Chapter XXII: The signet of the king

Already a wan light was revealing the round tops of the plum-trees in M. de Mirabeau's garden, the high gray wall, and the narrow alleyway beneath it. And the two vague shapes by me were no longer vague shapes, but were turning moment by moment, as if coming out of an enchantment, into their true forms. It really was Monsieur in the flesh, with a wet glint in his eyes as he kissed his boy.

Neither thought of me, and it was none of my concern what they said to each other. I went a rod or two down the lane, round a curve in the wall, and watched the bands of light streaking the eastern sky, in utter content. Never before had the world seemed to me so good a place. Since this misery had come right, I knew all the rest would; I should yet dance at M. Étienne's wedding.

I leaned my head back against the wall, and had shut my eyes to consider the matter more quietly, when I heard my name.

"Félix! Félix! Where is the boy got to?"

The sun was clean up over the horizon, and as I blinked and wondered how he had contrived the feat so quickly, my two messieurs came hand in hand round the corner to me, the level rays glittering on Monsieur's burnished breastplate, on M. Étienne's bright head, and on both their shining faces. Now that for the first time I saw them together, I found them, despite the dark hair and the yellow, the brown eyes and the gray, wonderfully alike. There was the same carriage, the same cock of the head, the same smile. If I had not known before, I knew now, the instant I looked at them, that the quarrel was over. Save as it gave them a deeper love of each other, it might never have been.

I sprang up, and Monsieur, my duke, embraced me.

"Lucky we came up the lane when we did, eh, Félix?" M. Étienne said. "But, Monsieur, I have not asked you yet what madness sent you traversing this back passage at two in the morning."

"I might ask you that, Étienne."

The young man hesitated a bare moment before he answered:

"I am just come from serenading Mlle. de Montluc."

A shade fell over Monsieur's radiance. At his look, M. Étienne cried out:

"I've told you I'm no Leaguer! Mayenne offered me mademoiselle if I would come over. I refused. Last night he sent me word that he would kill me as a common nuisance if I sought to see her. That was why I tried."

"Monsieur," I cried, curiosity mastering me, "was she in the window?"

He shook his head, his eyes on his father' face.

"Étienne," Monsieur said slowly, "can't you see that Mlle. de Montluc is not for you?"

"I shall never see it, Monsieur. The first article in my creed says she is for me. And I'll have her yet, for all Mayenne."

"Then, mordieu, we'll steal her together!"

"You! You'll help me?"

"Why, dear son," Monsieur explained, "it broke my heart to think of you in the League. I could not bear that my son should help a Spaniard to the throne of France, or a Lorrainer either. But if it is a question of stealing the lady--well, I never prosed about prudence yet, thank God!"

M. Étienne, wet-eyed, laughing, hugged Monsieur.

"By St. Quentin, we'll get you your lady! I hated the marriage while I thought it would make you a Leaguer. I could not see you sacrifice your honour to a girl's bright eyes. But your life--that is different."

"My life is a little thing."

"No," Monsieur said; "it is a good deal--one's life. But one is not to guard one's life at the cost of all that makes life sweet."

"Ah, you know how I love her!"

"They call me a fool," Monsieur went on musingly, "because I risk my life in wild errands. But, mordieu! I am the wise man. For they who think ever of safety, and crouch and scheme and shuffle to procure it, why, look you, they destroy their own ends. For, when all is done, they have never really lived. And that is why they hate death so, these worthies. While I, who have never cringed to fear, I live like a king. I go my ways without any man's leave; and if death comes to me a little sooner for that, I am a poor creature if I do not meet him smiling. If I may live as I please, I am content to die when I must."

"Aye," said M. Étienne, "and if we live as we do not please, still we must die presently. Therefore do I purpose never to give over striving after my lady."

"Oh, we'll win her by noon. But first we'll sleep. There's Félix yawning his head off. Come, come."

We set off along the alley, the St. Quentins arm in arm, I at their heels. Monsieur looked over his shoulder with a sudden anxiety.

"Félix, you said Huguet had run for aid?"

"Yes, Monsieur; Vigo should have been here before now," I answered, remembering Vigo's promptitude yesterday.

"Every one was asleep; he has been hammering this half-hour to get in," M. Étienne said easily.

