If I Were King | Page 3

And all the body's lovely line In
wrinkled meanness slipped astray; The limbs so round and ripe and fine
Shrivelled and withered; quenched the shine That made your eyes as
bright as day: So, ladies, hear these words of mine, Love, ere love
flutter far away."
The drift of the music seemed sadder than before, and there was a little
silence when the last words floated away into the blackened rafters, a
silence broken by one of the girls.

"Enne, that was a sad song, Abbess," Isabeau sighed, and her face
seemed to have paled beneath its false colours and the lines about her
mouth and eyes to have grown older in surrender to inevitable thoughts.
She whom the girl called Abbess laughed, and her mirth sounded
harshly after the dreamy sweetness of her song.
"Master François Villon made it for me t'other day," she answered. "'
You will grow old, Idol,' he said, 'and I make you this song to teach
you true things.'"
Guy Tabarie, whose red hair bunched out like little flames from the
fiery sun of his countenance, clapped his hands to the girl's waist and
thrust his face near to hers. "Kiss me and forget it," he hiccoughed. The
girl gave importunacy a little push which sent him staggering back to
his seat. "I have no kisses for any Jack of you all but François," she said,
while the others roared at the man's discomfiture. "Ah, there is no one
of you that can write songs like him, or make one sad as he can in the
midst of gladness."
The girl whom purple-coated René had kissed so rudely shivered a
little. "A strange reason for liking a man," she whispered, "that he make
you sad." She glanced wistfully round at her companions: to the faces
of the women the influence of the song had lent an unwonted softness,
but had brought no touch of tenderness to those of the men. Jehan le
Loup banged his fist heavily on the table in furious protestation till the
cans and flagons rattled.
"Is this a Court of Love?" he grunted, baring his yellow tusks in a
swinish rage. "There are other rooms for love-making," and he jerked
his thumb towards the roof. "We are here for drinking; we are here for
dicing; to the devil with smocks and sonnets."
He jumbled the ivories lustily as he growled and the familiar jingle
banished unfamiliar fancies. He slapped the spotted cubes on the table
and as they rolled into equilibrium eager eyes counted them, and
fingers eager or reluctant pinched or pushed at coins. The spell of the
music was broken. The melodious Abbess, with eyes now glittering and
tearless, swung her supple body from table to bench, thrust herself a

place among the players, shouted to Robin Turgis to bring more wine,
and spreading some silver on the dingy board surrendered to
speculation. Nobody heeded the faint clink which told that a hand
troubled the latch of the street door; nobody heeded the faint creaking
which showed that it was being softly opened; nobody heeded the man
who put his head gently through the opening and looked thoughtfully
around him. The new-comer was a grim-visaged fellow, somewhere
near the edge of middle age. He was dressed in the sober habit of a
simple burgess, and he used the long fold that hung from his cloth cap
very dexterously to hide his face. He peered into the obscurity of the
room with a disquieting smile that deepened in its unpleasing
expression as its owner surveyed the noisy fellowship in the corner, and
nodded his head as he seemed to identify its members. Confident that
nobody marked him he stealthily entered the room, and holding the
door ajar, he motioned to one who still stood without to enter. The
summons was answered by the entrance of another figure, capped and
habited like the first, who slipped in swiftly and furtively, and made at
once for the farthest and loneliest angle of the room without looking to
right or left, while his herald, after closing the door as noiselessly as
possible, followed quickly in his footsteps. If Master Robin, dancing
attendance upon his clamourous customers, could have divined the
identity of the newcomers whose advent he regarded so indifferently,
his purple face would have paled and his stomach failed him at the
thought that the Fircone sheltered the baleful presence of the king and
of his malign satellite, Tristan l'Hermite.
The two strangers seated themselves at a small table in the very pole of
the room to the place where the Abbess and her friends were busy, and
the second of the pair, drawing a little apart the dark-coloured fold of
cloth that almost concealed his features, looked around him curiously.
"Is this