Part 11

Farrant was quick to read the omen. Henceforth, it seemed, Enguerrand de Joncelles, the King’s favourite, would have to seek associates in such doubtful and dangerous company rather than among gentlemen of standing who had a care for their reputation and advancement.—The sprightly Vidame … threatened with a whipping—aha!

So Sir Paul replaced his beaver with a hasty gesture and, cautiously treading, took path across the turf toward the water-gate, where he reckoned to find his skiff in waiting. The while his friend wept corrosive tears against the bark of the lime tree.

The “Brothers of the Huff,” the Daughters of Joy, and other good companions of Alsatia, who had awaited, expecting sport, glanced at each other in disappointment. Upon the disappearance of the Templars, one of their number made a dash for the silver hilt on the ground; closely hustled by a second, swift to perceive the intention. This latter had to be content, however, with the broken blade, and a scuffle would have ensued had not a burly personage, who seemed to have authority among them, put an end to the dispute by possessing himself of the spoils and hustling the others back to the stairway.

A girl in tawdry finery now tripped stealthily toward the young man, who was so completely lost in the abstraction of his misery to all his surroundings, that he never felt the nimble touch that drew from his pocket the laced handkerchief, nor woke to actuality until her screech of laughter rang into his ears.

Here another woman sprang from the watchful group at the head of the stairs and flung herself between the pilferer and the Vidame, as he stood staring, white-faced and shaken.

“As for you,” cried she, “march!”

The outflung gesture that accompanied the words seemed to cow the thieving strumpet.

As the girl slunk away, cursing “French Joan and her tantrums,” yet in evident awe of her, the newcomer put forth her hand and touched the Vidame’s wrist.

Looking at her, dazed, he recognised Laperrière’s black-browed sister: a strange, sinister figure of uncertain age, and with sullen remains of what must have been great beauty, who was wont to sit moodily stitching in the little antechamber to the fencing master’s room. She had never a word for him as he passed daily to and fro, but a long, deep look: the same look was now plunging into his eyes. Having gained his attention, she dropped her hand from his and, folding her arms with a gesture of some dignity, began, in French, low-voiced and rapid:—

“Hate! Hatred! Oh, _la haine_…! I have known it, my young lord! But nothing my brother can teach or do will help you here! What use is the sword and the skill of it against him who will not fight?”

Enguerrand stared at her. Then into his fixed glance of despair sprang a sudden kindling flash, in response to the strong, devouring gaze that still held his.

“You cursed too loud, _mon joli seigneur_. Oh, too loud…! When one wants revenge, one must be silent!”

“Revenge…!” echoed Enguerrand, with such a cry as a despairing lover might give as he echoed his mistress’s call.

“Hush!” said she whom Alsatia called French Joan, two brown fingers on her lips.

She bent forward, lowering her voice still more, although the mocking rabble that pressed about them, only kept at bay by her hard and watchful eyes, could have made nothing of her foreign speech:—

“Yet you spoke well,” she went on. “‘May the wine-cup poison you!—May the pest follow you and break out under your footsteps…!’ A man may find that in his cup which will give him quick passage … as quick and quicker than the pest, believe me. He might have drunk, and the wine have lain as pleasant on his tongue as ever; and, lo!—before he can call for his second draught the pest, it seems, has stilled his heart—or so will every one say in these days: swooning, mortal sweat and burning fire, death, all within the hour.… The pest, indeed, all who had seen it would swear. Not a sign lacking: except that it strikes so quick, so quick—no time for remedies! And yet ’tis not the pest. It holds within a small thimble. _He, mon joli seigneur._ A treasure for those who understand hate. My brother brought back his best sword-passes from Italy—I brought back better … the _acquetta_ … eh, my pretty lord? The _Tofana_ drops, for them you hate…! You may trust me … they have been tried: else, maybe, we should not be here … and your luck would thereby be the less. If fate gave you the chance of mixing such a cup for the one you curse, what would you give to fate?”

“All I possess,” whispered the Vidame, hotly. “Anything she asked!”

Again the deep, inscrutable eyes brooded upon him. Then French Joan showed her white teeth in a smile that gave a kind of lurid beauty to her dark face.

