Chapter 15

I was afraid he would drop the flambeau and run, but he did not; he only sank back against the wall, eyeing my sword with exceeding deference. He knew not that there was but a foot of blade in the scabbard.

The burgher looked up the street and down the street, after M. Étienne's example, but there was no help to be seen or heard. He turned to his tormentor with the valour of a mouse at bay.

"Monsieur, beware what you do. I am Pierre Marceau!"

"Oh, you are Pierre Marceau? And can M. Pierre Marceau explain how he happened to be faring forth from his dwelling at this unholy hour?"

"I am not faring forth; I am faring home. I--we had a little con--that is, not to say a conference, but merely a little discussion on matters of no importance--"

"I have the pleasure," interrupted M. Étienne, sternly, "of knowing where M. Marceau lives. M. Marceau's errand in this direction is not accounted for."

"But I was going home--on my sacred honour I was! Ask Jacques, else. But as we went down the Rue de l'Évêque we saw two men in front of us. As they reached the wall by M. de Mirabeau's garden a gang of footpads fell on them. The two drew blades and defended themselves, but the ruffians were a dozen--a score. We ran for our lives."

M. Étienne wheeled round to me.

"Félix, here is work for us. As I was saying, M. Marceau, your decree is most offensive to the general-duke, and therefore, since he is my particular enemy, most pleasing to me. A beautiful night, is it not, sir? I wish you a delightful walk home."

He seized me by the hand, and we dashed up the street.

At the corner the noise of a fray came faintly but plainly to our ears. M. le Comte without hesitation plunged down a lane in the direction of the sound.

"I said I wanted no more fighting to-night, but two against a mob! We know how it feels."

The clash of steel on steel grew ever louder, and as we wheeled around a jutting garden wall we came full upon the combatants.

"A rescue, a rescue!" cried M. Étienne. "Shout, Félix! Montjoie St. Denis! A rescue, a rescue!"

We charged down the street, drawing our swords and shouting at the top of our lungs.

It was too dark to see much save a mass of struggling figures, with every now and then, as the steel hit, a point of light flashing out, to fade and appear again like a brilliant glow-worm. We could scarce tell which were the attackers, which the two comrades we had come to save.

But if we could not make them out, neither could they us. We shouted as boldly as if we had been a company, and in the clatter of their heels on the stones they could not count our feet. They knew not how many followers the darkness held. The group parted. Two men remained in hot combat close under the left wall. Across the way one sturdy fighter held off two, while a sixth man, crying on his mates to follow, fled down the lane.

M. Étienne knew now what he was about, and at once took sides with the solitary fencer. The combat being made equal, I started in pursuit of the flying figure. I had run but a few yards, however, when I tripped and fell prostrate over the body of a man. I was up in a moment, feeling him to find out if he were dead; my hands over his heart dipped into a pool of something wet and warm like new milk. I wiped them on his sleeve as best I could, and hastily groped about for his sword. He did not need it now, and I did.

When I rose with it my quarry was swallowed up in the shadows. M. Étienne, whose light clothing made a distinguishable spot in the gloom, had driven his opponent, or his opponent had driven him, some rods up the lane the way we had come. I stood perplexed, not knowing where to busy myself. M. Étienne's side I could not reach past the two duels; and of the four men near me, I could by no means tell, as they circled about and about, which were my chosen allies. They were all sombrely clad, their faces blurred in the darkness. When one made a clever pass, I knew not whether to rejoice or despair. But at length I picked out one who fenced, though valiantly enough, yet with greater effort than the rest; and I deemed that this had been the hardest pressed of all and must certainly be one of the attacked and the one most deserving of succour. He was plainly losing ground. I darted to his side just as his foe ran him through the arm.

The assailant pulled his blade free and darted back against the wall to face the two of us. But the sword of the wounded man fell from his loose fingers.

"I'm out of it," he cried to me; "I go for aid." And as his late combatant sprang forward to engage me, I heard him running off, stumbling where I had.

There had been little light toward the last in the court of the house in the Rue Coupejarrets, and less under the windows of the Hôtel de Lorraine; but here was none at all, I had to use my sword solely by the feel of his against it, and I underwent chilling qualms lest presently, without in the least knowing how it got there, I should find his point sticking out of my back. I could hardly believe he was not hitting me; I began to prickle in half a dozen places, and knew not whether the stings were real or imaginary. But one was not imaginary; my shoulder which Lucas had pinked and the doctor bandaged was throbbing painfully. I fancied that in my earlier combat the wound had opened again and that I was bleeding to death; and the fear shook me. I lunged wildly, and I had been sent to my account in short order had not at this moment one of the other pair near us, as it afterward appeared, driven his weapon square through his vis-à-vis's breast.

"I am done for. Run who can!" he cried as he fell. The sword snapped in two against the paving-stones; he rolled over and lay still, his face in the dirt.

My encounterer, with a shout to his single remaining comrade, made off down the lane. On my part, I was very willing to let him depart in peace.

The clash of swords up the lane had ceased at the stricken man's cry, and out of the gloom came the sound of footfalls fainter and fainter. I deemed that the battle was over.

The champion came toward me, three white patches visible for his face and hands; the rest of him but darkness moving in darkness. He held a sword rifled from the enemy, and advanced on me hesitatingly, not sure whether friend or foe remained to him. I felt that an explanation was due from me, but in my ignorance as to who he was and who his foes were, and why they had been fighting him and why we had been fighting them, I stood for a moment confused. It is hard to open conversation with a shadow.

He spoke first, in a voice husky from his exertion:

"Who are you?"

"A friend," I said. "My master and I saw two men fighting four--we came to help the weaker side. Your friend was hurt, but he got away safe to fetch aid."

The unknown made a rapid step toward me, crying, "What--"

But at the word M. Étienne emerged from the shadows.

"Who lives?" he called out. "You, Félix?"

"Not hurt, monsieur. And you?"

"Not a scratch. Nor did I scratch my man. Permit me to congratulate you, monsieur l'inconnu, on our coming up when we did."

The unknown said one word:

"Étienne!"

I sprang forward with the impulse to throw my arms about him, in the pure rapture of recognizing his voice. This struggler, whom we had rushed in, blindfold, to save, was Monsieur! If we had been content to mind our own business, had sheered away like the deputy--it turned me faint to think how long we had delayed with old Marceau, we were so nearly too late. I wanted to seize Monsieur, to convince myself that he was all safe, to feel him quick and warm.

I made one pace and stopped; for I remembered what ghastly shape stood between me and Monsieur--that horrible lying story.

"Dieu!" gasped M. Étienne, "Monsieur!"

For a moment we all kept silence, motionless; then Monsieur flung his sword over the wall.

"Do your will, Étienne."

His son darted forward with a cry.

"Monsieur, Monsieur, I am not your assassin! I came to your aid not dreaming who you were; but, had I known, I would have fought a hundred times the harder. I never plotted against you. On the honour of a St. Quentin I swear it."

Monsieur said naught, and we could not see his face; could not know whether he believed or rejected, softened or condemned.

M. Étienne, catching at his breath, went on:

"Monsieur, I know it is hard to credit. I have been a bad son to you, unloving, rebellious, insolent. We quarrelled; I spoke bitter words. But I am no ruffian. I am a St. Quentin. Had you had me whipped from the house, still would I never have raised hand against you. I knew nothing of the plot. Félix told you I was in it--small blame to him. But he was wrong. I knew naught of it."

Had he been content to rest his case here, I think Monsieur could not but have believed his innocence on his bare word. The stones in the pavement must have known that he was uttering truth. But he in his eagerness paused for no answer, but went on to stun Monsieur with statements new and amazing to his ear.

"My cousin Grammont--who is dead--was in the plot, and his lackey Pontou, and Martin the clerk; but the contriver was Lucas."

"Lucas?"

"Lucas," continued M. Étienne. "Or, to give him his true title, Paul de Lorraine, son of Henri de Guise."

"But that is impossible" Monsieur cried, stupefied.

"It is impossible, but it is true. He is a Lorraine--Mayenne's nephew, and for years Mayenne's spy. He came to you to kill you--for that object pure and simple. Last spring, before he came to you, he was here in Paris with Mayenne, making terms for your murder. He is no Huguenot, no Kingsman. He is Mayenne's henchman, son to Guise himself."

"And how long have you known this?" asked Monsieur.

