If I Were King Part 10

"I have little doubt that when the jacka.s.s wore the lion's skin he thought himself the lion. But is he not amazed?"

"Too much amazed, sire, to betray amazement. His attendants a.s.sure him, with the gravest faces, that he is the Grand Constable of France. I believe he thinks himself in a dream, and, finding the dream delicate, accepts it."

"Remember," said Louis, "to keep to the tale. This fellow came here from Provence last night. None must know who he is save you and I and Tristan. Blow it about to all the court that he is the Count of Montcorbier, the favourite of our brother of Provence, and now my friend and counsellor. I have a liking for you, Olivier, as you know, and Tristan and I are very good friends, but neither of your heads are safe on their shoulders if this sport of mine be spoiled by indiscretions."

Olivier bowed deeply.

"I cannot speak for Tristan, sire," he said, "but I can speak for myself. The G.o.d Harpocrates is not more symbolical of silence than I when it is my business to hold my tongue."

"It is well," said Louis. "I will answer for Tristan. Have this fellow sent to me here."

With another reverence Olivier left the king and ascended the steps into the palace. The king sniffed pensively at the rose which Katherine had given to him. The perfume seemed to sooth him and he mused, sunning himself and feeding his fancy with the entertainment which playing with the lives of others always afforded to him.

"This Jack and Jill shall dance to my whimsy like dolls upon a wire.

It would be rare sport if Mistress Katherine disdained Louis to decline upon this beggar. He shall hang for mocking me. But he carried himself like a king for all his tatters and patches, and he shall taste of splendour."

Glancing up at the terrace he perceived the returning figure of Olivier le Dain, and guessed that his henchman was serving as herald to the new Grand Constable. Behind Olivier came a little cl.u.s.ter of pages, and behind them again the king could see a s.h.i.+ning figure in cloth of gold.

"Here comes my mountebank," he said to himself, "as pompous as if he were born to the purple." He moved swiftly to the door of the tower and entered it, disappearing as the little procession descended the steps into the Rose Garden. There was a little grating in the door of the tower, a little grating with a sliding shutter, and through this grating the king now peered with infinite entertainment at the progress of the comedy himself had planned. Olivier had spoken truly when he said that Master Villon had been greatly changed. The barber's own handiwork had so cleansed and shaved his countenance, had so trimmed and readjusted his locks that his face now shone as different from the face of the tavern-haunter as the face of the moon s.h.i.+nes from the face of a lantern. He was as sumptuously attired as if he were a prince of the blood royal: the noonday sun seemed to take fresh l.u.s.tre from his suit of cloth of gold, the air to be enriched by his perfume, the world to be vastly the better for his furs and jewels. Though it was plain that the tricked-out poet was in a desperate dilemma he managed to bear himself with a dignity that consorted royally with his pomp. Olivier bowed low to the figure in cloth of gold.

"Will your dignity deign to linger awhile in this rose arbour?" he asked.

The gentleman in cloth of gold looked at him in wonder. In truth, the gentleman in cloth of gold was in a very bewildered frame of mind. He had seen but now a clean and smooth-shaven face in the mirror, with elegantly trimmed hair, and he tried to a.s.sociate the image in the mirror with his own familiar face, unwashed, unkempt, unshaven. He eyed the splendid clothes that covered him and his memory fumbled in perplexity over the horrors of a dingy, filthy wardrobe, ragged, wine-stained and ancient. He looked at the solemn pages who stood about him with golden cups and golden flagons in their hands, and he tried to remember how he had escaped from the society of Master Robin Turgis into this gilded environment. His head ached with the endeavour and he abandoned it. Olivier repeated his question, and at last Villon found words, though his voice sounded strange and hollow on his ears, and hard to command.

"My dignity will deign to do anything you suggest, good master Blackamoor," he answered, but to his heart he whispered that it was better to humour these strange satellites whose persons he found it impossible to reconcile with any memories of the real world as he knew it. The barber bowed deferentially.

"I shall have to trouble you presently with certain small cares of state," he said.

Villon beamed on him benignly. He was wondering what his interlocutor was talking about, but he felt that it was the course of the wise man to betray no wonder. The conditions were, indeed, bewildering, but also they were not disagreeable, and it was as well to take them cheerfully.

"No trouble, excellent myrmidon," he answered. "These duties are pleasures to your true man."

Olivier bowed anew.

"His majesty will probably honour you with his company later."

