Part 14

"And my mistress is here! You may save your breath, Vigo; I know what I shall do. The eloquence of monk Christin wouldn't change me."

"What is your purpose, M. Étienne?" Vigo asked.

Indeed, there was a vagueness about his scheme as revealed to us.

"It is quite simple. I purpose to get speech with mademoiselle if I can contrive it, and I think I can. I purpose to smuggle her out of the Hôtel de Lorraine--such feats have been accomplished before and may be again. Then I shall bring her here and hold her against all comers."

"No," Vigo said, "no, monsieur. You may not do that."

"Ventre bleu, Vigo!" his young lord cried.

"No," said Vigo. "I can't have her here, and Mayenne's army after her."

"Coward!" shouted M. Étienne.

I thought Vigo would take us both by the scruff of our necks and throw us out of the place. But he answered undisturbed:

"No, that is not the reason, monsieur. If M. le Duc told me to hold this house against the armies of France and Spain, I'd hold it till the last man of us was dead. But I am here in his absence to guard his hôtel, his moneys, and his papers. I don't call it guarding to throw a firebrand among them. Bringing Mayenne's niece here would be worse than that."

"Monsieur would never hesitate! Monsieur is no chicken-heart!" M. Étienne cried. "If he were here, he'd say, 'We'll defend the lady if every stone in this house is pulled from its fellow!'"

A twinkle came into Vigo's eyes.

"I think that is likely true," he said. "Monsieur opposed the marriage as long as Mayenne desired it; but now that Mayenne forbids it, stealing the demoiselle is another pair of sleeves."

"Well, then," cried M. Étienne, all good humour in a moment, "what more do you want? We'll divert ourselves pouring pitch out of the windows on Mayenne's ruffians."

"No, M. Étienne, it can't be done. If M. le Duc were here and gave the command to receive her, that would be one thing. No one would obey with a readier heart than I. Mordieu, monsieur, I have no objection to succouring a damsel in distress; I have been in the business before now."

"Then why not now? Death of my life, Vigo! When I know, and you know, Monsieur would approve."

"I don't know it, monsieur," Vigo said. "I only think it. And I cannot move by my own guesswork. I am in charge of the house till Monsieur returns. I purpose to do nothing to jeopard it. But I interfere in no way with your liberty to proceed as you please."

"I should think not, forsooth!" M. Étienne blazed out furiously.

"I could," rejoined Vigo, with his maddening tranquillity. "I could order the guard--and they would obey--to lock you up in your chamber. I believe Monsieur would thank me for it. But I don't do it. I leave you free to act as it likes you."

My lord was white with ire.

"Who is master here, you or I?"

"Neither of us, M. le Comte. But Monsieur, leaving, put the keys in my hand, and I am head of the house till he returns. You are very angry, M. Étienne, but my shoulders are broad enough to bear it. Your madness will get no countenance from me."

"Hang you for an obstinate pig!" M. Étienne cried.

Vigo said no more. He had made plain his position; he had naught to add or retract. Yeux-gris's face cleared. After all, there was no use being angry with Vigo; one might as well make fists at the flow of the Seine.

"Very well." M. Étienne swallowed his wrath. "It is understood that I get no aid from you. Then I have nobody in the world with me save Félix here. But for all that I'll win my lady!"

XVIII

_To the Bastille._

But Vigo proved better than his word. If he would give us no countenance, he gave freely good broad gold pieces. He himself suggested M. Étienne's need of the sinews of war, not in the least embarrassed or offended because he knew M. le Comte to be angry with him. He was no feather ruffled, serene in the consciousness that he was absolutely in the right. His position was impregnable; neither persuasion, ridicule, nor abuse moved him one whit. He had but a single purpose in life; he was born to forward the interests of the Duke of St. Quentin. He would forward them, if need were, over our bleeding corpses.

On top of all his disobedience and disrespect he was most amiable to M. Étienne, treating him with a calm assumption of friendliness that would have maddened a saint. Yet it was not hypocrisy; he liked his young lord, as we all did. He would not let him imperil Monsieur, but aside from that he wished him every good fortune in the world.

M. Étienne argued no more. He was wroth and sore over Vigo's attitude, but he said little. He accepted the advance of money--"Of course Monsieur would say, What coin is his is yours," Vigo explained--and despatched me to settle his score at the Three Lanterns.

I set out on my errand rather down in the mouth. We had accomplished nothing by our return to the hôtel. Nay, rather had we lost, for we were both of us, I thought, disheartened by the cold water flung on our ambitions. I took the liberty of doubting whether perfect loyalty to Monsieur included thwarting and disobeying his heir. It was all very well for Monsieur to spoil Vigo and let him speak his mind as became not his station, for Vigo never disobeyed _him_, but stood by him in all things. But I imagined that, were M. Étienne master, Vigo, for all his years of service, would be packed off the premises in short order.

