"Why should you tell me this--unless it is a lie?" coolly asked the jester.
"A lie!" exclaimed the visitor, frowning.
"Yes, like your very presence in Francis" court," added the fool, fearlessly.
In the silence ensuing the pa.s.sion slowly faded from the countenance of the king"s guest. He remembered he had not yet ascertained what he wished to know.
"Such recriminations from you remind me of a bird beating its wings against the bars of its cage," at length came the unruffled response.
"Why should I lie? There is no need for it. You sent Caillette; he is on his way now, for all of me. For"--leading to the thread of what he sought--"why should I have stopped him? He embarked on a hopeless chase. How can he reach Austria and the emperor in time to prevent the marriage?"
The jester"s swift questioning glance was not lost upon the speaker, who, after a pause, continued. "Had I known, I am not sure I would have prevented his departure. What better way to dispose of him than to let him go on a mad-cap journey? Besides, you must have forgotten about the pa.s.ses. How could you expect him to get by my sentinels? It will attract less attention to have him stopped there than here."
All this, spoken brusquely, was accompanied by frank, insolent looks which beneath their seeming openness concealed an intentness of purpose and a shrewd penetration. Only the first abrupt change in the fool"s look, a slight one though it was, betrayed the jester to his caller.
In that swiftly pa.s.sing gleam, as the free baron spoke of Austria, and not of Spain, the other read full confirmation of what he desired to know.
"He will do his best," commented the jester, carelessly.
"And man can do no more," retorted the king"s guest. "Many a battle has been thus bravely lost."
He had hoped to provoke from the _plaisant_ some further expression of self-content in his plans for the future, but the other had become guarded.
What if he offered the fool clemency? asked the princess" betrothed of himself. If the jester had confidence in the future he would naturally rather remain in the narrow confines of his dark chamber than consider proposals from one whom he believed he would yet overcome. The free baron began to enjoy this strategic duplicity of language; the environing dangers lent zest to equivocation; the seduction of finding himself more potent than forces antagonistic became intoxicating to his egotism.
"Why," he said, patronizingly, surveying the slender figure of the fool, "a good man should die by the sword rather than go to the scaffold. What if I were to overlook Caillette and the rest? He is harmless,"--more shrewdly; "let him go. As for the princess--well, you"re young; in the heyday for such nonsense. I have never yet quarreled seriously with man for woman"s sake. There are many graver causes for contention--a purse, or a few acres of land; right royal warfare. If I get the king to forgive you, and the princess to overlook your offense, will you well and truthfully serve me?"
"Never!" answered the fool, promptly.
"He is sure the message will reach Charles in Spain," mentally concluded the king"s guest. "Yet," he continued aloud in a tone of mockery, "you did not hesitate to betray your master yourself. Why, then, will you not betray him to me?"
"To him I will answer, not to you," returned the jester, calmly.
A contemptuous smile crossed the free baron"s face.
"And tell him how you dared look up to his mistress? That you sought to save her from another, while you yourself poured your own burning tale into her ear? Two things I most admire in nature," went on the free baron, with emphasis. "A dare-devil who stops not for man or Satan, and--an honest man. You take but a compromising middle course; and will hang, a hybrid, from some convenient limb."
"But not without first knowing that you, too, in all likelihood, will adorn an equally suitable branch, my Lord of the thieves" rookery,"
said the jester, smiling.
Louis of Hochfels responded with an ugly look. His bloodshot eyes took fire beneath the provocation.
"Fool, you expect your duke will intervene!" he exclaimed. "Not when he has been told all by the king, or the princess," he sneered. "Do you think she cares? You, a motley fool; a theme for jest between us."
"But when she learns about you?" retorted the plaisant, significantly.
"She will e"en be mistress of my castle."
"Castle?" laughed the Jester. "A robber"s aery! a footpad"s retreat!
A rifler of the roads become a great lord? You of royal blood! Then was your father a king of thieves!"
The free baron"s face worked fearfully; the kingly part of him had been a matter of fanatical pride; through it did he believe he was destined to power and honors. But before the cutting irony of the _plaisant_, that which is heaven-born--self-control--dropped from him; the mad, brutal rage of the peasant surged in his veins.
Infuriate his hand sought his sword, but before he could draw it the fool, antic.i.p.ating his purpose, had rushed upon him with such impetuosity and suddenness that the king"s guest, in spite of his bulk and strength, was thrust against the wall. Like a grip of iron, the jester"s fingers were buried in his opponent"s throat. For one so youthful and slender in build, his power was remarkable, and, strive as he might, the princess" betrothed could not shake him off. Although his arms pressed with crushing force about the figure of the fool, the hand at his throat never relaxed. He endeavored to thrust the _plaisant_ from him, but, like a tiger, the jester clung; to and fro they swayed; to the free baron, suffocated by that gauntlet of steel, the room was already going around; black spots danced before his eyes.
He strove to reach for the dagger that hung from his girdle, but it was held between them. Perhaps the muscles of the king"s guest had been weakened by the excesses of Francis" court, yet was he still a mighty tower of strength, and, mad with rage, by a last supreme effort he finally managed to tear himself loose, hurling the fool violently from him into the arms of the jailer, who, attracted by the sound of the struggle, at that moment rushed into the cell. This keeper, himself a burly, herculean soldier, promptly closed with the prisoner.
