The White Plumes of Navarre Part 7

Jean-aux-Choux laughed as she went out, and inclined his ear. Sounds which indicated the basting of not yet inanimate flesh, arrived from the kitchen.

"Mistress, mistress," cried a voice, "I am dead, bruised, scalded--have pity on me!"

"Pity is it, you rascal?"--the sharp tones of Madame Celeste rose high--"have you not wasted my good dripping, burnt my meat, offended these gentlemen, spoiled their dinner, so that they will report ill things of the Golden Lark to his most n.o.ble Grace of Guise?"

"Pity--oh, pity!"

Followed a rapid rus.h.i.+ng of feet to and fro in the kitchen. Furniture was overturned. Something of the nature of a basting-ladle struck sonorously on tables and scattered patty-pans on the floor. A door slammed, shaking the house, and a blue-clad kitchen boy fled down the narrow street, while Madame Celeste, basting-ladle in hand, fumed and gesticulated in his wake.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE GOLDEN LARK IN ORLEANS TOWN

"Now," said Jean-aux-Choux, "unless I go down and help at the turning-spit myself, we are further off dinner than ever. I will also pump the lady dry of information in a quarter of an hour, which, in such a Leaguer town, is always a useful thing. But stay where you are, my lady Claire, and keep the door open. You will smell burnt fat, but the Fool of the Three Henries will be with you in as many jumps of a gra.s.shopper whenever you want him. You have only to call, and lo, you have me!"

When Jean had disappeared to do double duty as spy and kitchen-drudge beneath, Claire went to the window which looked out upon the market-place. From beneath in the kitchen she could hear shouts of laughter climb up and die away. She knew that Jean-aux-Choux was at his tricks, and that, with five minutes' grace, he could get to windward of any landlady that ever lived, let alone such a merry plump one as Madame Celeste.

That dame indeed disliked all pretty women on principle. But she was never quite sure whether she preferred an ugly witty man who made her laugh, or a handsome dull man who only treated her as a gentleman ought.

But women--young women and pretty women--pah, she could not abide them!

And by this we can guess her age, for not so long ago she had been young and even pretty herself.

The tide that comes in the affairs of men is not nearly so marked as the ebb which comes in the affairs of women.

Claire stood a long while meditating, her eyes following the movement of the market-place vaguely, but without any real care for what was happening. She truly mourned her father, but she possessed much of that almost exclusively masculine temperament which says after any catastrophe, "Well, what is the next thing to be done?"

"I care nothing about my mother's people," she meditated to herself, "but I would see her home, her land, her country."

She had never seen her father's. But when he had spoken to her of the fresh winds, las.h.i.+ng rains, and driving snows, with nevertheless the rose blooming in the sheltered corners about the old house on Christmas Day, she had somehow known it all. But Collioure and its sand-dunes, the deep sapphire of the southern sea, cut across by the paler blue line of the sky--she could not imagine that, even when the Professor and the Abbe John, with tears glittering in their eyes, spoke together in the strange pathetic speech of _la pet.i.te patrie_.

But she would like to see it--the strand where the little Colette had played, the dunes down which she had slidden, and the gold and rose of the towers of Chateau Collioure, within which her mother was born.

A noise without attracted her attention. A procession was entering the square. In the midst was a huge coach with six mules, imported, equipage and all, from Spain. An outrider in the episcopal livery was mounted on each mule, while running footmen scattered the market-stalls and salad-barrows like the pa.s.sage of a sudden strong wind.

There was also great excitement down below in the Golden Lark. The kitchen emptied itself, and Madame Celeste stopped hastily to pin a bow of ribbons to her cap, unconscious that a long smear of sooty grease decorated one side of her nose. The Bishop's carriage was coming in state to the Golden Lark! There could not be the least doubt of it. And the Bishop himself was within, that holy man who so much more willingly handled the sword-hilt than the crozier--Bishop Pierrefonds of Orleans, certain archbishop and possible cardinal, a stoop of the League in all the centre of France.

Yes, he was conveying home his guests in state. He stepped out and stood on the pavement in front of the house, a right proper prelate, giving them in turn his hand as they stooped to kiss his amethyst ring. Then, seeing over the Abbe John's bowed head the lady of the house, he called out heartily to her (for he was too great to be haughty with any), "Mistress Celeste, mind you treat these gentlemen well. It is not every day that our good town of Orleans holds at once the light of the Sorbonne, its mirror of eloquence, and also the nephew of my Lord Cardinal of the Holy League, John d'Albret, claimant at only twenty removes to the crown of France."

"Pshaw," muttered the Abbe John wearily, "I wish the old fool would go away and let us get to dinner!"

For, indeed, at the Palace he had listened to much of this.

The hostess of the Golden Lark conducted her two guests upstairs as if to the sound of trumpets. She gathered her skirts and rustled like the poplar leaves of an entire winter whisking about the little Place Royale of Orleans. The Professor of the Sorbonne had suddenly sunk into the background. Even the almighty Duke of Guise was no better than a bird in the bush. While here--well in hand, and hungry for an honest Golden Lark dinner--was a real, hall-marked, royal personage, vouched for by a bishop, and still more by the bishop's carriage and outriders!

