THE BLACK DOG OF AMBOISE
Blessed four-and-twenty. From the first breath of life until the last,
even though by reason of strength there be four-score years, is there a
more perfect age? The restraints of the schoolboy are left behind, the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil has scattered its fruit about
the feet, all sweet, all fresh in their newness, all a delight, even,
alas, the worst of them: that of the tree of life seems just within the
reach, and the burdens of the world are as yet on other men's backs.
Even if the Porter's Knot, which all must bear sooner or later, is
already on the shoulder, the light heart of four-and-twenty is
untroubled. It believes, in its optimism, that it will tumble the load
of carks and cares into the first ditch, and live in freedom ever after!
To Stephen La Mothe's four-and-twenty with the spirit of eighteen the
world of that May day was God's good world, and what better could it be
than that! If a full-leaved cherry tree, its ripening clusters rosy
red and waxen yellow against the dense greenery, flung shade across the
road he paused in his tramp, squared his shoulders, and drank a deep
breath of the cooler air; if the blazing sun sucked up a subtle, acrid
smell from the hot dust stirred by his feet he snuffed it up greedily
and found it good to live. A hawk in the air, a thrush whistling from
a hazel bush as only a thrush can whistle, the glorious yellow of a
break of whin, all were a delight.
"Heigh ho! Love is my life!
Live I in loving, and love I to live!"
he sang, and broke into a whistle almost as blithe as the thrush itself
that he might think more freely. Commines' gibe had come back to him,
and for pastime he would make a verse of his love song, let Ursula de
Vesc's eyes be blue, grey, or black!
"Live I in loving, and love I to live,"
was a good line, a line Francois Villon himself could not have
bettered, but how should the next line run?
"Heigho! Sweetest of strife!"
Strife! The word jarred the context, but where would he get a better?
Wife? Rife? Worse! both worse! Sweetest of strife--of strife--strife,
"Winning the dearest that life can give!"
No! that was not good, not good at all: Villon would have turned the
rhyme better than that. But then Villon, wild rogue though he was, was
a poet. The dearest life can give--the dearest? What was the dearest
life could give? As the question, idly asked, fastened on his mind his
whistle sobered into silence, and he plodded on through the dust,
seeing neither the sunshine nor the shade.
France came first, the King had said, and then had made it clear that
he was France. Was the King's service the dearest thing life could
give? In times of peace, when the millstones and the hearts of men
alike grind placidly, patriotism is a cold virtue, and even in the hot
passion of war it is often the magnetism of the individual man--the
personal leader--who wakens the enthusiasm of desperate courage rather
than the cause in whose name men die. Roland, La Mothe told himself,
might have roused such an enthusiasm, or Coeur de Lion, or Joan of Arc,
but never that fierce corpse of Valmy. And if the father was France,
what was the son--the twelve-year boy so dreaded and so loved? Was he
not France too? Did France plot against France? "All is not well at
Amboise," said the King. If that was true in the sense the father
meant it, what then? Was this dull ailing boy a double parricide to
his father's knowledge?
That, by the law of association of ideas, called up a new thought, and
a rush of warmth, which drew none of its heat from the sunshine,
flushed La Mothe. What if the boy, dull and neglected though he was,
hid such a love for the father as the father hid from the boy, and what
if cunning Stephen La Mothe should find it out and make this torn
France one in heart? And so, because however one follows the clues
through this maze of life they always lead to love at the end, La Mothe
broke into his song again:
"Heigh ho! Love is my life,
Live I in loving, and love I to live.
Heigh ho! Sweetest of strife,
Winning the dearest that life can give.
Love, who denied me,
Hast thou not tried me----
And now, plague take the verse, where is my rhyme for the end?"
But a turn of the road brought him to Limeray with the stream of the
Eisse flowing beyond. Another league and he would reach
Amboise--Amboise, where the shuttles of fate, the man and the woman,
Fear and Love as the King had called them, were waiting to weave into
the warp and woof of life a pattern which would never fade; Amboise,
where an end was to come--he had forgotten to ask Commines what end--an
end which in some obscure way was to serve Commines and serve France.
"If I lift a finger he hangs," said the King. That, no doubt, was the
human slime of the gutter who had roused Commines' contempt, and yet
who was his passport to the castle. A pretty passport, and one not
much to his credit, thought La Mothe, and fell to wondering if Ursula
de Vesc of the uncertain eyes would class them as birds of a
feather--Ursula who found Amboise dull and was to kiss the poet as
Margaret had kissed Alain Chartier. But Chartier had been asleep at
the time, while La Mothe promised himself he would be very much awake,
and then called himself slime of the gutter for the thought. This was
not the chivalry and respect for all women he had learned in Poitou.