“Well, we shall see,” she said; “maybe I shall ask much, maybe I shall ask little.… Give me your hand, my pretty gentleman,” she cried, raising her voice into sonorousness again, and speaking in broken English: “I will lead you back to my brother’s. I have a cordial for such weakness.—Lean on me!”

Jeers and shouts responded from the greasy steps.

“Lean on French Joan, Master Frenchman! French Joan has a cordial for weak gentlemen!”

“Marry!” cried the girl who had stolen the kerchief, “will he come out alive again, think ye, masters?”

“Rather him than me, with French Joan!” roared the youngest ruffler, clapping his arms around her waist.

II

THE VENETIAN GLASS

“Little Satan,” said Charles, “a plague on all women, I say!”

The King’s page started from the gloomy muse in which he had been gazing out of the window recess of the royal room in Whitehall, at the flowing tide below.

“Amen—your Majesty!” he answered, with an attempt at sprightliness, the impotence of which brought a frown to the discontented face turned upon him. “As the times go, your Majesty’s wish carries the charm of possibility.… If all one hears be true, the plague hath taken already not a few—”

“Little Satan,” said the King, “many sins can be pardoned to your infernal reputation; but there is one, Odd’s fish! unforgivable.… You are growing monstrous dull, you are tedious. You lack tact, too, by the Lord! Fie, is it page’s business to put his master in mind of what he had better forget?—The veriest young cit would know better than to prate in our ears of what they would fain be deaf to.… Gadzooks, little boy, did we pick you out, think you, French and pert and joyous, for our Page of the Bottle, that you might ape our long-faced puritan ways and go mooning about our person, clapping your hand to your heart, sighing like furnace or lover?”

Here a chuckle shook the long, lazy figure sunk in the Flemish chair.

“Is it love? Marry, it can be but love! Little Satan in love!” cried the King, avid, in the deep weariness of his existence, for the slightest pretence of amusement. “Come, confess—Dan Cupid has shot his arrow into that sulphureous young heart of thine! My little devil’s in love—and being in love, has been as dull company, these three weeks, as any angel that ever flapped wings.”

The Vidame had left the window recess and now stood before the King. His hand had indeed gone to his heart, with what seemed an habitual gesture. He dropped it by his side and hung his head; a dull colour crept into his cheeks and faded again. Never burdened with any superfluity of flesh, he yet had grown noticeably thin these three weeks, and the healthy pallor of his face had been replaced by feverish tints as of one wasted by haunting, unsatisfied fires.

His royal master surveyed him, half irritably, half concernedly:—

“Come, little Enguerrand—the name of the cruel, the obdurate one?”

The page again arrested with a jerk the involuntary motion of his hand to his breast, flung back his head and suddenly laughed.

“Your Majesty, she is beautiful, if dark; and I believe that I shall kiss her on the lips before long.”

But Charles, though the most easy-going of monarchs, could rebuke undue liberty by a mere upraising of one heavy eyebrow. This sign of displeasure and the silence with which he received his page’s seemingly pert answer brought the blood leaping again into Enguerrand’s wasted cheek. If he could hate, this passionate youth, he could also love; and he loved Charles with an intensity only second to his hatred for the Lord Constable. He shook his curls over his face to hide his confusion.

Charles yawned and sank a fraction lower in his great chair. For a man who demanded but one thing of life,—that it should run even,—fate was playing him sorry tricks these days. Sickness and discontent were growing apace in the kingdom, money difficulties were pressing increasingly upon him, the progress of the war was doubtful, the quarrels of the Stewart and the Castlemaine made Whitehall a place of vast discomfort; and, besides, there were the interlacing circles of intrigue spun about him by consort, children, brother, ministers, divines, ruined loyalists, aspiring mistresses.

“Odd’s fish! Little Satan,” he resumed, good-humoured even in his exacerbation, “can you not consult your Great Father and find me an hour’s diversion?”

“Will your Majesty be pleased to survey the present of Venetian glass sent by his Majesty of France?—The chandelier has been suspended from the ceiling of the small supper room, the great mirror hung upon the wall, and the drinking vessels laid out on the buffet—according to your Majesty’s order. I saw it done this morning.”

“Pshaw!” said the King.

