his breast, flung back his head and suddenly laughed.
“Your Majesty, she is beautiful, if dark; and I believe that I shall kiss
her on the lips before long.”
But Charles, though the most easy-going of monarchs, could rebuke
undue liberty by a mere upraising of one heavy eyebrow. This sign of
displeasure and the silence with which he received his page’s seemingly
pert answer brought the blood leaping again into Enguerrand’s wasted
cheek. If he could hate, this passionate youth, he could also love; and
he loved Charles with an intensity only second to his hatred for the Lord
Constable. He shook his curls over his face to hide his confusion.
Charles yawned and sank a fraction lower in his great chair. For a man
who demanded but one thing of life,—that it should run even,—fate was
playing him sorry tricks these days. Sickness and discontent were growing
apace in the kingdom, money difficulties were pressing increasingly
upon him, the progress of the war was doubtful, the quarrels of the
Stewart and the Castlemaine made Whitehall a place of vast discomfort;
and, besides, there were the interlacing circles of intrigue spun about
him by consort, children, brother, ministers, divines, ruined loyalists,
aspiring mistresses.
“Odd’s fish! Little Satan,” he resumed, good-humoured even in his
exacerbation, “can you not consult your Great Father and find me an
hour’s diversion?”
“Will your Majesty be pleased to survey the present of Venetian glass
sent by his Majesty of France?—The chandelier has been suspended from
the ceiling of the small supper room, the great mirror hung upon the
wall, and the drinking vessels laid out on the buffet—according to your
Majesty’s order. I saw it done this morning.”
“Pshaw!” said the King.
When these instructions had been given, he had planned a discreet party
in the newly adorned chamber. But, two had heard of an invitation that
one only had received. And the royal temper was still smarting from the
consequent recriminations. He thought back on the distasteful scene, now,
with renewed injury:—
“Gad, I’ll banish the petticoats … though, by the Mass, the periwigs
are little better! I shall have Buckingham drawing on Hamilton for the
privilege of annexing my Venetian glass!” He chuckled bitterly at the
sense of his own too easy good nature. “I trust they’ve nailed the mirror
fast,” he cried aloud; “I am told it is mighty fine.”
* * * * *
Yet there was one of his chosen companions who had never sought for
either advancement or booty, and who had a humour that fitted well with
his own in these moods of reaction, when the voluptuary yielded to
cynical melancholy.
“Why,” exclaimed Charles, suddenly lifting himself in his seat with an
animation he had not hitherto shown, “it is a week or more since I have
seen my ‘Merry Rockhurst.’ Get you to the Tower, Little Satan, as fast as
your black wings can carry you. Bid my Lord Constable to the rescue. Tell
him I am dull, _que je m’ennuie, Vidame, et qu’il vienne s’ennuyer avec
moi_, for I am persuaded he is as dull as I am. ’Tis the fate of good wit
in a weary world. How now—not gone?”
“Sire,” said the lad, in a toneless voice, “Lord Rockhurst is at
Whitehall. I saw him at his writing but just now, as I passed the Window
of his apartment.”
“All the better fortune! Haste, then,” said the King. “But hark ye,
Little Satan: Rockhurst alone! God forbid there should be a flounce near
our presence to-night! Bid the Lord Constable come and crack a bottle
with us as in the old days of Flanders.”
A rueful grin spread over his saturnine countenance. Castlemaine and
Stewart had been overmuch for him this morning in their division: united,
against a new rival—no, the thought was beyond the pale of contemplation!
Once outside, in the great corridor, filled already with evening gloom,
Enguerrand paused:—
“Bid the Lord Constable come and crack a bottle with us…!” The boy flung
back his head and breathed sharply, through dilated nostrils, as if
scenting ecstasy. His moment,—so long brooded upon, desired with such
acrid ardour,—was it at last within his grasp? His hand went up to his
breast with that gesture that had attracted the King’s notice. Aye,
there it lay over his heart, the tiny phial of French Joan! Day and
night he felt it, burning, biting into his soul; day and night he heard
it whispering, urging, at once tormenting and delighting. Since that
horrible hour in the Temple Gardens, it was all he had left to look for
in the world. His life, shamed in his own eyes, was a worthless thing.
That other life once swept away, nothing would matter that could befall
him, be it death or disgrace. He went to sleep every night holding the
phial against his heart.… His Vengeance, dark and beautiful…! as the
lover holds his lady’s guerdon. The moment, was it actually drawing at
hand when he was to kiss her on the lips?