"Since this morning." Then, as the import of the question struck him, he fell back with a groan. "Ah, Monsieur, if you can ask that, I have no more to say. It is useless." He turned away into the darkness.

That they should part thus was too miserable to be endured. I was sure Monsieur's question was no accusation, but the groping of bewilderment.

"M. Étienne, stop!" I commanded. "Monsieur, it is the truth. Indeed it is the truth. He is innocent, and Lucas _is_ a Guise. Monsieur, you must listen to me. M. Étienne, you must wait. I stirred up the whole trouble with my story to you, Monsieur, and I take it back. I believed I was telling the truth. I was wrong. When I left you, I went straight back to the Rue Coupejarrets to kill your son--your murderer, I thought. And there I found Grammont and Lucas side by side. We thought them sworn foes: they were hand in glove. They came at me to end me because I had told, and M. Étienne saved me. Lucas mocked him to his face because he had been tricked; Lucas bragged that it was his own scheme--that M. Étienne was his dupe. Vigo will tell you. Vigo heard him. His scheme was to saddle M. Étienne with your murder. He was tricked. He believed what he told me--that the thing was a duel between Lucas and Grammont. You must believe it, Monsieur!"

M. Étienne, who had actually obeyed me,--me, his lackey,--turned to his father once again.

"Monsieur, if you cannot believe me, believe Félix. You believed him when he took away my good name. Believe him now when he restores it."

"Nay," Monsieur cried; "I believe thee, Étienne."

And he took his son in his arms.

XXII

_The signet of the king._

Already a wan light was revealing the round tops of the plum-trees in M. de Mirabeau's garden, the high gray wall, and the narrow alleyway beneath it. And the two vague shapes by me were no longer vague shapes, but were turning moment by moment, as if coming out of an enchantment, into their true forms. It really was Monsieur in the flesh, with a wet glint in his eyes as he kissed his boy.

Neither thought of me, and it was none of my concern what they said to each other. I went a rod or two down the lane, round a curve in the wall, and watched the bands of light streaking the eastern sky, in utter content. Never before had the world seemed to me so good a place. Since this misery had come right, I knew all the rest would; I should yet dance at M. Étienne's wedding.

I leaned my head back against the wall, and had shut my eyes to consider the matter more quietly, when I heard my name.

"Félix! Félix! Where is the boy got to?"

The sun was clean up over the horizon, and as I blinked and wondered how he had contrived the feat so quickly, my two messieurs came hand in hand round the corner to me, the level rays glittering on Monsieur's burnished breastplate, on M. Étienne's bright head, and on both their shining faces. Now that for the first time I saw them together, I found them, despite the dark hair and the yellow, the brown eyes and the gray, wonderfully alike. There was the same carriage, the same cock of the head, the same smile. If I had not known before, I knew now, the instant I looked at them, that the quarrel was over. Save as it gave them a deeper love of each other, it might never have been.

I sprang up, and Monsieur, my duke, embraced me.

"Lucky we came up the lane when we did, eh, Félix?" M. Étienne said. "But, Monsieur, I have not asked you yet what madness sent you traversing this back passage at two in the morning."

"I might ask you that, Étienne."

The young man hesitated a bare moment before he answered:

"I am just come from serenading Mlle. de Montluc."

A shade fell over Monsieur's radiance. At his look, M. Étienne cried out:

"I've told you I'm no Leaguer! Mayenne offered me mademoiselle if I would come over. I refused. Last night he sent me word that he would kill me as a common nuisance if I sought to see her. That was why I tried."

"Monsieur," I cried, curiosity mastering me, "was she in the window?"

He shook his head, his eyes on his father' face.

"Étienne," Monsieur said slowly, "can't you see that Mlle. de Montluc is not for you?"

"I shall never see it, Monsieur. The first article in my creed says she is for me. And I'll have her yet, for all Mayenne."

"Then, mordieu, we'll steal her together!"

"You! You'll help me?"

"Why, dear son," Monsieur explained, "it broke my heart to think of you in the League. I could not bear that my son should help a Spaniard to the throne of France, or a Lorrainer either. But if it is a question of stealing the lady--well, I never prosed about prudence yet, thank God!"

