If I Were King | Page 9

was lying in the kennel, which is my humour, and staring at the sky, which is my recreation--I speak, honest citizen, but in parable or allegory, a dear device with the schoolmen--I saw between me and Heaven the face of a lady, the loveliest face I ever saw."
Here the poor Abbess, indignation overcrowding her borrowed mannishness, began to sniffle and to assert that the speaker was a faithless pig, but Villon, unheeding her whimpers, went on with his tale.
"She was going to church--God shield her--but she looked my way as she passed, and though she saw me no more than she saw the cobble-stone I stood on, I saw her once and for ever. We song-chandlers babble a deal of love, but for the most part we know little or nothing about it, and when it comes it knocks us silly. I was knocked so silly that--well, what do you think was the silly thing I did?"
Villon turned his alert face to each member of his audience, and his derisive mouth belied the sadness of his eyes.
"Emptied a can for oblivion," Montigny suggested. Blanche was no less practical.
"Kissed a wench for the same purpose," she cried. "The times that I've been wooed out of my name!"
"Picked the woman's pocket," Casin Cholet hinted, wagging his shock head wisely, while Jehan le Loup, with a hideous leer, sniggered: "Got near her in the crowd and pinched her," and suited the action to the word with finger and thumb on Blanche's plump shoulder.
Master Fran?ois dissipated all this roguish philosophy with a contemptuous gesture.
"La, la, la," he chirruped. "Sillier than all these. I followed her into the church."
The silence of astonishment fell upon the audience. Only Colin de Cayeulx had sufficient presence of mind to formulate his amazement in a prolonged whistle. Louis crossed himself repeatedly under his gown. "You are not a church-goer, sir?" he questioned sourly. Villon answered him sweetly.
"No, old Queernabs, unless there's an alms-box to open or a matter of gold plate to pilfer." Guy Tabarie hurriedly interrupted him with a warning cry of "Cave!" and a significant glance at the strangers, but Villon derided his fears.
"Nonsense," he cried, leaning forward and playfully slapping Louis on the back with his sword. "This good Cuffin has a friendly face and can take a joke. Can't you, old rabbit?"
Louis winced and then grinned as Tristan gasped in anger. "I thank Heaven I have a sense ot humour," he said, with a sly glance at his companion. Villon went on with his story.
"Well, I sprawled there in the dark, with my knees on the cold ground, and all the while the sound of her beauty was sweet in my ears, and the taste of her beauty was salt on my lips, and the pain of her beauty was gnawing at my heart, and I prayed that I might see her again."
At this point Huguette, who had been following the narrative with a feline ferocity, caught up a wine-jug and made to throw it at the poet's head, but was dexterously disarmed by Guy Tabarie before the vessel had time to quit her fingers. Sulkily she plumped herself down on her stool again, while Villon, quite unconscious of the averted peril, rambled on dreamily.
"And the incense tickled my nostrils and the painted saints sneered at me, and bits of rhymes and bits of prayers jigged in my brain and I felt as if I were drunk with some new and delectable liquor. And then she slipped out and I after her. She took the Holy Water from my fingers."
Villon's voice sank reverently and Huguette took advantage of the pause.
"I wish it had burned you to the bone," she interrupted spitefully. Master Villon shook his head.
"It burned deeper than that, believe me. Outside, on God's steps, stood a yellow-haired, pink-faced puppet who greeted her and they ambled away together, I on their heels. Presently they came to a gateway and in slips my quarry, and as she did so she turned to her squire and I saw her face again and lost it, for the tears came into my eyes." With a heavy sigh he turned to Louis. "I suppose you wonder why I talk like this, but when my heart's in my mouth I must spit it out or it chokes me."
"I have learned to wonder at nothing," Louis answered sagely. Villon picked up the dropped thread of his tale.
"I saluted the gallant and begged to know the lady's name. He took me for a madman, but he told me."
In a second Huguette was on her legs again and nestling her eager face close to that of Villon as she whispered coaxingly:
"What was the lady's name, dear Fran?ois?"
Master Fran?ois looked into her watchful eyes with a wise smile.
"Be secret, sweet," he murmured. "It was