He gave a sudden laugh—secret-sounding yet triumphant, the abandoned
laugh of the madman over his obsession—which startled a sleeping page at
the end of the passage as with a sense of terror in the air, and he set
off running on his errand, past the astonished servants.
* * * * *
When he reached the Lord Constable’s Whitehall apartment, by the Holbein
gateway, his lordship was still sitting at his table in the dusk,
apparently absorbed in some deep revery; so deep indeed that he stared
at Enguerrand with unseeing eyes. The white-haired servant had twice to
repeat the announcement: “The King’s page, my lord, with a command from
his Majesty,” before his master roused himself to attention. Then the
Lord Constable turned his fine head questioningly toward the messenger.
Enguerrand bowed low, tasting, in a kind of inner intoxication, the full
sense of his own irony:—
“His Majesty bids you to supper, my lord, to crack—these are his
Majesty’s own words—a bottle of Rhenish, as in the old days of Flanders.
His Majesty is melancholy and—commands that you come and be melancholy
with him.”
The faintest shadow of a smile passed over the grave, listening
countenance. Any one who once came under the gaze of those brilliant,
haunting eyes of the Lord Constable’s could well conceive that such an
order was of easy obedience. He sat in melancholy, as his royal master
sat in tedium: hence the subtle pleasantry of ‘my Merry Rockhurst.’
“Thank you, Vidame,” said he, half rising, with a formal inclination of
the head. “Inform his Majesty, if you please, that I attend instantly.”
The French boy had to pause outside the gateway door, to battle with the
suffocating rage that suddenly invaded him. Rather would he have received
fresh insults from his enemy than this perfect courtesy—a courtesy which
at once seemed to remember and to pass over. In that last glance that
rested upon him, in that deep, brooding look, there had almost lurked
(or so he thought) pity. Pity! Enguerrand tore open the ruffle at his
throat and gasped for breath.
Then, as swiftly as it had come, the paroxysm passed. Weakling, to waste
his energies on fruitless curses! Was not his hour nigh, and did he not
need the cool head, the steady hand, the quick eye?… He once had offered
his honour and his sword for a chivalrous test … they both had been
broken and cast from him.… Vastly well! Now would he pass the secret
thrust for which there is no parry! He fastened his ruffle again with
fingers that now scarcely trembled. And, as he ran back to the royal
apartment, he broke shrilly into a stave of song: that same _frondeur_
lilt that had tickled the royal ears from Sister Jeanne’s lips on yonder
night when she had met fortune and jilted her—at the King’s supper party:—
_“La Tour, prends garde, la Tour, prends garde,_
_De te laisser abattre…!”_
rose the high notes.
“Master Page,” said a yeoman sternly, “have you taken leave of your wits?
The King is within.…”
“I know, I know,” said Enguerrand, poising himself for a moment on one
springing foot, and looking back over his shoulder like some light
Mercury in satin and ringlet. “I know, good old greybeard, and ’tis I
serve his Majesty’s supper to-night!”
Then, as he leaped forward again, he took up the song, under his breath,
this time, and in English,—
“Tower, have a care, O Tower, beware!”
Halfway down the corridor he paused once more, and once more looked back:—
“Look out for my Lord Constable of the Tower, you, Master Beefeater … for
he sups with the King to-night!”
His laugh echoed as he disappeared in the antechamber.
“A murrain on these French crickets to whom his Majesty is fain to give
what should belong to honest English lads!” grumbled the yeoman, as he
ordered his halbert with a thud. “’Tis mercy we have such gentlemen as my
Lord Constable about the person—to keep balance. And here indeed comes my
noble lord.”
Rockhurst halted a second beside the old yeoman. The gnarled hand that
grasped the halbert had lost one finger: Rockhurst knew in what fight.
Kings may forget what leal subjects have suffered for them, and ladies
what lovers have sighed and served, but the captain forgets not the man
who has stood in his ranks. Rockhurst’s hair was turning grey and the
yeoman’s was white—but they had been young together in the days of Edge
Hill.
“A sultry evening, good Ashby,” said the Lord Constable, with his kind,
sad eyes on the rugged face that crimsoned with joy under the honour.
“Aye, my lord—aye!” muttered the yeoman in gruff tones. (For the more
your Englishman’s heart is touched, the gruffer rings his voice.)
“There’s storm brewing, or so my old wounds tell me, my lord.”
“Aye, aye,”—Rockhurst took up the sound, as he walked on,—“the storm
keeps brewing, and our old wounds keep aching.”
