Michel and Angele [A Ladder of Swords] Part 4

"I will love you, whatever comes."

"Listen." She drew his head down. "I am no dragweight to thy life? Thou wouldst not do otherwise if there were no foolish Angele?"

He did not hesitate. "What is best is. I might do otherwise if there were no Angele in my life to pilot my heart, but that were worse for me."

"Thou art the best lover in all the world."

"I hope to make a better husband. To-morrow is carmine-lettered in my calendar, if thou sayst thou wilt still have me under the sword of the Medici."

Her hand pressed her heart suddenly. "Under the sword, if it be G.o.d's will," she answered. Then, with a faint smile: "But no, I will not believe the Queen of England will send thee, one of her own Protestant faith, to the Medici."

"And thou wilt marry me?"

"When the Queen of England approves thee," she answered, and buried her face in the hollow of his arm.

An hour later Sir Hugh Pawlett came to the manor-house of Rozel with two-score men-at-arms. The Seigneur himself answered the Governor's knocking, and showed himself in the doorway, with a dozen halberdiers behind him.

"I have come seeking Michel de la Foret," said the Governor.

"He is my guest."

"I have the Queen's command to take him."

"He is my cherished guest."

"Must I force my way?"

"Is it the Queen's will that blood be shed?"

"The Queen's commands must be obeyed."

"The Queen is a miracle of the world, G.o.d save her! What is the charge against him?"

"Summon Michel de la Foret, 'gainst whom it lies."

"He is my guest; ye shall have him only by force." The Governor turned to his men. "Force the pa.s.sage and search the house," he commanded.

The company advanced with levelled pikes, but at a motion from the Seigneur his men fell back before them, and, making a lane, disclosed Michel de la Foret at the end of it. Michel had not approved of Lempriere's mummery of defence, but he understood from what good spirit it sprung, and how it flattered the Seigneur's vanity to make show of resistance.

The Governor greeted De la Foret with a sour smile, read to him the Queen's writ, and politely begged his company towards Mont Orgueil Castle.

"I'll fetch other commands from her Majesty, or write me down a pedlar of St. Ouen's follies," the Seigneur said from his doorway, as the Governor and De la Foret bade him good-bye and took the road to the Castle.

CHAPTER VI

Michel de la Foret was gone, a prisoner. From the dusk of the trees by the little chapel of Rozel, Angele had watched his exit in charge of the Governor's men. She had not sought to show her presence: she had seen him--that was comfort to her heart; and she would not mar the memory of that last night's farewell by another before these strangers. She saw with what quiet Michel bore his arrest, and she said to herself, as the last halberdier vanished:

"If the Queen do but speak with him, if she but look upon his face and hear his voice, she must needs deal kindly by him. My Michel--ah, it is a face for all men to trust and all women--"

But she sighed and averted her head as though before prying eyes.

The bell of Rozel Chapel broke gently on the evening air; the sound, softened by the leaves and mellowed by the wood of the great elm-trees, billowed away till it was lost in faint reverberation in the sea beneath the cliffs of the Couperon, where a little craft was coming to anchor in the dead water.

At first the sound of the bell soothed her, softening the thought of the danger to Michel. She moved with it towards the sea, the tones of her grief chiming with it. Presently, as she went, a priest in ca.s.sock and robes and stole crossed the path in front of her, an acolyte before him swinging a censer, his voice chanting Latin verses from the service for the sick, in his hands the sacred elements of the sacrament for the dying. The priest was fat and heavy, his voice was lazy, his eyes expressionless, and his robes were dirty. The plaintive, peaceful sense which the sound of the vesper bell had thrown over Angele's sad reflections pa.s.sed away, and the thought smote her that, were it not for such as this black-toothed priest, Michel would not now be on his way to England, a prisoner. To her this vesper bell was the symbol of tyranny and hate. It was fighting, it was martyrdom, it was exile, it was the Medici. All that she had borne, all that her father had borne, the thought of the home lost, the mother dead before her time, the name ruined, the heritage dispossessed, the red war of the Camisards, the rivulets of blood in the streets of Paris and of her loved Rouen, smote upon her mind, and drove her to her knees in the forest glade, her hands upon her ears to shut out the sound of the bell. It came upon her that the bell had said "Peace! Peace!" to her mind when there should be no peace; that it had said "Be patient!" when she should be up and doing; that it had whispered "Stay!" when she should tread the path her lover trod, her feet following in his footsteps as his feet had trod in hers.

