"First, let us hear what that French woman has to say to the assignation," exclaimed Soulis, whose polluted heart could not suppose the existence of true purity, and whose cruel disposition exulted in torturing and death; "question her, and then her majesty may have full acquittal."
Again the brow of Edward was overcast. The fiends of jealously once more tugged at his heart; and ordering the Countess of Gloucester to withdraw he commanded the Baroness de Pontoise to be brought into his presence.
When she saw the king's threatening looks, and beheld the fearful expression which shot from every surrounding countenance, she shrunk with terror. Long backneyed in secret gallantries, the same inward whisper which had proclaimed to Soulis that the queen was guilty, induced her to believe that she had been the confidante of an illicit passion; and therefore, though she knew nothing really bad of her unhappy mistress, yet, fancying that she did, she stood before the royal tribunal with the air and aspect of a culprit.
"Repeat to me," demanded the king, "or answer it with your head, all that you know of Queen Margaret's intimacy with the man who calls himself a minstrel."
At these words, which were delivered in a tone that seemed the sentence of death, the French woman fell on her knees, and in a burst of terror exclaimed, "Sire, I will reveal all if your majesty will grant me pardon for having too faithfully served my mistress!"
"Speak! speak!" cried the king, with desperate impatience. "I swear to pardon you, even if you have joined in a conspiracy against my life; but speak the truth, and all the truth, that judgment, without mercy, may fall on the guilty heads!"
"Then I obey," answered the baroness.
"Foul betrayer!" half-exclaimed Gloucester, turning disappointed away. "O! what it is to be vile, and to trust the vile! But virtue will not be auxiliary to vice—and so wickedness falls by its own agents."
The baroness, raised from her kneeling position by Soulis, began:
"The only time I ever heard of, or saw this man, to my knowledge, was when he was brought to play before my lady at the bishop's banquet. I did not much observe him, being engaged in conversation at the other end of the room; so I cannot say, whether I might not have seen him in France; for many noble lords adored the Princess Margaret, though she appeared to frown upon them all. But I must confess, when I attended her majesty's disrobing after the feast, she put to me so many questions about what I thought of the minstrel who had sung so divinely, that I began to think her admiration too great to have been awakened by a mere song. And then she asked me, if a king could have a nobler air than he had; and she laughed, and said she would send your majesty to school to learn of him."