, my marriage with mademoiselle. But you put me off again. You sent me back to Mantes to kill you St. Quentin."

"Aye. And you have been about it these four months, and you have not killed him."

Lucas reddened with ire.