Rafael Sabatini - Bardelys the Magnificent

"I see no likelihood of being her daughter's husband," I answered mournfully.

The King looked up, and laughed. "Down on your knees, then," said he, "and render thanks to Heaven."

But I shook my head very soberly. "To Your Majesty it is a pleasing comedy," said I, "but to me, helas! it is nearer far to tragedy."

"Come, Marcel," said he, "may I not laugh a little? One grows so sad with being King of France! Tell me what vexes you."

"Mademoiselle de Lavedan has promised that she will marry me only when I have saved her father from the scaffold. I came to do it, very full of hope, Sire. But his wife has forestalled me and, seemingly, doomed him irrevocably."

His glance fell; his countenance resumed its habitual gloom. Then he looked up again, and in the melancholy depths of his eyes I saw a gleam of something that was very like affection.

"You know that I love you, Marcel," he said gently. "Were you my own son I could not love you more. You are a profligate, dissolute knave, and your scandals have rung in my ears more than once; yet you are different from these other fools, and at least you have never wearied me. To have done that is to have done something. I would not lose you, Marcel; as lose you I shall if you marry this rose of Languedoc, for I take it that she is too sweet a flower to let wither in the stale atmosphere of Courts. This man, this Vicomte de Lavedan, has earned his death. Why should I not let him die, since if he dies you will not wed?"

"Do you ask me why, Sire?" said I. "Because they call you Louis the Just, and because no king was ever more deserving of the title."

He winced; he pursed his lips, and shot a glance at La Fosse, who was deep in the mysteries of his volume. Then he drew towards him a sheet of paper, and, taking a quill, he sat toying with it.

"Because they call me the Just, I must let justice take its course," he answered presently.

"But," I objected, with a sudden hope, "the course of justice cannot lead to the headsman in the case of the Vicomte de Lavedan."

"Why not?" And his solemn eyes met mine across the table.

"Because he took no active part in the revolt. If he was a traitor, he was no more than a traitor at heart, and until a man commits a crime in deed he is not amenable to the law's rigour. His wife has made his defection clear; but it were unfair to punish him in the same measure as you punish those who bore arms against you, Sire."

"Ah!" he pondered. "Well? What more?"

"Is that not enough, Sire?" I cried. My heart beat quickly, and my pulses throbbed with the suspense of that portentous moment.

He bent his head, dipped his pen and began to write.

"What punishment would you have me mete out to him?" he asked as he wrote. "Come, Marcel, deal fairly with me, and deal fairly with him—for as you deal with him, so shall I deal with you through him."

I felt myself paling in my excitement. "There is banishment, Sire—it is usual in cases of treason that are not sufficiently flagrant to be punished by death."

"Yes!" He wrote busily. "Banishment for how long, Marcel? For his lifetime?"

"Nay, Sire. That were too long."

"For my lifetime, then?"

"Again that were too long."

He raised his eyes and smiled. "Ah! You turn prophet? Well, for how long, then? Come, man."

"I should think five years—"

"Five years be it. Say no more."

He wrote on for a few moments; then he raised the sandbox and sprinkled the document.

"Tiens!" he cried, as he dusted it and held it out to me. "There is my warrant for the disposal of Monsieur le Vicomte Leon de Lavedan. He is to go into banishment for five years, but his estates shall suffer no sequestration, and at the end of that period he may return and enjoy them—we hope with better loyalty than in the past. Get them to execute that warrant at once, and see that the Vicomte starts to-day under escort for Spain. It will also be your warrant to Mademoiselle de Lavedan, and will afford proof to her that your mission has been successful."

"Sire!" I cried. And in my gratitude I could say no more, but I sank on my knee before him and raised his hand to my lips.

"There," said he in a fatherly voice. "Go now, and be happy."

As I rose, he suddenly put up his hand.

"Ma foi, I had all but forgotten, so much has Monsieur de Lavedan's fate preoccupied us." He picked up another paper from his table, and tossed it to me. It was my note of hand to Chatellerault for my Picardy estates.

