The Outlaw of Torn | Page 6

the
foreign troops; their numbers; the first point of attack. Ah, would it not be sweet revenge
indeed to balk the King in this venture so dear to his heart !
A word to De Clare, or De Montfort would bring the barons and their retainers forty
thousand strong to overwhelm the King's forces.
And he would let the King know to whom, and for what cause, he was beholden for his
defeat and discomfiture. Possibly the barons would depose Henry, and place a new king
upon England's throne, and then De Vac would mock the Plantagenet to his face. Sweet,
kind, delectable vengeance, indeed ! And the old man licked his thin lips as though to
taste the last sweet vestige of some dainty morsel.
And then Chance carried a little leather ball beneath the window where the old man stood;
and as the child ran, laughing, to recover it, De Vac's eyes fell upon him, and his former
plan for revenge melted as the fog before the noonday sun; and in its stead there opened
to him the whole hideous plot of fearsome vengeance as clearly as it were writ upon the
leaves of a great book that had been thrown wide before him. And, in so far as he could
direct, he varied not one jot from the details of that vividly conceived masterpiece of
hellishness during the twenty years which followed.
The little boy who so innocently played in the garden of his royal father was Prince
Richard, the three-year-old son of Henry III of England. No published history mentions
this little lost prince; only the secret archives of the kings of England tell the story of his
strange and adventurous life. His name has been blotted from the records of men; and the
revenge of De Vac has passed from the eyes of the world; though in his time it was a real
and terrible thing in the hearts of the English.

CHAPTER III
For nearly a month, the old man haunted the palace, and watched in the gardens for the
little Prince until he knew the daily routine of his tiny life with his nurses and
governesses.
He saw that when the Lady Maud accompanied him, they were wont to repair to the
farthermost extremities of the palace grounds where, by a little postern gate, she admitted
a certain officer of the Guards to whom the Queen had forbidden the privilege of the
court.
There, in a secluded bower, the two lovers whispered their hopes and plans, unmindful of
the royal charge playing neglected among the flowers and shrubbery of the garden.
Toward the middle of July De Vac had his plans well laid. He had managed to coax old
Brus, the gardener, into letting him have the key to the little postern gate on the plea that

he wished to indulge in a midnight escapade, hinting broadly of a fair lady who was to be
the partner of his adventure, and, what was more to the point with Brus, at the same time
slipping a couple of golden zecchins into the gardener's palm.
Brus, like the other palace servants, considered De Vac a loyal retainer of the house of
Plantagenet. Whatever else of mischief De Vac might be up to, Brus was quite sure that
in so far as the King was concerned, the key to the postern gate was as safe in De Vac's
hands as though Henry himself had it.
The old fellow wondered a little that the morose old master of fence should, at his time in
life, indulge in frivolous escapades more befitting the younger sprigs of gentility, but,
then, what concern was it of his ? Did he not have enough to think about to keep the
gardens so that his royal master and mistress might find pleasure in the shaded walks, the
well-kept sward, and the gorgeous beds of foliage plants and blooming flowers which he
set with such wondrous precision in the formal garden ?
Further, two gold zecchins were not often come by so easily as this; and if the dear Lord
Jesus saw fit, in his infinite wisdom, to take this means of rewarding his poor servant, it
ill became such a worm as he to ignore the divine favor. So Brus took the gold zecchins
and De Vac the key, and the little prince played happily among the flowers of his royal
father's garden, and all were satisfied; which was as it should have been.
That night, De Vac took the key to a locksmith on the far side of London; one who could
not possibly know him or recognize the key as belonging to the palace. Here he had a
duplicate made, waiting impatiently while the old man fashioned it with the