Chapter 11

"And my little heart was bursting with love and admiration of you," she returned. "When I first could lisp, I learned to pray for my cousin Henri and my cousin Charles. I have never forgotten them one night in all these years. 'God receive and bless the soul of Henri de Guise; God guard and prosper Charles de Mayenne.' But you make it hard for me to ask it for my cousin Charles."

"This is a great coil over a horse-boy," Mayenne said curtly.

"Life is as dear to a horse-boy as to M. le Duc de Mayenne."

"I tell you I did not mean to kill the boy," Mayenne said. "With the door shut he could hear nothing. I meant to question him and let him go. But you have seen fit to meddle in what is no maid's business, mademoiselle. You have unlocked the door and let him listen to my concerns. Dead men, mademoiselle, tell no tales."

"M. de Mayenne," she said, "I cannot see that you need trouble for the tales of boys--you, the lord of half France. But if you must needs fear his tongue, why, even then you should set him free. He is but a serving-boy sent here with a message. It is wanton murder to take his life; it is like killing a child."

"He is not so harmless as you would lead one to suppose, mademoiselle," the duke retorted. "Since you have been eavesdropping, you have heard how he upset your cousin Paul's arrangements."

"For that you should be thankful to him, monsieur. He has saved you the stain of a cowardly crime."

"Mordieu!" Mayenne exclaimed, "who foully murdered my brother?"

"The Valois."

"And his henchman, St. Quentin."

"Not so," she cried. "He was here in Paris when it happened. He was revolted at the deed."

"Did they teach you that at the convent?"

"No, but it is true. M. de St. Quentin warned my cousin Henri not to go to Blois."

"Pardieu, you think them angels, these St. Quentins."

"I think them brave and honest gentlemen, as I think you, Cousin Charles."

"That sounds ill on the lips that have but now called me villain and murderer," Mayenne returned.

"I have not called you that, monsieur; I said you had been saved from the guilt of murder, and I knew one day you would be glad."

He kept silence, eying her in a puzzled way. After a moment she went on:

"Cousin Charles, it is our lot to live in such days of blood and turmoil that we know not any other way to do but injure and kill. I think you are more harassed and troubled than any man in France. You have Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots and half the provinces to fight in the field, and your own League to combat at home. You must make favour with each of a dozen quarrelling factions, must strive and strive to placate and loyalize them all. The leaders work each for his own end, each against the others and against you; and the truth is not in one of them, and their pledges are ropes of straw. They intrigue and rebel and betray till you know not which way to turn, and you curse the day that made you head of the League."

"I do curse the day Henri was killed," Mayenne said soberly. "And that is true, Lorance. But I am head of the League, and I must do my all to lead it to success."

"But not by the path of shame!" she cried quickly. "Success never yet lay that way. Henri de Valois slew our Henri, and see how God dealt with him!"

He looked at her fixedly; I think he heeded her words less than her shining, earnest eyes. And he said at last:

"Well, you shall have your boy, Lorance."

"Ah, monsieur!"

With tears dimming the brightness of those sweet eyes she dropped on her knees before him, kissing his hand.

Lucas, since his one unlucky outburst, had said never a word but stood looking on with a ruefulness of visage that it warmed the cockles of my heart to see.

Certes, he was in no very pleasant corner, this dear M. Paul. His mistress had heard his own lips describe his plot against the St. Quentins; there was no possibility of lying himself clear of it. Out of his own mouth he was convicted of spycraft, treachery, and cowardly murder. And in the Hôtel de Lorraine, as in the Hôtel de St. Quentin, his betrayal had come about through me. I was unwitting agent in both cases; but that did not make him love me the more. Could eyes slay, I had fallen of the glance he shot me over mademoiselle's bowed head; but when she rose he said to her:

"Mademoiselle, the boy is as much my prisoner as M. le Duc's, since I got him here. But I, too, freely give him up to you."

She swept him a curtsey, silently, without looking at him. He made an eager pace nearer her.

"Lorance," he cried in a low, rapid voice, "I see I am out of your graces. Now, by Our Lady, what's life worth to me if you will not take me back again? I admit I have tried to ruin the Comte de Mar. Is that any marvel, since he is my rival with you? Last March, when I was hiding here and watched from my window the gay M. de Mar come airily in, day after day, to see and make love to you, was it any marvel that I swore to bring his proud head to the dust?"

