The Justice of the King

by Hamilton Drummond

  CHAPTER XVIII

  FRENCH AND ENGLISH

  Before the coming of the Maid, that is to say more than fifty yearsbefore Stephen La Mothe gave himself the heartache over his misreadingsof the most read chapter in the book of nature, there stood upon thebanks of the Loire, about a mile from Amboise, the flour mill of oneJean Calvet. For six generations it had passed from a Calvet to aCalvet, son succeeding father as Amurath an Amurath, and the MoulinFleche d'Or was as well known to the countryside as Amboise itself.The kirkyard or the grinding stones; humanity must needs find its wayto both.

  When harvests were fat, and corn plentiful, its stones hummed fromdaylight to dark to the blent music of the creaking wheel and thesplash-splash of the water which drove it. In lean years, when war orfamine was abroad, and thanks to England these years were not few, thesluice was lifted, and in place of the hoarse murmur and complaint ofthe grinding stones and lumbering wheel there was the soft purr of themillrace, and the Calvet of his generation lived, like a turtle, on hisown fat, waiting for better days. And sooner or later these alwayscame, and with their coming grew the prosperity of the Golden Arrow.Corn and the human heart must needs be ground while the world lasts,and perhaps it is as much out of the grinding of the latter as theformer that life is strengthened. Then came a day which brought an endto more than the prosperity of Jean Calvet the sixth.

  Some clocks wear out, running down with little spurts of life andlonger intervals of dumbness; others end with a sudden crashing of thependulum while in its full swing, and a wild, convulsive whirr of thejarred wheels. One moment the sober tick tells that all is well, thenext--silence. So was it with Calvet's mill.

  In the fortune, or misfortune, of war an Englishman, one Sir JohnStone, riding that way with his band of marauders, little better thanlicensed brigands, found Amboise too tough a nut for his teeth, andharried the Calvets in pure wantonness. Over the tree-tops thegarrison of Amboise could see the smoke of the burning, but they weretoo weak to venture succour.

  Calvet must fend for himself lest Calvet and Amboise both end in theone ruin. There was little defence, but that little was grimly inearnest and yet more grim the revenge of the attack. For thatgeneration both pity and mercy had fled France. Jean Calvet theyounger, he who should have been the seventh of his line, was coursedin the open like a hare, but turned at the last and died at bay as awolf dies. Behind the barred door were Jean the sixth, his two youngersons, and the dead man's wife. The woman, grey-faced but tearless,fought as the men fought, using her Jean's cross-bow from the narrowupper windows. All that rage, desperation, and hate could do was done,and when the door fell in with a crash Jean the younger had beenavenged four times over. John Stone took as little by his wantonnessas he deserved.

  Then came the end. There was a rush up the stone stairway, a briefstruggle to gain the upper level, a minute's surging back and forth, abriefer, fiercer fury of strife among the cranks and meal-bags, a fewrough oaths, a woman's scream, and then silence, or what by contrastpassed for silence, since the sudden quiet was only broken by deepbreathing and the sucking of air into dry throats. England had gainedan ignoble victory.

  Fire followed as naturally as the spark follows the jar of flint andsteel, and with a hundred and fifty years to dry its beams, itscobwebbed walls hung with mouldy dust from the grinding of as manyharvests, its complex wooden troughs and grain-shoots parched totinder, the old mill was a ready prey. All that could burn burnt likea pile of dry shavings. But the walls, the stairway, and the upperfloor were of stone, and stood; and but for one thing the peace whichfollowed the coming of the Maid might have set the waterwheel creakingafresh. That one thing, typical of the times, forbade the thought.When the men of Amboise cleared away the rubbish they found the bonesof Jean Calvet the sixth piled in a grim derision upon his ownmillstones, and so these stones never turned again. Who could eatbread of their making?

  But the blackened shell was one of the Dauphin's favourite haunts, norcould a better stage for one of those plays of make-believe which hadcalled down the old King's bitter irony have been well devised. So faras possible the mill had been restored to its old condition. Therubbish had been cleared from the ancient watercourse; the tough oldwheel, freed from the weeds and soil which bound it, was set running asin the past, and a palisade of stout pickets erected to fence out thecurious. The side furthest from the roadway, with its clumps ofhazels, alder thicket, and chestnut wood in the distance was left open.Here, amid surroundings which lent a sombre realism to the pretence,Charlemagne could carve out a kingdom, Roland sound the horn ofRoncesvalles, or the Maid herself win back to France the crown theboy's forefather had lost.

  But, dearer even than these, he best loved to reproduce in little thetragedy which had laid the mill desolate, and it was La Mothe'sparticipation in that mock combat which had aroused Commines' contempt.What boy of imagination has not revelled in such sport, living aglorious hour beyond his age? And not a few of every nation have, intheir turn, made the glory real at the call of the country that theblood of new generations may take fire. And Stephen La Mothe saw noshame in such a play; saw, rather, a stimulus and an uplifting whoseeffects might not altogether pass away when the play ended. So he wasFrance or England as the Dauphin bade him, and by turns died valiantlyor fought victoriously.

