The Justice of the King Part 13

"How should I know!" answered La Mothe crossly. It vexed him that Villon should speak at all of Ursula de Vesc, and still more that his answer was so lame. But recognizing the symptoms out of a wide experience, Villon only laughed softly at the brusque retort.

"Some peaches hang themselves high," he said, the laugh broadening as La Mothe's face grew wrathful, "but they are peaches all the same.

Shake the tree, my young friend, shake the tree, and see that you keep your mouth open when the fruit drops."

"Monsieur Villon, if we are to be friends----"

"So young, so very young," said Villon softly. "Friends? most certainly. If we are not friends, who should be? Are we not both jackals hunting in the one pack, and jackal does not bite jackal."

Then his mood changed with a swiftness which La Mothe soon found to be characteristic, a kindliness cast out the jarring banter from his face, and his luminous eyes grew wistful. "Friends? It is a good word, the very best word in the world. Friends are more than family or kinship, and not many care to call old Francois Villon friend nowadays. There was a time----" He paused, running his hand down the long trail of his beard reflectively, a slender-fingered supple hand. La Mothe noted it was, a hand that had a distinct character of its own, just as the contradictory face had, though the finger-tips were less sensitive than in the days when their itching acquisitiveness had brought their owner to the cold shadows of the gallows. "Aye! there was a time. There were four of us----"

"The ballad says six," said La Mothe.

"Four, four: a man--yet, more, a woman--may have many lovers but few friends, many to tuck an arm in his or throw it across his neck when the pockets are full. But that's not friendship, and I don't call every man friend who dips his fingers into the same till with me. Yes, there were four of us, Montigny, Tabary, Cayeux, poor snows of yester year sucked down by the cold earth. But while the blood was warm in our veins we four were as one with one purse. When it was full we laughed and sang and feasted as no king feasts, because no king has such spice of appet.i.te nor can snap his fingers at the world and care as we could: when it was empty, and it was mostly empty, we laughed and sang the louder and shared our crusts or went gaily hungry. Brave lads every one, and brave days. Aye, aye."

"And where are they now?"

"With the snows of yester year! G.o.d knows where! and I fear me the devil knows too. Montigny was hung in '57, Tabary in '58, and Cayeux, Cayeux of the light heart and lighter fingers, went by the same path two years later: I only am left. They said I killed a man and would have hung me--me! Francois Villon! Certainly a man died or there would be no Villon now: it was either he or I, and they would have hung me." The full lips parted in a comfortable laugh and the eyes twinkled. "I appealed to Parliament in a ballad, and the humour of the notion moved the good gentlemen to mercy. 'How can we choke the breath from so sweet a singer?' said they. 'There are ten thousand hangable rogues in Paris, but only one poet amongst them!' G.o.d be praised for humour. I think it gave Francois Villon his life; but since then friendship has walked the other side of the street."

"And yet," La Mothe laid his hand on the elder man's shoulder, letting it lie there in kindliness, "you who so gibe at your best self are the Francois Villon of the ballad to Mary the Mother. How is that?"

"Can I tell you?

'Je cognois tout fors que moy mesme.'

Man is Eden in little: there is the slime of the serpent under the tree of knowledge, but the Lord G.o.d walks through the garden in the cool of the day. What are we but contradictions, shadows of Montfaucon shot through by glories from Notre Dame. Perhaps some day a clearer knowledge than ours will straighten out the tangles," and with a laugh, which had little joyousness in it, Villon plunged afresh into memories which seemed to strike the whole gamut of a soul's experience from A to G.

La Mothe allowed him to run on without interruption. The alternations of mood, tender and callous by turns, but never remorseful, never regretful, except with the regrets for a lost delight, both amused and repelled him, but at last as Villon sat silent he turned to the window and flung open the wooden sun-blinds.

"At last they are awake in the Chateau," he said. "Horses? hawks? Are they going hunting, do you suppose?"

"Saxe will know. Hulloa! Saxe! Saxe! What is little Charles doing to-day?"

"I was coming for you both," answered Saxe from the open door. "They are riding to Chateau-Renaud, and your worships are so beloved by both the Dauphin and mademoiselle that you must needs go with them.

Monsieur de Commines and Monsieur La Follette have gone hawking for the day."

"Do not go," said Villon. "They know you at Chateau-Renaud, and how could you explain if they recognized you?"

"But we may not go near the inn," answered La Mothe, to whom the ride meant neither more nor less than a morning with Ursula de Vesc, therefore a delight not to be denied. "But what of horses?"

"They are being saddled this very moment," replied Jean Saxe, and then went on to paint out La Mothe's roseate dreams with the dull brush of realities. "Always," and he lowered his voice as he spoke, "whether by day or by night, you will find a horse waiting ready for your ride to Valmy. It is in the stall facing the door, monsieur. By day the stable is open and not a soul will ask questions; saddle and bridle for yourself, then ride like the devil. By night send a stone through the last window on the left and I will be with you in three seconds. Don't spare your spurs, that's my advice."

"G.o.d send the man who rides to Valmy nothing redder than a red spur."

Villon had joined La Mothe at the window, and was peering out at the stir of men and horses in the open s.p.a.ce between the inn and the castle gates.