The veteran looked after him:—
“God save your honour!”
III
THE PHIAL OF ACQUETTA
The bunches of wax candles were lit in the parlour reserved for the
King’s intimate gatherings. Across the outside vision of lowering sky and
of black water, spangled with tossing lights, citron-yellow curtains were
drawn.
The new Venetian chandelier sparkled with delicate opalescent tints as
it hung over the supper table: there were pink roses and green leaves,
amber flowers and blue, most wondrously wrought in glass upon its
twisted branches. The cluster of goblets on the buffet, shot with gold,
had the glow of jewels. Two cups stood out from the rest: each had a
fantastic sea-horse with dragon tail for its base, supporting on its
grotesque head—gaping-jawed with red-curved tongue—a bowl as fine and as
miraculously coloured as a bubble. This delicate, magic array of colour
and sheen was reflected in a great mirror which filled the panel of the
wall behind the table.
This last of the Venice gifts was of severer art than the rest; and where
it did not hold the bubble splendour repeated in its depths, it shone
coldly, crystal and silver, from the dark wainscot.
Charles was momentarily lifted out of his heavy mood by amusement and
curiosity.
“Marry!” he said, “if these be our cousin of France’s leavings, what must
be the treasure he has kept! Look up, my lord, this mirror—’tis a curious
and pretty piece, and reflects the light a hundred times more gaily than
our silver and bronze. And the drinking gear yonder…! The Apocalypse
itself in glass!”
He strode to the side-table and laid a finger against the fair cheek of
one of the goblets—then he glanced up and caught sight of his own dark
visage in the new mirror. The gleam of satisfaction instantly vanished
from the long and melancholy countenance.
“And gad, my lord,” he cried, “if you think I shall be left as much as
this little tass, within a week! Oh—there’ll be one whose face will look
vastly better than mine in yonder mirror; and another whose tiring-room
can never be bright again without such a toy as yon!”
He turned and snapped his fingers impatiently toward the soft-footed
servants who came and went between the door and the sideboard with viands
and flasks.
“Away with them, away with them! We’ll sit together as in old times—eh,
my merry Rockhurst?—and keep but Little Satan there to fill a cup.”
“I oft waited on you, alone, in Holland and elsewhere, sire,” responded
the Lord Constable’s deep voice.
“Aye, aye,” said the King, in the same half-testy, half good-humoured
manner. “But we have a demon handy to-night. Tush, man,” proceeded he,
flinging himself into the leathern chair and shaking out the Flemish
napkin, “things are better with us, and things are worse with us; let us
drink and remember—and drink and forget! Ha, my lord, we oft had neither
pasty nor capon in those days—but I’ll say that for thee, Harry, you were
master cellarer, and you never let me lack decent wine—”
“My liege,” said Rockhurst, a note of tenderness creeping in through his
grave tones, “we had to pledge a great cause, and the wine had to be
worthy of the cup!”
“Truly,” said Charles. “I mind me of a certain yellow Rhenish: it had
a smack—where you got it I never knew, Harry, but it had a smack!—The
cause, say you? Plague on your hypocritical gravity…! Tush, man, we drank
to black eyes and blue, to trim ankles and laughing tongues. Those were
the days of that jade Lucy … ha, the pair of eyes! And what shall we
pledge to-night?”
“Why, then, the old days, your Majesty.”
“Aye—the old days, good days … and all the better, being past! None can
say I am an ambitious sovereign—eh, my solemn Constable? I ask no more of
my people than that they should never send me on my travels again.… ’Tis
modest, patriarchal—a home-keeping sovereign! No one can accuse me of not
spending my substance among my subjects!”
“Indeed and indeed, no, sire!” said Rockhurst, without the slightest
twinkle in his straight look. “As for spending, my liege, your Majesty
has indeed a royal mastery of the art.”
“Go to!” said the King. “Wet that too dry humour of thine with a
draught.—Nay, Little Satan, none of your dark-liveried claret to-night;
we’ll have the merry yellow wine in yonder long flagon. Away with this
dull glass, too.—Go, play with the Apocalypse. Those dragon beakers,
I’ll swear they’ll hold half the flagon apiece.—And you shall have a
brimmer and drink it to the last drop, my Lord Constable, for if I’m
never to have you a merry dog again, by the Lord, I’ll have you a drunk
one!—Vidame, I say you shall see my reverend Lord Constable drunk, and
have something to laugh at to your dying day—for ’tis then the solemnest
villain that ever staggered on human legs.”
