“Will you do me the honour to step aside with me, Chevalier?” I commanded rather than besought.
“At your service, sir,” said he; and I drew him out of earshot of those others.
“Now, Saint-Eustache, we can talk,” said I, with an abrupt change of manner from the coldly arrogant to the coldly menacing. “I marvel greatly at your temerity in pursuing this Iscariot business after learning who I am, at Toulouse two nights ago.”
He clenched his hands, and his weak face hardened.
“I would beg you to consider your expressions, monsieur, and to control them,” said he in a thick voice.
I vouchsafed him a stare of freezing amazement. “You will no doubt remember in what capacity I find you employed. Nay, keep your hands still, Saint-Eustache. I don’t fight catchpolls, and if you give me trouble my men are yonder.” And I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “And now to business. I am not minded to talk all day. I was saying that I marvel at your temerity, and more particularly at your having laid information against Monsieur de Lavedan, and having come here to arrest him, knowing, as you must know, that I am interested in the Vicomte.”
“I have heard of that interest, monsieur,” said he, with a sneer for which I could have struck him.
“This act of yours,” I pursued, ignoring his interpolation, “savours very much of flying in the face of Destiny. It almost seems to me as if you were defying me.”
His lip trembled, and his eyes shunned my glance.
“Indeed – indeed, monsieur–” he was protesting, when I cut him short.
“You cannot be so great a fool but that you must realize that if I tell the King what I know of you, you will be stripped of your ill-gotten gains, and broken on the wheel for a double traitor – a betrayer of your fellow-rebels.”
“But you will not do that, monsieur?” he cried. “It would be unworthy in you.”
At that I laughed in his face. “Heart of God! Are you to be what you please, and do you still expect that men shall be nice in dealing with you? I would do this thing, and, by my faith, Monsieur de Eustache, I will do it, if you compel me!”
He reddened and moved his foot uneasily. Perhaps I did not take the best way with him, after all. I might have confined myself to sowing fear in his heart; that alone might have had the effect I desired; by visiting upon him at the same time the insults I could not repress, I may have aroused his resistance, and excited his desire above all else to thwart me.
“What do you want of me?” he demanded, with a sudden arrogance which almost cast mine into the shade.
“I want you,” said I, deeming the time ripe to make a plain tale of it, “to withdraw your men, and to ride back to Toulouse without Monsieur de Lavedan, there to confess to the Keeper of the Seals that your suspicions were unfounded, and that you have culled evidence that the Vicomte has had no relations with Monsieur the King’s brother.”
He looked at me in amazement – amusedly, almost.
“A likely story that to bear to the astute gentlemen in Toulouse,” said he.
“Aye, ma foi, a most likely story,” said I. “When they come to consider the profit that you are losing by not apprehending the Vicomte, and can think of none that you are making, they will have little difficulty in believing you.”
“But what of this evidence you refer to?”
“You have, I take it, discovered no incriminating evidence – no documents that will tell against the Vicomte?”
“No, monsieur, it is true that I have not–”
He stopped and bit his lip, my smile making him aware of his indiscretion.
“Very well, then, you must invent some evidence to prove that he was in no way, associated with the rebellion.”
“Monsieur de Bardelys,” said he very insolently, “we waste time in idle words. If you think that I will imperil my neck for the sake of serving you or the Vicomte, you are most prodigiously at fault.”
“I have never thought so. But I have thought that you might be induced to imperil your neck – as you have it – for its own sake, and to the end that you might save it.”
He moved away. “Monsieur, you talk in vain. You have no royal warrant to supersede mine. Do what you will when you come to Toulouse,” and he smiled darkly. “Meanwhile, the Vicomte goes with me.”
“You have no evidence against him!” I cried, scarce believing that he would dare to defy me and that I had failed.
“I have the evidence of my word. I am ready to swear to what I know –that, whilst I was here at Lavedan, some weeks ago, I discovered his connection with the rebels.”
“And what think you, miserable fool, shall your word weigh against mine?” I cried. “Never fear, Monsieur le Chevalier, I shall be in Toulouse to give you the lie by showing that your word is a word to which no man may attach faith, and by exposing to the King your past conduct. If you think that, after I have spoken, King Louis whom they name the just will suffer the trial of the Vicomte to go further on your instigation, or if you think that you will be able to slip your own neck from the noose I shall have set about it, you are an infinitely greater fool than I deem you.”
He stood and looked at me over his shoulder, his face crimson, and his brows black as a thundercloud.
“All this may betide when you come to Toulouse, Monsieur de Bardelys,” said he darkly, “but from here to Toulouse it is a matter of some twenty leagues.”
With that, he turned on his heel and left me, baffled and angry, to puzzle out the inner meaning of his parting words.
He gave his men the order to mount, and bade Monsieur de Lavedan enter the coach, whereupon Gilles shot me a glance of inquiry. For a second, as I stepped slowly after the Chevalier, I was minded to try armed resistance, and to convert that grey courtyard into a shambles. Then I saw betimes the futility of such a step, and I shrugged my shoulders in answer to my servant’s glance.
I would have spoken to the Vicomte ere he departed, but I was too deeply chagrined and humiliated by my defeat. So much so that I had no room in my thoughts even for the very natural conjecture of what Lavedan must be thinking of me. I repented me then of my rashness in coming to Lavedan without having seen the King – as Castelroux had counselled me. I had come indulging vain dreams of a splendid overthrow of Saint-Eustache. I had thought to shine heroically in Mademoiselle’s eyes, and thus I had hoped that both gratitude for having saved her father and admiration at the manner in which I had achieved it would predispose her to grant me a hearing in which I might plead my rehabilitation. Once that were accorded me, I did not doubt I should prevail.
Now my dream was all dispelled, and my pride had suffered just such a humiliating fall as the moralists tell us pride must ever suffer. There seemed little left me but to go hence with lambent tail, like a dog that has been whipped – my dazzling escort become a mockery but that it served the more loudly to advertise my true impotency.
As I approached the carriage, the Vicomtesse swept suddenly down the steps and came towards me with a friendly smile. “Monsieur de Bardelys,” said she, “we are grateful for your intervention in the cause of that rebel my husband.”
“Madame,” I besought her, under my breath, “if you would not totally destroy him, I beseech you to be cautious. By your leave, I will have my men refreshed, and thereafter I shall take the road to Toulouse again. I can only hope that my intervention with the King may bear better fruit.”
Although I spoke in a subdued key, Saint-Eustache, who stood near us, overheard me, as his face very clearly testified.
“Remain here, sir,” she replied, with some effusion, “and follow us when you are rested.”
“Follow you?” I inquired. “Do you then go with Monsieur de Lavedan?”
“No, Anne,” said the Vicomte politely from the carriage. “It will be tiring you unnecessarily. You were better advised to remain here until my return.”
I doubt not that the poor Vicomte was more concerned with how she would tire him than with how the journey might tire her. But the Vicomtesse was not to be gainsaid. The Chevalier had sneered when the Vicomte spoke of returning. Madame had caught that sneer, and she swung round upon him now with the vehement fury of a virago.