"Saxe, what man of yours is that who is bitting Grey Roland? I don't know his face."

"A stop-gap," answered Saxe indifferently. "A gipsy fellow I think he is by his colour. Old Michel is drunk in the barn--how I don't know, but the Chien Noir is none the better for it--this other is in his place for the day. I don't know his name, but he can tell a horse from a mule by more than the ears, and that's name enough for me."

"Who owns that huge, raw-boned roan?" asked La Mothe. "Surely I have seen it somewhere."

"It's as much a stranger to me as Michel's stop-gap," answered Saxe.

"It's not one of the regular Chateau horses, that's certain. The beast has power in his legs, rough though he is. Why do you ask, monsieur?"

But La Mothe had already lost his interest. "There is the Dauphin," he said. "Come, let us go."

But his gaze was fixed on the slender figure which followed the boy, and the eyes of a much greyer age than a lover of twenty-four with the heart of eighteen might well have lit into a sparkle at the charm of the picture. He was not learned in women's stuffs, or the hundred little arts through which an accent, as it were, is put upon a charm already sufficiently gracious, or a beauty brought into yet clearer relief for the luring and undoing of the unsuspecting male, and so could not have told whether Ursula de Vesc was clad in sober grey or sunny lightness. She was Ursula de Vesc, and that was enough, Ursula de Vesc, the woman of a single hour of life, and yet the one sweet woman in the world.

"A lover's arms ought to be her riding-chair," said Villon, following La Mothe's gaze. "No, there is no offence meant," he added, as Stephen's face reddened with the beginnings of umbrage. "She may be a spitfire and not love Francois Villon, but she is a good girl, and my four eyes are not blind."

"Your four eyes?" questioned La Mothe; "most of us have but two."

"Two in my head and two in my sense, and it is by the two in his sense a man should marry. The two in the head are the greatest liars and deceivers in creation."

The Dauphin had already mounted when La Mothe and Villon crossed the roadway with their horses following, led by drunken Michel's subst.i.tute, and his greeting to both was of the curtest. The apologue of the night before was neither forgotten nor forgiven. But with Ursula de Vesc's grey eyes smiling at him La Mothe cared little for the boy's dour looks. Hugues, who had mounted his master, still waited by the horse's head, a spirited, high-bred bay, sleek and well groomed, which stood shifting its feet with impatience at the delay. The bridle of the less fiery but no less well-cared-for jennet intended for the girl was held by a stable-helper, while in a group behind the escort made ready to mount. Neither Commines nor La Follette was present; they had gone hawking, as Saxe had said, nor was Hugues booted for riding.

"Good morning, Monsieur La Mothe." Ursula de Vesc spoke gaily, frankly, as if she had not a care in the world, and the greeting in the soft clear voice stirred La Mothe's heart as the smile in the grey eyes had stirred it. "We missed you at breakfast: what early risers you poets are."

"Mademoiselle," stammered La Mothe, "my day has but now begun."

"Then you must walk in your sleep," she interrupted laughingly.

"Monseigneur, do you hear? Monsieur La Mothe walks in his sleep. So do not be frightened if you hear him in the corridor o' nights. He has been up these three hours and says the day has only now begun."

"I hear," replied Charles, turning on La Mothe those dull, watchful eyes which, according to Villon, saw so much more than men supposed.

"And Hugues hears too. While Hugues sleeps at my door I shan't be frightened. Come, Ursula, mount and let us go. Bertrand is so restive I can scarcely hold him."

At that moment La Mothe felt the bridle of Grey Roland pushed into his hand with a "Hold that a moment, monsieur," and Jean Saxe's stop-gap crossed to the Dauphin's side.

"Your pardon, Monseigneur," he said, stooping, "there is a buckle loose, if your Highness would lift your leg a moment while I fasten it."

"A buckle? Where?"

"Below the saddle-flap, Monseigneur: a shift of the leg--thank you, Monseigneur, that is right," and he drew back toward the Chien Noir, nor paused until he was lost in the crowd of idlers. For a gipsy he was singularly un.o.btrusive.

CHAPTER XIV

FOR LIFE AND A THRONE

Slipping his foot back into the stirrup the Dauphin mechanically closed his knees, as a rider does to renew his grip after it has been relaxed.

But with the tightening of the grip the bay started as if goaded by a vicious double rasp of the spurs, swerved violently, shaking his head till the chains rattled, then plunging to right and left he sprang forward at a gallop.

"Hugues, Hugues, catch the reins," cried mademoiselle, but the swerve had sent Hugues staggering, and before he had steadied himself or regained his wits Bertrand was tearing madly under the city gates, his reins hanging loose, his neck stretched like a racer's.

"The Dauphin! the Dauphin! Oh! for G.o.d's sake--Hugues--Monsieur La Mothe--is there no one to help? They will be in the Loire--drowned while you stand there staring. Oh! that I could ride like a man: why don't you move, some of you, stocks that you are?"

The gasped words were but a breath, so quickly the broken sentences followed one another, but before the frightened girl could lash them with the whip of her distress a second time La Mothe had his fingers knit in Grey Roland's mane and was climbing into the saddle, and the last he heard, as, swaying in his seat, he groped blindly for a missing stirrup, was the girl's deep breath, half sob, half cry.