But Monsieur asked of me:

"Was he much hurt, Félix?"

"No; I am sure not, Monsieur. He was run through the arm; I am sure he was not hurt otherwise."

We came to where the two slain men lay across the way. M. Étienne exclaimed:

"If you do not hold your life dear, you sell it dear, Monsieur! How many of the rascals were there?"

"It was hard to tell in the dark. Five, I think."

"Now, Monsieur, how came you to be in this place in the dark?"

"Why, what to do, Étienne? I came in at the gate just after midnight. I could not leave St. Denis earlier, and night is my time to enter Paris. The inns were shut--"

"But some friend near the gate? Tarigny would have sheltered you."

"Aye, and got into trouble for it, had it leaked out to the Sixteen."

"Tarigny is no craven."

"But neither am I," said Monsieur, smiling.

"Oh, I give you up! Go your ways. But I will not come to save you next time."

"No, lad; you will be at my side hereafter."

M. Étienne laughed and said no more.

"But in truth," Monsieur added, "I did not expect waylaying. If these fellows watched by the gate, they hid cleverly. I never saw a finger-tip of them till they sprang upon us by the corner here, when we were almost home."

M. Étienne bent over and turned face up the man whom Monsieur had run through the heart. He was an ugly enough fellow, one eye entirely closed by a great scar that ran from his forehead nearly to his grizzled mustache.

"This is Bernet le Borgne," he said. "Have you encountered him before, Monsieur? He was a soldier under Guise once, they say, but he has done naught but hang about Paris taverns this many a year. We used to wonder how he lived; we knew he did somebody's dirty work. Clisson employed him once, so I know something of him. With his one eye he could fence better than most folks with two. My congratulations to you, Monsieur."

But Monsieur, not heeding, was bending over the other man.

"Your acquaintance is wider than mine. Do you know this one?"

M. Étienne shook his head over this other man, who lay face up, staring with wide dark eyes into the sky. His hair curled in little rings about his forehead, and his cheeks were smooth; he looked no older than I.

"He dashed at me the first of all," Monsieur said in a low voice. "I ran him through before the others came up. Mordieu! I am glad it was dark. A boy like that!"

"He had good mettle to run up first," M. Étienne said. "And it is no disgrace to fall to your sword, Monsieur. Come, let us go."

But Monsieur looked back again at the dead lad, and then at his son and at me, and came with us heavy of countenance.

On the stones before us lay a trail of blood-drops.

"Now, that is where Huguet ran with his wounded arm," I said to M. Étienne.

"Aye, and if we did not know the way home we could find it by this red track."

But the trail did not reach the door; for when we turned into the little street where the arch is, where I had waited for Martin, as we turned the familiar corner under the walls of the house itself, we came suddenly on the body of a man. Monsieur ran forward with a cry, for it was the squire Huguet.

He wore a leather jerkin lined with steel rings, mail as stout as any forged. Some one had stabbed once and again at the coat without avail, and had then torn it open and stabbed his defenceless breast. Though we had killed two of their men, they had rained blows enough on this man of ours to kill twenty.

Monsieur knelt on the ground beside him, but he was quite cold.

"The man who fled when we charged them must have lurked about," I said. "Huguet's sword-arm was useless; he could not defend himself."

"Or else he fainted from his wound, he bled so," M. Étienne answered. "And one of those who fled last came upon him helpless and did this."

"Why didn't I follow him instead of sitting down, a John o'dreams?" I cried. "But I was thinking of you and Monsieur; I forgot Huguet."

"I forgot him, too," Monsieur sorrowed. "Shame to me; he would not have forgotten me."

"Monsieur," his son said, "it was no negligence of yours. You could have saved him only by following when he ran. And that was impossible."

"In sight of the door," Monsieur said sadly. "In sight of his own door."

We held silent. Monsieur got soberly to his feet.

"I never lost a better man."

"Monsieur," I cried, "he asks no better epitaph. If you will say that of me when I die, I shall not have lived in vain."

He smiled at the outburst, but I did not care; if he would only smile, I was content it should be at me.

"Nay, Félix," he said. "I hope it will not be I who compose your epitaph. Come, we must get to the house and send after poor Huguet."

"Félix and I will carry him," M. Étienne said, and we lifted him between us--no easy task, for he was a heavy fellow. But it was little enough to do for him.

