The Seats of the Mighty Part 3

"If the Governor would grant me leave, I would not only wear, but use one, your excellency knows well where," said I.

"Large speaking, Captain Moray. They do that in Virginia, I am told."

"In Gascony there's quiet, your excellency."

Doltaire laughed outright, for it was said that Bigot, in his coltish days, had a shrewish Gascon wife, whom he took leave to send to heaven before her time. I saw the Intendant's mouth twitch angrily.

"Come," he said, "you have a tongue; we'll see if you have a stomach.

You've languished with the girls; you shall have your chance to drink with Francois Bigot. Now, if you dare, when we have drunk to the first c.o.c.kcrow, should you be still on your feet, you'll fight some one among us, first giving ample cause."

"I hope, your excellency," I replied, with a touch of vanity, "I have still some stomach and a wrist. I will drink to c.o.c.kcrow, if you will.

And if my sword prove the stronger, what?"

"There's the point," he said. "Your Englishman loves not fighting for fighting's sake, Doltaire; he must have bonbons for it. Well, see: if your sword and stomach prove the stronger, you shall go your ways to where you will. Voila!"

If I could but have seen a bare portion of the craftiness of this pair of devils artisans! They both had ends to serve in working ill to me, and neither was content that I should be shut away in the citadel, and no more. There was a deeper game playing. I give them their due: the trap was skillful, and in those times, with great things at stake, strategy took the place of open fighting here and there. For Bigot I was to be a weapon against another; for Doltaire, against myself.

What a gull they must have thought me! I might have known that, with my lost papers on the way to France, they must hold me tight here till I had been tried, nor permit me to escape. But I was sick of doing nothing, thinking with horror on a long winter in the citadel, and I caught at the least straw of freedom.

"Captain Moray will like to spend a couple of hours at his lodgings before he joins us at the palace," the Intendant said, and with a nod to me he turned to his coachman. The horses wheeled, and in a moment the great doors opened, and he had pa.s.sed inside to applause, though here and there among the crowd was heard a hiss, for the Scarlet Woman had made an impression. The Intendant's men essayed to trace these noises, but found no one. Looking again to the Heights, I saw that the woman had gone. Doltaire noted my glance and the inquiry in my face, and he said:

"Some bad fighting hours with the Intendant at Chateau Bigot, and then a fever, bringing a kind of madness: so the story creeps about, as told by Bigot's enemies."

Just at this point I felt a man hustle me as he pa.s.sed. One of the soldiers made a thrust at him, and he turned round. I caught his eye, and it flashed something to me. It was Voban the barber, who had shaved me every day for months when I first came, while my arm was stiff from a wound got fighting the French on the Ohio. It was quite a year since I had met him, and I was struck by the change in his face. It had grown much older; its roundness was gone. We had had many a talk together; he helping me with French, I listening to the tales of his early life in France, and to the later tale of a humble love, and of the home which he was fitting up for his Mathilde, a peasant girl of much beauty, I was told, but whom I had never seen. I remembered at that moment, as he stood in the crowd looking at me, the piles of linen which he had bought at Ste. Anne de Beaupre, and the silver pitcher which his grandfather had got from the Duc de Valois for an act of merit. Many a time we had discussed the pitcher and the deed, and fingered the linen, now talking in French, now in English; for in France, years before, he had been a valet to an English officer at King Louis's court. But my surprise had been great when I learned that this English gentleman was no other than the best friend I ever had, next to my parents and my grandfather. Voban was bound to Sir John G.o.dric by as strong ties of affection as I. What was more, by a secret letter I had sent to George Was.h.i.+ngton, who was then as good a Briton as myself, I had been able to have my barber's young brother, a prisoner of war, set free.

I felt that he had something to say to me. But he turned away and disappeared among the crowd. I might have had some clue if I had known that he had been crouched behind the Intendant's carriage while I was being bidden to the supper. I did not guess then that there was anything between him and the Scarlet Woman who railed at Bigot.

In a little while I was at my lodgings, soldiers posted at my door and one in my room. Doltaire gone to his own quarters promising to call for me within two hours. There was little for me to do but to put in a bag the fewest necessaries, to roll up my heavy cloak, to stow safely my pipes and two goodly packets of tobacco, which were to be my chiefest solace for many a long day, and to write some letters--one to Governor Dinwiddie, one to George Was.h.i.+ngton, and one to my partner in Virginia, telling them my fresh misfortunes, and begging them to send me money, which, however useless in my captivity, would be important in my fight for life and freedom. I did not write intimately of my state, for I was not sure my letters would ever pa.s.s outside Quebec. There were only two men I could trust to do the thing. One was a fellow-countryman, Clark, a s.h.i.+p-carpenter, who, to save his neck and to spare his wife and child, had turned Catholic, but who hated all Frenchmen barbarously at heart, remembering two of his bairns butchered before his eyes. The other was Voban. I knew that though Voban might not act, he would not betray me. But how to reach either of them? It was clear that I must bide my chances.

One other letter I wrote, brief but vital, in which I begged the sweetest girl in the world not to have uneasiness because of me; that I trusted to my star and to my innocence to convince my judges; and begging her, if she could, to send me a line at the citadel. I told her I knew well how hard it would be, for her mother and her father would not now look upon my love with favour. But I trusted all to time and Providence.

