at last, late in the afternoon, the lad blaise came for me in great haste.
"mademoiselle, the king is asking for you."
"for me? how can that be?"
"i only know what i am told," he answered, fumbling at his bonnet.
"is that all monsieur de commines' message?"
i have studied boys as well as men, and from his confusion i guessed his mind was burdened by more than he had delivered. at the question, his face flushed red in the sunlight, and he broke out—
"mademoiselle, i hate the court, and court ways. god made me for a plain soldier, and not to truckle in mud."
"wait," said i; "presently you will find that mud is your surest stepping-place to fortune. what more had you to say?"
"monsieur de commines beseeches you not to be angry if the king thinks evil of you; if he even puts a vile construction on your friendship for monsieur de helville."
"the king can think no more vilely of me than i of him," i answered hotly. then my heart leaped into my mouth. not for myself; for me the bitterness of fear was long past: but with that illumination which they say the drowning have at the last, i suddenly realised that gaspard's life hung not alone on my powers of pleading, but on my self-control. all my grown years i had hated, loathed, and despised louis of valois, not only as the merciless enemy of navarre, but as the vilest, meanest cunning spirit that ever made flesh contemptible. what if that loathing and despisal crept into my pleading and pled against me? what if that hatred, which to me was almost a religion, flashed through my prayer and blasted the king's mercy? what if they hardened louis' softer mood, and so left me all my life guilty of gaspard's blood? what if——
"mademoiselle! mademoiselle!" cried blaise, half piteously, half in indignation. "do not look so horrified, so troubled. it was a lie, we all know it was a lie."
"did monsieur de commines say, it is a lie?"
"for policy's sake, mademoiselle——"
"policy! policy! policy! that is monsieur de commines all over. truth? there is no truth, there is only policy. a woman's honour? her reputation? her good name? to his slippery, pliant policy all these are nothing. there, there, monsieur blaise, it is my turn to say, do not look so horrified! monsieur de commines is his master's mirror."
at the first door a red-haired youth whom blaise called davidd was waiting for us, and with him as surety we passed through guard after guard unchallenged. up what stairs, along what corridors, through what anterooms we were led i do not know; nor could i tell whether the furnishings of plessis were those of the palace or the prison. if the hanging, were of silk i did not see them; if there were carvings, gildings, fretwork, my eyes passed them blindly by. only there were men everywhere, men who whispered eagerly together in groups of threes and fours, and who turned to watch us curiously as we left them behind.
before an open door, guarded as every other door had been through which we had come, monsieur de commines was waiting for us.
"come!" said he, brusquely, almost dragging me after him, while blaise and davidd stood aside, "and remember, no matter what he may say, remember more than de helville's life hangs on the turn of a word."
"i am not afraid," i began.
"but i am," he interrupted, "horribly, horribly afraid."
"hey! is that de helville's woman, d'argenton?" said a weak, whispering voice from the end of the room. it was the king, pipingly thin and harshly raucous by turns as weakness of flesh or strength of spirit got the upper hand. "get out of the light, and let me look at her. heh! heh! heh!" and he laughed a little snickering laugh through his nose. "what a lover he was, that de helville! bloused as a poppy or peaked and pale, they were all as one to him. what is your name, girl?"
from where he stood, a little in advance of me, i saw monsieur de commines start. he even opened his mouth as if to speak, but though he kept silence, his side-long glance was at once an entreaty and a repetition of his warning.
"ah! sire," said i, "might i not be spared that?"
"you can understand, your majesty," said monseigneur, his voice hard and jerky as if in bad control, "that under the circumstances mademoiselle would prefer——"
"of course," broke in louis, though how can i give the cutting contempt of his sneer? "modest retirement at all times becomes a woman. meek virtue that consorts with this hellewyl from navarre to poictiers, and heaven knows how long before, is shocked at the bare whispering of its name! heh! heh! heh! what do they call you, girl?"
