AN EARLY-MORNING VISIT
In a mood of contending thought, the free baron left his apartments the
next morning and traversed the tapestry-hung corridor leading toward
the servants' and soldiers' quarters. He congratulated himself that
the incident of the past night had precipitated a favorable climax in
one source of possible instability, and that the fool who had opposed
him had been summarily removed from the field of action. Confined
within the four walls of the castle dungeon, there was scant likelihood
he would cause further trouble and annoyance. Francis' strong prison
house would effectively curb any more interference with, or dabbling
in, the affairs of the master of the Vulture's Nest.
Following the exposure of the jester's weakness, his passion for his
mistress, Francis, as Villot told Jacqueline, had immediately ordered
the fool into strictest confinement, the donjon of the ancient
structure. In that darkened cell he had rested over night and there he
would no doubt remain indefinitely. The king's guest had not been
greatly concerned with the jester's quixotic love for the princess,
being little disposed to jealousy. He was no sighing solicitant for
woman's favor; higher allurements than woman's eyes, or admiration for
his inamorata, moved him--that edge of appetite for power, conquest
hunger, an itching palm for a kingdom. His were the unscrupulous
soldier's rather than the eager true-love's dreams.
But to offset his satisfaction that the jester lay under restraint he
took in bad part the trooper's continued insensibility which deprived
him of the much-desired information. When he had repaired to the
bedside of the soldier the night before he had only his trip for his
pains, as the man had again sunk into unconsciousness shortly before
his coming. Thus the free baron was still in ignorance of the person
to whom the fool had betrayed him. The fact that there still roamed an
unfettered some one who possessed the knowledge of his identity caused
him to knit his brows and look glum.
These jesters were daring fellows; several of them had borne arms, as,
for example, Clement Marot, who had been taken prisoner with Francis at
the battle of Pavia. Brusquet had been a hanger-on of the camp at
Avignon; Villot, a Paris student; Caillette had received the spirited
education of a soldier in the household of his benefactor, Diane's
father. And as for the others--how varied had been their
careers!--lives of hazard and vicissitude; scapegraces and
adventurers--existing literally by their wits.
To what careless or wanton head had his secret been confined? What use
would the rashling make of it? Daringly attempt to approach the throne
with this startling budget of information; impulsively seek the
princess; or whisper it over his cups among the _femmes de chambre_,
laundresses or scullery maids?
"If the soldier should never speak?" thought the free baron out of
humor, as he drew near the trooper's door. "What a nest of suspicion
may be growing! The wasps may be breeding. A whisper may become an
ominous threat. Is not the danger even greater than it was before,
when I could place my hand on my foeman? The man must speak!--must!"
With a firm step the king's guest entered the chamber of the injured
soldier. Upon a narrow bed lay the trooper, his mustachios appearing
unusually red and fierce against his now yellow, washed-out complexion.
As the free baron drew near the couch a tall figure arose from the side
of the bed.
"How is your patient, doctor?" said the visitor, shortly.
"Low," returned the other, laconically. This person wore a black gown;
a pair of huge, broad-rimmed glasses rested on the bridge of a thin,
long nose, and in his claw-like fingers he held a vial, the contents of
which he stirred slowly. His aspect was that of living sorrow and
melancholy.
"Has he been conscious again?" asked the caller.
"He has e'en lain as you see him," replied the wearer of the black robe.
"Humph!" commented the free baron, attentively regarding the motionless
and silent figure.
"I urged upon him the impropriety of sending for you at the
festivities," resumed the man, sniffing at the vial, "but he became
excited, swore he would leave the bed and brain me with mine own pestle
if I ventured to hinder him. So I consented to convey his request."
"And when I arrived he was still as a log," supplemented the visitor,
gloomily.
"Alas, yes; although I tried to keep him up, giving him specifics and
carminatives and bleeding him once."
"Bleeding him!" cried the false duke, angrily, glowering upon the
impassive and woebegone countenance of the medical attendant. "As if
he had not bled enough from his hurts! Quack of an imposter! You have
killed him!"
"As for that," retorted the man in a sing-song voice, "no one can tell
whether a medicine be antidote or poison, unless as leechcraft and
chirurgery point out--"
"His days are numbered," quoth the free baron to himself, staring
downward. But as he spoke he imagined he saw the red mustachios move,
while one eye certainly glared with intelligent hatred upon the doctor
and turned with anxious solicitude upon his master. The latter
immediately knelt by the bedside and laid his hand upon the already
cold one of the soldier.
"Speak!" he said.
It was the command of an officer to a trooper, an authoritative
bidding, and seemed to summon a last rallying energy from the failing
heart. The man's gaze showed that he understood. From the free
baron's eye flashed a glance of savage power and force.
"Speak!" he repeated, cruelly, imperatively.
The mustachios quivered; the leader bent his head low, so low his face
almost touched the soldier's. A voice--was it a voice, so faint it
sounded?--breathed a few words:
"The emperor--Spain--Caillette gone!"
