A Ladder of Swords Part 9

Leicester's impatience only made her more self-willed on the instant.

"You speak with the trumpet note, monsieur," she said to De la Foret.

"We will prove you. You shall have a company in my Lord Leicester's army here, and we will send you upon some service worthy of your fame."

"I crave your Majesty's pardon, but I cannot do it," was De la Foret's instant reply. "I have sworn that I will lift my sword in one cause only, and to that I must stand. And more--the widow of my dead chief, Gabriel de Montgomery, is set down in this land unsheltered and alone. I have sworn to one who loves her, and for my dead chief's sake, that I will serve her and be near her until better days be come and she may return in quietness to France. In exile we few stricken folk must stand together, your august Majesty."

Elizabeth's eye flashed up. She was impatient of refusal of her favor. She was also a woman, and that De la Foret should flaunt his devotion to another woman was little to her liking. The woman in her, which had never been blessed with a n.o.ble love, was roused. The sourness of a childless, uncompanionable life was stronger for the moment than her strong mind and sense.

"Monsieur has sworn this, and monsieur has sworn that," she said, petulantly--"and to one who loveth a lady, and for a cause--tut! tut!

tut!--"

Suddenly a kind of intriguing laugh leaped into her eye, and she turned to Leicester and whispered in his ear. Leicester frowned, then smiled, and glanced up and down De la Foret's figure impertinently.

"See, Monsieur de la Foret," she added, "since you will not fight, you shall preach. A priest you came into my kingdom, and a priest you shall remain; but you shall preach good English doctrine and no Popish folly."

De la Foret started, then composed himself, and before he had time to reply Elizabeth continued:

"Partly for your own sake am I thus gracious, for as a preacher of the Word I have not need to give you up, according to agreement with our brother of France. As a rebel and conspirator I were bound to do so, unless you were an officer of my army. The Seigneur of Rozel has spoken for you, and the Comtesse de Montgomery has written a pleading letter. Also I have from another source a tearful prayer--the ink is scare dry upon it--which has been of service to you. But I myself have chosen this way of escape for you. Prove yourself worthy and all may be well--but prove yourself you shall. You have prepared your own brine, monsieur; in it you shall pickle."

She smiled a sour smile, for she was piqued, and added: "Do you think I will have you here squiring of distressed dames save as a priest?

You shall hence to Madame of Montgomery as her faithful chaplain, once I have heard you preach and know your doctrine."

Leicester almost laughed outright in the young man's face now, for he had no thought that De la Foret would accept, and refusal meant the exile's doom.

It seemed fantastic that this n.o.ble gentleman, this very type of the perfect soldier, with the brown face of a Romany and an athletic valor of body, should become a preacher even in necessity.

Elizabeth, seeing De la Foret's dumb amazement and anxiety, spoke up sharply: "Do this, or get you hence to the Medici, and Madame of Montgomery shall mourn her protector, and mademoiselle, your mistress of the vermilion cheek, shall have one lover the less, which, methinks, our Seigneur of Rozel would thank me for."

De la Foret started, his lips pressed firmly together in effort of restraint. There seemed little the Queen did not know concerning him, and reference to Angele roused him to sharp solicitude.

"Well, well?" asked Elizabeth, impatiently, then made a motion to Leicester, and he, going to the door, bade some one to enter.

There stepped inside the Seigneur of Rozel, who made a lumbering obeisance, then got to his knees before the Queen.

"You have brought the lady safely--with her father?" she asked.

Lempriere, puzzled, looked inquiringly at the Queen, then replied, "Both are safe without, your infinite Majesty."

De la Foret's face grew pale. He knew now for the first time that Angele and her father were in England, and he looked Lempriere suspiciously in the eyes; but the swaggering seigneur met his look frankly, and bowed with ponderous and genial gravity.

Now De la Foret spoke. "Your high Majesty," said he, "if I may ask Mademoiselle Aubert one question in your presence--"

"Your answer now; the lady in due season," interposed the Queen.

"She was betrothed to a soldier, she may resent a priest," said De la Foret, with a touch of humor, for he saw the better way was to take the matter with some outward ease.

Elizabeth smiled. "It is the custom of her s.e.x to have a fondness for both," she answered, with an acid smile. "But your answer?"

De la Foret's face became exceeding grave. Bowing his head, he said: "My sword has spoken freely for the cause; G.o.d forbid that my tongue should not speak also. I will do your Majesty's behest."

The jesting word that was upon the royal lips came not forth, for De la Foret's face was that of a man who had determined a great thing, and Elizabeth was one who had a heart for high deeds. "The man is brave indeed," she said, under her breath, and, turning to the dumfounded seigneur, bade him bring in Mademoiselle Aubert.

A moment later, Angele entered, came a few steps forward, made obeisance, and stood still. She showed no trepidation, but looked before her steadily. She knew not what was to be required of her--she was a stranger in a strange land; but persecution and exile had gone far to strengthen her spirit and greaten her composure.

Elizabeth gazed at the girl coldly and critically. To women she was not over-amiable; but as she looked at the young Huguenot maid, of this calm bearing, warm of color, clear of eye, and purposeful of face, something kindled in her. Most like it was that love for a cause which was more to be encouraged by her than any woman's love for a man, which, as she grew older, inspired her with aversion, as talk of marriage brought cynical allusions to her lips.