Enguerrand had been a presence in the room as noiseless as a spirit.
Yet every word that passed between the two men—the sovereign and his
old comrade—had added intensity to his murderous passion. The boy loved
the King. Unhappy, abnormal creature! He could neither love nor hate in
reason, was as much racked with jealousy of his master’s regard as a
lover of his mistress’s favour. Every look of old familiar friendship
that Charles flung at Lord Rockhurst, every easy word, proclaiming a
sympathy and confidence that placed them almost on brotherly equality,
was as a lash on the raw wound of his pride—a spur to his leaping hatred.
At the King’s command he filled one of the dragon beakers from the
long-necked bottle with a singular precision, though his hand was cold
as ice, and his pulse beat to suffocation in his throat. He set the
wonderful glass—more wonderful than ever now, with the golden liquid
shining within its flanks—beside the King’s plate.
“Odd’s fish—a truly royal cup! As I live, the fair half of the bottle!…
Now, boy, the other half to my Lord Constable.”
* * * * *
Over by the sideboard, under the cold gleam of the mirror, the King’s
page paused a second, and his hand went a last time to his breast. Out,
little phial! It lay in the hollow of his palm, no larger than a lady’s
thimble. Break, silken thread! His moment had come: the lover would kiss
his dark mistress on the lips! There was buzzing as of a thousand angry
bees in his ears.… He never noted how still the room had grown. Now his
hand hovered over the rim of the full beaker—a strange gesture, as of the
priest blessing the cup…!
“Little Satan.…” said the King.
Though neither loud nor sharp, there was something so singular in
Charles’s voice that Rockhurst started from his wonted abstraction.
As for Enguerrand, he was struck full into his heart. Involuntarily he
straightened his hand and the empty phial fell lightly on the carpet. He
remained a moment staring into nothingness; then slowly raised his eyes,
and met the King’s eyes in the Venetian mirror.
Charles’s face in the glass … his glance was terrible! Terrible, too, was
his voice as he spoke again, though it was lower than usual, and very
distinct, very quiet:—
“Bring me that cup, Little Satan.”
And as the boy mechanically lifted the dragon goblet and turned round,
holding it in both hands, for it was brimming, Charles leaned across the
table and passed the twin cup, his own, toward Rockhurst, who sat in
wonder.
“The King should have the fuller draught,” he said. “Why do you wait
there, Little Satan?—Bring me that cup, that I may pledge my noble friend
the Lord Constable.”
With this Enguerrand heard his doom. Had the King ordered him to torture
and death he could not have punished him so mortally as by this quiet
order.
A second more he stood, with fascinated eyes, staring at his beloved
master: there was not the faintest answer in Charles’s relentless gaze.
Then a dreadful smile broke on the young face. Without a word Enguerrand
de Joncelles lifted the beaker to his own lips and drank.
It was a long draught, and every gulp was an effort to the constricted
throat. Yet there was no interruption; and for a seemingly endless span
of silence and tension the boy stood and drew the death into himself—his
eyes, over the lovely, fragile rim, fixed in agony upon the King.
Charles made no sign, but waited.
When the last drop was drained, Enguerrand unclasped his fingers on
either side. The dragon glass fell and was shivered.
Here Rockhurst leaped to his feet.
“Good God, your Majesty!” he exclaimed. “What is this?”
“Sit down again,” said the King, coldly. “The Vidame de Joncelles has
voluntarily assumed to-night a new service about our person. It is a
service which hath fallen into desuetude at the Court of England. And the
young gentleman has proved a greedy taster and a clumsy one.—I am still
waiting for my wine.”
Rockhurst’s gaze went in deep uneasiness from Charles’s face, set in
lines of unwonted severity, to the livid countenance of the boy, who
leaned back against the sideboard, scarce able to support himself.
“Your pardon, sire,” he began, pushing back his own cup—“the matter can
scarce remain.…”
But his sovereign again interrupted him, this time with the royal
peremptoriness which admits of no discussion:—
“There is but one thing we will not pardon, and it is that you add to
our tedium: we commanded your presence here to-night that you might
share it, not to increase it. But, meanwhile we are waiting,—Monsieur de
Joncelles,”—and for the first time he raised his voice sharply,—“we are
waiting.”
The boy passed his hand across his forehead and dashed back the curls
that were already growing damp. That the King should have no pity on him,
and yet spare him thus—it was befitting one whom he had worshipped from
the very first for his true royalty. A kind of fierce pride awoke in him
and spurred him to meet his death in a manner worthy of such clement
cruelty. Though the lights were beginning to swim before his eyes and
he rather groped than saw, he contrived to open a second flask and fill
another of the Venetian beakers.