Quickly the free baron sprang to his feet. The soldier seemed to fall
asleep; his face calm and tranquil as a campaigner's before the bivouac
fire at the hour of rest; the ugliness of his features glossed by a
new-found dignity; only his mustachios strangely fierce, vivid,
formidable, against the peace and pallor of his countenance. The leech
looked at him; stopped stirring the drug; leaned over him; straightened
himself; took the vial once more from the table and threw the medicine
out of the window. Then he methodically began gathering up bottles and
other receptacles, which he placed neatly in a handbag. The free baron
passed through the door, leaving the cheerless practitioner still
gravely engaged in getting together his small belongings.
Soberly the king's guest walked down the echoing stairway out into the
open air of the court. The emperor in Spain? It seemed not unlikely.
Charles spent much of his time in that country, nor was it improbable
he had gone there quietly, without flourish of trumpet, for some
purpose of his own. His ways were not always manifest; his personality
and mind-workings were characterized by concealment. If the emperor
had gone to Spain, a messenger, riding post-haste, could reach Charles
in time to enable that monarch to interpose in the nuptials and
override the confidence the free baron had established for himself in
the court of Francis. An impediment offered by Charles would be
equivalent to the abandonment of the entire marital enterprise.
Pausing before a massive arched doorway that led into a wing of the
castle where the free baron knew the jesters and certain of the
gentlemen of the chamber lodged, the master of Hochfels, in answer to
his inquiries from a servant, learned that Caillette had not been in
his apartments since the day before; that he had ridden from the
tournament, ostensibly to return to his rooms, but nothing had been
heard of him since. And the oddest part of it was, as the old woman
volubly explained when the free baron had pushed his way into the
tastefully furnished chambers of the absent fool, the jester had been
desperately wounded; had groaned much when the duke's _plaisant_ had
assisted him from the field, and had been barely able to mount his
horse with the assistance of a squire.
Meditatively, while absorbing this prattle, the visitor gazed about
him. The bed had been unslept in, and here and there were evidences of
a hasty and unpremeditated leave-taking. Upon an open desk lay a
half-finished poem, obviously intended for no eyes save the writer's.
Several dainty missives and a lace handkerchief, with a monogram,
invited the unscrupulous and prying glance of the inquisitive
newsmonger.
But as these details offered nothing additional to the one great germ
of information embodied in the loquacity of the narrator, the free
baron turned silently away, breaking the thread of her volubility by
unceremoniously disappearing. No further doubt remained in his mind
that the duke's _plaisant_ had sent a comrade in motley to the emperor,
and, as he would not have inspired a mere fool's errand, Charles
without question was in Spain, several days nearer to the court of the
French monarch than the princess' betrothed had presumed. Caillette
had now been four-and-twenty hours on his journey; it would be useless
to attempt pursuit, as the jester was a gallant horseman, trained to
the hunt. Such a man would be indefatigable in the saddle, and the
other realized that, strive as he might, he could never overcome the
handicap.
Then of what avail was one fool in the dungeon, with a second--on the
road? Should he abandon his quest, be driven from his purpose by a
nest of motley meddlers? The idea never seriously entered his mind; he
would fight it out doggedly upon the field of deception. But how? As
surely as the sun rose and set, before many days had come and gone the
hand of Charles would be thrust between him and his projects.
Circumspect, suspicious, was the emperor; he would investigate, and
investigation meant the downfall of the structure of falsehood that had
been erected with such skill and painstaking by the subtile architect.
The maker had pride in his work, and, to see it totter and tumble, was
a misfortune he would avert with his life--or fall with it.
As he had no intention, however, of being buried beneath the wreckage
of his endeavors, he sought to prop the weakening fabric of invention
and mendacity by new shuffling or pretense. Should a disgraced fool be
his undoing? From that living entombment should his foeman in cap and
bells yet indirectly summon the force to bend him to the dust, or send
him to the hangman's knot?
Step by step the king's guest had left the palace behind him, until the
surrounding shrubbery shut it from view, but the path, sweeping onward
with graceful curve, brought him suddenly to a beautiful château. Lost
in thought, he gazed within the flowering ground, at the ornate
architecture, the marble statues and the little lake, in whose pellucid
depths were mirrored a thousand beauties of that chosen spot--an
improved Eden of the landscape gardener wherein resided the Countess
d'Etampes.
"Why," thought the free baron, brightening abruptly, "that chance which
served me last night, which forced the trooper to speak to-day, now has
led my stupid feet to the soothsayer."
Within a much begilt and gorgeous bower, he soon found himself awaiting
patiently the coming of the favorite. Upon a tiny chair of gold, too
fragile for his bulk, the caller meanwhile inspected the ceilings and
walls of this dainty domicile, mechanically striving to decipher a
painted allegory of Venus and Mars, or Helen and Paris, or the countess
and Francis--he could not decide precisely its purport--when she who
had succeeded Châteaubriant floated into the room, dressed in some
diaphanous stuff, a natural accompaniment to the other decorations; her
dishabille a positive note of modesty amid the vivid colorings and
graceful poses of those tributes to love with which Primaticcio and
other Italian artists had adorned this bower.
