If I Were King (McCarthy novel, R. H. Russell)/Chapter 9
ON the seventh day of Villon's week of wonder, his glory was at its greatest. No fairer day had traced that radiant month of June and no more splendid pageantry had adorned the illustrious reign of the new Grand Constable. Mimic battles, fountains running wine, free doles of food, fantastic pageants, grotesque dances, all the gorgeous mummery that the fifteenth century delighted in was offered in profusion to please the fancy and win the hearts of the people of Paris. But the crowning triumph was the great festival which the Grand Constable gave with the king's permission in the king's own rose garden, the magnificent mascarado in the Italian manner, to which all who were associated with the court were summoned. This revelry which began at sunset was intended to overtop all possible courtly ceremonials in the splendour of its equipment, the lavishness of its display, the richness and profusion of its hospitality.
It was near to the hour of sunset when Villon sat with the king in the little room in the grey tower from which the king loved to follow the movements of the heavenly bodies. On the table by which the king and Villon were seated lay a large chart of the country in the immediate neighbourhood of Paris, and in front of the table stood three of the king's most trusty commanders, the Lord du Lau, the Lord Poncet de Rivière and the Lord of Nantoillet.
Villon had been explaining to the king and to his military advisers a scheme which had been growing in his mind throughout the week for the confusion of the enemy, a scheme for which the gorgeous entertainment to be given that evening was to serve as a golden mask. Villon touched a point on the map which represented a spot very familiar to him, a little dip in the swelling land, where he used to play as a child and gather wildflowers and hide himself, and imagine that he was a bandit or a great captain or a fairy prince—any one of the thousand illusions of childhood at its play.
"There, sire," he said. "If we can lure the Burgundians to that hollow, the day is ours. The sloping ground above it will mask a thousand men."
Poncet de Rivière leaned forward questioningly.
"Are you sure of the lay of the land?"
Villon answered positively:
"Sure. I played truant there when I was no higher than your sword belt."
Nantoillet spoke as a man who weighs his words:
"The scheme seems feasible, sire."
Villon glanced up from the table in humourous apology.
"You may think me a raw soldier," he said; "yet I have practised strategy all my days."
Du Lau answered him approvingly:
"My lord, you reason like a seasoned veteran."
Pleased with the praise Villon turned to the king.
"Sire, I have blown it abroad that your majesty feasts to-night. While the Duke of Burgundy believes us to be carousing, we shall make a sortie from St. Anthony's gate. Our horses' hooves will be muffled, no spur shall jingle, and no bridle clink. We will steal through the night like shadows. At the cross road some few of us will make an attack upon the enemy's left and beat a retreat. This will tempt him into our ambuscade and as I believe end in his rout. At nine, my lords. Farewell."
He raised his hand in dismissal; the three captains saluted the king and his minister and passed out of the presence. As they descended the winding stairs, du Lau said to his companions:
"I do not know your hearts, my lords, but I love this soldier of fortune."
Nantoillet answered cordially:
"God knows where he came from and God knows where he will go to, but I would ride with him to the world's end."
"My father," said Poncet de Rivière, "told me often of the Maid of Orleans and her power with bearded men. He must be of her kindred, for he wins me against my will."
As the sound of their feet died away in the depths of the tower, Villon turned to the king.
"If the Duke of Burgundy falls into my trap," he said; "men will call me a great captain. Yet it is no more than remembering the shape of a meadow where I played in childhood. Strange that an urchin's playground should become a Golgotha of graves and glories."
The king clapped him playfully on the shoulder.
"Where did you learn wisdom?"
"In the school of hope deferred. When I was—what I was, I still believed that this dingy carcass swaddled a Roman spirit. In the pomp of my pallet I dreamed Olympian dreams. And the dreams have come true."
"You are an amazing fellow. Here in a week, you have made me more popular than I made myself since my accession. In court, in camp, in council, men are pleased to call you paragon."
"I am a man of the people and I know what the people need. A week ago the good people of Paris were disloyal enough. I repeal the tax on wine and to-day they clap their hands and cry 'God save King Louis' lustily. A week ago your soldiers were mutinous because they were ill fed, worse clothed, and never paid at all. I feed them full, clothe them warm, pay them well, and to-day your majesty has an army that would follow me to the devil if I whistled a marching tune."
