The Helmet of Navarre Part 40

"I think that is likely true," he said. "Monsieur opposed the marriage as long as Mayenne desired it; but now that Mayenne forbids it, stealing the demoiselle is another pair of sleeves."

"Well, then," cried M. etienne, all good humour in a moment, "what more do you want? We'll divert ourselves pouring pitch out of the windows on Mayenne's ruffians."

"No, M. etienne, it can't be done. If M. le Duc were here and gave the command to receive her, that would be one thing. No one would obey with a readier heart than I. Mordieu, monsieur, I have no objection to succouring a damsel in distress; I have been in the business before now."

"Then why not now? Death of my life, Vigo! When I know, and you know, Monsieur would approve."

"I don't know it, monsieur," Vigo said. "I only think it. And I cannot move by my own guesswork. I am in charge of the house till Monsieur returns. I purpose to do nothing to jeopard it. But I interfere in no way with your liberty to proceed as you please."

"I should think not, forsooth!" M. etienne blazed out furiously.

"I could," rejoined Vigo, with his maddening tranquillity. "I could order the guard--and they would obey--to lock you up in your chamber. I believe Monsieur would thank me for it. But I don't do it. I leave you free to act as it likes you."

My lord was white with ire.

"Who is master here, you or I?"

"Neither of us, M. le Comte. But Monsieur, leaving, put the keys in my hand, and I am head of the house till he returns. You are very angry, M.

etienne, but my shoulders are broad enough to bear it. Your madness will get no countenance from me."

"Hang you for an obstinate pig!" M. etienne cried.

Vigo said no more. He had made plain his position; he had naught to add or retract. Yeux-gris's face cleared. After all, there was no use being angry with Vigo; one might as well make fists at the flow of the Seine.

"Very well." M. etienne swallowed his wrath. "It is understood that I get no aid from you. Then I have n.o.body in the world with me save Felix here. But for all that I'll win my lady!"

XVIII

_To the Bastille._

But Vigo proved better than his word. If he would give us no countenance, he gave freely good broad gold pieces. He himself suggested M. etienne's need of the sinews of war, not in the least embarra.s.sed or offended because he knew M. le Comte to be angry with him. He was no feather ruffled, serene in the consciousness that he was absolutely in the right. His position was impregnable; neither persuasion, ridicule, nor abuse moved him one whit. He had but a single purpose in life; he was born to forward the interests of the Duke of St. Quentin. He would forward them, if need were, over our bleeding corpses.

On top of all his disobedience and disrespect he was most amiable to M.

etienne, treating him with a calm a.s.sumption of friendliness that would have maddened a saint. Yet it was not hypocrisy; he liked his young lord, as we all did. He would not let him imperil Monsieur, but aside from that he wished him every good fortune in the world.

M. etienne argued no more. He was wroth and sore over Vigo's att.i.tude, but he said little. He accepted the advance of money--"Of course Monsieur would say, What coin is his is yours," Vigo explained--and despatched me to settle his score at the Three Lanterns.

I set out on my errand rather down in the mouth. We had accomplished nothing by our return to the hotel. Nay, rather had we lost, for we were both of us, I thought, disheartened by the cold water flung on our ambitions. I took the liberty of doubting whether perfect loyalty to Monsieur included thwarting and disobeying his heir. It was all very well for Monsieur to spoil Vigo and let him speak his mind as became not his station, for Vigo never disobeyed _him_, but stood by him in all things. But I imagined that, were M. etienne master, Vigo, for all his years of service, would be packed off the premises in short order.

I walked along in a brown study, wondering how M. etienne did purpose to rescue mademoiselle. His scheme, so far as vouchsafed to me, was somewhat in the air. I could only hope he had more in his mind than he had let me know. It seemed to me a pity not to be doing something in the matter, and though I had no particular liking for Hotel de Lorraine hospitality, I had very willingly been bound thither at this moment to try to get a letter to mademoiselle. But he would not send me.

"No," he had said, "it won't do. Think of something better, Felix."

But I could not, and so was taking my dull way to the inn of the Trois Lanternes.

