"His speech?"
"That of one born to command."
"Command!" returned the princess, ironically. "Odious word!"
"You, Madam," quickly answered the jester, "he would serve."
A moment her glance challenged his, coldly, proudly, and then her features softened. The indolent look crept into her eyes once more; the tension of her lips relaxed.
"Command and serve!" laughed the princess. "A paradox, if not a paragon, it seems! Not handsome--probably ugly!--a soldier--full of oaths--a bl.u.s.terer--strong in his cups! What a list of qualifications!
Well"--with a sigh--"what must needs be must be! The emperor plays the rook; Francis moves his p.a.w.n--my poor self. The game, beyond the two moves, is naught to us. Perhaps we shall be sacrificed, one or both!
What of that, if it"s a draw, or one of the players checkmates the other--"
"But, Princess," cried the fool, "he loves you!
Pa.s.sionately!--devotedly!--"
"A pa.s.sing fancy for a painted semblance!" said the lady, as rising she turned toward the cas.e.m.e.nt, the golden Cupid falling from her lap to the floor. In the rhythmic ease of her movement, in her very att.i.tude, was consciousness of her own power, but to the poet-jester, surrounded as he was by symbols of worship and devotion, her expressed self-doubt seemed that of some saintly being, cloistered in the solitude of a sanctuary.
"Nay," he answered swiftly, "he has but to see you--with the sunlight in your hair--as I see you now! The p.a.w.n, Madam, would become a queen; his queen! What would matter to him the game of Charles or Francis? Let Charles grow greater, or Francis smaller. His gain would be--you!"
The fingers of the maid who sat at the far end of the room ceased to caress the silver vase; her hands were tightly clasped together; in her dark eyes was an ironical light, as her gaze pa.s.sed from the jester to her mistress. Almost motionless stood the princess until he had finished; motionless it would have seemed but for the chain on her breast, which rose and fell with her breathing. From the jeweled network which half-bound her hair shone flashes of light; a tress which escaped the glittering environment lay like a serpent of gold upon the crimson of her gown where the neck softly uprose. A hue, delicately rich as the tinted leaves of orange blossoms, mantled her cheeks.
She shook her head in soft dissent. "Queen for how long?" she answered gently. "As long as gentle Claude was queen for Francis? As long as saintly Eleanor held undisputed sway?"
"As long as Eleanor is queen in the hearts of her people!" he exclaimed, pa.s.sionately. "As long as France is her bridegroom!"
Deliberately she half-turned, the coil of gold falling over her shoulder.
Near her hand, white against the dark cas.e.m.e.nt, a blood-red rose trembled at the entrance of her chamber, and, grasping it lightly, she held it to her face as if its perfume symbolized her thoughts.
"Is there so much constancy in the world?" she asked musingly. "Can such singleness of heart exist? Like this flower which would bloom and die at my window? A bold flower, though! Day by day has it been growing nearer. Here," she added, breaking it from the stem and holding it to the jester.
"Madam!" he cried.
"Take it," she laughed, "and--send it to the duke!" Kneeling, he received it. "Thou art a fellow of infinite humor indeed. Equally at home in a lady"s boudoir, or a fools" drinking bout. Come, Jacqueline, Queen Marguerite awaits our presence. She has a new chapter to read, but whether another instalment of her tales, or a prayer for her Mirror of the Sinful Soul, I know not. As for you, sir"--with a parting smile--"later we shall walk in the garden. There you may await us."
CHAPTER IV
AN IMPATIENT SUITOR
"Well, Sir Mariner, do you not fear to venture so far on a dangerous sea?" asked a mocking voice.
"A dangerous sea, fair Jacqueline?" he replied, stroking the head of the hound which lay before the bench. "I see nothing save smiling fields and fragrant beds of flowers."
"Oh, I recognize now Monsieur Diplomat, not Sir Mariner!" she retorted.
Beneath her head-dress, resembling in some degree two great b.u.t.terfly wings, her face looked smaller than its wont. Laced tight, after the fashion, the _cotte-hardie_ made her waist appear little larger than could be clasped by the hands of a soldier, while a silken-shod foot with which she tapped the ground would have nestled neatly in his palm.
