ENTER THIBAUT
Once again the door swung on its hinges admitting a very tall,
powerful man, dressed like a common soldier, his brawny bulk
panoplied in steel and leather. He glanced about him as he entered,
exchanged looks with René de Montigny and came down to the settle,
where he flung his vast body with a clatter while he called to the
landlord in a bull's bellow to bring him some wine.
Katherine leaning and looking gave a little gasp. "That is he!" she
breathed into Villon's ear. Villon gave an involuntary sigh, partly
indeed of satisfaction at the thought that his quarry was before
him, a very vast and royal stag for a hunter's hand to threaten, but
partly too of exquisite regret. It had been very sweet to crouch
there in the darkness of the stairway so close to the one fair woman
of all the world, to feel her breath upon his cheek, almost to hear
her heart-beats, to know that once if only for once they were alone
together and allied in a common purpose, to feel the touch of her
soft gown, to know that if he chose he could touch her hair with his
outstretched hand. Those seconds of strange intimacy seemed to be
worth all the rest of his life--and now they had come to an end. Now
he had to show that he deserved them. "Good," he said, and leaving
her side he softly descended the stairs, crept cat-foot across the
tavern floor and insinuated himself dexterously into the society of
his friends, who were by this time far too mad and merry to show any
surprise at his sudden re-appearance, or to question whence he came.
Only one of the fellowship was away from the board--René de
Montigny, who had risen as soon as the soldier had taken his seat by
the fireplace, and had come down to greet him in a seemingly
careless, off-hand fashion. Villon dexterously moving from friend to
friend managed to niche himself by the back of the settle where he
could catch some of the words that passed between Montigny and the
stranger, whose meeting was also the subject of unsuspected scrutiny
on the part of the unassuming burgesses who sat apart and to whom no
one now gave heed.
"A fine evening, friend," Montigny said affably.
"Pretty fine for the time of year," the soldier answered. "How is
your garden, friend?"
Montigny smiled whimsically.
"Very salubrious, if it were not for the shooting stars."
Then as the soldier stared at him he hastened to explain.
"My quip. The shooting star was a Burgundian arrow a cloth-yard long
which came winging its way over the walls at noon and made itself at
home in my garden. Here is what the arrow carried."
He pulled from his pouch a small piece of parchment folded and
sealed, and handed it to the seeming soldier. The disguised
constable took the missive and scanned it narrowly.
"The seal has not been tampered with," he said to himself. Ren
caught him up with a noble gesture of indignation.
"I never read other people's letters," he protested.
Thibaut shrugged his shoulders.
"It would have profited you little if you had," he said, as he broke
the seal and turning aside stooped a little to read by the faint
fire light what the letter said. It was couched in words that seemed
commonplace enough, but Thibaut knew their secret meaning, knew that
the Duke of Burgundy would do all that he asked, give him a duchy,
give him the girl he coveted, all that he might ask for or lust for
if he would only play the traitor and deliver Louis into the Duke of
Burgundy's hands. As this was precisely what Thibaut was resolved to
do, a pleased smile played over his lips as he tossed the parchment
into the glowing ashes and watched it wither into nothingness. He
turned to Montigny, who was watching him attentively.
"Can you command some safe rogues of your kidney who think better of
Burgundian gold than of the fool on the throne?"
Montigny answered him behind his hand. "Aye. I know of half a dozen
stout lads who would pilfer the king from his palace of the Louvre
if they were paid well enough for the job," and he jerked his thumb
over his shoulder in the direction of his carousing comrades.
Thibaut nodded approval. He thrust some gold into Montigny's ready
palm, whispered to him to meet him again to-morrow, and as Montigny
rejoined his friends he turned to leave the tavern.
To his surprise he found himself confronted by Villon, who feigning
intoxication barred his passage with an air of great hilarity. "You
walk abroad late, honest soldier," he hiccoughed.
"That's my business," Thibaut answered, trying to pass, but Villon
still delayed him.
"Don't be testy. Come and crack a bottle."
"I've had enough, and you've had more than enough," Thibaut growled.
"Go to bed!"
Villon's false good humour changed in a clap.
"You're a damned uncivil fellow, soldier, and don't know how to
treat a gentleman when you see one."
Thibaut began to lose patience.
"Get out of the way!" he said, and gave Villon a little push with
his open hand that made him stagger. Villon's voice rose to a yell.
"I will not get out of the way! How do I know you are an honest
soldier? How do I know that you are a true man?"
As Villon's voice rose the altercation attracted the attention of
the revellers. Montigny glided to Villon's side and whispered him.
"Let him alone, François; he's not what he seems."
"Seems! Who cares what he seems?" Villon shouted. "It's what he is I
want to know. Perhaps he's not an honest soldier at all. Perhap's
he's a damned Burgundian spy!"
Thibaut lifted his hand to crush Villon, but the poet's naked dagger
menaced him and he paused.
