“Help me, ye saints, but things are not at such a pass in this place!” she said abruptly, but with weariness in her voice. “Yet sometimes I know not. The Court is a city by itself, walled and moated, and hath a life all its own. ‘If there be found ten honest men within the city yet will I save it,’ saith the Lord. By my father’s head, I would not risk a finger on the hazard if this city, this Court of Elizabeth were set ‘twixt the fire from Heaven and eternal peace. In truth, child, I would lay me down and die in black disgust were it not that one might come hereafter would make a very Sodom or Gomorrah of this land: and out yonder—out in all my counties, where the truth of England is among my poor burgesses, who die for the great causes which my nobles profess but risk not their lives—out yonder all that they have won, and for which I have striven, would be lost.... Speak on. I have not heard so plain a tongue and so little guile these twenty years.”
Angele continued, more courage in her voice. “In the midst of it all came the wave of the new faith upon my mother. And before ill could fall upon her from her foes, she died and was at rest. Then we returned to Rouen, my father and I, and there we lived in peril, but in great happiness of soul until the day of massacre. That night in Paris we were given greatly of the mercy of God.”
“You were there—you were in the massacre at Paris?”
“In the house of the Duke of Langon, with whom was resting after a hazardous enterprise, Michel de la Foret.”
“And here beginneth the second lesson,” said the Queen with a smile on her lips; but there was a look of scrutiny in her eyes, and something like irony in her tone. “And I will swear by all the stars of Heaven that this Michel saved ye both. Is it not so?”
“It is even so. By his skill and bravery we found our way to safety, and in a hiding-place near to our loved Rouen watched him return from the gates of death.”
“He was wounded then?”
“Seven times wounded, and with as little blood left in him as would fill a cup. But it was summer, and we were in the hills, and they brought us, our friends of Rouen, all that we had need of; and so God was with us.
“But did he save thy life, except by skill, by indirect and fortunate wisdom? Was there deadly danger upon thee? Did he beat down the sword of death?”
“He saved my life thrice directly. The wounds he carried were got by interposing his own sword ‘twixt death and me.”