Book: An Enemy To The King

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"Follow me. Make no sign,--your life depends on it!"

She passed on, and turned out of the gallery towards her own apartments.
For a moment I stood motionless; then, with a kind of instinctive sense
of what ought to be done, for all thought seemed paralyzed within me, I
made as if to return to the chamberlains' apartments, from which I had
come. Reaching the place where Marguerite's corridor turned off, I
pretended for an instant to be at a loss which way to go; then I turned
in the direction taken by Marguerite. If the halberdiers, at the entrance
to the King's apartments, saw me do this, they could but think I had made
a mistake, and it was not their duty to come after me. Should I seek to
intrude whither I had no right of entrance, I should encounter guards to
hinder me.

Marguerite had waited for me in the corridor, out of sight of the
halberdiers.

"Quickly, monsieur!" she said, and glided rapidly on. She led me boldly
to her own apartments and through two or three chambers, passing, on the
way, guards, pages, and ladies in waiting, before whom I had the wit to
assume the mien of one who was about to do some service for her, and had
come to receive instructions. So my entrance seemed to pass as nothing
remarkable. At last we entered a cabinet, where I was alone with her. She
opened the door of a small closet.

"Monsieur," she said, "conceal yourself in this closet until I return. I
am going to be present at the _petite levée_ of the King. Do not stir,
for they will soon be searching the palace, with orders for your arrest.
Had you not come after me, at once, two of the Scotch Guards would have
found you where you waited. I slipped out while they were listening to
the orders that my mother added to the King's."

I fell on my knee, within the closet.

"Madame," I said, trembling with gratitude, "you are more than a queen.
You are an angel of goodness."

"No; I am merely a woman who does not forget an obligation. I have heard,
from one of my maids, who heard it from a friend of yours, how you
knocked a too inquisitive person into the moat beneath my window. I had
to burn the rope that was used that night, but I have since procured
another, which may have to be put to a similar purpose!"

And, with a smile, she shut the closet door upon me.




CHAPTER V.

HOW LA TOURNOIRE ESCAPED FROM PARIS


I heard the key turn in the lock, and the Queen of Navarre leave the
cabinet. She took the key with her, so that a tiny beam of light came
through the keyhole, giving my dark hiding-place its only illumination.

I felt complete confidence both in Marguerite's show of willingness to
save me, and in her ability to do so. All I could do was to wait, and
leave my future in her hands.

After a long time, I heard steps in the cabinet outside the closet door,
the beam of light from the keyhole was cut off, the key turned again, the
door opened, and Marguerite again stood before me.

"Monsieur," she said, "that we may talk without danger, remain in the
closet. I will leave the door slightly ajar, thus, and will sit here,
near it, with my 'Book of Hours,' as if reading aloud to myself. Should
any one come, I can lock your door again and hide the key. Hark! be
silent, monsieur!"

And as she spoke, she shut the door, locked it, drew out the key, and
sat down. I listened to learn what had caused this act of precaution.

"Madame," I heard some one say, "M. de l'Archant desires, by order of the
King, to search your apartments for a man who is to be arrested, and who
is thought to have secreted himself somewhere in the palace."

"Let him enter." said Marguerite. My heart stood still. Then I heard her
say, in a tone of pleasantry:

"What, M. le Capitain, is there another St. Bartholomew, that people
choose my apartments for refuge?"

"This time it is not certain that the fugitive is here," replied Captain
de l'Archant, of the bodyguard. "He is known to have been in the palace
this morning, and no one answering his description has been seen to leave
by any of the gates. It was, indeed, a most sudden and mysterious
disappearance; and it is thought that he has run to cover in some chamber
or other. We are looking everywhere."

"Who is the man?" asked Marguerite, in a tone of indifference.

"M. de la Tournoire, of the French Guards."

"Very well. Look where you please. If he came into my apartments, he must
have done so while I attended the _petite levée_ of the King; otherwise I
should have seen him. What are you looking at? The door of that closet?
He could not have gone there without my knowledge. One of the maids
locked it the other day, and the key has disappeared." Whereupon, she
tried the door, herself, as if in proof of her assertion.

"Then he cannot be there," said De L'Archant, deceived by her manner; and
he took his leave.

For some minutes I heard nothing but the monotonous voice of Marguerite
as she read aloud to herself from her "Book of Hours."

