The next day at noon, as her Majesty had advised the seigneur, De la
Forêt was ushered into the presence. The Queen’s eye quickened as she
saw him, and she remarked with secret pleasure the figure and bearing
of this young captain of the Huguenots. She loved physical grace and
prowess with a full heart. The day had almost passed when she would
measure all men against Leicester in his favor; and he, knowing this
clearly now, saw with haughty anxiety the gradual passing of his
power, and clutched futilely at the vanishing substance. Thus it was
that he now spent his strength in getting his way with the Queen in
little things. She had been so long used to take his counsel--in some
part wise and skilful that when she at length did without it or
followed her own mind, it became a fever with him to let no chance
pass for serving his own will by persuading her out of hers. This
was why he had spent an hour the day before in sadly yet
vaguely reproaching her for the slight she put upon him in the
presence-chamber by her frown, and another in urging her to come to
terms with Catherine dé Medici in this small affair--since the
Frenchwoman had set her revengeful heart upon it--that larger matters
might be settled to the gain of England. It was not so much that he
had reason to destroy De la Forêt as that he saw that the Queen was
disposed to deal friendly by him and protect him. He did not see the
danger of rousing in the Queen the same unreasoning tenaciousness of
will upon just such lesser things as might well be left to her
advisers. In spite of which he almost succeeded, this very day, in
regaining, for a time at least, the ground he had lost with her. He
had never been so adroit, so brilliant, so witty, so insinuating; and
he left her with the feeling that if he had his way concerning De la
Forêt--a mere stubborn whim, with no fair reason behind it--his
influence would be again securely set. The sense of crisis was on
him.
On Michel de la Forêt entering the presence the Queen’s attention had
become riveted. She felt in him a spirit of mastery yet of unselfish
purpose. Here was one, she thought, who might well be in her
household or leading a regiment of her troops. The clear, fresh face,
curling hair, direct look, quiet energy, and air of nobility--this
sort of man could only be begotten of a great cause; he were not
possible in idle or prosperous times.
Elizabeth looked him up and down, then affected surprise. “Monsieur
de la Forêt,” she said, “I do not recognize you in this
attire”--glancing towards his dress.
De la Forêt bowed, and Elizabeth continued, looking at a paper in her
hand: “You landed on our shores of Jersey in the robes of a priest of
France. The passport for a priest of France was found upon your
person when our officers in Jersey made search of you. Which is
yourself--Michel de la Forêt, soldier, or a priest of France?”
De la Forêt replied, gravely, that he was a soldier and that the
priestly dress had been but a disguise.
“In which papist attire, methinks, Michel de la Forêt, soldier and
Huguenot, must have been ill at ease--the eagle with the vulture’s
wing. What say you, monsieur?”
“That vulture’s wing hath carried me to a safe dove-cote, your
gracious Majesty,” he answered, with a low obeisance.
“I’m none so sure of that, monsieur,” was Elizabeth’s answer, and she
glanced quizzically at Leicester, who made a gesture of annoyance.
“Our cousin, France, makes you to us a dark intriguer and
conspirator, a dangerous weed in our good garden of England, a
‘troublous, treacherous violence’--such are you called, monsieur.”
“I am in your high Majesty’s power,” he answered, “to do with me as
it seemeth best. If your Majesty wills it that I be returned to
France, I pray you set me upon its coast as I came from it, a
fugitive. Thence will I try to find my way to the army and the poor,
stricken people of whom I was. I pray for that only, and not to be
given to the red hand of the Medici.”
“Red hand--by my faith, but you are bold, monsieur!”
Leicester tapped his foot upon the floor impatiently, then caught the
Queen’s eye and gave her a meaning look.
De la Forêt saw the look and knew his enemy, but he did not quail.
“Bold only by your high Majesty’s faith, indeed,” he answered the
Queen, with harmless guile.
Elizabeth smiled. She loved such nattering speech from a strong man.
It touched a chord in her deeper than that under Leicester’s finger.
Leicester’s impatience only made her more self-willed on the instant.
“You speak with the trumpet note, monsieur,” she said to De la Forêt.
“We will prove you. You shall have a company in my Lord Leicester’s
army here, and we will send you upon some service worthy of your
fame.”
“I crave your Majesty’s pardon, but I cannot do it,” was De la
Forêt’s instant reply. “I have sworn that I will lift my sword in
one cause only, and to that I must stand. And more--the widow of my
dead chief, Gabriel de Montgomery, is set down in this land
unsheltered and alone. I have sworn to one who loves her, and for my
dead chief’s sake, that I will serve her and be near her until better
days be come and she may return in quietness to France. In exile we
few stricken folk must stand together, your august Majesty.”