Who was he that a woman, sweet and good he had no doubt, should kiss
him because Amboise was dull, and if she did would she be sweet and
good? He pulled a wry face and shook himself angrily, the thought was
like a bad taste in the mouth.
At Grand-Vouvray he forded the Loire, with Amboise sloping up from the
river in full sight, the red roofs of its houses, huddled almost
underneath the Château for protection, glowing yet more ruddily in the
setting sun, and entered the town by the Tours gate as Commines had
bidden him. Reared high above the town it at once awed and protected
was the grey castle, towered and turreted like a fortress, and fortress
it was,--fortress, palace, and prison in one. Round town and castle
alike lay the river, holding them in its embrace like a guardian arm,
and beyond stretched the rich fertility of the Orleannais.
The Chien Noir was easily found. It seemed as well known in Amboise as
Notre Dame in Paris, and from the warmth of his reception La Mothe
guessed shrewdly that his coming was expected. Innkeepers were not
prone to lavish welcomes on wandering minstrels who carried all their
world's gear on their back like any snail. For such light-hearted folk
an open window at night was an easier method of payment than an open
purse.
"A room and supper? Both, monsieur, and of the best. For the first
what do you say to this?" and the landlord threw open a door with a
flourish of pride. "Not in the Château itself will you find a better.
Two windows, as you see: bright by day and cool by night, with all the
life of the town passing up and down the road to keep you company if
you are dull, and the castle gates in full view so that none can go in
or out and you not know it. And for supper--I am my own cook and you
may trust Jean Saxe. Give me twenty minutes, monsieur, twenty little
minutes, and you'll say blessed be the Black Dog of Amboise!"
"And who are in the castle?"
"Two or three units with a dozen of noughts to their tail to give them
value; Monsieur de Commines----"
"Monsieur de Commines? Do you dare speak of Monsieur de Commines so
insolently?" burst out La Mothe, too indignant in his loyal devotion to
Commines to remember that a wandering singer ate the bread of
sufferance and had no opinions. But the innkeeper took no offence,
which again suggested that he had his own private opinion of the
knapsack and the lute.
"Monsieur, I meant no harm," he protested humbly. "I am Monsieur de
Commines' man--that is, the King's man--to the death."
"Well, let it pass. Who else are at the Château?"
"Mademoiselle de Vesc----"
"Does she come next in consequence? Why not the Dauphin?"
"Oh! The Dauphin!" and Jean Saxe blew out his lips in contempt. "We
who live in Amboise do not think great things of little Charles. To my
mind little Charles is one of the noughts. But wait till you go to the
Château and then you will understand for yourself."
"And why should I go to the Château?"
"Because they love music," and the fellow grinned knowingly as he
cocked a cunning eye at the exposed lute, "because there is another who
loves music and can open the doors and will say---- There! do you hear
him? La, lilla, la! La, la, lilla, la! He always sings over the
third bottle, and the King--God bless him--pays for all."
Opening the door to its widest Saxe stood aside listening, his head on
one side, his hand beckoning familiarly to La Mothe, as up the dark
well of stairs there came the rise and fall of a man's voice in a brisk
chant. No words could be caught, but the air ran trippingly, and if
the higher notes broke in a crack which told of age or misuse, or both
together, the lower ran clear and full, and the tune ran on with a
rollicking, careless awing which showed that, whoever might cavil, the
singer had at least one appreciative hearer--himself!
"A wonderful man, wonderful," whispered Saxe, his small eyes twinkling
with appreciation, but whether at the music or because the King paid
for all, La Mothe was uncertain. "A poet of poets, a drinker of
drinkers, and a shrewd, bitter-tongued devil drunk or sober. Not that
he grows drunk easily, not he! and always he sings at his third bottle."
"What is his name?"
"Whatever he chooses, monsieur, and so long as the King pays what does
a name matter? He serves the King as I do and--with great respect--as
you do also. Did I ask your name when you said, 'A room and supper'?
Not I!"
"I am called Stephen La Mothe."
"As you please, monsieur, and I don't doubt you will eat as good a
supper by that name as by any other. Give me twenty minutes and you
will say the Black Dog of Amboise is no cur."
Nor was Jean Saxe's boast unjustified. La Mothe not only supped but
ate, and with such satisfaction that in the peace of a healthy hunger
crowned with as healthy a digestion--unappreciated blessings of
four-and-twenty--he forgot alike King and Dauphin, Valmy and the Grey
Gates of Amboise in the shadows across the road.