Then—for French Joan had been faithful, and swift was the working of her
gift—he had to make a heroic effort to bring the glass to the King. But
the very fierceness of the effort, final flare of an indomitable spirit,
carried the failing body through.
Enguerrand came to the table with measured step, although it seemed to
him he trod illimitable air; went down slowly on one knee and uplifted
his rigid hands, clasping the substance he no longer felt. The ultimate
action of his life was the yielding of the cup into the King’s hand.
As the King took and drank, the boy fell.
“Why, the lad has swooned…! some aqua vitæ!” exclaimed Rockhurst.
But Charles flung out his hand with his rare gesture of command:—
“Nay, my lord.—He is dead, or dying. Little Satans do not do their work
by halves. He is dead or soon will be.—Odd’s fish!” added the King, after
a moment’s frowning meditation, “when you lured that linnet, his sister,
to sing for you in the Tower, Harry, you little thought her song was to
have such an echo!”
Rockhurst stared for a moment horror-stricken—his glance roamed from
the broken beaker to the cups on the table and thence to Enguerrand’s
convulsed face. A glimmering of the truth began to dawn upon him; the
mystery was dissolving before a tragic and dreadful light. Even in the
midst of the King’s words he dropped on one knee to raise the prone
figure. The livid head fell limply back over his arm. The King cast one
look down and averted his eyes.
“Away with him!” he cried, in an explosion of nervous irritability.
“Away with him! Call whomsoever you want to carry him, do what you list,
get what physician you wish,—the lad’s dead, and ’tis the end of it!
You understand, I’ll not hear another word about the matter.… Gadzooks!
what a finish to a tedious day! Away with him, I command you, my Lord
Rockhurst!”
Rockhurst, who had half risen at the King’s sharp tones, now bent once
more down and gathered the inert form into his arms.
“Will your Majesty, then, open the door for me?” he said, in a low voice.
The King sprang up from his chair, dashing his napkin on one side, and
flung open the door with an angry hand.
The slam of its closing echoed down the great corridors. So would Charles
ever shut the unpleasant episode out from his life. Yet he had not quite
succeeded: as he went moodily back to the table, his foot struck against
the empty little phial. With precaution, placing the napkin between it
and his palm, he held it to the light. It was wrought of Italian glass,
with twisted lines of blue and red, not much larger than a filbert nut.
A vision swam before his eyes: Rockhurst’s face, upturned as he had but
just now seen that of his French page; and, like it, livid in the hues of
death.
“Little Satan! …” he said aloud.
It was the last time that the words were ever to cross his lips. He cast
the phial out through the open window and heard the faint splintering
crash echo from the flags below.
* * * * *
Rockhurst had taken but a few steps down the passage, when some
inexplicable impression bade him pause and glance down at his sad burden.
The light from one of the wall sconces fell full on the boy’s face: a
subtle change, that was scarcely so much a quiver as a composing of all
the features, was passing over it, driving away the terrible pinched look
of agony and restoring something of its youthful beauty. Then Enguerrand
opened his eyes and stared up into the Lord Constable’s countenance.
Rockhurst had never before met those eyes but that he had found hatred in
them. At this supreme moment there was no hatred, only a kind of desolate
wonder. Then, even as their gaze met, the soul that seemed to seek his
was gone; the eyes wondered no more.
Rockhurst stood still, an intolerable pain at his heart. It was almost
as if he held his own son’s dead body on his breast. The ring of the
yeoman’s halbert, the tramp of his heavy foot, roused him from the
revery. He strode forward a few steps more.
“Ho, Ashby,” he called, “I have need of thee!”
“Nay, in God’s mercy,” cried the old man, drawing near, “that is never
the French lad!”
He laid the halbert against the wall, and hastened to relieve his captain
from the burden. Then, as he felt one of the small hands, cold and limp:—
“Dead, and dead in very surety! Why, ’tis not an hour since he passed me,
singing like a swallow on the wing, and hopping for all like a squirrel.”
* * * * *
Very serious was the face of the King’s physician, and pale his cheek, as
he lifted himself suddenly from the examination of the corpse that had
been laid on my Lord Constable’s bed, in the room by the gateway.
He turned hastily and, forgetting all decorum, pushed not only the
yeoman, who was awaiting his orders, but my lord himself, from the
chamber.
“We can do nothing—the boy is dead!”