"But in the meantime, your sands are running out. Is your heart failing? Is your pulse flagging?"
"Not a whit. I have been translated without discredit from the tavern to the palace, and if the worse comes to the worst, I may say with the dying Cæsar, 'Applaud me.'"
The king grinned sardonically.
"Will the worse come to the worst?" he piped, "How is your suit with the Lady Katherine?"
Villon's smile lingered still on his lips as he answered:
"Sire, no wise man boasts that he knows the heart of a woman, and yet, I hope for the best."
"But if you fail," the king persisted.
Villon's smile grew more philosophical. In his heart he felt fairly confident, but spoke cautiously.
"Why, then, when the housewife moon kindles her pale fire on the hearth of heaven to-morrow, I shall be quiet enough. But either way you have given me a royal week, and I have made the most of it, lived a thousand lives, eaten my cake to the last sweet crumb and have known the meaning of kingship."
Louis laughed.
"You speak as if you had reigned for a century."
Villon's sententious mood deepened.
"A man might live a thousand years and yet be no more account at the last than as a great eater of dinners. Whereas to suck all the sweet and snuff all the perfume but of a single hour, to push all its possibilities to the edge of the chessboard, is to live greatly though it be not to live long, and an end is an end if it come on the winged heels of a week or the dull crutch of a century."
Louis leaned back and looked at his companion in astonishment.
"Pray heaven this philosophy may sound as fine when your neck is in the halter."
"Your majesty's wit and my wish run nose and nose in a leash."
Louis changed the subject as if there were more important matters in the world than the life, loves and death even of a Grand Constable.
"Messire Noel brings me a new astrologer to-night. The heavens seem in a conspiracy of confusion, the stars are all a tangle! My dream of a star falling from heaven defies divination."
Villon looked at him pityingly.
"Do you never tire of these sky doctors?" he questioned.
Louis frowned, as he always frowned at any hint of disbelief in the science of the stars.
"Don't jest, master poet," he said, "but ply your suit with proud Kate, for I swear if you fail, you shall hang to-morrow. Now leave me, for I must work while you play," and he bent over a chart and seemed to forget all else in his profound contemplation.
Villon looked at him for a moment in silence and then went out of the room and descended the steps, opened the little door, and passed into the garden. The summer sun was dying in a splendid riot of colour among the rose trees. Its last rays, falling on the face of the god Pan, illuminated his fantastic features and seemed to lend them the life of an ironic leer. The warm air was rich with the blended odours of a thousand blossoms, and from the palace, faint and far off, came the sound of joyous voices. It was almost the moment when the rose garden was to be thrown open to the royal guests.
Villon pulled a rose from a bush by his hand and gazed into its crimson heart as if he sought to read there the secret which all flowers hold but which no flower has ever yet betrayed to the longing eyes of a poet. He leaned against the statue of Pan and mused pensively.
"The petals of my reign are falling from me full of life, full of colour to the end. Shall I win this wonderful woman? Am I mad to hope it? If I lose, it is a short shrift and a long rope at the end of a dazzling dream."
He shivered as he thought and cast the rose he held away from him.
"How cold the June air seems, and these roses smell of graves." He paused a little till his hopes took heart again. "But if I win, how will it be, I wonder, to marry my heart's desire, to grow old sedately, to live again with the children on my knee, a little François here more honest than his father, a little Katherine there less comely than her mother!"
He flung out his hands as if he were dismissing the phantoms of his fancy.
"Run away, my dear dream children to your playground of shadows where you belong, for your father may be hanged to-morrow, and he fights for love and life to-night."
Villon's reflections were fluttered by a sudden blare of music, and a gaudy fellow in a pursuivant's coat made his appearance on the top of the terrace and rattled blast after blast from his brazen trumpet. In obedience to the long-looked-for signal, a many-coloured crowd of revellers gushed from the palace and flowed like a glowing wave of merry-making down the steps and into the walks and alleys of the rose garden. All the strange figures that a freakish fancy could suggest leaped and danced and shouted in a rapture of mirth-satyrs and follies, clowns and devils wheeled wildly by, waving torches, clashing cymbals, or screaming at the top of their voices, while sedater spirits, masked and muffled in mantles of sombre hue, moved through the tumultuous throng and found their abated pleasure in mystification and intrigues.
