CHAPTER VII.
Just six days after the events we have related in our last chapter, Guerin, the good minister whom we have so often had occasion to notice, was walking up and down under a range of old beech-trees, which, forming the last limit of the forest of Compiègne, approached close to the castle, and waved their wide branches even over part of the royal garden.
Guerin, however, was not within the boundary of the garden; from which the spot he had chosen for his walk, was separated by a palisade and ditch covered towards the castle by a high hedge of shrubs. There was indeed an outlet towards the forest by means of a small postern door, and a slight moveable bridge of wood, but the key of that gate remained alone with the king; so that the minister, to reach the part of the wood in which he walked, must have made a considerable circuit round the castle, and through part of the town itself. His object, probably, in choosing that particular spot, was to enjoy some moments of undisturbed thought, without shutting himself up in the close chambers of a Gothic château. Indeed, the subjects which he revolved in his heart were of that nature, which one loves to deal with in the open air, where we have free space to occupy the matter, while the mind is differently engaged--strong contending doubts, hesitations between right and wrong, the struggles of a naturally gentle and feeling heart, against the dictates of political necessity. Such were the guests of his bosom. The topic, which thus painfully busied the minister's thoughts, was the communication made to him by the good but weak bishop of Paris, as a consequence of his conversation with Bernard, the hermit of St. Mandé.
To tear the hearts of the king and queen asunder,--to cast between them so sad an apple of discord as jealousy, especially when he felt convinced that Agnes's love to her husband was as firm as adamant,--was a stroke of policy for which the mind of Guerin was hardly framed; and yet the misery that the interdict had already brought, the thousand, thousand fold that it was yet to bring, could only be done away and averted by such a step. Philip remained firm to resist to the last; Agnes was equally so to abide by his will, without making any attempt to quit him. In a hundred parts of the kingdom, the people were actually in revolt. The barons were leaguing together to compel the king to submission, or to dethrone him; and ruin, wretchedness, and destruction seemed threatening France on every side. The plan proposed by the canon of St. Berthe's might turn away the storm, and yet Guerin would rather have had his hand struck off than put it in execution.
Such were the thoughts, and such the contending feelings, that warred against each other in his breast, while he paced slowly up and down before the palisade of the garden; and yet nothing showed itself upon his countenance but deep, calm thought. He was not one of those men whose features or whose movements betray the workings of the mind. There were no wild starts, no broken expressions, no muttered sentences: his corporeal feelings were not sufficiently excitable for such gesticulations: and the stern retired habits of his life had given a degree of rigidity to his features, which, without effort rendered them on all ordinary events as immoveable as those of a statue.
On the present occasion, he was followed by a page bearing his sword; for, as we have before said, during many years after he had been elected to the bishopric of Senlis, he retained the habit of a knight hospitaller; but the boy, though accustomed to mark his lord's countenance, beheld nothing there but the usual steady gravity of profound thought.
As he passed backwards and forwards, the voices of two persons conversing in the garden hard by struck his ear. At first, the speakers were afar off, and their tones indistinct; but gradually they came so near, that their words even would have been perfectly audible, had Guerin been one to play the eaves-dropper; and then again they passed on, the sounds dying away as they pursued their walk round their garden.
"The queen's voice," said Guerin to himself; "and, if I mistake not, that of the Count D'Auvergne. He arrived at Compiègne last night, by Philip's own invitation, who expected to have returned from Gournay long since. Pray God, he fail not there! for one rebuff in war, and all his barons would be upon him at once. I wish I had gone myself; for he is sometimes rash. If he were to return now, and find this Auvergne with the queen, his jealousy might perchance spring from his own head. But there is no hope of that: as he came not last night, he will not arrive till evening."
Such was the course of Guerin's thoughts, when a page, dressed in a bright green tunic of silk, approached, and, addressing himself to the follower of the minister, asked his way to the garden of the château.
"Why, you must go a mile and more round, by the town, and in at the great gates of the castle," replied Guerin's page.--"What do you seek in the garden?"
"I seek the Count d'Auvergne," replied the youth, "on business of life and death; and they told me that he was in the garden behind the château, close by the forest.--My curse upon all misleaders!" and he turned to retread his steps through the town.
Guerin had not heeded this brief conversation, but had rather quickened his pace, to avoid hearing what was said by the queen and the Count d'Auvergne, who at the moment were passing, as we have said, on the other side of the palisade, and spoke loud, in the full confidence that no human ears were near. A few words, however, forced themselves upon his hearing.
"And such was my father's command and message," said Agnes in a sorrowful tone.
"Such, indeed, it was, lady," replied the Count d'Auvergne; "and he bade me entreat and conjure you, by all that is dear and sacred between parent and child----"
Guerin, as we have said, quickened his pace: and what the unhappy Count d'Auvergne added was lost, at least to him. Sufficient time had just elapsed, to allow the speakers in the garden to turn away from that spot and take the sweep towards the castle, when the sound of horse was heard approaching. Guerin advanced to the end of one of the alleys, and to his surprise beheld the king, followed by about a dozen men-at-arms, coming towards the castle in all haste.
Before he reached the spot where Guerin stood, Philip dismounted, and gave his bridle to one of the squires. "I will through the garden," said he:--"go you round to the gates as quietly as possible--I would not have the poor burgesses know that I am returned, or I shall have petitions and lamentations about this accursed interdict: petitions that I cannot grant--lamentations that I would not hear."
The squire took the bridle, and, in obedience to the king's commands, turned another way with the rest of the party; while Philip advanced slowly, with his brow knit, and his eyes fixed on the ground. He did not observe his minister; and, as he came onward, it was easy to read deep, powerful, painful thought in every line of his countenance. Twice he stopped, as he advanced, with his look still bent upon the earth, and remained gazing thereon, without word or motion, for several minutes. It would have seemed that he paused to remark some moss and wild flowers, gathered together at his feet, had not his frowning forehead, and stern, fixed eye, as well as the mournful shake of the head, with which his pause still ended, told that sadder and more bitter contemplations were busy in his mind.
The last time he stopped was within ten paces of Guerin, and yet he did not see him, so deeply occupied were all his thoughts. At length, unclasping his arms, which had been folded over his breast, he clenched his hands tight, exclaiming, "Happy, happy Saladin! Thou hast no meddling priest to disturb thy domestic joys!--By Heaven! I will embrace thy creed, and worship Mahound!"
As he spoke, he raised his eyes, and they instantly rested on the figure of his minister. "Ha, Guerin!" cried the king, "has the interdict driven thee forth from the city?"
"Not so, sire," replied the minister. "I came forth to meditate here in silence, over what might be done to raise it.--Get thee gone, boy!" he continued, turning to his page. "Hie thee to the castle, and leave me with the king."
