The Justice of the King Part 19

Some clocks wear out, running down with little spurts of life and longer intervals of dumbness; others end with a sudden cras.h.i.+ng of the pendulum while in its full swing, and a wild, convulsive whirr of the jarred wheels. One moment the sober tick tells that all is well, the next--silence. So was it with Calvet's mill.

In the fortune, or misfortune, of war an Englishman, one Sir John Stone, riding that way with his band of marauders, little better than licensed brigands, found Amboise too tough a nut for his teeth, and harried the Calvets in pure wantonness. Over the tree-tops the garrison of Amboise could see the smoke of the burning, but they were too weak to venture succour.

Calvet must fend for himself lest Calvet and Amboise both end in the one ruin. There was little defence, but that little was grimly in earnest and yet more grim the revenge of the attack. For that generation both pity and mercy had fled France. Jean Calvet the younger, he who should have been the seventh of his line, was coursed in the open like a hare, but turned at the last and died at bay as a wolf dies. Behind the barred door were Jean the sixth, his two younger sons, and the dead man's wife. The woman, grey-faced but tearless, fought as the men fought, using her Jean's cross-bow from the narrow upper windows. All that rage, desperation, and hate could do was done, and when the door fell in with a crash Jean the younger had been avenged four times over. John Stone took as little by his wantonness as he deserved.

Then came the end. There was a rush up the stone stairway, a brief struggle to gain the upper level, a minute's surging back and forth, a briefer, fiercer fury of strife among the cranks and meal-bags, a few rough oaths, a woman's scream, and then silence, or what by contrast pa.s.sed for silence, since the sudden quiet was only broken by deep breathing and the sucking of air into dry throats. England had gained an ign.o.ble victory.

Fire followed as naturally as the spark follows the jar of flint and steel, and with a hundred and fifty years to dry its beams, its cobwebbed walls hung with mouldy dust from the grinding of as many harvests, its complex wooden troughs and grain-shoots parched to tinder, the old mill was a ready prey. All that could burn burnt like a pile of dry shavings. But the walls, the stairway, and the upper floor were of stone, and stood; and but for one thing the peace which followed the coming of the Maid might have set the waterwheel creaking afresh. That one thing, typical of the times, forbade the thought.

When the men of Amboise cleared away the rubbish they found the bones of Jean Calvet the sixth piled in a grim derision upon his own millstones, and so these stones never turned again. Who could eat bread of their making?

But the blackened sh.e.l.l was one of the Dauphin's favourite haunts, nor could a better stage for one of those plays of make-believe which had called down the old King's bitter irony have been well devised. So far as possible the mill had been restored to its old condition. The rubbish had been cleared from the ancient watercourse; the tough old wheel, freed from the weeds and soil which bound it, was set running as in the past, and a palisade of stout pickets erected to fence out the curious. The side furthest from the roadway, with its clumps of hazels, alder thicket, and chestnut wood in the distance was left open.

Here, amid surroundings which lent a sombre realism to the pretence, Charlemagne could carve out a kingdom, Roland sound the horn of Roncesvalles, or the Maid herself win back to France the crown the boy's forefather had lost.

But, dearer even than these, he best loved to reproduce in little the tragedy which had laid the mill desolate, and it was La Mothe's partic.i.p.ation in that mock combat which had aroused Commines' contempt.

What boy of imagination has not revelled in such sport, living a glorious hour beyond his age? And not a few of every nation have, in their turn, made the glory real at the call of the country that the blood of new generations may take fire. And Stephen La Mothe saw no shame in such a play; saw, rather, a stimulus and an uplifting whose effects might not altogether pa.s.s away when the play ended. So he was France or England as the Dauphin bade him, and by turns died valiantly or fought victoriously.

But chiefly, and to La Mothe it had its significance, the Dauphin played the part of Jean Calvet. All children, and not children only, love to be upon the winning side, and it told something of the trend of the boy's deeper nature that he would rather die for France than live for England. So would it have been the afternoon of the day La Mothe had followed his own course to his own disaster had not Charles once more proved the truth of Villon's observation. The dull eyes saw more than men supposed.