Villon had a mask in his girdle. He put it on and pushing into the press allowed himself to drift hither and thither with the eddying currents of pleasure. His fantastic imagination took fire from the strange shapes and sounds about him. The sense of being in a dream, which had never deserted him from the first moment of his awakened consciousness in the rose garden, clung closely about him on this night, and the jocund figures around him flitted by as unreal as the phantoms of a noon-tide sleep.
Suddenly his attention was arrested by the sound of a voice that seemed familiar to him. A man habited like a pilgrim from the Holy Land, in long hood and gabardine of grey, and with the pilgrim's cockleshell on his shoulder, had met another masker, habited like himself. The pair were exchanging salutations, in a speech that the speakers might well assume to be unknown to any person in the royal garden. The speech, however, jingled very familiarly on Villon's ear, for the man was talking in the amazing jargon which the worshipful company of cockleshells had devised for the better furtherance of their thievish purposes, and it appealed to Villon as intimately as a song that is learned in childhood.
The first pilgrim questioned the other.
"What do you carry in your scrip?"
And the second answered:
"I carry a cockleshell."
The first pilgrim questioned again:
"What do you carry in your hand?"
And the second responded:
"A foot of steel."
Yet again the first speaker queried:
"Will you drink the king's health?"
And the answer came decisively:
"In a flagon of Burgundy."
Whereat the two pilgrims saluted and parted and went their several ways and were swallowed up in the motley masquerade.
Villon's curiosity was piqued to the quick.
"How in heaven's name," he asked himself, "does it come to pass that people speaking the thieves' lingo of the Court of Miracles find themselves at a feast in the rose garden of King Louis?"
He set himself to try and track down one or the other of the mysterious pilgrims, but neither of them was to be found. His wanderings brought him back to the fair space at the foot of the terrace protected by the image of the god Pan. The place was deserted; the revellers had drifted elsewhere. A lute lay on the marble seat. Villon seated himself and taking up the instrument was touching it carelessly, when a light step on the grass arrested him, the sweetest voice in the world sounded in his ears, and he found himself addressed by the Lady Katherine de Vaucelles, who was attended by a number of fair court ladies.
"I am the voice of these ladies to pray for a favour."
Villon bowed low.
"My ear is all obedience," he said, "and my heart all homage."
"You are a poet, my lord," said Katherine, "and this is an eve which should please a poet. Rhyme us a rhyme which shall match this night of summer."
Villon sighed a little.
"No rhyme ever rhymed was worth a beam of summer sun or summer moon; but I have lingered in Provence where every man is a nightingale, and I caught there the fever of improvisation. What shall I rhyme about?"
Katherine laughed as she pointed to her attendant ladies.
"Your suitors are women; therefore, nothing better nor worse than love."
"The burden of the world," Villon said. "Sigh, my lute, sigh."
He let his fingers ripple over the strings, waking the faint wail of a plaintive minor. In a moment or two he began to recite, touching every now and then a chord on his lute to emphasize the words he spoke:
Apollo's music fills the air;
In what green valley Artemis
For young Endymion spreads the snare:
Where Venus lingers debonair:
The Wind has blown them all away—
And Pan lies piping in his lair—
Where are the Gods of Yesterday?
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Sleeps in a rose-red tomb; and where
The precious dust of Cæsar is,
Or Cleopatra's yellow hair:
Where Alexander Do-and-Dare;
The Wind has blown them all away—
And Redbeard of the Iron Chair;
Where are the Dreams of Yesterday?
And Phryne in her beauty bare;
By what strange sea does Tomyris
With Dido and Cassandra share
Divine Proserpina's despair;
The Wind has blown them all away—
For what poor ghost does Helen care?
Where are the Girls of Yesterday?
The Wind has blown them all away:
The young and yare, the fond and fair:
Where are the Snows of Yesterday?"
The little group whom he addressed lingered in a gracious silence for a short space. Singer and listeners seemed to be in an exquisite isolation of moonlight and soft odours. Katherine murmured pensively to herself:
"Where are the snows of yesterday?"
Her eyes were shining like summer stars, her parted lips made Villon think of ripe pomegranates, her mind was wandering in the Islands of the Blest with the lovers and ladies whom Villon had praised. Villon dismissed melancholy with a jest:
"Sweet ladies," he said; "my song is sung. Do not let it dishearten you, for, believe me, it will snow again next year and lie white and light on the graves of dead lovers. Yesterday is dead, and to-morrow comes never."
