A ROYAL PERIL.
The elation with which I had heard the king announce his resolution
quickly diminished on cooler reflection. It stood in particular at a
very low ebb as I waited, an hour later, at the little north postern
of the Castle, and, cowering within the shelter of the arch to escape
the wind, debated whether his Majesty's energy would sustain him to
the point of action, or whether he might not, in one of those fits of
treacherous vacillation which had again and again marred his plans,
send those to keep the appointment who would give a final account of
me. The longer I considered his character the more dubious I grew. The
loneliness of the situation, the darkness, the black front, unbroken
by any glimmer of light, which the Castle presented on this side, and
the unusual and gloomy stillness which lay upon the town, all
contributed to increase my uneasiness. It was with apprehension as
well as relief that I caught at last the sound of footsteps on the
stone staircase, and, standing a little to one side, saw a streak of
light appear at the foot of the door.
On the latter being partially opened a voice cried my name. I advanced
with caution and showed myself. A brief conversation ensued between
two or three persons who stood within; but in the end, a masked
figure, which I had no difficulty in identifying as the king, stepped
briskly out.
'You are armed?' he said, pausing a second opposite me.
I put back my cloak and showed him, by the light which streamed from
the doorway, that I carried pistols as well as a sword.
'Good!' he answered briefly; 'then let us go. Do you walk on my left
hand, my friend. It is a dark night, is it not?'
'Very dark, sire,' I said.
He made no answer to this, and we started, proceeding with caution
until we had crossed the narrow bridge, and then with greater freedom
and at a better pace. The slenderness of the attendance at Court that
evening, and the cold wind, which swept even the narrowest streets and
drove roisterers indoors, rendered it unlikely that we should be
stopped or molested by any except professed thieves; and for these I
was prepared. The king showed no inclination to talk; and keeping
silence myself out of respect, I had time to calculate the chances and
to consider whether his Majesty would succeed where I had failed.
This calculation, which was not inconsistent with the keenest
watchfulness on my part whenever we turned a corner or passed the
mouth of an alley, was brought to an end by our safe arrival at the
house. Briefly apologising to the king for the meanness and darkness
of the staircase, I begged leave to precede him, and rapidly mounted
until I met Maignan. Whispering to him that all was well, I did not
wait to hear his answer, but, bidding him be on the watch, I led the
king on with as much deference as was possible until we stood at the
door of mademoiselle's apartment, which I have elsewhere stated to
consist of an outer and inner room. The door was opened by Simon
Fleix, and him I promptly sent out. Then, standing aside and
uncovering, I begged the king to enter.
He did so, still wearing his hat and mask, and I followed and secured
the door. A lamp hanging from the ceiling diffused an imperfect light
through the room, which was smaller but more comfortable in appearance
than that which I rented overhead. I observed that Fanchette, whose
harsh countenance looked more forbidding than usual, occupied a stool
which she had set in a strange fashion against the inner door; but I
thought no more of this at the moment, my attention passing quickly to
mademoiselle, who sat crouching before the fire, enveloped in a large
outdoor cloak, as if she felt the cold. Her back was towards us, and
she was, or pretended to be, still ignorant of our presence. With a
muttered word I pointed her out to the king, and went towards her with
him.
'Mademoiselle,' I said in a low voice, 'Mademoiselle de la Vire! I
have the honour----'
She would not turn, and I stopped. Clearly she heard, but she betrayed
that she did so only by drawing her cloak more closely round her.
Primed by my respect for the king, I touched her lightly on the
shoulder. 'Mademoiselle!' I said impatiently, 'you are not aware of
it, but----'
She shook herself free from my hand with so rude a gesture that I
broke off, and stood gaping foolishly at her. The king smiled, and
nodding to me to step back a pace, took the task on himself.
'Mademoiselle,' he said with dignity, 'I am not accustomed----'
His voice had a magical effect. Before he could add another word she
sprang up as if she had been struck, and faced us, a cry of alarm on
her lips. Simultaneously we both cried out too, for it was not
mademoiselle at all. The woman who confronted us, her hand on her
mask, her eyes glittering through the slits, was of a taller and
fuller figure. We stared at her. Then a lock of bright golden hair
which had escaped from the hood of her cloak gave us the clue.
'Madame!' the king cried.
'Madame de Bruhl!' I echoed, my astonishment greater than his.
