“Why now, Nuncio,” answered the other, “it is clear that there is a fool at Court, for is it not written that a fool and his money are soon parted? And this gold-piece is still hot with running ‘tween thee and me.”
Lempriere roared. “Why, then, for thy hit thou shalt have another gold-piece, gossip. But see”--his voice lowered--“know you where is my friend, Buonespoir, the pirate? Know you where he is in durance?”
“As I know marrow in a bone I know where he hides, Nuncio, so come with me,” answered the fool.
“If De Carteret had but thy sense, we could live at peace in Jersey,” rejoined Lempriere, and strode ponderously after the light-footed fool who capered forth singing:
“Come hither, O come hither, There’s a bride upon her bed; They have strewn her o’er with roses, There are roses ‘neath her head: Life is love and tears and laughter, But the laughter it is dead Sing the way to the Valley, to the Valley! Hey, but the roses they are red!”
The next day at noon, as her Majesty had advised the Seigneur, De la Foret was ushered into the presence. The Queen’s eye quickened as she saw him, and she remarked with secret pleasure the figure and bearing of this young captain of the Huguenots. She loved physical grace and prowess with a full heart. The day had almost passed when she would measure all men against Leicester in his favour; and he, knowing this clearly now, saw with haughty anxiety the gradual passing of his power, and clutched futilely at the vanishing substance. Thus it was that he now spent his strength in getting his way with the Queen in little things. She had been so long used to take his counsel--in some part wise and skilful--that when she at length did without it, or followed her own mind, it became a fever with him to let no chance pass for serving his own will by persuading her out of hers. This was why he had spent an hour the day before in sadly yet vaguely reproaching her for the slight she put upon him in the presence-chamber by her frown; and another in urging her to come to terms with Catherine de Medici in this small affair--since the Frenchwoman had set her revengeful heart upon it--that larger matters might be settled to the gain of England. It was not so much that he had reason to destroy De la Foret, as that he saw that the Queen was disposed to deal friendly by him and protect him. He did not see the danger of rousing in the Queen the same unreasoning tenaciousness of will upon just such lesser things as might well be left to her advisers. In spite of which he almost succeeded, this very day, in regaining, for a time at least, the ground he had lost with her. He had never been so adroit, so brilliant, so witty, so insinuating; and he left her with the feeling that if he had his way concerning De la Foret--a mere stubborn whim, with no fair reason behind it--his influence would be again securely set. The sense of crisis was on him.