Bardelys the Magnificent - Rafael Sabatini (affordable ebook reader .txt) 📗

Ciel! how she did swear! Not a saint in the

calendar would she let rest in peace; she dragged them all by turns

from their chapter-rolls to bear witness to the truth of what she

said.”

 

“That was—”

 

“That her husband was the foulest traitor out of hell. But that

he was a fool with no wit of his own to make him accountable for

what he did, and that out of folly he had gone astray. Upon those

grounds she besought me to forgive him and let him go. When I

told her that he must stand his trial, and that I could offer her

but little hope of his acquittal, she told me things about myself,

which in my conceit, and thanks to you flatterers who have

surrounded me, I had never dreamed.

 

“She told me I was ugly, sour-faced, and malformed; that I was

priest-ridden and a fool; unlike my brother, who, she assured me,

is a mirror of chivalry and manly perfections. She promised me

that Heaven should never receive my soul, though I told my beads

from now till Doomsday, and she prophesied for me a welcome among

the damned when my time comes. What more she might have foretold

I cannot say. She wearied me at last, for all her novelty, and I

dismissed her - that is to say,” he amended, “I ordered four

musketeers to carry her out. God pity you, Marcel, when you become

her daughter’s husband!”

 

But I had no heart to enter into his jocularity. This woman

with her ungovernable passion and her rash tongue had destroyed

everything.

 

“I see no likelihood of being her daughter’s husband,” I answered

mournfully.

 

The King looked up, and laughed. “Down on your knees, then,” said

he, “and render thanks to Heaven.”

 

But I shook my head very soberly. “To Your Majesty it is a

pleasing comedy,” said I, “but to me, helas! it is nearer far to

tragedy.”

 

“Come, Marcel,” said he, “may I not laugh a little? One grows so

sad with being King of France! Tell me what vexes you.”

 

“Mademoiselle de Lavedan has promised that she will marry me only

when I have saved her father from the scaffold. I came to do it,

very full of hope, Sire. But his wife has forestalled me and,

seemingly, doomed him irrevocably.”

 

His glance fell; his countenance resumed its habitual gloom. Then

he looked up again, and in the melancholy depths of his eyes I saw

a gleam of something that was very like affection.

 

“You know that I love you, Marcel,” he said gently. “Were you my

own son I could not love you more. You are a profligate, dissolute

knave, and your scandals have rung in my ears more than once; yet

you are different from these other fools, and at least you have

never wearied me. To have done that is to have done something.

I would not lose you, Marcel; as lose you I shall if you marry this

rose of Languedoc, for I take it that she is too sweet a flower to

let wither in the stale atmosphere of Courts. This man, this

Vicomte de Lavedan, has earned his death. Why should I not let him

die, since if he dies you will not wed?”

 

“Do you ask me why, Sire?” said I. “Because they call you Louis the

Just, and because no king was ever more deserving of the title.”

 

He winced; he pursed his lips, and shot a glance at La Fosse, who

was deep in the mysteries of his volume. Then he drew towards him

a sheet of paper, and, taking a quill, he sat toying with it.

 

“Because they call me the Just, I must let justice take its course,”

he answered presently.

 

“But,” I objected, with a sudden hope, “the course of justice cannot

lead to the headsman in the case of the Vicomte de Lavedan.”

 

“Why not?” And his solemn eyes met mine across the table.

 

“Because he took no active part in the revolt. If he was a traitor,

he was no more than a traitor at heart, and until a man commits a

crime in deed he is not amenable to the law’s rigour. His wife has

made his defection clear; but it were unfair to punish him in the

same measure as you punish those who bore arms against you, Sire.”

 

“Ah!” he pondered. “Well? What more?”

 

“Is that not enough, Sire?” I cried. My heart beat quickly, and my

pulses throbbed with the suspense of that portentous moment.

 

He bent his head, dipped his pen and began to write.

 

“What punishment would you have me mete out to him?” he asked as he

wrote. “Come, Marcel, deal fairly with me, and deal fairly with him

—for as you deal with him, so shall I deal with you through him.”

 

I felt myself paling in my excitement. “There is banishment, Sire

—it is usual in cases of treason that are not sufficiently flagrant

to be punished by death.”

 

“Yes!” He wrote busily. “Banishment for how long, Marcel? For his

lifetime?”

 

“Nay, Sire. That were too long.”

 

“For my lifetime, then?”