When these instructions had been given, he had planned a discreet party in the newly adorned chamber. But, two had heard of an invitation that one only had received. And the royal temper was still smarting from the consequent recriminations. He thought back on the distasteful scene, now, with renewed injury:—

“Gad, I’ll banish the petticoats … though, by the Mass, the periwigs are little better! I shall have Buckingham drawing on Hamilton for the privilege of annexing my Venetian glass!” He chuckled bitterly at the sense of his own too easy good nature. “I trust they’ve nailed the mirror fast,” he cried aloud; “I am told it is mighty fine.”

* * * * *

Yet there was one of his chosen companions who had never sought for either advancement or booty, and who had a humour that fitted well with his own in these moods of reaction, when the voluptuary yielded to cynical melancholy.

“Why,” exclaimed Charles, suddenly lifting himself in his seat with an animation he had not hitherto shown, “it is a week or more since I have seen my ‘Merry Rockhurst.’ Get you to the Tower, Little Satan, as fast as your black wings can carry you. Bid my Lord Constable to the rescue. Tell him I am dull, _que je m’ennuie, Vidame, et qu’il vienne s’ennuyer avec moi_, for I am persuaded he is as dull as I am. ’Tis the fate of good wit in a weary world. How now—not gone?”

“Sire,” said the lad, in a toneless voice, “Lord Rockhurst is at Whitehall. I saw him at his writing but just now, as I passed the Window of his apartment.”

“All the better fortune! Haste, then,” said the King. “But hark ye, Little Satan: Rockhurst alone! God forbid there should be a flounce near our presence to-night! Bid the Lord Constable come and crack a bottle with us as in the old days of Flanders.”

A rueful grin spread over his saturnine countenance. Castlemaine and Stewart had been overmuch for him this morning in their division: united, against a new rival—no, the thought was beyond the pale of contemplation!

Once outside, in the great corridor, filled already with evening gloom, Enguerrand paused:—

“Bid the Lord Constable come and crack a bottle with us…!” The boy flung back his head and breathed sharply, through dilated nostrils, as if scenting ecstasy. His moment,—so long brooded upon, desired with such acrid ardour,—was it at last within his grasp? His hand went up to his breast with that gesture that had attracted the King’s notice. Aye, there it lay over his heart, the tiny phial of French Joan! Day and night he felt it, burning, biting into his soul; day and night he heard it whispering, urging, at once tormenting and delighting. Since that horrible hour in the Temple Gardens, it was all he had left to look for in the world. His life, shamed in his own eyes, was a worthless thing. That other life once swept away, nothing would matter that could befall him, be it death or disgrace. He went to sleep every night holding the phial against his heart.… His Vengeance, dark and beautiful…! as the lover holds his lady’s guerdon. The moment, was it actually drawing at hand when he was to kiss her on the lips?

He gave a sudden laugh—secret-sounding yet triumphant, the abandoned laugh of the madman over his obsession—which startled a sleeping page at the end of the passage as with a sense of terror in the air, and he set off running on his errand, past the astonished servants.

* * * * *

When he reached the Lord Constable’s Whitehall apartment, by the Holbein gateway, his lordship was still sitting at his table in the dusk, apparently absorbed in some deep revery; so deep indeed that he stared at Enguerrand with unseeing eyes. The white-haired servant had twice to repeat the announcement: “The King’s page, my lord, with a command from his Majesty,” before his master roused himself to attention. Then the Lord Constable turned his fine head questioningly toward the messenger.

Enguerrand bowed low, tasting, in a kind of inner intoxication, the full sense of his own irony:—

“His Majesty bids you to supper, my lord, to crack—these are his Majesty’s own words—a bottle of Rhenish, as in the old days of Flanders. His Majesty is melancholy and—commands that you come and be melancholy with him.”

The faintest shadow of a smile passed over the grave, listening countenance. Any one who once came under the gaze of those brilliant, haunting eyes of the Lord Constable’s could well conceive that such an order was of easy obedience. He sat in melancholy, as his royal master sat in tedium: hence the subtle pleasantry of ‘my Merry Rockhurst.’

“Thank you, Vidame,” said he, half rising, with a formal inclination of the head. “Inform his Majesty, if you please, that I attend instantly.”

The French boy had to pause outside the gateway door, to battle with the suffocating rage that suddenly invaded him. Rather would he have received fresh insults from his enemy than this perfect courtesy—a courtesy which at once seemed to remember and to pass over. In that last glance that rested upon him, in that deep, brooding look, there had almost lurked (or so he thought) pity. Pity! Enguerrand tore open the ruffle at his throat and gasped for breath.

