Rafael Sabatini - Bardelys the Magnificent

There was a moan from Roxalanne, then silence; then—"Oh, monsieur, you are pitiless! What bargain is this that you offer me?"

"A fair one, surely," said that son of hell—"a very fair one. The risk of my life against your hand in marriage."

"If you—if you truly loved me as you say, monsieur," she reasoned, "you would serve me without asking guerdon."

"In any other thing I would. But is it fair to ask a man who is racked by love of you to place another in your arms, and that at the risk of his own life? Ah, mademoiselle, I am but a man, and I am subject to human weaknesses. If you will consent, this Lesperon shall go free, but you must see him no more; and I will carry my consideration so far as to give you six months in which to overcome your sorrow, ere I present myself to you again to urge my suit."

"And if I refuse, monsieur?"

He sighed.

"To the value which I set upon my life you must add my very human jealousy. From such a combination what can you hope for?"

"You mean, in short, that he must die?"

"To-morrow," was that infernal cheat's laconic answer.

They were silent a little while, then she fell a-sobbing.

"Be pitiful, monsieur! Have mercy if you, indeed, love me. Oh, he must not die! I cannot, I dare not, let him die! Save him, monsieur, and I will pray for you every night of my life; I will pray for you to our Holy Mother as I am now praying to you for him."

Lived there the man to resist that innocent, devout appeal? Lived there one who in answer to such gentle words of love and grief could obtrude his own coarse passions? It seems there did, for all he answered was "You know the price, child."

"And God pity me! I must pay it. I must, for if he dies I shall have his blood upon my conscience!" Then she checked her grief, and her voice grew almost stern in the restraint she set upon herself. "If I give you my promise to wed you hereafter—say in six months' time—what proof will you afford me that he who is detained under the name of Lesperon shall go free?"

I caught the sound of something very like a gasp from the Count.

"Remain in Toulouse until to-morrow, and to-night ere he departs he shall come to take his leave of you. Are you content?"

"Be it so, monsieur," she answered.

Then at last I leapt to my feet. I could endure no more. You may marvel that I had had the heart to endure so much, and to have so let her suffer that I might satisfy myself how far this scoundrel Chatellerault would drive his trickster's bargain.

A more impetuous man would have beaten down the partition, or shouted to her through it the consolation that Chatellerault's bargain was no bargain at all, since I was already at large. And that is where a more impetuous man would have acted upon instinct more wisely than did I upon reason. Instead, I opened the door, and, crossing the common room, I flung myself down a passage that I thought must lead to the chamber in which they were closeted. But in this I was at fault, and ere I had come upon a waiter and been redirected some precious moments were lost. He led me back through the common room to a door opening upon another corridor. He pushed it wide, and I came suddenly face to face with Chatellerault, still flushed from his recent contest.

"You here!" he gasped, his jaw falling, and his cheeks turning pale, as well they might; for all that he could not dream I had overheard his bargaining.

"We will go back, if you please, Monsieur le Comte." said I.

"Back where?" he asked stupidly.

"Back to Mademoiselle. Back to the room you have just quitted." And none too gently I pushed him into the corridor again, and so, in the gloom, I missed the expression of his face.

"She is not there," said he.

I laughed shortly.

"Nevertheless, we will go back," I insisted.

And so I had my way, and we gained the room where his infamous traffic had been held. Yet for once he spoke the truth. She was no longer there.

"Where is she?" I demanded angrily.

"Gone," he answered; and when I protested that I had not met her, "You would not have a lady go by way of the public room, would you?" he demanded insolently. "She left by the side door into the courtyard."

"That being so, Monsieur le Comte," said I quietly, "I will have a little talk with you before going after her." And I carefully closed the door.

Within the room Chatellerault and I faced each other in silence. And how vastly changed were the circumstances since our last meeting!

The disorder that had stamped itself upon his countenance when first he had beheld me still prevailed. There was a lowering, sullen look in his eyes and a certain displacement of their symmetry which was peculiar to them when troubled.

Although a cunning plotter and a scheming intriguer in his own interests, Chatellerault, as I have said before, was not by nature a quick man. His wits worked slowly, and he needed leisure to consider a situation and his actions therein ere he was in a position to engage with it.

"Monsieur le Comte," quoth I ironically, "I make you my compliments upon your astuteness and the depth of your schemes, and my condolences upon the little accident owing to which I am here, and in consequence of which your pretty plans are likely to miscarry."

He threw back his great head like a horse that feels the curb, and his smouldering eyes looked up at me balefully. Then his sensuous lips parted in scorn.

"How much do you know?" he demanded with sullen contempt.

"I have been in that room for the half of an hour," I answered, rapping the partition with my knuckles.

"The dividing wall, as you will observe, is thin, and I heard everything that passed between you and Mademoiselle de Lavedan."

"So that Bardelys, known as the Magnificent; Bardelys the mirror of chivalry; Bardelys the arbiter elegantiarum of the Court of France, is no better, it seems, than a vulgar spy."

If he sought by that word to anger me, he failed.

"Lord Count," I answered him very quietly, "you are of an age to know that the truth alone has power to wound. I was in that room by accident, and when the first words of your conversation reached me I had not been human had I not remained and strained my ears to catch every syllable you uttered. For the rest, let me ask you, my dear Chatellerault, since when have you become so nice that you dare cast it at a man that he has been eavesdropping?"

