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The King's Esquires: The Jewel of France, a fiction by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 43. King Denis Refuses |
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_ CHAPTER FORTY THREE. KING DENIS REFUSES Denis's heart beat wildly for a few moments, as he asked himself should he be asleep or waking; but the heavy beating calmed down at once as he heard the King's slow footsteps in the outer room, and then the question in the now well-known voice: "No attendants?" "No, Sire. I presume he is asleep." "Then I must awake him," said the King sternly; "but my business is with him alone. Go, and retire the guards. I will summon you when I have done." "But, your Majesty--" "Silence! Can I not defend myself were it necessary against a wounded man? Go, and at once!" The chamberlain, whose voice Denis had recognised at once, retired in silence. There was the trampling of the guards, the closing of the outer door, and then as Denis lay listening all was still, while he began counting the slow heavy beating of his heart. "What will follow now?" he asked himself. He knew at once, for there was a slight cough, a heavy step, and the King strode through the dividing door into the chamber, stopped as if looking round for a moment, and then stepped round to the side of the great canopied bed, drew forward a chair, and seated himself between the recumbent prisoner and the window. Then he coughed again, but sharply and angrily this time. "You hear me, Comte de la Seine?" he said haughtily. It seemed to come naturally to the young esquire how to play his part-- to gain all the time he could; and he slowly raised one hand and let it fall heavily back upon the coverlet. Henry was satisfied, and his tones bespoke it, as he said: "It is well, sir. I have stooped to pay you this visit--here this night, to remind you that by the way in which you have repaid my hospitality you have forfeited your life." Denis raised his hand again, so that it came out of the shadow thrown by the curtains into the light cast by the candles right across the bed; and as the King sat there as if watching the effect of his words, the hand was waved carelessly in the air before it was allowed to descend. "Hah!" cried the King. "You are a Frenchman, sir, and you behave with all the flippancy of your race. I understand your gesture. It means recklessness. You, so to speak, tell me that you do not value your life. You defy me. But you will alter your tone when you are called upon to march in the middle of my guards to the headsman's block, and suffer there for your crime." There was a quick impatient gesture of the hand again. "We shall see," continued the King, with his voice growing deeper, suggestive of the hot anger that was burning in his breast. "And now listen to me, M. le Comte de la Seine, as you call yourself. But you have not deceived me. I know everything, even to the reason why you have stooped to play the part of a common cutpurse." Denis raised his hand again with an angry gesture, and Henry continued more loudly: "I repeat it, sir," he cried; "a common cutpurse; and please understand that you are quite at my mercy. No one can save you but I. Now listen. Men call me merciless and tyrannical. Let them. I am also just, and can be merciful when I please. Are you ready to accept my mercy?" Denis raised his hand again quickly. "Hah! Good! Then it is in your power to act in a way that will command this mercy, possibly my forgiveness, and the continuance of the feeling of friendship that you, so brilliant and talented a man, have won." Denis raised his hand again, as if in deprecation, feeling in spite of his perilous position something like amusement at the success attending the playing of his _role_. "Oh yes," continued the King; "you have proved yourself a man brilliant, courtly, and in every way fitted for the high position you held before you stooped to the wretched chicanery and folly which brought you to this pass. Now, sir, I tell you I am ready to be merciful and spare your life, but upon conditions; and these stipulations which I shall make, I tell you, you as my prisoner are bound to accept. You came here under false pretences to steal a jewel that was England's by the right of conquest, making to yourself the excuse that originally it belonged to France. Is not this so?" Denis raised his hand again. "You do not speak," said the King. "Well, knowing as I do that you were badly wounded by my faithful guards, and are now suffering severely for your crime, I am willing to accept a motion of your hand, a gesture, as your acceptation, as a reply. You see, sir, that all through this mad escapade Providence was working a means of compassing its righteous ends. You have fallen completely into my power, and either you submit to my terms or die." Denis raised his hand quickly. "You mean an appeal for mercy," cried the King. "Wait till you have heard my terms. They are these. I have here," he continued, unfolding a paper, "a complete renunciation on the part of France of the city of Bordeaux with the towns and territories embraced by Guienne, lands that were won by the good sword of my predecessors, to have and hold for three hundred years, but which you now occupy on sufferance and by the magnanimity of the English throne, which has mercifully withheld itself from seizing them by an act of war." Denis's hand, now fully in the light, was extended for a moment, but sharply withdrawn, for the fingers to begin tapping impatiently upon the coverlet. "Ah, you hesitate!" cried Henry. "Let me tell you that it is no time for hesitation, and that I shall brook no argument, accept nothing but a full and sufficient resignation made now upon this paper, which needs but your act and deed made fully by the addition of your royal name." Denis raised his hand slowly, and let it fall heavily upon the bed. "Hah!" cried the King, in a tone which evinced triumph and intense satisfaction, as he rose to his feet and walked slowly to a side-table standing beneath one of the sconces, upon which were writing materials ready to the visitor's hand. "I am glad," continued Henry, "that you are acting so wise a part. I might call in my chamberlain and others of my people to witness your surrender, but I will spare the feelings of a brother monarch who is completely in my hands. Your signature, Sire, will suffice." And as he spoke he took up and dipped a pen and seized a book, to bear them in company with the paper he held to the side of the bed, where he spread the paper upon the work. "Now, Sire," he continued, "at this moment we are enemies. Take this pen and add your royal name where I will place my finger, and I give you my kingly word that I will wipe out from the tablets of my memory the whole of your dastardly action, and become henceforth not only your brother of England, but your willing ally against all enemies who may rise up in an endeavour to imperil our thrones. There, Sire; I presume you are not too weak to write. Come: take the pen." Denis, who was now nearly at his wits' end how to continue the comedy, and beginning to flinch in his dismay at having gone so far, raised his hand slowly and closed his fingers upon the pen, while with a sigh of satisfaction Henry placed his index finger, upon which a large gem was glittering, upon the blank spot beneath that which he had written upon the paper. "Stop!" he cried suddenly. "I had forgotten. It is not written down there, but for it I will take your kingly word. You promise me to restore the jewel reft from my cabinet and hidden somewhere you best know where. Surely you can speak enough for this--the fewest words will do. You promise by your kingly word and all that is holy to restore that gem?" He ceased speaking, and to one of those present the silence in that room seemed more than awful, till Henry spoke again. "You hear me, sir? One word will do, and that word, Yes." The answer made Henry start back in amaze, for, desperate now, and nerving himself to meet the crisis which might mean the sacrifice of his life, Denis with a quick flick of his fingers sent the fully feathered pen flying from the gloom of the hangings where he lay far out into the room. "What!" roared Henry. "You refuse?" "I refuse," said Denis, in a hoarse whisper. "But why?" cried Henry, half suffocated by his anger. "Because," cried the boy defiantly, "I am not the King." And with a quick movement he threw back the coverlet, sprang from the bed, and tore off his bandages, to stand there in the full light in white shirt and trunk hose, scattering the wrappings which had disfigured his face, just as, startled in his turn and fully expecting an attack, Henry took a couple of steps backward and drew his sword. _ |
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