Elizabeth’s eye flashed up. She was impatient of refusal of her
favor. She was also a woman, and that De la Forêt should flaunt his
devotion to another woman was little to her liking. The woman in her,
which had never been blessed with a noble love, was roused. The
sourness of a childless, uncompanionable life was stronger for the
moment than her strong mind and sense.
“Monsieur has sworn this, and monsieur has sworn that,” she said,
petulantly--“and to one who loveth a lady, and for a cause--tut! tut!
tut!--”
Suddenly a kind of intriguing laugh leaped into her eye, and she
turned to Leicester and whispered in his ear. Leicester frowned, then
smiled, and glanced up and down De la Forêt’s figure impertinently.
“See, Monsieur de la Forêt,” she added, “since you will not fight,
you shall preach. A priest you came into my kingdom, and a priest you
shall remain; but you shall preach good English doctrine and no
Popish folly.”
De la Forêt started, then composed himself, and before he had time to
reply Elizabeth continued:
“Partly for your own sake am I thus gracious, for as a preacher of
the Word I have not need to give you up, according to agreement with
our brother of France. As a rebel and conspirator I were bound to do
so, unless you were an officer of my army. The Seigneur of Rozel has
spoken for you, and the Comtesse de Montgomery has written a pleading
letter. Also I have from another source a tearful prayer--the ink is
scare dry upon it--which has been of service to you. But I myself
have chosen this way of escape for you. Prove yourself worthy and
all may be well--but prove yourself you shall. You have prepared your
own brine, monsieur; in it you shall pickle.”
She smiled a sour smile, for she was piqued, and added: “Do you think
I will have you here squiring of distressed dames save as a priest?
You shall hence to Madame of Montgomery as her faithful chaplain,
once I have heard you preach and know your doctrine.”
Leicester almost laughed outright in the young man’s face now, for he
had no thought that De la Forêt would accept, and refusal meant the
exile’s doom.
It seemed fantastic that this noble gentleman, this very type of the
perfect soldier, with the brown face of a Romany and an athletic
valor of body, should become a preacher even in necessity.
Elizabeth, seeing De la Forêt’s dumb amazement and anxiety, spoke up
sharply: “Do this, or get you hence to the Medici, and Madame of
Montgomery shall mourn her protector, and mademoiselle, your mistress
of the vermilion cheek, shall have one lover the less, which,
methinks, our Seigneur of Rozel would thank me for.”
De la Forêt started, his lips pressed firmly together in effort of
restraint. There seemed little the Queen did not know concerning him,
and reference to Angèle roused him to sharp solicitude.
“Well, well?” asked Elizabeth, impatiently, then made a motion to
Leicester, and he, going to the door, bade some one to enter.
There stepped inside the Seigneur of Rozel, who made a lumbering
obeisance, then got to his knees before the Queen.
“You have brought the lady safely--with her father?” she asked.
Lemprière, puzzled, looked inquiringly at the Queen, then replied,
“Both are safe without, your infinite Majesty.”
De la Forêt’s face grew pale. He knew now for the first time that
Angèle and her father were in England, and he looked Lemprière
suspiciously in the eyes; but the swaggering seigneur met his look
frankly, and bowed with ponderous and genial gravity.
Now De la Forêt spoke. “Your high Majesty,” said he, “if I may ask
Mademoiselle Aubert one question in your presence--”
“Your answer now; the lady in due season,” interposed the Queen.
“She was betrothed to a soldier, she may resent a priest,” said De la
Forêt, with a touch of humor, for he saw the better way was to take
the matter with some outward ease.
Elizabeth smiled. “It is the custom of her sex to have a fondness for
both,” she answered, with an acid smile. “But your answer?”
De la Forêt’s face became exceeding grave. Bowing his head, he said:
“My sword has spoken freely for the cause; God forbid that my tongue
should not speak also. I will do your Majesty’s behest.”
The jesting word that was upon the royal lips came not forth, for De
la Forêt’s face was that of a man who had determined a great thing,
and Elizabeth was one who had a heart for high deeds. “The man is
brave indeed,” she said, under her breath, and, turning to the
dumfounded seigneur, bade him bring in Mademoiselle Aubert.
A moment later, Angèle entered, came a few steps forward, made
obeisance, and stood still. She showed no trepidation, but looked
before her steadily. She knew not what was to be required of her--she
was a stranger in a strange land; but persecution and exile had gone
far to strengthen her spirit and greaten her composure.
Elizabeth gazed at the girl coldly and critically. To women she was
not over-amiable; but as she looked at the young Huguenot maid, of
this calm bearing, warm of color, clear of eye, and purposeful of
face, something kindled in her. Most like it was that love for a
cause which was more to be encouraged by her than any woman’s love
for a man, which, as she grew older, inspired her with aversion, as
talk of marriage brought cynical allusions to her lips.
