With a curse Thibaut turned and, sweeping aside the archers who tried to stop him, disappeared down the nearest alley. Noel le Jolys, drawing his sword, rushed in pursuit, followed by several soldiers. Villon held the bleeding body of the girl in his arms, and tried his best to stanch the wound which was staining the green jerkin a dull red, but the girl protested faintly, pushing his ministering hand away.

"Let me alone; I am done for," she gasped.

Olivier was by her side in an instant, eyeing the wound with the professional interest of the surgeon-barber and looking from it to the girl's pale face. Villon's gaze questioned him. Olivier shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. Villon knew that the wound was mortal, and his own blood seemed like water within him. He carried the girl across the gra.s.s to the marble seat and rested her on it, the red stain on the green coat growing wider and wider as they moved.

"Courage, Abbess, courage, la.s.s," he whispered, fighting with his horror and his sorrow as he moaned to himself: "That any one should die for me!"

The girl's arms clung closer about his neck and her lips moved faintly. He stooped close to her to catch her words.

"This is a strange end, Francois. I always thought I should die in a bed. Here is another kind of battlefield. Give me drink."

"Some water," Villon cried to Olivier, who stood a little apart from the pair with the resigned look of the physician who knows that his art is of no avail.

Huguette protested faintly.

"Not water. Wine. I have ever loved the taste of it, and 'tis too late to change now."

Olivier filled a cup from the flagon on the table and was for lifting it to the girl's lips, but her feeble hand repulsed him and she pleaded to Villon:

"Give it to me, Francois."

Villon took the cup from the barber's hand, lifted it to the dying girl's lips, and she drank greedily. The strong wine gave her for a moment something of its own false strength, and she struggled to her feet, Villon rising with her and supporting her.

"Your health, Francois. I suppose I have been a great sinner. Will G.o.d forgive me?"

Villon stifled a heavy groan, but he was sworn to console her if he could, and, indeed, he believed his words of consolation.

"He understands his children."

The heavy head drooped its golden curls upon his shoulder.

"You always were hopeful," she said brokenly. Then suddenly clasping him tightly, she cried: "Many men have taken my body; only you ever took my heart. Give me your lips."

Villon's spirit was troubled. It seemed to him that his lips were bound to wait for that kiss of his lady's, and yet the dying girl loved him and he had loved the dying girl after a fashion, and he could not refuse her now. He bent to grant her prayer, when suddenly she shook herself free from his arms and began to sing faintly the words of the song he had made for her:

"Daughters of Pleasure, one and all,

Then she caught her breath with a sob and slipped to the last lines of the verse:

"Use your red lips before too late, Love ere love flies beyond recall."

She shook her head back in a wild peal of laughter: then she gave a great cry and fell forward. Villon caught her, looked in her face and knew that she was dead, and that the best of his old bad life lay dead with her.

Olivier in obedience to an order of the king's, gave a signal and the girl's body was swiftly wrapped in a soldier's cloak and laid gently upon a pair of crossed halberds. As this was being done, Noel le Jolys came panting back with a red sword in his hand.

"Thibaut d'Aussigny is dead, sire," he said; "my hand was the hand that finished him."

Then as his eyes fell on the dead body, they shone with sudden tears. Villon went up to him and touched him on the shoulder.

"I leave this dead woman in your hands," he said, "for I think you had a kindness for her. See that she has Christian burial."

Noel bowed his head and followed in silence the girl's body. The garden was left to Louis and Villon, Tristan and Olivier, and the handful of captured rogues who stood apart, strongly guarded and stripped of their pilgrims' garb, gazing amazed at Louis and his double. Villon, silent too, looked after the little group that bore away the dead girl's body. His mind was a warfare of wild memories.

Strange recollections of times and places with Huguette came crowding up and beating piteously upon his brain. He thought of what he had been, and groaned; of what he was now, and his soul cried out as in prayer in the name of Katherine.

CHAPTER XII

A VIRGIN'S TEARS

The king's hand fell upon his shoulder and shattered his meditations.

"Are you so dashed by the death of a wanton?" the king asked mockingly.

Villon turned upon him in a n.o.ble rage.

"She had G.o.d's breath in her body, sire," he said. Then drawing his hand across his forehead as if to dissipate the sad fancies that oppressed him, he went on:

"I have been John-a-Nods for the moment, sire; now I am Jack-a-Deeds again. The hour for battle is at hand."

Louis shrugged his shoulders.

"You have done me a good turn, gossip," he said, "and may ask any grace of me except your life. That depends on your lady."

Villon looked over at the corner where his old boon companions were huddled together, the miserable centre of a circle of soldiers.

"Sire," he said; "grant me the lives of those rascals. They shall ride with me and fight for France to-night. It is better than making them play bob-apple on the evil tree."

The king whispered a few words to Tristan, and Tristan very reluctantly gave the order of liberation. The comrades of the c.o.c.klesh.e.l.l were freed of their bonds and bade to stand apart, under guard and out of earshot, to wait on destiny for future commands. At this moment Louis, glancing upwards, caught sight between the flower vases on the terrace of a gleam of crimson, the crimson silk of a woman's robe. It betrayed the presence of Katherine de Vaucelles, who had come hard upon the hour of nine to seek for her lover, but who paused irresolute at the head of the stairs, noting the presence of the king. Louis beckoned to her amicably, and she began slowly to descend the staircase. Louis came over to Villon and whispered in his ear:

"Here comes your lady. I think your love-fruit is ripe and you need not stand on tip-toe to pick it."

Villon answered him with burning eyes:

"Sire, I believe I have won the rose of the world."

Louis chuckled like an enraptured raven.

"The Count of Montcorbier is luckier than Francois Villon. But the lady has a high mind and a fierce spirit. She may not relish the deception, pardon the cheat his lie!"

Something in the king's words struck upon Villon's fiery hopes like a stream of ice-cold water and seemed to quench them. He was like a man who, long playing at blind-man's-buff, suddenly has the bandage plucked from his eyes and stands dazzled and blinking in the sunlight. After all, he was not the Count of Montcorbier; after all, he was not the Grand Constable of France; after all, he was only a masquerading beggar who had won the heart of a lady under false colours; who had triumphed by flying a false flag. In all those seven splendid days this simple thought had never come to him. His whole soul had been so taken captive by the fascination of the part he had been permitted to play that he forgot he was playing a part, and allowed his fancy to believe that a week-long dream would endure forever. Now he knew himself and what he had done and what he must do. A divine farce had turned to sudden tragedy. He turned to the king with a groan.