“Yes.”
“They are not in my government,” the speaker replied. “Nor in mine!”
“Nor mine!” And so all, except the Governor of the Limousin and the Governor of Poitou, who sat sulkily silent.
Another of the great ones, Marshal Matignon, nodded approval. “Let every man shoe his own ass,” he said, pursing up his lips. He was a white-haired, red-faced, apoplectic man of sixty, who thought that in persuading the Estates of Bordeaux to acknowledge Henry he had earned the right to go his own way. “Otherwise we shall jostle one another,” he continued, “and be at blows before we know it, sire! They are in the Limousin; let the Governor put them down. It is his business and no other’s.”
“Except mine,” the King replied, with a frown of displeasure. “And if he cannot, what then?”
“Let him make way, sire, for one who can,” the Constable answered readily. “Your Majesty will not have far to look for him,” he continued in a playful tone. “My nephew, for instance, would like a government.”
“A truce to jesting,” Henry said. “The trouble began, it is true, in the Limousin, but it has spread into Poitou and into the Angoumois” — he looked at Epernon’s agent, for the Duke of Epernon was so great a man he had not come himself. “Gentlemen,” the King continued, sitting back in his great chair, “can you not come to some agreement? Can you not mass what force you have, and deal with them shortly but mercifully? The longer the fire burns, the more trouble will it be to extinguish it, and the greater the suffering.”
“Why not let it burn out, sire?” Epernon’s agent muttered with thinly veiled impudence. “It will then burn the more rubbish, with your Majesty’s leave!”
But, the words said, he quailed. For, under his aquiline nose, the King’s mustaches curled with rage. There were some with whom he must bear, lords who had brought him rich cities, wide provinces; and others whose deeds won them licence. But this man? “There spoke the hireling!” he cried. And the stroke went home, for the man was the only one at the table who had no government of his own. “I will spare your attendance, sir,” the King continued, with a scornful gesture. “M. de Guise will answer such questions as arise on your master’s late government — of Provence. And for his other government — —”
“I represent him there also,” the man muttered sulkily.
“Then you can represent his absence,” Henry retorted with quick wit, “since he is never there! I need you not. Go, sir, and see that within three hours you are without the walls of Lyons!”
The man rose, divided between fear of the King and fear of the master to whom he must return. He paused an instant, then went down the room slowly, and went out.
“Now, gentlemen,” Henry continued, with hard looks, “understand. You may shoe each his own ass, but you must shoe mine also. There must be an end put to this peasant rising. Who will undertake it?”
“The man who should undertake it,” Matignon answered, “for the ass is of his providing, is the gentleman who has gone out.”
“He is naught!”
“He is for much in this.”
“How? Sometimes,” the King continued irritably, “I think the men are shod, and the asses come to my Council Table!”
This was a stroke of wit on a level with the Constable’s discernment; he laughed loudly. “Nevertheless,” he said, “Matignon’s right, sire. That man’s master is for a good deal in this. If he had kept order his neighbour’s house would not be on fire.”
For the first time M. des Ageaux ventured a word from the lower end of the table. “Vlaye!” he muttered.
The Constable leaned forward to see who spoke. “Ay, you’ve hit on it, my lad, whoever you are. Vlaye it is!” And he looked at Matignon, who nodded his adhesion.
Henry frowned. “I am coming to the matter of Vlaye,” he said.
“It is all one, sire,” Matignon replied, his eyes half shut. He wheezed a little in his speech.
“How?”
The Constable explained. He leant forward and prodded the table with a short, stout finger — not overclean according to the ideas of a later time. “Angoumois is there,” he said. “See, your Majesty. And Poitou is here” — with a second prod an inch from the first. “And the Limousin is here! And Périgord is there! And see, your Majesty, where their skirts all meet in this corner — or as good as meet — is Vlaye! Name of God, a strong place, that!” He turned for assent to old Matignon, who nodded silently.
“And you mean to say that Vlaye — —”
“Has been over heavy handed, your Majesty. And the clowns, beginning to find the thing beyond a joke, began by hanging three poor devils of toll gatherers, and the thing started. And what is on everybody’s frontier is nobody’s business.”