"Fling this drunken dog into the street," he commanded angrily.
Villon's friends snapped at him furiously. Villon flung back the
phrase.
"Drunken dog, indeed! You are a lying, ill-favoured knave! Keep the
door, friends, this rogue has insulted me. Pluck out your iron,
soldier!"
In a moment the whole pack were between Thibaut and the door, every
woman a fury, every man a fighter, every man with the exception of
René de Montigny, who, dexterously disentangling himself from the
mass of his companions, made for the side door and slipped out of it
unheeded in the confusion. It was his intention to alarm the watch
and intervene for the protection of his powerful patron, and with
this purpose in his mind he disappeared into the darkness of the
street and ran as fast as his legs could carry him.
In the meantime the quarrel at the Fircone raged hotter. Thibaut,
glaring at his enemies as a bull might glare at barking dogs, asked
savagely of the poet who was brandishing his sword:
"Who the devil are you?"
Villon flung has head back defiantly and flourished his sword.
"I am François Villon, and my sword is as good as another man's."
The moment the name fell on Thibaut's ears the giant gave a giant's
laugh.
"Are you François Villon?" he thundered. "Lend me a cudgel, some
one," and he looked around as if seeking for the weapon he asked
for..Villon snatched up a mug and flung the heel taps in the
soldier's face, spotting his cheeks with drops of crimson that
trickled on to his breast plate. With a choking cry of rage Thibaut
dragged his sword into the air.
"You fool," he hissed, "I'll kill you!"
"We shall see," Villon answered gallantly, as he stood on guard
alert and wary.
For a moment the he-rascals and she-rascals held their breath. The
great figure in the shining steel seemed so to dominate the slight
frame of their favourite that anything like an equal contest between
the two men seemed little less than ridiculous. What skill of
Villon's could hope to avail against the mighty sweep of that huge
soldier's weapon? Suddenly the swift spirit of Huguette solved the
problem. Springing forward with the delicate agility of a young
panther, she poised, opinionative, between the opponents.
"Fair play!" she screamed. "This is David and Goliath," and as she
spoke she pointed with one hand at Villon while with the other she
struck with her open palm a ringing blow on the cuirass of Villon's
antagonist. "Let them fight it out with sword and lantern in the
dark."
A loud shout of applause greeted the girl's suggestion. That
fantastic form of duello was not unfamiliar to the free companions
of the Court of Miracles, and Villon himself, eager as he was for
the combat, was keen enough to see how well this way might work for
the surety of his purpose. Skill, inches, tricks of fence, all
things were equal when men fought as shadows in shadowland.
"What do you say, Goliath?" he laughed, and the grim face of Thibaut
smiled responsive.
"As you please," he said, serenely confident in his strength and
length of arm. "It is all one to me." Then suddenly looking round on
the leering, sullen faces about him, a wolfish girdle of ferocity,
he caught back his agreement and held it for a moment. "On this
condition," he added. "When there is an end of you, there is an end
of the quarrel. Your friends here must agree to that."
Villon agreed on the instant. He was all for ridding the world of
Thibaut, but he wanted to do it himself for the sake of the white
girl crouching on the stairway.
"I promise," he said, "for myself and for them," and turning to the
girl, he insisted, "Promise, Huguette; swear it!"
"I swear it," Huguette answered.
"That is settled," said Villon. "Now, friends, make a ring and dowse
the glim."
In another instant, the preparations for the combat were afoot,
Robin Turgis, angrily protesting against the desecration of his
orderly hostelry and shouting wild words about summoning the watch,
was promptly overpowered by Jehan le Loup, who forced him on to a
bench and kept him there with a dagger's point at his throat. The
women huddled, screaming and excited, on the stairway a little below
the place where Katherine crouched, holding her breath and peeping
through the railings. The men stood behind tables and on benches,
while Casin Cholet and Colin de Cayeulx dived into the landlord's
quarters and reappeared bearing each in his hand a lighted lantern.
While these preparations were being hurried toward, Tristan, full of
alarm, leaned forward and plucked at the king's mantle.
"This must be put a stop to, sire," he whispered; but the king shook
his head with a grim smile of satisfaction.
"On the contrary, gossip," he answered, "whichever of these rascals
kills the other, does the state a service and saves the hangman some
labour."
Villon crossed the room and came close to where Thibaut waited
sullen. "I think I shall square our reckoning, Master Thibaut," he
whispered. The giant stared at him. "You know me?" he gasped. "Your
varlets thumped me yesterday," Villon answered. "I shall tickle you
to-day. Turn, turn about, friend Thibaut."
Even as he spoke Guy Tabarie puffed out the last candle left alight
in the room, which was plunged instantly into almost total darkness.
Even the faint moonlight that had come through the window was
swiftly veiled by Huguette, who drew the crimson curtains close
together. The dim light from the fire only seemed to accentuate and
intensify the darkness through which the two lanterns burned, pale
planets of yellow fire, in the hands of Casin and Colin. Villon
snatched the one and Thibaut took the other. There was a moment of
intense silence; then the voice of Huguette cried out of the
blackness: "Are you ready?"
