A Ladder of Swords Part 7

"But once in ten years, your n.o.ble Majesty."

"When last?"

"But yesterday a week, your universal Majesty."

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. "Who was the criminal, what the occasion?"

"The criminal was one Buonespoir, the occasion our coming hither to wait upon the Queen of England and our Lady of Normandy, for such is your well-born Majesty to your loyal Jersiais." And thereupon he plunged into an impeachment of De Carteret of St. Ouen's, and stumbled through a blunt, broken story of the wrongs and the sorrows of Michel and Angele and the doings of Buonespoir in their behalf.

Elizabeth frowned and interrupted him. "I have heard of this Buonespoir, monsieur, through others than the Seigneur of St.

Ouen's. He is an unlikely squire of dames. There's a hill in my kingdom has long bided his coming. Where waits the rascal now?"

"In the antechapel, your Majesty."

"By the rood!" said Elizabeth, in sudden amazement. "In my antechapel, forsooth!"

She looked beyond the doorway and saw the great, red-topped figure of Buonespoir, his good-natured, fearless face, his shock of hair, his clear blue eye--he was not thirty feet away.

"He comes to crave pardon for his rank offences, your benignant Majesty," said Lempriere.

The humor of the thing rushed upon the Queen. Never before were two such nave folk at court. There was not a hair of duplicity in the heads of the two, and she judged them well in her mind.

"I will see you stand together--you and your henchman," she said to Rozel, and moved on to the antechapel, the court following. Standing still just inside the doorway, she motioned Buonespoir to come near.

The pirate, unconfused, undismayed, with his wide, blue, asking eyes, came forward and dropped upon his knees. Elizabeth motioned Lempriere to stand a little apart.

Thereupon she set a few questions to Buonespoir, whose replies, truthfully given, showed that he had no real estimate of his crimes, and was indifferent to what might be their penalties. He had no moral sense on the one hand, on the other, no fear.

Suddenly she turned to Lempriere again. "You came, then, to speak for this Michel de la Foret, the exile--?"

"And for the demoiselle Angele Aubert, who loves him, your Majesty."

"I sent for this gentleman exile a fortnight ago--" She turned towards Leicester inquiringly.

"I have the papers here, your Majesty," said Leicester, and gave a packet over.

"And where have you De la Foret?" said Elizabeth.

"In durance, your Majesty."

"When came he hither?"

"Three days gone," answered Leicester, a little gloomily, for there was acerbity in Elizabeth's voice.

Elizabeth seemed about to speak, then dropped her eyes upon the papers and glanced hastily at their contents.

"You will have this Michel de la Foret brought to my presence as fast as horse can bring him, my lord," she said to Leicester. "This rascal of the sea--Buonespoir--you will have safe bestowed till I recall his existence again," she said to a captain of men-at-arms; "and you, Monsieur of Rozel, since you are my butler, will get you to my diningroom and do your duty--the office is not all perquisites," she added, smoothly. She was about to move on when a thought seemed to strike her, and she added, "This mademoiselle and her father whom you brought hither--where are they?"

"They are even within the palace grounds, your imperial Majesty,"

answered Lempriere.

"You will summon them when I bid you," she said to the seigneur; "and you shall see that they have comforts and housing as befits their station," she added to the Lord Chamberlain.

So did Elizabeth, out of a whimsical humor, set the highest in the land to attend upon unknown, unconsidered exiles.

VIII

Five minutes later Lempriere of Rozel, as butler to the Queen, saw a sight of which he told to his dying day. When, after varied troubles hereafter set down, he went back to Jersey, he made a speech before the royal court, in which he told what chanced while Elizabeth was at chapel.