Then she opened my door again. Through the tiny crack I saw a part
of her head.

"Monsieur," she said to me, keeping her eyes upon the book, and retaining
the same changeless tone of one reading aloud, "you see that you are
safe, for the present. No one in the palace, save one of my maids, is
aware that I know you or have reason to take the slightest interest in
you. Your entrance to my apartments was made so naturally and openly that
it left no impression on those who saw you come in. I have since sent
every one of those persons on some errand, so that all who might happen
to remember your coming here will suppose that you left during their
absence. It was well that I brought you here; had I merely told you to
leave the palace, immediately, you would not have known exactly how
matters stood, and you would have been arrested at your lodgings, or on
your way to your place of duty. By this time, orders have gone to the
city gates to prevent your leaving Paris. Before noon, not only the
body-guard, the Provost of the palace, and the French and Scotch Guards
will be on the lookout for you, but also the gendarmes of the Provost of
Paris. That is why we must be careful, and why stealth must be used in
conveying you out of Paris."

"They make a very important personage of me," I said, in a low tone.

"Hush! When you speak imitate my tone, exactly, and be silent the instant
I cough. Too many people are not to be trusted. That you may understand
me, you must know precisely how matters stand. This morning my mother
went to see the King in his chamber before he had risen. They discussed a
matter which required my presence, and I was sent for. After we had
finished our family council, my mother and I remained for a few words, in
private, with each other. While we were talking, M. de Quelus came in and
spoke for a while to the King. I heard the King reply, 'Certainly, as he
preserved you to me, my friend.' De Quelus was about to leave the King's
chamber, when the Duke of Guise was announced. De Quelus waited, out of
curiosity, I suppose. M. de Guise was admitted. He immediately told the
King that one of his gentlemen, M. de Noyard, had been killed by the
Sieur de la Tournoire, one of the French Guards. I became interested, for
I remembered your name as that of the gentleman who, according to my
maid, had stopped the spy from whom I had had so much to fear. I
recalled, also, that you had the esteem of my brother's faithful Bussy
d'Amboise. My mother immediately expressed the greatest horror at De
Noyard's death, with the greatest sympathy for M. de Guise; and she urged
the King to make an example of you."

I remembered, with a deep sigh, what De Rilly had told me,--that
Catherine, to prevent the Duke of Guise from laying the death of De
Noyard to her, would do her utmost to bring me to punishment.

"The King looked at De Quelus," continued Marguerite. "That gentleman,
seeing how things were, and, knowing that the King now wishes to seem
friendly to the Duke, promptly said, 'This is fortunate. La Tournoire is
now waiting for me in the red gallery; I suppose he wishes to beg my
intercession. His presumption will be properly punished when the guards
arrest him there.'"

I turned sick, at this revelation of treachery. This was the gentleman
who owed his life to me, and, in the first outburst of gratitude, had
promised to obtain for me a captaincy!

"The King," Marguerite went on, "at once ordered two of the Scotch Guards
to arrest you. All this time, I had been standing at the window, looking
out, as if paying no attention. My mother stopped the guards to give them
some additional direction. No one was watching me. I passed carelessly
out, and you know what followed. At the _petite levée_, I learned what
was thought of your disappearance,--that you had seen the Duke of Guise
enter the King's apartments, had guessed his purpose, and had
precipitately fled."

I did not dare tell his sister what I thought of a King who would,
without hesitation or question, offer up one of his guards as a sacrifice
to appease that King's greatest enemy.

"And now, monsieur," said Marguerite, still seeming to read from her
book, "the King and the Queen, my mother, will make every effort to have
you captured, lest it be thought that they are secretly protecting the
slayer of M. de Noyard. To convince you that you may rely on me,
thoroughly, I will confess that it is not solely gratitude for your
service the other night that induces me to help you,--although my
gratitude was great. I had seen the spy rise out of the moat and all
night I was in deadly fear that he had reached the guard-house and
prevented my brother's flight, or, at least, betrayed me. When I became
convinced that he had not done so, I thanked Heaven for the unknown
cause that had hindered him. So you may imagine, when my maid told me
that a friend of her lover's was that unknown cause, how I felt towards
that friend."

"Madame," I said, with emotion, "I ought to be content to die, having had
the happiness of eliciting your gratitude!"

