The Helmet of Navarre Part 13

"Will Monsieur let me speak?"

"I have done naught but urge you to do so for some time past," he answered dryly.

"Monsieur, you know my father would not let me leave St. Quentin with you, three months back. But at length he said I should come, and I reached Paris last night and, since it was late, lodged at an inn. This morning I came to your gate, but the guard would not let me enter. I was so mad to see you, Monsieur, that when you drove out I sprang up on your coach-step--"

"Ah," said Monsieur, a new light breaking in upon him, "that was you, Felix? I did not know you; I was thinking of other matters. And Lucas took you for a miscreant. Now I _am_ sorry."

If I had been a n.o.ble he could not have spoken franker apology. But at once he was stern again. "And because my secretary took you in all good faith for a possible a.s.sa.s.sin and struck you to save me, you turn traitor and take part in a plot to set on him and kill him! I had believed that of some hired lackey, not of a Broux."

"Monsieur, I was wrong--a thousand times wrong. I knew that as soon as I had sworn. And when I found it was you they meant, I came to you, oath or no oath."

"There spoke the Broux!" cried Monsieur with his brilliant smile. "Now you are Felix. Who are my would-be murderers?"

We had come round in a circle to the place where we had stuck before, and here we stuck again.

"Monsieur, I would tell you all before you could count ten--tell you their names, their whereabouts, everything--were it not for one man who stood my friend."

The duke's eyes flashed.

"You call him that--my a.s.sa.s.sin!"

"He is an a.s.sa.s.sin," I was forced to answer; "even Monsieur's a.s.sa.s.sin--and a perjurer. But--but, Monsieur, he saved my life from the other, at the risk of his own. How can I pay him back by betraying him?"

"According to your own account, he betrayed you."

"Aye, he lied to me," I said brokenly. "Yet Monsieur, if it were your own case and one had saved your life, were he the sc.u.m of the gutter, would you send him to his death?"

"To whom do you owe your first duty?"

"Monsieur, to you."

"Then speak."

But I could not do it. Though I knew Yeux-gris for a villain, yet he had saved my life.

"Monsieur, I cannot."

The duke cried out:

"This to me!"

There was a silence. I stood with hanging head, the picture of a shame-faced knave. Shame so filled me that I could not look up to meet Monsieur's sentence. But when I had remembered the good hater in Monsieur, I should have remembered, too, the good lover. Monsieur had been fond of me at St. Quentin. As I waited for the lightning to strike, he said with utmost gentleness:

"Felix, let me understand you. In what manner did this man save your life?"

Now that was like my lord. Though a hot man, he loved fairness and ever strove to do the just thing, and his patience was the finer that it was not his nature. His leniency fired me with a sudden hope.

"Monsieur, there are four of them in the plot. But one cannot be as vile as the others, since he saved my life. Monsieur, if I tell you, will you let that one go?"

"I shall do as I see fit," he answered, all the duke. "Felix, will you speak?"

"If Monsieur will promise to let him go--"

"Insolence, sirrah! I do not bargain with my servants."

His words were like whips. I flinched before his proud anger, and for the second time stood with hanging head awaiting his sentence. And again he did what I could not guess. He cried out:

"Felix, you are blind, besotted, mad. You know not what you do. I am in constant danger. The city is filled with my enemies. The Leagues hate me and are ever plotting mischief against me. Every day their mistrust and hatred grow. I did a bold thing in coming to Paris, but I had a great end to serve--to pave a way into the capital for the Catholic king and bring the land to peace. For that, I live in hourly jeopardy, and risk my life to-night on foot in the streets. If I am killed, more than my life is lost. The Church may lose the king, and this dear France of ours be harried to a desert in the civil wars!"

I had braced myself to bear Monsieur's anger, but this unlooked-for appeal pierced me through and through. All the love and loyalty in me--and I had much, though it may not have seemed so--rose in answer to Monsieur's call. I fell on my knees before him, choked with sobs.

Monsieur's hand lay on my head as he said quietly:

"Now, Felix, speak."

I answered huskily:

"Would Monsieur have me turn Judas?"

"Judas betrayed his _master_."

It was my last stand. My last redoubt had fallen. I raised my head to tell him all.

Maybe it was the tears in my eyes, but as I lifted them to M. le Duc, I saw--not him, but Yeux-gris--Yeux-gris looking at me with warm good will, as he had looked when he was saving me from Gervais. I saw him, I say, plain before my eyes. The next instant there was nothing but Monsieur's face of rising impatience.

I rose to my feet, and said:

"Kill me, Monsieur; I cannot tell."

"Nom de dieu!" he shouted, springing up.

I shut my eyes and waited. Had he slain me then and there it were no more than my deserts.

"Monsieur," said Vigo, immovably, "shall I go for the boot?"

I opened my eyes then. Monsieur stood quite still, his brow knotted, his hands clenched as if to keep them off me.

"Monsieur," I said, "send for the boot, the thumbscrew, whatever you please. I deserve it, and I will bear it. Monsieur, it is not that I will not tell. It is something stronger than I. I _cannot_."

He burst into an angry laugh.

"Say you are possessed of a devil, and I will believe it. My faith!

though you are a low-born lad and I Duke of St. Quentin, I seem to be getting the worst of it."

"There is the boot, Monsieur."

Monsieur laughed again, no less angrily.

"That does not help me, my good Vigo. I cannot torture a Broux."