If I Were King (McCarthy novel, R. H. Russell)/Chapter 4
ONCE again the door swung on its hinges admitting a very tall, powerful man, dressed like a common soldier, his brawny bulk panoplied in steel and leather. He glanced about him as he entered, exchanged looks with René de Montigny and came down to the settle, where he flung his vast body with a clatter while he called to the landlord in a bull's bellow to bring him some wine.
Katherine leaning and looking gave a little gasp.
"That is he!" she breathed into Villon's ear.
Villon gave an involuntary sigh, partly indeed of satisfaction at the thought that his quarry was before him, a very vast and royal stag for a hunter's hand to threaten, but partly too of exquisite regret. It had been very sweet to crouch there in the darkness of the stairway so close to the one fair woman of all the world, to feel her breath upon his cheek, almost to hear her heart-beats, to know that once if only for once they were alone together and allied in a common purpose, to feel the touch of her soft gown, to know that if he chose he could touch her hair with his outstretched hand. Those seconds of strange intimacy seemed to be worth all the rest of his life—and now they had come to an end. Now he had to show that he deserved them. "Good," he said, and leaving her side he softly descended the stairs, crept cat-foot across the tavern floor and insinuated himself dexterously into the society of his friends, who were by this time far too mad and merry to show any surprise at his sudden re-appearance, or to question whence he came. Only one of the fellowship was away from the board—René de Montigny, who had risen as soon as the soldier had taken his seat by the fireplace, and had come down to greet him in a seemingly careless, off-hand fashion. Villon dexterously moving from friend to friend managed to niche himself by the back of the settle where he could catch some of the words that passed between Montigny and the stranger, whose meeting was also the subject of unsuspected scrutiny on the part of the unassuming burgesses who sat apart and to whom no one now gave heed.
"A fine evening, friend," Montigny said affably.
"Pretty fine for the time of year," the soldier answered. "How is your garden, friend?"
Montigny smiled whimsically.
"Very salubrious, if it were not for the shooting stars."
Then as the soldier stared at him he hastened to explain.
"My quip. The shooting star was a Burgundian arrow a cloth-yard long which came winging its way over the walls at noon and made itself at home in my garden. Here is what the arrow carried."
He pulled from his pouch a small piece of parchment folded and sealed, and handed it to the seeming soldier. The disguised constable took the missive and scanned it narrowly.
"The seal has not been tampered with," he said to himself. René caught him up with a noble gesture of indignation.
"I never read other people's letters," he protested.
Thibaut shrugged his shoulders.
"It would have profited you little if you had," he said, as he broke the seal and turning aside stooped a little to read by the faint fire light what the letter said. It was couched in words that seemed commonplace enough, but Thibaut knew their secret meaning, knew that the Duke of Burgundy would do all that he asked, give him a duchy, give him the girl he coveted, all that he might ask for or lust for if he would only play the traitor and deliver Louis into the Duke of Burgundy's hands. As this was precisely what Thibaut was resolved to do, a pleased smile played over his lips as he tossed the parchment into the glowing ashes and watched it wither into nothingness. He turned to Montigny, who was watching him attentively.
"Can you command some safe rogues of your kidney who think better of Burgundian gold than of the fool on the throne?"
Montigny answered him behind his hand. "Aye. I know of half a dozen stout lads who would pilfer the king from his palace of the Louvre if they were paid well enough for the job," and he jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of his carousing comrades. Thibaut nodded approval. He thrust some gold into Montigny's ready palm, whispered to him to meet him again to-morrow, and as Montigny rejoined his friends he turned to leave the tavern.
To his surprise he found himself confronted by Villon, who feigning intoxication barred his passage with an air of great hilarity. "You walk abroad late, honest soldier," he hiccoughed.
"That's my business," Thibaut answered, trying to pass, but Villon still delayed him.
"Don't be testy. Come and crack a bottle."
"I've had enough, and you've had more than enough," Thibaut growled. "Go to bed!"
Villon's false good humour changed in a clap.
"You're a damned uncivil fellow, soldier, and don't know how to treat a gentleman when you see one."
Thibaut began to lose patience.
"Get out of the way!" he said, and gave Villon a little push with his open hand that made him stagger. Villon's voice rose to a yell.
"I will not get out of the way! How do I know you are an honest soldier? How do I know that you are a true man?"
As Villon's voice rose the altercation attracted the attention of the revellers. Montigny glided to Villon's side and whispered him.
"Let him alone, François; he's not what he seems."
"Seems! Who cares what he seems?" Villon shouted. "It's what he is I want to know. Perhaps he's not an honest soldier at all. Perhap's he's a damned Burgundian spy!"
Thibaut lifted his hand to crush Villon, but the poet's naked dagger menaced him and he paused.