Both combatants cried, "Yes!" in the same breath, and in the next
the battle began.
No stranger fight had ever been fought within those walls before, or
even perhaps within the walls of Paris. In the dense obscurity the
two antagonists groped for each other, alternately guided and
baffled by the light of the lanterns, as their holder lifted his
light suddenly in the air or dexterously concealed it under the fold
of his mantle. Every now and then the swords would meet with a
clash, there would be a hurried exchange of thrust and blow, and
then the adversaries would drift back again to grope and gleam and
seek each other anew, their lanterns flashing and disappearing like
accentuated glow-worms, and their blades now shining in sudden
illumination like streaks of blue lightning across the blackness and
now invisible even to those who held them in their hands.
Tristan had in vain endeavoured to persuade the king to leave before
the preliminaries for the fantastic strife had been completed, but
Louis was firm in his determination to remain.
"I would not miss this for the world, man," he had insisted. All his
childlike delight in the adventurous was being sated to the full
this evening, and there was no happier man at that moment in the
kingdom than the man who by strange fortune was its king.
The fight persisted for some minutes that seemed like hours to more
than one of the anxious spectators. Now the room would be steeped in
the deepest silence, and now, as the revealed lantern glowed and the
naked weapons met, some woman's scream or some man's suppressed oath
would fill the place with a sense of watching, eager humanity.
Suddenly, when the tension of watcher and watched was keenest, there
came a mighty crashing at the door and a voice shouted loudly a
summons to open in the king's name.
Tristan knew well enough what the summons meant. "It is the watch,
sire," he whispered to the king.
Thibaut too, groping for his nimble antagonist and beginning to
despair of crushing the man, heard and understood the summons. He
was tired of the baffling struggle.
"Open the door!" he shouted noisily, and the cry stirred Villon to a
more vehement assault. He sprang like a cat at the giant, flashed
the lantern dazzlingly in his eyes, and as Thibaut, furious, made a
wild lunge at him, Villon dexterously swung his lantern on to his
enemy's sword point and in another second had driven his own blade
into Thibaut's side.
"Not so fast, rat-catcher!" he shouted exultantly, and as Thibaut
fell with a heavy crash of rattling armour on the floor, the door
was dashed open and the armed watch poured in with blazing torches,
filling the room with light and armoured men. François, after a
moment's glance of triumph at the fallen giant, sprang round and
glanced up at the gallery.
Katherine, standing, leaned over the balustrade and flung a knot of
ribbon to her champion, who caught it as it skimmed through the air,
pressed it to his lips and thrust it into the bosom of his jerkin.
In another moment Katherine had disappeared and Villon found himself
roughly held in the strong grasp of two soldiers, while the captain
of the watch surveyed the scene with some astonishment, and the
rogues were overawed by the bills of the new-comers.
"What is this tumult?" the captain demanded. Villon answered him
airily, smiling over the crossed pikes that penned him.
"A fair fight, good captain, conducted according to the honourable
laws of sword and lantern."
The captain of the watch turned his attention to Thibaut, who,
assisted by one of the soldiers, had raised himself upon one elbow
and was glaring vindictively at Villon.
"Who is this man?" he asked.
A desire for revenge got the better of the wounded man's discretion.
"I am Thibaut d'Aussigny," he gasped. "I am the Grand Constable."
A little shiver of surprise and alarm ran round the room at the
sound of that dreaded name. The captain of the watch kneeled in
salutation.
"Monseigneur," he said, "how did this happen?" Thibaut's senses were
running away from him with his running blood, but malignity
overcrowed weakness for a moment. He pointed at Villon. "Take that
fellow and hang him on the nearest lantern," and as he spoke he
swooned. Promptly the captain turned towards his prisoner. "Take
that fellow outside and hang him," he commanded curtly. Villon
glanced wildly about for a way to escape and saw none. His friends
gave a groan of sympathy, but they could do no more, for the
soldiers overawed them. Huguette flung her arms about him, sobbing.
The grasp of his captors tightened and Villon shivered at the clasp.
Suddenly the little insignificant burgess at the table rose and
advanced towards the soldier.
"Stop, sir," he said imperatively. "That young gentleman is my
affair." The soldier turned angrily upon the interfering citizen.
"Who are you," he growled, "who dare to interfere with the king's
justice?"
The citizen pulled his heavy cap from his head and revealed the
wrinkled, eager visage that was so well known and so well feared.
"I am the king's justice," he said simply, while Tristan behind him
cried "God save the king!" and the astonished soldier bent the knee
in homage. Villon, staring, dumfounded, caught the humour of the
situation and could not hold his tongue.
"The king! Good Lord!" he said, and punctuated his comment with a
prolonged whistle.