CHAPTER VII.
Just six days after the events we have related in our last chapter, Guerin, the good minister whom we have so often had occasion to notice, was walking up and down under a range of old beech-trees, which, forming the last limit of the forest of Compiègne, approached close to the castle, and waved their wide branches even over part of the royal garden.
Guerin, however, was not within the boundary of the garden; from which the spot he had chosen for his walk, was separated by a palisade and ditch covered towards the castle by a high hedge of shrubs. There was indeed an outlet towards the forest by means of a small postern door, and a slight moveable bridge of wood, but the key of that gate remained alone with the king; so that the minister, to reach the part of the wood in which he walked, must have made a considerable circuit round the castle, and through part of the town itself. His object, probably, in choosing that particular spot, was to enjoy some moments of undisturbed thought, without shutting himself up in the close chambers of a Gothic château. Indeed, the subjects which he revolved in his heart were of that nature, which one loves to deal with in the open air, where we have free space to occupy the matter, while the mind is differently engaged--strong contending doubts, hesitations between right and wrong, the struggles of a naturally gentle and feeling heart, against the dictates of political necessity. Such were the guests of his bosom. The topic, which thus painfully busied the minister's thoughts, was the communication made to him by the good but weak bishop of Paris, as a consequence of his conversation with Bernard, the hermit of St. Mandé.
To tear the hearts of the king and queen asunder,--to cast between them so sad an apple of discord as jealousy, especially when he felt convinced that Agnes's love to her husband was as firm as adamant,--was a stroke of policy for which the mind of Guerin was hardly framed; and yet the misery that the interdict had already brought, the thousand, thousand fold that it was yet to bring, could only be done away and averted by such a step. Philip remained firm to resist to the last; Agnes was equally so to abide by his will, without making any attempt to quit him. In a hundred parts of the kingdom, the people were actually in revolt. The barons were leaguing together to compel the king to submission, or to dethrone him; and ruin, wretchedness, and destruction seemed threatening France on every side. The plan proposed by the canon of St. Berthe's might turn away the storm, and yet Guerin would rather have had his hand struck off than put it in execution.
Such were the thoughts, and such the contending feelings, that warred against each other in his breast, while he paced slowly up and down before the palisade of the garden; and yet nothing showed itself upon his countenance but deep, calm thought. He was not one of those men whose features or whose movements betray the workings of the mind. There were no wild starts, no broken expressions, no muttered sentences: his corporeal feelings were not sufficiently excitable for such gesticulations: and the stern retired habits of his life had given a degree of rigidity to his features, which, without effort rendered them on all ordinary events as immoveable as those of a statue.
On the present occasion, he was followed by a page bearing his sword; for, as we have before said, during many years after he had been elected to the bishopric of Senlis, he retained the habit of a knight hospitaller; but the boy, though accustomed to mark his lord's countenance, beheld nothing there but the usual steady gravity of profound thought.
As he passed backwards and forwards, the voices of two persons conversing in the garden hard by struck his ear. At first, the speakers were afar off, and their tones indistinct; but gradually they came so near, that their words even would have been perfectly audible, had Guerin been one to play the eaves-dropper; and then again they passed on, the sounds dying away as they pursued their walk round their garden.
"The queen's voice," said Guerin to himself; "and, if I mistake not, that of the Count D'Auvergne. He arrived at Compiègne last night, by Philip's own invitation, who expected to have returned from Gournay long since. Pray God, he fail not there! for one rebuff in war, and all his barons would be upon him at once. I wish I had gone myself; for he is sometimes rash. If he were to return now, and find this Auvergne with the queen, his jealousy might perchance spring from his own head. But there is no hope of that: as he came not last night, he will not arrive till evening."
Such was the course of Guerin's thoughts, when a page, dressed in a bright green tunic of silk, approached, and, addressing himself to the follower of the minister, asked his way to the garden of the château.
"Why, you must go a mile and more round, by the town, and in at the great gates of the castle," replied Guerin's page.--"What do you seek in the garden?"
"I seek the Count d'Auvergne," replied the youth, "on business of life and death; and they told me that he was in the garden behind the château, close by the forest.--My curse upon all misleaders!" and he turned to retread his steps through the town.
Guerin had not heeded this brief conversation, but had rather quickened his pace, to avoid hearing what was said by the queen and the Count d'Auvergne, who at the moment were passing, as we have said, on the other side of the palisade, and spoke loud, in the full confidence that no human ears were near. A few words, however, forced themselves upon his hearing.
"And such was my father's command and message," said Agnes in a sorrowful tone.
