"We will not be balked of our spoil. The purses of the burghers are ours!" cried several of the free companions; and one sprang forward from immediately behind De Coucy, and passed the bound he had fixed. That instant, however, the knight, without seeing or inquiring who he was, struck him a blow in the face with the pommel of his sword, that laid him rolling on the ground with the blood spouting from his mouth and nose. No one made a movement to follow; and Jodelle--for it was he--rose from the ground, and retired silently to his companions.
De Coucy then advanced with prince Arthur towards the multitude crowding round the barbican. Immediately the soldiers on the walls bent their bows: but the voice of the earl of Salisbury was heard exclaiming, "Whoever wings a shaft at him dies on the spot?" and De Coucy proceeded to tell the people, that they must, if they hoped to be spared, yield whatever gold or jewels they had about them to the soldiery; and that all such men as were not clerks must agree to surrender themselves prisoners, and pay a fair ransom, such as should be determined afterwards by the prince's council.
This matter was soon settled; the universal cry from the burghers being, in their extremity of fear, "Save our lives!--Save our women's honour!--Save our children!--and take gold, or whatever else we possess!" Each one instantly stripped himself of the wealth he had about him; and this, being collected in a heap, satisfied for the time the rapacity of the soldiers. De Coucy then took measures to secure the lives of the prisoners; and putting them by twos and threes under the protection of the prince's men-at-arms and his own squires, he accompanied Arthur to the market-place, followed by the Brabançois, wrangling with each other concerning the distribution of the spoil, and seemingly forgetful of their disappointment in not having been permitted to add bloodshed to plunder.
In the market-place, beside De Coucy's standard, stood Savary de Maulèon, Geoffroy de Lusignan, and several other barons, with three Norman knights as prisoners. The moment De Coucy and Arthur approached, Savary de Maulèon advanced to meet them; and with that generous spirit, which formed one of the brightest points in the ancient knightly character, he pressed the former opponent of his counsels in his mailed arms, exclaiming, "By my faith, Sire de Coucy, thou hast kept thy word! There stands thy banner, an hour before sun-set! and I proclaim thee, with the voice of all my companions, the lord of this day's fight."
"Not so, fair sir!" replied De Coucy, "not so! There is another, to whom the honour justly belongs.--Who first mounted the breach we made in the wall? Who first measured swords with the famous William Longsword, earl of Salisbury, and who, in short, has been the first in all this day's achievements?--Here he stands," continued the knight, turning towards the princely youth who stood beside him, blushing to his very brow, both with graceful embarrassment and gratified pride--"here he stands! and may this conquest of Mirebeau be but the first of those that shall, step by step, give him his whole dominions.--Sound trumpets, sound!--Long life to Arthur, king of England!"
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.