From under his leathern jerkin he drew an armourer's file such as is used for cutting rivets, long, flat, and coarse, and through the howls of the frantic brutes came the steady rasp, rasp, rasp, while the sweat grew cold upon me at the cunning devilishness of the villian's purpose.
"Your dinner to-day, Burgundy," said he, plying the tool steadily under cover of the howling din. "Your dinner to-morrow, but the third day you must go a-hunting. One spring and you're through, my children; Rome, Burgundy, and the Empire all on France at a leap, and Spain crawling in behind to claim her share of the spoils. Good!" as one of the famished brutes, crouching, thundered against the bars, "that is the trick to play when a man jeers your empty belly. Spring! and you're through! but not to-day nor to-morrow. When the third day comes, then, God with us! poof! You're through! you're through!" and again the rasp, rasp, rasp arose, harsh and strident, his body swinging in rhythm to the grind of the tool.
CHAPTER XII
MONSEIGNEUR'S COUNTERPLOT
If ever there had been a doubt of the scoundrel's treacherous purpose there was none now and, the beasts being at last fed, and he gone, it was with a humbled heart I slipped from my hiding-place. My God! What a secret to hold! Truly those who net in King's waters sometimes land strange fish. For a moment my purpose staggered. Jan Meert was the King's tool. Let me but hold my peace for two days, and the hand and brain which set that tool working would pass to judgment by as red a road as had dead Babette. I owed the King no loyalty, no gratitude, no love. Love! Who in all France or out of it owed Louis love? Mademoiselle? No, hate rather; for in some way which I did not understand, Louis stood to her for ruin and the wreck of all she held most dear.
Again my purpose staggered. Once already I have said I was not in love with Mademoiselle, but she had stirred my sympathy, and except Martin, and perhaps, no, not perhaps, certainly—Brigitta and the dead Babette, no one had touched me so nearly as that since my mother died.
But that mood passed. I have always believed that the finger of God is closer to the lives of men than some think. You are blind and do not see it, hardened and do not feel it, self-guided and so misunderstand its directings, but whose fault is it that we fail to read the signs, or are unconscious of the pressure of spirit on spirit? By silence I could secure my private vengeance, but at what a cost?
If Louis died, died murdered in such a fashion, war would surely follow. A picture of The Four Nations let loose on France: of Burgundy and Spain, Rome and The Empire, dividing her mangled body, not in type, but in truth, with all the crowded horrors of siege and sack rose before me; cities laid waste, a helpless peasantry ravaged, innocence flung to feed the passions of human wolves; these were mine to permit or prevent; who knew but that God Almighty had brought me to Plessis for this very thing?
"Who are you, to question whys and wherefores in the King's business?" Monsieur de Commines had said, and I had allowed the justice of the demand. Here was the hand of the King of Kings Himself, and who was I to question His whys and wherefores? or to His command. Do this for me! answer, I will not! No! Monsieur de Commines must hear and must act.
He listened without comment, almost without emotion, till I had ended. Then—