Perhaps it was not a surprising thing that Chatellerault should gaze upon me in that curious fashion, for was it not probable that he had heard that I was dead? Besides, the fact that I was without a sword, and that at my side stood a King’s officer, afforded evidence enough of my condition, and well might Chatellerault stare at beholding me so manifestly a prisoner.
Even as I watched him, he appeared to start at something that Saint-Eustache was saying, and a curious change spread over his face. Its whilom expression had been rather one of dismay; for, having believed me dead, he no doubt accounted his wager won, whereas seeing me alive had destroyed that pleasant conviction. But now it took on a look of relief and of something that suggested malicious cunning.
“That,” said Castelroux in my ear, “is the King’s commissioner.
Did I not know it? I never waited to answer him, but, striding across the room, I held out my hand over the table – to Chatellerault.
“My dear Comte,” I cried, “you are most choicely met.”
I would have added more, but there was something in his attitude that silenced me. He had turned half from me, and stood now, hand on hip, his great head thrown back and tilted towards his shoulder, his expression one of freezing and disdainful wonder.
Now, if his attitude filled me with astonishment and apprehension, consider how these feelings were heightened by his words.
“Monsieur de Lesperon, I can but express amazement at your effrontery. If we have been acquainted in the past, do you think that is a sufficient reason for me to take your hand now that you have placed yourself in a position which renders it impossible for His Majesty’s loyal servants to know you?”
I fell back a pace, my mind scarce grasping yet the depths of this inexplicable attitude.
“This to me, Chatellerault?” I gasped.
“To you?” he blazed, stirred to a sudden passion. “What else did you expect, Monsieur de Lesperon?”
I had it in me to give him the lie, to denounce him then for a low, swindling trickster. I understood all at once the meaning of this wondrous make-believe. From Saint-Eustache he had gathered the mistake there was, and for his wager’s sake he would let the error prevail, and hurry me to the scaffold. What else might I have expected from the man that had lured me into such a wager – a wager which the knowledge he possessed had made him certain of winning? Would he who had cheated at the dealing of the cards neglect an opportunity to cheat again during the progress of the game?
As I have said, I had it in my mind to cry out that he lied – that I was not Lesperon; that he knew I was Bardelys. But the futility of such an outcry came to me simultaneously with the thought of it. And, I fear me, I stood before him and his satellites – the mocking Saint-Eustache amongst them – a very foolish figure.
“There is no more to be said,” I murmured at last.
“But there is!” he retorted. “There is much more to be said. You shall render yet an account of your treason, and I am afraid, my poor rebel, that your comely head will part company with your shapely body. You and I will meet at Toulouse. What more is to be said will be said in the Tribunal there.”
A chill encompassed me. I was doomed, it seemed. This man, ruling the province pending the King’s arrival, would see to it that none came forward to recognize me. He would expedite the comedy of my trial, and close it with the tragedy of my execution. My professions of a mistake of identity – if I wasted breath upon them would be treated with disdain and disregarded utterly. God! What a position had I got myself into, and what a vein of comedy ran through it – grim, tragic comedy, if you will, yet comedy to all faith. The very woman whom I had wagered to wed had betrayed me into the hands of the very man with whom I laid my wager.
But there was more in it than that. As I had told Mironsac that night in Paris, when the thing had been initiated, it was a duel that was being fought betwixt Chatellerault and me – a duel for supremacy in the King’s good graces. We were rivals, and he desired my removal from the Court. To this end had he lured me into a bargain that should result in my financial ruin, thereby compelling me to withdraw from the costly life of the Luxembourg, and leaving him supreme, the sole and uncontested recipient of our master’s favour. Now into his hand Fate had thrust a stouter weapon and a deadlier: a weapon which not only should make him master of the wealth that I had pledged, but one whereby he might remove me for all time, a thousandfold more effectively than the mere encompassing of my ruin would have done.
I was doomed. I realized it fully and very bitterly.
I was to go out of the ways of men unnoticed and unmourned; as a rebel, under the obscure name of another and bearing another’s sins upon my shoulders, I was to pass almost unheeded to the gallows. Bardelys the Magnificent – the Marquis Marcel Saint-Pol de Bardelys, whose splendour had been a byword in France – was to go out like a guttering candle.
The thought filled me with the awful frenzy that so often goes with impotency, such a frenzy as the damned in hell may know. I forgot in that hour my precept that under no conditions should a gentleman give way to anger. In a blind access of fury I flung myself across the table and caught that villainous cheat by the throat, before any there could put out a hand to stop me.
He was a heavy man, if a short one, and the strength of his thick-set frame was a thing abnormal. Yet at that moment such nervous power did I gather from my rage, that I swung him from his feet as though he had been the puniest weakling. I dragged him down on to the table, and there I ground his face with a most excellent good-will and relish.
“You liar, you cheat, you thief!” I snarled like any cross-grained mongrel. “The King shall hear of this, you knave! By God, he shall!”
They dragged me from him at last – those lapdogs that attended him –and with much rough handling they sent me sprawling among the sawdust on the floor. It is more than likely that but for Castelroux’s intervention they had made short work of me there and then.
But with a bunch of Mordieus, Sangdieus, and Po’ Cap de Dieus, the little Gascon flung himself before my prostrate figure, and bade them in the King’s name, and at their peril, to stand back.
Chatellerault, sorely shaken, his face purple, and with blood streaming from his nostrils, had sunk into a chair. He rose now, and his first words were incoherent, raging gasps.
“What is your name, sir?” he bellowed at last, addressing the Captain.
“Amedee de Mironsac de Castelroux, of Chateau Rouge in Gascony,” answered my captor, with a grand manner and a flourish, and added, “Your servant.”
“What authority have you to allow your prisoners this degree of freedom?”
“I do not need authority, monsieur,” replied the Gascon.
“Do you not?” blazed the Count. “We shall see. Wait until I am in Toulouse, my malapert friend.”
Castelroux drew himself up, straight as a rapier, his face slightly flushed and his glance angry, yet he had the presence of mind to restrain himself, partly at least.
“I have my orders from the Keeper of the Seals, to effect the apprehension of Monsieur de Lesperon; and to deliver him up, alive or dead, at Toulouse. So that I do this, the manner of it is my own affair, and who presumes to criticize my methods censoriously impugns my honour and affronts me. And who affronts me, monsieur, be he whosoever he may be, renders me satisfaction. I beg that you will bear that circumstance in mind.”
His moustaches bristled as he spoke, and altogether his air was very fierce and truculent. For a moment I trembled for him. But the Count evidently thought better of it than to provoke a quarrel, particularly one in which he would be manifestly in the wrong, King’s Commissioner though he might be. There was an exchange of questionable compliments betwixt the officer and the Count, whereafter, to avoid further unpleasantness, Castelroux conducted me to a private room, where we took our meal in gloomy silence.
It was not until an hour later, when we were again in the saddle and upon the last stage of our journey, that I offered Castelroux an explanation of my seemingly mad attack upon Chatellerault.