CHAPTER XIV
FOR LIFE AND A THRONE
Slipping his foot back into the stirrup the Dauphin mechanically closed his knees, as a rider does to renew his grip after it has been relaxed. But with the tightening of the grip the bay started as if goaded by a vicious double rasp of the spurs, swerved violently, shaking his head till the chains rattled, then plunging to right and left he sprang forward at a gallop.
"Hugues, Hugues, catch the reins," cried mademoiselle, but the swerve had sent Hugues staggering, and before he had steadied himself or regained his wits Bertrand was tearing madly under the city gates, his reins hanging loose, his neck stretched like a racer's.
"The Dauphin! the Dauphin! Oh! for God's sake—Hugues—Monsieur La Mothe—is there no one to help? They will be in the Loire—drowned while you stand there staring. Oh! that I could ride like a man: why don't you move, some of you, stocks that you are?"
The gasped words were but a breath, so quickly the broken sentences followed one another, but before the frightened girl could lash them with the whip of her distress a second time La Mothe had his fingers knit in Grey Roland's mane and was climbing into the saddle, and the last he heard, as, swaying in his seat, he groped blindly for a missing stirrup, was the girl's deep breath, half sob, half cry.
Bertrand had a long start, but on Grey Roland's back was a rider who in his horsemanship had learned not only how to save his beast, so that no ounce of strength might be unduly hurried to waste, but who also knew how to compel into immediate energy all that reserve force which endures the trials of a long day's march.
Bareheaded—his hat was in his hand as he jested with Ursula de Vesc, and in the stress of the surprise he had flung it aside—La Mothe crouched low in the saddle, the reins gathered into his left hand so that he and Grey Roland alike were just conscious of the bit in the sensitive mouth. For the moment, with that tense grip of the knees, they were as one flesh; the need was they should be of one spirit. With a quiet word La Mothe soothed the excitement which might have plunged them both to sudden destruction on the rounded cobbles of the paved streets, but once the gates were passed, and the dust of the high road underfoot, he loosed the light tension and pressed his heels home into the flanks. There, ahead, a shifting vision in the rising swirl of dust, was the bay, thundering at top speed. Behind there were shouts, cries, the clatter of iron shoes upon the stones, but La Mothe heard only the muffled rhythm of galloping hoof-beats sounding through the roar of the blood swelling his temples and booming in his ears like the surf of a far-off sea. Away to the side, with a stretch of sunburnt grass between, lay the river. Let Bertrand keep to the winding road and all was well. Gallop how he might Grey Roland would wear him down, but let him swerve, let the fluttering of a bird startle him aside, and Ursula de Vesc's prophetic terrors would be justified.
As the memory of her dread flashed into his mind afresh, there swept across Stephen La Mothe one of those sudden storms of temptation which at some time or another beat into every life, even the most sheltered, and surely prove that the curse of primal sin still dwells inherent in our best humanity. "He will drown! Well, let him drown!" and in the instant of the thought, by some instinct of the brain, the loose rein was drawn in with a jerk, which forced the grey to change his stride. Let him drown and there was an end to the tangle which made a hell in the possible heaven of Amboise, an end to the unnatural strife of father and son, an end to the threatened rending asunder of France, who was the mistress and mother of them all, whether King, Dauphin, or pawn in the terrible game of life and death, an end to the danger which hung over the head of Ursula de Vesc. Let him drown: death would pay all debts, and the crooked would be made straight.
Gritting his teeth La Mothe drew a deep breath. With the fuller realization of the thought the sudden convulsion of his heart choked him, and while his blood buzzed the louder for the possibility, fate, chance, or what you will threw the cards in the game his way. Beyond a bend of the road a waggoner's leisurely wain plodded its way to Amboise, and next instant the clearer thunder of Bertrand's hoofs came ringing back from the harder sod which lay between the river and the road. The bay had headed for the bank where, by the same bend, the river curved to a line ahead. Death would pay all debts, and the crooked would be made straight: he would pay Commines all he owed him and there would be clean hands for them both. Clean hands? "By God! No!" he cried, and shook the tightened rein loose. Clean hands? Saul, who consented to Stephen's death, was as red-handed as the man who hurled the first stone: what better was it to let the boy ride to his fate unaided? That way there was no cleansing of hands. To permit a preventable death was murder—murder.