 

“Again that were too long.”

 

He raised his eyes and smiled. “Ah! You turn prophet? Well, for

how long, then? Come, man.”

 

“I should think five years—”

 

“Five years be it. Say no more.”

 

He wrote on for a few moments; then he raised the sandbox and

sprinkled the document.

 

“Tiens!” he cried, as he dusted it and held it out to me. “There

is my warrant for the disposal of Monsieur le Vicomte Leon de

Lavedan. He is to go into banishment for five years, but his

estates shall suffer no sequestration, and at the end of that

period he may return and enjoy them - we hope with better loyalty

than in the past. Get them to execute that warrant at once, and

see that the Vicomte starts to-day under escort for Spain. It will

also be your warrant to Mademoiselle de Lavedan, and will afford

proof to her that your mission has been successful.”

 

“Sire!” I cried. And in my gratitude I could say no more, but I

sank on my knee before him and raised his hand to my lips.

 

“There,” said he in a fatherly voice. “Go now, and be happy.”

 

As I rose, he suddenly put up his hand.

 

“Ma foi, I had all but forgotten, so much has Monsieur de Lavedan’s

fate preoccupied us.” He picked up another paper from his table,

and tossed it to me. It was my note of hand to Chatellerault for

my Picardy estates.

 

“Chatellerault died this morning,” the King pursued. “He had been

asking to see you, but when he was told that you had left Toulouse,

he dictated a long confession of his misdeeds, which he sent to me

together with this note of yours. He could not, he wrote, permit

his heirs to enjoy your estates; he had not won them; he had really

forfeited his own stakes, since he had broken the rules of play.

He has left me to deliver judgment in the matter of his own lands

passing into your possession. What do you say to it, Marcel?”

 

It was almost with reluctance that I took up that scrap of paper.

It had been so fine and heroic a thing to have cast my wealth to

the winds of heaven for love’s sake, that on my soul I was loath

to see myself master of more than Beaugency. Then a compromise

suggested itself.

 

“The wager, Sire,” said I, “is one that I take shame in having

entered upon; that shame made me eager to pay it, although fully

conscious that I had not lost. But even now, I cannot, in any case,

accept the forfeit Chatellerault was willing to suffer. Shall we

—shall we forget that the wager was ever laid?”

 

“The decision does you honour. It was what I had hoped from you.

Go now, Marcel. I doubt me you are eager. When your lovesickness

wanes a little we shall hope to see you at Court again.”

 

I sighed. “Helas, Sire, that would be never.”

 

“So you said once before, monsieur. It is a foolish spirit upon

which to enter into matrimony; yet - like many follies - a fine

one. Adieu, Marcel!”

 

“Adieu, Sire!”

 

I had kissed his hands; I had poured forth my thanks; I had reached

the door already, and he was in the act of turning to La Fosse,

when it came into my head to glance at the warrant he had given me.

He noticed this and my sudden halt.

 

“Is aught amiss?” he asked.

 

“You-you have omitted something, Sire,” I ventured, and I returned

to the table. “I am already so grateful that I hesitate to ask an

additional favour. Yet it is but troubling you to add a few strokes

of the pen, and it will not materially affect the sentence itself.”

 

He glanced at me, and his brows drew together as he sought to guess

my meaning.

 

“Well, man, what is it?” he demanded impatiently.

 

“It has occurred to me that this poor Vicomte, in a strange land,

alone, among strange faces, missing the loved ones that for so many

years he has seen daily by his side, will be pitiably lonely.”

 

The King’s glance was lifted suddenly to my face. “Must I then

banish his family as well?”

 

“All of it will not be necessary, Your Majesty.”

 

For once his eyes lost their melancholy, and as hearty a burst of

laughter as ever I heard from that poor, weary gentleman he vented

then.

 

“Ciel! what a jester you are! Ah, but I shall miss you!” he cried,

as, seizing the pen, he added the word I craved of him.

 

“Are you content at last?” he asked, returning the paper to me.

 

I glanced at it. The warrant now stipulated that Madame la

Vicomtesse de Lavedan should bear her husband company in his exile.

 

“Sire, you are too good!” I murmured.

 

“Tell the officer to whom you entrust the execution of this warrant

that he will find the lady in the guardroom below, where she is

being detained, pending my pleasure. Did she but know that it was

your pleasure she has been waiting upon, I should tremble for your

future when the five years expire.”