"So that is why Monsieur d'Argenton is in Amboise?"
"The story is this," went on Commines, studiously ignoring the cold contempt in her voice. But she interrupted him.
"Let Saxe tell his own story; why else is he here? It is always safer to get such things first-hand. Now, Saxe?"
Turning her shoulder on Commines she confronted Saxe. She knew she was, somehow, on her defence, but not the offence alleged against her. All day La Mothe's unexpected question had troubled her, and vaguely she had connected it with the attempt upon the Dauphin at the Burnt Mill, though how she, the Dauphin's almost one friend in Amboise, could have knowledge of the attempt she could not understand. With the failure of the attack she had thought the incident closed, but now Jean Saxe had a story to tell, a story in some way linked to Stephen La Mothe's question, a question which flushed the pallor of even her weariness when she remembered how widely it had differed from what her thought had been.
But Jean Saxe was in no haste with his tale. Jean Saxe shuffled his feet, licked his dry lips, and caught at his breath. His throat was drier than Villon's had ever been, and Villon's was the driest throat in Amboise. A modest man, though an innkeeper, Jean Saxe did not know which way to look now that he was, for the moment, the centre of the world. Either the grey eyes, their lids no longer drooping, searched him out, or Commines' stern gaze stared him down, or, worst of all, he met the sardonic light with which Villon beamed his satisfaction at a scene quite to his humour, and so Jean Saxe was dumb, remembering that Louis had many ways of paying his debts, and more went into Amboise than came out again. For the trusted servant of so generous a King Jean Saxe was not happy.
"Come, Saxe, come. Tell me what you told me this afternoon, neither more nor less. There is nothing in it to your discredit."
"Yes, monseigneur, certainly. I have nothing to hide. I have always been the King's most humble, faithful, devoted——"
"Leave that aside. Come to your tale and tell the whole truth."
"Of course, monseigneur. Hugues came to me——"
"When did Hugues go to you?" It was Ursula de Vesc who spoke. From his place behind her La Mothe could see the upward defiant tilt of the head as she asked the question.