"Such, indeed, it was, lady," replied the Count d'Auvergne; "and he bade me entreat and conjure you, by all that is dear and sacred between parent and child----"
Guerin, as we have said, quickened his pace: and what the unhappy Count d'Auvergne added was lost, at least to him. Sufficient time had just elapsed, to allow the speakers in the garden to turn away from that spot and take the sweep towards the castle, when the sound of horse was heard approaching. Guerin advanced to the end of one of the alleys, and to his surprise beheld the king, followed by about a dozen men-at-arms, coming towards the castle in all haste.
Before he reached the spot where Guerin stood, Philip dismounted, and gave his bridle to one of the squires. "I will through the garden," said he:--"go you round to the gates as quietly as possible--I would not have the poor burgesses know that I am returned, or I shall have petitions and lamentations about this accursed interdict: petitions that I cannot grant--lamentations that I would not hear."
The squire took the bridle, and, in obedience to the king's commands, turned another way with the rest of the party; while Philip advanced slowly, with his brow knit, and his eyes fixed on the ground. He did not observe his minister; and, as he came onward, it was easy to read deep, powerful, painful thought in every line of his countenance. Twice he stopped, as he advanced, with his look still bent upon the earth, and remained gazing thereon, without word or motion, for several minutes. It would have seemed that he paused to remark some moss and wild flowers, gathered together at his feet, had not his frowning forehead, and stern, fixed eye, as well as the mournful shake of the head, with which his pause still ended, told that sadder and more bitter contemplations were busy in his mind.
The last time he stopped was within ten paces of Guerin, and yet he did not see him, so deeply occupied were all his thoughts. At length, unclasping his arms, which had been folded over his breast, he clenched his hands tight, exclaiming, "Happy, happy Saladin! Thou hast no meddling priest to disturb thy domestic joys!--By Heaven! I will embrace thy creed, and worship Mahound!"
As he spoke, he raised his eyes, and they instantly rested on the figure of his minister. "Ha, Guerin!" cried the king, "has the interdict driven thee forth from the city?"
"Not so, sire," replied the minister. "I came forth to meditate here in silence, over what might be done to raise it.--Get thee gone, boy!" he continued, turning to his page. "Hie thee to the castle, and leave me with the king."
"Oh! Guerin!" said Philip, pursuing his own train of thought,--"oh Guerin! think of these base barons! these disloyal knights! After all their empty enthusiasm!--after all their vain boastings!--after all their lying promises!--falling off from me now, in my moment of need! like flies frightened from a dead carcase by the wings of a raven.--And the bishops too!--the goodly, saintly, fickle, treacherous pack, frightened by the very hum of Rome's vulture wings!--they leave me in the midst of the evil they have made! But, by the Lord above! they shall suffer for their treason! Bishops and barons! they shall feel this interdict as deeply as I do. Their treachery and cowardice shall fill my treasury, and shall swell my crown's domains; and they shall find that Philip knows how to make their punishment increase his power. Gournay has fallen, Guerin," continued the king, "without the loss of a man. I cut the high sluices and overwhelmed them in the waters of their own artificial lake. Walls, and turrets, and buttresses gave way before the rushing inundation, like straws before the sickle. Half Normandy has yielded without resistance; and I might have come back joyful, but that in every town as I passed, it was murmurs, and petitions, and lamentations on the foul interdict. They brought out their dead," proceeded Philip, grasping Guerin's arm,--"they brought out their dead, and laid them at my feet! They lined the streets with the dying, shrieking for the aid of religion. Oh! Guerin! my friend! 'tis very horrible!--very, very, very horrible!"
"It is indeed, sire!" said Guerin solemnly, "most horrible! and I am sorry to increase your affliction by telling you, that, by every courier that arrives, the most alarming accounts are brought from the various provinces of your kingdom, speaking of nothing but open rebellion and revolt."
"Where?" cried Philip Augustus, his eyes flashing fire. "Where? Who dares revolt against the will of their liege sovereign?"
"In fifty different points of the kingdom the populace are in arms, sire!" replied the minister. "I will lay the details before you at your leisure. Many of the barons, too, remonstrate in no humble tone."
"We will march against them, Guerin,--we will march against them," replied the king firmly, "and serfs and barons shall learn they have a lord."
As he spoke, he advanced a few paces towards the garden, then paused, and drawing forth a scrap of parchment, he put it into Guerin's hand. "I found that on my table at Gournay," said the king. "'Tis strange! Some enemy of the Count d'Auvergne has done it!"
Guerin looked at the paper, and beheld, written evidently in the hand of the canon of St. Berthe's, which he well knew; "Sir king, beware of the Count d'Auvergne!" The minister, however, had no time to make any reply; for the sound of the voices in the garden began again to approach, and Philip instantly recognised the tones of Agnes de Meranie.
"'Tis the queen," said he,--"'Tis Agnes!" and as he spoke that beloved name, all the cares and sorrows that, in the world, had gathered round his noble brow, like morning clouds about the high peak of some proud mountain, rolled away, like those same clouds before the risen sun, and his countenance beamed with more than usual happiness.