"Chatellerault died this morning," the King pursued. "He had been asking to see you, but when he was told that you had left Toulouse, he dictated a long confession of his misdeeds, which he sent to me together with this note of yours. He could not, he wrote, permit his heirs to enjoy your estates; he had not won them; he had really forfeited his own stakes, since he had broken the rules of play. He has left me to deliver judgment in the matter of his own lands passing into your possession. What do you say to it, Marcel?"

It was almost with reluctance that I took up that scrap of paper. It had been so fine and heroic a thing to have cast my wealth to the winds of heaven for love's sake, that on my soul I was loath to see myself master of more than Beaugency. Then a compromise suggested itself.

"The wager, Sire," said I, "is one that I take shame in having entered upon; that shame made me eager to pay it, although fully conscious that I had not lost. But even now, I cannot, in any case, accept the forfeit Chatellerault was willing to suffer. Shall we—shall we forget that the wager was ever laid?"

"The decision does you honour. It was what I had hoped from you. Go now, Marcel. I doubt me you are eager. When your love-sickness wanes a little we shall hope to see you at Court again."

I sighed. "Helas, Sire, that would be never."

"So you said once before, monsieur. It is a foolish spirit upon which to enter into matrimony; yet—like many follies—a fine one. Adieu, Marcel!"

"Adieu, Sire!"

I had kissed his hands; I had poured forth my thanks; I had reached the door already, and he was in the act of turning to La Fosse, when it came into my head to glance at the warrant he had given me. He noticed this and my sudden halt.

"Is aught amiss?" he asked.

"You-you have omitted something, Sire," I ventured, and I returned to the table. "I am already so grateful that I hesitate to ask an additional favour. Yet it is but troubling you to add a few strokes of the pen, and it will not materially affect the sentence itself."

He glanced at me, and his brows drew together as he sought to guess my meaning.

"Well, man, what is it?" he demanded impatiently.

"It has occurred to me that this poor Vicomte, in a strange land, alone, among strange faces, missing the loved ones that for so many years he has seen daily by his side, will be pitiably lonely."

The King's glance was lifted suddenly to my face. "Must I then banish his family as well?"

"All of it will not be necessary, Your Majesty."

For once his eyes lost their melancholy, and as hearty a burst of laughter as ever I heard from that poor, weary gentleman he vented then.

"Ciel! what a jester you are! Ah, but I shall miss you!" he cried, as, seizing the pen, he added the word I craved of him.

"Are you content at last?" he asked, returning the paper to me.

I glanced at it. The warrant now stipulated that Madame la Vicomtesse de Lavedan should bear her husband company in his exile.

"Sire, you are too good!" I murmured.

"Tell the officer to whom you entrust the execution of this warrant that he will find the lady in the guardroom below, where she is being detained, pending my pleasure. Did she but know that it was your pleasure she has been waiting upon, I should tremble for your future when the five years expire."

Mademoiselle held the royal warrant of her father's banishment in her hand. She was pale, and her greeting of me had been timid. I stood before her, and by the door stood Rodenard, whom I had bidden attend me.

As I had approached Lavedan that day, I had been taken with a great, an overwhelming shame at the bargain I had driven. I had pondered, and it had come to me that she had been right to suggest that in matters of love what is not freely given it is not worth while to take. And out of my shame and that conclusion had sprung a new resolve. So that nothing might weaken it, and lest, after all, the sight of Roxalanne should bring me so to desire her that I might be tempted to override my purpose, I had deemed it well to have the restraint of a witness at our last interview. To this end had I bidden Ganymede follow me into the very salon.

She read the document to the very end, then her glance was raised timidly again to mine, and from me it shifted to Ganymede, stiff at his post by the door.

"This was the best that you could do, monsieur?" she asked at last.

"The very best, mademoiselle," I answered calmly. "I do not wish to magnify my service, but it was that or the scaffold. Madame your mother had, unfortunately, seen the King before me, and she had prejudiced your father's case by admitting him to be a traitor. There was a moment when in view of that I was almost led to despair. I am glad, however, mademoiselle, that I was so fortunate as to persuade the King to just so much clemency."

"And for five years, then, I shall not see my parents." She sighed, and her distress was very touching.

"That need not be. Though they may not come to France, it still remains possible for you to visit them in Spain."