M. Étienne, wet-eyed, laughing, hugged Monsieur.

"By St. Quentin, we'll get you your lady! I hated the marriage while I thought it would make you a Leaguer. I could not see you sacrifice your honour to a girl's bright eyes. But your life--that is different."

"My life is a little thing."

"No," Monsieur said; "it is a good deal--one's life. But one is not to guard one's life at the cost of all that makes life sweet."

"Ah, you know how I love her!"

"They call me a fool," Monsieur went on musingly, "because I risk my life in wild errands. But, mordieu! I am the wise man. For they who think ever of safety, and crouch and scheme and shuffle to procure it, why, look you, they destroy their own ends. For, when all is done, they have never really lived. And that is why they hate death so, these worthies. While I, who have never cringed to fear, I live like a king. I go my ways without any man's leave; and if death comes to me a little sooner for that, I am a poor creature if I do not meet him smiling. If I may live as I please, I am content to die when I must."

"Aye," said M. Étienne, "and if we live as we do not please, still we must die presently. Therefore do I purpose never to give over striving after my lady."

"Oh, we'll win her by noon. But first we'll sleep. There's Félix yawning his head off. Come, come."

We set off along the alley, the St. Quentins arm in arm, I at their heels. Monsieur looked over his shoulder with a sudden anxiety.

"Félix, you said Huguet had run for aid?"

"Yes, Monsieur; Vigo should have been here before now," I answered, remembering Vigo's promptitude yesterday.

"Every one was asleep; he has been hammering this half-hour to get in," M. Étienne said easily.

But Monsieur asked of me:

"Was he much hurt, Félix?"

"No; I am sure not, Monsieur. He was run through the arm; I am sure he was not hurt otherwise."

We came to where the two slain men lay across the way. M. Étienne exclaimed:

"If you do not hold your life dear, you sell it dear, Monsieur! How many of the rascals were there?"

"It was hard to tell in the dark. Five, I think."

"Now, Monsieur, how came you to be in this place in the dark?"

"Why, what to do, Étienne? I came in at the gate just after midnight. I could not leave St. Denis earlier, and night is my time to enter Paris. The inns were shut--"

"But some friend near the gate? Tarigny would have sheltered you."

"Aye, and got into trouble for it, had it leaked out to the Sixteen."

"Tarigny is no craven."

"But neither am I," said Monsieur, smiling.

"Oh, I give you up! Go your ways. But I will not come to save you next time."

"No, lad; you will be at my side hereafter."

M. Étienne laughed and said no more.

"But in truth," Monsieur added, "I did not expect waylaying. If these fellows watched by the gate, they hid cleverly. I never saw a finger-tip of them till they sprang upon us by the corner here, when we were almost home."

M. Étienne bent over and turned face up the man whom Monsieur had run through the heart. He was an ugly enough fellow, one eye entirely closed by a great scar that ran from his forehead nearly to his grizzled mustache.

"This is Bernet le Borgne," he said. "Have you encountered him before, Monsieur? He was a soldier under Guise once, they say, but he has done naught but hang about Paris taverns this many a year. We used to wonder how he lived; we knew he did somebody's dirty work. Clisson employed him once, so I know something of him. With his one eye he could fence better than most folks with two. My congratulations to you, Monsieur."

But Monsieur, not heeding, was bending over the other man.

"Your acquaintance is wider than mine. Do you know this one?"

M. Étienne shook his head over this other man, who lay face up, staring with wide dark eyes into the sky. His hair curled in little rings about his forehead, and his cheeks were smooth; he looked no older than I.

"He dashed at me the first of all," Monsieur said in a low voice. "I ran him through before the others came up. Mordieu! I am glad it was dark. A boy like that!"

"He had good mettle to run up first," M. Étienne said. "And it is no disgrace to fall to your sword, Monsieur. Come, let us go."

But Monsieur looked back again at the dead lad, and then at his son and at me, and came with us heavy of countenance.

On the stones before us lay a trail of blood-drops.

"Now, that is where Huguet ran with his wounded arm," I said to M. Étienne.

"Aye, and if we did not know the way home we could find it by this red track."

But the trail did not reach the door; for when we turned into the little street where the arch is, where I had waited for Martin, as we turned the familiar corner under the walls of the house itself, we came suddenly on the body of a man. Monsieur ran forward with a cry, for it was the squire Huguet.