Villon beamed again, and again his wonder found words which seemed to him to make the most and the best of the situation. Perhaps in this singular region of dreams he was the king's man and the king's friend. At least it could do no harm to a.s.sume such friends.h.i.+p when his solemn companion seemed to take it for granted.

"Always delighted to see dear Louis. He and I are very good friends.

People say hard things of him, but believe me, they don't know him."

He was trying his best to piece together the disordered fragments of his memory and to explain to himself how it came to pa.s.s that he was on terms of friends.h.i.+p with the king. His head was dizzy and heavy and he felt like a man in a dark room who was groping to find the door handle. The voice of the barber interrupted these mental struggles.

"May we take our leave, monseigneur?"

Villon's face lighted. He felt that it would be pleasanter for him to be alone while he was attempting to regain control of his faculties, more especially as he noted that the pages had placed their golden cups and flagons on the marble table and that his instinct a.s.sured him that these precious vessels sheltered no less precious wine.

"You may, you may," he a.s.sented, and then as the barber made to depart, Villon's mood changed and he caught him by the sleeve and drew him confidentially toward him.

"Stay one moment," he murmured. "You know this plaguy memory of mine--what a forgetful fellow I am. Would you mind telling me again who I happen to be?"

No look of surprise stirred the barber's face; there came no change in his extreme complaisance.

"You are the Count of Montcorbier, monseigneur," he answered, gravely. "You have just arrived in Paris from the Court of Provence, where you stood in high favour with the king of that country, but your favour is, I believe, greater with the King of France, for he has been pleased to make you Grand Constable. It is his majesty's wish that you contrive to remember this."

Villon laughed a laugh which he tried hard to make hearty and natural, but with indifferent success.

"Of course, it was most foolish of me to forget. I suppose, good master Long-toes, that a person in my exalted rank has a good deal of power, influence, authority, and what not?"

"With the king's favour, you are the first man in the realm."

Villon gave a gasp of gratification. The dream was growing in glory.

"Quite so. And does my exalted position carry with it any agreeable perquisite in the way of pocket money?"

"If you will dip your finger in your pouch--" Olivier suggested, pointing a thin forefinger at Villon's jewelled belt.

Villon thrust his fingers into the pocket that hung from it and brought them out again loaded with great golden coins, bright and clear from the mint, that gleamed joyously in the sunlight. He gave a little cry of delight as he let them run in a s.h.i.+ning stream from hollowed hand to hollowed hand, and contemplated their jingle and glitter with the delight of a new Midas. But the first thought that welled up in his heart to welcome this strange wealth was bravely unselfish.

"Gold counters, on my honour. Dear drops from the divine stream of Pactolus. Good sir, will you straightway despatch some one you can trust with a handful of these broad pieces to the Church of the Celestins and inquire of the beadle there for the dwelling of Mother Villon, a poor old woman, sorely plagued with a scapegrace son? Let him seek her out--she dwells in the seventh story and therefore the nearer to the Heaven she deserves--and give her these coins that she may buy herself food, clothes and firing."

He was too confused to reason clearly with his situation, but he felt sure that whoever he was and wherever he was in this amazing dream of his, the poor old woman whom he loved so well must needs be in it and might benefit by this gift of fairy gold.

Olivier bowed deferentially.

"It shall be done," he said, transferring the great gold discs to his own pocket. Then pointing to a small golden bell which one of the pages had placed upon the table, he added, "If there be anything your dignity should desire, he has only to strike upon this bell."

"You are very good," Villon responded solemnly, and on the phrase Olivier and the pages withdrew into the palace with every sign of the most profound respect. The king at his peep-hole was pleased to observe that his commands were being obeyed most strictly and that no hint of any secret mirth, no obvious consciousness of a hidden joke marred for one moment the monumental gravity of the parts which Olivier and the pages had to play.

As soon as Villon found himself alone he looked cautiously around him, comprehending in his astonished glance the grey walls of the palace, the moss-grown terrace, the petal-strewn steps, the old, stern tower with its ominous sun dial, and the wealth of wonderful roses all about him, making the air a very paradise of exquisite colours and exquisite odours. He shut his eyes for a few seconds and then opened them sharply as if expecting to find that the scene had vanished shadow-like into thin impalpable air, but castle and terrace, tower and roses remained as they had been, very plain to the poet's astonished senses. Tiptoeing cautiously across the gra.s.s, he reached a marble seat which stood beneath a bower of roses and seemed to be protected by a great terminal statue of the G.o.d Pan, which had been given as a present to Louis by an Eastern prince who had carried it from Athens. Pressing his hand to his forehead, Villon tried to recall the events of the evening before, which for some fantastic reason seemed to lie long centuries behind him. He could remember dimly an evil looking cell with straw upon the floor and chains upon the walls; he could recall the sullen faces of unfriendly gaolers. One of these gaolers he remembered had thrust a mug of wine into his hand and bade him drink surlily, and he had drunk greedily, as was his way when free drink was offered to him, and drinking, drank oblivion sudden and complete.