"Fling this drunken dog into the street," he commanded angrily. Villon's friends snapped at him furiously. Villon flung back the phrase.
"Drunken dog, indeed! You are a lying, ill-favoured knave! Keep the door, friends, this rogue has insulted me. Pluck out your iron, soldier!"
In a moment the whole pack were between Thibaut and the door, every woman a fury, every man a fighter, every man with the exception of René de Montigny, who, dexterously disentangling himself from the mass of his companions, made for the side door and slipped out of it unheeded in the confusion. It was his intention to alarm the watch and intervene for the protection of his powerful patron, and with this purpose in his mind he disappeared into the darkness of the street and ran as fast as his legs could carry him.
In the meantime the quarrel at the Fircone raged hotter. Thibaut, glaring at his enemies as a bull might glare at barking dogs, asked savagely of the poet who was brandishing his sword:
"Who the devil are you?"
Villon flung has head back defiantly and flourished his sword.
"I am François Villon, and my sword is as good as another man's."
The moment the name fell on Thibaut's ears the giant gave a giant's laugh.
"Are you François Villon?" he thundered. "Lend me a cudgel, some one," and he looked around as if seeking for the weapon he asked for. Villon snatched up a mug and flung the heel taps in the soldier's face, spotting his cheeks with drops of crimson that trickled on to his breast plate. With a choking cry of rage Thibaut dragged his sword into the air.
"You fool," he hissed, "I'll kill you!"
"We shall see," Villon answered gallantly, as he stood on guard alert and wary.
For a moment the he-rascals and she-rascals held their breath. The great figure in the shining steel seemed so to dominate the slight frame of their favourite that anything like an equal contest between the two men seemed little less than ridiculous. What skill of Villon's could hope to avail against the mighty sweep of that huge soldier's weapon? Suddenly the swift spirit of Huguette solved the problem. Springing forward with the delicate agility of a young panther, she poised, opinionative, between the opponents.
"Fair play!" she screamed. "This is David and Goliath," and as she spoke she pointed with one hand at Villon while with the other she struck with her open palm a ringing blow on the cuirass of Villon's antagonist. "Let them fight it out with sword and lantern in the dark."
A loud shout of applause greeted the girl's suggestion. That fantastic form of duello was not unfamiliar to the free companions of the Court of Miracles, and Villon himself, eager as he was for the combat, was keen enough to see how well this way might work for the surety of his purpose. Skill, inches, tricks of fence, all things were equal when men fought as shadows in shadowland.
"What do you say, Goliath?" he laughed, and the grim face of Thibaut smiled responsive.
"As you please," he said, serenely confident in his strength and length of arm. "It is all one to me." Then suddenly looking round on the leering, sullen faces about him, a wolfish girdle of ferocity, he caught back his agreement and held it for a moment. "On this condition," he added. "When there is an end of you, there is an end of the quarrel. Your friends here must agree to that."
Villon agreed on the instant. He was all for ridding the world of Thibaut, but he wanted to do it himself for the sake of the white girl crouching on the stairway.
"I promise," he said, "for myself and for them," and turning to the girl, he insisted, "Promise, Huguette; swear it!"
"I swear it," Huguette answered.
"That is settled," said Villon. "Now, friends, make a ring and dowse the glim."
In another instant, the preparations for the combat were afoot, Robin Turgis, angrily protesting against the desecration of his orderly hostelry and shouting wild words about summoning the watch, was promptly overpowered by Jehan le Loup, who forced him on to a bench and kept him there with a dagger's point at his throat. The women huddled, screaming and excited, on the stairway a little below the place where Katherine crouched, holding her breath and peeping through the railings. The men stood behind tables and on benches, while Casin Cholet and Colin de Cayeulx dived into the landlord's quarters and reappeared bearing each in his hand a lighted lantern. While these preparations were being hurried toward, Tristan, full of alarm, leaned forward and plucked at the king's mantle.
"This must be put a stop to, sire," he whispered; but the king shook his head with a grim smile of satisfaction.
"On the contrary, gossip," he answered, "whichever of these rascals kills the other, does the state a service and saves the hangman some labour."
Villon crossed the room and came close to where Thibaut waited sullen. "I think I shall square our reckoning, Master Thibaut," he whispered. The giant stared at him. "You know me?" he gasped. "Your varlets thumped me yesterday," Villon answered. "I shall tickle you to-day. Turn, turn about, friend Thibaut."
Even as he spoke Guy Tabarie puffed out the last candle left alight in the room, which was plunged instantly into almost total darkness. Even the faint moonlight that had come through the window was swiftly veiled by Huguette, who drew the crimson curtains close together. The dim light from the fire only seemed to accentuate and intensify the darkness through which the two lanterns burned, pale planets of yellow fire, in the hands of Casin and Colin. Villon snatched the one and Thibaut took the other. There was a moment of intense silence; then the voice of Huguette cried out of the blackness: "Are you ready?"
