The Justice of the King Part 8

CHAPTER VIII

THE BLACK DOG OF AMBOISE

Blessed four-and-twenty. From the first breath of life until the last, even though by reason of strength there be four-score years, is there a more perfect age? The restraints of the schoolboy are left behind, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil has scattered its fruit about the feet, all sweet, all fresh in their newness, all a delight, even, alas, the worst of them: that of the tree of life seems just within the reach, and the burdens of the world are as yet on other men's backs.

Even if the Porter's Knot, which all must bear sooner or later, is already on the shoulder, the light heart of four-and-twenty is untroubled. It believes, in its optimism, that it will tumble the load of carks and cares into the first ditch, and live in freedom ever after!

To Stephen La Mothe's four-and-twenty with the spirit of eighteen the world of that May day was G.o.d's good world, and what better could it be than that! If a full-leaved cherry tree, its ripening cl.u.s.ters rosy red and waxen yellow against the dense greenery, flung shade across the road he paused in his tramp, squared his shoulders, and drank a deep breath of the cooler air; if the blazing sun sucked up a subtle, acrid smell from the hot dust stirred by his feet he snuffed it up greedily and found it good to live. A hawk in the air, a thrush whistling from a hazel bush as only a thrush can whistle, the glorious yellow of a break of whin, all were a delight.

"Heigh ho! Love is my life!

Live I in loving, and love I to live!"

he sang, and broke into a whistle almost as blithe as the thrush itself that he might think more freely. Commines' gibe had come back to him, and for pastime he would make a verse of his love song, let Ursula de Vesc's eyes be blue, grey, or black!

"Live I in loving, and love I to live,"

was a good line, a line Francois Villon himself could not have bettered, but how should the next line run?

"Heigho! Sweetest of strife!"

Strife! The word jarred the context, but where would he get a better?

Wife? Rife? Worse! both worse! Sweetest of strife--of strife--strife,

"Winning the dearest that life can give!"

No! that was not good, not good at all: Villon would have turned the rhyme better than that. But then Villon, wild rogue though he was, was a poet. The dearest life can give--the dearest? What was the dearest life could give? As the question, idly asked, fastened on his mind his whistle sobered into silence, and he plodded on through the dust, seeing neither the sunshine nor the shade.

France came first, the King had said, and then had made it clear that he was France. Was the King's service the dearest thing life could give? In times of peace, when the millstones and the hearts of men alike grind placidly, patriotism is a cold virtue, and even in the hot pa.s.sion of war it is often the magnetism of the individual man--the personal leader--who wakens the enthusiasm of desperate courage rather than the cause in whose name men die. Roland, La Mothe told himself, might have roused such an enthusiasm, or Coeur de Lion, or Joan of Arc, but never that fierce corpse of Valmy. And if the father was France, what was the son--the twelve-year boy so dreaded and so loved? Was he not France too? Did France plot against France? "All is not well at Amboise," said the King. If that was true in the sense the father meant it, what then? Was this dull ailing boy a double parricide to his father's knowledge?

That, by the law of a.s.sociation of ideas, called up a new thought, and a rush of warmth, which drew none of its heat from the sunshine, flushed La Mothe. What if the boy, dull and neglected though he was, hid such a love for the father as the father hid from the boy, and what if cunning Stephen La Mothe should find it out and make this torn France one in heart? And so, because however one follows the clues through this maze of life they always lead to love at the end, La Mothe broke into his song again:

"Heigh ho! Love is my life, Live I in loving, and love I to live.

Heigh ho! Sweetest of strife, Winning the dearest that life can give.

Love, who denied me, Hast thou not tried me----

And now, plague take the verse, where is my rhyme for the end?"

But a turn of the road brought him to Limeray with the stream of the Eisse flowing beyond. Another league and he would reach Amboise--Amboise, where the shuttles of fate, the man and the woman, Fear and Love as the King had called them, were waiting to weave into the warp and woof of life a pattern which would never fade; Amboise, where an end was to come--he had forgotten to ask Commines what end--an end which in some obscure way was to serve Commines and serve France.

