CHAPTER XXIX
HOW MARTIN WON HIS HEART'S DESIRE
And now I come to what has saddened all my life since, and still must sadden it.
In Poictiers, it will be remembered, much was to happen. There Mademoiselle de Narbonne was to leave me behind in hiding while she rode on to Plessis to gain the King's ear through Philip de Commines. There, too, I was to forestall her useless sacrifice and, in a triple sense, disappear into the dark, into the night, into her scorn and contempt, into the valley of the shadow, from which none ride out at the hither end.
And yet none of these things came to pass. We reckoned without the King's energy of will to strike, and the swiftness of his wrath.
Once only she referred to the part she proposed that I should play. It was on the morning of that last Thursday in August, and the great silence of the deep heart of the wood through which we rode had fallen upon us.
"Father Paulus has told you that we part at Poictiers?" she said, looking straight forward between her horse's twitching ears.
"Yes; it is all arranged between us."
Then silence fell again, but she gave her reins a little impatient shake as if she asked in her heart what manner of man was this who had no word of gratitude or even of plain thanks to offer her. But it was better so; the graceless boor would easier seem the lying scoundrel.
"What will you do, Monsieur, while you are waiting for news?" she went on at last.
"Rather let us ask, what will you do? How, for instance, do you propose to pass the gates of Plessis?"