"Oh! Guerin!" said Philip, pursuing his own train of thought,--"oh Guerin! think of these base barons! these disloyal knights! After all their empty enthusiasm!--after all their vain boastings!--after all their lying promises!--falling off from me now, in my moment of need! like flies frightened from a dead carcase by the wings of a raven.--And the bishops too!--the goodly, saintly, fickle, treacherous pack, frightened by the very hum of Rome's vulture wings!--they leave me in the midst of the evil they have made! But, by the Lord above! they shall suffer for their treason! Bishops and barons! they shall feel this interdict as deeply as I do. Their treachery and cowardice shall fill my treasury, and shall swell my crown's domains; and they shall find that Philip knows how to make their punishment increase his power. Gournay has fallen, Guerin," continued the king, "without the loss of a man. I cut the high sluices and overwhelmed them in the waters of their own artificial lake. Walls, and turrets, and buttresses gave way before the rushing inundation, like straws before the sickle. Half Normandy has yielded without resistance; and I might have come back joyful, but that in every town as I passed, it was murmurs, and petitions, and lamentations on the foul interdict. They brought out their dead," proceeded Philip, grasping Guerin's arm,--"they brought out their dead, and laid them at my feet! They lined the streets with the dying, shrieking for the aid of religion. Oh! Guerin! my friend! 'tis very horrible!--very, very, very horrible!"
"It is indeed, sire!" said Guerin solemnly, "most horrible! and I am sorry to increase your affliction by telling you, that, by every courier that arrives, the most alarming accounts are brought from the various provinces of your kingdom, speaking of nothing but open rebellion and revolt."
"Where?" cried Philip Augustus, his eyes flashing fire. "Where? Who dares revolt against the will of their liege sovereign?"
"In fifty different points of the kingdom the populace are in arms, sire!" replied the minister. "I will lay the details before you at your leisure. Many of the barons, too, remonstrate in no humble tone."
"We will march against them, Guerin,--we will march against them," replied the king firmly, "and serfs and barons shall learn they have a lord."
As he spoke, he advanced a few paces towards the garden, then paused, and drawing forth a scrap of parchment, he put it into Guerin's hand. "I found that on my table at Gournay," said the king. "'Tis strange! Some enemy of the Count d'Auvergne has done it!"
Guerin looked at the paper, and beheld, written evidently in the hand of the canon of St. Berthe's, which he well knew; "Sir king, beware of the Count d'Auvergne!" The minister, however, had no time to make any reply; for the sound of the voices in the garden began again to approach, and Philip instantly recognised the tones of Agnes de Meranie.
"'Tis the queen," said he,--"'Tis Agnes!" and as he spoke that beloved name, all the cares and sorrows that, in the world, had gathered round his noble brow, like morning clouds about the high peak of some proud mountain, rolled away, like those same clouds before the risen sun, and his countenance beamed with more than usual happiness.
Guerin had by no means determined how to act, though he decidedly leaned towards the scheme of the canon of St. Berthe's; but the radiant gladness of Philip's eye at the very name of Agnes de Meranie, strangely shook all the minister's conclusions, and he remained more than ever in doubt.
"Hark!" cried Philip, in some surprise. "There is the voice of a man!--To whom does she speak? Know you, Guerin?"
"I believe--I believe, sire," replied the minister, really embarrassed and undecided how to act,--"I believe it is the Count d'Auvergne."
"You believe!--you believe!" cried the king, the blood mounting into his face, till the veins of his temples swelled out in wavy lines upon his clear skin. "The Count d'Auvergne! You hesitate--you stammer, sir bishop!--you that never hesitated in your days before. What means this?--By the God of heaven! I will know!"--and drawing forth the key of the postern, he strode towards it. But at that moment the sound of the voices came nearer and nearer--It was irresistible--The king paused.
Agnes was speaking, and somewhat vehemently. "Once for all, beau sire d'Auvergne," she said, "urge me no more; for, notwithstanding all you say--notwithstanding all my own feelings in this respect, I must not--I cannot--I will not--quit my husband. That name alone, my husband, were enough to bind me to him by every duty; and I will never quit him!"
What were the feelings of Philip Augustus as he heard such words, combined with the hesitation of his minister, with the warning he had received, and with the confused memory of former suspicions! The thoughts that rushed through his brain had nearly driven him to madness. "She loves me not!" he thought. "She loves me not--after all I have done, and sacrificed for her! She is coldly virtuous--but she loves me not;--she owns, her feelings take part with her seducer!--but she will not leave me, for duty's sake!--Hell and fury! I, that have adored her! She loves me not!--Oh God! she loves me not!--But he,--he--shall not escape me! No,--I will wring his heart of its last drop of blood! I will trample it under my feet!"
His wild straining eye,--the almost bursting veins of his temples,--the clenching of his hands,--but more, the last words, which had found utterance aloud--showed evidently to Guerin the dreadfully over-wrought state of the king's mind; and, casting himself between Philip and the postern as he rushed towards it, he firmly opposed the monarch's passage, kneeling at his feet, and clasping his knees in his still vigorous arms.
"Some one is coming. Count d'Auvergne!" Agnes was heard to say hastily. "Begone! leave me!--Never let me hear of this again! Begone, sir, I beg!"
"Unclasp me," cried the king, struggling to free himself from Guerin's hold. "Thou knew'st it too, vile confidant! Base betrayer of your sovereign's honour!--Unclasp me, or, by Heaven! you die as you kneel!--Away! I say!" and, drawing his sword, he raised his arm over the hospitaller's head.
"Strike, sire!" cried Guerin undauntedly, clasping the monarch's knees still more firmly in his arms--"strike your faithful servant! His blood is yours--take it! You cannot wound his heart more deeply with your weapon, than you have done with your words--Strike! I am unarmed; but here will I lie, between you and your mad passion, till you have time to think what it is to slay a guest, whom you yourself invited, in your own halls--before you know whether he be guilty or not."
"Free me, Guerin!" said Philip more calmly, but still with bitter sternness. "Free me, I say! I am the king once more! Nay, hold not by my haubert, man!"
Guerin rose, saying, "I beseech you, sire, consider! But Philip put him aside with a strong arm; and, passing over the bridge, entered the garden by the postern gate.
"Now, God forgive us all, if we have done amiss in this matter; and surely if I have inflicted pain, it has not been without suffering it too." Such was the reflection of the good bishop of Senlis, when left by Philip; but although his heart was deeply wrung to see the agony of a man he loved, and to be thereof even a promoter, he was not one to waste his moments in fruitless regrets; and, passing through the postern, which the king had neglected to shut, he proceeded, as fast as possible, towards the castle, in order to govern the circumstances, and moderate Philip's wrath, as much as the power of man might do.
In the mean while, Philip had entered the garden with his sword drawn, and passing through the formal rows of flowering shrubs, which was the taste of that day, he stood for an instant at the top of the large square of ground which lay between him and the castle. Half the way down on the left side, his eye caught the form of Agnes de Meranie; but she was alone, save inasmuch as two of her ladies, following at about a hundred yards' distance, could be said to keep her company. Without turning towards her, Philip passed through a long arcade of trellis-work which ran along the wall to the right, and, with a pace of light, made his way to the castle.
On the steps he paused, replaced his sword in the sheath, and, passing through one of the lesser towers, in a minute after stood in the midst of the great hall. The men-at-arms started up from their various occupations and amusements, and stood marvelling at the unannounced coming of the king; more than one of them taxing themselves internally with some undisclosed fault, and wondering if this unusual visitation portended a reproof.
"Has the Count d'Auvergne been seen?" demanded Philip in a tone which he meant to be calm, but which, though sufficiently rigid--if such a term may be applied to sound--still betrayed more agitation than he imagined--"Has the Count d'Auvergne been seen?"