Then, as swiftly as it had come, the paroxysm passed. Weakling, to waste his energies on fruitless curses! Was not his hour nigh, and did he not need the cool head, the steady hand, the quick eye?… He once had offered his honour and his sword for a chivalrous test … they both had been broken and cast from him.… Vastly well! Now would he pass the secret thrust for which there is no parry! He fastened his ruffle again with fingers that now scarcely trembled. And, as he ran back to the royal apartment, he broke shrilly into a stave of song: that same _frondeur_ lilt that had tickled the royal ears from Sister Jeanne’s lips on yonder night when she had met fortune and jilted her—at the King’s supper party:—

_“La Tour, prends garde, la Tour, prends garde,_ _De te laisser abattre…!”_

rose the high notes.

“Master Page,” said a yeoman sternly, “have you taken leave of your wits? The King is within.…”

“I know, I know,” said Enguerrand, poising himself for a moment on one springing foot, and looking back over his shoulder like some light Mercury in satin and ringlet. “I know, good old greybeard, and ’tis I serve his Majesty’s supper to-night!”

Then, as he leaped forward again, he took up the song, under his breath, this time, and in English,—

“Tower, have a care, O Tower, beware!”

Halfway down the corridor he paused once more, and once more looked back:—

“Look out for my Lord Constable of the Tower, you, Master Beefeater … for he sups with the King to-night!”

His laugh echoed as he disappeared in the antechamber.

“A murrain on these French crickets to whom his Majesty is fain to give what should belong to honest English lads!” grumbled the yeoman, as he ordered his halbert with a thud. “’Tis mercy we have such gentlemen as my Lord Constable about the person—to keep balance. And here indeed comes my noble lord.”

Rockhurst halted a second beside the old yeoman. The gnarled hand that grasped the halbert had lost one finger: Rockhurst knew in what fight. Kings may forget what leal subjects have suffered for them, and ladies what lovers have sighed and served, but the captain forgets not the man who has stood in his ranks. Rockhurst’s hair was turning grey and the yeoman’s was white—but they had been young together in the days of Edge Hill.

“A sultry evening, good Ashby,” said the Lord Constable, with his kind, sad eyes on the rugged face that crimsoned with joy under the honour.

“Aye, my lord—aye!” muttered the yeoman in gruff tones. (For the more your Englishman’s heart is touched, the gruffer rings his voice.) “There’s storm brewing, or so my old wounds tell me, my lord.”

“Aye, aye,”—Rockhurst took up the sound, as he walked on,—“the storm keeps brewing, and our old wounds keep aching.”

The veteran looked after him:—

“God save your honour!”

III

THE PHIAL OF ACQUETTA

The bunches of wax candles were lit in the parlour reserved for the King’s intimate gatherings. Across the outside vision of lowering sky and of black water, spangled with tossing lights, citron-yellow curtains were drawn.

The new Venetian chandelier sparkled with delicate opalescent tints as it hung over the supper table: there were pink roses and green leaves, amber flowers and blue, most wondrously wrought in glass upon its twisted branches. The cluster of goblets on the buffet, shot with gold, had the glow of jewels. Two cups stood out from the rest: each had a fantastic sea-horse with dragon tail for its base, supporting on its grotesque head—gaping-jawed with red-curved tongue—a bowl as fine and as miraculously coloured as a bubble. This delicate, magic array of colour and sheen was reflected in a great mirror which filled the panel of the wall behind the table.

This last of the Venice gifts was of severer art than the rest; and where it did not hold the bubble splendour repeated in its depths, it shone coldly, crystal and silver, from the dark wainscot.

Charles was momentarily lifted out of his heavy mood by amusement and curiosity.

“Marry!” he said, “if these be our cousin of France’s leavings, what must be the treasure he has kept! Look up, my lord, this mirror—’tis a curious and pretty piece, and reflects the light a hundred times more gaily than our silver and bronze. And the drinking gear yonder…! The Apocalypse itself in glass!”

He strode to the side-table and laid a finger against the fair cheek of one of the goblets—then he glanced up and caught sight of his own dark visage in the new mirror. The gleam of satisfaction instantly vanished from the long and melancholy countenance.