Guerin had by no means determined how to act, though he decidedly leaned towards the scheme of the canon of St. Berthe's; but the radiant gladness of Philip's eye at the very name of Agnes de Meranie, strangely shook all the minister's conclusions, and he remained more than ever in doubt.
"Hark!" cried Philip, in some surprise. "There is the voice of a man!--To whom does she speak? Know you, Guerin?"
"I believe--I believe, sire," replied the minister, really embarrassed and undecided how to act,--"I believe it is the Count d'Auvergne."
"You believe!--you believe!" cried the king, the blood mounting into his face, till the veins of his temples swelled out in wavy lines upon his clear skin. "The Count d'Auvergne! You hesitate--you stammer, sir bishop!--you that never hesitated in your days before. What means this?--By the God of heaven! I will know!"--and drawing forth the key of the postern, he strode towards it. But at that moment the sound of the voices came nearer and nearer--It was irresistible--The king paused.
Agnes was speaking, and somewhat vehemently. "Once for all, beau sire d'Auvergne," she said, "urge me no more; for, notwithstanding all you say--notwithstanding all my own feelings in this respect, I must not--I cannot--I will not--quit my husband. That name alone, my husband, were enough to bind me to him by every duty; and I will never quit him!"
What were the feelings of Philip Augustus as he heard such words, combined with the hesitation of his minister, with the warning he had received, and with the confused memory of former suspicions! The thoughts that rushed through his brain had nearly driven him to madness. "She loves me not!" he thought. "She loves me not--after all I have done, and sacrificed for her! She is coldly virtuous--but she loves me not;--she owns, her feelings take part with her seducer!--but she will not leave me, for duty's sake!--Hell and fury! I, that have adored her! She loves me not!--Oh God! she loves me not!--But he,--he--shall not escape me! No,--I will wring his heart of its last drop of blood! I will trample it under my feet!"
His wild straining eye,--the almost bursting veins of his temples,--the clenching of his hands,--but more, the last words, which had found utterance aloud--showed evidently to Guerin the dreadfully over-wrought state of the king's mind; and, casting himself between Philip and the postern as he rushed towards it, he firmly opposed the monarch's passage, kneeling at his feet, and clasping his knees in his still vigorous arms.
"Some one is coming. Count d'Auvergne!" Agnes was heard to say hastily. "Begone! leave me!--Never let me hear of this again! Begone, sir, I beg!"
"Unclasp me," cried the king, struggling to free himself from Guerin's hold. "Thou knew'st it too, vile confidant! Base betrayer of your sovereign's honour!--Unclasp me, or, by Heaven! you die as you kneel!--Away! I say!" and, drawing his sword, he raised his arm over the hospitaller's head.
"Strike, sire!" cried Guerin undauntedly, clasping the monarch's knees still more firmly in his arms--"strike your faithful servant! His blood is yours--take it! You cannot wound his heart more deeply with your weapon, than you have done with your words--Strike! I am unarmed; but here will I lie, between you and your mad passion, till you have time to think what it is to slay a guest, whom you yourself invited, in your own halls--before you know whether he be guilty or not."
"Free me, Guerin!" said Philip more calmly, but still with bitter sternness. "Free me, I say! I am the king once more! Nay, hold not by my haubert, man!"
Guerin rose, saying, "I beseech you, sire, consider! But Philip put him aside with a strong arm; and, passing over the bridge, entered the garden by the postern gate.
"Now, God forgive us all, if we have done amiss in this matter; and surely if I have inflicted pain, it has not been without suffering it too." Such was the reflection of the good bishop of Senlis, when left by Philip; but although his heart was deeply wrung to see the agony of a man he loved, and to be thereof even a promoter, he was not one to waste his moments in fruitless regrets; and, passing through the postern, which the king had neglected to shut, he proceeded, as fast as possible, towards the castle, in order to govern the circumstances, and moderate Philip's wrath, as much as the power of man might do.
In the mean while, Philip had entered the garden with his sword drawn, and passing through the formal rows of flowering shrubs, which was the taste of that day, he stood for an instant at the top of the large square of ground which lay between him and the castle. Half the way down on the left side, his eye caught the form of Agnes de Meranie; but she was alone, save inasmuch as two of her ladies, following at about a hundred yards' distance, could be said to keep her company. Without turning towards her, Philip passed through a long arcade of trellis-work which ran along the wall to the right, and, with a pace of light, made his way to the castle.
On the steps he paused, replaced his sword in the sheath, and, passing through one of the lesser towers, in a minute after stood in the midst of the great hall. The men-at-arms started up from their various occupations and amusements, and stood marvelling at the unannounced coming of the king; more than one of them taxing themselves internally with some undisclosed fault, and wondering if this unusual visitation portended a reproof.