"But I am not content that you should die, for I wish you to serve me
once more, this time as a messenger to my brother, the Duke of Anjou, who
is at Angers; to M. Bussy d'Amboise, who is with him; and to my husband,
the King of Navarre, who is at Nerac, in Gascony. Thus it is to my own
interest to procure your safe escape from Paris. And if you reach Nerac,
monsieur, you cannot do better than to stay there. The King of Navarre
will give you some post more worthy of you than that of a mere soldier,
which you hold here."

"I enlisted in the French Guards," I hastened to explain, "because I was
unknown, and a Huguenot, and could expect no higher beginning."

"For the very reason that you are a Huguenot, you can expect a great deal
from the King of Navarre. His kingdom is little more than a toy kingdom,
it is true, and his court is but the distant echo of the court of France,
but believe me, monsieur,"--and here Marguerite's voice indicated a
profound conviction,--"there is a future before my husband, the King of
Navarre! They do not know him. Moreover, Paris will never be a safe
place for you as long as the Duke of Guise lives. He does not forget!"

I knew that Marguerite had excellent means of knowing the Duke of Guise,
and I did not dispute her assertion. Moreover, I was now quite willing to
go from the city wherein I was to have achieved such great things. My
self-conceit had been shaken a little.

"But if every exit is watched, how can I leave Paris?" I asked.

"The exits were watched to prevent the going of my brother Anjou," said
Marguerite, "but he went. He crossed the Seine with his chamberlain,
Simier, and his valet, Cange, and went to the Abbey of St. Genevieve, of
which the gardens are bounded by the city wall. The Abbot Foulon was
secretly with us. M. Bussy had returned to Paris, and was waiting at the
Abbey for Monsieur. They left Paris by way of the Abbey garden. The Abbot
is a cautious soul, and to protect himself, in case of discovery, he had
M. Bussy tie him to a chair, and after Monsieur and Bussy had joined
their gentlemen, outside, and galloped off toward Angers, the Abbot came
to the Louvre, and informed the King of Monsieur's escape. Now I suppose
we shall have to make use of the same ingenious Foulon."

"You know what is best, madame," I said.

"But the Abbot of Saint Genevieve would not do for you, or even for me,
what he would do for my brother Anjou. If he knew who you were, he might
gladly seize an opportunity to offset, by giving you up, the suspicion
that he had a hand in my brother's escape."

"But if there is a suspicion of that, will they not watch the Abbey now,
on my account?"

"No; for you are not of my brother's party, and the Abbot would have no
reason for aiding you. The question is how to make him serve us in
this. I must now think and act, monsieur, and I shall have to lock you
up again."

She rose and did so, and again I was left to meditate. It is astonishing
how unconcerned I had come to feel, how reliant on the ingenuity of this
charming princess with the small head, the high, broad forehead, the
burning, black eyes the curly blonde hair, the quizzically discrete
expression of face.

After some hours, during which I learned, again, the value of patience,
the door was opened, and Marguerite thrust in some bread and cold meat,
which she had brought with her own hand. I took it in silence, and
stooped to kiss the hand, but it was too soon withdrawn, and the door
locked again.

When the door next opened, Marguerite stood before it with a candle in
her hand. I therefore knew that it was night. In her other hand, she held
four letters, three of them already sealed, the fourth open.

"I have made all arrangements," she said, quickly. "This letter is to the
Abbot Foulon. Read it."

She handed it to me, and held the candle for me while I read:

This gentleman bears private letters to Monsieur. As he was about to
depart with them, I learned that the King had been informed of his
intended mission, and had given orders for his arrest at the gate. I call
upon you to aid him to leave Paris, as you aided my brother Anjou. His
arrest would result in a disclosure of how that matter was conducted.

MARGUERITE.

I smiled, when I had finished reading the letter.

"That letter will frighten Brother Foulon into immediate action," said
Marguerite, "and he will be compelled to destroy it, as it incriminates
him. Take these others. You will first go to Angers, and deliver this to
the Duke of Anjou, this to M. de Bussy. Then proceed to Gascony with
this, for the King of Navarre."

"And I am to start?"

