CHAPTER V.

HOW LA TOURNOIRE ESCAPED FROM PARIS

I heard the key turn in the lock, and the Queen of Navarre leave the cabinet. She took the key with her, so that a tiny beam of light came through the keyhole, giving my dark hiding-place its only illumination.

I felt complete confidence both in Marguerite's show of willingness to save me, and in her ability to do so. All I could do was to wait, and leave my future in her hands.

After a long time, I heard steps in the cabinet outside the closet door, the beam of light from the keyhole was cut off, the key turned again, the door opened, and Marguerite again stood before me.

"Monsieur," she said, "that we may talk without danger, remain in the closet. I will leave the door slightly ajar, thus, and will sit here, near it, with my 'Book of Hours,' as if reading aloud to myself. Should any one come, I can lock your door again and hide the key. Hark! be silent, monsieur!"

And as she spoke, she shut the door, locked it, drew out the key, and sat down. I listened to learn what had caused this act of precaution.

"Madame," I heard some one say, "M. de l'Archant desires, by order of the King, to search your apartments for a man who is to be arrested, and who is thought to have secreted himself somewhere in the palace."

"Let him enter." said Marguerite. My heart stood still. Then I heard her say, in a tone of pleasantry:

"What, M. le Capitain, is there another St. Bartholomew, that people choose my apartments for refuge?"

"This time it is not certain that the fugitive is here," replied Captain de l'Archant, of the bodyguard. "He is known to have been in the palace this morning, and no one answering his description has been seen to leave by any of the gates. It was, indeed, a most sudden and mysterious disappearance; and it is thought that he has run to cover in some chamber or other. We are looking everywhere."

"Who is the man?" asked Marguerite, in a tone of indifference.

"M. de la Tournoire, of the French Guards."

"Very well. Look where you please. If he came into my apartments, he must have done so while I attended the _pet.i.te levee_ of the King; otherwise I should have seen him. What are you looking at? The door of that closet?

He could not have gone there without my knowledge. One of the maids locked it the other day, and the key has disappeared." Whereupon, she tried the door, herself, as if in proof of her a.s.sertion.

"Then he cannot be there," said De L'Archant, deceived by her manner; and he took his leave.

For some minutes I heard nothing but the monotonous voice of Marguerite as she read aloud to herself from her "Book of Hours."

Then she opened my door again. Through the tiny crack I saw a part of her head.

"Monsieur," she said to me, keeping her eyes upon the book, and retaining the same changeless tone of one reading aloud, "you see that you are safe, for the present. No one in the palace, save one of my maids, is aware that I know you or have reason to take the slightest interest in you. Your entrance to my apartments was made so naturally and openly that it left no impression on those who saw you come in. I have since sent every one of those persons on some errand, so that all who might happen to remember your coming here will suppose that you left during their absence. It was well that I brought you here; had I merely told you to leave the palace, immediately, you would not have known exactly how matters stood, and you would have been arrested at your lodgings, or on your way to your place of duty. By this time, orders have gone to the city gates to prevent your leaving Paris. Before noon, not only the body-guard, the Provost of the palace, and the French and Scotch Guards will be on the lookout for you, but also the gendarmes of the Provost of Paris. That is why we must be careful, and why stealth must be used in conveying you out of Paris."

"They make a very important personage of me," I said, in a low tone.

"Hush! When you speak imitate my tone, exactly, and be silent the instant I cough. Too many people are not to be trusted. That you may understand me, you must know precisely how matters stand. This morning my mother went to see the King in his chamber before he had risen. They discussed a matter which required my presence, and I was sent for. After we had finished our family council, my mother and I remained for a few words, in private, with each other. While we were talking, M. de Quelus came in and spoke for a while to the King. I heard the King reply, 'Certainly, as he preserved you to me, my friend.' De Quelus was about to leave the King's chamber, when the Duke of Guise was announced. De Quelus waited, out of curiosity, I suppose. M. de Guise was admitted. He immediately told the King that one of his gentlemen, M. de Noyard, had been killed by the Sieur de la Tournoire, one of the French Guards. I became interested, for I remembered your name as that of the gentleman who, according to my maid, had stopped the spy from whom I had had so much to fear. I recalled, also, that you had the esteem of my brother's faithful Bussy d'Amboise. My mother immediately expressed the greatest horror at De Noyard's death, with the greatest sympathy for M. de Guise; and she urged the King to make an example of you."

I remembered, with a deep sigh, what De Rilly had told me,--that Catherine, to prevent the Duke of Guise from laying the death of De Noyard to her, would do her utmost to bring me to punishment.

"The King looked at De Quelus," continued Marguerite. "That gentleman, seeing how things were, and, knowing that the King now wishes to seem friendly to the Duke, promptly said, 'This is fortunate. La Tournoire is now waiting for me in the red gallery; I suppose he wishes to beg my intercession. His presumption will be properly punished when the guards arrest him there.'"

I turned sick, at this revelation of treachery. This was the gentleman who owed his life to me, and, in the first outburst of grat.i.tude, had promised to obtain for me a captaincy!

"The King," Marguerite went on, "at once ordered two of the Scotch Guards to arrest you. All this time, I had been standing at the window, looking out, as if paying no attention. My mother stopped the guards to give them some additional direction. No one was watching me. I pa.s.sed carelessly out, and you know what followed. At the _pet.i.te levee_, I learned what was thought of your disappearance,--that you had seen the Duke of Guise enter the King's apartments, had guessed his purpose, and had precipitately fled."

