“Are you sure, Ponthieu?”
“Sure as I live! It was near the King’s Oak, where the road through the forest turns sharply toward the west. My guards thought me safe enough, for Loches was in sight. Two of them were a little in front of me laughing and singing, two rode behind, and in this manner we were going at a walk, when at the elbow of the road we came face to face with a half-dozen cavaliers, and the leading horseman was Coqueville.
“All through the morning I had been looking for some chance to make a dash for it. When we met, the two parties were not fifty yards apart, and if I could only slip past them, I knew that in the confusion I would get a start, and the luck that favors the brave might favor me.
“All this went through me in a moment. I put spurs to my horse, and, giving a yell, went forward like a flash. I got behind Coqueville, calling loudly out to him by name for help, and then my horse stumbled, and I rolled over like a log into the brambles.
“But the good God was with me. I was not hurt, by a mercy. Coqueville knew my voice, and ma foi! But he is a great sword. While I lay in the brambles I heard the kicking and plunging of horses, the clash of steel, and twice the sharp reports of a pistol. My guards were taken by surprise, but the bishop is well served, and they made a brave fight of it. Two lay dead in the snow, and two, beaten from their horses, had surrendered. I thought it was time to appear now, so scrambled up, and began to pour out thanks, while the cords that bound my hands were cut by a Moorish dwarf.”
“Majolais!”
“I know not his name, but, once free, I helped myself to a sword from one of the dead men, and explained how I stood. The Princess was there in her litter, and she herself told me that she was for Orleans but that Monsieur de Lanoy had taken the young Prince on to Poitou. She wished me God-speed on my errand to the Constable, Coqueville gave me one of the captured horses, and lent me ten écus—and you can guess the rest. But now, messieurs, here is the forest of Russy, and here is the Beuvron, and here we must part, for I lie to-night at Bracieux, and to-morrow must be with the Constable.”
He shook our hands, thanked us again, and, turning toward the northeast, trotted off into the forest.
CHAPTER X
THE VISION OF THE WOOD
We had reined up under a huge yoke-elm, whose spreading branches threw a mottled shade on the snow at our feet, and watched Ponthieu in silence until he went quite out of our sight. The same thoughts were running in our minds. Perhaps something too of the same despair had seized us, a presentiment that we were casting away our lives for nothing. Madame de Condé had at one stroke, by changing her plans, gone straight into the lion’s mouth, and had increased tenfold the difficulty of our emprise, if not totally destroying all chances of its success. And yet, now that I look back upon things, I cannot blame her. She was a woman, after all, and guided more by the heart than the head. But then, as we stood there, I railed against the caprice that was like to cost us all our lives.