"He passed but this instant, sire," replied one of the serjeants, "with a page habited in green, who has been searching for him this hour."
"Seek him!" cried the king in a voice that needed no repetition; and the men-at-arms vanished in every direction from the hall, like dust scattered by the wind. During their absence, Philip strode up and down the pavement, his arms ringing as he trod, while the bitter gnawing of his nether lip showed but too plainly the burning passions that were kindled in his bosom. Every now and then, too, he would pause at one of the doors, throw it wide open--look out, or listen for a moment, and then resume his perturbed pacing in the hall.
In a few minutes, however, the bishop of Senlis entered, and approached the king. Philip passed him by, knitting his brow, and bending his eyes on the ground, as if resolved not to see him. Guerin, notwithstanding his frown, came nearer, respectfully but boldly; and the king was obliged to look up. "Leave me, sir Guerin," said he. "I will speak with thee anon. Answer not; but leave me, for fear of worse."
"Whatever worse than your displeasure may happen, sire," replied Guerin, "I must abide it--claiming, however, the right of committing the old servant's crime, and speaking first, if I am to be chidden after."
Philip crossed his arms upon his broad chest, and with a stern brow looked the minister full in the face; but remained silent, and suffered him to continue.
"You have this day, my lord," proceeded Guerin, with unabated boldness, "used hard terms towards a faithful subject and an ancient friend; but you have conferred the great power upon me of forgiving my king. My lord, I do forgive you, for thinking that the man who has served you truly for twenty years,--since when first, in the boyish hand of fifteen, you held an unsteady sceptre,--would now betray your honour himself, or know it betrayed without warning you thereof. True, my lord, I believed the Count d'Auvergne to be at the moment of your arrival in the castle gardens with your royal queen."
The king's lip curled, but he remained silent. "Nevertheless," continued Guerin, "so God help me, as I did and do believe he meant no evil towards you, beau sire; and nought but honourable friendship towards the queen."
"Good man!" cried the king, his lip curling with a sneer, doubly bitter, because it stung himself as well as him to whom it was addressed. "Guerin, Guerin, thou art a good man!--too good, as the world goes!"
"Mock me, sire, if you will," replied the minister, "but hear me still. I knew the Count d'Auvergne to be the dear friend of this lady's father--the sworn companion in arms of her dead brother: and I doubted not that, as he lately comes from Istria, he might be charged to enforce towards the queen herself, the same request that her father made to you by letter, when first he heard that the divorce was annulled by the see of Rome--namely, that his daughter might return to his court, and not be made both the subject and sacrifice of long protracted disputes with the supreme pontiff."
"Ha!" said the king, raising his hand thoughtfully to his brow. "Say'st thou?" and for several minutes he remained in deep meditation. "Guerin, my friend," said he at length, raising his eyes to the minister as he comprehended at once the hospitaller's motive for gladly yielding way to such a communication between the Count d'Auvergne and Agnes as that of which he spoke--"Guerin, my friend, thou hast cleared thyself of all but judging ill. Thy intentions--as I believe from my soul they always are--were right. I did thee wrong. Forgive me, good friend, in charity; for, even among kings, I am very, very unhappy!" and he stretched out his hand towards his minister.
Guerin bent his lips to it in silence; and the king proceeded:--
"In clearing thyself too, thou hast mingled a doubt with my hatred of this Thibalt d'Auvergne; but thou hast not taken the thorn from my bosom. She may be chaste as ice, Guerin. Nay, she is. Her every word, her every look speaks it--even her language to him was beyond doubt--but still, she loves me not, Guerin! She spoke of duty, but she never spoke of love! She, who has been my adoration--she, who loved me, I thought, as kings are seldom loved--she loves me not!"
Guerin was silent. He felt that he could not conscientiously say one word to strengthen the king's conclusion, that Agnes did not love him; but for the sake of the great object he had in view, of raising the interdict, and thereby freeing France from all the dangers that menaced her, he forebore to express his firm conviction of the queen's deep attachment to her husband.
Fortunately for his purpose, at this moment one or two of the king's serjeants-at-arms returned, informing Philip, with no small addition of surprise, that they could find no trace of the Count d'Auvergne.
"Let better search be made!" said the king; "and the moment he is found, let him be arrested in my name, and confined, under strict guard, in the chapel tower. Let his usage be good, but his prison sure. Your heads shall answer!" Thus saying, he turned, and left the hall, followed by Guerin, who dared not urge his remonstrances farther at the moment.
CHAPTER VIII.
It may be necessary here to go back a little, in order to show more fully what had really been that conversation between Thibalt d'Auvergne and the fair Agnes de Meranie, of which but a few words have yet reached the reader's ears.
The Count d'Auvergne had come to the castle of Compiègne, as we have shown, upon the direct invitation of the king himself; and, indeed, Philip had taken more than one occasion to court his powerful vassal; not alone, perhaps, from political motives, but because he felt within himself, without any defined cause, a kind of doubt and dislike towards him, which he believed to be unjust, and knew to be impolitic; and which, he was continually afraid, might become apparent, unless he stretched his courtesy to its utmost extent.
D'Auvergne made no return. The frozen rigidity of his manner was never relaxed for an instant; and whatever warmth the king assumed, it could never thaw him even to a smile. Nor was this wholly the offspring of that personal dislike which he might well be supposed to feel to a happy and successful rival; but he felt that, bound by his promise to the old duke of Istria, he had a task to perform, which Philip would consider that of an enemy, and therefore D'Auvergne resolved never to bear towards him, for a moment, the semblance of a friend.
Having, after his return to Paris, once more accepted Philip's invitation to Compiègne; which, being made upon the plea of consulting him respecting the conquest of Constantinople, was complied with, without obligation. D'Auvergne proceeded on the evening appointed to the castle; but, finding that Philip had not returned from the siege of Gournay, he lodged himself and his followers, as he best might, in the village. He felt, however, that he must seize the moment which presented itself, of conveying to Agnes her father's message; and convinced, by bitter experience, of the quick and mortal nature of opportunity, the morning after his arrival he proceeded to the castle, and demanded an audience of the queen.
No sensation on earth, perhaps, can be conceived more bitter than that of seeing the object of one's love in the possession of another; and Thibalt d'Auvergne's heart beat painfully--his very lip grew pale, as he passed into the castle hall, and bade one of the pages announce him to the queen. A few moments passed, after the boy's departure, in sad expectation; the memory of former days contrasting their bright fancies with the dark and gloomy hopelessness of the present. The page speedily returned, and informed the count that his lady, the queen, would see him with pleasure if he would follow to the garden. D'Auvergne summoned all his courage; for there is more real valour in meeting and conquering our own feelings, when armed against us, than in overthrowing the best paladin that ever mounted horse. He followed the boy towards the garden with a firm step, and, on entering, soon perceived the queen advancing to meet him.