I did not dare tell his sister what I thought of a King who would, without hesitation or question, offer up one of his guards as a sacrifice to appease that King's greatest enemy.

"And now, monsieur," said Marguerite, still seeming to read from her book, "the King and the Queen, my mother, will make every effort to have you captured, lest it be thought that they are secretly protecting the slayer of M. de Noyard. To convince you that you may rely on me, thoroughly, I will confess that it is not solely grat.i.tude for your service the other night that induces me to help you,--although my grat.i.tude was great. I had seen the spy rise out of the moat and all night I was in deadly fear that he had reached the guard-house and prevented my brother's flight, or, at least, betrayed me. When I became convinced that he had not done so, I thanked Heaven for the unknown cause that had hindered him. So you may imagine, when my maid told me that a friend of her lover's was that unknown cause, how I felt towards that friend."

"Madame," I said, with emotion, "I ought to be content to die, having had the happiness of eliciting your grat.i.tude!"

"But I am not content that you should die, for I wish you to serve me once more, this time as a messenger to my brother, the Duke of Anjou, who is at Angers; to M. Bussy d'Amboise, who is with him; and to my husband, the King of Navarre, who is at Nerac, in Gascony. Thus it is to my own interest to procure your safe escape from Paris. And if you reach Nerac, monsieur, you cannot do better than to stay there. The King of Navarre will give you some post more worthy of you than that of a mere soldier, which you hold here."

"I enlisted in the French Guards," I hastened to explain, "because I was unknown, and a Huguenot, and could expect no higher beginning."

"For the very reason that you are a Huguenot, you can expect a great deal from the King of Navarre. His kingdom is little more than a toy kingdom, it is true, and his court is but the distant echo of the court of France, but believe me, monsieur,"--and here Marguerite's voice indicated a profound conviction,--"there is a future before my husband, the King of Navarre! They do not know him. Moreover, Paris will never be a safe place for you as long as the Duke of Guise lives. He does not forget!"

I knew that Marguerite had excellent means of knowing the Duke of Guise, and I did not dispute her a.s.sertion. Moreover, I was now quite willing to go from the city wherein I was to have achieved such great things. My self-conceit had been shaken a little.

"But if every exit is watched, how can I leave Paris?" I asked.

"The exits were watched to prevent the going of my brother Anjou," said Marguerite, "but he went. He crossed the Seine with his chamberlain, Simier, and his valet, Cange, and went to the Abbey of St. Genevieve, of which the gardens are bounded by the city wall. The Abbot Foulon was secretly with us. M. Bussy had returned to Paris, and was waiting at the Abbey for Monsieur. They left Paris by way of the Abbey garden. The Abbot is a cautious soul, and to protect himself, in case of discovery, he had M. Bussy tie him to a chair, and after Monsieur and Bussy had joined their gentlemen, outside, and galloped off toward Angers, the Abbot came to the Louvre, and informed the King of Monsieur's escape. Now I suppose we shall have to make use of the same ingenious Foulon."

"You know what is best, madame," I said.

"But the Abbot of Saint Genevieve would not do for you, or even for me, what he would do for my brother Anjou. If he knew who you were, he might gladly seize an opportunity to offset, by giving you up, the suspicion that he had a hand in my brother's escape."

"But if there is a suspicion of that, will they not watch the Abbey now, on my account?"

"No; for you are not of my brother's party, and the Abbot would have no reason for aiding you. The question is how to make him serve us in this. I must now think and act, monsieur, and I shall have to lock you up again."

She rose and did so, and again I was left to meditate. It is astonishing how unconcerned I had come to feel, how reliant on the ingenuity of this charming princess with the small head, the high, broad forehead, the burning, black eyes the curly blonde hair, the quizzically discrete expression of face.

After some hours, during which I learned, again, the value of patience, the door was opened, and Marguerite thrust in some bread and cold meat, which she had brought with her own hand. I took it in silence, and stooped to kiss the hand, but it was too soon withdrawn, and the door locked again.

When the door next opened, Marguerite stood before it with a candle in her hand. I therefore knew that it was night. In her other hand, she held four letters, three of them already sealed, the fourth open.

"I have made all arrangements," she said, quickly. "This letter is to the Abbot Foulon. Read it."

She handed it to me, and held the candle for me while I read:

This gentleman bears private letters to Monsieur. As he was about to depart with them, I learned that the King had been informed of his intended mission, and had given orders for his arrest at the gate. I call upon you to aid him to leave Paris, as you aided my brother Anjou. His arrest would result in a disclosure of how that matter was conducted.

MARGUERITE.

I smiled, when I had finished reading the letter.

"That letter will frighten Brother Foulon into immediate action," said Marguerite, "and he will be compelled to destroy it, as it incriminates him. Take these others. You will first go to Angers, and deliver this to the Duke of Anjou, this to M. de Bussy. Then proceed to Gascony with this, for the King of Navarre."

"And I am to start?"

"To-night. I shall let you down into the moat, as Monsieur was let down.

You cannot cross the bridges of the Seine, lest you be stopped by guards at the entrances; therefore I have employed, in this matter, the same boy who served me the other night. Go immediately from the moat to that part of the quay which lies east of the Hotel de Bourbon. You will find him waiting there in a boat. He will take you across the river to the Quay of the Augustines, and from there you will go alone to the Abbey. When Foulon knows that you come in my name, he will at once admit you. I am sorry that there is not time to have a horse waiting for you outside the fortifications."

"Alas, I must leave my own horse in Paris! I must go forth as a deserter from the Guards!"