I sealed my letters, put them in my pocket, and sat down to smoke and think while I waited for Doltaire. To the soldier on duty, whom I did not notice at first, I now offered a pipe and a gla.s.s of wine, which he accepted rather gruffly, but enjoyed, if I might judge by his devotion to them.

By-and-bye, without any relevancy at all, he said abruptly, "If a little sooner she had come--aho!"

For a moment I could not think what he meant; but soon I saw.

"The palace would have been burnt if the girl in scarlet had come sooner--eh?" I asked. "She would have urged the people on?"

"And Bigot burnt, too, maybe," he answered.

"Fire and death--eh?"

I offered him another pipeful of tobacco. He looked doubtful, but accepted.

"Aho! And that Voban, he would have had his hand in," he growled.

I began to get more light.

"She was shut up at Chateau Bigot--hand of iron and lock of steel--who knows the rest! But Voban was for always," he added presently.

The thing was clear. The Scarlet Woman was Mathilde. So here was the end of Voban's little romance--of the fine linen from Ste. Anne de Beaupre and the silver pitcher for the wedding wine. I saw, or felt, that in Voban I might find now a confederate, if I put my hard case on Bigot's shoulders.

"I can't see why she stayed with Bigot," I said tentatively.

"Break the dog's leg, it can't go hunting bones--mais, non! Holy, how stupid are you Englis.h.!.+"

"Why doesn't the Intendant lock her up now? She's dangerous to him. You remember what she said?"

"Tonnerre, you shall see to-morrow," he answered; "now all the sheep go bleating with the bell. Bigot--Bigot--Bigot--there is nothing but Bigot!

But, pis.h.!.+ Vaudreuil the Governor is the great man, and Montcalm, aho!

son of Mahomet! You shall see. Now they dance to Bigot's whistling; he will lock her safe enough to-morrow, 'less some one steps in to help her. Before to-night she never spoke of him before the world--but a poor daft thing, going about all sad and wild. She missed her chance to-night--aho!"

"Why are you not with Montcalm's soldiers?" I asked. "You like him better."

"I was with him, but my time was out, and I left him for Bigot. Pis.h.!.+ I left him for Bigot, for the militia!" He raised his thumb to his nose, and spread out his fingers. Again light dawned on me. He was still with the Governor in all fact, though soldiering for Bigot--a sort of watch upon the Intendant.

I saw my chance. If I could but induce this fellow to fetch me Voban!

There was yet an hour before I was to go to the intendance.

I called up what looks of candour were possible to me, and told him bluntly that I wished Voban to bear a letter for me to the Seigneur Duvarney's. At that he c.o.c.ked his ear and shook his bushy head, fiercely stroking his mustaches.

I knew that I should stake something if I said it was a letter for Mademoiselle Duvarney, but I knew also that if he was still the Governor's man in Bigot's pay he would understand the Seigneur's relations with the Governor. And a woman in the case with a soldier--that would count for something. So I said it was for her.

Besides, I had no other resource but to make a friend among my enemies, if I could, while yet there was a chance.

It was like a load lifted from me when I saw his mouth and eyes open wide in a big soundless laugh, which came to an end with a voiceless aho! I gave him another tumbler of wine. Before he took it, he made a wide mouth at me again, and slapped his leg. After drinking, he said, "Poom--what good? They're going to hang you for a spy."

"That rope's not ready yet," I answered. "I'll tie a pretty knot in another string first, I trust."

"d.a.m.ned if you haven't spirit!" said he. "That Seigneur Duvarney, I know him; and I know his son the ensign--whung, what saltpetre is he! And the ma'm'selle--excellent, excellent; and a face, such a face, and a seat like leeches in the saddle. And you a British officer mewed up to kick your heels till gallows day! So droll, my dear!"

"But will you fetch Voban?" I asked.

"To trim your hair against the supper to-night--eh, like that?"

As he spoke he puffed out his red cheeks with wide boylike eyes, burst his lips in another soundless laugh, and laid a finger beside his nose.

His marvellous innocence of look and his peasant openness hid, I saw, great shrewdness and intelligence--an admirable man for Vaudreuil's purpose, as admirable for mine. I knew well that if I had tried to bribe him he would have scouted me, or if I had made a motion for escape he would have shot me off-hand. But a lady--that appealed to him; and that she was the Seigneur Duvarney's daughter did the rest.

"Yes, yes," said I, "one must be well appointed in soul and body when one sups with his Excellency and Monsieur Doltaire."

"Limed inside and chalked outside," he retorted gleefully. "But M'sieu'

Doltaire needs no lime, for he has no soul. No, by Sainte Helois! The good G.o.d didn't make him. The devil laughed, and that laugh grew into M'sieu' Doltaire. But brave!--no kicking pulse is in his body."

"You will send for Voban--now?" I asked softly.

He was leaning against the door as he spoke. He reached and put the tumbler on a shelf, then turned and opened the door, his face all altered to a grimness.

"Attend here, Labrouk!" he called; and on the soldier coming, he blurted out in scorn, "Here's this English captain can't go to supper without Voban's shears to snip him. Go fetch him, for I'd rather hear a calf in a barn-yard than this whing-whanging for 'M'sieu' Voban!'"