"There stood I, butler to the Queen," he said, with a large gesture, "but what knew I of butler's duties at Greenwich Palace! Her Majesty had given me an office where all the work was done for me. Odd's life! but when I saw the Gentleman of the Rod and his fellow get down on their knees to lay the cloth upon the table, as though it was an altar at Jerusalem, I thought it time to say my prayers. There was naught but kneeling and retiring. Now it was the saltcellar, the plate, and the bread; then it was a Duke's Daughter--a n.o.ble soul as ever lived--with a tasting-knife, as beautiful as a rose; then another lady enters who glares at me, and gets to her knees as does the other. Three times up and down, and then one rubs the plate with bread and salt, as solemn as St. Ouen's when he says prayers in the royal court. Gentles, that was a day for Jersey. For there stood I as master of all, the Queen's butler, and the greatest ladies of the land doing my will--though it was all Persian mystery to me, save when the kettle-drums began to beat and the trumpet to blow, and in walked bareheaded the yeomen of the guard, all scarlet, with a golden rose on their backs, bringing in a course of twenty-four gold dishes, and I, as Queen's butler, receiving them.

"Then it was I opened my mouth, amazed at the endless dishes filled with niceties of earth, and the Duke's Daughter pops onto my tongue a mouthful of the first dish brought, and then does the same to every yeoman of the guard that carried a dish--that her notorious Majesty be safe against the hand of poisoners. There was I, fed by a Duke's Daughter; and thus was Jersey honored; and the Duke's Daughter whispers to me, as a dozen other unmarried ladies enter, 'The Queen liked not the cut of your frieze jerkin better than do I, seigneur.'

With that she joins the others, and they all kneel down and rise up again, and, lifting the meat from the table, bear it into the Queen's private chamber.

"When they return, and the yeomen of the guard go forth, I am left alone with these ladies, and there I stand with twelve pairs of eyes upon me, little knowing what to do. There was laughter in the faces of some, and looks less taking in the eyes of others; for my Lord Leicester was to have done the duty I was set to do that day, and he the greatest gallant of the kingdom, as all the world knows. What they said among themselves I know not, but I heard Leicester's name, and I guessed that they were mostly in the pay of his soft words.

But the Duke's Daughter was on my side, as was proved betimes when Leicester made trouble for us who went from Jersey to plead the cause of injured folk. Of the earl's enmity to me--a foolish spite of a great n.o.bleman against a Norman-Jersey gentleman--and of how it injured others for the moment, you all know; but we had him by the heels before the end of it, great earl and favorite as he was."

In the same speech Lempriere told of his audience with the Queen, even as she sat at dinner, and of what she said to him; but since his words give but a partial picture of events, the relation must not be his.

When the Queen returned from chapel to her apartments, Lempriere was called by an attendant, and he stood behind the Queen's chair until she summoned him to face her. Then, having finished her meal and dipped her fingers in a bowl of rose-water, she took up the papers Leicester had given her--the Duke's Daughter had read them aloud as she ate--and said:

"Now, my good Seigneur of Rozel, answer me these few questions: First, what concern is it of yours whether this Michel de la Foret be sent back to France or die here in England?"

"I helped to save his life at sea--one good turn deserves another, your high-born Majesty."

The Queen looked sharply at him, then burst out laughing.

"G.o.d's life, but here's a bull making epigrams!" she said. Then her humor changed. "See you, my butler of Rozel, you shall speak the truth, or I'll have you where that jerkin will fit you not so well a month hence. Plain answers I will have to plain questions, or De Carteret of St. Ouen's shall have his will of you and your precious pirate. So bear yourself as you would save your head and your honors."

Lempriere of Rozel never had a better moment than when he met the Queen of England's threats with faultless intrepidity. "I am concerned about my head, but more about my honors, and most about my honor," he replied. "My head is my own, my honors are my family's, for which I would give my head when needed, and my honor defends both until both are naught--and all are in the service of my Queen."

Smiling, Elizabeth suddenly leaned forward, and, with a glance of satisfaction towards the Duke's Daughter, who was present, said:

"I had not thought to find so much logic behind your rampant skull,"

she said. "You've spoken well, Rozel, and you shall speak by the book to the end, if you will save your friends. What concern is it of yours whether Michel de la Foret live or die?"

"It is a concern of one whom I've sworn to befriend, and that is my concern, your ineffable Majesty."

"Who the friend?"

"Mademoiselle Aubert."

"The betrothed of this Michel de la Foret?"

"Even so, your exalted Majesty. But I made sure De la Foret was dead when I asked her to be my wife."