He drew very close to Katherine and whispered the end of his sentence in her ear:
"Let us live and love to-day."
Katherine gave a little start as she dropped from cloudland and looked at him. He drew back and turned to the others.
"Fair ladies," he said; "shall we go to the great hall where the Italian players gambol?"
The women gathered about him, thanking him for his song, and then fluttered away like brilliant birds, up the steps to the terrace. As they did so a figure in a pilgrim's gown came from the scented gloom of one of the rose alleys, paused for a moment as if undecided as to his course, and then proceeded to cross the space of moonlit grass. He did not heed Katherine, standing in the shadow, till he almost touched her. Then he glanced at her, and with a stifled exclamation hurried past, plunged into the darkness of an opposite alley, and disappeared. Katherine gave a little cry that was almost a cry of fear, and ran swiftly to where Villon stood apart at the foot of the steps awaiting her pleasure.
"My lord!" she cried, and he, turning, swiftly responded:
"My lady!"
"This masking kindles fancies. I thought but now that the eyes of Thibaut d'Aussigny glared on me from under a pilgrim's hood."
Villon frowned.
"A villainous apparition. For the news is that he lies dead in the camp of Burgundy."
Katherine gave a little shudder.
"I always hated him; almost feared him. If he be dead, I hope he will not haunt me. Ah! I tingle to-night like a lute that is tuned too high."
"Let us think of no evil things to-night," Villon responded. "Will you watch the players?"
Katherine shook her head.
"Nay, I am more in a mood for moonlight than candlelight."
Villon looked at her in silence, a silence of seconds that seemed to both of them like the silence of hours. The hearts of both were houses of sweet hopes, and the brains of both were hives of happy thoughts.
"May I ask you a question?" Villon said, and the girl answered:
"Surely."
"Are you content with me?"
"You have done much."
"I have more to do. For seven days I have wrestled with greatness as Jacob wrestled with the angels; I have made the king popular, the Parisians loyal, the army faithful"
"Then why do you linger here where courtiers feast and ladies dance?"
Villon's voice swelled proudly as he answered:
"I want the Duke of Burgundy to believe that the king's favourite is a zany, and the king's court an orgy, where the king's honour melts like a pearl in a pot of vinegar. But our swords are tempered in wine and sharpened to dance music, and to-night we ride."
The girl sighed. "I would that I were a man that I might ride with you."
Villon came close to her and peered into her eyes.
"I ride in your honour. Heaven has been very good to me, and I serve France serving you. Perhaps I serve both for the last time."
"For the last time?" she repeated.
"Even so, my sweet Lady Echo. Those far away lanterns warn me that I may die to-morrow. Some of us will be dreaming our last dreams by sunrise. I may be one of those heavy sleepers."
"Why, you may die if you ride on the king's business, but so may I who sit at home and eat my heart."
"For whom?"
"I will tell you that to-morrow."
Villon touched her lightly on the wrist and pointed to the grey tower on whose weather-beaten wall the quaint old dial showed plainly in the bright moonlight, with its wise Latin inscription: "Dum Spectas, Fugit Hora, Carpe Diem."
"There is no time like now time. That dial there is as wise as the wisest." And he rapidly rendered the antique maxim into a running rhyme:
Then use each hour while in your power;
For comes the sun but time flies on,
Proceeding ever, returning never."
Katherine tried to laugh.
"This was old wisdom when Noah sailed the seas," she said, and drew a little apart from him. Villon followed her.
"Well, let to-morrow tell to-morrow's story. To-night I feel like a happy child in a world of make-believe. To-night we are immortal, you and I, wandering forever in this green garden under those indifferent stars, breathing this rose-scented air, spelling the secret of the world."
"You may say what you please to-morrow," she whispered, but Villon would not have it so.
"Alas, no! To-morrow I shall be mortally sober; to-night I am divinely drunk-drunk with star wine, flower wine, song wine. The stars burn my brain; the roses pierce my flesh; the songs trouble my soul. To-night, if I dared, I would ease my heart."
The girl spoke so faintly that only a lover's ears could hear the words:
"You may say what you please to-night."
Villon caught at his heart as if to keep it in the compass of his breast.