Was it pique that moved her thus to address the duke"s jester? Since he had arrived, Jacqueline had been relegated, as it were, to the corner. She, formerly ever first with the princess, had perforce stood aside on the coming of the foreign fool whose company her mistress strangely seemed to prefer to her own.
First had it been talking, walking and jesting, in which last accomplishment he proved singularly expert, judging from the peals of laughter to which her mistress occasionally gave vent. Then it had become riding, hawking and, worst of all, reading. Lately Louise, learned, as has been set forth, in the profane letters, had displayed a marked favor for books of all kinds--The Tree of Battles, by Bonnet, the Breviary of n.o.bles in verse, the "_Livre des faits d"armes et de chevalerie_," by Christine de Pisan; and in a secluded garden spot, with her fool and servant, she sedulously pursued her literary labors.
As books were rare, being hand-printed and hand-illumined, the princess" choice of volumes was not large, but Marguerite, the king"s sister, possessed some rarely executed poems--in their mechanical aspect; the monarch permitted her the use of several precious chronicles; while the abbess in the convent near by, who esteemed Louise for her piety and accomplishments, submitted to her care a gorgeously painted, satin-bound Life of Saint Agnes, a Roman virgin who died under the sanguinary persecution of Diocletian. But Jacqueline frowningly noticed that the saint"s life lay idle--conspicuously, though fittingly, on the altar-table--while a ma.n.u.script of the Queen of Navarre suspiciously accompanied the jester when he sought the pleasant nook selected for reading and conversation.
It was to this spot the maid repaired one soft summer afternoon, where she found the fool and a volume--Marguerite"s, by the purple binding and the love-knot in silver!--awaiting doubtless the coming of the princess; and at the sight of them, the book of romance and the jester who brought it, what wonder her patience gave way?
"You have been here now a fortnight, Monsieur Diplomat," she continued, bending the eyes which Triboulet so feared upon the other.
"Thirteen days, to be exact, sweet Jacqueline!" he answered calmly.
"Indeed! Then there is some hope for you, if you"ve kept track of time," she returned pointedly.
Still he forbore to qualify his manner, save with a latent smile that further exasperated the girl.
"What mean you, gentle mistress?" he asked quietly, without even looking at her.
""Sweet Jacqueline!" "Gentle mistress!" you are profuse with soft words!" she cried sharply.
"And yet they turn you not from anger."
"Anger!" she said, her eyes flashing. "Not another man at court would dare to talk to me as you do."
At this he lifted his brows and surveyed her much as one would a spoiled child, a glance that excited in her the same emotion she had experienced the night of his arrival in Fools" hall, when he had contemplated her in her garb of Joculatrix, as some misplaced anomaly.
"I know, mistress," he returned ironically, "you have a reputation for sorcery. But I think it lies more in your eyes than in the moon."
"And yet I can see the future for all that," she replied, persistently, defiantly.
"The future?" he retorted, and looked from the earth to the sky. "What is the goal of yonder tiny cloud? Can you tell me that?"
"The goal?" she repeated, uplifting her head. "Wait! It is very small. The sun is already swallowing it up."
"Heigho!" yawned the jester, outstretching his yellow-pointed boot, "I catch not the moral to the fable--an there be one!
"The moral!" she said, quickly. "Ask Marot."
"Why Marot?" Balancing the stick with the fool"s head in his hand.
"Because he dared love Queen Marguerite!" she answered impetuously.
"The fool in motley; the lady in purple! How he jested at her wedding!
How he wept when he thought himself alone!"
"He had but himself to blame, Jacqueline," returned the other with composure, although his eyes were now bent straight before him. "He could not climb to her; she could not stoop to him. Yet I daresay, it was a mad dream he would not have foregone."
"Not have foregone!" she exclaimed, quickly. "What would he not have given to tear it from his breast; aye, though he tore his heart with it! That day, bright and fair, when Henry d"Albret, King of Navarre, took her in his arms and kissed her brow! When amid gay festivities she became his bride! Not have foregone? Yes; Marot would forego that day--and other days."
Still that inertia; that irritating immobility. "What a tragic tale for a summer day!" was his only comment.