silk, shot out from the red robe. A thin ivory-coloured hand, with fingers of almost preternatural length, rose to a painted scarlet slit which was the creature's mouth.
The masked head dropped a little to one side, one lean finger, shining like a fish-bone, tapped the mouth significantly, the door opened, some heavy curtains of Flanders tapestry were pushed aside, and the Equerry walked into a place as strange and sickly as he had ever met in some fantastic or disordered dream.
Johnnie heard the door close softly behind him, the "swish, swish" of the falling curtains. And then he stood up, his eyes blinking a little in the bright light which streamed upon them – his hand upon his sword-hilt – and looked around to find himself. He was in a smallish room, hung around entirely with an arras of scarlet cloth, powdered at regular intervals with a pattern of golden bats.
The floor was covered with a heavy carpet of Flanders pile – a very rare and luxurious thing in those days – and the whole room was lit by its silver lamps, which hung from the ceiling upon chains. On one side, opposite the door, was a great pile of cushions, going half-way up the wall towards the ceiling – cushions as of strange barbaric colours, violent colours that smote upon the eye and seemed almost to do the brain a violence.
In the middle of the room, right in the centre, was a low oak stool, upon which was a silver tray. In the middle of the tray was a miniature chafing-dish, beneath which some volatile amethyst-coloured flame was burning, and from the dish itself a pastille, smouldering and heated, sent up a thin, grey whip of odorous smoke.
The whole air of this curious tented room was heavy and languorous with perfume. Sickly, and yet with a sensuous allurement, the place seemed to reel round the young man, to disgust one side of him, the real side; and yet, in some low, evil fashion, to beckon to base things in his blood – base thoughts, physical influences which he had never known before, and which now seemed to suddenly wake out of a long sleep, and to whisper in his ears.
All this, this surveyal of the place in which he found himself, took but a moment, and he had hardly stood there for three seconds – tall, upright, and debonair, amid the wicked luxury of the room – when he heard a sound to his left, and, turning, saw that he was not alone.
Behind a little table of Italian filigree work, upon which were a pair of tiny velvet slippers, embroidered with burnt silver, a sprunking-glass – or pocket mirror – and a tall-stemmed bottle of wine, sat a vast, pink, fleshy, elderly woman.
Her face, which was as big as a ham, was painted white and scarlet. Her eyebrows were pencilled with deep black, the heavy eyes shared the vacuity of glass, with an evil and steadfast glitter of welcome.
There were great pouches underneath the eyes; the nose was hawk-like, the chins pendulous, the lips once, perhaps, well curved and beautiful enough, now full, bloated, and red with horrid invitation.
The woman was dressed with extreme richness.
Fat and powdered fingers were covered with rings. Her corsage was jewelled – she was like some dreadful mummy of what youth had been, a sullen caricature of a long-past youth, when she also might have walked in the fields under God's sky, heard bird-music, and seen the dew upon the bracken at dawn.
Johnnie stirred and blinked at this apparition for a moment; then his natural courtesy and training came to him, and he bowed.
As he did so, the fat old woman threw out her jewelled arms, leant back in her chair, stuttering and choking with amusement.
"Tiens!" she said in French, "Monsieur qui arrive! Why have you never been to see me before, my dear?"
Johnnie said nothing at all. His head was bent a little forward. He was regarding this old French procuress with grave attention.
He knew now at once who she was. He had heard her name handed about the Court very often – Madame La Motte.
"You are a little out of my way, Madame," Johnnie answered. "I come not over Thames. You see, I am but newly arrived at the Court."
He said it perfectly politely, but with a little tiny, half-hidden sneer, which the woman was quick to notice.
"Ah! Monsieur," she said, "you are here on duty. Merci, that I know very well. Those for whom you have come will be down from above stairs very soon, and then you can go about your business. But you will take a glass of wine with me?"
"I shall be very glad, Madame," Johnnie answered, as he watched the fat, trembling hand, with all its winking jewels, pouring Vin de Burgogne into a glass. He raised it and bowed.
The old painted woman raised her glass also, and lifted it to her lips, tossing the wine down with a sudden smack of satisfaction.
Then, in that strange perfumed room, the two oddly assorted people looked at each other straightly for a moment.
Neither spoke.
At length Madame La Motte, of the great big house with the red door, heaved herself out of her arm-chair, and waddled round the table. She was short and fat; she put one hand upon the shoulder of the tall, clean young man in his riding suit and light armour.
"Mon ami," she said thickly, "don't come here again."
Johnnie looked down at the hideous old creature, but with a singular feeling of pity and compassion.
"Madame," he said, "I don't propose to come again."
"Thou art limn and debonair, and a very pretty boy, but come not here, because in thy face I see other things for thee. Lads of the Court come to see me and my girls, proper lads too, but in their faces there is not what I discern in thy face. For them it matters nothing; for thee 'twould be a stain for all thy life. Thou knowest well whom I am, Monsieur, and canst guess well where I shall go – e'en though His Most Catholic Majesty be above stairs, and will get absolution for all he is pleased to do here. But you – thou wilt be a clean boy. Is it not so?"
The fat hand trembled upon the young man's arm, the hoarse, sodden voice was full of pleading.
"Ma mère," Johnnie answered her in her own language, "have no fear for me. I thank you – but I did not understand…"
"Boy," she cried, "thou canst not understand. Many steps down hellwards have I gone, and in the pit there is knowledge. I knew good as thou knowest it. Evil now I know as, please God, thou wilt never know it. But, look you, from my very knowledge of evil, I am given a tongue with which to speak to thee. Keep virgin. Thou art virgin now; my hand upon thy sword-arm tells me that. Keep virgin until the day cometh and bringeth thy lady and thy destined love to thee."
There were tears in the young man's eyes as he looked down into the great pendulous painted face, from which now the evil seemed to be wiped away as a cloth wipes away a chalk mark upon a slate.
As the last ray of a setting sun sometimes touches to a fugitive glory – a last fugitive glory – some ugly, sordid building of a town, so here he saw something maternal and sweet upon the face of this old brothel-keeper, this woman who had amassed a huge fortune in ministering to the pride of life, the pomp, vanity, and lusts of Principalities and Powers.
He turned half round, and took the woman's left hand in his.
"My mother," he said, with an infinitely winning and yet very melancholy gaze, "my mother, I think, indeed, that love will never come to me. I am not made so. May the Mother of God shield me from that which is not love, but natheless seemeth to have love's visage when one is hot in wine or stirred to excitement. But thou, thou wert not ever…"
She