“Except mine,” the King muttered drily. “And Vlaye is Epernon’s man?”
“That is it, sire,” the Constable answered. “Epernon put him in the castle six years back for standing by him when the Angoulême people rose on him. But the man is no Vlaye, you understand. M. de Vlaye was in that business and died of his wounds. He had no near heirs, and the man whom Epernon put in took the lordship as well as the castle, the name and all belonging to it. They call him the Captain of Vlaye in those parts.”
The King looked his astonishment.
“Oh, I could give you twenty cases!” the Constable continued, shrugging his shoulders. “What do you expect, sire, in such times as these?”
“Ventre St. Gris!” Henry swore. “And not content with what he has got, he robs the poor?”
“And the rich, too,” Joyeuse murmured with a grin, “when he gets them into his net!”
Henry looked sternly from one to another. “But what do you while this goes on?” he said. “For shame! You, Constable? You, Matignon?” He turned from one to the other.
Matignon laughed wheezily. “Make me Governor in Epernon’s place, sire,” he said, “and I will account for him. But double work and single pay? No, no!”
The Constable laughed as at a great joke. “I say the same, sire,” he said. “While Epernon has the Angoumois it is his affair.”
The King looked stormily at the Governor of Poitou. But Poitou shook his head. “It is not in my government,” he said moodily. “I cannot afford, sire, to get a hornets’ nest about my ears for nothing.”
He of the Limousin fidgeted. “I say the same, sire,” he muttered. “Vlaye has three hundred spears. It would need an army to reduce him. And I have neither men nor money for the task.”
“There you have, sire,” the delicate-faced Joyeuse cried gaily, “three hundred and one good reasons why the Limousin leaves the man alone. For the matter of that” — he tried to spin his pen like a top— “there is a government as deeply concerned in this as any that has been named.”
“Which?” Henry asked. He was losing patience. That which was so much to him was nothing to these.
“Périgord,” Joyeuse answered with a bow. And at that several laughed softly — but not the King. He was himself, as has been said, Governor of Périgord.
Here at last, however, was one on whom he could vent his displeasure; and he would vent it! “Stand up, des Ageaux!” he cried harshly. And he scowled as des Ageaux, who was somewhat like him in feature, rose from his seat. “What have you to say, man?” Henry cried. “For yourself and for me! Speak, sir!” But before des Ageaux could answer, the King broke out anew — with abuse, with reproaches, giving his passion rein; while the great Governors listened and licked their lips, or winked at one another, when the King hit them a side blow. Presently, when des Ageaux would have defended himself, alleging that he was no deeper in fault than others,
“Ventre St. Gris! No words, sir!” Henry retorted. “I find kings enough here, I want not you in the number! I made not you that I might have your nobility cast in my teeth! You are not of the blood royal, nor even,” leaning a little on the word, “Joyeuse or Epernon! Man, I made you! And not for show, I have enough of that — but to be of use and service, for comm
on needs and not for parade — like the gentleman,” bitterly, “who deigns to represent me in the Limousin, or he who is so good as to sign papers for me in Poitou! Man alive, it might be thought you were peer and marshal, from your way of idling here, while robbers ride your marches, and my peasants are driven to revolt. Go to, do you think you are one of these?” He indicated by a gesture the great lords who sat nearest him. “Do you think that because I made you, I cannot unmake you?”
The man on whom the storm had fallen bore it not ignobly. It has been said that he featured Henry himself, being prominent of nose, with a grave face, a brown beard, close-cropped, and a forehead high and severe. Only in his eyes shone, and that rarely, a gleam of humour. Now the sweat stood on his brow as he listened — they were cruel blows, the position a cruel one. Nevertheless, when the King paused, and he had room to answer, his voice was steady.
“I claim, sire,” he said, “no immunity. Neither that, nor aught but the right of a soldier, who has fought for France — —”
“And gallantly!” struck in one, who had not yet spoken — Lesdiguières, the Huguenot, the famous Governor of Dauphiny. He turned to the King. “I vouch for it, sire,” he continued. “And M. de Joyeuse, who has the better right, will vouch for it, too.”
