The Justice of the King Part 10

To-day he received Monsieur de Commines with all the gravity of the Pope: 'Where is Monsieur Tristan, Tristan of the House of Great Nails?'

he asked, peering about him with those dull, tired eyes of his which see so much more than most men imagine. 'Tristan?' says Monsieur de Commines, very sourly for so great a man, 'Tristan does not travel with me, Monseigneur.' 'He must be somewhere near,' says little Charles, 'since you come from my father, do you not? and you are both friends of his.' It was a sharp thrust and it was not the Dauphin who looked the fool. Now, was that more or less than the impishness that's in all boys, prince or gutter rat? More, I say. No, children are too subtle for me: give me women for simplicity! But I may help you with him all the same."

Though a king dwelt in Valmy and a king's son in Amboise, never was there a greater contrast than between the watchfulness exercised for their safety. At Valmy guards had thronged at every turn, more vigilant than pickets who hold the lives of a sleeping army in their keeping, but at Amboise the doors swung open to the touch of almost the first comer, though it was not easy to be certain how much of this laxity was due to the guarantee of Villon's presence. A careless porter kept the outer gate, a single sentinel, lounging in the guard-room, let them pa.s.s into the central court unchallenged, and the servant or two they met upon the stairs gave them no more than a heedless glance. That, at least, was La Mothe's first impressions.

But when he saw the same face in the lower hall, again at the stair-head, yet again in the ante-room, and recognized that the plainly dressed serving-man had kept them under observation at every turn, un.o.btrusively but of evident purpose, he decided that a casual stranger could not have penetrated to the heart of Amboise without first giving a good account of himself. The watcher was Hugues, the Dauphin's valet. And yet when Villon gently drew aside a curtain masking a doorway which opened upon the stair-head, there was no one in attendance to announce them. It was as if the King said, more significantly, more emphatically than in any words, "My son may be the Dauphin, but I alone am France."

"There are the boy and the woman," said Villon softly, "Charles and Ursula de Vesc. Now, had I been your age I would rather have won the woman."

CHAPTER X

LOVE, THE ENEMY

Charles was seated on a low stool at the further end of the room, a pale-faced boy with dull, peevish eyes closely set together, the long Valois nose, and a thin, obstinate mouth. His dress was severely, obstinately, contemptuously plain. Again it was as if the King said, This is not the greatness or the glory of France! But love and care had redeemed the derisive parsimony. All the lad wore was exquisitely neat and the very severity lent the little figure a dignity of its own.

Beside him, but a little behind, stood Love, the Enemy, Ursula de Vesc, a slim figure in white. One arm was flung over his shoulder, the hand holding the boy's hand as he raised it across his breast, and she seemed to draw him back to her so that he half leaned, half lay against her knee. Her other hand was caught up against her side below the rounded breast, and pressed there so tensely that the slender, bloodless fingers lay ivory-white against the hardly purer white of the bodice. The whole att.i.tude was one of spontaneous, natural, womanly affection, but as Stephen La Mothe looked a second time he seemed to find in it both defence and defiance, or if not defiance, then that vigilant watchfulness which is almost an antagonism. The clasping arm spoke protection, but a protection which said, "Touch if you dare."

Nor did the expression of her face change his thought. The clear grey eyes were alert with something more than a girl's fresh interest, the firm mouth, even while the lips moved, was set in an unconscious strain, and across the broad forehead two lines were shadowed where no lines ought to have been. If the face of age, when the sorrows and experience of years have written anxiety for the uncertain morrow across it, moves the heart by the story it tells, how much more the face of youth lined by cares which merciful Time should still have held unrevealed? There are more valleys of shadows than that of death, and it seemed to La Mothe that the gloom of some one of them had gathered thickly round Ursula de Vesc.

Of the three or four others grouped at the further end of the room Commines was the only familiar figure, and though all turned at the noise of the bra.s.s rings jangling on their rod as Villon drew the curtain there was no recognition in his eyes. It was the opening of the lying masquerade, and La Mothe vaguely felt the white horse stumble as it swerved from the straight course. The soiling of clean hands spoken of by Commines on the road to Chateau-Renaud had begun.

"Gain the girl and win the boy," whispered Villon as, with his hand upon La Mothe's arm, they walked up the room together, then aloud, "Monseigneur and Mademoiselle----"

"Monseigneur, if you please," interrupted the girl, but though she spoke to Villon her eyes were on La Mothe. The voice was cold, the words at once a self-effacement and a rebuke. It was as if she said, "I know my place: know--and keep--yours."

"Monseigneur," went on Villon, quite unruffled, "with the ills of life come their cure: Amboise was dull and I present to you Monsieur Stephen La Mothe."

The Dauphin made no immediate answer, but glanced up at Ursula de Vesc with a question in his eyes, and his clasp on her hand tightened, drawing her yet closer to him. It was the action of a child to its mother rather than that of a boy of twelve to a girl not twice his age, and to those who understood it was curiously instructive. Looking down upon him she smiled and nodded, nor did the gracious softening of the tender face escape La Mothe. Her eyes were grey, and surely grey eyes were the sweetest in all the world?

"Monsieur La Mothe," repeated Charles, as if the girl's look had given him courage to speak. "Monsieur La Mothe of--Valmy?"

"Monsieur La Mothe of everywhere," replied Villon hastily, before La Mothe had time to answer. "Singers and poets are of all the world.

They say it took seven cities to give Homer birth."