"it is not that, sire," said monsieur de commines hastily, waving a monitory hand at me behind his back that i should keep silence. it was a hard thing to ask a woman at such a time and under such an imputation; but it was gaspard's life i played for, and so i controlled myself. "not that, ah, no! such brazen bashfulness would truly be absurd—in such a woman as your majesty describes. but hellewyl is unhappily in disgrace——"
"disgrace!" cried louis, his voice strengthening to a screech. "god's name! man, have you no better word than that? a damned treacherous cur who has cost france a province, and you sweetly lisp he is unhappily in disgrace! if to hang like a common thief is disgrace, and no more than disgrace, then, yes, yes, you are right, your monsieur de helville is in disgrace. but he was always a friend of yours, monsieur le prince?" flinging back the scarlet cape that covered his meagre shoulders, louis tore open his cambric vest at the throat and lay back on his high pillows, gasping. "coctier! coctier! come to me, coctier!—my heart—ah! miserable sinner that i am—my heart as father francis says, is deceitful and desperately weak. i cannot trust it, cannot trust it."
the king's bed faced a range of windows opening to the west. above the head a huge canopy projected, the hangings of which had been removed for sake of air; only at the extreme ends were there curtains remaining. these were drawn back as flat to the wall as the heavy silk would pack, but the carved pillars which supported the canopy gave a heavy, cumbersome appearance to the bed. between these pillars cushions had been piled, raising the king almost to a sitting posture, but with complete and much-needed support.
never had i seen such an anatomy of a man, and had he not been louis of valois i could have wept for pity. his eyes, filmed with grey and colourless from weakness, were sunk deep in a skull to which the skin clung flat, yellow as ancient parchment, and forcing into relief every bony curve and prominence. naked in throat and chest, the tense sinews played up and down in the lean neck with every articulation, while across the hollow chest the bones showed like white knuckles through the strained skin. his loose sleeves had fallen back beyond the elbow, and the bare arms, stretched downwards on the counterpane, were shrunken to a skeleton. for four days no razor had touched him, and a thin frost lay upon the mouth, framing into relief the cruel straight lines of the sunken lips, through which the gapped and blackened teeth showed at every sneering laugh or outburst of rage. had he died, and had his father the devil, entering in, raised him to life again, he could not have looked more like a mask of wasted malevolent mortality.
"coctier!" he went on, slanting his eyes at us without turning his head. "they will kill me, coctier, if they cross me like this."
from behind the shelter of the twisted pillar of the bedstead a man in a loose suit of grey stuffs leaned over him, putting a cup to his mouth.
"you hear, monsieur d'argenton? the responsibility is yours."
"his majesty sent for—for—this lady," answered monseigneur doggedly, "and, sire, truly you mistake. what this—lady fears, is lest your righteous anger should strike more than monsieur de helville."
sucking the liquid from the cup with as much noise and spilling of its contents as if he had been a half-weaned child, the king pointed a shaking finger at me.
"that—that—lady," he said, mocking, "need have no fear. i have monsieur—how civil you are, d'argenton, with your monsieurs and your ladys!—i have the rascal hellewyl safe, and will hurt neither her nor hers. god forbid!" he went on unctuously, and turning his eyes towards the side of the bed opposite to where ma?tre coctier stood. there, a guardian over the soul, as coctier over the body—and which was the more grievously sick, god knows!—stood a frocked monk, white bearded, white moustached, and rigid as a statue, his hands folded humbly across his breast. "god forbid that i should punish the innocent for the guilty, that would be mortal sin, eh, father francis?"
"then, sire," cried monseigneur, "we have your promise?"
"my oath, if you like, man! why! what a mystery you make about a—a—common——"
"she is mademoiselle de narbonne," said monsieur de commines, breaking in curtly, as louis paused to pick his vilest epithet.
drawing his palms under him at each side, the king pushed himself to such a sitting posture that for very weakness his chin fell forward on his breast.
"narbonne?" he whispered huskily, his jaw working with sudden excitement. whether from coctier's potion or from some stimulant of the devil, fire woke in the dull eyes; and a broad spot of red flushed the skin above the cheek bones. "a narbonne, you say, d'argenton—a narbonne? and yet this rascal hellewyl——"
"monsieur de helville's promised wife, sire," i cried, crushing back my indignation, and falling on my knees to this loathsome king. "a miserable, broken-hearted woman who pleads for her lover's life. oh, sire, sire! be merciful, be gracious. as god has given you greatness——"
"bah!" he snarled in a splutter; "be silent, girl!" then, with a sudden shift to a mocking smoothness, he went on in the same breath: "oh! we ask your pardon! give us time to think, mademoiselle de narbonne. narbonne? ho! ho! narbonne? narbonne? come nearer, d'argenton," and sinking back on his pillows with a moan he beckoned to monseigneur. "narbonne? what narbonne?"
"cousin twice or thrice removed to jean de foix, sire, and guardian to the young gaston."
"by god! d'argenton, we win in the end!" he broke out, shaking his finger at me. "cousin to jean de foix? that girl stands for navarre, and we'll wring—wring our rights out of her!"
"oh, sire!" cried monseigneur, "your promise, your promise!"