She pressed her hands tight upon her ears and prayed with a pa.s.sion and a fervour she had never known before. A revelation seemed to come upon her, and, for the first time, she was a Huguenot to the core. Hitherto she had suffered for her religion because it was her mother's broken life, her father's faith, and because they had suffered, and her lover had suffered. Her mind had been convinced, her loyalty had been unwavering, her words for the great cause had measured well with her deeds. But new senses were suddenly born in her, new eyes were given to her mind, new powers for endurance to her soul. She saw now as the martyrs of Meaux had seen; a pa.s.sionate faith descended on her as it had descended on them; no longer only patient, she was fain for action.

Tears rained from her eyes. Her heart burst itself in entreaty and confession.

"Thy light shall be my light, and Thy will my will, O Lord," she cried at the last. "Teach me Thy way, create a right spirit within me. Give me boldness without rashness, and hope without vain thinking. Bear up my arms, O Lord, and save me when falling. A poor Samaritan am I. Give me the water that shall be a well of water springing up to everlasting life, that I thirst not in the fever of doing. Give me the manna of life to eat that I faint not nor cry out in plague, pestilence, or famine.

Give me Thy grace, O G.o.d, as Thou hast given it to Michel de la Foret, and guide my feet as I follow him in life and in death, for Christ's sake. Amen."

As she rose from her knees she heard the evening gun from the castle of Mont Orgueil, whither Michel was being borne by the Queen's men. The vesper bell had stopped. Through the wood came the salt savour of the sea on the cool sunset air. She threw back her head and walked swiftly towards it, her heart beating hard, her eyes s.h.i.+ning with the light of purpose, her step elastic with the vigour of youth and health. A quarter-hour's walking brought her to the cliff of the Couperon.

As she gazed out over the sea, however, a voice in the bay below caught her ear. She looked down. On the deck of the little craft which had entered the harbour when the vesper bell was ringing stood a man who waved a hand up towards her, then gave a peculiar call. She stared with amazement: it was Buonespoir the pirate. What did this mean? Had G.o.d sent this man to her, by his presence to suggest what she should do in this crisis in her life? For even as she ran down the sh.o.r.e towards him, it came to her mind that Buonespoir should take her in his craft to England.

What to do in England? Who could tell? She only knew that a voice called her to England, to follow the footsteps of Michel de la Foret, who even this night would be setting forth in the Governor's brigantine for London.

Buonespoir met her upon the sh.o.r.e, grinning like a boy.

"G.o.d save you, lady!" he said.

"What brings you hither, friend?" she asked.

If he had said that a voice had called him hither as one called her to England, it had not sounded strange; for she was not thinking that this was one who superst.i.tiously swore by the little finger of St. Peter, but only that he was the man who had brought her Michel from France, who had been a faithful friend to her and to her father.

"What brings me hither?" Buonespoir laughed low in his chest. "Even to fetch to the Seigneur of Rozel, a friend of mine by every token of remembrance, a dozen flagons of golden muscadella."

To Angele no suggestion flashed that these flagons of muscadella had come from the cellar of the Seigneur of St. Ouen's, where they had been reserved for a certain royal visit. Nothing was in her mind save the one thought-that she must follow Michel.

"Will you take me to England?" she asked, putting a hand quickly on his arm.

He had been laughing hard, picturing to himself what Lempriere of Rozel would say when he sniffed the flagon of St. Ouen's best wine, and for an instant he did not take in the question; but he stared at her now as the laugh slowly subsided through notes of abstraction and her words worked their way into his brain.

"Will you take me, Buonespoir?" she urged. "Take you--?" he questioned.

"To England."

"And myself to Tyburn?"

"Nay, to the Queen."

"'Tis the same thing. Head of Abel! Elizabeth hath heard of me. The Seigneur of St. Ouen's and others have writ me down a pirate to her. She would not pardon the muscadella," he added, with another laugh, looking down where the flagons lay.

"She must pardon more than that," exclaimed Angele, and hastily she told him of what had happened to Michel de la Foret, and why she would go.