"To-night. I shall let you down into the moat, as Monsieur was let down.
You cannot cross the bridges of the Seine, lest you be stopped by guards
at the entrances; therefore I have employed, in this matter, the same boy
who served me the other night. Go immediately from the moat to that part
of the quay which lies east of the Hôtel de Bourbon. You will find him
waiting there in a boat. He will take you across the river to the Quay of
the Augustines, and from there you will go alone to the Abbey. When
Foulon knows that you come in my name, he will at once admit you. I am
sorry that there is not time to have a horse waiting for you outside the
fortifications."

"Alas, I must leave my own horse in Paris! I must go forth as a deserter
from the Guards!"

"It is better than going to the executioner," said Marguerite, gaily.
"For the last time, monsieur, become a bird in a cage. I am about to
retire. As soon as all my people are dismissed, and the palace is asleep,
I shall come for you."

The door closed again upon my prison of a day. I placed the letters
within my doublet, and looked to the fastening of my clothes, as a man
who prepares for a race or contest. I straightened myself up in my place
of concealment, and stood ready to attempt my flight from this Paris of
which the King had made a cage to hold me.

More waiting, and then came Marguerite, this time without a candle. She
stood in the darkness, in a white _robe de nuit_, like a ghost.

"Now, monsieur," she whispered.

I stepped forth without a word, and followed her through the cabinet into
a chamber which also dark. Three of Marguerite's maids stood there, in
silence, one near the door, the other two at the window. One of the
latter held a stout stick, to the middle of which was fastened a rope,
which dangled down to the floor and lay there in irregular coils. I saw
this by the little light that came through the window from the clouded
night sky.

Marguerite took the stick and held it across the window. It was longer
than the width of the window, and hence its ends overlapped the chamber
walls on either side.

"Are you ready, monsieur?" asked Marguerite, in a whisper.

"Ready, madame."

Still holding the stick in position with one hand, she opened the window
with the other, and looked out. She then drew in her head, and passed the
loose end of the rope out of the window. Then she looked at me, and stood
a little at one side, that I might have room to pass.

Summoning a bold heart, I mounted the window-ledge, got on my knees with
my face towards the chamber, caught the rope in both hands, lowered my
head, and kissed one of the hands of the Queen of Navarre; then, resting
my weight on my elbows, dropped my legs out of the window. Two more
movements took my body after them, and presently I saw before me only the
wall of the Louvre, and was descending the rope, hand after hand, the
weight of my body keeping the stick above in position.

When I was half-way down, I looked up. The wall of the palace seemed now
to lean over upon me, and now to draw back from me. Marguerite was gazing
down at me.

At last, looking down, I saw the earth near, and dropped. I cast another
glance upward. Marguerite was just drawing in her head, and immediately
the rope's end flew out of my reach.

"There's no going back the way I came!" I said, to myself, and strode
along the moat to find a place where I could most easily climb out of it.
Such a place I found, and I was soon in the street, alone, near where I
had been wont to watch under the window of Mlle. d'Arency. I took a last
look at the window of Marguerite's chamber. It was closed, and the rope
had disappeared. My safety was no longer in the hands of the Queen of
Navarre. She had pointed out the way for me, and had brought me thus far;
henceforth, I had to rely on myself.

I shivered in the cold. I had left my large cloak beside the dead body of
M. de Noyard the previous night, and had worn to the Louvre, in the
morning, only a light mantle by way of outer covering.

"Blessings on the night for being so dark, and maledictions on it for
being so cold!" I muttered, as I turned towards the river.

I had reached the Hôtel de Bourbon, when I heard, behind me, the sound
of footsteps in accord. I looked back. It was a body of several armed
men, two of them bearing torches.

Were they gendarmes of the watch, or were they guards of the King? What
were they doing on my track, and had they seen me?

Probably they had not seen me, for they did not increase their gait,
although they came steadily towards me. The torches, which illuminated
everything near them, served to blind them to what was at a distance
from them.

Fortunately, I had reached the end of the street, and so I turned
eastward and proceeded along the quay, high walls on one side of me, the
river on the other. It had been impossible for Marguerite to indicate to
me the exact place at which the boat was to be in waiting. I did not
think it best, therefore, to go to the edge of the quay and look for the
boat while the soldiers were in the vicinity. They might come upon the
quay at the moment of my embarking, and in that event, they would
certainly investigate. So I walked on along the quay.

Presently I knew, by the sound of their steps, that they, too, had
reached the quay, and that they had turned in the direction that I had
taken. I was still out of the range of their torchlight.