"And Monsieur La Mothe is another Homer?" said the girl, and Stephen winced at the insolent curve of her lips. He was quite sure they were never meant for such a curve, surely a Cupid's bow would be more natural than contempt, disdain, and a few other injurious opinions all in the one expression. In this belief he hastened to reply, allowing no time for Villon to intervene.

"No, mademoiselle, I am neither a singer nor a poet, at least not such a one as Monsieur Villon."

"I hope not, for your credit's sake," answered the girl drily, nor did she seek to keep the scorn from her voice. "As both singer and poet Monsieur Francois Villon is beyond his age."

"There is no such critic as the one who fails to understand," said Villon, his wrinkled face white with anger, "and I see I was right at first, and should have said Mademoiselle and Monseigneur, not Monseigneur and Mademoiselle."

"Master Villon, you are impertinent," broke in Commines, who loved Ursula de Vesc little, but hated Villon more.

"Monsieur de Commines, if it were not another impertinence I would say that like breeds like," retorted Villon, entirely unabashed. He returned Commines' dislike with energy, and so long as he served the King he had little to fear from the King's minister.

"Poets are privileged," said Mademoiselle de Vesc. "And Monsieur Villon has paid me a compliment: I neither understand his poetry nor desire to." Her tone was still contemptuous and had in it no thanks to Philip de Commines for his reproof on her behalf. She resented it, rather, since she had no desire to owe him either grat.i.tude or thanks.

For a moment there was a pause, a moment which seemed the prelude to a sarcastic outbreak from one or other of those she had wilfully irritated in that intolerance which so often goes hand in hand with a spirit of self-sacrifice. But Stephen La Mothe interposed.

"Mademoiselle, may I have the honour of being presented to Monseigneur?"

"You?" she said, the lines deepening across her forehead. "A roadside singer presented to the Dauphin! Surely you forget yourself--and him?"

"Even a roadside singer may be a loyal son of France," he retorted, looking her full in the face. He keenly resented the false position into which the King's ill-considered scheme had thrust him, but he had gone too far to retreat. "You know best, mademoiselle, whether the Dauphin has need of a man's honest love and devotion."

"Devotion that is here to-day, was G.o.d knows where yesterday, and will be G.o.d knows where to-morrow! Merci! the Dauphin is indeed grateful."

"Spitfire!" murmured Villon, but so cautiously that only La Mothe heard him. "Certainly I should have said Mademoiselle and Monseigneur. Or better still have left the Monseigneur out altogether. You do not go the right way. Win the girl, I tell you, and the boy will follow like a sheep."

"Let me win her my own way," answered La Mothe, which has always been the man's desire since Adam was in Eden with the one woman in all the world. Then he went on aloud, "Pour your scorn on it as you will, mademoiselle, it is devotion that will wait patiently in Amboise until it has proved itself."

"That will wait patiently in Amboise?" she repeated. Her eyes challenged his as she spoke, and in them there was nothing of the light the sons of Adam have loved to see in a woman's eyes so that they might dwell together in Paradise.

"Why not? And if a poor gentleman desires to see France in this fashion is there any reason against it?"

"A poor gentleman, but not a poor minstrel?"

"As both I can but give my best. May I have the honour, mademoiselle?"

Her clasp upon the boy's hand must have tightened, for again he raised his face to hers as she stooped over him, speaking softly. This time it was he who nodded.

"You know best," he whispered back, and the words would have given La Mothe food for thought had he heard them. "As you say, it will be safer to have him before our eyes than behind our backs. We may be quite sure that Hugues will watch him. Yes, I agree: at least he is prettier to look at than that beast of a Villon."

From her side, where she held it pressed, her left hand slipped down across the Dauphin's shoulder until it too drew him towards her, but when she raised her head the lines were smoothed from the forehead, and if the grey eyes were still watchful, they watched through a smile.

"Monseigneur permits it," she said. "Monseigneur, I have the honour to present to you Monsieur Stephen La Mothe."

"Monsieur La Mothe of where?" asked the boy gravely.

"Of Landless, in the Duchy of Lackeverything," replied La Mothe, bowing with an equal gravity, and at the adroit parrying of a difficult question the smile crept down from Ursula de Vesc's eyes until it loosened the hard lines of the mouth, and bent them to that Cupid's bow La Mothe so much desired to see. "I have many fellow-subjects, Monseigneur."

"Another name for that duchy is Amboise," said Charles, "and so, monsieur, it is my wish that you make the castle your home for as long as it pleases you."

He spoke with such a settled seriousness that it was difficult to be sure whether he understood the jest and played up to it in that spirit of make-believe which had drawn down the King's anger or answered out of a dull uncomprehension. Nor did La Mothe care which it was. His heart leaped within him at the double promise opened up of fulfilling the King's mission at his ease and watching the unbending of the curved bow, but he answered with an equal gravity.

"Then Landless is not Houseless, Monseigneur, and to devotion grat.i.tude is added."

"Discretion and good appet.i.te give a man a longer life than either,"

said Villon.

"But remember," and Commines spoke to La Mothe for the first time, "the King has first claim upon both."

"On discretion and good appet.i.te?" said Villon gravely. "I fear, Monsieur d'Argenton, His Majesty in his present health has more need of the second than the first."

"Take your ribald impertinences elsewhere, but beware how you attempt them upon me elsewhere," answered Commines, with a stern contempt.

"Here Monseigneur and mademoiselle's presence protect you."