"If I lift a finger he hangs," said the King. That, no doubt, was the human slime of the gutter who had roused Commines' contempt, and yet who was his pa.s.sport to the castle. A pretty pa.s.sport, and one not much to his credit, thought La Mothe, and fell to wondering if Ursula de Vesc of the uncertain eyes would cla.s.s them as birds of a feather--Ursula who found Amboise dull and was to kiss the poet as Margaret had kissed Alain Chartier. But Chartier had been asleep at the time, while La Mothe promised himself he would be very much awake, and then called himself slime of the gutter for the thought. This was not the chivalry and respect for all women he had learned in Poitou.

Who was he that a woman, sweet and good he had no doubt, should kiss him because Amboise was dull, and if she did would she be sweet and good? He pulled a wry face and shook himself angrily, the thought was like a bad taste in the mouth.

At Grand-Vouvray he forded the Loire, with Amboise sloping up from the river in full sight, the red roofs of its houses, huddled almost underneath the Chateau for protection, glowing yet more ruddily in the setting sun, and entered the town by the Tours gate as Commines had bidden him. Reared high above the town it at once awed and protected was the grey castle, towered and turreted like a fortress, and fortress it was,--fortress, palace, and prison in one. Round town and castle alike lay the river, holding them in its embrace like a guardian arm, and beyond stretched the rich fertility of the Orleannais.

The Chien Noir was easily found. It seemed as well known in Amboise as Notre Dame in Paris, and from the warmth of his reception La Mothe guessed shrewdly that his coming was expected. Innkeepers were not p.r.o.ne to lavish welcomes on wandering minstrels who carried all their world's gear on their back like any snail. For such light-hearted folk an open window at night was an easier method of payment than an open purse.

"A room and supper? Both, monsieur, and of the best. For the first what do you say to this?" and the landlord threw open a door with a flourish of pride. "Not in the Chateau itself will you find a better.

Two windows, as you see: bright by day and cool by night, with all the life of the town pa.s.sing up and down the road to keep you company if you are dull, and the castle gates in full view so that none can go in or out and you not know it. And for supper--I am my own cook and you may trust Jean Saxe. Give me twenty minutes, monsieur, twenty little minutes, and you'll say blessed be the Black Dog of Amboise!"

"And who are in the castle?"

"Two or three units with a dozen of noughts to their tail to give them value; Monsieur de Commines----"

"Monsieur de Commines? Do you dare speak of Monsieur de Commines so insolently?" burst out La Mothe, too indignant in his loyal devotion to Commines to remember that a wandering singer ate the bread of sufferance and had no opinions. But the innkeeper took no offence, which again suggested that he had his own private opinion of the knapsack and the lute.

"Monsieur, I meant no harm," he protested humbly. "I am Monsieur de Commines' man--that is, the King's man--to the death."

"Well, let it pa.s.s. Who else are at the Chateau?"

"Mademoiselle de Vesc----"

"Does she come next in consequence? Why not the Dauphin?"

"Oh! The Dauphin!" and Jean Saxe blew out his lips in contempt. "We who live in Amboise do not think great things of little Charles. To my mind little Charles is one of the noughts. But wait till you go to the Chateau and then you will understand for yourself."

"And why should I go to the Chateau?"

"Because they love music," and the fellow grinned knowingly as he c.o.c.ked a cunning eye at the exposed lute, "because there is another who loves music and can open the doors and will say---- There! do you hear him? La, lilla, la! La, la, lilla, la! He always sings over the third bottle, and the King--G.o.d bless him--pays for all."

