The Lady of Fort St. John Part 12

"They have few trinkets in that barbarous Fort Orange in the west. I detest that Hollandaise more since she carries about such a casket. Let us be cozy. Kiss me, Shubenacadie."

The swan's attachment and obedience to her were struggling against some swan-like instinct which made him rear a lofty head and twist it riverward.

"Kiss me, I say! Shall I have to beat thee over the head with my clavier to teach thee manners?"

Shubenacadie darted his snake neck downward and touched bills with her.

She patted his coral nostrils.

"Not yet. Before you take to the water we must have some talk. I am shut up here to stay this whole day. And for what? Not because of the casket, for they know not what I have done with it. But because thou and I sometimes go out without the pa.s.sword. Stick out thy toes and let me polish them."

Shubenacadie resisted this mandate, and his autocrat promptly dragged one foot from under him, causing him to topple on the parapet. He hissed at her. Le Rossignol looked up at the threatening flat head and hissed back.

"You are as bad as that Swiss," she laughed. "I will put a yoke on you.

I will tie you to the settle in the hall. Why have all man creatures such tempers? Thank heaven I was not born to hose and doublet. Never did I see a mild man in my life except Edelwald. As for this Swiss, I am done with him. He hath a wife, Shubenacadie. She sits down there by the oven now; a miserable thing turned off by D'Aulnay de Charnisay. Have I told thee the Swiss had a soul above a common soldier and I picked him out to pay court to me? Beat me for it. Pull the red hair he condemned.

I would have had him sighing for me that I might pity him. The populace is beneath us, but we must amuse ourselves. Beat me, I demand. Punish me well for abasing my eyes to that Swiss."

Shubenacadie understood the challenge and the tone. He was used to rendering such service when his mistress repented of her sins. Yet he gave his tail feathers a slight flirt and quavered some guttural to sustain his part in the conversation, and to beg that he might be excused from holding the sword this time. As she continued to prod him, however, he struck her with his beak. Le Rossignol was human in never finding herself able to bear the punishment she courted. She flew at the swan, he spread his wings for ardent warfare, and they both dropped to the stone floor in a whirlwind of mandolin, arms, and feathers. The dwarf kept her hold on him until he cowered and lay with his neck along the pavement.

"Thou art a Turk, a rascal, a horned beast!" panted Le Rossignol.

Shubenacadie quavered plaintively, and all her wrath was gone. She spread out one of his wings and smoothed the plumes. She nursed his head in her lap and sung to him. Two of his feathers, plucked out in the contest, she put in her bosom. He flirted his tail and gathered himself again to his feet, and she broke her loaf and fed him and poured water into her palm for his bill.

Le Rossignol esteemed the military dignity given to her imprisonment, and she was a hardy midget who could bear untold exposure when wandering at her own will. She therefore received with disgust her lady's summons to come down long before the day was spent, the messenger being only Zelie.

"Ah--h, mademoiselle," warned the maid, stumping ponderously out of the stone stairway, "are you about to mount that swan again?"

"Who has ever seen me mount him?"

"I would be sworn there are a dozen men in the fort that have."

"But you never have."

"No. I have been absent with my lady."

"Well, you shall see me now."

The dwarf flung herself on Shubenacadie's back, and thrust her feet down under his wings. He began to rise, and expanded, stretching his neck forward, and Zelie uttered a yell of terror. The weird little woman leaped off and turned her laughing beak toward the terrified maid. Her ear-hoops swung as she rolled her mocking head.

"Oh, if it frightens you I will not ride to-day," she said. Shubenacadie sailed across the battlements, and though they could no longer see him they knew he had taken to the river.

"If I tell my lady this," s.h.i.+vered Zelie, "she will never let you out of the turret. And she but this moment sent me to call you down out of the chill east wind."

"Tell Madame Marie," urged the dwarf insolently.

"And do you ride that way over bush and brier, through mirk and daylight?"

"I was at Pen.o.bscot this week," answered Le Rossignol.

Zelie gazed with a bristling of even the hairs upon her lip.

"It goeth past belief," she observed, setting her hands upon her sides.

"And the swan, what else can he do besides carry thee like a dragon?"

"He sings to me," boldly a.s.serted Le Rossignol. "And many a good bit of advice have I taken from his bill."

"It would be well if he turned his mind more to thinking and less to roving," respectfully hinted Zelie. "I will go before you downstairs and leave the key in the turret door," she suggested.

"Take up these things and go when you please, and mind that I do not hear my clavier striking the wall."

"Have you not felt the wind in this open donjon?"

"The wind and I take no note of each other," answered the dwarf, lifting her chilled nose skyward. "But the cold water and bread have worked me most discomfort in this imprisonment. Go down and tell the cook for me that he is to make a hot bowl of the broth I like."

"He will do it," said Zelie.

"Yes, he will do it," said the dwarf, "and the sooner he does it the better."

"Will you eat it in the hall?"

"I will eat it wherever Madame Marie is."

"But that you cannot do. There is great business going forward and she is shut with Madame Bronck in our other lady's room."

"I like it when you presume to know better than I do what is going forward in this fort!" exclaimed the dwarf jealously, a flush mounting her slender cheeks.

"I should best know what has happened since you left the hall,"

contended Zelie.

"Do you think so, poor heavy-foot? You can only hearken to what is whispered past your ear; but I can sit here on the battlements and read all the secrets below me."

"Can you, Mademoiselle Nightingale? For instance, where is Madame Bronck's box?"

The maid drew a deep breath at her own daring.

"It is not about Madame Bronck's box that they confer. It is about the marriage of the Hollandaise," answered Le Rossignol with a bold guess.

"I could have told you that when you entered the turret."

Zelie experienced a chill through her flesh which was not caused by the damp breath of Fundy Bay.

"How doth she find out things done behind her back--this clever little witch? And perhaps you will name the bridegroom, mademoiselle?"

"Who could that be except the big Hollandais who hath come out of the west after her? Could she marry a priest or a common soldier?"

"That is true," admitted Zelie, feeling her superst.i.tion allayed.

"There must be as few women as trinkets in that wilderness Fort of Orange from which he came," added the dwarf.

"Why?" inquired Zelie, wrinkling her nose and squinting in the sunlight.