We bore him along slowly, Monsieur striding ahead. But of a sudden he turned back to us, laying quick fingers on the poor torn breast.

"What is it, Monsieur?" cried his son.

"My papers."

We set him down, and the three of us examined him from top to toe, stripping off his steel coat, pulling apart his blood-clotted linen, prying into his very boots. But no papers revealed themselves.

"What were they, Monsieur?"

A drawn look had come over Monsieur's face.

"Papers which the king gave me, and which I, fool and traitor, have lost."

I ran back to the spot where we had found Huguet; there was his hat on the ground, but no papers. I followed up the red trail to its beginning, looking behind every stone, every bunch of grass; but no papers. In my desperation I even pulled about the dead man, lest the packet had been covered, falling from Huguet in the fray. The two gentlemen joined me in the search, and we went over every inch of the ground, but to no purpose.

"I thought them safer with Huguet than with me," Monsieur groaned. "I knew we ran the risk of ambush. Myself would be the object of attack; I bade Huguet, were we waylaid, to run with the papers."

"And of course he would not."

"He should; it was my command. He stayed and saved my life perhaps, and lost me what is dearer than life--my honour."

"He could not leave you to be killed, Monsieur; that were asking the impossible."

"Aye, but I am saved at the ruin of a hundred others!" Monsieur cried. "The papers contained certain lists of names of Mayenne's officers pledged to support the king if he turn Catholic. I had them for Lemaître. But at this date, in Mayenne's hands, they spell the men's destruction. Huguet should have known that if I told him to desert me, I meant it."

M. Étienne ventured no word, understanding well enough that in such bitter moments no consolation consoles. M. le Duc added after a moment:

"Mordieu! I am ashamed of myself. I might be better occupied than in blaming the dead--the brave and faithful dead. Belike he could not run, they set on us so suddenly. When he could, he did go, and he went to his death. They were my charge, the papers. I had no right to put the responsibility on any other. I should have kept them myself. I should have gone to Tarigny. I should never have ventured myself through these black lanes. Fool! traitorous fool!"

"Nay, Monsieur, the mischance might have befallen any one."

"It would not have befallen Villeroi! It would not have befallen Rosny!" Monsieur exclaimed bitterly. "It befalls me because I am a lack-wit who rushes into affairs for which he is not fit. I can handle a sword, but I have no business to meddle in statecraft."

"Then have those wiseheads out at St. Denis no business to employ you," M. Étienne said. "He is not unknown to fame, this Duke of St. Quentin; everybody knows how he goes about things. Monsieur, they gave you the papers because no one else would carry them into Paris. They knew you had no fear in you; and it is because of that that the papers are lacking. But take heart, Monsieur. We'll get them back."

"When? How?"

"Soon," M. Étienne answered, "and easily, if you will tell me what they are like. Are they open?"

"I fear by now they may be. There are three sheets of names, and a fourth sheet, a letter--all in cipher."

"Ah, but in that case--"

Monsieur cut short his son's jubilation.

"But--Lucas."

"Of course--I forgot him. He knows your ciphers, then?"

"Dolt that I was, he knows everything."

"Then must we lay hands on the papers before they reach Mayenne, and all is saved," M. Étienne declared cheerfully. "These fellows can't read a cipher. If the packet be not open, Monsieur?"

"It was a span long, and half as wide; for all address, the letters _St. Q._ in the corner. It was tied with red cord and bore the seal of a flying falcon, and the motto, _Je reviendrai_."

"What! the king's seal? That's serious. Expect, then, Monsieur, to see the papers in an hour's time."

"Étienne, Étienne," Monsieur cried, "are you mad?"

"No madder than is proper for a St. Quentin. It's simple enough. I told you I recognized that worthy back there for one Bernet, who lodged at an inn I wot of over beyond the markets. Do we betake ourselves thither, we may easily fall in with some comrades of his bosom who have not the misfortune to be lying dead in a back lane, who will know something of your loss. Bernet's sort are no bigots; while they work for the League, they will lend a kindly ear to the chink of Kingsmen's florins."

"Ah," cried Monsieur, "then let us go." But M. Étienne laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.

"Not you. I. They will kill you in the Halles just as cheerfully as in the Quartier Marais. This is my affair."