Seeing herself known, she began with trembling fingers to undo the
fastenings of her mask; but the king, who had hitherto displayed a
trustfulness I had not expected in him, had taken alarm at sight of
her, as at a thing unlocked for, and of which I had not warned him.
'How is this?' he said harshly, drawing back a pace from her and
regarding me with anger and distrust. 'Is this some pretty arrangement
of yours, sir? Am I an intruder at an assignation, or is this a trap
with M. de Bruhl in the background? Answer, sirrah!' he continued,
working himself rapidly into a passion. 'Which am I to understand is
the case?'
'Neither, sire,' I answered with as much dignity as I could assume,
utterly surprised and mystified as I was by Madame's presence. 'Your
Majesty wrongs Madame de Bruhl as much by the one suspicion as you
injure me by the other. I am equally in the dark with you, sire, and
as little expected to see madame here.'
'I came, sire,' she said proudly, addressing herself to the king, and
ignoring me, 'out of no love to M. de Marsac, but as any person
bearing a message to him might come. Nor can you, sire,' she added
with spirit, 'feel half as much surprise at seeing me here, as I at
seeing your Majesty.'
'I can believe that,' the king answered drily. 'I would you had not
seen me.'
'The King of France is seen only when he chooses,' she replied,
curtseying to the ground.
'Good,' he answered. 'Let it be so, and you will oblige the King of
France, madame. But enough,' he continued, turning from her to me;
'since this is not the lady I came to see, M. de Marsac, where is
she?'
'In the inner room, sire, I opine,' I said, advancing to Fanchette
with more misgiving at heart than my manner evinced. 'Your mistress is
here, is she not?' I continued, addressing the woman sharply.
'Ay, and will not come out,' she rejoined, sturdily keeping her place.
'Nonsense!' I said. 'Tell her----'
'You may tell her what you please,' she replied, refusing to budge an
inch. 'She can hear.'
'But, woman!' I cried impatiently, 'you do not understand. I _must_
speak with her. I must speak with her at once! On business of the
highest importance.'
'As you please,' she said rudely, still keeping her seat. 'I have told
you you can speak.'
Perhaps I felt as foolish on this occasion as ever in my life; and
surely never was man placed in a more ridiculous position. After
overcoming numberless obstacles, and escaping as many perils, I had
brought the king here, a feat beyond my highest hopes--only to be
baffled and defeated by a waiting-woman! I stood irresolute; witless
and confused; while the king waited half angry and half amused, and
madame kept her place by the entrance, to which she had retreated.
I was delivered from my dilemma by the curiosity which is,
providentially perhaps, a part of woman's character, and which led
mademoiselle to interfere herself. Keenly on the watch inside, she had
heard part of what passed between us, and been rendered inquisitive by
the sound of a strange man's voice, and by the deference which she
could discern I paid to the visitor. At this moment, she cried out,
accordingly, to know who was there; and Fanchette, seeming to take
this as a command, rose and dragged her stool aside, saying peevishly
and without any increase of respect, 'There, I told you she could
hear.'
'Who is it?' mademoiselle asked again, in a raised voice.
I was about to answer when the king signed to me to stand back, and,
advancing himself, knocked gently on the door. 'Open, I pray you,
mademoiselle,' he said courteously.
'Who is there?' she cried again, her voice trembling.
'It is I, the king,' he answered softly; but in that tone of majesty
which belongs not to the man, but to the descendant, and seems to be
the outcome of centuries of command.
She uttered an exclamation and slowly, and with seeming reluctance,
turned the key in the lock. It grated, and the door opened. I caught a
glimpse for an instant of her pale face and bright eyes, and then his
Majesty, removing his hat, passed in and closed the door; and I
withdrew to the farther end of the room, where madame continued to
stand by the entrance.
I entertained a suspicion, I remember, and not unnaturally, that she
had come to my lodging as her husband's spy; but her first words when
I joined her dispelled this. 'Quick!' she said with an imperious
gesture. 'Hear me and let me go! I have waited long enough for you,
and suffered enough through you. As for that woman in there, she is
mad, and her servant too! Now, listen to me. You spoke to me honestly
to-day, and I have come to repay you. You have an appointment with my
husband to-morrow at Chaverny. Is it not so?' she added impatiently.
I replied that it was so.
'You are to go with one friend,' she went on, tearing the glove she
had taken off, to strips in her excitement. 'He is to meet you with
one also?'
'Yes,' I assented reluctantly, 'at the bridge, madame.'
'Then do not go,' she rejoined emphatically. 'Shame on me that I
should betray my husband; but it were worse to send an innocent man to
his death. He will meet you with one sword only, according to his
challenge, but there will be those under the bridge who will make
certain work. There, I have betrayed him now!' she continued bitterly.
'It is done. Let me go!'
'Nay, but, madame,' I said, feeling more concerned for her, on whom
from the first moment of meeting her I had brought nothing but
misfortune, than surprised by this new treachery on his part, 'will
you not run some risk in returning to him? Is there nothing I can do
for you--no step I can take for your protection?'
'None!' she said repellently and almost rudely, 'except to speed my
going.'
'But you will not pass through the streets alone?'
She laughed so bitterly my heart ached for her. 'The unhappy are
always safe,' she said.
Remembering how short a time it was since I had surprised her in the
first happiness of wedded love, I felt for her all the pity it was
natural I should feel. But the responsibility under which his
Majesty's presence and the charge of mademoiselle laid me forbade me
to indulge in the luxury of evincing my gratitude. Gladly would I have
escorted her back to her home--even if I could not make that home
again what it had been, or restore her husband to the pinnacle from
which I had dashed him--but I dared not do this. I was forced to
content myself with less, and was about to offer to send one of my men
with her, when a hurried knocking at the outer door arrested the words
on my lips.
Signing to her to stand still, I listened. The knocking was repeated,
and grew each moment more urgent. There was a little grille, strongly
wired, in the upper part of the door, and this I was about to open in
order to learn what was amiss, when Simon's voice reached me from the
farther side imploring me to open the door quickly. Doubting the lad's
prudence, yet afraid to refuse lest I should lose some warning he had
to give, I paused a second, and then undid the fastenings. The moment
the door gave way he fell in bodily, crying out to me to bar it behind
him. I caught a glimpse through the gap of a glare as of torches, and
saw by this light half a dozen flushed faces in the act of rising
above the edge of the landing. The men who owned them raised a shout
of triumph at sight of me, and, clearing the upper steps at a bound,
made a rush for the door. But in vain. We had just time to close it
and drop the two stout bars. In a moment, in a second, the fierce
outcry fell to a dull roar; and safe for the time, we had leisure to
look in one another's faces and learn the different aspects of alarm.
Madame was white to the lips, while Simon's eyes seemed starting from
his head, and he shook in every limb with terror.
At first, on my asking him what it meant, he could not speak. But that
would not do, and I was in the act of seizing him by the collar to
force an answer from him when the inner door opened, and the king came
out, his face wearing an air of so much cheerfulness as proved both
his satisfaction with mademoiselle's story and his ignorance of all we
were about. In a word he had not yet taken the least alarm; but seeing
Simon in my hands, and madame leaning against the wall by the door
like one deprived of life, he stood and cried out in surprise to know
what it was.
'I fear we are besieged, sire,' I answered desperately, feeling my
anxieties increased a hundredfold by his appearance--'but by whom I
cannot say. This lad knows, however,' I continued, giving Simon a
vicious shake, 'and he shall speak. Now, trembler,' I said to him,
'tell your tale?'
'The Provost-Marshal!' he stammered, terrified afresh by the king's
presence: for Henry had removed his mask. 'I was on guard below. I had
come up a few steps to be out of the cold, when I heard them enter.
There are a round score of them.'
I cried out a great oath, asking him why he had not gone up and warned
Maignan, who with his men was now cut off from us in the rooms above.
'You fool!' I continued, almost beside myself with rage, 'if you had
not come to this door they would have mounted to my rooms and beset
them! What is this folly about the Provost-Marshal?'
'He is there,' Simon answered, cowering away from me, his face
working.
I thought he was lying, and had merely fancied this in his fright. But
the assailants at this moment began to hail blows on the door, calling
on us to open, and using such volleys of threats as penetrated even
the thickness of the oak; driving the blood from the women's cheeks,
and arresting the king's step in a manner which did not escape me.
Among their cries I could plainly distinguish the words, 'In the
king's name!' which bore out Simon's statement.
At the moment I drew comfort from this; for if we had merely to deal
with the law we had that on our side which was above it. And I
speedily made up my mind what to do. 'I think the lad speaks the
truth, sire,' I said coolly. 'This is only your Majesty's
Provost-Marshal. The worst to be feared, therefore, is that he may
learn your presence here before you would have it known. It should not
be a matter of great difficulty, however, to bind him to silence, and
if you will please to mask, I will open the grille and speak with
him.'
The king, who had taken his stand in the middle of the room, and
seemed dazed and confused by the suddenness of the alarm and the
uproar, assented with a brief word. Accordingly I was preparing to
open the grille when Madame de Bruhl seized my arm, and forcibly
pushed me back from it.
'What would you do?' she cried, her face full of terror. 'Do you not
hear? He is there.'
'Who is there?' I said, startled more by her manner than her words.
'Who?' she answered; 'who should be there? My husband! I hear his
voice, I tell you! He has tracked me here! He has found me, and will
kill me!'
'God forbid!' I said, doubting if she had really heard his voice. To
make sure, I asked Simon if he had seen him; and my heart sank when I
heard from him too that Bruhl was of the party. For the first time I
became fully sensible of the danger which threatened us. For the first
time, looking round the ill-lit room on the women's terrified faces,
and the king's masked figure instinct with ill-repressed nervousness,
I recognised how hopelessly we were enmeshed. Fortune had served Bruhl
so well that, whether he knew it or not, he had us all trapped--alike
the king whom he desired to compromise, and his wife whom he hated,
mademoiselle who had once escaped him, and me who had twice thwarted
him. It was little to be wondered at if my courage sank as I looked
from one to another, and listened to the ominous creaking of the door,
as the stout panels complained under the blows rained upon them. For
my first duty, and that which took the _pas_ of all others, was to the
king--to save him harmless. How, then, was I to be answerable for
mademoiselle, how protect Madame de Bruhl?--how, in a word, redeem all
those pledges in which my honour was concerned?
It was the thought of the Provost-Marshal which at this moment rallied
my failing spirits. I remembered that until the mystery of his
presence here in alliance with Bruhl was explained there was no need
to despair; and turning briskly to the king I begged him to favour me
by standing with the women in a corner which was not visible from the
door. He complied mechanically, and in a manner which I did not like;
but lacking time to weigh trifles, I turned to the grille and opened
it without more ado.
The appearance of my face at the trap was greeted with a savage cry of
recognition, which subsided as quickly into silence. It was followed
by a momentary pushing to and fro among the crowd outside, which in
its turn ended in the Provost-Marshal coming to the front. 'In the
king's name!' he said fussily.
'What is it?' I replied, eyeing rather the flushed, eager faces which
scowled over his shoulders than himself. The light of two links, borne
by some of the party, shone ruddily on the heads of the halberds, and,
flaring up from time to time, filled all the place with wavering,
smoky light. 'What do you want?' I continued, 'rousing my lodging at
this time of night?'
'I hold a warrant for your arrest,' he replied bluntly. 'Resistance
will be vain. If you do not surrender I shall send for a ram to break
in the door.'
'Where is your order?' I said sharply. 'The one you held this morning
was cancelled by the king himself.'
'Suspended only,' he answered. 'Suspended only. It was given out to me
again this evening for instant execution. And I am here in pursuance
of it, and call on you to surrender.'
'Who delivered it to you?' I retorted.
'M. de Villequier, 'he answered readily. 'And here it is. Now, come,
sir,' he continued, 'you are only making matters worse. Open to us.'
'Before I do so,' I said drily, 'I should like to know what part in
the pageant my friend M. de Bruhl, whom I see on the stairs yonder,
proposes to play. And there is my old friend Fresnoy,' I added. 'And I
see one or two others whom I know, M. Provost. Before I surrender I
must know among other things what M. de Bruhl's business is here.'
'It is the business of every loyal man to execute the king's warrant,'
the Provost answered evasively. 'It is yours to surrender, and mine to
lodge you in the Castle. But I am loth to have a disturbance. I will
give you until that torch goes out, if you like, to make up your mind.
At the end of that time, if you do not surrender, I shall batter down
the door.'
'You will give the torch fair play?' I said, noting its condition.
He assented; and thanking him sternly for this indulgence, I closed
the grille.