"If I were to die to-morrow, I would tell you this to-night: I love you. These are easy words to say, yet my heart fails as I say them, for their meaning is as full and musical as the Bell of Doom. Men are such fools that they have but one name for a thousand meanings, and beggar the poor love-word to base kitchen usages and work-a-day desires. But I would keep it holy for the flame which it
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sometimes pleases heaven to light in one heart for the worship of another. I never knew what love was till I saw a girl's face on a May morning and wisdom stripped the rind from my naked heart. The God in me leaped into being to greet the God in your eyes. I love you. This is what I would say if I were to die to-morrow."
He was very close to her now, and his eyes were looking into her eyes. She answered him frankly:
"If you were to die to-morrow, I might tell you this much to-night. A woman may love a man because he is brave, or because he is comely, or because he is wise, or gentle—for a thousand thousand reasons. But the best of all reasons for a woman loving a man is just because she loves him, without rhyme and without reason, because heaven wills it, because earth fulfils it, because his hand is of the right size to hold her heart in its hollow."
The lovers' hands were closely clasped, the lovers' lips were very near to meeting. Only the god Pan smiled and sneered as if he knew that sometimes lovers' lips fail to meet even when the space between fervent mouth and mouth is no bigger than a rose-leaf.
"Katherine," Villon whispered, and drew her closer to him. Love, happiness, life were coming to his arms as to a shrine.
In the sudden bliss that had come upon both the lovers they paid no heed to a footstep upon the terrace, till a voice struck like a sword-stroke across their ecstasy, the voice of Noel le Jolys.
"Where are the lovers of yesterday?" Noel said mockingly as he slowly descended the steps to join them.
There was a red rage in Villon's heart, but he bridled it as he turned upon the interloper contemptuously.
"Your pink and white lady-bird," he said to Katherine, and then waving his hand at Noel with a gesture of disdain and dismissal, chanted at him:
"Lady-bird, lady-bird, fly away home."
Noel's pink face flushed a poppy red and his white hand went to his sword hilt. There was courage in the foppish substance, and he would clearly have rejoiced to try his chance in a passage-at-arms.
"My lord," he said, "I will measure word and sword with you at any season, but now I seek promised speech with this lady."
Villon laughed at his menace.
"While I have better business in hand, you shall know only the smooth of my tongue and the flat of my falchion. Compass your swelling heart lest you play the lion before a lady."
The two men eyed each other like angry dogs, eager to spring at each other's throats. Katherine dropped her restraining hand on Villon's arm.
"My lord," she whispered, "he has importuned me for audience. I will speak with you again ere you ride."
Villon turned to her.
"We ride at nine, remember," he said in a low voice; and then in a louder tone, looking at Noel, he added mockingly, "Till then I shall busy myself in writing my last will and testament, and bequeathing a thousand nothings to a thousand nobodies to puzzle posterity. You shall taste of my bounty, Messire Noel," and he began to improvise derisively:
By those who love him, I bequeath
A helmless ship, a houseless street,
A wordless book, a swordless sheath,
An hourless clock, a leafless wreath,
A bed sans sheet, a board sans meat,
A bell sans tongue, a saw sans teeth,
To make his nothingness complete."
Noel shrugged his shoulders and turned his back. He was very irate, but he was resolved to show nothing but indifference.
"Do you leave me nothing?" Katherine whispered, and Villon answered:
"Now and always the heart of my heart."
He turned on his heel and glided into the liquid darkness of the rose alley, alone with exquisite thoughts.
Katherine turned to Noel haughtily.
"Well?" she said.
"I have always to seek you nowadays," Noel protested.
Katherine tossed her head, and her tresses trembled like leaves in the moonlight.
"The world is not yet so old that the wooing must be done by women."
"I am out of favour," Noel complained, "since a fellow from nowhere plays the fool in high places."
Katherine's eyes showered scorn upon him.
"I do not hate you for railing at him, but it does not help me to love you."
Noel caught at the word.
"You loved me once," he asserted.
She shook her head pityingly.
"We played with great words as children play with coloured balls. It is easy to say 'I love you,' and often very sweet; yet the coloured balls roll into the corner, and the child forgets them when the moon of childhood wanes."
A wistful irritation puckered Noel's smooth countenance.
"You have outgrown me?" he questioned.