  But chiefly, and to La Mothe it had its significance, the Dauphinplayed the part of Jean Calvet. All children, and not children only,love to be upon the winning side, and it told something of the trend ofthe boy's deeper nature that he would rather die for France than livefor England. So would it have been the afternoon of the day La Mothehad followed his own course to his own disaster had not Charles oncemore proved the truth of Villon's observation. The dull eyes saw morethan men supposed.

  "You and Ursula have quarrelled," he said, with all a boy's blunt powerof making the truth a terror. "All the way from Amboise you have notspoken a word to each other; and you will quarrel still more if I shutyou up in the mill together. Do you be Stone, with Blaise and Marcel,while I and Monsieur La Follette and Hugues will keep the stairs."Then a gleam of unaccustomed humour flickered across his face; a senseof humour was rarely a Valois characteristic. "No, I am wrong. Do yoube Calvet; I want a real battle to-day, and you will fight all thebetter with Ursula looking on." As for Ursula de Vesc, she drew herskirts together and ran up the unprotected flight of stairs humming anair--not Stephen La Mothe's triolet, you may be sure--as if she had nota care in the world.

  So the forces arrayed themselves, Charles and the two lads from thestables behind the clump of bushes which always served as an ambush,and La Mothe at the doorless entrance to the mill, where he was to givethe alarm and then retreat to the upper floor where La Follette andHugues were posted. La Follette, who had been a lover in his day,would have kept watch below and taken Hugues with him, but Ursula deVesc, in the upper room, told them tartly that the Dauphin would bedispleased if the usual plan were departed from, and so, in no veryplayful humour any of them, they waited the attack.

  Presently it came. Out from his ambush, a hundred yards away, racedthe Dauphin, Marcel and Blaise at his heels, their stout wooden swordsbared for the grim work of slaughter. "The English! the English!"shouted La Mothe. "Frenchmen, the enemy are upon us!" But as heturned to gain the upper floor there came a cry which was not part ofthe play, a cry of fear and despairing rage, "The Dauphin! the Dauphin!Monsieur La Mothe, save the Dauphin," and midway on the stairs Huguesdashed past him.

  "Hugues, what is it?"

  "An ambush. The Dauphin; they will murder the Dauphin----" and Hugueswas through the doorway with La Mothe and La Follette following, andUrsula de Vesc, white and trembling, at the stair-head, more insurprise than any realization of danger. But only for an instant, thenshe ran to the narrow window where Hugues had waited, watching.

  Midway from their hiding-place, confused by the sudden outcry, stoodthe Dauphin and the two lads, and towards them ran Hugues with all hisspeed, La Mothe not far beh
ind. La Follette waited at the door,uncertain and bewildered. But from a further covert, the thicket ofmore distant alder, a troop of ten or a dozen horsemen had burst,galloping at the charge, nor could there be any doubt of their sinisterpurpose. It was a race for the boy, with the greater distance toneutralize the greater speed, but they rode desperately, recklessly, asmen who ride for their lives.

  "Run, Monseigneur, run," cried Hugues, panting. "See, behind--behind,"and almost as he shouted the words he and La Mothe, younger and moreactive, reached the group. "Out of the way, fools," he gasped,shouldering the stable lads aside; then to La Mothe, "Take the otherarm," and again there was a race of desperation, but this time with themill as the goal. Nearer and nearer thundered the hoofs, out from hisscattered following forged their leader, his spurs red to the heel, histeeth set hard in the shadow of the mask which hid his face. "Faster,for God's sake faster," groaned Hugues, "Faster, faster," shouted LaFollette from the doorway, and Ursula de Vesc, at her point of vantage,hardly dared to breathe as she knit her hands so closely the one intothe other that the fingers cramped. Then the chase passed out ofsight, and she ran to the stair-head, waiting for she knew not what.It was just there that Calvet the younger had died, and now there wasas little mockery in the tragedy. Beyond the doorway she heard a"Thank God!" from La Follette, then shadows darkened it, and theDauphin was thrust in, staggering. On the instant La Follettefollowed, paused, glancing backward as if in hesitation. But one dutywas imperative. Catching the boy in his arms, he half carried, halfforced him up the stairway, while in the open space below La Mothe andHugues, letting Blaise and Marcel slip between them, turned side byside to face whatever was without. What that was she knew, and as shewatched him in the gap an instant, before hastening to the Dauphin'said, the girl's heart went out to Stephen La Mothe in the agony of abitter repentance. If death pays all debts surely the darkening of theshadows brings forgiveness for all offences?