If I Were King (McCarthy novel, R. H. Russell)/Chapter 12
THE king's hand fell upon his shoulder and shattered his meditations.
"Are you so dashed by the death of a wanton?" the king asked mockingly.
Villon turned upon him in a noble rage.
"She had God's breath in her body, sire," he said. Then drawing his hand across his forehead as if to dissipate the sad fancies that oppressed him, he went on:
"I have been John-a-Nods for the moment, sire; now I am Jack-a-Deeds again. The hour for battle is at hand."
Louis shrugged his shoulders.
"You have done me a good turn, gossip," he said, "and may ask any grace of me except your life. That depends on your lady."
Villon looked over at the corner where his old boon companions were huddled together, the miserable centre of a circle of soldiers.
"Sire," he said; "grant me the lives of those rascals. They shall ride with me and fight for France to-night. It is better than making them play bob-apple on the evil tree."
The king whispered a few words to Tristan, and Tristan very reluctantly gave the order of liberation. The comrades of the Cockleshell were freed of their bonds and bade to stand apart, under guard and out of earshot, to wait on destiny for future commands. At this moment Louis, glancing upwards, caught sight between the flower vases on the terrace of a gleam of crimson, the crimson silk of a woman's robe. It betrayed the presence of Katherine de Vaucelles, who had come hard upon the hour of nine to seek for her lover, but who paused irresolute at the head of the stairs, noting the presence of the king. Louis beckoned to her amicably, and she began slowly to descend the staircase. Louis came over to Villon and whispered in his ear:
"Here comes your lady. I think your love-fruit is ripe and you need not stand on tip-toe to pick it."
Villon answered him with burning eyes:
"Sire, I believe I have won the rose of the world."
Louis chuckled like an enraptured raven.
"The Count of Montcorbier is luckier than François Villon. But the lady has a high mind and a fierce spirit. She may not relish the deception, pardon the cheat his lie!"
Something in the king's words struck upon Villon's fiery hopes like a stream of ice-cold water and seemed to quench them. He was like a man who, long playing at blind-man's-buff, suddenly has the bandage plucked from his eyes and stands dazzled and blinking in the sunlight. After all, he was not the Count of Montcorbier; after all, he was not the Grand Constable of France; after all, he was only a masquerading beggar who had won the heart of a lady under false colours; who had triumphed by flying a false flag. In all those seven splendid days this simple thought had never come to him. His whole soul had been so taken captive by the fascination of the part he had been permitted to play that he forgot he was playing a part, and allowed his fancy to believe that a week-long dream would endure forever. Now he knew himself and what he had done and what he must do. A divine farce had turned to sudden tragedy. He turned to the king with a groan.
"Cheat, lie," he repeated. "Sire, those words fling me from my fool's paradise. Kill me if I fail to win her, but I will tear this mask from my face, this falsehood from my heart."
Louis grinned at him.
"Please yourself. Win her or swing. Either way contents me."
As he spoke, he turned away. Katherine had descended the steps and was moving across the grass to greet her hero, who stood with clasped hands in the moonlight like a man struck dumb. Katherine was carrying in her hands a crimson scarf fringed with gold, and she lifted it to him as she spoke.
"Wear this with my prayers. With it, I give you my hand and heart. You shall carry my plighted troth with you into the battle. Let me tell my love to all the world."
Swiftly and lightly she threw it about his neck before he could find words, but now he spoke:
"Wait, wait! You must say no more until you know me."
The girl's eyes widened with surprise.
"Do I not know you?"
Villon thrust his face forward very close to hers.
"Look into my face," he said. "Look well. Do you see nothing there that reminds you of other hours?"
Katherine smiled divinely.
"Of happy hours in this rose garden."
Villon insisted fiercely:
"No, no! Of a dark night, a tavern, a cloaked woman, a sordid fellow dreaming sottishly by the fire, a prayer, a love-tale and a promise, a crowd of bullies and wantons, a quarrel, a fight with sword and lantern in the dark, a breast knot of ribbon flung from a gallery"
Katherine recoiled a little, with a horror in her eyes.