But neither was allowed to remain forgotten. As he sat over the
remains of his supper, tapping out a verse of his love song with his
finger-tips on the table, the door from the common room of the inn was
opened and a man entered whom La Mothe at once guessed to be one of his
three good friends in Amboise. In one hand he carried a lighted
candle, in the other a great horn cup.
"Thanks, Jean," he said patronizingly, nodding towards the room he had
left as he spoke. "Close the door behind me, my good fellow: both my
hands are full." Then raising the candle, he turned and scrutinized La
Mothe with a curiosity as great as La Mothe's own and much more frankly
evident.
And he was worth studying, as a rare specimen is studied in the
difficulty of classification. If there were many such men in France La
Mothe had never yet met one of them. He was under middle height, the
jaunty, alert youthfulness of his slim figure, supple without great
strength, contradicted by the grey which shot with silver the thin hair
falling almost to his narrow shoulders, and, as La Mothe searched him
in the wavering, guttered candle-light, it flashed upon him that
contradiction was the note of all his characteristics. The weak chin
with the unkempt straggle of a beard gave the lie to a forehead
magnificent in its abundant strength of mental power: the promise of
the luminous, clear eyes was robbed of fulfilment by the loose mouth
with the slime of the gutter and sensuality of the beast writ large
upon its thick lips. From the thin peaked nose upwards it was the face
of a son of the gods who knew his parentage and birthright; but
downward that of a human swine who loved the foulness of the trough for
the trough's sake. A Poet of poets, said the eyes: Slime of the gutter
and old age unashamed of its shame, retorted the mouth; and both spoke
truth. Evidently his scrutiny satisfied him, for he heaved a sigh of
contentment as he drew nearer to La Mothe.
"The image of what I was at your age," he said, and again there was the
note of contradiction. The voice was the sweet, full voice of a
singer, but ruined at the first emotion into roughness by excess.
Placing the candlestick on the table he lifted La Mothe's wine bottle
and smelt it with slow carefulness, applying it first to one nostril
then to the other. "Vintage '63," he said appreciatively, "and that
animal Saxe fobs me off with '75."
"Then try my '63," said La Mothe, "and we shall see if Saxe has another
bottle of the same."
Promptly the contents of the horn mug were flung with a splash into the
open fireplace at La Mothe's back.
"Just what I was at your age! The same to a hair! A gay companion
generous of heart and purse. Yes," he went on, half seating himself on
the table-edge and sucking down the wine with slow appreciative gulps,
"'63; I knew I could not be mistaken, though it is four years since I
tasted it last. The palate, Monsieur La Mothe, is like nature and
never forgets. For that reason we should never outrage either."
"Four years!" repeated La Mothe with mock admiration, then remembering
that this was a poet of poets and should know his Villon, he quoted,
"'And where are the snows of Yester Year?'"
The narrow shoulders broadened with a start, the bright eyes grew yet
brighter, and a firmer set of the mouth gave the face that note of
strength it so sorely needed. If it were not that he was already deep
in his fourth bottle La Mothe would have said the wine had set his
blood on fire, warming him with a fictitious energy, so sudden and so
marked was the change.
"Ah ha!" he said, setting down the horn mug as he leaned towards La
Mothe, and this time the voice was as full and round as a woman's. "So
you know your Villon, do you? rascal that he was!"
"Was? Is Villon dead?"
"Dead! No! But his rascality is dead: dead but not forgotten!
Saints! what a dear sweet life it gave him while it lived, that same
rascality. 'Where are the snows of Yester Year?' That is the cry of
all the years after, say, four- or five-and-twenty." He paused, his
bright keen eyes watching La Mothe with a wistful humour in them, half
envious, half reminiscent. "Four-and-twenty! Up to that age it is,
Oh, for next year's suns! Oh, for the flowers of a new spring's
plucking! and ever after, 'Where are the snows of Yester Year?' I
think," he added, pursing his mouth reflectively, "that what the
priests call Hell is hot just because last year's snows never come
back."
"Gone!" said La Mothe, falling into his humour, "dead like Villon's
rascality, but as unforgotten. But are you sure Villon is alive?"
"Monsieur," and the little man slipped from the table-edge to his feet
and bowed, his eyes twinkling with an intense enjoyment, "I can vouch
for him as you can for Stephen La Mothe: I have the honour to present
to you Francois Villon, Master of Arts of Paris and of all the crafts
of this wicked world."