The city wore a sleepy afternoon look. It was very hot, and few cared to be stirring. I saw nothing worth my notice until, only a stone's throw from the Three Lanterns, I came upon a big black coach standing at the door of a rival auberge, L'Oie d'Or. It aroused my interest at once, for a travelling-coach was a rare sight in the beleaguered city. As my master had said, this was not a time of pleasure-trips to Paris. I readily imagined that the owner of this chariot came on weighty business indeed. He might be an amba.s.sador from Spain, a legate from Rome.

I paused by the group of street urchins who were stroking the horses and clambering on the back of the coach, to wonder whether it would be worth while to wait and see the dignitary come out. I was just going to ask the coachman a question or two concerning his journey, when he began to snap his whip about the bare legs of the little whelps. The street was so narrow that he could hardly chastise them without danger to me, so it seemed best to saunter off. The screaming urchins stopped just out of the reach of his lash and set to pelting mud at him with a right good will, but I was too old for that game. I reflected that I was charged with business for my master, and that it was nothing to me what envoys might come to Mayenne. I went on into the Three Lanterns.

The cabaret was absolutely deserted; one might have walked all about and carried off what he pleased, as from the sleeping palace in the tale.

"This is a pretty way to keep an inn," I thought. "Where have all the lazy rascals got to?" Then I heard a confused murmur of voices and shuffle of feet from the back, and I went through into the pa.s.sage where the staircase was.

Here were gathered, in a huddle, like scared sheep, some dozen of the serving-folk, men and maids, the la.s.ses most of them in tears, the men looking scarce less terrified. Their gaze was fixed on the closed door of Maitre Menard's little counting-room, whence issued the shrill cry:

"Spare me, n.o.ble gentlemen! Spare a poor innkeeper! I swear I know nothing of his whereabouts."

As my footsteps sounded on the threshold, one and all spun round to look at me in fresh dread.

"Mon dieu, it is his lackey!" a chambermaid cried. In the next second a little wiry dame, her eyes blazing with fury, darted out of the group and seized me by the arm with a grip of her nails that made me think a panther had got me.

"So here you are," she screamed. I declare I thought she was going to bite me. "Oh-h-h, you and your fine master, that come here and devour our substance and never pay one sou, but bring ruin to the house! Now, go you straight in there and let them squeeze your throat awhile, and see how you like it yourself!"

She swept me across the pa.s.sage like a whirlwind, opened the door, shoved me in, and banged it after me before I could collect my senses.

The room was small; it was very well filled up by a bureau, a strong box, a table, two chairs, three soldiers, one innkeeper, and myself.

The bureau stood by the window, with Maitre Menard's account-books on it. Opposite was the table, with a captain of dragoons on it. Of his two men, one took the middle of the room, amusing himself with the windpipe of Maitre Menard; the other was posted at the door. I was shot out of Mme. Menard's grasp into his, and I found his the gentler of the two.

"I say I know not where he went," Maitre Menard was gasping, black in the face from the dragoon's attentions. "He did not tell--I have no notion. Ah--" The breath failed him utterly, but his eyes, bloodshot and bulging, rolled toward me.

"What now?" the captain cried, springing to his feet. "Who are you?"

He wore under his breastplate what I took to be the uniform of the city guards. I had seen the like on the officer of the gate the night I entered Paris. He was a young man of a decidedly bourgeois appearance, as if he were not much, outside of his uniform.

"My name is Felix Broux," I said. "I came to pay a bill--"

"His servant," Maitre Menard contrived to murmur, the dragoon allowing him a breath.

"Oh, you are the Comte de Mar's servant, are you? Where have you left your master?"

"What do you want of him?" I asked in turn.

"Never you mind. I want him."

"But Mayenne said he should not be touched," I cried. "The Duke of Mayenne said himself he should not be touched."

"I know nothing about that," he returned, a trifle more civilly than he had spoken. "I have naught to do with the Duke of Mayenne. If he is friends with your master, M. de Mar may not stay behind bars very long.

But I have the governor's warrant for his arrest."

"On what charge?"

"A trifle. Merely murder."

"_Murder?_"