"How charming of you!" vaguely murmured the lady, sinking lightly upon
a settee. "What an early riser you must be, Duke."
Although it was then but two hours from noon, the visitor confessed
himself open to criticism in this regard. "And you, as well, Madam,"
he added, "must plead guilty of the same fault. One can easily see you
have been out in the garden, and," he blundered on, "stolen the tints
from the roses."
Sharply the countess looked at him, but read only an honest attempt at
a compliment.
"Why," she said, "you are becoming as great a flatterer as the rest of
them. But confess now, you did not call to tell me that?"
The free baron looked from her through the folding doors into a
retiring apartment, set with arabesque designs, and adorned with inlaid
tables bearing statues of alabaster and enamel. Purposely he waited
before he replied, and was gratified to see how curiously she regarded
him when again his glance returned to her.
"No, Madam," he answered, taking credit to himself for his diplomacy,
"it is not necessary that truth should be premeditated. I had a
serious purpose in seeking you. Of all the court you alone can assist
me; it is to you, only, I can look for aid. Knowing you generous, I
have ventured to come."
"What a serious preamble," smiled the lady. "How grave must be the
matter behind it!"
"The service I ask must be from the king," he went on, with seeming
embarrassment.
"Then why not go to his Majesty?" she interrupted, with the suggestion
of a frown.
"Because I should fail," he retorted, frankly. "The case is one
wherein a messenger--like yourself--a friend--may I so call you?--would
win, while I, a rough soldier, should but make myself ridiculous, the
laughing stock of the court."
"You interest me," she laughed. "It must be a pressing emergency when
you honor me--so early in the day."
"It is, Madam," he replied. "Very pressing to me. I want the wedding
day changed."
"Changed!" she exclaimed, staring at him. "Deferred?"
"No; hastened, Madam. It is too long to wait. Go to the king; ask him
to shorten the interval; to set the day sooner. I beg of you, Madam!"
His voice was hard and harsh. It seemed almost a demand he laid upon
her. Had he been less blunt or coercive, had he employed a more
honeyed appeal, she would not have felt so moved in his behalf. In the
atmosphere of adulation and blandishment to which she was accustomed,
the free baron offered a marked contrast to the fine-spoken courtiers,
and she leaned back and surveyed him as though he were a type of the
lords of creation she had not yet investigated.
"Oh, this is delicious!" purred the countess. "Samson in the toils!
His locks shorn by our fair Delilah!"
The thick-set soldier arose; muscular, well-knit, virile. "I fear I am
detaining you, Madam," he said, coldly.
"No; you're not," she answered, merrily. "Won't you be seated--please!
I should have known," she could not resist adding, "that love is as
sensitive as impatient."
"I see, Madam, that you have your mind made up to refuse me, and
therefore--"
"Refuse," repeated the favorite, surveying this unique petitioner with
rising amusement. "How do you read my mind so well?"
"Then you haven't determined to refuse me?" And he stepped toward her
quickly.
"No, I haven't," she answered, throwing back her head, like a spoiled
child. "On the contrary, I will be your messenger, your advocate, and
will plead your cause, and will win your case, and the king shall say
'yes,' and you shall have your princess whene'er you list. All this I
promise faithfully to do and perform. And now, if you want to leave me
so sullenly, go!"
But the free baron dropped awkwardly to his knee, took her little hand
in his massive one and raised it to his lips. "Madam, you overwhelm
me," he murmured.
"That is all very well," she commented, reflectively, "but what about
the princess? What will she say when--"
"It shall be my task to persuade her. I am sure she will consent,"
returned the suitor.
"Oh, you're sure of that?" observed the lady. "You have some faith in
your own powers of persuasion--in certain quarters!"
"Not in my powers, Madam, but in the princess' amiability."
"Perhaps you have spoken to her already?" asked the countess.
"No, Madam; without your assistance, of what use would be her
willingness?"
"What a responsibility you place on my weak shoulders!" cried the
other. "However, I will not shift the burden. I will go to his
Majesty at once. And do you"--gaily--"go to the princess."
"At your command!" he replied, and took his departure.
Without the inclosure of the château gardens, the free baron began to
review the events of the morning with complacency and satisfaction,
but, as he took up the threads of his case and examined them more
narrowly, his peace of mind was darkened with the shadow of a new
disquietude. What if Francis, less easily cozened than the countess,
should find his suspicions aroused? What if the princess, who had
immediately dismissed the fool's denouncement of the free baron as an
ebullition of blind jealousy--after informing her betrothed of the mad
accusation--should see in his request equivocal circumstances? Or, was
the countess--like many of her sisters--given to second thoughts, and
would this after-reverie dampen the ardor of her impetuous promise?
"But," thought the king's guest, banishing these assailing doubts,
"there never yet was victory assured before the battle had been fought,
and, with renewed precautions, defeat is most unlikely."
By the time he had reached this conclusion he had arrived at the
princess' door.