Breathless, exhausted, the free baron marked the conflict now transferred to the turnkey and the jester. The former held the fool at a decided disadvantage, as he had sprung upon the back of the jester and was also unweakened by previous efforts. But still the fool contended fiercely, striving to turn so as to grapple with his a.s.sailant, and wonderingly the free baron for a moment watched that exhibition of virility and endurance. During the wrestling the jester"s doublet had been torn open and suddenly the gaze of the king"s guest fell, as if fascinated, upon an object which hung from his neck.
Bending forward, he scrutinized more closely that which had attracted his attention and then started back. Harshly he laughed, as though a new train of thought had suddenly a.s.sailed him, and looked earnestly into the now pale face of the nearly helpless fool.
"Why," he cried, "here"s a different complication!"
And stooping suddenly, he grasped the stool from the floor and brought it down with crushing force upon the _plaisant"s_ head. A cowardly, brutal blow; and at once the prisoner"s grasp relaxed, and he lay motionless in the arms of the warder, who placed him on the straw.
"I think the knave"s dead, my Lord," remarked the man, panting from his exertion.
"That makes the comedy only the stronger," replied the free baron curtly, as he knelt by the side of the prostrate figure and thrust his hand under the torn doublet. Having procured possession of the object which chance had revealed to him, he arose and, without further word, left the cell.
CHAPTER XVI
TIDINGS FROM THE COURT
When Brusquet, the jester, fled from the camp at Avignon, where he had presumed to practise medicine, to the detriment of the army, some one said: "Fools and cats have nine lives," and the revised proverb had been accepted at court. It was this saying the turnkey muttered when he bent over the prostrate figure of the duke"s _plaisant_ after the free baron had departed. Thus one of the fabled sources of existence was left the fool, and again it seemed the proverb would be realized.
Day after day pa.s.sed, and still the vital spark burned; perhaps it wavered, but in this extremity the jester had not been entirely neglected; but who had befriended him, a.s.sisting the spirit and the flesh to maintain their unification, he did not learn until some time later. Youth and a strong const.i.tution were also a shield against the final change, and when he began to mend, and his heart-beats grew stronger, even the jailer, his erstwhile a.s.sailant, the most callous of his several keepers, exhibited a stony interest in this unusual convalescence.
The touch of a hand was the _plaisant"s_ first impression of returning consciousness, and then into his throbbing brain crept the outlines of the prison walls and the small window that grudgingly admitted the light. To his confused thoughts these surroundings recalled the struggle with the free baron and the jailer. As across a dark chasm, he saw the face of the false duke, whereon wonder and conviction had given way to brutal rage, and, with the memory of that treacherous blow, the fool half-started from his couch.
A low voice carried him back from the past to a vague cognizance of a woman"s form, standing at the head of the bed, and two grave, dark eyes looking down upon him which he strove in vain to interrogate with his own. He would have spoken, but the soothing pressure of the hand upon his forehead restrained him, and, turning to the wall, sleep overcame him; a slumber long, sound and restorative. Motionless the figure remained, listening for some time to his deep breathing and then stole away as silently as she had come.
Amid a solitude like that of a catacomb the hours ran their course; the day grew old, and eventide replaced the waning flush in the west. The shadows deepened into night, and the first kisses of morn again merged into the brighter prime. Near the cell the only sound had been the footstep of the warder, or the scampering of a rat, but now from afar seemed to come a faint whispering, like the murmur of the ocean. It was the voice of awakened nature; the wind and the trees; the whir of birds" wings, or the sound of other living creatures in the forest hard by. A song of life and buoyancy, it breathed just audibly its cheering intonation about the prison bars, when the captive once more stirred and gazed around him. As he did so, the figure of the woman, who had again noiselessly entered the cell, stepped forward and stood near the couch.
"Are you better?" she asked.
He raised himself on his elbow, surprised at the unexpected appearance of his visitor.
"Jacqueline!" he said, wonderingly, recognizing the features of the joculatrix. "I must have been unconscious all night." And he stared from her toward the window.
"Yes," she returned with a peculiar smile; "all night." And bending over him, she held a receptacle to his lips from which he mechanically drank a broth, warm and refreshing, the while he endeavored to account for the strangeness of her presence in the cell. She placed the bowl on the floor and then, straightening her slim figure, again regarded him.
"You are improving fast," she commented, reflectively.
"Thanks to your sovereign mixture," he answered, lifting a hand to his bandaged head, and striving to collect his scattered ideas which already seemed to flow more consecutively. The pain which had racked his brow had grown perceptibly less since his last deep slumber, and a grateful warmth diffused itself in his veins with a growing a.s.surance of physical relief. "But may I ask how you came here?" he continued, perplexity mingling with the sense of temporary languor that stole over him.
"I heard the duke tell the king you had attacked him and he had struck you down," she replied, after a pause.
His face darkened; his head throbbed once more; with his fingers he idly picked at the straw.