But Joyeuse, who was sulkily prodding the table with his spoiled pen, neither lifted his eyes nor gave heed. He was bitterly offended by the junction of his name with that of Epernon, who, great and powerful as he was, had had a notary for his father. He was silent.
Des Ageaux, who had looked at him as hoping something, lifted his eyes. “Your Majesty will do me the justice to remember,” he said, “that I had your order to have a special care of my province; and to mass what force I could in Périgueux. Few men as I have — —”
“You build them up within walls!” Henry retorted.
“But if I lost Périgueux — —”
The King snarled.
“Or aught happened there?”
“You would lose your head!” Henry returned. He was thoroughly out of temper. “By the Lord,” he continued, “have I no man in my service? Must I take this fellow of Vlaye into hire because I have no honest man with the courage of a mouse! You call yourself Lieutenant of Périgord, and this happens on your border. I have a mind to break you, sir!”
Henry seldom let his anger have vent; and the man who stood before him knew his danger. From a poor gentleman of Brittany with something of pedigree but little of estate, he had risen to this post which eight out of ten at that table grudged him. He saw it slipping away; nay, falling from him — falling! A moment might decide his fate.
In the pinch his eyes sought Joyeuse, and the appeal in them was not to be mistaken. But the elegant sulked, and would not see. It was clear that, for him, des Ageaux might sink. For himself, the Lieutenant doubted if words would help him, and they might aggravate the King’s temper. He was bravely silent.
It was Lesdiguières, the Huguenot, who came to the rescue. “Your Majesty is a little hard on M. des Ageaux,” he said. And the King’s lieutenant in Périgord knew why men loved the King’s Governor in Dauphiny.
“In his place,” Henry answered wrathfully, “I would pull down Vlaye if I did it with my teeth. It is easy for you, my friend, to talk,” he continued, addressing the Huguenot leader. “They are not your peasants whom this rogue of a Vlaye presses, nor your hamlets he burns. I have it all here — here!” he repeated, his eyes kindling as he slapped with his open hand one of the papers before him, “and the things he has done make my blood boil! I swear if I were not King I would turn Crocan myself! But these things are little thought of by others. M. d’Epernon supports this man, and” — with a sudden glance at Matignon— “the Governor of Guienne makes use of his horses when he travels to see the King.”
Matignon laughed something shamefacedly. “Well, sire, the horses have done no harm,” he said. “Nor he in my government. He knows better. And things are upside down thereabouts.”
“It is for us to right them!” Henry retorted. And then to des Ageaux, but with less temper. “Now, sir, I lay my order on you! I give you six weeks to rid me of this man, Vlaye. Fail, and I put in your place a man who will do it. You understand, Lieutenant? Then do not fail. By the Lord, I know not where I shall be bearded next!”
He turned then, but still muttering angrily, to other business. Matignon and the Constable were not concerned in this; and as soon as the King’s shoulder was towards them they winked at one another. “Your nephew will not have long to wait,” Matignon whispered, “if a lieutenancy will suit him.”
“’Twould be a fair start,” the Constable answered. “But a watched pot — you know the saying.”
“This pot will boil at the end of six weeks,” Matignon rejoined with a fat chuckle. “Chut, man, with his wage a year in arrear, and naught behind his wage, where is he to find another fifty men, let alone three or four hundred? He will need five and twenty score for this, and he dare not move a man!”
“He might squeeze his country?” the Constable objected.
“Pooh! He is a fool of the new school! He will go back to his cabbages before he will do that! I tell you,” he continued, laying his hand on the other’s knee, “he has got Périgord, the main part of it, into order! Ay, into order! And if he don’t go, we shall have to mend our manners,” with a grin, “and get our governments into order, too!”
“By the Lord, there is no finger wags in my country unless I will it!” the Constable rejoined with some tartness. “Since he” — he indicated Joyeuse— “came over to us, at any rate! Don’t think it! But there it is. If there were no whifflesnaffles here and there, and no blood-letting, it would not suit us very well, would it? You don’t want to go to cabbage planting, Marshal, more than I do?”
The Marshal smiled.