“I have your letter and its protests and its pleadings. There were
fine words and adjurations--are you so religious, then?” she asked,
brusquely.
“I am a Huguenot, your noble Majesty,” answered the girl, as though
that answered all.
“How is it, then, you are betrothed to a roistering soldier?” asked
the Queen.
“Some must pray for Christ’s sake, and some must fight, your most
Christian Majesty,” answered the girl.
“Some must do both,” rejoined the Queen, in a kinder voice, for the
pure spirit of the girl worked upon her. “I am told that Monsieur de
la Forêt fights fairly. If he can pray as well, methinks he shall
have safety in our kingdom, and ye shall all have peace. On Trinity
Sunday you shall preach in my chapel, Monsieur de la Forêt, and
thereafter you shall know your fate.”
She rose. “My lord,” she said to Leicester, on whose face gloom had
settled, “you will tell the Lord Chamberlain that Monsieur de la
Forêt’s durance must be made comfortable in the west tower of my
palace till chapel-going of Trinity Day. I will send him for his
comfort and instruction some sermons of Latimer’s.”
She stepped down from the dais. “You will come with me, mistress,”
she said to Angèle, and reached out her hand.
Angèle fell on her knees and kissed it, tears falling down her cheek,
then rose and followed the Queen from the chamber. She greatly
desired to look backward towards De la Forêt, but some good angel
bade her not; she realized that to offend the Queen at this moment
might ruin all; and Elizabeth herself was little like to offer chance
for farewell and love-tokens.
So it was that, with bowed head, Angèle left the room with the Queen
of England, leaving Lemprière and De la Forêt gazing at each other,
the one bewildered, the other lost in painful reverie, and Leicester
smiling maliciously at them both.
X
Every man, if you bring him to the right point, if you touch him in
the corner where he is most sensitive, where he most lives, as it
were; if you prick his nerves with a needle of suggestion where all
his passions, ambitions, and sentiments are at white heat, will
readily throw away the whole game of life in some mad act out of
harmony with all he ever did. It matters little whether the needle
prick him by accident or blunder or design, he will burst all bounds
and establish again the old truth that each of us will prove himself
a fool given perfect opportunity. Nor need the occasion of this
revolution be a great one; the most trivial event may produce the
great fire which burns up wisdom, prudence, and habit.
The Earl of Leicester, so long counted astute, clear-headed, and well
governed, had been suddenly foisted out of balance, shaken from his
imperious composure, tortured out of an assumed and persistent
urbanity, by the presence in Greenwich Palace of a Huguenot exile of
no seeming importance, save what the Medici grimly gave him by
desiring his head. It appeared absurd that the great Leicester, whose
nearness to the throne had made him the most feared, most notable,
and, by virtue of his opportunities, the most dramatic figure in
England, should have sleepless nights by reason of a fugitive like
Michel de la Forêt. On the surface it was preposterous that he should
see in the Queen’s offer of service to the refugee evidence that she
was set to grant him special favors; it was equally absurd that her
offer of safety to him on pledge of his turning preacher should seem
proof that she meant to have him near her.
Elizabeth had left the presence-chamber without so much as a glance
at him, though she had turned and looked graciously at the stranger.
He had hastily followed her, and thereafter impatiently awaited a
summons which never came, though he had sent a message that his hours
were at her Majesty’s disposal. Waiting, he saw Angèle’s father
escorted from the palace by a Gentleman Pensioner to a lodge in the
park; he saw Michel de la Forêt taken to his apartments; he saw the
Seigneur of Rozel walking in the palace grounds with such possession
as though they were his own, self-content in every motion of his
body.
Upon the instant the great earl was incensed out of all proportion to
the affront of the seigneur’s existence. He suddenly hated Lemprière
only less than he hated Michel de la Forêt. As he still waited
irritably for a summons from Elizabeth, he brooded on every word and
every look she had given him of late; he recalled her manner to him
in the antechapel the day before, and the admiring look she cast on
De la Forêt but now. He had seen more in it than mere approval of
courage and the self-reliant bearing of a refugee of her own
religion.
These were days when the soldier of fortune mounted to high places.
He needed but to carry the banner of bravery and a busy sword, and
his way to power was not hindered by poor estate. To be gently born
was the one thing needful, and Michel de la Forêt was gently born;
and he had still his sword, though he chose not to use it in
Elizabeth’s service. My lord knew it might be easier for a stranger
like De la Forêt, who came with no encumbrance, to mount to place in
the struggles of the court, than for an Englishman, whose increasing
and ever-bolder enemies were undermining on every hand, to hold his
own.
