The Lady of the Mount Part 19

"_A la barque_! _A l'ecaille_!"

"_La vie_! Two drinks for a _liard_!"

"_Voila le plaisir des dames_!"

The Mount, in olden times a glorious and sacred place for royal pilgrimages, where kings came to pray and seek absolution, seemed now more mart than holy spot. But those whom the petty traders sought to entice--sullen-looking peasants, or poorly clad fishermen and their families--for the most part listened indifferently, or with stupid derision.

"Bah!" scoffed one of them, a woman dressed in worn-out costume of inherited holiday finery. "Where think you we can get sous for gew-gaws?"

"Or full stomachs with empty pockets?" said another. "The foul fiend take your Portugals!"

The nomadic merchants replied and a rough altercation seemed impending, when, pushing through the crowd, the girl hurried on.

Down, down, she continued; to the base of the rock where the sand's shining surface had attracted and yet held many of the people. Thither they still continued to come--in bands; processions; little streams that, trickling in, mingled with and augmented the rabble. An encampment for the hour--until the "_pet.i.te_" tide should break it up, and drive it piecemeal to the sh.o.r.e or up the sides of the Mount--it spread out and almost around the foundations of the great rock. Only the shadows it avoided--the chilling outlines of pinnacles and towers; the cold impress of the saint, holding close to the sunlit strand and basking in its warmth.

Some, following the example of their sea-faring fellows, dug half-heartedly in the sands in the hope of eking out the meager evening meal with a course, salt-flavored; others, abandoning themselves to lighter employment, made merry in heavy or riotous fashion, but the effect of these holiday efforts was only depressing and incongruous.

"Won't you join?" Some one's arm abruptly seized my lady.

"No, no!"

Unceremoniously he still would have drawn her into the ring, but with a sudden swift movement, she escaped from his grasp.

"My child!" The voice was that of a wolfish false friar who, seeing her pa.s.s quickly near by, broke off in threat, solicitation and appeal for sous, to intercept her. "Aren't you in a hurry, my child?"

"It may be," she answered steadily, with no effort to conceal her aversion at sight of the gleaming eyes and teeth. "Too much so, to speak with you, who are no friar!"

"What mean you?" His expression, ingratiating before, had darkened, and from his mean eyes shot a malignant look; she met it with fearless disdain.

"That you make pretext of this holy day to rob the people--as if they are not poor enough!"

"Ban you with bell, book and candle! Your tongue is too sharp, my girl!" he snarled, but did not linger long, finding the flashing glance, the contemptuous mien, or the truth of her words, little to his liking. That he profited not by the last, however, was soon evident, as with amulets and talismans for a bargain, again he moved among the crowd, conjuring by a full calendar of saints, real and imaginary, and professing to excommunicate, in an execrable confusion of monkish gibberish, where the people could not, or would not, comply with his demands.

"So they _are_--poor enough!" Leaning on a stick, an aged fishwife who had drawn near and overheard part of the dialogue between the thrifty rogue and the girl, now shook her withered head. "Yet still to be cozened! Never too poor to be cozened!" she repeated in shrill falsetto tones.

"And why," sharply my lady turned to the crone, "why are they so poor?

The lands are rich--the soil fertile."

"Why?" more shrilly. "You must come from some far-off place not to know. Why? Don't you, also, have to pay _metayage_ to some great lord? And _ba.n.a.lite_ here, and _ba.n.a.lite_ there, until--"

"But surely, if you applied to your great lord, your Governor; if you told him--"

"If we told him!" Brokenly the woman laughed. "Yes; yes; of course; if--"

"I don't understand," said the Governor's daughter coldly.

Muttering and chuckling, the woman did not seem to hear; had started to hobble on, when abruptly the girl stopped her.

"Where do you live?"

"There!" A claw-like finger pointed. "On the old Seigneur's lands--a little distance from the woods--"

"The old Seigneur? You knew him?"

