Part 42 (1/2)
My lord, he never did you any harm in all his innocent life!”
The Marshal de Retz shut the window with a shrug of protest against the vulgarity of prejudice. He did not notice four men in the garb of pilgrims who stood in the dark of a doorway opposite.
”This is both unnecessary and excessively discomposing,” he muttered; ”I fear Poitou has not been judicious enough in his selections.”
He turned towards the private door, and as he did so Astarte the she-wolf rose and silently followed him with her head drooped forward.
He went along a dark pa.s.sage and pushed open a little iron door. A bright light as of a furnace burnt up before him, and the heat was overpowering as it rushed like a ruddy tide-race against his face.
”Well, Poitou, does it go better?” he said cheerfully, ”or must we try them of the other s.e.x and somewhat younger, as I at first proposed?”
He let the door slip back, and the action of a powerful spring shut out Astarte. Whereat she sat down on her haunches in the dark of the pa.s.sage, and showed her gleaming teeth in a grin, as, with c.o.c.ked ears, she listened to the sounds from within the secret laboratory of the Marshal de Retz.
CHAPTER XLIII
MALISE FETCHES A CLOUT
The four men whom the Messire Gilles, by good fortune, failed to see standing in the doorway opposite the Hotel de p.o.r.nic were attired in the habit of pilgrims to the shrine of Saint James of Compostella.
Upon their heads they wore broad corded hats of brown. Long brown robes covered them from head to foot. Their heads were tonsured, and as they went along they fumbled at their beads and gave their benediction to the people that pa.s.sed by, whether they returned them an alms or not. This they did by spreading abroad the fingers of both hands and inclining their heads, at the same time muttering to themselves in a tongue which, if not Latin, was at least equally unknown to the good folk of Paris.
”It is the house,” said the tallest of the four, ”stand well back within the shade!”
”Nay, Sholto, what need?” grumbled another, a very thickset palmer he; ”if the maids be within, let us burst the gates, and go and take them out!”
”Be silent, Malise,” put in the third pilgrim, whose dress of richer stuff than that of his companions, added to an air of natural command, betrayed the man of superior rank, ”remember, great jolterhead, that we are not at the gates of Edinburgh with all the south country at our backs.”
The fourth, a slender youth and fresh of countenance, stood somewhat behind the first three, without speaking, and wore an air of profound meditation and abstraction.
It is not difficult to identify three out of the four. Sholto's quest for his sweetheart was a thing fixed and settled. That his father and his brother Laurence should accompany him was also to be expected. But the other and more richly attired was somewhat less easy to be certified. The Lord James of Douglas it was, who spoke French with the idiomatic use and easy accentuation of a native, albeit of those central provinces which had longest owned the sway of the King of France. The brothers MacKim also spoke the language of the country after a fas.h.i.+on. For many Frenchmen had come over to Galloway in the trains of the first two Dukes of Touraine, so that the Gallic speech was a common accomplishment among the youths who sighed to adventure where so many poor Scots had won fortune, in the armies of the Kings of France.
Indeed, throughout the centuries Paris cannot be other than Paris. And Paris was more than ever Paris in the reign of Charles the Seventh.
Her populace, gay, fickle, brave, had just cast off the yoke of the English, and were now venting their freedom from stern Saxon policing according to their own fas.h.i.+on. Not the King of France, but the Lord of Misrule held the sceptre in the capital.
It was not long therefore before a band of rufflers swung round a corner arm-in-arm, taking the whole breadth of the narrow causeway with them as they came. It chanced that their leader espied the four Scots standing in the wide doorway of the house opposite the Hotel de p.o.r.nic.
”Hey, game lads,” he cried, in that roistering shriek which then pa.s.sed for das.h.i.+ng hardihood among the youth of Paris, ”here be some holy men, pilgrims to the shrine of Saint Denis, I warrant. I, too, am a clerk of a sort, for Henriet tonsured me on Wednesday sennight. Let us see if these men of good works carry any of the deceitful vanities of earth about with them in their purses. Sometimes such are not ill lined!”
The youths accepted the proposal of their leader with alacrity.
”Let us have the blessing of the holy palmers,” they cried, ”and eke the contents of their pockets!”
So with a gay shout, and in an evil hour for themselves, they bore down upon the four Scots.
”Good four evangelists,” cried the youth who had spoken first--a tall, ill-favoured, and sallow young man in a cloak of blue lined with scarlet, swaggering it with long strides before the others, ”tell us which of you four is Messire Matthew. For, being a tax-gatherer, he will a.s.suredly have money of his own, and besides, since the sad death of your worthy friend Judas, he must have succeeded him as your treasurer.”
”This is the keeper of our humble store, n.o.ble sir,” answered the Lord James Douglas, quietly, indicating the giant Malise with his left hand, ”but spare him and us, I pray you courteously!”
”Ha, so,” mocked the tall youth, turning to Malise, ”then the gentleman of the receipt of custom hath grown strangely about the chest since he went a-wandering from Galilee!”