She was no longer the gay, bright girl that he had known in Istria, on whose rosy cheek the touch of care had withered not a flower, whose step was buoyancy, whose eyes looked youth, and whose arching lip breathed the very spirit of gladness. She was no longer the same fair girl we have seen, dreaming with her beloved husband overjoys and hopes that royal stations must not know--with the substantial happiness of the present, and the fanciful delights of the future, forming a beamy wreath of smiles around her brow.--No; she was still fair and lovely, but with a sadder kind of loveliness. The same sweet features remained,--the same bland soul, shining from within--the same heavenly eyes--the same enchanting lip; but those eyes had an expression of pensive languor, far different from former days; and that lip, though it beamed with a sweet welcoming smile, as her father's and her brother's friend approached, seemed as if chained down by some power of melancholy, so that the smile itself was sad. The rose too had left her cheek; and though a very, very lovely colour of a different hue had supplied its place, still it was not the colour of the rose. It was something more delicate, more tender, more akin to the last blush of the sinking sun before he stoops into the darkness.
Two of the queen's ladies were at some distance behind, and, with good discretion, after the count d'Auvergne had joined their royal mistress, they made that distance greater. D'Auvergne advanced, and, as was the custom of the day, bent his lips to the queen's hand. The one he raised it in, trembled as if it were palsied; but there was feverish heat in that of Agnes, as he pressed his lip upon it, still more fearful.
"Welcome to the court, beau sire D'Auvergne!" said the queen with a sweet and unembarrassed smile. "You have heard that my truant husband, Philip, has not yet returned, though he promised me, with all a lover's vows, to be back by yester-even. They tell me, you men are all false with us women, and, in good truth, I begin to think it."
"May you never find it too bitterly, madam," replied the count.
"Nay, you spoke that in sad earnest, my lord," said Agnes, now striving with effort for the same playful gaiety that was once natural to her. "You are no longer what you were in Istria, beau sire. But we must make you merrier before you leave our court. Come, you know, before the absolution, must still go confession;" and as she spoke, with a certain sort of restlessness that had lately seized her, she led the way round the garden, adding, "Confess, beau sire, what makes you sad--every one must have something to make them sad--so I will be your confessor. Confess, and you shall have remission."
She touched the count's wound to the quick, and he replied in a tone of sadness bordering on reproach: "Oh! madam! I fear me, confession would come too late!"
How a single word--a single tone--a single look, will sometimes give the key to a mystery. There are moments when conception, awakened we know not how, flashes like the lightning through all space, illumining at once a world that was before all darkness. That single sentence, with the tone in which it was said, touched the "electric chain" of memory, and ran brightening along over a thousand links in the past, which connected those words with the days long gone by. It all flashed upon Agnes's mind at once. She had been loved--deeply, powerfully loved; and, unknowing then what love was, she had not seen it. But now, that love was the constant food of her mind, from morning until night, her eyes were opened at once, and that, with no small pain to herself. The change in her manner, however, was instant; and she felt, that one light word, one gay jest, after that discovery, would render her culpable, both to her husband and to Thibalt d'Auvergne. Her eye lost the light it had for a moment assumed--the smile died away upon her lip, and she became calm and cold as some fair statue.
The Count d'Auvergne saw the change, and felt perhaps why; but as he did feel it, firm in the noble rectitude of his intentions, he lost the embarrassment of his manner, and took up the conversation which the queen had dropped entirely.
"To quit a most painful subject, madam," he said calmly and firmly, "allow me to say that I should never have returned to Europe, had not duties called me; those duties are over, and I shall soon go back to wear out the frail rest of life amidst the soldiers of the cross. I may fall before some Saracen lance,--I may taste the cup of the mortal plague; but my bones shall whiten on a distant shore, after fighting under the sign of our salvation. There still, however, remains one task to be performed, which, however wringing to my heart, must be completed. As I returned to France, madam, I know not what desire of giving myself pain made me visit Istria; I there saw your noble father, who bound me by a knightly vow to bear a message to his child."
"Indeed, sir!" said Agnes: "let me beg you would deliver it.--But first tell me, how is my father?" she aided anxiously,--"how looks he? Have age, and the wearing cares of this world, made any inroad on his vigorous strength? Speak, sir count!"
"I should say falsely, lady," replied D'Auvergne, "if I said that, since I saw him before, he had not become, when last we met, an altered man. But I was told by those about him, that 'tis within the last year this change has principally taken place."
"Indeed!" said Agnes thoughtfully: "and has it been very great? Stoops he now? He was as upright as a mountain pine, when I left him? Goes he forth to hunt as formerly?"
"He often seeks the chase, lady," answered the count, "as a diversion to his somewhat gloomy thoughts; but I am grieved to say, that age has bent the pine."
Agnes mused for several minutes; and the count remained silent.
"Well, sir," said she at length, "the message--what is it? Gave he no letter?
"None, madam," said the count; "he thought that a message by one who had seen him, and one whose wishes for your welfare were undoubted, might be more serviceable to the purpose he desired."
"My lord, your wishes for my welfare are as undoubted by me as they are by my father," replied the queen, noticing a slight emphasis which D'Auvergne had placed upon the word undoubted; "and therefore I am happy to receive his message from the lips of his friend."
The queen's words were courteous and kind, but her manner was as cold and distant as if she had spoken to a stranger; and D'Auvergne felt hurt that it should be so, though he well knew that her conduct was perhaps the wisest for both.
After a moment's thought, however, he proceeded, to deliver the message wherewith he had been charged by the duke of Istria and Meranie. "Your father, lady," he said, "charged me to give you the following message;--and let me beg you to remember, that, as far as memory serves, I use his own words; for what might be bold, presumptuous, or even unfeeling, in your brother's poor companion in arms, becomes kind counsel and affectionate anxiety when urged by a parent. Your father, lady, bade me say, that he had received a letter from the common father of the Christian church, informing him that your marriage with the noble king Philip was not, and could not be valid, because----"
"Spare the reasons, sir," said Agnes, with a calm voice, indeed, but walking on, at the same time, with that increased rapidity of pace which showed too well her internal agitation,--"spare the reasons, sir! I have heard them before--Indeed, too, too often!--What said my father, more?"
"He said, madam, that as the pope assured him, on his apostolic truth, that the marriage never could be rendered valid," continued the count; "and farther, that the realm of France must be put in interdict--for the interdict, madam, had not been then pronounced; and Celestin, a far milder judge than the present, sat in the chair of St. Peter;--he said, that as this was the case, and as the daughter of the duke of Meranie was not formed to be an object of discord between a king and a Christian prelate, he begged, and conjured, and commanded you to withdraw yourself from an alliance that he now considered as disgraceful as it had formerly appeared honourable; and to return to your father's court, and the arms of your family, where, you well know, he said, that domestic love and parental affection would endeavour to wipe out from your heart the memory of disappointments and sorrows brought on you by no fault of your own."
"And such, indeed, was my father's command and message?" said the queen, in a tone of deep affliction.
"Such, indeed, it was, lady," replied the count D'Auvergne, "and he bade me, farther, entreat and conjure you, by all that is dear and sacred between parent and child, not to neglect his counsel and disobey his commands. He said moreover that he knew----" and Thibalt d'Auvergne's lip quivered as if the agony of death was struggling in his heart--"he said that he knew how fondly you loved the noble king your husband, and how hard it would be to tear yourself from him. But he begged you to remember that your house's honour was at stake, and not to shrink from your duty."