Now she turned to him and met his gaze squarely.

"The means you employed was the marvel," she said. "If you did not approve of his visits, you had only to tell him so. He had been ready to defend to you his right to make them. But you never showed him your face; of course, had you, you could not have become his father's housemate and Judas. Oh, I blush to know that the same blood runs in your veins and mine!"

"You speak hard words, mademoiselle," Lucas returned, keeping his temper with a stern effort. "You forget that we live in France in war-time, and not in the kingdom of heaven. I was toiling for more than my own revenges. I was working at your cousin Mayenne's commands, to aid our holy cause, for the preservation of the Catholic Church and the Catholic kingdom of France."

"Your conversion is sudden, then; only an hour ago you were working for nothing and no one but Paul de Lorraine."

"Come, come, Lorance," Mayenne interposed, his caution setting him ever on the side of compromise. "Paul is no worse than the rest of us. He hates his enemies, and so do we all; he works against them to the best of his power, and so do we all. They are Kingsmen, we are Leaguers; they fight for their side, and we fight for ours. If we plot against them, they plot against us; we murder lest we be murdered. We cannot scruple over our means. Nom de dieu, mademoiselle, what do you expect? Civil war is not a dancing-school."

"Mademoiselle is right," Lucas said humbly, refusing any defence. "We have been using cowardly means, weapons unworthy of Christian gentlemen. And I, at least, cannot plead M. le Duc's excuse that I was blinded in my zeal for the Cause. For I know and you know there is but one cause with me. I went to kill St. Quentin because I was promised you for it, as I would have gone to kill the Pope himself. This is my excuse; I did it to win you. There is no crime in God's calendar I would not commit for that."

He had possessed himself of her hand and was bending over her, burning her with his hot eyes. Mass of lies as the man was, in this last sentence I knew he spoke the truth.

She strove to free herself from him with none of the flattered pride in his declaration which he had perhaps looked for. Instead, she eyed him with positive fear, as if she saw no way of escape from his rampant desire.

"I wish rather you would practise a little virtue to win me," she said.

"So I will if you ask it," he returned, unabashed. "Lorance, I love you so there is no depth to which I could not stoop to gain you; there is no height to which I cannot rise. There is no shame so bitter, no danger so awful, that I would not face it for you. Nor is there any sacrifice I will not make to gain your good will. I hate M. de Mar above any living man because you have smiled on him; but I will let him go for your sake. I swear to you before the figure of Our Blessed Lady there that I will drop all enmity to Étienne de Mar. From this time forward I will neither move against him nor cause others to move against him in any shape or manner, so help me God!"

He dropped her hand to kiss the cross of his sword. She retreated from him, her face very pale, her breast heaving.

"You make it hard for me to know when you are speaking the truth," she said.

"May the lightning strike me if I am lying!" Lucas cried. "May my tongue rot at the root if ever I lie to you, Lorance!"

"Then I am very grateful and glad," she said gravely, and again curtsied to him.

"Yes, I give you my word for that, too, Lorance," Mayenne added. "I have no quarrel with young Mar. His father has stirred up more trouble for me than any dozen of Huguenots; I have my score to settle with St. Quentin. But I have no quarrel with the son. I will not molest him."

"Grand'merci, monsieur," she said, sweeping him another of her graceful obeisances.

"Understand me, mademoiselle," Mayenne went on. "I pardon him, but not that he may be anything to you. That time is past. The St. Quentins are Navarre's men now, and our enemies. For your sake I will let Mar alone; but if he come near you again, I will crush him as I would a buzzing fly."

"That I understand, monsieur," she answered in a low tone. "While I live under your roof, I shall not be treacherous to you. I am a Ligueuse and he is a Kingsman, and there can be nothing between us. There shall be nothing, monsieur. I do not swear it, as Paul needs, because I have never lied to you."

She did not once look at Lucas, yet I think she saw him wince under her stab. The Duke of Mayenne was right; not even Mlle. de Montluc loved her enemies.

"You are a good girl, Lorance," Mayenne said.

"Will you let the boy go now, Cousin Charles?" she asked.

"Yes, I will let your boy go," he made answer. "But if I do this for you, I shall expect you henceforth to do my bidding."

