"That vulture's wing hath carried me to a safe dove-cote, your gracious
Majesty," he answered, with a low obeisance.
"I'm none so sure of that, Monsieur," was Elizabeth's answer, and she glanced quizzically at Leicester, who made a gesture of annoyance. "Our cousin France makes you to us a dark intriguer and conspirator, a dangerous weed in our good garden of England, a 'troublous, treacherous violence'—such are you called, Monsieur."
"I am in your high Majesty's power," he answered, "to do with me as it seemeth best. If your Majesty wills it that I be returned to France, I pray you set me upon its coast as I came from it, a fugitive. Thence will I try to find my way to the army and the poor stricken people of whom I was. I pray for that only, and not to be given to the red hand of the Medici."
"Red hand—by my faith, but you are bold, Monsieur!"
Leicester tapped his foot upon the floor impatiently, then caught the
Queen's eye, and gave her a meaning look.
De la Foret saw the look and knew his enemy, but he did not quail. "Bold only by your high Majesty's faith, indeed," he answered the Queen, with harmless guile.
Elizabeth smiled. She loved such flattering speech from a strong man.
It touched a chord in her deeper than that under Leicester's finger.
Leicester's impatience only made her more self-willed on the instant.
"You speak with the trumpet note, Monsieur," she said to De la Foret. "We will prove you. You shall have a company in my Lord Leicester's army here, and we will send you upon some service worthy of your fame."
"I crave your Majesty's pardon, but I cannot do it," was De la Foret's instant reply. "I have sworn that I will lift my sword in one cause only, and to that I must stand. And more—the widow of my dead chief, Gabriel de Montgomery, is set down in this land unsheltered and alone. I have sworn to one who loves her, and for my dead chief's sake, that I will serve her and be near her until better days be come and she may return in quietness to France. In exile we few stricken folk must stand together, your august Majesty."
Elizabeth's eye flashed up. She was impatient of refusal of her favour. She was also a woman, and that De la Foret should flaunt his devotion to another woman was little to her liking. The woman in her, which had never been blessed with a noble love, was roused. The sourness of a childless, uncompanionable life was stronger for the moment than her strong mind and sense.