Opening the door to its widest Saxe stood aside listening, his head on one side, his hand beckoning familiarly to La Mothe, as up the dark well of stairs there came the rise and fall of a man's voice in a brisk chant. No words could be caught, but the air ran trippingly, and if the higher notes broke in a crack which told of age or misuse, or both together, the lower ran clear and full, and the tune ran on with a rollicking, careless awing which showed that, whoever might cavil, the singer had at least one appreciative hearer--himself!

"A wonderful man, wonderful," whispered Saxe, his small eyes twinkling with appreciation, but whether at the music or because the King paid for all, La Mothe was uncertain. "A poet of poets, a drinker of drinkers, and a shrewd, bitter-tongued devil drunk or sober. Not that he grows drunk easily, not he! and always he sings at his third bottle."

"What is his name?"

"Whatever he chooses, monsieur, and so long as the King pays what does a name matter? He serves the King as I do and--with great respect--as you do also. Did I ask your name when you said, 'A room and supper'?

Not I!"

"I am called Stephen La Mothe."

"As you please, monsieur, and I don't doubt you will eat as good a supper by that name as by any other. Give me twenty minutes and you will say the Black Dog of Amboise is no cur."

Nor was Jean Saxe's boast unjustified. La Mothe not only supped but ate, and with such satisfaction that in the peace of a healthy hunger crowned with as healthy a digestion--unappreciated blessings of four-and-twenty--he forgot alike King and Dauphin, Valmy and the Grey Gates of Amboise in the shadows across the road.

But neither was allowed to remain forgotten. As he sat over the remains of his supper, tapping out a verse of his love song with his finger-tips on the table, the door from the common room of the inn was opened and a man entered whom La Mothe at once guessed to be one of his three good friends in Amboise. In one hand he carried a lighted candle, in the other a great horn cup.

"Thanks, Jean," he said patronizingly, nodding towards the room he had left as he spoke. "Close the door behind me, my good fellow: both my hands are full." Then raising the candle, he turned and scrutinized La Mothe with a curiosity as great as La Mothe's own and much more frankly evident.

And he was worth studying, as a rare specimen is studied in the difficulty of cla.s.sification. If there were many such men in France La Mothe had never yet met one of them. He was under middle height, the jaunty, alert youthfulness of his slim figure, supple without great strength, contradicted by the grey which shot with silver the thin hair falling almost to his narrow shoulders, and, as La Mothe searched him in the wavering, guttered candle-light, it flashed upon him that contradiction was the note of all his characteristics. The weak chin with the unkempt straggle of a beard gave the lie to a forehead magnificent in its abundant strength of mental power: the promise of the luminous, clear eyes was robbed of fulfilment by the loose mouth with the slime of the gutter and sensuality of the beast writ large upon its thick lips. From the thin peaked nose upwards it was the face of a son of the G.o.ds who knew his parentage and birthright; but downward that of a human swine who loved the foulness of the trough for the trough's sake. A Poet of poets, said the eyes: Slime of the gutter and old age unashamed of its shame, retorted the mouth; and both spoke truth. Evidently his scrutiny satisfied him, for he heaved a sigh of contentment as he drew nearer to La Mothe.

"The image of what I was at your age," he said, and again there was the note of contradiction. The voice was the sweet, full voice of a singer, but ruined at the first emotion into roughness by excess.

Placing the candlestick on the table he lifted La Mothe's wine bottle and smelt it with slow carefulness, applying it first to one nostril then to the other. "Vintage '63," he said appreciatively, "and that animal Saxe fobs me off with '75."

"Then try my '63," said La Mothe, "and we shall see if Saxe has another bottle of the same."

Promptly the contents of the horn mug were flung with a splash into the open fireplace at La Mothe's back.

"Just what I was at your age! The same to a hair! A gay companion generous of heart and purse. Yes," he went on, half seating himself on the table-edge and sucking down the wine with slow appreciative gulps, "'63; I knew I could not be mistaken, though it is four years since I tasted it last. The palate, Monsieur La Mothe, is like nature and never forgets. For that reason we should never outrage either."