"Has the Count d'Auvergne been seen?" demanded Philip in a tone which he meant to be calm, but which, though sufficiently rigid--if such a term may be applied to sound--still betrayed more agitation than he imagined--"Has the Count d'Auvergne been seen?"
"He passed but this instant, sire," replied one of the serjeants, "with a page habited in green, who has been searching for him this hour."
"Seek him!" cried the king in a voice that needed no repetition; and the men-at-arms vanished in every direction from the hall, like dust scattered by the wind. During their absence, Philip strode up and down the pavement, his arms ringing as he trod, while the bitter gnawing of his nether lip showed but too plainly the burning passions that were kindled in his bosom. Every now and then, too, he would pause at one of the doors, throw it wide open--look out, or listen for a moment, and then resume his perturbed pacing in the hall.
In a few minutes, however, the bishop of Senlis entered, and approached the king. Philip passed him by, knitting his brow, and bending his eyes on the ground, as if resolved not to see him. Guerin, notwithstanding his frown, came nearer, respectfully but boldly; and the king was obliged to look up. "Leave me, sir Guerin," said he. "I will speak with thee anon. Answer not; but leave me, for fear of worse."
"Whatever worse than your displeasure may happen, sire," replied Guerin, "I must abide it--claiming, however, the right of committing the old servant's crime, and speaking first, if I am to be chidden after."
Philip crossed his arms upon his broad chest, and with a stern brow looked the minister full in the face; but remained silent, and suffered him to continue.
"You have this day, my lord," proceeded Guerin, with unabated boldness, "used hard terms towards a faithful subject and an ancient friend; but you have conferred the great power upon me of forgiving my king. My lord, I do forgive you, for thinking that the man who has served you truly for twenty years,--since when first, in the boyish hand of fifteen, you held an unsteady sceptre,--would now betray your honour himself, or know it betrayed without warning you thereof. True, my lord, I believed the Count d'Auvergne to be at the moment of your arrival in the castle gardens with your royal queen."
The king's lip curled, but he remained silent. "Nevertheless," continued Guerin, "so God help me, as I did and do believe he meant no evil towards you, beau sire; and nought but honourable friendship towards the queen."
"Good man!" cried the king, his lip curling with a sneer, doubly bitter, because it stung himself as well as him to whom it was addressed. "Guerin, Guerin, thou art a good man!--too good, as the world goes!"
"Mock me, sire, if you will," replied the minister, "but hear me still. I knew the Count d'Auvergne to be the dear friend of this lady's father--the sworn companion in arms of her dead brother: and I doubted not that, as he lately comes from Istria, he might be charged to enforce towards the queen herself, the same request that her father made to you by letter, when first he heard that the divorce was annulled by the see of Rome--namely, that his daughter might return to his court, and not be made both the subject and sacrifice of long protracted disputes with the supreme pontiff."
"Ha!" said the king, raising his hand thoughtfully to his brow. "Say'st thou?" and for several minutes he remained in deep meditation. "Guerin, my friend," said he at length, raising his eyes to the minister as he comprehended at once the hospitaller's motive for gladly yielding way to such a communication between the Count d'Auvergne and Agnes as that of which he spoke--"Guerin, my friend, thou hast cleared thyself of all but judging ill. Thy intentions--as I believe from my soul they always are--were right. I did thee wrong. Forgive me, good friend, in charity; for, even among kings, I am very, very unhappy!" and he stretched out his hand towards his minister.
Guerin bent his lips to it in silence; and the king proceeded:--
"In clearing thyself too, thou hast mingled a doubt with my hatred of this Thibalt d'Auvergne; but thou hast not taken the thorn from my bosom. She may be chaste as ice, Guerin. Nay, she is. Her every word, her every look speaks it--even her language to him was beyond doubt--but still, she loves me not, Guerin! She spoke of duty, but she never spoke of love! She, who has been my adoration--she, who loved me, I thought, as kings are seldom loved--she loves me not!"
Guerin was silent. He felt that he could not conscientiously say one word to strengthen the king's conclusion, that Agnes did not love him; but for the sake of the great object he had in view, of raising the interdict, and thereby freeing France from all the dangers that menaced her, he forebore to express his firm conviction of the queen's deep attachment to her husband.
Fortunately for his purpose, at this moment one or two of the king's serjeants-at-arms returned, informing Philip, with no small addition of surprise, that they could find no trace of the Count d'Auvergne.
"Let better search be made!" said the king; "and the moment he is found, let him be arrested in my name, and confined, under strict guard, in the chapel tower. Let his usage be good, but his prison sure. Your heads shall answer!" Thus saying, he turned, and left the hall, followed by Guerin, who dared not urge his remonstrances farther at the moment.