"We're charged to guard him with our lives, and not leave him till he comes to the Amba.s.sador's house."

"But these rogues hunt sometimes in threes and fours," said I. "You might well lose one of your number."

"We're cheap, sir," laughed one. "The King of France has many of us."

"But if your master were the one?"

"Even then provision is made."

"What? Could you carry his message--for if his treasure isn't money, I must set it down as tidings--to the Amba.s.sador."

They looked at one another rather doubtfully. But I was not behindhand in filling their gla.s.ses.

"Still we should go on, even without _Monsieur_," said one.

"But to what end?" I cried in feigned derision.

"Why, we too have a message."

"Indeed. Can you carry the King's message?"

"None better, sir," said the shorter of the pair, with a shrewd twinkle in his eye. "For we don't understand it."

"Is it difficult then?"

"Nay, it's so simple as to see without meaning."

"What, so simple--but your bottle is empty! Come, another?"

"Indeed no, _Monsieur_."

"A last bottle between us! I'll not be denied." And I called for a fourth.

When we were well started on the drinking of it, I asked carelessly,

"And what's your message?"

But neither the wine nor the negligence of my question had quite lulled their caution to sleep. They shook their heads, and laughed, saying,

"We're forbidden to tell that."

"Yet, if it be so simple as to have no meaning, what harm in telling it?"

"But orders are orders, and we're soldiers," answered the shrewd short fellow.

The idea had been working in my brain, growing stronger and stronger till it reached conviction. I determined now to put it to the proof.

"Tut," said I. "You make a pretty secret of it, and I don't blame you.

But I can guess your riddle. Listen. If anything befell M. de Fontelles, which G.o.d forbid----"

"Amen, amen," they murmured with a chuckle.

"You two, or if fate left but one, that one, would ride on at his best speed to London, and there seek out the Amba.s.sador of the Most Christian King. Isn't it so?"

"So much, sir, you might guess from what we've said."

"Ay, ay, I claim no powers of divination. Yet I'll guess a little more.

On being admitted to the presence of the Amba.s.sador, he would relate the sad fate of his master, and would then deliver his message, and that message would be----" I drew my chair forward between them and laid a finger on the arm of each. "That message," said I, "would be just like this--and indeed it's very simple, and seems devoid of all rational meaning: _Je viens_." They started. "_Tu viens._" They gaped. "_Il vient_," I cried triumphantly, and their chairs shot back as they sprang to their feet, astonishment vivid on their faces. For me, I sat there laughing in sheer delight at the excellence of my aim and the shrewdness of my penetration.

What they would have said, I do not know. The door was flung open and M.

de Fontelles appeared. He bowed coldly to me and vented on his servants the anger from which he was not yet free, calling them drunken knaves and bidding them see to their horses and lie down in the stable, for he must be on his way by daybreak. With covert glances at me which implored silence and received the answer of a rea.s.suring nod, they slunk away. I bowed to M. de Fontelles with a merry smile; I could not conceal my amus.e.m.e.nt and did not care how it might puzzle him. I strode out of the kitchen and made my way up the stairs. I had to pa.s.s the Duke's apartment. The light still burned there, and he and Carford were sitting at the table. I put my head in.

"If your Grace has no need of me, I'll seek my bed," said I, mustering a yawn.

"No need at all," he answered. "Good-night to you, Simon." But then he added, "You'll keep your promise to me?"

"Your Grace may depend on me."

"Though in truth I may tell you that the whole affair is nothing; it's no more than a matter of gallantry, eh, Carford?"

"No more," said my Lord Carford.

"But such matters are best not talked of."

I bowed as he dismissed me, and pursued my way to my room. A matter of gallantry might, it seemed, be of moment to the messengers of the King of France. I did not know what to make of the mystery, but I knew there was a mystery.

"And it turns," said I to myself, "on those little words '_Il vient_.'

Who is he? Where comes he? And to what end? Perhaps I shall learn these things at Dover."

There is this to be said. A man's heart aches less when his head is full. On that night I did not sigh above half my usual measure.

CHAPTER XI

THE GENTLEMAN FROM CALAIS

Good fortune and bad had combined to make me somewhat more of a figure in the eyes of the Court than was warranted by my abilities or my station. The friend of Mistress Gwyn and the favourite of the Duke of Monmouth (for this latter t.i.tle his Grace's signal kindness soon extorted from the amused and the envious) was a man whom great folk recognised, and to whom small folk paid civility. Lord Carford had become again all smiles and courtesy; Darrell, who arrived in the Secretary's train, compensated in cordiality for what he lacked in confidence; my Lord Arlington himself presented me in most flattering terms to the French King's envoy, M. Colbert de Croissy, who, in his turn, greeted me with a warmth and regarded me with a curiosity that produced equal gratification and bewilderment in my mind. Finally, the Duke of Monmouth insisted on having me with him in the Castle, though the greater part of the gentlemen attached to the Royal and n.o.ble persons were sent to lodge in the town for want of accommodation within the walls. My private distress, from which I recovered but slowly, or, to speak more properly, suppressed with difficulty, served to prevent me from becoming puffed up with the conceit which this success might well have inspired.

The first part of Betty Nasroth's prophecy now stood fulfilled, ay, as I trusted, utterly finished and accomplished; the rest tarried. I had guessed that there was a secret, what it was remained unknown to me and, as I soon suspected, to people more important. The interval before the arrival of the d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans was occupied in many councils and conferences; at most of them the Duke of Monmouth was present, and he told me no more than all the Court conjectured when he said that Madame d'Orleans came with a project for a new French Alliance and a fresh war with the Dutch. But there were conferences at which he was not present, nor the Duke of Buckingham, but only the King, his brother (so soon as his Royal Highness joined us from London), the French Envoy, and Clifford and Arlington. Of what pa.s.sed at these my master knew nothing, though he feigned knowledge; he would be restless when I, having used my eyes, told him that the King had been with M. Colbert de Croissy for two hours, and that the Duke of York had walked on the wall above an hour in earnest conversation with the Treasurer. He felt himself ignored, and poured out his indignation unreservedly to Carford. Carford would frown and throw his eyes towards me, as though to ask if I were to hear these things, but the Duke refused his suggestion. Nay, once he said in jest:

"What I say is as safe with him as with you, my lord, or safer."

I wondered to see Carford indignant.

"Why do you say safer, sir?" he asked haughtily, while the colour on his cheeks was heightened. "Is any man's honour more to be trusted than mine?"