"Sir count," said Agnes, in a voice that faltered with emotion, "he, nor no one else, can tell how I love my husband--how deeply--how fondly--how devotedly. Yet that should not stay me; for though I would as soon tear out my heart, and trample it under my own feet, as quit him, yet I would do it, if my honour and my duty bade me go. But my honour and my duty bid me stay----" She paused, and thoughtfully followed the direction of the walk, clasping her small hands together, and bending down her eyes, as one whose mind, unaccustomed to decide between contending arguments, is bewildered by number and reiteration, but not convinced. She thus advanced some way in the turn towards the castle, and then added--"Besides, even if I would, how could I quit my husband's house and territories? How could I return to Istria without his will?"
"That difficulty, madam, I would smooth for you or die," replied the count. "The troops of Auvergne could and should protect you."
"The troops of Auvergne against Philip of France!" exclaimed Agnes, raising her voice, while her eye flashed with an unwonted fire, and her lip curled with a touch of scorn. "And doubtless the Count d'Auvergne to head them, and defend the truant wife against her angry husband!"
"You do me wrong, lady," replied D'Auvergne calmly--"you do me wrong. The Count d'Auvergne is boon for other lands. Nor would he do one act for worlds, that could, even in the ill-judging eyes of men, cast a shade over the fame and honour of one----" He paused, and broke off his sentence, adding--"But no more of that--lady, you do me wrong. I did but deem, that, accompanied by your own holy confessor, and what other prelates or clergymen you would, a thousand of my armed vassals might convey you safely to the court of your father, while I, bound by a holy vow, should take shipping at Marseilles, and never set my foot on shore till I might plant it on the burning sands of Palestine.--Lady, may this be?"
"No, lord count, no!"--replied Agnes, her indignation at any one dreaming of opposing the god of her idolatry still unsubdued, "it cannot, nor it must not be! Did I seek Istria at all, I would rather don a pilgrim's weeds, and beg my way thither on foot. But I seek it not, my lord--I never will seek it. Philip is my husband--France is my land. The bishops of this realm have freed, by their united decree, their king from all other engagement than that to me; and so long as he himself shall look upon that engagement as valid, I will not doubt its firmness and its truth."
"I have then discharged me of my unpleasant duty, lady," said the Count d'Auvergne. "My task is accomplished, and my promise to your father fulfilled. Yet, that it may be well fulfilled, let me beg you once again to think of your father's commands; and knowing the nobleness of his nature, the clearness of his judgment, and the fearless integrity of his heart, think if he would have urged you to quit king Philip without he thought it your duty to do so."
"He judged as a father; I judge as a wife," replied Agnes. "I love my father--I would die for him; and, but to see him, I would sacrifice crown, and dignity, and wealth. Yet, once for all, beau sire d'Auvergne, urge me no more; for, notwithstanding all you can say--notwithstanding my own feelings in this respect, I must not--I cannot--I will not quit my husband. That name alone, my husband, were enough to bind me to him by every duty, and I will never quit him."
D'Auvergne was silent; for he saw, by the flushed cheek and disturbed look of Agnes de Meranie, that he had urged her as far as in honour and courtesy he dared to go. They had by this time turned towards the château, from which they beheld a page, habited in green, advancing rapidly towards them.
"Some one is coming. Count d'Auvergne," said Agnes hastily, fearful, although her women were at a little distance behind, that any stranger should see her discomposed look.--"Some one is coming,--Begone! Leave me!" And seeing the count about to speak again, though it was but to take his leave, she added--"Never let me hear of this again! Begone, sir, I beg!"
She then stooped down to trifle with some flowers, till such time as the stranger should be gone, or her own cheek lose the heated flush with which it was overspread.
In the meanwhile, the Count d'Auvergne bowed low, and turned towards the castle. Before he had reached it, however, he was encountered by De Coucy's page, who put a paper in his hand, one glance of which made him hasten forward; and passing directly through the hall of the château, he issued out at the other gate. From thence he proceeded to the lodging where he had passed the night before--called his retainers suddenly together, mounted his horse, and rode away.
As soon as he left her, Agnes de Meranie raised her head from the flowers over which she had been stooping, and walked on slowly, musing, towards the castle; while thought--that strange phantasmagoria of the brain--presented to her a thousand vague and incoherent forms, called up by the conversation that had just passed--plans, and fears, and hopes, and doubts, crowding the undefined future; and memories, regrets, and sorrows thronging equally the past. Fancy, the quick wanderer, had travelled far in a single moment, when the sound of a hasty step caught her ear, passing along under the trellis of vines that skirted the garden wall. She could not see the figure of the person that went by; but it needed not that she should. The sound of that footfall was as well known to her ear as the most familiar form to her eye; and, bending her head, she listened again, to be sure--very sure.
"'Tis Philip!" said she, all her other feelings forgotten, and hope and joy sparkling again in her eye--"'tis Philip! He sees me not, and yet he knows that at this hour it is my wont to walk here. But perhaps 'tis later than I thought. He is in haste too by his step. However, I will in, with all speed, to meet him;" and, signing to her women to come up, she hastened towards the castle.
"Have you seen the king?" demanded she of a page, who hurried to open the gates for her.
"He has just passed, madam," replied the youth. "He seemed to go into the great hall in haste, and is now speaking to the serjeants-at-arms. You may hear his voice."
"I do," said the queen; and proceeding to her apartments, she waited for her husband's coming, with all that joyful hope that seemed destined in this world as meet prey for disappointment.
CHAPTER IX.
At Tours, we have seen De Coucy despatch his page towards the Count d'Auvergne; and at Compiègne we have seen the same youth deliver a letter to that nobleman. But we must here pause, to trace more particularly the course of the messenger, which, in truth, was not near so direct as at first may be imagined.
There was, at the period referred to, a little hostelry in the town of Château du Loir, which was neat and well-furnished enough for the time it flourished in.[21] It had the most comfortable large hearth in the world, which, in those days, was the next great excellence in a house of general reception to that of having good wine, which always held the first place; and round this--on each side of the fire, as well as behind it--was a large stone seat, that might accommodate well fifteen or sixteen persons on a cold evening. At the far corner of this hearth, one night in the wane of September, when days are hot and evenings are chilly, sat a fair youth of about eighteen years of age, for whom the good hostess, an honest, ancient dame, that always prayed God's blessing on a pair of rosy cheeks, was mulling some spiced wine, to cheer him after a long and heavy day's riding.
"Ah, now! I warrant thee," said the good lady, adjusting the wood embers carefully round the little pipkin, on the top of which just began to appear a slight creaming foam, promising a speedy conclusion to her labours--"ay, now! I warrant thee, thou hast seen them all--the fair lady Isadore, and pretty mistress Alice, the head maid, and little Eleanor, with her blue eyes. Ha, sir page, you redden! I have touched thee, child. God bless thee, boy! never blush to be in love. Your betters have been so before thee; and I warrant little Eleanor would blush too. God bless her, and St. Luke the apostate! Oh, bless thee, my boy, I know them all! God wot they stayed here, master and man, two days, while they were waiting for news from the king John; and old Sir Julian himself vowed he was as well here as in the best castle of France or England."
"Well, well, dame! I have ridden hard back, at all events," replied the page; "and I will make my horse's speed soon catch up, between this and Paris, the day and a half I have lingered here; so that my noble lord cannot blame me for loitering on his errand."
"Tut, tut! He will never know a word," cried the old dame, applying to the page that sort of consolatory assurance that our faults will rest unknown, which has damned many a one, both man and woman, in this world--"he will never know a word of it; and, if he did, he would forgive it. Lord, Lord! being a knight, of course he is in love himself; and knows what love is. God bless him, and all true knights! I say."