He wore a leather jerkin lined with steel rings, mail as stout as any forged. Some one had stabbed once and again at the coat without avail, and had then torn it open and stabbed his defenceless breast. Though we had killed two of their men, they had rained blows enough on this man of ours to kill twenty.

Monsieur knelt on the ground beside him, but he was quite cold.

"The man who fled when we charged them must have lurked about," I said. "Huguet's sword-arm was useless; he could not defend himself."

"Or else he fainted from his wound, he bled so," M. Étienne answered. "And one of those who fled last came upon him helpless and did this."

"Why didn't I follow him instead of sitting down, a John o'dreams?" I cried. "But I was thinking of you and Monsieur; I forgot Huguet."

"I forgot him, too," Monsieur sorrowed. "Shame to me; he would not have forgotten me."

"Monsieur," his son said, "it was no negligence of yours. You could have saved him only by following when he ran. And that was impossible."

"In sight of the door," Monsieur said sadly. "In sight of his own door."

We held silent. Monsieur got soberly to his feet.

"I never lost a better man."

"Monsieur," I cried, "he asks no better epitaph. If you will say that of me when I die, I shall not have lived in vain."

He smiled at the outburst, but I did not care; if he would only smile, I was content it should be at me.

"Nay, Félix," he said. "I hope it will not be I who compose your epitaph. Come, we must get to the house and send after poor Huguet."

"Félix and I will carry him," M. Étienne said, and we lifted him between us--no easy task, for he was a heavy fellow. But it was little enough to do for him.

We bore him along slowly, Monsieur striding ahead. But of a sudden he turned back to us, laying quick fingers on the poor torn breast.

"What is it, Monsieur?" cried his son.

"My papers."

We set him down, and the three of us examined him from top to toe, stripping off his steel coat, pulling apart his blood-clotted linen, prying into his very boots. But no papers revealed themselves.

"What were they, Monsieur?"

A drawn look had come over Monsieur's face.

"Papers which the king gave me, and which I, fool and traitor, have lost."

I ran back to the spot where we had found Huguet; there was his hat on the ground, but no papers. I followed up the red trail to its beginning, looking behind every stone, every bunch of grass; but no papers. In my desperation I even pulled about the dead man, lest the packet had been covered, falling from Huguet in the fray. The two gentlemen joined me in the search, and we went over every inch of the ground, but to no purpose.

"I thought them safer with Huguet than with me," Monsieur groaned. "I knew we ran the risk of ambush. Myself would be the object of attack; I bade Huguet, were we waylaid, to run with the papers."

"And of course he would not."

"He should; it was my command. He stayed and saved my life perhaps, and lost me what is dearer than life--my honour."

"He could not leave you to be killed, Monsieur; that were asking the impossible."

"Aye, but I am saved at the ruin of a hundred others!" Monsieur cried. "The papers contained certain lists of names of Mayenne's officers pledged to support the king if he turn Catholic. I had them for Lemaître. But at this date, in Mayenne's hands, they spell the men's destruction. Huguet should have known that if I told him to desert me, I meant it."

M. Étienne ventured no word, understanding well enough that in such bitter moments no consolation consoles. M. le Duc added after a moment:

"Mordieu! I am ashamed of myself. I might be better occupied than in blaming the dead--the brave and faithful dead. Belike he could not run, they set on us so suddenly. When he could, he did go, and he went to his death. They were my charge, the papers. I had no right to put the responsibility on any other. I should have kept them myself. I should have gone to Tarigny. I should never have ventured myself through these black lanes. Fool! traitorous fool!"

"Nay, Monsieur, the mischance might have befallen any one."

"It would not have befallen Villeroi! It would not have befallen Rosny!" Monsieur exclaimed bitterly. "It befalls me because I am a lack-wit who rushes into affairs for which he is not fit. I can handle a sword, but I have no business to meddle in statecraft."

"Then have those wiseheads out at St. Denis no business to employ you," M. Étienne said. "He is not unknown to fame, this Duke of St. Quentin; everybody knows how he goes about things. Monsieur, they gave you the papers because no one else would carry them into Paris. They knew you had no fear in you; and it is because of that that the papers are lacking. But take heart, Monsieur. We'll get them back."

"When? How?"