Part 26 (1/2)
With a curse Thibaut turned and, sweeping aside the archers who tried to stop him, disappeared down the nearest alley. Noel le Jolys, drawing his sword, rushed in pursuit, followed by several soldiers. Villon held the bleeding body of the girl in his arms, and tried his best to stanch the wound which was staining the green jerkin a dull red, but the girl protested faintly, pus.h.i.+ng his ministering hand away.
”Let me alone; I am done for,” she gasped.
Olivier was by her side in an instant, eyeing the wound with the professional interest of the surgeon-barber and looking from it to the girl's pale face. Villon's gaze questioned him. Olivier shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. Villon knew that the wound was mortal, and his own blood seemed like water within him. He carried the girl across the gra.s.s to the marble seat and rested her on it, the red stain on the green coat growing wider and wider as they moved.
”Courage, Abbess, courage, la.s.s,” he whispered, fighting with his horror and his sorrow as he moaned to himself: ”That any one should die for me!”
The girl's arms clung closer about his neck and her lips moved faintly. He stooped close to her to catch her words.
”This is a strange end, Francois. I always thought I should die in a bed. Here is another kind of battlefield. Give me drink.”
”Some water,” Villon cried to Olivier, who stood a little apart from the pair with the resigned look of the physician who knows that his art is of no avail.
Huguette protested faintly.
”Not water. Wine. I have ever loved the taste of it, and 'tis too late to change now.”
Olivier filled a cup from the flagon on the table and was for lifting it to the girl's lips, but her feeble hand repulsed him and she pleaded to Villon:
”Give it to me, Francois.”
Villon took the cup from the barber's hand, lifted it to the dying girl's lips, and she drank greedily. The strong wine gave her for a moment something of its own false strength, and she struggled to her feet, Villon rising with her and supporting her.
”Your health, Francois. I suppose I have been a great sinner. Will G.o.d forgive me?”
Villon stifled a heavy groan, but he was sworn to console her if he could, and, indeed, he believed his words of consolation.
”He understands his children.”
The heavy head drooped its golden curls upon his shoulder.
”You always were hopeful,” she said brokenly. Then suddenly clasping him tightly, she cried: ”Many men have taken my body; only you ever took my heart. Give me your lips.”
Villon's spirit was troubled. It seemed to him that his lips were bound to wait for that kiss of his lady's, and yet the dying girl loved him and he had loved the dying girl after a fas.h.i.+on, and he could not refuse her now. He bent to grant her prayer, when suddenly she shook herself free from his arms and began to sing faintly the words of the song he had made for her:
”Daughters of Pleasure, one and all,
Then she caught her breath with a sob and slipped to the last lines of the verse:
”Use your red lips before too late, Love ere love flies beyond recall.”
She shook her head back in a wild peal of laughter: then she gave a great cry and fell forward. Villon caught her, looked in her face and knew that she was dead, and that the best of his old bad life lay dead with her.
Olivier in obedience to an order of the king's, gave a signal and the girl's body was swiftly wrapped in a soldier's cloak and laid gently upon a pair of crossed halberds. As this was being done, Noel le Jolys came panting back with a red sword in his hand.
”Thibaut d'Aussigny is dead, sire,” he said; ”my hand was the hand that finished him.”