"Oh, in love--to be sure he is!" replied the page. "Bless thee, dame! when we came all hot from the Holy Land, like loaves out of an oven, my lord no sooner clapped his eyes upon the lady Isadore, than he was in love up to the ears, as they say. Ay! and would ride as far to see her, as I would to see little Eleanor. But tell me, dame, have you staked the door as I asked you?"
"Latch down, and bolt shot!" answered the old lady; "but what shouldst thou fear, poor child? Thou art not of king John's friends, that I well divine; but, bless thee! every one who has passed, this blessed day, says they are moving the other way; though, in good troth, I have no need to say God be thanked; for the heavy Normans, and the thirsty English, would sit here and drink me pot after pot, and it mattered not what wine I gave them--Loiret was as good as Beaugency. God bless them all, and St. Luke the apostate! as I said. So what need'st thou fear, boy?"
"Why, I'll tell thee, good dame. If they caught me, and knew I was the De Coucy's man, they would hang me up, for God's benison," said the page; "and I narrowly escaped on the road too. Five mounted men, with their arms covered with soldiers' mantles,--though they looked like knights, and rode like knights too,--chased me for more than a mile. They had a good score of archers at their backs; and I would have dodged them across the country, but every little hill I came to, I saw a body of horse on all sides, moving pace by pace with them. Full five hundred men, I counted one way and another; and there might be five hundred more, for aught I know."
"Now, St. Barbara's toe nail to St. Luke's shoulder bone," exclaimed the hostess, mingling somewhat strangely the relics which she was accustomed to venerate with the profane wagers of the soldiery who frequented her house--"now, St. Barbara's toe nail to St. Luke's shoulder bone, that these are the men whom my lodger upstairs expected to come to-night!"
"What lodger?" cried the page anxiously. "Dame, dame, you told me, this very morning, you had none!"
"And I told you true, sir chit!" replied the old woman, bridling at the tone of reproach the page adopted. "I told you true.--There, drink your wine--it is well mulled now;--take care you do not split the horn, pouring it in so hot.--I told you true enough--I had no lodger this morning, when you went; but, half an hour after, came one who had ridden all night, with a great boutiau at his saddle, that would hold four quarts. Cursed be those boutiaus! they cut us vintners' combs. Every man carries his wine with him, and never sets foot in a hostelry but to feed his horse."
"But the traveller!--the traveller!--Good dame, tell me," cried the page, "what manner of man was he?"
"A goodly man, i'faith," replied the landlady. "Taller than thou art, sir page, by a hand's breadth. He had been in a fray, I warrant, for his eye was covered over with a patch, and his nose broken across. He too would fain not be seen, and made me put him in a guest-chamber at the end of the dormitory. He calls himself Alberic, though that is nothing to me or any one: and there was a Norman came to speak with him an hour after he came; but that is nothing to me either."
"Hark, dame! hark! I hear horses," cried the page, starting up in no small trepidation, "Where can I hide me? Where?" and, even as he asked the question, he began to climb the stairs, that came almost perpendicularly down into the centre of the room, with all the precipitation of fear.
"Not there!--not there!" cried the old woman; "thou wilt meet that Alberic. Into that cupboard;" and, seizing the page by the arm, she pushed him into a closet filled with faggots and brushwood for replenishing the kitchen fire. Under this heap he ensconced himself as well as he might, paying no regard to the skin of his hands and face, which was very sufficiently scratched in the operation of diving down to the bottom of the pile. The old lady, who seemed quite familiar with all such manœuvres, while the sound of approaching horses came nearer and nearer, arranged what he had disarranged in his haste, sat down by the fire, tossed off the remainder of the wine in the pipkin, and began to spin quietly, while the horses' feet that had startled the page clattered on through the village. In a moment after, they stopped at the door; and, at the same time, a heavy footfall was heard pacing forward above, as if some one, disturbed also by the sounds, approached to listen at the head of the stairs.
"Ho! Within there!" cried some person without, after having pushed the door, and found it bolted.--"Ho! Within there! Open, I say."
The old dame ran forward, taking care to make her feet give audible sounds of haste upon the floor; and, instantly unfastening the door, she stood becking and bowing to the strangers, as they dismounted from their horses and entered the kitchen.
"God save ye, fair sir!--God save ye, noble gentlemen. Welcome, welcome!--Lord! Lord! I have not seen such a sight of noble faces since good king John's army went. The blessing of God be upon him and them! He is a right well favoured and kingly lord! Bless his noble eyes, and his sweet low forehead, and send him plenty of crowns to put upon it!"
"How, dame! Dost thou know King John?" asked one of the strangers, laying his hand upon the hostess's shoulders, with an air of kindly familiarity. "But thou mistakest. I have heard he is villanous ugly. Ha!"
"Lord forgive you, sire, and St. Luke the apostate!" cried the old woman. "He is the sweetest gentleman you ever set your eyes on. Many a time have I seen him when the army was here; and so handsome he is! Lord, Lord!"
"Ha! methinks thou wouldst look handsomer thus, thyself," cried the stranger, suddenly snatching off the old woman's quoif, and setting it down again on her head with the wrong side in front. "So, my lovely lass!" and he patted the high cap with the whole strength of his hand, so as to flatten it completely. "So, so!"
His four companions burst into a loud and applauding laugh, and were proceeding to follow up his jest upon the old woman, when the other stopped them at once, crying, "Enough, my masters! no more of it. Let us to business. Guillaume de la Roche Guyon, you shall make love to the old wench another time.--Now, beautiful lady!" he continued, mocking the chivalrous speeches of the day. "Would those sweet lips but deign to open the coral boundary of sound, and inform an unhappy knight, who has this evening ridden five long leagues, whether one sir Alberic, as he is pleased to call himself, lodges in your castle?"
"Lord bless your noble and merry heart!" replied the old woman, apparently not at all offended or discomposed by the accustomed gibes of her guests. "How should I know sir Alberic? I never ask strangers' names that do my poor hostel the honour of putting up at it. Not but that I may have heard the name, and lately; but----"
"But--hold thy peace, old woman!" said a voice from above. "These persons want me, and I want them;" and down the staircase came no less a person than our friend Jodelle, the captain of De Coucy's troop of Brabançois. One eye indeed was covered with a patch; but this addition to his countenance was probably assumed less as a concealment, than for the purpose of covering the marks of a tremendous blow which we may remember the knight had dealt him with the pommel of his sword; and which, notwithstanding the patch, shone out in a large livid swelling all round.
"Tell me, dame," cried he, advancing to the hostess, before he exchanged one word of salutation with the strangers, "who was it that stopped at your gate half an hour ago on horseback, and where is he gone? He was speaking with thee but now, for I heard two voices."
"Lord bless you, sir, and St. Luke the apostate, to boot!" said the old woman, "'twas but my nephew, poor boy; frightened out of his life, because he said he had met with some of King Philip's horsemen on the road. So he slipped away when he heard horses coming, and took his beast round to the field to ride off without being noticed, because being of the English party, King Philip would hang him if he caught him."
"King Philip's horsemen!" cried the first stranger, turning deadly pale. "Whence did he come, good dame? What road did he travel, that he saw King Philip's horsemen?"