He looked at Monsieur with kindling eyes, seeing his chance to prove his devotion. The duke yielded to his eagerness.

"But," M. Étienne added generously, "you may have the honour of paying the piper."

"I give you carte blanche, my son. Étienne, if you put that packet into my hand, it is more than if you brought the sceptre of France."

"Then go practise, Monsieur, at feeling more than king."

He embraced his father, and we turned off down the street.

The sun was well up by this time, and the city rousing to the labours of the day. Half was I glad of the lateness of the hour, for we ran no risk now of cutthroats; and half was I sorry, for it behooves not a man supposed to be in the Bastille to show himself too liberally to the broad eye of the streets. Every time--and it was often--that we approached a person who to my nervous imagination looked official, I shook in my shoes. The way seemed fairly to bristle with soldiers, officers, judges; for aught I knew, members of the Sixteen, Governor Belin himself. It was a great surprise to me when at length we arrived without let or hindrance before the door of a mean little drinking-place, our goal.

We went in, and M. Étienne ordered wine, much to my satisfaction. My stomach was beginning to remind me that I had given it nothing for twelve hours or so, while I had worked my legs hard.

"Does M. Bernet lodge with you?" my master asked of the landlord. We were his only patrons at the moment.

"M. Bernet? Him with the eye out?"

"The same."

"Why, no, monsieur. I don't let lodgings. The building is not mine. I but rent the ground floor for my purposes."

"But M. Bernet lodges in the house, then?"

"No, he doesn't. He lodges round the corner, in the court off the Rue Clichet."

"But he comes here often?"

"Oh, aye. Every morning for his glass. And most evenings, too."

M. Étienne laid down the drink-money, and something more.

"Sometimes he has a friend with him, eh?"

The man laughed.

"No, monsieur; he comes in here alone. Many's the time I'll standing in my door when he'll go by with some gallant, and he never chances to see me or my shop. While if he's alone it's 'Good morning, Jean. Anything in the casks to-day?' He can no more get by my door than he'll get by Death's when the time comes."

"No," agreed M. Étienne; "we all stop there, soon or late. Those friends of M. Bernet, then--there is none you could put a name to?"

"Why, no, monsieur, more's the pity. He has none lives in this quarter. M. Bernet's in low water, you understand, monsieur. If he lives here, it is because he can't help it. But he goes elsewhere for his friends."

"Then you can tell us, my man, where he lodges?"

"Aye, that can I," mine host answered, bustling out from behind the bar, eager in the interest of the pleasant-spoken, open-handed gallant. "Just round the corner of the Rue Clichet, in the court. The first house on the left, that is his. I would go with monsieur, only I cannot leave the shop alone, and the wife not back from market. But monsieur cannot miss it. The first house in the court. Thank you, monsieur. Au revoir, monsieur."

In the doorway of the first house on the left in the little court stood an old man with a wooden leg, sweeping heaps of refuse out of the passage.

"It appears that every one on this stair lacks something," M. Étienne murmured to me. "It is the livery of the house. Can you tell me, friend, where I may find M. Bernet?"

The concierge regarded us without cordiality, while by no means ceasing his endeavours to cover our shoes with his sweepings.

"Third story back," he said.

"Does M. Bernet lodge alone?"

"One of him's enough," the old fellow growled, whacking out his dirty broom on the door-post, powdering us with dust. M. Étienne, coughing, pursued his inquiries:

"Ah, I understood he shared his lodgings with a comrade. He has a friend, then, in the building?"

"Aye, I suppose so," the old chap grinned, "when monsieur walks in."

"But he has another friend besides me, has he not?" M. Étienne persisted. "One who, if he does not live here, comes often to see M. Bernet?"

"You seem to know all about it. Better see Bernet himself, instead of chattering here all day."

"Good advice, and I'll take it," said M. Étienne, lightly setting foot on the stair, muttering to himself as he mounted, "and come back to break your head, mon vieillard."