Katherine drew away from him till the moonlight that shone between them lay wide and white. She answered quietly:
"My soul was in bud a week ago. To-day it is in blossom."
Noel threw up his arms impatiently.
"God have mercy! What can this fellow do that is denied to me? Can he stride a horse, or fly a hawk better? show a brighter sword in quarrel, or tune a smoother lute in calm? Can he out-dance me, out-drink me, out-courtier me, out-soldier me? No, no, no! And must I now believe that he can out-love me?"
Katherine, weary of the controversy, began to ascend the steps to the palace. She spoke as she mounted:
"When a man comes to court, it is worth while to be a woman. You will learn that some day, Sir Noel, if you grow to be a man."
Noel retorted:
"It is no great blazon to be the favourite of a king. Gentlemen who brag little may do much. The old love may outlast the new."
Katherine frowned at his mystery.
"You speak like a scented Sphinx, but I am too idle for enigmas. Farewell!" and she vanished into the palace.
Noel looked after her fretfully:
"Why are the women all sunflowers to this scaramouch?" he asked himself querulously. "Well, there are other women, and a wise man gathers the nearest grapes."
A flagon and cup stood on the table by the marble seat. Noel poured himself out some wine and drank it, seeking consolation. His duty called him shortly to the service of the king, but he lingered in the garden on the chance of a hoped-for meeting.
"I shall be revenged," he said to himself, "if my astrologer plays his part and tells the weak king that this Lord of Montcorbier is his evil spirit."
His thoughts were busy with the events of the past week; if Katherine had been disdainful, the girl Huguette had been kind, and the Golden Scull had found the dainty soldier a frequent visitor. It was Huguette who, after listening to Noel's complaints of the Grand Constable, had suggested to him, in apparent artlessness of heart, that he could play upon the king's superstitions through a new astrologer and had promised to find him a star-gazer who would say anything and everything that Messire Noel wished to have said. The scheme had appealed to Noel, and this very evening he expected Huguette to bring the astrologer to him, to which end he had entrusted her with a password which would admit strangers into the royal garden.
As he mused, a figure in a pilgrim's gown came cautiously out of the shadows into the moonlight behind him and stood for a moment watching him. The god Pan could see the face that smiled under the pilgrim's hood—a girl's face, with bright eyes framed in golden hair, but when the girl saw Noel, she slipped a mask over her face, drew her pilgrim's gown closely about her slim body, and tip-toed lightly across the grass to touch Noel on the shoulder.
Noel turned with a start, and faced, as he believed, a masquerading palmer.
"May I vend you a benevolence, gentleman?" Huguette asked, disguising her voice in an unfamiliar gruffness.
Noel waved aside importunacy.
"Pass your ways, pilgrim. I am in no mood for motley."
He turned away, but the persistent pilgrim followed him.
"Are you in a maid's mood, or a mood for a maid?"
Noel stopped impatiently.
"Are you pander as well as pilgrim? I wait for a woman."
The pilgrim's pertinacity was not to be baffled.
"Is she tall or short, young or old, dark or fair, sweet or sour?"
Noel answered whimsically:
"She is of the colour of the chameleon, of the age of the ancient world, of the height of any man's heart, and as bitter-sweet as a crushed quince."
The girl pulled off her mask and threw back her hood.
"Is she of my feet, favour, years and savour?"
The moment he saw her face Noel gave a cry of delight.
"You are welcome, witch," he shouted, "for you. bring the best love in the world!"
He sprang to catch the girl in his arms, but she repulsed him gently.
"Hush! I am no love-monger now, no gallantry girl, but a most politic plotter. The world spins like a potter's wheel to shape the vessel of our enterprise. We have a wizard ready for your king. Will Louis come?"
Noel nodded decisively.
"As linnet to looking-glass. He is greedy of star-wisdom. Does your astrologer know his lesson?"
"He is parrot-perfect. When all is quiet, give an owl's cry thrice, and a friend will bring him. He will warn the king against his Grand Constable; he will praise Tristan, applaud Olivier, and commend Messire Noel le Jolys."
Noel chuckled.
"Then I shall be king of the castle, and you shall have a great gold chain and pearls as big as a virgin's tears."
Noel did not detect the scorn in Huguette's voice, as she answered with apparent amiability:
"You know the way to win a woman."