"What are you trying to tell me?" she asked.
Villon dropped on his knees with a groan.
"Here is the knot of ribbon which you flung to me in the Fircone Tavern. Oh, pity me! I am François Villon."
Katherine pressed her hands to her forehead.
"I can hear what you say, but it makes no mark on my brain."
Villon's words ran fast from him:
"I am François Villon and yet no longer he, for my old evil self is dead. I am François Villon who served you with his sword, who praised you with his pen, and who loves you with all his soul."
The girl's whole body shook with fear as she answered:
"It isn't true! It isn't true! I don't believe you."
Villon sprang to his feet.
"Whatever my fate is," he cried, "you shall know the truth."
Turning to where the released conspirators stood apart, he called to them peremptorily:
"Guy! Eene! All of you, come here!"
_15.png)
Amazed to be thus summoned in their own names by so great a personage as the Grand Constable of France, the thieves crept forward timidly and, in obedience to Villon's commanding gestures, gathered about him as he turned to them, pressing his face near to their faces, and cried:
"Look at me closer—closer. Don't you know François Villon in spite of this new spirit shining in his eyes?"
René de Montigny gave a cry of recognition.
"I should never have known you. You are so strangely changed."
Guy Tabarie endorsed him.
"Still, 'tis his dear old countenance."
Katherine watching the scene in sick despair, turned piteously to the king.
"Sire, sire, is this true?"
Louis, who had been watching all with unmitigated satisfaction, answered fleeringly:
"Most true, pretty mistress. You disdained me for this."
With blazing eyes and trembling hands Katherine moved across the grass to where Villon stood.
"Pitiful traitor, why did you live this lie?"
Villon pleaded desperately:
"I loved you."
Katherine's anger flamed into a great fire.
"Do not shame the sweet word. I hate you! To think the face that I have learned to love should mask so base a heart!"
Then as Villon drew a little closer to her, in an agony of entreaty, she struck out at him with both hands, beating him on the breast in an unconquerable fury. Villon bowed beneath the blow while she raged at him:
"You have stolen my love like a thief, you have crucified my pride. I hate you! Go back to the dregs and lees of life, skulk in your tavern, forget, what I shall never forget, that so base a thing as you ever came near me!"
The king was by her side in an instant and whispering into her ear:
"Is this the course of true love?"
She swung upon him in scorn.
"Sire, you have wreaked a royal revenge upon a woman. There are no tears in my eyes yet, but I pray they will come that I may weep myself clean of this memory."
With clasped hands and set lips she moved away from Louis and stood apart in the moonlight, a fixed and rigid figure of despair. Louis stepped to where Villon stood in stricken anguish and whispered to him:
"I am afraid you will hang to-morrow, Master Villon."
Villon threw back his head defiantly.
"I should be glad to greet the gallows now, but I have a deed to do before I die."
As he spoke the great bell of the palace beat out the first stroke of the hour of nine. It roused the wounded spirit in his soul. He moved to where Katherine stood and spoke to her:
"I dreamed that love through which I have been born again could lift me to your lips. The dream is over. But you bade me serve France, and I ride and fight for you to-night."
While he spoke the Lords of Lau, of Eiviere and of Nantoillet in panoply of war came from the palace with their immediate followers. The garden began to fill with the picked men of the enterprise hurrying on the summons of the warning bell to follow their leader on his sortie. Villon's pages brought the armour of the Grand Constable and began to buckle it upon him. While this was being done, he turned and spoke to his brothers-in-arms:
"Comrades, let each man carry himself to-night as if the fate of France depended upon his heart, his arm, his courage. Strike for the mothers that bore you, the wives that comfort you, the children that renew you—the women that love you." For a moment his voice quailed and almost failed him. There were happy men there, no doubt, whom women loved. But he rallied in a breath and his voice rang out valiantly again: "Forward in God's name and the king's!"
And every soldier present echoed him:
"Forward in God's name and the king's!"