“And gad, my lord,” he cried, “if you think I shall be left as much as this little tass, within a week! Oh—there’ll be one whose face will look vastly better than mine in yonder mirror; and another whose tiring-room can never be bright again without such a toy as yon!”

He turned and snapped his fingers impatiently toward the soft-footed servants who came and went between the door and the sideboard with viands and flasks.

“Away with them, away with them! We’ll sit together as in old times—eh, my merry Rockhurst?—and keep but Little Satan there to fill a cup.”

“I oft waited on you, alone, in Holland and elsewhere, sire,” responded the Lord Constable’s deep voice.

“Aye, aye,” said the King, in the same half-testy, half good-humoured manner. “But we have a demon handy to-night. Tush, man,” proceeded he, flinging himself into the leathern chair and shaking out the Flemish napkin, “things are better with us, and things are worse with us; let us drink and remember—and drink and forget! Ha, my lord, we oft had neither pasty nor capon in those days—but I’ll say that for thee, Harry, you were master cellarer, and you never let me lack decent wine—”

“My liege,” said Rockhurst, a note of tenderness creeping in through his grave tones, “we had to pledge a great cause, and the wine had to be worthy of the cup!”

“Truly,” said Charles. “I mind me of a certain yellow Rhenish: it had a smack—where you got it I never knew, Harry, but it had a smack!—The cause, say you? Plague on your hypocritical gravity…! Tush, man, we drank to black eyes and blue, to trim ankles and laughing tongues. Those were the days of that jade Lucy … ha, the pair of eyes! And what shall we pledge to-night?”

“Why, then, the old days, your Majesty.”

“Aye—the old days, good days … and all the better, being past! None can say I am an ambitious sovereign—eh, my solemn Constable? I ask no more of my people than that they should never send me on my travels again.… ’Tis modest, patriarchal—a home-keeping sovereign! No one can accuse me of not spending my substance among my subjects!”

“Indeed and indeed, no, sire!” said Rockhurst, without the slightest twinkle in his straight look. “As for spending, my liege, your Majesty has indeed a royal mastery of the art.”

“Go to!” said the King. “Wet that too dry humour of thine with a draught.—Nay, Little Satan, none of your dark-liveried claret to-night; we’ll have the merry yellow wine in yonder long flagon. Away with this dull glass, too.—Go, play with the Apocalypse. Those dragon beakers, I’ll swear they’ll hold half the flagon apiece.—And you shall have a brimmer and drink it to the last drop, my Lord Constable, for if I’m never to have you a merry dog again, by the Lord, I’ll have you a drunk one!—Vidame, I say you shall see my reverend Lord Constable drunk, and have something to laugh at to your dying day—for ’tis then the solemnest villain that ever staggered on human legs.”

Enguerrand had been a presence in the room as noiseless as a spirit. Yet every word that passed between the two men—the sovereign and his old comrade—had added intensity to his murderous passion. The boy loved the King. Unhappy, abnormal creature! He could neither love nor hate in reason, was as much racked with jealousy of his master’s regard as a lover of his mistress’s favour. Every look of old familiar friendship that Charles flung at Lord Rockhurst, every easy word, proclaiming a sympathy and confidence that placed them almost on brotherly equality, was as a lash on the raw wound of his pride—a spur to his leaping hatred.

At the King’s command he filled one of the dragon beakers from the long-necked bottle with a singular precision, though his hand was cold as ice, and his pulse beat to suffocation in his throat. He set the wonderful glass—more wonderful than ever now, with the golden liquid shining within its flanks—beside the King’s plate.

“Odd’s fish—a truly royal cup! As I live, the fair half of the bottle!… Now, boy, the other half to my Lord Constable.”

* * * * *

Over by the sideboard, under the cold gleam of the mirror, the King’s page paused a second, and his hand went a last time to his breast. Out, little phial! It lay in the hollow of his palm, no larger than a lady’s thimble. Break, silken thread! His moment had come: the lover would kiss his dark mistress on the lips! There was buzzing as of a thousand angry bees in his ears.… He never noted how still the room had grown. Now his hand hovered over the rim of the full beaker—a strange gesture, as of the priest blessing the cup…!

“Little Satan.…” said the King.

Though neither loud nor sharp, there was something so singular in Charles’s voice that Rockhurst started from his wonted abstraction.