"You are obscure, monsieur. What is it that you suggest?"

"I am signifying that when a man stands unmasked for a cheat, a liar, and a thief, his own character should give him concern enough to restrain him from strictures upon that of another."

A red flush showed through the tan of his skin, then faded and left him livid—a very evil sight, as God lives. He flung his heavily-feathered hat upon the table, and carried his hand to his hilt.

"God's blood!" he cried. "You shall answer me for this."

I shook my head and smiled; but I made no sign of drawing.

"Monsieur, we must talk a while. I think that you had better."

He raised his sullen eyes to mine. Perhaps the earnest impressiveness of my tones prevailed. Be that as it may, his half-drawn sword was thrust back with a click, and "What have you to say?" he asked.

"Be seated." I motioned him to a chair by the table and when he had taken it I sat down opposite to him. Taking up a quill, I dipped it in the ink-horn that stood by, and drew towards me a sheet of paper.

"When you lured me into the wager touching Mademoiselle de Lavedan," said I calmly, "you did so, counting upon certain circumstances, of which you alone had knowledge, that should render impossible the urging of my suit. That, Monsieur le Comte, was undeniably the action of a cheat. Was it not?"

"Damnation!" he roared, and would have risen, but, my hand upon his arm, I restrained him and pressed him back into his chair.

"By a sequence of fortuitous circumstances," I pursued, "it became possible for me to circumvent the obstacle upon which you had based your calculations. Those same circumstances led later to my being arrested in error and in place of another man. You discovered how I had contravened the influence upon which you counted; you trembled to see how the unexpected had befriended me, and you began to fear for your wager.

"What did you do? Seeing me arraigned before you in your quality as King's Commissioner, you pretended to no knowledge of me; you became blind to my being any but Lesperon the rebel, and you sentenced me to death in his place, so that being thus definitely removed I should be unable to carry out my undertaking, and my lands should consequently pass into your possession. That, monsieur, was at once the act of a thief and a murderer. Wait, monsieur; restrain yourself until I shall have done. To-day again fortune comes to my rescue. Again you see me slipping from your grasp, and you are in despair. Then, in the eleventh hour, Mademoiselle de Lavedan comes to you to plead for my life. By that act she gives you the most ample proof that your wager is lost. What would a gentleman, a man of honour, have done under these circumstances? What did you do? You seized that last chance; you turned it to the best account; you made this poor girl buy something from you; you made her sell herself to you for nothing—pretending that your nothing was a something of great value. What term shall we apply to that? To say that you cheated again seems hardly adequate."

"By God, Bardelys!"

"Wait!" I thundered, looking him straight between the eyes, so that again he sank back cowed. Then resuming the calm with which hitherto I had addressed him, "Your cupidity," said I, "your greed for the estates of Bardelys, and your jealousy and thirst to see me impoverished and so ousted from my position at Court, to leave you supreme in His Majesty's favour, have put you to strange shifts for a gentleman, Chatellerault. Yet, wait."

And, dipping my pen in the ink-horn, I began to write. I was conscious of his eyes upon me, and I could imagine his surmisings and bewildered speculations as my pen scratched rapidly across the paper. In a few moments it was done, and I tossed the pen aside. I took up the sandbox.

"When a man cheats, Monsieur le Comte, and is detected, he is invariably adjudged the loser of his stakes. On that count alone everything that you have is now mine by rights." Again I had to quell an interruption. "But if we wave that point, and proceed upon the supposition that you have dealt fairly and honourably with me, why, then, monsieur, you have still sufficient evidence—the word of Mademoiselle, herself, in fact—that I have won my wager. And so, if we take this, the most lenient view of the case"—I paused to sprinkle the sand over my writing—"your estates are still lost to you, and pass to be my property."

"Do they, by God?" he roared, unable longer to restrain himself, and leaping to his feet. "You have done, have you not? You have said all that you can call to mind? You have flung insults and epithets at me enough to earn the cutting of a dozen throats. You have dubbed me cheat and thief"—he choked in his passion—"until you have had your fill—is it not so? Now, listen to me, Master Bardelys, master spy, master buffoon, master masquerader! What manner of proceeding was yours to go to Lavedan under a false name? How call you that? Was that, perhaps, not cheating?"

"No, monsieur, it was not," I answered quietly. "It was in the terms of your challenge that I was free to go to Lavedan in what guise I listed, employing what wiles I pleased. But let that be," I ended, and, creasing the paper, I poured the sand back into the box, and dusted the document. "The point is hardly worth discussing at this time of day. If not one way, why, then, in another, your wager is lost."

"Is it?" He set his arms akimbo and eyed me derisively, his thick-set frame planted squarely before me. "You are satisfied that it is so? Quite satisfied, eh?" He leered in my face. "Why, then, Monsieur le Marquis, we will see whether a few inches of steel will win it back for me." And once more his hand flew to his hilt.

Rising, I flung the document I had accomplished upon the table. "Glance first at that," said I.

He stopped to look at me in inquiry, my manner sowing so great a curiosity in him that his passion was all scattered before it. Then he stepped up to the table and lifted the paper. As he read, his hand shook, amazement dilated his eyes and furrowed his brow.