"Knew him! Who better?" The whitened head wagged. "And the Black Seigneur? Wasn't he left, as a child, with me, when the old Seigneur went to America? And," pursing her thin lips, "didn't I care for him, and bring him up as one of my own?"

"But I thought--I heard that he, the Black Seigneur, when a boy, lived in the woods."

"That," answered the old creature, "was after. After the years he lived with us and shared our all! Not that we begrudged--no, no! Nor he! For once when I sent word, pleading our need, that we were starving, he forgave--I mean, remembered me--all I had done and," in a wheedling voice, "sent money--money--"

"He did?" Swiftly the girl reached for her own purse, only to discover she had forgotten to bring one. "But of course," in a tone of disappointment at her oversight, "he couldn't very well forget or desert one who had so generously befriended him."

"There are those now among his friends he must needs desert," the crone cackled, wagging her head.

A shadow crossed the girl's brow. "Must needs?" she repeated.

"Aye, forsooth! His comrades--taken prisoners near the island of Casque? His Excellency will hang them till they're dead--dead, like some I've seen dangling from the branches in the wood. He, the Black Seigneur, may wish to save them; but what can he do?"

"What, indeed?" The girl regarded the Mount almost bitterly. "It is impregnable."

"Way there!" At that moment, a deep, strong voice from a little group of people, moving toward them, interrupted.

CHAPTER XVI

THE MOUNTEBANK AND THE PEOPLE

In the center walked a man, dressed as a mountebank, who bent forward, laden with various properties--a bag that contained a miscellany of spurious medicines and drugs, to be sold from a stand, and various dolls for a small puppet theater he carried on his back. It was not for the Governor's daughter, or the old woman, however, his call had been intended. "Way there!" he repeated to those in front of him.

But they, yet seeking to detain, called out: "Give the piece here!"

CHAPTER XVI

THE MOUNTEBANK AND THE PEOPLE

In the center walked a man, dressed as a mountebank, who bent forward, laden with various properties--a bag that contained a miscellany of spurious medicines and drugs, to be sold from a stand, and various dolls for a small puppet theater he carried on his back. It was not for the Governor's daughter, or the old woman, however, his call had been intended. "Way there!" he repeated to those in front of him.

But they, yet seeking to detain, called out: "Give the piece here!"

Like a person not lightly turned from his purpose, he, strolling-player as well as charlatan, pointed to the Mount, and, unceremoniously thrusting one person to this side and another to that, stubbornly pushed on. As long as they were in sight the girl watched, but when with shouts and laughter they had vanished, swallowed by the shifting host, once more she turned to the crone. That person, however, had walked on toward the sh.o.r.e, and indecisively the Governor's daughter gazed after. The woman's name she had not inquired, but could find out later; that would not be difficult, she felt sure.

Soon, with no definite thought of where she was going, she began to retrace her steps, no longer experiencing that earlier over-sensitive perception for details, but seeing the picture as a whole--a vague impression of faces; in the background, the Mount--its golden saint ever threatening to strike!--until she drew closer; when abruptly the uplifted blade, a dominant note, above color and movement, vanished, and she looked about to find herself in the shadow of one of the rock's bulwarks. Near by, a scattering approach of pilgrims from the sands narrowed into a compact stream directed toward a lower gate, and, remembering her experience above, she would have avoided the general current; but no choice remained. At the portals she was jostled sharply; no respecters of persons, these men made her once more feel what it was to be one of the great commonalty; an atom in the rank and file! At length reaching the tower's little square, many of them stopped, and she was suffered to escape--to the stone steps swinging sharply upward. She had not gone far, however, when looking down, she was held by a spectacle not without novelty to her.

In the shadow of the Tower of the King stood the mountebank she had seen but a short time before on the sands. Now facing the people before his little show-house, which he had set up in a convenient corner, he was calling attention to the entertainment he proposed giving, by a loud beating on a drum.

Rub-a-dub-dub! "Don't crowd too close!" Rub-a-dub-dub! "Keep order and you will see--"