I walked along in a brown study, wondering how M. Étienne did purpose to rescue mademoiselle. His scheme, so far as vouchsafed to me, was somewhat in the air. I could only hope he had more in his mind than he had let me know. It seemed to me a pity not to be doing something in the matter, and though I had no particular liking for Hôtel de Lorraine hospitality, I had very willingly been bound thither at this moment to try to get a letter to mademoiselle. But he would not send me.

"No," he had said, "it won't do. Think of something better, Félix."

But I could not, and so was taking my dull way to the inn of the Trois Lanternes.

The city wore a sleepy afternoon look. It was very hot, and few cared to be stirring. I saw nothing worth my notice until, only a stone's throw from the Three Lanterns, I came upon a big black coach standing at the door of a rival auberge, L'Oie d'Or. It aroused my interest at once, for a travelling-coach was a rare sight in the beleaguered city. As my master had said, this was not a time of pleasure-trips to Paris. I readily imagined that the owner of this chariot came on weighty business indeed. He might be an ambassador from Spain, a legate from Rome.

I paused by the group of street urchins who were stroking the horses and clambering on the back of the coach, to wonder whether it would be worth while to wait and see the dignitary come out. I was just going to ask the coachman a question or two concerning his journey, when he began to snap his whip about the bare legs of the little whelps. The street was so narrow that he could hardly chastise them without danger to me, so it seemed best to saunter off. The screaming urchins stopped just out of the reach of his lash and set to pelting mud at him with a right good will, but I was too old for that game. I reflected that I was charged with business for my master, and that it was nothing to me what envoys might come to Mayenne. I went on into the Three Lanterns.

The cabaret was absolutely deserted; one might have walked all about and carried off what he pleased, as from the sleeping palace in the tale. "This is a pretty way to keep an inn," I thought. "Where have all the lazy rascals got to?" Then I heard a confused murmur of voices and shuffle of feet from the back, and I went through into the passage where the staircase was.

Here were gathered, in a huddle, like scared sheep, some dozen of the serving-folk, men and maids, the lasses most of them in tears, the men looking scarce less terrified. Their gaze was fixed on the closed door of Maître Menard's little counting-room, whence issued the shrill cry:

"Spare me, noble gentlemen! Spare a poor innkeeper! I swear I know nothing of his whereabouts."

As my footsteps sounded on the threshold, one and all spun round to look at me in fresh dread.

"Mon dieu, it is his lackey!" a chambermaid cried. In the next second a little wiry dame, her eyes blazing with fury, darted out of the group and seized me by the arm with a grip of her nails that made me think a panther had got me.

"So here you are," she screamed. I declare I thought she was going to bite me. "Oh-h-h, you and your fine master, that come here and devour our substance and never pay one sou, but bring ruin to the house! Now, go you straight in there and let them squeeze your throat awhile, and see how you like it yourself!"

She swept me across the passage like a whirlwind, opened the door, shoved me in, and banged it after me before I could collect my senses.

The room was small; it was very well filled up by a bureau, a strong box, a table, two chairs, three soldiers, one innkeeper, and myself.

The bureau stood by the window, with Maître Menard's account-books on it. Opposite was the table, with a captain of dragoons on it. Of his two men, one took the middle of the room, amusing himself with the windpipe of Maître Menard; the other was posted at the door. I was shot out of Mme. Menard's grasp into his, and I found his the gentler of the two.

"I say I know not where he went," Maître Menard was gasping, black in the face from the dragoon's attentions. "He did not tell--I have no notion. Ah--" The breath failed him utterly, but his eyes, bloodshot and bulging, rolled toward me.

"What now?" the captain cried, springing to his feet. "Who are you?"

He wore under his breastplate what I took to be the uniform of the city guards. I had seen the like on the officer of the gate the night I entered Paris. He was a young man of a decidedly bourgeois appearance, as if he were not much, outside of his uniform.

"My name is Félix Broux," I said. "I came to pay a bill--"

"His servant," Maître Menard contrived to murmur, the dragoon allowing him a breath.

"Oh, you are the Comte de Mar's servant, are you? Where have you left your master?"

"What do you want of him?" I asked in turn.

"Never you mind. I want him."

"But Mayenne said he should not be touched," I cried. "The Duke of Mayenne said himself he should not be touched."

"I know nothing about that," he returned, a trifle more civilly than he had spoken. "I have naught to do with the Duke of Mayenne. If he is friends with your master, M. de Mar may not stay behind bars very long. But I have the governor's warrant for his arrest."

