“I was glad you weren’t hanged this morning,” he said with a sly leer. “If you had died, my scheme would have gone astray. I’m going to care for you now like a bird in a cage. I’m going to send you down the river to a safe, snug place where you will come to no harm.” He rubbed his hands together like a merchant who has just made a clever deal. “When your brother sees fit to surrender his estates, I shall give you back to him. Till then——” He raised his arm and snapped his fingers in the air.
He turned to the fellow who had taken me and clapped him on the back.
“You have earned every groat of your reward, my man,” he said, and drew from an inside pocket a leather purse. “I am proud of you.” Then he counted out upon the table the fifty crowns in glittering pieces of gold.
My captor was beside himself from joy and bashfulness—joy, that he had been the lucky one to effect my capture, bashful, that he was made so much of by so great a person as De Marsac. He wanted to mutter a word of thanks, but he choked in trying it, so that all he could do was to hang his head and turn his face aside.
But after he had put the money in his jerkin, he took me by the arm and led me to a place at the far end of the room. By merest chance it was the very seat I had occupied the night before.
“You have been the means of making me a rich man, lad,” he puffed as he sat down. “And I’m going to feast you to your heart’s content for it.”
The landlord came—the same wiry hatchet-faced fellow who had taken my dagger. Not a sign of recognition showed on his face. As though he had never laid eyes on me before, he bowed graciously to us, asked us what we would eat and was off.
While we sat waiting, I ran my eyes searchingly around the room. In the semidarkness of the old lanthorn, I noticed De Marsac sitting over his supper with the same smile upon his face. Soldiers came in and out, some of them to bring reports to their master, others to snatch a bite and to make off again.
I rested my gaze upon my captor. The cap was still drawn down half way over his eyes. The flaring red scarf hung about his neck, reaching well up under his chin. A scowl crossed my brow. I fastened a look on him that was filled with hate and chagrin. His two beady eyes twinkled their strange light into mine as though they were laughing at me. The corners of his lips curled slightly up in amusement. Then he winked slyly at me as though there was something I ought to understand.
I grew interested. As though he were a curiosity, I began to examine him more closely. The shine of those eyes and the slight arch of his nose seemed strangely familiar to me.