"You have called me a good girl, cousin."

"Aye, so you are. And there is small need to look so Friday-faced about it. If I have denied you one lover, I will give you another just as good."

"Am I Friday-faced?" she said, summoning up a smile. "Then my looks belie me. For since you free this poor boy whom I was like to have ruined I take a grateful and happy heart to bed."

"Aye, and you must stay happy. Pardieu, what does it matter whether your husband have yellow hair or brown? My brother Henri was for getting himself into a monastery because he could not have his Margot. Yet in less than a year he is as merry as a fiddler with the Duchesse Katharine."

"You have made me happy, to-night at least, monsieur," she answered gently, if not merrily.

"It is the most foolish act of my life," Mayenne answered. "But it is for you, Lorance. If ill comes to me by it, yours is the credit."

"You can swear him to silence, monsieur," she cried quickly.

"What use? He would not keep silence."

"He will if I ask it," she returned, flinging me a look of bright confidence that made the blood dance in my veins. But Mayenne laughed.

"When you have lived in the world as long as I have, you will not so flatter yourself, Lorance."

Thus it happened that I was not bound to silence concerning what I had seen and heard in the house of Lorraine.

Mayenne took out his dagger.

"What I do I do thoroughly. I said I'd set you free. Free you shall be."

Mademoiselle sprang forward with pleading hand.

"Let me cut the cords, Cousin Charles."

He recoiled a bare second, the habit of a lifetime prompting him against the putting of a weapon in any one's hand. Then, ashamed of the suspicion, which indeed was not of her, he yielded the knife and she cut my bonds. She looked straight into my eyes, with a glance earnest, beseeching, loving; I could not begin to read all she meant by it. The next moment she was making her deep curtsey before the duke.

"Monsieur, I shall never cease to love you for this. And now I thank you for your long patience, and bid you good night."

With a bare inclination of the head to Lucas, she turned to go. But Mayenne bade her pause.

"Do I get but a curtsey for my courtesy? No warmer thanks, Lorance?"

He held out his arms to her, and she let him kiss both her cheeks.

"I will conduct you to the staircase, mademoiselle," he said, and taking her hand with stately politeness led her from the room. The light seemed to go from it with the gleam of her yellow gown.

"Lorance!" Lucas cried to her, but she never turned her head. He stood glowering, grinding his teeth together, his glib tongue finding for once no way to better his sorry case. He was the picture of trickery rewarded; I could not repress a grin at him. Marking which, he burst out at me, vehemently, yet in a low tone, for Mayenne had not closed the door:

"You think I am bested, do you, you devil's brat? Let him laugh that wins; I shall have her yet."

"I will tell M. le Comte so," I answered with all the impudence I could muster.

"By Heaven, you will tell him nothing," he cried. "You will never see daylight again."

"I have Mayenne's word," I began, but his retort was to draw dagger. I deemed it time to stop parleying, and I did what the best of soldiers must do sometimes: I ran. I bounded into the oratory, flinging the door to after me. He was upon it before I could get it shut, and the heavy oak was swung this way and that between us, till it seemed as if we must tear it off the hinges. I contrived not to let him push it open wide enough to enter; meantime, as I was unarmed, I thought it no shame to shriek for succour. I heard an answering cry and hurrying footsteps. Then Lucas took his weight from the door so suddenly that mine banged it shut. The next minute it flew open again, mademoiselle, frightened and panting, on the threshold.

A tall soldier with a musket stood at her back; at one side Lucas lounged by the cabinet where the duke had set down the light. His right hand he held behind his back, while with his left he poked his dagger into the candle-flame.

Mayenne, red and puffing, hurried into the room.

"What is the pother?" he demanded. "What devilment now, Paul?"

"Mademoiselle's protégé is nervous," Lucas answered with a fine sneer. "When I drew out my knife to get the thief from the candle he screamed to wake the dead and took sanctuary in the oratory."

I had given him the lie then and there, but as I emerged from the darkness Mayenne commanded:

"Take him out to the street, d'Auvray."

The tall musketeer, saluting, motioned me to precede him. For a moment I hesitated, burning to defend my valour before mademoiselle. Then, reflecting how much harm my hasty tongue had previously done me, and that the path to freedom was now open before me, I said nothing. Nor had I need. For as I turned she flashed over to Lucas and said straight in his face:

"When you marry me, Paul de Lorraine, you will marry a dead wife."

XVII

_"I'll win my lady!"_

Lucas's prophecy came to grief within five minutes of the making. For when the musketeer unbarred the house door for me, the first thing I saw was the morning sun.

My spirits danced at sight of him, as he himself might dance on Easter day. Within the close, candle-lit room I had had no thought but that it was still black midnight; and now at one step I passed from the gloomy house into the heartening sunshine of a new clean day. I ran along as joyously as if I had left the last of my troubles behind me, forgotten in some dark corner of the Hôtel de Lorraine. Always my heart lifts when, after hours within walls, I find myself in the open again. I am afraid in houses, but out of doors I have no fear of harm from any man or any thing.

Though Sir Sun was risen this half-hour, and at home we should all have been about our business, these lazy Paris folk were still snoring. They liked well to turn night into day and lie long abed of a morning. Although here a shopkeeper took down shutters, and there a brisk servant-lass swept the door-step, yet I walked through a sleeping city, quiet as our St. Quentin woods, save that here my footsteps echoed in the emptiness. At length, with the knack I have, whatever my stupidities, of finding my way in a strange place, I arrived before the courtyard of the Trois Lanternes. The big wooden doors were indeed shut, but when I had pounded lustily awhile a young tapster, half clad and cross as a bear, opened to me. I vouchsafed him scant apology, but, dropping on a heap of hay under a shed in the court, passed straightway into dreamless slumber.

When I awoke my good friend the sun was looking down at me from near his zenith, and my first happy thought was that I was just in time for dinner. Then I discovered that I had been prodded out of my rest by the pitchfork of a hostler.

"Sorry to disturb monsieur, but the horses must be fed."

"Oh, I am obliged to you," I said, rubbing my eyes. "I must go up to M. le Comte."

"He has been himself to look at you, and gave orders you were not to be disturbed. But that was last week. Dame! you slept like a sabot."

It did not take me long to brush the straw off me, wash my face at the trough, and present myself before monsieur. He was dressed and sitting at table in his bedchamber, while a drawer served him with dinner.

"You are out of bed, monsieur," I cried.

"But yes," he answered, springing up, "I am as well as ever I was. Félix, what has happened to you?"

I glanced at the serving-man; M. Étienne ordered him at once from the room.

"Now tell me quickly," he cried, as I faltered, tongue-tied from very richness of matter. "Mademoiselle?"

"Ah, mademoiselle!" I exclaimed. "Mademoiselle is--" I paused in a dearth of words worthy of her.

"She is, she is!" he agreed, laughing. "Oh, go on, you little slow-poke! You saw her? And she said--"

He was near to laying hands on me, to hurry my tale.

"I saw her and Mayenne and Lucas and ever so many things," I told him. "And they had me flogged, and mademoiselle loves you."

"She does!" he cried, flushing. "Félix, does she? You cannot know."

"But I do know it," I answered, not very lucidly. "You see, she wouldn't have wept so much, just over me."

"Did she weep? Lorance?" he exclaimed.

"They flogged me," I said. "They didn't hurt me much. But she came down in the night with a candle and cried over me."

"And what said she? Now I am sorry they beat you. Who did that? Mayenne? What said she, Félix?"

"And then," I went on, not heeding his questions in sudden remembrance of my crowning news, "Mayenne and Lucas came in. And here is something you do not know, monsieur. Lucas is Paul de Lorraine, Henri de Guise's son."

"Mille tonnerres du ciel! But he is a Huguenot, a Rochelais!"

"Yes, but he is a son of Henri le Balafré. His mother was Rochelaise, I think. He was a spy for Navarre and captured at Ivry. They were going to hang him when Mayenne, worse luck, recognized him for a nephew. Since then he has been spying for them. Because Mayenne promised him Mlle. de Montluc in marriage."

He stared at me with dropped jaw, absolutely too startled to swear.

"He has not got her yet!" I cried. "Mayenne told him he should have her when he had killed St. Quentin. And St. Quentin is alive."

"Great God!" said M. Étienne, only half aloud, dropping down on the arm of his chair, overcome to realize the issue that had hung on a paltry handful of pistoles. Then, recovering, himself a little, he cried:

"But she--mademoiselle?"

"You need give yourself no uneasiness there," I said. "Mademoiselle hates him."

"Does she know--"

"I think she understands quite well what Lucas is," I made answer. "Monsieur, I must tell you everything that happened from the beginning, or I shall never make it clear to you."

"Yes, yes, go on," he cried.

He sat down at table again, with the intention of eating his dinner as I talked, but precious few mouthfuls he took. At every word I spoke he got deeper into the interest of my tale. I never talked so much in my life, me, as I did those few days. I was always relating a history, to Monsieur, to mademoiselle, to M. Étienne, to--well, you shall know.

I had finished at length, and he burst out at me:

"You little scamp, you have all the luck! I never saw such a boy! Well do they call you Félix! Mordieu, here I lie lapped in bed like a baby, while you go forth knight-erranting. I must lie here with old Galen for all company, while you bandy words with the Generalissimo himself! And make faces at Lucas, and kiss the hands of mademoiselle! But I'll stand it no longer. I'm done with lying abed and letting you have all the fun. No; to-day I shall take part myself."

"But monsieur's arm--"

"Pshaw, it is well!" he cried. "It is a scratch--it is nothing. Pardieu, it takes more than that to put a St. Quentin out of the reckoning. To-day is no time for sloth; I must act."

"Monsieur--" I began, but he broke in on me:

"Nom de dieu, Félix, are we to sit idle while mademoiselle is carried off by that beast Lucas?"

"Of course not," I said. "I was only trying to ask what monsieur meant to do."

"To take the moon in my teeth," he cried.

"Yes, monsieur, but how?"

"Ah, if I knew!"

He stared at me as if he would read the answer in my face, but he found it as blank as the wall. He flung away and made a turn down the room, and came back to seize me by the arm.

"How are we to do it, Félix?" he demanded.

But I could only shrug my shoulders and answer:

"Sais pas."

He paced the floor once more, and presently faced me again with the declaration:

"Lucas shall have her only over my dead body."

"He will only have her own dead body," I said.

He turned away abruptly and stood at the window, looking out with unseeing eyes. "Lorance--Lorance," he murmured to himself. I think he did not know he spoke aloud.

"If I could get word to her--" he went on presently. "But I can't send you again. Should I write a letter--But letters are mischievous. They fall into the wrong hands, and then where are we?"

"Monsieur," I suggested, "if I could get a letter into the hands of Pierre, that lackey who befriended me--" But he shook his head.

"They know you about the place. It were safer to despatch one of these inn-men--if any had the sense to go rein in hand. Hang me if I don't think I'll go myself!"

"Monsieur," I said, "Lucas swore by all things sacred that he would never molest you more. Therefore you will do well to keep out of his way."

"My faith, Félix," he laughed, "you take a black view of mankind."

"Not of mankind, M. Étienne. Only of Lucas. Not of Monsieur, or you, or Vigo."

"And of Mayenne?"

"I don't make out Mayenne," I answered. "I thought he was the worst of the crew. But he let me go. He said he would, and he did."

"Think you he meant to let you go from the first?"

"Who knows?" I said, shrugging. "Lucas is always lying. But Mayenne--sometimes he lies and sometimes not. He's base, and then again he's kind. You can't make out Mayenne."

"He does not mean you shall," M. Étienne returned. "Yet the key is not buried. He is made up, like all the rest of us, of good and bad."

"Monsieur," I said, "if there is any bad in the St. Quentins I, for one, do not know it."

"Ah, Félix," he cried, "you may believe that till doomsday--you will--of Monsieur."

His face clouded a little, and he fell silent. I knew that, besides his thoughts of his lady, came other thoughts of his father. He sat gravely silent. But of last night's bitter distress he showed no trace. Last night he had not been able to take his eyes from the miserable past; but to-day he saw the future. A future not altogether flowery, perhaps, but one which, however it turned out, should not repeat the old mistakes and shames.

"Félix," he said at length, "I see nothing for it but to eat my pride."

I kept still in the happy hope that I should hear just what I longed to; he went on:

"I swore then that I would never darken his doors again; I was mad with anger; so was he. He said if I went with Gervais I went forever."

"Monsieur, if you repent your hot words, so does he."