"On what charge?"

"A trifle. Merely murder."

"_Murder?_"

"Yes, the murder of a lackey, one Pontou."

"But that is ridiculous!" I cried. "M. le Comte did not--"

I came to a halt, not knowing what to say. "Lucas--Paul de Lorraine killed him," was on the tip of my tongue, but I choked it down. To fling wild accusations against a great man's man were no wisdom. By accident I had given the officer the impression that we were friends of Mayenne. I should do ill to imperil the delusion. "M. le Comte--" I began again, and again stopped. I meant to say that monsieur had never left the inn last night; he could have had no hand in the crime. Then I bethought me that I had better not know the hour of the murder. "M. le Comte is a very grand gentleman; he would not murder a lackey," I got out at last.

"You can tell that to the judges," the captain rejoined.

At this I felt ice sliding down my spine. To be arrested as a witness was the last thing I desired.

"I know nothing whatever about it," I cried. "He seemed to me a very fine gentleman. But you can't always tell about these nobles. The Comte de Mar, I've only known him twenty-four hours. Until he engaged me as lackey, yesterday afternoon, I had never laid eyes on him. I know not what he has been about. He engaged me yesterday to carry a message for him to the Hôtel St. Quentin. I came into Paris but night before last, and put up at the Amour de Dieu in the Rue Coupejarrets. Yesterday he employed me to run his errands, and last night brought me here with him. But I had never seen him till this time yesterday. I know nothing about him save that he seemed a very free-handed, easy master."

To a nice ear I might have seemed a little too voluble, but the captain only laughed at my patent fright.

"Oh, you need not look so whey-faced; I have no warrant for your arrest. I dare say you are as great a rogue as he, but the order says nothing about you. Don't swoon away; you are in no peril."

I was stung to be thought such a craven, but I pocketed the insult, and merely answered:

"I assure you, monsieur, I know naught of the matter." Yesterday I would have blurted out to him the whole truth; decidedly my experiences were teaching me something.

"Come now, I can't fool about here all day," he said impatiently. "Tell me where that precious master of yours is now. And be quicker about it than this old mule."

Maître Menard, then, had told them nothing--staunch old loyalist. He knew perfectly that M. le Comte had gone home, and they had throttled him, and yet he had not told. Well, he should not lose by it.

"Monsieur is about the streets somewhere. On my life, I know not where. But I know he will be back here to supper."

"Oh, you don't know, don't you? Then perhaps Gaspard can quicken your memory."

At the word the soldier who had attended to Maître Menard came over to me and taught me how it feels to be hanged. I said to myself that if I had talked like a dastard I was not one, and every time he let me speak I gasped, "I don't know." The room was black to me, and the sea roared in my ears, and I wondered whether I had done well to tell the lie. For had I said that my master was in the Hôtel St Quentin, still those fellows would have found it no easy job to take him. Vigo might not be ready to defend Mlle. de Montluc, but he would defend Monsieur's heir to the last gasp. Yet I would not yield before the choking Maître Menard had withstood, and I stuck to my lie.

Then I bethought me, while the room reeled about me and my head seemed like to burst, that perchance if they should keep me here a captive for M. le Comte's arrival he might really follow to see what had become of me. I turned sick with the fear of it, and resolved on the truth. But Gaspard's last gullet-gripe had robbed me of the power to speak. I could only pant and choke. As I struggled painfully for wind, the door was flung open before a tall young man in black. Through the haze that hung before my vision I saw the soldier seize him as he crossed the threshold. Through the noise of waters I heard the captain's cry of triumph.

"Oh, M. Étienne!" I gasped, in agony that my pain had been for nothing. Now all was lost. Then the blur lifted, and my amazed eyes beheld not my master, but--Lucas!

"How now, sirrah?" he cried to the dragoon. "Hands off me, knaves!" For the second soldier had seized his other arm.

"I regret to inconvenience monsieur," the captain answered, "but he is wanted at the Bastille."

"Wanted? I?" Lucas cried, fear flashing into his eyes.

He felt an instant's terror, I deem, lest Mayenne had betrayed him. Quick as he was, he did not see that he had been taken for another man.

"You, monsieur. You are wanted for the murder of your man, Pontou."

He grew white, looking instinctively at me, remembering where I had been at three o'clock this morning.

"It is a lie! He left my service a month back and I have never seen him since."

"Tell that to the judges," the captain said, as he had said to me. "I am not trying you. The handcuffs, men."

One of them produced a pair. Lucas struggled frantically in his captors' grasp. He dragged them from one end of the room to the other, calling down all the curses of Heaven upon them; but they snapped the handcuffs on for all that.

"If this is Mayenne's work--" he panted.