"You and Ursula have quarrelled," he said, with all a boy's blunt power of making the truth a terror. "All the way from Amboise you have not spoken a word to each other; and you will quarrel still more if I shut you up in the mill together. Do you be Stone, with Blaise and Marcel, while I and Monsieur La Follette and Hugues will keep the stairs."

Then a gleam of unaccustomed humour flickered across his face; a sense of humour was rarely a Valois characteristic. "No, I am wrong. Do you be Calvet; I want a real battle to-day, and you will fight all the better with Ursula looking on." As for Ursula de Vesc, she drew her skirts together and ran up the unprotected flight of stairs humming an air--not Stephen La Mothe's triolet, you may be sure--as if she had not a care in the world.

So the forces arrayed themselves, Charles and the two lads from the stables behind the clump of bushes which always served as an ambush, and La Mothe at the doorless entrance to the mill, where he was to give the alarm and then retreat to the upper floor where La Follette and Hugues were posted. La Follette, who had been a lover in his day, would have kept watch below and taken Hugues with him, but Ursula de Vesc, in the upper room, told them tartly that the Dauphin would be displeased if the usual plan were departed from, and so, in no very playful humour any of them, they waited the attack.

Presently it came. Out from his ambush, a hundred yards away, raced the Dauphin, Marcel and Blaise at his heels, their stout wooden swords bared for the grim work of slaughter. "The Englis.h.!.+ the Englis.h.!.+"

shouted La Mothe. "Frenchmen, the enemy are upon us!" But as he turned to gain the upper floor there came a cry which was not part of the play, a cry of fear and despairing rage, "The Dauphin! the Dauphin!

Monsieur La Mothe, save the Dauphin," and midway on the stairs Hugues dashed past him.

"Hugues, what is it?"

"An ambush. The Dauphin; they will murder the Dauphin----" and Hugues was through the doorway with La Mothe and La Follette following, and Ursula de Vesc, white and trembling, at the stair-head, more in surprise than any realization of danger. But only for an instant, then she ran to the narrow window where Hugues had waited, watching.

Midway from their hiding-place, confused by the sudden outcry, stood the Dauphin and the two lads, and towards them ran Hugues with all his speed, La Mothe not far behind. La Follette waited at the door, uncertain and bewildered. But from a further covert, the thicket of more distant alder, a troop of ten or a dozen hors.e.m.e.n had burst, galloping at the charge, nor could there be any doubt of their sinister purpose. It was a race for the boy, with the greater distance to neutralize the greater speed, but they rode desperately, recklessly, as men who ride for their lives.

"Run, Monseigneur, run," cried Hugues, panting. "See, behind--behind,"

and almost as he shouted the words he and La Mothe, younger and more active, reached the group. "Out of the way, fools," he gasped, shouldering the stable lads aside; then to La Mothe, "Take the other arm," and again there was a race of desperation, but this time with the mill as the goal. Nearer and nearer thundered the hoofs, out from his scattered following forged their leader, his spurs red to the heel, his teeth set hard in the shadow of the mask which hid his face. "Faster, for G.o.d's sake faster," groaned Hugues, "Faster, faster," shouted La Follette from the doorway, and Ursula de Vesc, at her point of vantage, hardly dared to breathe as she knit her hands so closely the one into the other that the fingers cramped. Then the chase pa.s.sed out of sight, and she ran to the stair-head, waiting for she knew not what.

It was just there that Calvet the younger had died, and now there was as little mockery in the tragedy. Beyond the doorway she heard a "Thank G.o.d!" from La Follette, then shadows darkened it, and the Dauphin was thrust in, staggering. On the instant La Follette followed, paused, glancing backward as if in hesitation. But one duty was imperative. Catching the boy in his arms, he half carried, half forced him up the stairway, while in the open s.p.a.ce below La Mothe and Hugues, letting Blaise and Marcel slip between them, turned side by side to face whatever was without. What that was she knew, and as she watched him in the gap an instant, before hastening to the Dauphin's aid, the girl's heart went out to Stephen La Mothe in the agony of a bitter repentance. If death pays all debts surely the darkening of the shadows brings forgiveness for all offences?