"I am no jingling rhyme-broker, I thank heaven!" Noel cried. "I pay my way."
He caught Huguette in his arms as he spoke and sought to kiss her, but she avoided him dexterously.
"I will kiss you when you win," she cried.
Noel would have pushed his suit further, but at that moment the great clock of the palace chimed the half-hour and struck upon his memory as well as upon his ear. He knew that the king expected him and he abandoned his love-making reluctantly.
"You are indeed a politician," he sighed. "I must wait on the king."
He opened the door of the tower and stood for a moment looking regretfully at the girl, who smiled at him temptingly, then he passed in and drew the door behind him.
The moment he had disappeared, the girl's bearing changed. Her face and gesture blazoned a world of contempt for her courtier lover.
"Fool, dunce, dolt, ass, peacock, buzzard, owl!" she stormed. Then her rage faded and she turned sadly on her heel as another man's name came into her heart and fluttered to her lips. "The world is as sour as a rotten orange since François went into exile."
Her glance fell on the lute which lay on the marble seat where Villon had left it. She took it up and began to thrum it pensively, whispering to herself the words of Villon's song:
Of form and features delicate,"
she murmured to herself. As she did so, Villon, weary of wandering in the rose alleys, came into the moonlit space and saw the cloaked and hooded figure where it sat. In a moment his mind recalled the strange greetings he had overheard between the two pilgrims.
"There is another of those pilgrims," he said to himself, determined now to solve the mystery. He crossed the grass quickly to the figure's side and saluted it.
"Hail, little brother."
Huguette leaped to her feet and answered lightly:
"Hail, little sister."
"Why little sister?" Villon asked in some astonishment.
The masked pilgrim answered him smartly:
"If I am a brother of yours, you must need be a sister of mine. But you talk out of the litany."
"What harm," Villon retorted, "if you give me responses?"
Huguette shrugged her shoulders.
"I will give you no more than good-bye," she said, and turned to leave him, but Villon caught her by the arm.
"You shall not show me your heels till I show myself your face," he insisted.
Before the girl could prevent him, he had flung back her hood and snatched the mask from her face. To his amazement he found himself looking on the fair, familiar face of Huguette, and in astonishment he cried her name. The girl, astounded at being recognized, came close to him.
"Who are you?" she asked.
For answer, Villon unmasked.
Huguette looked closely into his face, at first Without any sign of recognition, then suddenly the knowledge came to her and she caught him in her arms with a cry of joy.
"François, you dear devil, where have you been this thousand years? They said you were banished. How brave you are! Where did you steal so much splendour? Are you cutting purses? Are you plucking mantles?"
Villon tried to stay her questions.
"What are you doing here, Abbess?"
"The fair fool Noel has taken a week-long fancy to me, and I am making an age-long fool of him. Kiss me," she urged, putting her face very near to Villon's. Villon drew back his head.
"You should keep your kisses for the fair fool Noel."
Huguette drew away from him angrily.
"When you were as lean as a cat and as ragged as a sparrow, you were not so nice a precisian. Has some great lady bewitched you? Can you only woo in silk and win in velvet? If the kernel be sweet, what does the husk matter? Heaven's pity! Why should a woman love you?"
Villon took no notice of her petulance but repeated his question:
"What are you doing here, Abbess?"
The girl's rage was as short as a summer's shower. She turned again to him, fondling him.
"Well, I cannot shut the door of my heart in your smooth face. René de Montigny has a great game afoot, and you are back in time to share in it."
"What game?" Villon asked.
Huguette answered:
"The fair fool Noel, advised by me, has persuaded the king to see an astrologer here to-night when the gardens are quiet. Noel believes that the astrologer will advise the king to fling his Grand Constable out of the window and call Messire Noel in at the door, but the comrades of the cockleshell really mean much more mischief. When once we get the king within reach of our fingers, we mean to snap him up and carry him out of Paris, willy nilly, and sell him to the Duke of Burgundy."
Villon caught his breath.
"A great game!" he cried. "But who is this astrologer?"
"Thibaut d'Aussigny," she answered, "who pretends to be dead, but who lives for this revenge."
Villon leaped to his feet. He remembered what Katherine thought she had seen.
"Then it was he!" he said.
Huguette went on with her story.
"Noel is to give us the signal by crying an owl's cry thrice."