"your oath!" said a deeper voice, and francis of paulo laid his hands fearlessly on the meagre shoulder nearest him. "dare you forswear yourself—dare you lie in the very ear of god, and the grave open at the bed's edge?"
round upon him turned louis, striking upward feebly like an angry cat.
"no oath!" he cried shrilly, his yellow face suffused by excited rage. "i swore no oath, i only said—only said—said——" his voice died away in a quaver as his eyes met those of the white-haired monk set in unshrinking sternness. "i submit, father, i submit. heaven is too strong for me, poor weak wretch that i am. but, pray god, heaven is worth a province. it is a long price to pay for a man's soul. but what we must not wring we may win by consent, a consent free from all pressure of compulsion? for that i must—i must think. mademoiselle de narbonne, your pleading has moved my pity, as you see, moved it greatly. from my heart i grieve for your sorrow. if—mark, for to-day i say no more than if—if justice allows mercy—it is france who is offended, not i—would you wish to be the one to carry monsieur de helville's pardon to poictiers?"
"if i might, sire," i answered, my heart beating so fast that i could hardly draw breath.
"and if—not? if france can find no excuse, what then? would you still wish to say—farewell?"
"farewell? not that, not that; give me his life, sire, give me his life, and in return everything that service, everything that devotion can do——"
"perhaps," he broke in sharply, "perhaps you can find me excuses for monsieur de helville, excuses that will satisfy—france! what will you give—france for his life?"
"oh, sire!" i answered, half crying, for it seemed to me he played with my misery, "what can i give france?"
"navarre!" leaning his chin on his palm, he bit furiously at his finger-nails. "navarre! a child for a man. no, no, no, do not answer now, wait till you see poictiers' market-place clear in your mind as it will be next sunday at dawn. wait and think. go away for to-day, go away. i am tired and must rest, is it not so, coctier? only, i would be merciful. come again to-morrow, and meanwhile, think hard."
"to-morrow, sire?" i cried, now fully weeping and too confused to grasp the meaning of all he said. "oh, sire! there is so little time."
"tut, tut! no, no, i am not so ill as that; every hour i am stronger, is it not so, coctier? take her away, d'argenton, take her away, there is no more to be said."
"but monsieur de helville—gaspard—oh, sire, the dawn of sunday is so near, so very near."
he had fallen back on the cushions, his thin chest heaving as he fought for breath, his eyes closed all but a narrow slit through which the evil beast in him glared at me. as i took a step towards him, wringing my hands, he shook his head, a dry, mocking smile, twitching his lips.
"the greater need to think hard," he whispered. "a child for a man—to-morrow, when i send for you. in any case you shall see your lover, in any case i will send word. take her away, d'argenton, lest worse come to her, oath or no oath. a province for a single soul! ah! dear saint claude! what a price to pay! take her away, take her away!"
not roughly, but with a force i could not combat, monsieur de commines caught me by the arm, drawing me in the direction of the door, and the last i knew of louis of valois was the skeleton head turned towards me on the pillows, the yellow sunken face wrinkled into a malevolent, smirking laugh, and a piping voice that said:
"are you there, father francis? mother of mercy! pray for me, for i am very weak."
not even when we were beyond the door, not till we were midway down the gallery, and so in comparative privacy between two sets of guards, did he loosen his hold. at first i thought he was angry, so urgent was he, so insistent. but no, his eyes were full of pity, and his face, white and strained, was the face of a man in sore trouble rather than wrath.
"you have failed, mademoiselle," said he, with a kind of fatherly tenderness that sat strangely on one whose hair was still unsilvered. "that was inevitable from the first. but though you have failed, it will be a comfort hereafter that you made the trial."
"but there is still hope, monseigneur, surely there is still hope?"
"yes," he assented with a sudden cheerfulness, "of course you are right, and for to-day hope is our best medicine."
"what did the king mean at the last?" i asked as as we walked slowly onward. "he said i was to think hard. but, monseigneur, i cannot think. my brain is dazed, is in a whirl. he spoke of a man for a child, but my head swims, and i cannot understand."
"do not try to understand," he answered very gently. i never thought so stern a man had so much of a woman's tenderness in him. "think only that yea or nay you are to see monsieur de helville again. have you strength for another ride to poictiers?"
"to poictiers to see gaspard? why, yes, monseigneur. poictiers to see gaspard! that is nothing."
"then my advice is, rest. nurse your strength, mademoiselle; who knows when it may be needed, or for what crisis."
and i did rest, partly because i was worn threadbare, and partly through a draught coctier gave me. so friday drifted into the last day of the week end, and on the morrow gaspard was to die at dawn.