"How far will I be made to walk by these meddlesome archers?" I asked
myself, annoyed at this interruption, and considering it an incident of
ill omen. I looked ahead, to see whither my walking would lead me.

I saw another body of gendarmes, likewise lighted by torches, just
emerging from a street's end, some distance in front of me. They turned
and came towards me.

I stopped, feeling for an instant as if all my blood, all power of
motion, had left me. "Great God!" I thought, "I am caught between two
rows of teeth."

I must wait no longer to seek the boat. Would God grant that it might be
near, that I might reach it before either troop should see me?

I ran to the edge of the quay and looked over into the river. Of all the
boats that lay at rest there, not one in sight was unmoored, not one
contained a boatman!

The two bodies of men were approaching each other. In a few seconds the
two areas of torchlight would merge together. On one side were walls,
frowning and impenetrable; on the other was the river.

I took off my sword and dagger, on account of their weight, and dropped
them with their sheathes into the river. I started to undo the fastening
of my mantle, but the knot held; my fingers became clumsy, and time
pressed. So I gave up that attempt, threw away my hat, let myself over
the edge of the quay, and slid quietly into the icy water. I immediately
dived, and presently came to the surface at some distance from the
shore. I then swam for the middle of the river. God knows what powers
within me awoke to my necessity. I endured the cold, and found strength
to swim in spite of the clothes that impeded my movements and added
immensely to my weight.

Without looking back, I could tell, presently, from the talking on the
quay that the two detachments of gendarmes had met and were standing
still. Had either one descried me, there would have been loud or hurried
words, but there were none. After a while, during which I continued to
swim, the voices ceased, and I looked back. Two torches remained on the
quay. The others were moving away, along the river. I then made a guess,
which afterward was confirmed as truth. The boy sent by Marguerite had
been discovered in his boat, had been taken to the guard-house, and had
given such answers as led to the suspicion that he was waiting to aid
the flight of some one. The captain of the Guard, thinking so to catch
the person for whom the boatman waited, had sent two bodies of men out,
one to occupy the spot near which the boy had been found, the other to
patrol the river bank in search of questionable persons. I had arrived
on the quay in the interval between the boy's capture and the arrival
of the guards.

My first intention was to reach the left bank and proceed to the Abbey of
St. Genevieve. But it occurred to me that, although a boat could not pass
down the river, out of Paris, at night, because of the chain stretched
across the river from the Tour du Coin to the Tour de Nesle, yet a
swimmer might pass under or over that chain and then make, through the
faubourg outside the walls, for the open country. Neither Marguerite nor
I had thought of this way of leaving Paris, because of the seeming
impossibility of a man's surviving a swim through the icy Seine, and a
flight in wet clothes through the February night. Moreover, there was the
necessity of leaving my sword behind, and the danger of being seen by the
men on guard at the towers on either side of the river. But now that
necessity had driven me into the river, I chose this shorter route to
freedom, and swam with the current of the Seine. In front of me lay a
dark mass upon the water in the middle of the river. This was the barge
moored there to support the chain which stretched, from either side,
across the surface of the water, up the bank and to the Tour de Nesle on
the left side, and to the Tour du Coin on the right. I might pass either
to the right or to the left of this barge. Naturally, I chose to avoid
the side nearest the bank from which I had just fled, and to take the
left side, which lay in the shadow of the frowning Tour de Nesle.

By swimming close to the left bank of the river, I might pass the
boundary without diving under the chain, for the chain ascended obliquely
from the water to the tower, leaving a small part of the river's surface
entirely free. But this part was at the very foot of the tower, and if I
tried passage there I should probably attract the attention of the guard.
I was just looking ahead, to choose a spot midway between the barge and
the left bank, when suddenly the blackness went from the face of things,
a pale yellow light took its place, and I knew that the moon had come
from behind the clouds. A moment later, I heard a cry from the right bank
of the river, and knew that I was discovered. The shout came from the
soldiers whom I had so narrowly eluded.

I knew that it was a race for life now. The soldiers would know that any
man swimming the Seine on a February night was a man whom they ought to
stop. I did not look back,--the one thing to do was to pass the Tour de
Nesle before the guards there should be put on the alert by the cries
from the right bank. So on I swam, urging every muscle to its utmost.

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