But why he had gone to a dungeon? His senses ached as he asked himself this, and faint pictures began to piece themselves together out of the episodes of the dead night. He saw again the squalid walls of the Fircone Tavern and his mind jumped back to his recitation of the ballad and his fierce sense of indignation at the humiliation of Paris, girdled by a wall of hostile Burgundians and governed by an impotent king. Then came the vision of an angel's visit and a prayer that had more of devil than angel in it, and then came a quarrel, and a fight in darkness shattered by the flaming torches of the watch and Thibaut's huge body lying on the ground a huddled heap of s.h.i.+ning armour. He remembered the ribbon that had been flung to him from the gallery and thrust his hand into the bosom of his vest of cloth of gold and found the token there, its glossiness of white and gold soiled by its touch of the floor. Then came his capture, his contumelious march through the gloomy streets, his taste of an unknown prison, his taste of poppied wine, and then sleep.

His next consciousness was that he was lying on a soft bed instead of on a truss of straw, and that the darkness about him was not the darkness of the cell. Suddenly someone drew a curtain and in a second the place where he lay filled with a soft light and showed that to Villon which astonished him as much as if the gates of Paradise had parted before him and shown him the s.h.i.+ning lines of the hosts of Heaven. He remembered that he was lying in a stately bed, nestled in snowy linen beneath a coverlet of crimson silk. He remembered that the bed stood in a gorgeous room, heavy with magnificent tapestry and roofed with a carved and painted ceiling that glittered with gilt and stars. Curtains of purple velvet admitted the daylight through windows on which rich armorial bearings glowed in coloured gla.s.s. Soft and delicate odours impregnated the atmosphere and tender strains of delicate music stole wooingly on the senses from the strings of a distant lute.

Then there carne, so kindly memory a.s.sured him, an obsequious man in black, with no less obsequious attendants, and singular ceremonies of bathing, perfuming and hair dressing and a putting on of sweet linen and furred raiment and jewels, and all the ceremonials for the transfiguration of a ragged robin into the likeness of a mighty lord. On the top of all this preparation rose the sun of a splendid banquet, served in ware of gold and silver and waited on by the same obsequious figure in black and the same respectful pages. Then followed the summons to walk into the air, the procession through quiet corridors on to the cool grey terrace and the final installment in the scented solitude of the rose garden. Villon was head-sick and heart-sick with the effort to put so much of the past together. He felt as if in some strange t.i.tanic way he had ruined a world and was suddenly called upon by Providence to piece the fragments together and make all whole again. He tapped his forehead wonderingly.

"Last night I was a red-handed outlaw, sleeping on the straw of a dungeon. To-day I wake in a royal bed and my varlets call me monseigneur. There are but three ways of explaining this singular situation. Either I am drunk or I am mad or I am dreaming. If I am drunk, I shall never distinguish Bordeaux Wine from Burgundy--a melancholy dilemma. Let's test it."

The marble table stood but a little way from him. The golden vessels that stood upon it had served him at that morning meal which was still an immediate excellent memory, and he remembered how his attendants had told him that one held wine of Bordeaux and one wine of Burgundy. He rose and crept across the soft gra.s.s to the table and lifted one of the golden flagons gingerly, sniffed at it fearfully and poured some of its contents carefully into a golden goblet. Lifting it cautiously to his lips, he tasted it judiciously.

A ripe, warm, royal flavour rewarded him.

"By Heaven!" he cried; "no n.o.bler juice ever rippled from Burgundian vineyards."

He drained the cup and set it down to fill another from the companion vessel and to repeat the ceremony of sniffing, tasting and swallowing. Again the desire of his palate was pleased and pacified.

He reflected as he sipped and swallowed.

"This quintessence of crushed violets ripened no otherwhere than in the valleys of Bordeaux. Ergo, I am not drunk. I do not think I am mad, neither, for I know in my heart that I am poor Francois Villon, penniless Master of Arts, and no will o' the wisp Grand Constable.