"He came from Flêche, fair sir," replied the hostess, "and he said there were five of them chased him; and he saw many more scattered about."
"Oh, nonsense!" cried one of the other strangers. "'Tis the youth we chased ourselves. He has taken us for Philip's men.--How was he dressed, dame?"
"In green, beau sire," replied the ready hostess. "He had a green cassock on I am well nigh sure."
"'Tis the same!--'tis the same!" said the stranger, who had asked the last question.--"Be not afraid, beau sire," he added, speaking in a low tone to the stranger who had entered first. "Philip is far enough; and were he near, he should dine off the heads of lances, and quaff red blood till he were drunk, ere he harmed a hair of your head. So, be not afraid."
"Afraid, sir!" replied the other, drawing himself up haughtily, now re-assured by the certainty of the mistake concerning Philip's horsemen. "How came you to suppose I am afraid?--Now, good fellow," he continued, turning to Jodelle, "are you that Alberic that wrote a billet this morning to the camp at----?"
"By your leave, fair sir," interrupted Jodelle, "we will have a clear coast.--Come, old woman, get thee out. We must be alone."
"What! out of my own kitchen, sir?" cried the hostess. "That is hard allowance, surely."
"It must needs be so, however," answered Jodelle: "out at that door, good dame! Thou shalt not be long on the other side;" and, very unceremoniously taking the landlady by the arm, he put her out at the door which opened on the street, and bolted it once more. "And now," said he, "to see that no lurkers are about."
So saying, he examined the different parts of the room, and then opened the door of the closet, in which the poor page lay trembling like an aspen leaf.
"Brushwood!" said Jodelle, taking a candle from one of the iron brackets that lighted the room, and advancing into the closet, he laid his hand on one of the bundles, and rolled it over.
The page, cringing into the space of a pigmy, escaped his sight, however; and the roll of the fagot, instead of discovering him, concealed him still better by falling down upon his head. But still unsatisfied, the marauder drew his sword, and plunged it into the mass of brushwood to make all sure.--There was in favour of the poor page's life but the single chance of Jodelle's blade passing to the right or left of him. Still, that chance was for him. The Brabançois' sword was aimed a little on one side, and, leaving him uninjured, struck against the wall. Jodelle sheathed it again, satisfied, and returned to the strangers, the chief of whom had seated himself by the fire, and was, with strange levity, moralising on the empty pipkin which had held the mulled wine.
His voice was sweet and melodious, and, though he evidently spoke in mockery, one might discover in his speech those tones and accents that lead and persuade.
"Mark! Guillaume de la Roche," said he, "Mark! Pembroke, and you, sir Alberic, mark well! for it may happen in your sinful life, that never again shall you hear how eloquently a pipkin speaks to man. Look at it, as I hold it now in my hand. No man amongst you would buy it at half a denier; but fill it with glorious wine of Montrichard, and it is worth ten times the sum. Man! man! thou art but a pipkin,--formed of clay--baked in youth--used in manhood--broken in age. So long as thou art filled with spirit, thou art valuable and ennobled; but the moment the spirit is out, thou art but a lump of clay again. While thou art full, men never abandon thee; but when thou art sucked empty, they give thee up, and let thee drop as I do the pipkin;" and opening his finger and thumb, he suffered it to fall on the floor, where it at once dashed itself to pieces.
"And now, sir Alberic," continued he, turning to Jodelle, "what the devil do you want with me?"
"Beau sire king," said Jodelle, bending his knee before the stranger, "if you are indeed, as your words imply, John, king of England----"
"I am but a pipkin!" interrupted the light king. "Alas! sir Alberic, lam but a pipkin.--But proceed, proceed.--I am the king."
"Well then, my lord," answered Jodelle, in truth, somewhat impatient in his heart at the king's mockery, "as I was bold to tell you in my letter, I have heard that your heart's best desire is to have under your safe care and guidance your nephew, Arthur, duke of Brittany----"
"Thou speakest right, fellow!" cried the King John, wakening to animation at the thought. "'Tis my heart's dearest wish to have him.--Where is the little rebel? Produce him! Have you got him here?"
"Good God! my lord, you forget," said the Earl of Pembroke. "This fair gentleman cannot be expected to carry your nephew about with him, like a holy relic in a reliquary."
"Or, a white mouse in a show-box," added Guillaume de la Roche Guyon, laughing.
"Good, good!" cried John, joining in the laugh.--"But come, sir Alberic, speak plainly. Where is the white mouse? When wilt thou open thy show-box? We have come ourselves, because thou wouldest deal with none but us; therefore, now thou hast our presence, bear thyself discreetly in it.--Come, when wilt thou open the box, I pray?"
"When it pleases you to pay the poor showman his price?" said Jodelle, bowing low and standing calmly before the king, in the attitude of one who knows that, for the moment at least, he commands, where he seems to be commanded; and that his demands, however exorbitant, must be complied with.
"Ha!" said John, knitting his brows; "I had forgot that there is not one man on all the earth who has not his price.--Pray, what is thine, fellow?"
"I am very moderate, beau sire," replied Jodelle, with the most imperturbable composure, "very moderate in regard to what I sell. Would you know, my lord king, what I demand for placing your nephew Arthur in your hands, with all those who are now assisting him to besiege the queen, your mother, in her château of Mirebeau?--'Tis a worthy deed, and merits some small recompence."
"Speak, speak, man!" cried the king impatiently. "Go not round and round the matter. Speak it out plainly. What sum dost thou ask?"
"Marry! my lord, there must go more than sums to the bargain," replied Jodelle boldly. "But if you would know justly what I do demand, 'tis this. First, you shall pay me down, or give me here an order on your royal treasure for the sum of ten thousand marks in what coin you will."
"By the Lord, and the Holy Evangelists!" cried the king; but, then pausing, he added, while he turned a half smiling glance to Lord Pembroke:--"Well, thou shalt have the order on the royal treasury. What next?"
"After you have given me the order, sire," replied Jodelle, answering the meaning of the king's smile, "I will find means to wring the money out of your friends, or out of your enemies, even should your treasure be as dry as hay."
"Try my enemies first, good Alberic," said the king; "my friends have enough to do already.--But what next? for you put that firstly, if I forget not."
"Next, you must give me commission, under your royal signet, to raise for your use, and at your expense, one thousand free lances," replied Jodelle stoutly, "engaged to serve you for the space of ten years. Moreover, I must have annually half the pay of Mercader; and you must consent to dub me knight with your royal hand."
"Knight!" cried the Earl of Pembroke, turning fiercely upon him.--"By the Lord! if the king do dub so mean and pitiful a traitor, I will either make the day of your dubbing the last of your life; or I will have my own scullion strike off my own spurs, as a dishonour to my heels, when such a villain wears the same."
"When those spurs are on, Lord Pembroke," replied Jodelle boldly, "thou shalt not want one to meet thee, and give thee back scorn for scorn. Till then, meddle with what concerns thee, and mar not the king's success with thy scolding."
"Peace, Pembroke! peace!" cried King John, seeing his hasty peer about to make angry answer. "Who dare interfere where my will speaks?--And now tell me, fellow Alberic," he added with an air of dignity he could sometimes assume, "suppose that we refuse thine exacting demands--what follows then?"