"I have your letter and its protests and its pleadings. There were fine words and adjurations--are you so religious, then?" she asked, brusquely.

"I am a Huguenot, your n.o.ble Majesty," answered the girl, as though that answered all.

"How is it, then, you are betrothed to a roistering soldier?" asked the Queen.

"Some must pray for Christ's sake, and some must fight, your most Christian Majesty," answered the girl.

"Some must do both," rejoined the Queen, in a kinder voice, for the pure spirit of the girl worked upon her. "I am told that Monsieur de la Foret fights fairly. If he can pray as well, methinks he shall have safety in our kingdom, and ye shall all have peace. On Trinity Sunday you shall preach in my chapel, Monsieur de la Foret, and thereafter you shall know your fate."

She rose. "My lord," she said to Leicester, on whose face gloom had settled, "you will tell the Lord Chamberlain that Monsieur de la Foret's durance must be made comfortable in the west tower of my palace till chapel-going of Trinity Day. I will send him for his comfort and instruction some sermons of Latimer's."

She stepped down from the dais. "You will come with me, mistress,"

she said to Angele, and reached out her hand.

Angele fell on her knees and kissed it, tears falling down her cheek, then rose and followed the Queen from the chamber. She greatly desired to look backward towards De la Foret, but some good angel bade her not; she realized that to offend the Queen at this moment might ruin all; and Elizabeth herself was little like to offer chance for farewell and love-tokens.

So it was that, with bowed head, Angele left the room with the Queen of England, leaving Lempriere and De la Foret gazing at each other, the one bewildered, the other lost in painful reverie, and Leicester smiling maliciously at them both.

X

Every man, if you bring him to the right point, if you touch him in the corner where he is most sensitive, where he most lives, as it were; if you p.r.i.c.k his nerves with a needle of suggestion where all his pa.s.sions, ambitions, and sentiments are at white heat, will readily throw away the whole game of life in some mad act out of harmony with all he ever did. It matters little whether the needle p.r.i.c.k him by accident or blunder or design, he will burst all bounds and establish again the old truth that each of us will prove himself a fool given perfect opportunity. Nor need the occasion of this revolution be a great one; the most trivial event may produce the great fire which burns up wisdom, prudence, and habit.

The Earl of Leicester, so long counted astute, clear-headed, and well governed, had been suddenly foisted out of balance, shaken from his imperious composure, tortured out of an a.s.sumed and persistent urbanity, by the presence in Greenwich Palace of a Huguenot exile of no seeming importance, save what the Medici grimly gave him by desiring his head. It appeared absurd that the great Leicester, whose nearness to the throne had made him the most feared, most notable, and, by virtue of his opportunities, the most dramatic figure in England, should have sleepless nights by reason of a fugitive like Michel de la Foret. On the surface it was preposterous that he should see in the Queen's offer of service to the refugee evidence that she was set to grant him special favors; it was equally absurd that her offer of safety to him on pledge of his turning preacher should seem proof that she meant to have him near her.

Elizabeth had left the presence-chamber without so much as a glance at him, though she had turned and looked graciously at the stranger.

He had hastily followed her, and thereafter impatiently awaited a summons which never came, though he had sent a message that his hours were at her Majesty's disposal. Waiting, he saw Angele's father escorted from the palace by a Gentleman Pensioner to a lodge in the park; he saw Michel de la Foret taken to his apartments; he saw the Seigneur of Rozel walking in the palace grounds with such possession as though they were his own, self-content in every motion of his body.

Upon the instant the great earl was incensed out of all proportion to the affront of the seigneur's existence. He suddenly hated Lempriere only less than he hated Michel de la Foret. As he still waited irritably for a summons from Elizabeth, he brooded on every word and every look she had given him of late; he recalled her manner to him in the antechapel the day before, and the admiring look she cast on De la Foret but now. He had seen more in it than mere approval of courage and the self-reliant bearing of a refugee of her own religion.

These were days when the soldier of fortune mounted to high places.

He needed but to carry the banner of bravery and a busy sword, and his way to power was not hindered by poor estate. To be gently born was the one thing needful, and Michel de la Foret was gently born; and he had still his sword, though he chose not to use it in Elizabeth's service. My lord knew it might be easier for a stranger like De la Foret, who came with no enc.u.mbrance, to mount to place in the struggles of the court, than for an Englishman, whose increasing and ever-bolder enemies were undermining on every hand, to hold his own.

He began to think upon ways and means to meet this sudden preference of the Queen, made sharply manifest, as he waited in the antechamber, by a summons to the refugee to enter the Queen's apartments. When the refugee came forth again he wore a sword the Queen had sent him, and a packet of Latimer's sermons were under his arm. Leicester was unaware that Elizabeth herself did not see De la Foret when he was thus hastily called; but that her lady-in-waiting, the Duke's Daughter, who figured so largely in the pictures Lempriere drew of his experiences at Greenwich Palace, brought forth the sermons and the sword, with this message from the Queen:

"The Queen says that it is but fair to the sword to be by Michel de la Foret's side when the sermons are in his hand, that his choice have every seeming of fairness. For her Majesty says it is still his choice between the Sword and the Book till Trinity Day."

Leicester, however, only saw the sword at the side of the refugee and the gold-bound book under his arm as he came forth, and in a rage he left the palace and gloomily walked under the trees, denying himself to every one.