CHAPTER XI. UNCERTAINTY.
– Then happy low, lie down; Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. Henry IV. – Part Second
Forty men-at-arms, carrying alternately naked swords and blazing torches, served as the escort, or rather the guard, of King Louis, from the townhall of Peronne to the Castle; and as he entered within its darksome and gloomy strength, it seemed as if a voice screamed in his ear that warning which the Florentine has inscribed over the portal of the infernal regions, "Leave all hope behind!"
At that moment, perhaps, some feeling of remorse might have crossed the King's mind, had he thought on the hundreds, nay thousands, whom, without cause, or on light suspicion, he had committed to the abysses of his dungeons, deprived of all hope of liberty, and loathing even the life to which they clung by animal instinct.
The broad glare of the torches outfacing the pale moon, which was more obscured on this than on the former night, and the red smoky light which they dispersed around the ancient buildings, gave a darker shade to that huge donjon, called the Earl Herbert's Tower. It was the same that Louis had viewed with misgiving presentiment on the preceding evening, and of which he was now doomed to become an inhabitant, under the terror of what violence soever the wrathful temper of his overgrown vassal might tempt him to exercise in those secret recesses of despotism.
To aggravate the King's painful feelings, he saw, as he crossed the court-yard, several bodies, over each of which had been hastily flung a military cloak. He was not long of discerning that they were corpses of slain archers of the Scottish Guard, who having disputed, as the Count Crèvecoeur informed him, the command given them to quit the post near the King's apartments, a brawl had ensued between them and the Duke's Walloon bodyguards, and before it could be composed by the officers on either side, several lives had been lost.
"My trusty Scots!" said the King, as he looked upon this melancholy spectacle; "had they brought only man to man, all Flanders, ay, and Burgundy to boot, had not furnished champions to mate you."
"Yes, an it please your Majesty," said Balafré, who attended close behind the King, "Maistery mows the meadow – few men can fight more than two at once. I myself never care to meet three, unless it be in the way of special duty, when one must not stand to count heads."
"Art thou there, old acquaintance?" said the King, looking behind him; "then I have one true subject with me yet."
"And a faithful minister, whether in your councils, or in his offices about your royal person," whispered Oliver le Dain.