"Why, that I betake myself to my beast's back, and ride away as I came," answered Jodelle undisturbedly.
"But suppose we do not let thee go," continued the king; "and farther, suppose we hang thee up to the elm before the door."
"Then you will have broken a king's honour to win a dead carcase," answered the Brabançois; "for nothing shall you ever know from me that may stead you in your purpose."
"But we have tortures, sir, would almost make the dead speak," rejoined King John. "Such, at least, as would make thee wish thyself dead a thousand times, ere death came to thy relief."
"I doubt thee not, sir king," answered Jodelle, with the same determined tone and manner in which he had heretofore spoken--"I doubt thee not; and, as I pretend to no more love for tortures than my neighbours, 'tis more than likely I should tell thee all I could tell, before the thumbscrew had taken half a turn; but it would avail thee nothing, for nought that I could tell thee would make my men withdraw till they have me amongst them; and, until they be withdrawn, you may as well try to surprise the sun of heaven, guarded by all his rays, as catch Prince Arthur and Guy de Coucy."
"Why wouldst thou not come to the camp, then?" demanded John. "If thou wert so secure, why camest thou not when I sent for thee?"
"Because, King John, I once served your brother Richard," replied the Brabançois, "and during that time I made me so many dear friends in Mercader's band, that I thought, if I came to visit them, without two or three hundred men at my back, they might, out of pure love, give me a banquet of cold steel, and lodging with our lady mother,--the earth."
"The fellow jests, lords! On my soul! the fellow jests!" cried John.--"Get thee back, sirrah, a step or two; and let me consult with my nobles," he added.--"Look to him, Pembroke, that he escape not."
John then spoke for several minutes with the gentlemen who had attended him to this extraordinary meeting; and the conversation, though carried on in a low tone, seemed in no slight degree animated; more especially on the part of Lord Pembroke, who frequently spoke loud enough for such words to be heard as "disgrace to chivalry--disgust the barons of England--would not submit to have their order degraded," &c.
At length, however, a moment of greater calm succeeded; and John, beckoning the coterel forward, spoke to him thus:--
"Our determination is taken, good fellow, and thou shall subscribe to it, or not, as thou wilt. First, we will give thee the order upon our treasury for the ten thousand marks of silver; always provided, that within ten days' time, the body of Arthur Plantagenet is by thy means placed in our hands--living--or dead," added the king, with a fearful emphasis on the last word. At the same time he contracted his brows, and though his eyes still remained fixed upon Jodelle, he half-closed the eyelids over them, as if he considered his own countenance as a mask through which his soul could gaze out without being seen, while he insinuated what he was afraid or ashamed to proclaim openly.
Lord Pembroke gave a meaning glance to another nobleman who stood behind the king; and who slightly raised his shoulder and drew down the corner of his mouth as a reply, while the king proceeded:--
"We will grant thee also, on the same condition, that which thou demandest in regard to raising a band of Brabançois, and serving as their commander, together with all the matter of pay, and whatever else you have mentioned on that head; but as to creating thee a knight, 'tis what we will not, nor cannot do, at least, for service of this kind. If you like the terms, well!" concluded the king; "if not, there stands an elm at the door, as we have before said, which would form as cool and shady a dangling place, as a man could wish to hang on in a September's day."
"Nay, I have no wish of the kind," replied the Brabançois: "if I must hang on any thing, let it be a king, not a stump of timber. I will not drive my bargain hard, sir king. Sign me the papers now, with all the conditions you mention; and when I am your servant, I will do you such good service, that yon proud lord, who now stands in the way of my knighthood, shall own I deserve it as well as himself."
The Earl of Pembroke gave him a glance of scorn, but replied not to his boast; and writing materials having been procured from some of the attendants without--the whole house being by this time surrounded with armed men, who had been commanded to follow the king by different roads--the papers were drawn up, and signed by the king.
"And now, my lord," said Jodelle, with the boldness of a man who can render needful service, "look upon Prince Arthur as your own. Advance with all speed upon Mirebeau. When you are within five leagues, halt till night. Arthur, with the hogs of Poitou, is kinging it in the town. De Coucy sleeps by his watch-fire under the castle mound. My men keep the watch on this side of the town. Let your troops advance quietly in the dark, giving the word Jodelle, and, without sign or signal, my free fellows shall retire before you, till you are in the very heart of the place. Arthur, with his best knights, sleeps at the prévôt's house; surround that, and you have them all, without drawing a sword.--Love you the plan?"
"By my crown and honour!" cried the king, his eyes sparkling with delight, "if the plan be as well executed as it is devised, thou wilt merit a diamond worth a thousand marks, to weigh your silver down. Count upon me, good Alberic! as your best friend through life, if thy plot succeeds. Count on me, Alberic----"
"Jodelle! for the future, so please you, sire," replied the coterel; "Alberic was but assumed:--and now, my lord, I will to horse and away; for I must put twenty long leagues between me and this place before the dawn of to-morrow."
"Speed you well!--speed you well, good Jodelle!" replied the king, rising: "I will away too, to move forward on Mirebeau, like an eagle to his prey. Come, lords! to horse!--Count on me, good Jodelle!" he repeated, as he put his foot in the stirrup, and turned away, "count on me--to hang you as high as the crow builds," he muttered to himself as he galloped off--"ay, count on me for that! Well; lords, what think you of our night's work?--By Heaven! our enemies are in our hands! We have but to do, as I have seen a child catch flies,--sweep the board with our palm, and we grasp them all."
"True, my lord," replied the Earl of Pembroke, who had been speaking in a low voice with some of the other followers of the prince. "But there are several things to be considered first."
"How to be considered, sir?" demanded King John, somewhat checking his horse's pace with an impatient start. "What is it now?--for I know by that word, considered, that there is some rebellion to my will, toward."
"Not so, sire," replied the Earl of Pembroke firmly; "but the barons of England, my liege, have to remember that, by direct line of descent, Arthur Plantagenet was the clear heir to Richard Cœur de Lion. Now, though there wants not reason or example to show that we have a right to choose from the royal family which member we think most fit to bear the sceptre; yet we so far respect the blood of our kings, and so far feel for the generous ardour of a noble youth who seeks but to regain a kingdom which he deems his of right, that we will not march against Arthur Plantagenet, without you, sire, will promise to moderate your wrath towards him, to confirm him in his dukedom of Brittany, and to refrain from placing either your nephew, or any of his followers, in any strong place or prison, on pretext of guarding them."
John was silent for a long space, for his habitual dissimulation could hardly master the rage that struggled in his bosom. It conquered at last, however, and its triumph was complete.
"I will own, I am grieved, Lord Pembroke," said he, in a hurt and sorrowful tone, "to think that my good English barons should so far doubt their king, as to approach the very verge of rebellion and disobedience, to obtain what he could never have a thought of denying. The promises you require I give you, as freely and as willingly as you could ask them; and if I fail to keep them in word and deed, let my orders be no longer obeyed; let my sceptre be broken, my crown torn from my head, and let me, by peer and peasant, be no longer regarded as a king."
"Thanks! my lord! thanks!" cried Lord Bagot and one or two of the other barons, who followed. "You are a free and noble sovereign, and a right loyal and excellent king. We thank you well for your free promise and accord."