If I Were King (McCarthy novel, R. H. Russell)/Chapter 6
ON the terrace the fair girl leaned and looked over at the garden and its golden occupant. To the eyes of Villon her beauty had never seemed rarer, and the wild passion which had prompted him to spin his very soul into song burnt with a new, delicious strength of hope. He stared at her as a worshipper might stare at some sudden vision of a long dreamed of goddess, and as he stared, Olivier descended the steps, soft-footed, and came and stood before him.
"My lord, there is a lady there who desires to speak with you."
Villon turned his gaze unwillingly from the gracious apparition above him to the sombre servitor.
"I desire to speak with her," he said earnestly, and again his eyes travelled in the direction of the lady.
Olivier came close to him and touched him respectfully on the wrist.
"Remember, my lord," he said, very softly, "that you are François of Corbeuil, Lord of Montcorbier, Grand Constable of France, newly come to Paris from the Court of His Majesty of Provence. Remember this as if it were written in letters of gold upon tables of iron. Forget all else. The king commands it."
The words sounded dully enough on Villon's brain, absorbed as he was in the contemplation of his queen, but at least they served to convince him of what he had already begun to assure himself, that for some purpose or other King Louis wished him well and granted him golden chances.
François of Corbeuil, Count of Montcorbier, stood in a very different relation to the Lady Katherine from that of the lowly poet and gaolbird who had rhymed and sighed and battled in the Fircone Tavern last night.
"The king shall be obeyed," he said gravely, and Olivier, turning, made a sign to Katherine, who descended the steps slowly. As she reached the last step, Olivier saluted Villon and the lady profoundly and, mounting the steps, vanished within the palace.
The man and the woman were left alone in the rose garden. Villon felt a sudden strange sensation at his heart, exquisite pain and exquisite pleasure, and he clasped his hands together.
"I am awake," he assured himself; "no dream could be as fair as she."
Even at the thought, Katherine flung herself swiftly at his feet, divinely gracious in her surrender of dignity as she kneeled to him with uplifted imploring hands and eyes.
"My lord," she cried, "will you listen to a distressed lady?"
Villon stooped and caught her white fingers and drew her to her feet.
"Not while the lady kneels," he said gently, and he looked with a strange apprehension into the frank, bright eyes of Katherine. Would she know him for what he was, he wondered. He read no recognition in her sweet eyes. Katherine returned his gaze, unflinchingly regarding him as a great lady might regard some stranger her equal of whom she could ask a favour.
"She does not know me," Villon's delight cried in his heart, and at the thought his spirit fluttered with fierce exaltation. The Lord of Moncorbier, who was Grand Constable of France, might say many things that were denied to the lips of François Villon.
Katherine pleaded warmly:
"There is a man in prison at this hour for whom I would implore your clemency. His name is François Villon. Last night he wounded Thibaut d'Aussigny"
Villon smiled a contented smile.
"Thereby making room for me," he suggested.
Katherine went on unheeding:
"The penalty is death. But Thibaut was a traitor sold to Burgundy."
"Did this Villon fight him for his treason?"
"No. He fought for the sake of a woman. He risked his life with a light heart because a woman asked him."
"How do you know all this?"
"Because I was the woman. This man had seen me, thought he loved me, sent me verses"
"How insolent!"
"It was insolence—and yet they were beautiful verses. I was in mortal fear of Thibaut d'Aussigny. I went to this Villon and begged him to kill my enemy. He backed his love tale with his sword—and he lies in the shadow of death. It is not just that he should suffer for my sin."
Villon turned suddenly upon the beautiful suppliant. A thought had come into his brain so whimsical and so fantastic that it made him as dizzy for an instant as if the smooth grass beneath him had yawned into a sheer and evil precipice.
"Do you by any chance love this Villon?"
A little wave of disdain rippled over the girl's calm face.
"Great ladies do not love tavern bravos. But I pity him, and I do not want him to die, though, indeed, life cannot be very dear to him if he would fling it away to please a woman."
She had held a rose in her hand, and as she spoke she flung it from her in dainty symbolism of the life which the poor tavern poet had risked so bravely for her sake. A mad resolve came into Villon's mind. If he was, indeed, all that this woman thought him to be, all that those with whom he had spoken had assured him he was, now was his chance to play the lover to his heart's desire. If the Grand Constable had the power to pardon, surely the Grand Constable had also the right to woo. She had drawn a little way from him and he followed her up, standing so close to her that with a little movement he might have kissed her on the cheek.
"Even when you are the woman? If I had stood in this rascal's shoes, I would have done as he did for your sake."
The girl gave a joyous cry.
"If you think this, you should grant the poor knave his freedom."
Villon flung his hands apart with a magnificent gesture of liberation.
"That broker of ballads shall go free. Your prayer unshackles him and we will do no more than banish him from Paris. Forget that such a slave ever came near you."
The lady dropped him a magnificent curtsey, and her cheeks glowed with gratitude.
"I shall remember your clemency."
She made as if she would leave his presence, but his boldness waxed within him as a fire waxes with new wood, and he caught her lightly by the wrist.
"By Saint Venus, I envy this fellow that he should have won your thoughts. For I am in his case and I, too, would die to serve you!"
Surprise flamed in the girl's eyes, surprise and amusement mingled.
"My lord, you do not know me," she laughed, and her laughter was as fresh and merry as a milkmaid's in the meadows.
"Did he know you? Yet when he saw you he loved you and made bold to tell you so."
Her forehead wrinkled prettily in a little protesting frown.
"His words were of no more account than the wind in the eaves. But you and I are peers and the words we change have meanings."
Villon caught his breath. The Lord of Montcorbier was, indeed, wardered by very different stars from the fellow of the Fircone. He saluted her banteringly.
"Though I be newly come to Paris I have heard much of the beauty and more of the pride of the Lady Katherine de Vaucelles."
A little fire burned in the girl's pale cheeks, and she flung her head back scornfully.
"I am humble enough as to my beauty, but I am very proud of my pride."
Villon, leaning forward with entreating hands, pleaded with beseeching lips.
"Would you pity me if I told you that I loved you?"
Katherine laughed, and the music of her laughter seemed to wake faint echoes among the roses as if every blossom were a magic bell with a fairy hand at the clapper.
"Heaven's mercy," she said. "How fast your fancy gallops. I care little to be flattered and less to be wooed, and I swear that I should be very hard to win."
She turned to mount the steps as she spoke, as if she had said all that she wanted to say, but Villon delayed her with imploring protest.
"I have more right to try than your taproom bandit. I see what he saw; I love what he loved."
Again the girl's laughter brightened the summer air.
"You are very inflammable."
Villon caught at her words.
"My fire burns to the ashes. You can no more stay me from loving you than you can stay the flowers from loving the soft air, or true men from loving honour, or heroes from loving glory. I would rake the moon from heaven for you."
The girl swayed her head daintily, as a queen rose might in a realm of roses. There was something like pity in her eyes, but laughter lingered on her lips.
"That promise has grown rusty since Adam first made it to Eve." She eyed him in silence for a second time, deriding his sighs with a smile: then "There is a rhyme in my mind," she cried, "about moons and lovers," and she began to declaim, half muse, half minx, some lines that had pleased her, to tease the importunate stranger.
Love may uphold;
Fear goes in sable,
Courage in gold.
Mystery covers
Midnight and noon,
Heroes and lovers
Cry for the moon."
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Midnight and noon,
Heroes and lovers
Cry for the moon."
As the first words of the verse fell from her lips, Villon's heart leaped and his eyes brightened for he knew the sound. They were part of the rhymes himself had sent her on that very parchment which had cost him first a dinner and then a drubbing. He had fancied the words and the rhymes when he wrote them, but now they seemed to sound on his ears with the married music of all the falling waters and all the blowing winds of the world. It was a shining face that he turned to the girl as he jeered, denying the thought in his heart:
"What doggerel!"
The girl flashed scorn at him.
"Doggerel! It is divinity," she insisted, flinging a kiss from her finger-tips in Godspeed, as it were, to the banished ballad-maker, as she moved a little further up the steps. Villon followed her. Let come what might come, he was the maid's equal for the moment and would press his suit if he died for it.
"Tell me what I may do," he said, "to win your favour."
The girl's smiling face grew graver as she looked down on the imploring poet.
"A trifle," she said lightly, as a child might bid for a doll; and then, as Villon's eyes glowed questions, her voice rang out like the call of a clarion. "Save France!" she trumpeted.
Villon caught fire from both her moods.
"No more?" he said, and though the sound of his voice jested, the look in his eyes was earnest.
The girl responded to jest and earnest royally.
"No less. Are you not Grand Constable, chief of the king's army? There is an enemy at the gates of Paris, and none of the king's men can frighten him away." She pointed out where, in the distance, beyond the walls of Paris, the pitched tents of the enemy fluttered their hostile flags. Her bosom heaved with great desire. "Oh, that a man would come to court! For the man who shall trail the banners of Burgundy in the dust for the king of France to walk on, I may perhaps have favours."
Villon looked at her as men must have looked at Joan of Arc when she bade them rise up and strike for France.
"You are hard to please," he said, but his heart was full of joy at the thought of trying to please her. If he could do this thing!
The girl answered his words and not his thoughts.
"My hero must have every virtue for his wreath, every courage for his coronet. Farewell."
By this time she had reached the terrace and she made to enter the palace. Villon called to her longingly:
"Stay! I have a thousand things to say to you."
The girl smiled denial.
"I have but one," she said, "and I have said it long since. Farewell."
Villon made a dash for audacity.
"I will follow you," he said, and he moved to do so, but the girl's lifted finger stayed him.
"You may not," she said peremptorily. "I go to the queen." And so with a swift salutation, gracious as the dip of a dancing wave, she entered the palace and left him standing there, dazed and ardent, as a man might be who had just been vouchsafed the vision of an angel. He murmured to himself her words as he slowly descended the steps to the ground,
"Oh, that a man would come to court," and on that text he wove the hopeful commentary of his thoughts.
"Why should I not deserve her? Last night I was only a poor devil with a rusty sword and a single suit. To-day all's different. I am the king's friend, it would seem, a court potentate, a man of mark. What may I not accomplish? This finery smiles like sunlight and the world will warm its hands at me."
He was exquisitely pleased with himself, exquisitely pleased with the world that held him and Katherine. He forgot, as lovers always will forget, that there was any one else in the world save himself and his beloved, and he was so wrapped in his sweet contemplations that he did not hear the tower door gently open, did not hear the soft, creeping footsteps of the king as he came out of his hiding place and shuffled across the soft grass toward his plaything.