We went up the three flights and along the passage to the door at the back, whereon M. Étienne pounded loudly. I could not see his reason, and heartily I wished he would not. It seemed to me a creepy thing to be knocking on a man's door when we knew very well he would never open it again. We knocked as if we fully thought him within, when all the while we knew he was lying a stone on the stones under M. de Mirabeau's garden wall. Perhaps by this time he had been found; perhaps one of the marquis's liveried lackeys, or a passing idler, or a woman with a market-basket had come upon him; perhaps even now he was being borne away on a plank to be identified. And here were we, knocking, knocking, as if we innocently expected him to open to us. I had a chill dread that suddenly he would open to us. The door would swing wide and show him pale and bloody, with the broken sword in his heart. At the real creaking of a hinge I could scarce swallow a cry.

It was not Bernet's door, but the door at the front which opened, letting a stream of sunlight into the dark passage. In the doorway stood a woman, with two bare-legged babies clinging to her skirts.

"Madame," M. Étienne addressed her, with the courtesy due to a duchess, "I have been knocking at M. Bernet's door without result. Perhaps you could give me some hint as to his whereabouts?"

"Ah, I am sorry. I know nothing to tell monsieur," she cried regretfully, impressed, as the concierge had not been, by his look and manner. "But this I can say: he went out last night, and I do not believe he has been in since. He went out about nine--or it may have been later than that. Because I did not put the children to bed till after dark; they enjoy running about in the cool of the evening as much as anybody else, the little dears. And they were cross last night, the day was so hot, and I was a long time hushing them to sleep. Yes, it must have been after ten, because they were asleep, and the man stumbling on the stairs woke Pierre. And he cried for an hour. Didn't you, my angel?"

She picked one of the brats up in her arms to display him to us. M. Étienne asked:

"What man?"

"Why, the one that came for him. The one he went out with."

"And what sort of person was this?"

"Nay, how was I to see? Would I be out walking the common passage with a child to hush? I was rocking the cradle."

"But who does come here to visit M. Bernet?"

"I've never seen any one, monsieur. I've never laid eyes on M. Bernet but twice. I keep in my apartment. And besides, we have only been here a week."

"I thank you, madame," M. Étienne said, turning to the stairs.

She ran out to the rail, babies and all.

"But I could take a message for him, monsieur. I will make a point of seeing him when he comes in."

"I will not burden you, madame," M. Étienne answered from the story below. But she was loath to stop talking, and hung over the railing to call:

"Beware of your footing, monsieur. Those second-floor people are not so tidy as they might be; one stumbles over all sorts of their rubbish out in the public way."

The door in front of us opened with a startling suddenness, and a big, brawny wench bounced out to demand of us:

"What is that she says? What are you saying of us, you slut?"

We had no mind to be mixed in the quarrel. We fled for our lives down the stair.

The old carl, though his sweeping was done, leaned on his broom on the outer step.

"So you didn't find M. Bernet at home? I could have told you as much had you been civil enough to ask."

I would have kicked the old curmudgeon, but M. Étienne drew two gold pieces from his pouch.

"Perchance if I ask you civilly, you will tell me with whom M. Bernet went out last night?"

"Who says he went out with anybody?"

"I do," and M. Étienne made a motion to return the coins to their place.

"Since you know so much, it's strange you don't know a little more," the old chap growled. "Well, Lord knows if it is really his, but he goes by the name of Peyrot."

"And where does he lodge?"

"How should I know? I have trouble enough keeping track of my own lodgers, without bothering my head about other people's."

"Now rack your brains, my friend, over this fellow," M. Étienne said patiently, with a persuasive chink of his pouch. "Recollect now; you have been sent to this monsieur with a message."

"Well, Rue des Tournelles, sign of the Gilded Shears," the old carl spat out at last.

"You are sure?"

"Hang me else."

"If you are lying to me, I will come back and beat you to a jelly with your own broom."

"It's the truth, monsieur," he said, with some proper show of respect at last. "Peyrot, at the Gilded Shears, Rue des Tournelles. You may beat me to a jelly if I lie."

"It would do you good in any event," M. Étienne told him, but flinging him his pistoles, nevertheless. The old fellow swooped upon them, gathered them up, and was behind the closed door all in one movement. But as we walked away, he opened a little wicket in the upper panel, and stuck out his ugly head to yell after us:

"If M. Bernet's not at home yet, neither will his friend be. I've told you what will profit you none."

"You mistake, Sir Gargoyle," M. Étienne called over his shoulder. "Your information is entirely to my needs."