CHAPTER XIX

GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN

But meanwhile there was a pause. Below, in the defenceless doorway, Hugues and La Mothe stood shoulder to shoulder for one of those fiery instants which try a man's nerve rather than his courage. For the moment the Dauphin was saved. But they had no illusions. It was only for the moment, and both knew that in the moment to follow the danger would not be for the Dauphin alone. But only one, Stephen La Mothe, gave that a thought, and it was not for himself. Ursula de Vesc? The masked scoundrel who, panting with the rage of disappointment, faced them three yards away, one hand still gripping the reins of the horse by whose head he stood, the other a naked sword, had his half-score of cut-throats behind him, and could afford to leave no witness to his outrage. There would be no pity for Ursula de Vesc.

"d.a.m.nation," cried La Mothe almost in a sob, and, forgetting that he, too, wore a sword, he would have sprung upon him barehanded in his despair had not Hugues forced him to keep his place.

"Not yet," he whispered. "Wait; perhaps--later----" and the moment of possibility had pa.s.sed. The troop was upon them.

But their leader held them back.

"Wait," he said in his turn. "We may save time. Be wise, and give us the Dauphin. We are a dozen, you only three or four. We are sure to have him in the end."

"On what terms?" It was Hugues who answered.

"Terms?" cried La Mothe. "Hugues, there can be no terms."

"Your pardon, Monsieur La Mothe," said Hugues. "You are a gentleman, but I am only a servant," and in his excitement La Mothe never paused to ask himself why Hugues should so cla.s.sify a hedge minstrel of the Duchy of Lackeverything. "It is a fine thing, no doubt, to die for your honour, but what have I to do with honour? Life is life. The boy, on what terms?"

"Your lives. And you gain nothing by refusing. The boy is ours in any case."

"Never," said La Mothe, struggling to shake off the restraining hand that pinned him, helpless, half behind the doorpost. "Never while I live."

"Just so," answered Hugues, tightening his grasp; "not while you live.

But afterwards? and what better are we then, or the Dauphin either?

Give me three minutes, monsieur, to persuade him, just three minutes,"

and in La Mothe's ear he whispered, "For G.o.d's sake be quiet or you will ruin us all."

"Three minutes? Play me no tricks, my man."

"But, monsieur," and Hugues' voice was a whine as he spoke. "What trick is possible? You are a dozen, we three or four. And are we not caught like rats in a pit?"

"Like rats! You have said the word! Take your three minutes, rat, and don't forget that like rats we'll kill you."

Urging his point vehemently, pleadingly, and with every plausible argument at his command, but never slackening his grip, Hugues drew La Mothe a yard or two into the blackened ruin. There he held him with a wary eye to a possible surprise. Blaise and Marcel were on the upper floor and only La Follette was in sight, standing guard at the stair-head.

"Listen," he said. "Monseigneur is dearer to me than to you. Do you think I would give up one hair of him while I live, I, who sleep at his door of nights? Never, not one hair! But between us we may save him yet. Shake your head, curse me for a coward, for a scoundrel, try to throw me off, strike me if you like. Yes, yes," he insisted, raising his voice, "it is our lives; why lose our lives for nothing?" Then, in a whisper, "They will give the alarm from the fields; it is only a mile to Amboise----"

"But it is a mile--a mile to go, a mile to come back----"

"It is the one chance," answered Hugues loudly, fawning on La Mothe with a hand which aped persuasion. The words had a double meaning and held La Follette quiet, La Follette who might have ruined all through incomprehension. "You know the bench where Mademoiselle sits to watch the play? When I cry Now! rush up and fling it across the gap of the stair-head. It will hold them back for a time. Then, for G.o.d's sake, Monsieur La Mothe, fight, fight, fight. Fight to the last. It is for life, it is for France, it is for Mademoiselle."

"And you?"

"I will hold the door."

"But that is death."

"It will give you a minute, or two, or three."

"Then it is my place; I have a sword."

"I love him best," answered Hugues. To him was the one unanswerable argument; he loved him best, and love had the right to die for love's sake. "You understand? When I cry Now! run--run."

"Hugues, Hugues, let me----"

"Do you think a valet cannot love?"