Villon was revolving many thoughts in his mind and he hardly heeded her.
"This adventure of the astrologer might be turned to my advantage. Here is a chance in a thousand," he muttered to himself, as he paced restlessly on the grass. "I have but to close my eyes and shut my ears and the good Thibaut carries the good Louis to the good Burgundy to-night, and there can be no hanging to-morrow."
The girl followed after him, catching at his sleeve to stay him.
"What are you talking about?"
Villon went on, unheeding her, whispering to himself:
"If they cut Gaffer Louis' throat between them, the world were rid of a crooked-witted king, and I free to win Katherine, hold Paris, be the first man in France"
"François, speak to me," Huguette pleaded, but she pleaded in vain.
"One would say I were a fool to let such occasion slip through my ten commandments. But I have learned a thing called honour, which I must not lose for the sake of my lady."
Huguette flung herself in front of him and stopped his restless walk.
"François! François!"
"Yes, child, yes."
"What does it matter to you what they do with the fool king?"
"Abbess, I must have a finger in this pie. Abbess, for the old sake's sake, will you keep me a secret?"
The girl looked up at him lovingly.
"I will always do your bidding."
"I have a mind to play my part in this enterprise. I am the king of the Cockleshells and I have returned to authority. Give me your pilgrim's gown, girl, and mind, not a word to the brotherhood. I want to take friend Thibaut by surprise."
As he spoke, he pulled off the pilgrim's gown, and Huguette stood before him in her familiar boy's dress of green.
"Hide among the roses until the sport begins," he cried.
The girl flung her arms about him.
"Dear François!" she cried, and then ran swiftly away from him and disappeared into the rose-scented night.
Villon looked after the girl as she ran.
"The girl is as fleet as a hare and as wild witted," he said to himself. Then he flung Huguette from his thoughts and faced the great problem.
"How does the balance go?" he asked himself, and he weighed the air with his hands as if their cups held the precious things he spoke of.
"In the one hand, a great king's life; in the other, a poor poet's honour. King, beggar, beggar, king."
He paused a moment, looking down the long lane of infinite possibilities. He owed nothing to Louis after all. Louis had made him the plaything of a shameless trick; had thrust honour upon him in mockery; had tantalized him with a dream of a dream. Ere another sunset, if a woman's heart were not his for the winning, he would be swinging, grisly enough, with his tongue through his teeth, and the ravens wheeling about his ears, upon the Paris gallows. It was but to let Thibaut d'Aussigny play out his play and snare the old black fox, and then Villon had Paris to himself, was absolved from all penalty, might in the light of the new love the people had for him, do, or at least try to do, pretty much as he pleased with the kingless kingdom. It was a dazzling prospect.
"Why not?" he asked himself. Then, in a moment, the reasons why not rose up against him—not to be cheated, not to be banished. He had given his word; he had sworn fealty to the fantastic monarch who had played with him and to whom he owed at least the—realization of great dreams and the golden chance of winning his heart's desire. He had given his word. That would not have meant much to him eight days ago when he lived in a sick atmosphere of lies and dodges and tricks and meannesses, where the lips were as ready to deceive as the fingers to filch, and where a successful falsehood was almost as much applauded as a successful theft. But now, as he had said, he had learned a thing called honour; the whole meaning of life had been changed for him in the sunshine of a fair girl's favour, and what was but yesterday possible, probable, even pleasant, was to-day surely impossible. He murmured her name to himself—"Katherine!"—as a charm against horrible temptation, and his heart strengthened under the spell.
He turned to enter the tower, but as he did so the tower door was pushed out against him and he found himself face to face with Noel le Jolys. Noel started in astonishment at the sight of his rival, but Villon caught him by the wrist. The poor popinjay was too brave a bird to be Thibaut d'Aussigny's decoy-duck.
"Messire Noel," he said; "I have a word to say; in your ear," and he drew him inside the tower and stood with him for a moment in the darkness, whispering speech that made Noel's pulse beat fast. Then Villon left him and sped swiftly up the winding stairs that led to the king's room, while Noel, left alone, pushed open the door again and passed out into the garden, his head dizzy with strange news. Placing his hands like a shell about his mouth, he gave the cry of an owl three times with a little interval between each cry, and then softly withdrew again into the tower, and in his turn raced with a throbbing heart up the narrow steps that led to the king's chamber.