The archer’s meditations, however, were soon put to flight by the agreeable interruption of a well-served supper (for, indeed, prior to those days, as old Froissart will bear us witness, the French excelled in cookery); and after the first cravings of appetite were appeased, he emptied a cup of red wine with a sigh of considerable satisfaction, then returned to his platter with renewed vigour, and filled his goblet once more to the brim.
‘Good wine drowns care,’ said a laughing voice behind him; ‘and Cupid himself cannot fly when his wings are drenched. Ho! drawer, quick! Another flask of Burgundy, and place me a chair by my pearl of Scottish Archers, till he tells me what brings him here eighty leagues from Paris, unless it be to mingle his tears with the salt brine of the accursed Channel that bears our White Queen[1] from the shores of France.’
[1] Mary was called ‘La Reine Blanche,’ because she mourned in white for her first husband, Francis II.
An expression of pain shot rapidly over the archer’s face as he greeted the speaker with a cordial grasp of the hand; but he answered in the deep steady tones that were habitual to him.
‘A man may have despatches to carry from the constable to his son; and d’Amville is not likely to overlook a soldier’s delay on such a road as this, where there are as many horses as poplar trees. I could take the Montmorency’s orders yesterday at noon, and be here to supper to-night, without borrowing the Pegasus you ride so recklessly, my poetical friend.’
The other laughed gaily; and when he laughed, his dark eyes flashed and sparkled like diamonds.
‘My Pegasus,’ said he, ‘needs oftener the spur than the rein; but who could not write verses, and sing them too, with such a theme before him? Listen, my friend. I am to sail to-morrow with them for Scotland. Heaven’s blessing on d’Amville that he has selected me to accompany him! Nay, we are appointed to the Queen’s galley; and Mary will take at least one heart along with her, as loyal and devoted as any she can leave behind.’
He checked himself suddenly, and a sad, wistful expression crossed his handsome brow, whilst the dark eyes dimmed, and he set down untasted the Burgundy he had lifted to his lips. Something in his voice, too, seemed to have enlisted the archer’s sympathy, and he also was silent for a moment, and averted his looks from his companion’s face.
After a while he forced himself to speak.