The officer caught nothing but the name Mayenne.

"The boy said you were a friend to his Grace, monsieur, but orders are orders. I have the warrant for your arrest from M. de Belin."

"At whose instigation?"

"How should I know'? I am a soldier of the guard. I have naught to do with it but to arrest you."

"Let me see the warrant."

"I am not obliged to. But I will, though. It may quiet your bluster."

He took out the warrant and held it at a safe distance before Lucas's eyes. A great light broke in on that personage.

"Mille tonnerres! I am not the Comte de Mar!"

"Oh, you say that now, do you? Pity you had not thought of it sooner."

"But I am not the Comte de Mar! I am Paul de Lorraine, nephew to my Lord Mayenne."

"Why don't you say straight out that you're the Duc de Guise?"

"I am not the Due de Guise," Lucas returned with dignity. He must have been cursing himself that he had not given his name sooner. "But I am his brother."

"You take me for a fool."

"Aye, who shall hang for his folly!"

"You must think me a fool," the captain repeated. "The Duke of Guise's eldest brother is but seventeen--"

"I did not say I was legitimate."

"Oh, you did not say that? You did not know, then, that I could reel off the ages of every Lorraine of them all. No, M. de Mar, I am not so simple as you think. You will come along with me to the Bastille."

"Blockhead! I'll have you broken on the wheel for this," Lucas stormed. "I am no more Count of Mar than I am King of Spain. Speak up, you old turnspit," he shouted to Maître Menard. "Am I he?"

Poor Maître Menard had dropped down on his iron box, too limp and sick to know what was going on. He only stared helplessly.

"Speak, rascal," Lucas cried. "Am I Comte de Mar?"

"No," the maître answered in low, faltering tones. He was at the last point of pain and fear. "No, monsieur officer, it is as he says. He is not the Comte de Mar."

"Who is he, then?"

"I know not," the maître stammered. "He came here last night. But it is as he says--he is not the Comte de Mar."

"Take care, mine host," the officer returned; "you're lying."

I could not wonder at him; if I had not been in a position to know otherwise, I had thought myself the maître was lying.

"If you had spoken at first I might have believed you," the captain said, bestowing a kick on him. "Get out of here, old ass, before I cram your lie down your throat. And clear your people away from this door. I'll not walk through a mob. Send every man Jack about his business, or it will be the worse for him. And every woman Jill, too."

"M. le Capitaine," Maître Menard quavered, rising unsteadily to his feet, "you make a mistake. On my sacred word, you mistake; this is not--"

"Get out!" cried the captain, helping him along with his boot. Maître Menard fell rather than walked out of the door.

A gray hue came over Lucas's face. His first fright had given way to fury at perceiving himself the victim of a mistake, but now alarm was born in his eyes again. Was it, after all, a mistake? This obstinate disbelief in his assertion, this ordering away of all who could swear to his identity--was it not rather a plot for his ruin? He swallowed hard once or twice, fear gripping his throat harder than ever the dragoon's fingers had gripped mine. Certainly he was not the Comte de Mar; but then he was the man who had killed Pontou.

"If this is a plot against me, say so!" he cried. "If you have orders to arrest me, do so. But arrest me by the name of Paul de Lorraine, not of Étienne de Mar."

"The name of Étienne de Mar will do," the captain returned; "we have no fancy for aliases at the Bastille."

"It is a plot!" Lucas cried.

"It is a warrant; that is all I know about it"

"But I am not Comte de Mar," Lucas repeated.

His uneasy conscience had numbed his wits. In his dread of a plot he had done little to dissipate an error. But now he pulled himself together; error or intention, he would act as if he knew it must be error.

"My captain, you have made a mistake likely to cost you your shoulder-straps. I tell you I am not Mar; the landlord, who knows him well, tells you I am not Mar. Ask those who know M. de Mar; ask these inn people. They will one and all tell you I am not he. Ask that boy there; even he dares not say to my face that I am."

His eyes met mine, and I could see that, even in the moment of challenging me, he repented. He believed that I would give the lie. But the dragoon who was bending over him, relieving him of his sword-belt, spared me the necessity.

"Captain, you need give yourself no uneasiness; this is the Comte right enough. I live in the Quartier Marais, and I have seen this gentleman a score of times riding with M. de St. Quentin."

Lucas, at this unexpected testimony, looked so taken aback that the captain burst out laughing.

"Yes, my dear monsieur, it is a little hard for M. de Mayenne's nephew--you are a nephew, are you not?--to explain how he comes to ride with the Duc de St. Quentin."

It was awkward to explain. Lucas, knowing well that there was no future for him who betrayed the Generalissimo's secrets, cried out angrily: