Walking briskly forward he mounted and urged his tired horse to its best speed. That it should reach Valmy in its last extremity, foam-flecked and caked with sweat, would appeal to the King's sick suspicions. It was a petty trick, mean and contemptible, but had the King not played a still more mean and contemptible trick on him? Commines knew with whom he had to deal; it was the vulgar cunning his master had taught him, and any apparent absence of anxious haste would be a point lost in the game: so their spurs were red, and their beasts utterly blown, utterly weary from their last climb up the river's bank when they drew rein before the outer guard-house. The Tours troop was already out of sight.
Lessaix himself was on duty, and as he came forward with outstretched hand Commines required no second glance to tell himself that Ursula de Vesc had construed Tristan's letter aright. Not so frankly would he have been greeted if Valmy's master lay dead in Valmy.
"The King expects you," he said, "and by your horses' looks you have lost no time on the road." As he spoke he ran his finger-tips up the hot neck, leaving tracks of roughened, sweaty hair behind the pressure.
"When did you leave Amboise?"
"The King expects me? How can that be?"
Then as Lessaix, scenting a mystery, looked up curiously Commines made haste to cover his slip, "Or rather, how did you know I was coming?"
"Tristan told me as he rode out half an hour ago. He said you were on the way and might arrive any moment. You are to go to the King at once."
"So Tristan left half an hour ago?"
Try as he would Commines could not quite control his voice. He owed more to Mademoiselle de Vesc than he had supposed. The trap had, as it were, snapped before his face and he had escaped by a hair-breadth. Tristan's cunning was as deep as simplicity. His forethought must have run somewhat thus. Lessaix knows that Monsieur de Commines is expected any moment and is to go at once to the King, who waits for him; Monsieur de Commines does not appear, but remains paying his court to the Dauphin at Amboise. The inference would be clear to all men, and Monsieur de Commines would be ruined outright and utterly discredited. Yes, Ursula de Vesc had saved him from downfall, or worse.
Lessaix, watchful as every man was who called Louis master, caught the change of tone and again looked up, but this time with something more than curiosity—an anxious wariness, a fear lest some current of events he failed to discover might catch him in its flood and drag him down with its undertow unawares.