* * * * *
Late that night the young Duke of Joyeuse, leaving his people at the end of the street, went by himself to the house in which des Ageaux lodged in Lyons. A woman answered his summons, and not knowing the young grandee — for he was cloaked to the nose — fetched the Bat, an old, lean, lank-visaged captain who played squire of the body to des Ageaux. The Bat knew the Duke in spite of his cloak; perhaps he had him for a certain reason in his mind. And he bowed his long, stiff back before him, and would have fetched lights; yet with a glum face. But the Duke answered him shortly that he wanted no more than a word with his master, and would say it there.
On which, “You are too late, my lord,” the Bat rejoined; and Joyeuse saw that with all his politeness he was as gloomy as his name. “He left Lyons this afternoon.”
“With what attendance?” the Duke asked in great surprise. For he had not heard of it.
“Alone, my lord Duke.”
“Does he return to-morrow?”
“I know not.”
“But you know something!” the young noble retorted with more of vexation than the circumstances seemed to justify.
“My lord, nothing,” the Bat answered, “save that we are ordered to follow him to-morrow by way of Clermont.”
“To his province?”
“Even so, my lord.”
Joyeuse struck his booted foot against the pavement, and the sombre Bat, whose ears — some said he got his name from them — were almost as long as his legs, caught the genial chink of gold crowns. It was such music as he seldom heard, for he had a vision of a heavy bag of them; and his eyes glistened.
But the chink was all he had of them. Joyeuse turned away, and with a stifled sigh and a shrug went back to the play-table at the Archbishop’s palace. Sinning and repenting were the two occupations in which he had spent one half of his short life; and if there was a thing which he did with greater ardour than the first — it was the second.
CHAPTER I.
VILLENEUVE-L’ABBESSE.
The horse looked piteously at the man. Blood oozed from its broken knees and its legs quivered under it. The man holding his scratched and abraded hand to his mouth returned the b
east’s look, at first with promise of punishment, but by and by less unkindly. He was a just man, and he saw that the fault was his; since it was he who, after crossing the ridge, had urged the horse out of the path that he might be spared some part of the weary descent. Out of the path, and cunningly hidden by a tuft of rough grass, a rabbit-hole had lain in wait.
He contented himself with a word of disgust, therefore, chucked the rein impatiently — since justice has its limits — and began to lead the horse down the descent, which a short sward rendered slippery. But he had not gone many paces before he halted. The horse’s painful limp and the sweat that broke out on its shoulders indicated that two broken knees were not the worst of the damage. The man let the rein go, resigned himself to the position, and, shrugging his shoulders, scanned the scene before him.
The accident had happened on the south side of the long swell of chalk hills which the traveller had been mounting for an hour past; and scarcely a stone’s-throw below the ruined wind-mill that had been his landmark for leagues. To right and left of him, under a pale-blue sky, the breezy, open down, carpeted with wild thyme and vetches, and alive with the hum of bees, stretched in long soft undulations, marred by no sign of man save a second and a third wind-mill ranged in line on the highest breasts. Below him the slope of sward and fern, broken here by a solitary blackthorn, there by a clump of whin and briars, swept gently down to a shallow wide valley — almost a plain — green and thickly wooded, beyond which the landscape rose again slowly and imperceptibly into uplands. Through this wide valley flowed from left to right a silvery river, its meandering course marked by the lighter foliage of willows and poplars; and immediately below the traveller a cluster of roofless hovels on the bank seemed to mark a ford.
On all the hill about him, on the slopes of thyme, and heather, and yellow gorse, the low sun was shining — from his right, and from a little behind him, so that his shadow stretched far across the sward. But in the valley about the river and the ford evening was beginning to fall, grey, peaceful, silent. For a time his eyes roved hither and thither, seeking a halting-place of more promise than the ruined cots; and at length they found what they sought. He marked, rising from a mass of trees a little beyond the ford, a thin curl of smoke, so light, so grey, as to be undiscoverable by any but the sharpest eyes — but his were of the sharpest. The outline of the woods at the same point indicated a clearing within a wide loop of the river; and putting the one with the other, des Ageaux — for it was he — came to a fair certainty that a house of some magnitude lay hidden there.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 435