He began to think upon ways and means to meet this sudden preference
of the Queen, made sharply manifest, as he waited in the antechamber,
by a summons to the refugee to enter the Queen’s apartments. When the
refugee came forth again he wore a sword the Queen had sent him, and
a packet of Latimer’s sermons were under his arm. Leicester was
unaware that Elizabeth herself did not see De la Forêt when he was
thus hastily called; but that her lady-in-waiting, the Duke’s
Daughter, who figured so largely in the pictures Lemprière drew of
his experiences at Greenwich Palace, brought forth the sermons and
the sword, with this message from the Queen:
“The Queen says that it is but fair to the sword to be by Michel de
la Forêt’s side when the sermons are in his hand, that his choice
have every seeming of fairness. For her Majesty says it is still his
choice between the Sword and the Book till Trinity Day.”
Leicester, however, only saw the sword at the side of the refugee and
the gold-bound book under his arm as he came forth, and in a rage he
left the palace and gloomily walked under the trees, denying himself
to every one.
To seize De la Forêt, and send him to the Medici, and then rely on
Elizabeth’s favor for his pardon, as he had done in the past? That
might do, but the risk to England was too great. It would be like the
Queen, if her temper was up, to demand from the Medici the return of
De la Forêt, and war might ensue. Two women, with two nations behind
them, were not to be played lightly against each other, trusting to
their common-sense and humor.
As he walked among the trees, brooding with averted eyes, he was
suddenly faced by the Seigneur of Rozel, who also was shaken from his
discretion and the best interests of the two fugitives he was bound
to protect by a late offence against his own dignity. A seed of
rancor had been sown in his mind which had grown to a great size, and
must presently burst into a dark flower of vengeance. He, Lemprière
of Rozel, with three dove-cotes, the _perquage_, and the office of
butler to the Queen, to be called a “farmer,” to be sneered at--it
was not in the blood of man, not in the towering vanity of a
Lemprière, to endure it at any price computable to mortal mind.
Thus there were in England on that day two fools (there are as many
now), and one said:
“My Lord Leicester, I crave a word with you.”
“Crave on, good fellow,” responded Leicester, with a look of boredom,
making to pass by.
“I am Lemprière, Lord of Rozel, my lord--”
“Ah yes, I took you for a farmer,” answered Leicester. “Instead of
that, I believe you keep doves, and wear a jerkin that fits like a
king’s. Dear Lord, so does greatness come with girth!”
“The king that gave me dove-cotes gave me honor, and ’tis not for the
Earl of Leicester to belittle it.”
“What is your coat of arms?” said Leicester, with a faint smile, but
in an assumed tone of natural interest.
“A swan upon a sea of azure, two stars above, and over all a sword
with a wreath around its point,” answered Lemprière, simply,
unsuspecting irony, and touched by Leicester’s flint where he was
most like to flare up with vanity.
“Ah!” said Leicester. “And the motto?”
“Mea spes supra stellas--my hope is beyond the stars.”
“And the wreath--of parsley, I suppose?”
Now Lemprière understood, and he shook with fury as he roared:
“Yes, by God, and to be got at the point of the sword, to put on the
heads of insolents like Lord Leicester!” His face was flaming, he was
like a cock strutting upon a stable mound.
There fell a slight pause, and then Leicester said, “To-morrow at
daylight, eh?”
“Now, my lord, now!”
“We have no seconds.”
“’Sblood! ’Tis not your way, my lord, to be stickling in detail of
courtesy.”
“’Tis not the custom to draw swords in secret, Lemprière of Rozel.
Also, my teeth are not on edge to fight you.”
Lemprière had already drawn his sword, and the look of his eyes was
as that of a mad bull in a ring. “You won’t fight with me--you don’t
think Rozel your equal?” His voice was high.
Leicester’s face took on a hard, cruel look. “We cannot fight among
the ladies,” he said, quietly.
Lemprière followed his glance, and saw the Duke’s Daughter and
another in the trees near by.
He hastily put up his sword. “When, my lord?” he asked.
“You will hear from me to-night,” was the answer, and Leicester went
forward hastily to meet the ladies--they had news, no doubt.
Lemprière turned on his heel and walked quickly away among the trees
towards the quarters where Buonespoir was in durance, which was
little more severe than to keep him within the palace yard. There he
found the fool and the pirate in whimsical converse. The fool had
brought a letter of inquiry and warm greeting from Angèle to
Buonespoir, who was laboriously inditing one in return. When
Lemprière entered the pirate greeted him jovially.
“In the very pinch of time!” he said. “You have grammar and syntax
and etiquette.”
“’Tis even so, Nuncio,” said the fool. “Here is needed prosody
potential. Exhale!”
The three put their heads together above the paper.