It was enough to turn the head of a wiser woman than Madame Celeste Gillifleur.

"And is it really true?" demanded Claire Agnew.

"Is what true, my dear lady?" said the Abbe John, very ungraciously for him. For he thought he would have to explain it all over again.

"That you are a near heir to the throne of France?"

The Abbe John clapped his hands together with a gesture of despair.

"Just as much as I am the Abbe John and a holy man," he cried; "it pleases them to call me so. Thank G.o.d, I am no priest, nor ever will be.

And as for the crown of France--Henry of Valois is not dead, that ever I heard of. And if he were, I warrant his next heir and my valiant cousin, Henry of Navarre, would have a word to say before he were pa.s.sed over!"

"But," said the Professor of Eloquence, smiling, "the Pope and our wise Sorbonne have loosed all French subjects from paying any allegiance to a heretic!"

"By your favour, sir," said the young man, "I think both made a mistake for which they will be sorry. Also I heard of a certain professor who voted boldly for the Bearnais in that Leaguer a.s.sembly, and who found it convenient to go see his mother next day, lest he should find himself one fine morning shortened by a head, all for the glory of G.o.d and the Holy League!"

Doctor Anatole laughed at his pupil's boldness.

"You are out of disciplinary bounds now," he said, "and as you are too old to birch, I must e'en let you chatter. But what is the meaning of the Bishop's sudden cordiality?"

"Oh," said the Abbe John, with a sigh of resignation, "these Leaguers are always getting maggots in their brains. If my mother had been my father--if I had been a Bourbon instead of a d'Albret--if Henry the Bearnais had been in my shoes and I in his--if--if--any number of 'ifs'--then there might be something in this heir-to-the-crown business.

But the truth is, they are at their wits' end (which is no long distance to travel). The Demon of the South, our good, steady-going King of Spain, drives them hard. They dare not have him to rule over them, with his inquisitors, his blazing heretic fires, and the rest of it. Yet it is a choice between him and the Huguenot, unless they can find a true Catholic king. The Cardinal Bourbon is manifestly too old, though one day even he may serve to stop a gap. The Duke of Guise may be descended from the Merovingians or from Adam, but in either case his family-tree is not convincing. It has too many branches--too few roots! So the plotters--my good uncle among them--are looking about for some one--any one--that is, not a Guise nor yet a Huguenot, who may serve their turn.

His Grace of Orleans thinks I may do as well as another. That is all--only one Leaguer maggot the more."

"And must we, then, always say 'Your Royal Highness' or 'Your Serenity'

when we kiss your hand--which shall it be?" Claire asked the question gravely.

"I had much rather kiss yours," said the heir to a throne, bowing with equal gravity; "and as for a name--why, I am plain John d'Albret, at your service!"

He doffed his cap as he spoke, and the Professor noted for the first time, with a touch of jealousy, that he was a comely lad enough--that is, if he had not been so ludicrously young. The Professor (who was not a philosopher for nothing) noted the pa.s.sing twinge of jealousy as a sign that he was growing old. Twenty years ago he might have been tempted to break his pupil's head for a presumptuous jackanapes, or challenge him to a bout at the small swords, but jealousy--pah, Anatole Long thought himself as good as any man--always excepting the Bearnais--where the s.e.x was concerned.

It was a good and substantial supper to which they sat down. The cookery did credit to the handicraft of Madame Celeste, especially the salmon steaks done in parsley sauce, and the roast capon stuffed with b.u.t.ter, mint, and bread-crumbs. The wine, a white Cote Rotie, went admirably with the viands. The Professor and Claire had but little appet.i.te, but the eyes of the landlady were now upon the Abbe John alone. His plate was scarce empty before it was mysteriously refilled. His wine-gla.s.s found itself regularly replenished by the fair plump hands of Madame Celeste herself. All went merry as a marriage-bell, and Jean-aux-Choux, seated a little way below the salt, and using his dagger as an entire table equipment, worked his way steadily through everything within his reach. For though the Fool of the Three Henries held nothing in heaven or earth sacred from his bitter tongue when in the exercise of his profession, he equally let nothing in heaven or earth (or even under the earth) interfere with his appet.i.te. He explained the matter thus:

"I have heard of men living from hand to mouth," he told Claire; "for twenty years I have lived from table to mouth--always the same mouth, seldom twice the same table. There was you, my little lady, to be served first. And a hundred times your father and I went hungry that you might eat your milk-sop hot-a-nights. While, if I could, I would cheat my master as to what remained, his being the greater need."

"Good Jean!" said Claire, gently reaching out to pat his s.h.a.ggy head.

The long-armed jester shook a little and went pale under her touch, which was the stranger, seeing that with a twist of his shoulders he could throw off the clutch of a strong man.

Such were the three with whom Claire travelled southward, in an exceeding safety, considering the disturbed time. For any of them would have given his life to s.h.i.+eld her from harm, though as yet Jean-aux-Choux was the only one of the three who knew it. And with him it was a matter of course.

CHAPTER IX.

THE REBELLION OF HERODIAS' DAUGHTER

"And I suppose I am to bait the trap, as usual?"

"You forget, Valentine, that I am your uncle and a grandee of Spain."