Both combatants cried, "Yes!" in the same breath, and in the next the battle began.
No stranger fight had ever been fought within those walls before, or even perhaps within the walls of Paris. In the dense obscurity the two antagonists groped for each other, alternately guided and baffled by the light of the lanterns, as their holder lifted his light suddenly in the air or dexterously concealed it under the fold of his mantle. Every now and then the swords would meet with a clash, there would be a hurried exchange of thrust and blow, and then the adversaries would drift back again to grope and gleam and seek each other anew, their lanterns flashing and disappearing like accentuated glow-worms, and their blades now shining in sudden illumination like streaks of blue lightning across the blackness and now invisible even to those who held them in their hands.
Tristan had in vain endeavoured to persuade the king to leave before the preliminaries for the fantastic strife had been completed, but Louis was firm in his determination to remain.
"I would not miss this for the world, man," he had insisted. All his childlike delight in the adventurous was being sated to the full this evening, and there was no happier man at that moment in the kingdom than the man who by strange fortune was its king.
The fight persisted for some minutes that seemed like hours to more than one of the anxious spectators. Now the room would be steeped in the deepest silence, and now, as the revealed lantern glowed and the naked weapons met, some woman's scream or some man's suppressed oath would fill the place with a sense of watching, eager humanity.
Suddenly, when the tension of watcher and watched was keenest, there came a mighty crashing at the door and a voice shouted loudly a summons to open in the king's name.
Tristan knew well enough what the summons meant. "It is the watch, sire," he whispered to the king.
Thibaut too, groping for his nimble antagonist and beginning to despair of crushing the man, heard and understood the summons. He was tired of the baffling struggle.
"Open the door!" he shouted noisily, and the cry stirred Villon to a more vehement assault. He sprang like a cat at the giant, flashed the lantern dazzlingly in his eyes, and as Thibaut, furious, made a wild lunge at him, Villon dexterously swung his lantern on to his enemy's sword point and in another second had driven his own blade into Thibaut's side.
"Not so fast, rat-catcher!" he shouted exultantly, and as Thibaut fell with a heavy crash of rattling armour on the floor, the door was dashed open and the armed watch poured in with blazing torches, filling the room with light and armoured men. François, after a moment's glance of triumph at the fallen giant, sprang round and glanced up at the gallery.
Katherine, standing, leaned over the balustrade and flung a knot of ribbon to her champion, who caught it as it skimmed through the air, pressed it to his lips and thrust it into the bosom of his jerkin. In another moment Katherine had disappeared and Villon found himself roughly held in the strong grasp of two soldiers, while the captain of the watch surveyed the scene with some astonishment, and the rogues were overawed by the bills of the new-comers.
"What is this tumult?" the captain demanded. Villon answered him airily, smiling over the crossed pikes that penned him.
"A fair fight, good captain, conducted according to the honourable laws of sword and lantern."
The captain of the watch turned his attention to Thibaut, who, assisted by one of the soldiers, had raised himself upon one elbow and was glaring vindictively at Villon.
"Who is this man?" he asked.
A desire for revenge got the better of the wounded man's discretion.
"I am Thibaut d'Aussigny," he gasped. "I am the Grand Constable."
A little shiver of surprise and alarm ran round the room at the sound of that dreaded name. The captain of the watch kneeled in salutation.
"Monseigneur," he said, "how did this happen?"
Thibaut's senses were running away from him with his running blood, but malignity overcrowed weakness for a moment. He pointed at Villon. "Take that fellow and hang him on the nearest lantern," and as he spoke he swooned. Promptly the captain turned towards his prisoner. "Take that fellow outside and hang him," he commanded curtly. Villon glanced wildly about for a way to escape and saw none. His friends gave a groan of sympathy, but they could do no more, for the soldiers overawed them. Huguette flung her arms about him, sobbing. The grasp of his captors tightened and Villon shivered at the clasp. Suddenly the little insignificant burgess at the table rose and advanced towards the soldier.
"Stop, sir," he said imperatively. "That young gentleman is my affair." The soldier turned angrily upon the interfering citizen.
"Who are you," he growled, "who dare to interfere with the king's justice?"
The citizen pulled his heavy cap from his head and revealed the wrinkled, eager visage that was so well known and so well feared.
"I am the king's justice," he said simply, while Tristan behind him cried "God save the king!" and the astonished soldier bent the knee in homage. Villon, staring, dumfounded, caught the humour of the situation and could not hold his tongue.
"The king! Good Lord!" he said, and punctuated his comment with a prolonged whistle.
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